#79 Self Financing of Labour & The Skilled Artisan

This one has the atomic number for gold on it and believe me folks, once you get the whole nature of this part of the proposal, you'll begin to see how the Valun is a vertiable gold mine of opportunities for just about anything. We are proceeding from our last paper concerning the proposed method and understanding whereby one gets paid for one's work with one's own money, because one issued it oneself by one's own rightful fiat! We've explained all this before, just check the previous numbered papers. It's difficult to tell where you are without knowing where you've been and where the people that brought you here, had gone themselves. None of them dared guess that their own fiat was what was required to set them free. This happens to be the ONLY known monetary solution that squarely addresses this mandatory requirement; the inalienable right to issue one's own money. We do not want what is not ours by right. There isn't going to be any “redistribution of wealth” solutions or anything even remotely like that, but we do want to recapture what has been quite erroneously and cunningly taken from us.  

So, in the proposal, there are fundamentally two ways one issues one's own money; 1) one works for it, or 2) if one is really needy and for whatever reason can't be the one earning a living, the community determines how much each month they can issue. As we've said many times, this is our answer to state socialism: we will take care of our own without the need for a state to do so. But in order to make a realistic decision concerning how many Valuns the indigent would be able to issue, the local community would have to take into consideration the standards suggested by the present “public” money and its price structure for necessities. We covered this aspect in this paper

The proposed Valun was designed to be heavier than any other money so prices would naturally seem low. Right now (4/11/16), the Valun is in a 1 to 2.76 ratio with the dollar: it would take $2.76 to trade for V1. But right now, we want to get back to discussing earning a living, contracts and the way artisans would understand how they would be paid.

An artisan contract is different from a normal wage or salaried labour contract. The whole cost of an artisan contract involves both labour and materials and a finish date for work that needs to be completed on time, by that date, else other work depending on it might suffer. Those are the sub-contractor kinds of jobs, where a skilled artisan is involved in the overall project, or at least enough to know where his work fits into the whole, and when the time comes, he/she gets in there, perhaps gets the materials too, and does his/her job and when done goes onto something else.

The kinds of artisan craftsmen/women I have in mind could be doing anything that is usually a one time only, short project kind of work. They might schedule their work out months in advance too. So we have any number of possible jobs that could be created having to do with the building trades, the demolition and repurposing of older materials to create new ones, some jobs involving earth moving and agricultural and other ground manoeuvring, and then there is the whole arena of anything having to do with motors, automotive work, truck engine rebuilding, etc. Many of these can be and are scheduled as specific date sensitive tasks that need to be done by people who know what they're doing and have built up a reputation, “good will” again, that gets other people to place their confidence in their talents and abilities; expressing the artisan's innate wealth.

Artisan contracts are of varying kinds and pay schedules. Most imply that if the job is not done on time, the artisan is docked pay for the cost of delay. Most artisan contracts also cover materials; the artisan is presumed better to know the materials required to do his job. Until a pure Valun market is achieved, however, it is understood that an artisan getting paid in Valuns is also getting paid in the local “public” currency. Some materials may not be available in the Valun market (the VEN), so therefore some considerations would play into the making of simple parallel contracts; one specifying the amount paid in “public” money and the other contract, one paid in Valuns.

But as we said before, no IE is going to care about the nature of the work being done, nor any contract in dollars or anything but Valuns. That's between the members that engage in it. All the IE needs to know is how many Valuns go to whose account at particular points in the project being achieved, according to the contract the members drew up before they started their jobs. Rather than being specifically identified, these points in the job could be referenced on the simple contract as Point A, Point B, etc. Likewise again, the IE doesn't need to know about any contract that exists in “public” money. There may be one or may not be one. Whether there is one in their money or not, In any case, the IE would need one and we'd probably call it something like an Artisan Labour Contract (ALC).

With ALCs, the usual procedure is to pay the artisan 50% of the total up front, which allows the artisan to acquire the needed materials and enough to live on until he's done, whereupon he gets the rest upon a timely completion and that part acts as kind of a bonus or a hold over until the artisan's next job. Artisan contract arrangements are very popular for those one of a kind or one at a time projects where the artisan isn't normally expected to return for any routine maintenance, etc.

Here's how the administration at the IE for one of these works: upon successful acceptance by the IE, the entire amount of Valuns gets transferred from the artisan to the account of the person or enterprise for which the contract job is being done, at least a few days before the artisan is scheduled to begin work. Again, the artisan is buying his job. The employer has the funds and so depending on the terms of the contract, the artisan is paid by the employer in money that he just previously used to buy his job; perhaps as much as 50% of it up front. The rest is held by the employer until the artisan has successfully completed his/her job and of course if the artisan fails his due date, some percentage of the remaining Valuns would be retained by the employer. These terms would also be all specified on a simple one page contract.

We'll prefer that these kinds of jobs didn't drag on for months or years. The idea is to have an idea of the scope and extent of the job going in and everything is done, not to keep doing something longer to get more money out of the employer (as frequently occurs under the present system), but instead to get done quickly, so as to go ahead and self finance the next job! Is all that clearly understood?

The cost to the employer for having an artisan do something for him might be surprisingly small; half the present cost, if borne by nothing but the “public” currency.

What everyone has needed is for others to work for them doing needful work, but there has never been enough money to pay workers to do them. Now with the fiat where it rightfully belongs, artisans can approach employers and offer to do many things to make needful improvements at far less cost than presently. See how that differs from the present system that actually treats labour as Ayn Rand's character deemed best; only give them enough money to feed them and nothing more? So much is really a matter of attitude and perspective; the position from which one comes at a particular skill, job or occupation.

Of course it's necessary for all employers of artisans to have closure, completion, real improvement, etc. The community may require artisans to form guilds as they used to which would enforce standards of competence and workmanship. Since the workers themselves determine their own valuation of the work they do, they would charge more than is customary in “public” money, but there would be an upward limit set by a few considerations: 1) income taxes; this “complementary money for the time being” business is never going to be a tax dodge and their taxes must be paid and in their money. If you make too many Valuns, at the end of the year you're going to have to pay the extra taxes and 2) if the employer is a B business, and most of these kinds of contracts would have to be because even though the money is called into existence by the craftsman's fiat, the payout is still from the account of the B member business and at the end of the day, all expenses must be met and exceeded by incoming revenue or the business is dead, bankrupt, a joke. Understood?

Artisans could be B member businesses every bit as much as sole proprietorships. They might approach other members of the community with clean up or fix up projects that make people who visit the community begin to know and understand that the people who live there really care about how their properties look, etc. In the process, a lot of skilled craftsmen can earn a living and earn their own money same as the salaried employee.

We could very easily imagine that the amount of work and the number of opportunities to come in and get something done and then move on are far more numerous than salaried full time or even part time jobs. Using an ALC is one more expression of displaying the legitimacy of your own money; in our examples, Valuns were created as money in the very act of buying a job and as the work is completed, the Valuns are cancelled by the employee taking back his Valuns. The monetary circle is closed; as many Valuns are received as were issued, thus cancelling out any possibility for inflation.

Everyone is actually very concerned with their money losing its purchasing power long term. They feel as though the system and its money are cheating them and of course this is so. This is one reason to adopt the Valun and eventually renounce as far as possible the use of their money: save THEIR money for taxes and anything that at this time must be paid in THEIR money. Spend your Valuns! That way, they get stronger; “good will” spreads as they are seen in public and their use benefits more people. Imagine magnifying this reach as the Valun is adopted by more and more communities!

Our next topic is going to deal with ways that all money is not just depreciated, but where it is squandered or lost completely. There is no “conservation of energy” theory associated with money, unless you're a blockhead who insists that everything is ultimately quantifiable (one can count it) and that therefore all is rendered nothing but commodities and that their interactions determine prices.  

Well of course they don't. People make choices based on how much value they have to measure in trade (how much money they have) compared with other possible products, services, activities, amusements, etc that could be paid for instead. There is an infinite variety of possible things to buy at any moment and there is never any possible upward limit to how much money might be required – HOWEVER- there are other natural laws in play, one of which is the “diminished returns to scale law” which varies form shop to shop and industry to industry.

This much we know; were money to be acquired as proposed in this blog, probably some would become rather rich compared with others, but the differences between rich and poor would be strikingly diminished. You see, without that monetary jet fuel they call capitalism, which allows the rich few to live in luxury they mostly don't deserve (sorry, but everybody knows it anyway, so I'm not stating anything that's not obvious to everyone here), the distances become more genuinely humane between the various classes of people, as it was perhaps in earlier centuries when people regardless of class, could actually be said to care about one another in ways that have become next to impossible today.

This is just one more reason we need our own money rather than THEIRS. We back our own money with our work and our lives. What do they back theirs with? Nothing at all but FORCE and the threat of blockades, sanctions and war.

David Burton
dpbmss@mail.com

Current Hypothetical Value of a Hypothetical Value Unit