Since
we need to spread the word simply and clearly, we'll state the
features of the proposal as simply as we can:
A: What
is the basis of your money?
Q: The proposed money is
based on people rather than things. Money begins its life from its
issue, when it is exchanged for something in a trade (when one buy's
something with it) and travels around in trade in a community or
market until it buys something that depreciates and thereafter that
money is destroyed, never to return. That is the lifespan of money; it is born, it does its work in exchange for real goods and services, and then it dies,
hence:
Money is not a static quantity but must be a renewable
resource or economies (co-moneys) die.
We placed this statement apart as
it is not only obvious, but this is where our economic understanding
differs most radically from anything in standard academic economics:
our understanding is more analogous to electrical theory.
Our
proposal is based on the extension of the Rights of Man; the right of
everyman / everywoman to issue his/her own money as a literal extension
of their individual will, resulting in a truly natural democratic
order. I said a democratic order as it would be horizontal not
vertical and without the organizational vertical, there is no need
for representation or a republican form of anything, except in one
place; each exchange would offer people to a rotating council that would
be in charge of IVES, the service organization for all the
independent exchanges.
According to Riegel, any other money
issuance is illegitimate and leads to ultimate economic failure,
usually under terms of totalitarian tyranny, which also fails as a
natural concept, since all centralized controlled, planned, etc.
systems expect to run successfully against nature. As Riegel and
others have noted, THEY prefer price inflation (largely to hold up
the spurious value of their securities markets) so that over time
THEIR money must lose its value no matter what fiscal or monetary
policies are followed. Those policies after all are just more
indications of the dubious but deliberate manipulation of THEIR
system that it relies on such things to preserve its economy,
co-money, intact.
Want stable prices, enough money but
never too much, money that is backed by the people's labour and
split-bartered for available goods as all money has ever been used
down through time? Then work to implement this Valun solution.
Q:
Where does it all start?
A: With
each of you: with each one of us, word of mouth, eye to eye,
grassroots, community to community. It begins with the formation of
a business entity, perhaps called IVES, the International Valun
(Value) Exchange Society. This business would be tasked with
managing certain necessary internal bookkeeping tasks for all of its
local exchange members, which would be something more than
franchises, but less than wholly owned subsidiaries. In fact IVES
would be the servant of all the member exchanges.
I
recall inventing this image for IVES, It is a seal in the style of a
rock, a stone with the engraved lettering IVES, representing the
earth, the third rock from the sun, etc. Always to be printed in
gray granite black and white. The IVES seal seemed to me at the time
to show the basic idea that I wanted people to understand: our
monetary system represents the ground, the rock, from which all
things including ourselves spring forth.
But there's one thing
I need everyone to understand; money has no meaning whatever
unless it is exchanged with other people. It actually proves its
power and usefulness only by how many people understand, accept and
use it. In accomplishing split barter, its primary function, money
enables us to save time and build wealth, which must provide an
income, a livelihood. Money supports and helps sustain and build
the cornerstones of society, beginning within each local community.
Money is a tool separating the civilized from the savage, who have
relied on whole barter since forever.
Particularly
in these times, if you care about civilization or even the
preservation of the planet itself, this is as important and serious
an idea to consider and pursue as any material preparations you might
be making for when times really get rough. If you want a future free
of THEM (globalists, central bankers, elites), then you will need
your own money, because money is literally the basis of any
civilized human organization – and right now, our enemies have
a monopoly over it and to that extent have unwarranted control over
us.
The solution, the proposal presented here, is designed
to beat any of THEIR brands of THEIR money at preserving purchasing
power; it will retain its purchasing power over all others because
its present value of a transaction at a stated time basis stands
athwart their outdated and self-serving commodity basis for money
(self serving in that THEY love to speculate on commodities as it
makes THEM money on money without any actual work).
Q:
What is the name of your unit of exchange:
money?
A: We used E. C. Riegel's name for it. It's
called a Valun [VAL-un] – a value unit – although it could be
called by other names as long as the same structure and rules were to
apply.
Q:
What is your money based on?
A: A
unit of purchasing power involving a transaction for 1 oz
of gold on a specific date stated in any of THEIR money that can
trade for gold divided into a thousand parts, the date identified
as the Valun inception date. Each day, the present value of that
transaction is calculated based on THEIR prices for gold (we also
take silver and maybe later platinum in trade) and the result in
THEIR other currencies represents the present fair trade value of a
Valun in THEIR money. (On 11/7/16 V1 = $2.72. See the present
value of a proposed Valun here.)
All exchanges of THEIR
money for ours are one way trade as there is no point in trading
out of the basic currency of the people, unless you intend perhaps
some form of money laundering, which this completely eliminates.
Q:How does one participate in this proposed
monetary system?
A:
Each human being above the age of 18 in the United States (there may
be more lenient rules in other countries) would be entitled to become
an A member, an OWNER, in their community independent exchange or IE
(which includes a percentage ownership in IVES). Each A member will
pay the value of V1 per year as dues. Each A member must be
recommended by two other A members (Technically: It takes an
agreement among three people to start an IE, each recommended by the
other two.) and be entitled to live where they reside: our domicile
rule.
Certain provisions will probably be made for the
homeless; they will need to abide by the same rules, approval by two
A members and a connection with the area in which they are homeless.
This proposal is humanitarian at its roots, because it all comes
forth from us not from THEM (globalists, central bankers, elites) and
must be PRIVATE or it simply wont work.
In
order for anything to be worthwhile, it must be OWNED by the people
that use it. That way, it gets better looked after, taken care of,
runs better, etc. In fact the independent exchanges would become
your spaces for gathering and discussing things relating to work,
business, jobs, goods for sale, etc. Money is not just tokens,
they're the visible part of an accounting machine and the offices in
which these activities are centered will also feature ads for jobs
and goods for sale in Valuns.
Will there be some internet
presence? Probably. But most of us live in the actual brick and
mortar world and want to make things, grow things, develop new
services, new appliances, new ideas that otherwise would require
THEIR money, etc. This proposal will only work if people really use
it in their daily lives.
Q: Where are
your offices?
A: Since this is intended to be a PRIVATE
business, our premises will always be on PRIVATE property and access
will be PRIVATE; NOT open to the general “off the street” public.
Each local center will be called an exchange. The business of these
exchanges will be the settlement of the accounts of its members;
literally the movement of Valuns between accounts. Eventually, there
may be smaller offices located in various places; Valun counters.
These would carry on certain services, gather transaction traffic
that will be processed at the main exchange office.
Q: How
will we spread news of this business?
A: For now, word
of mouth and eye to eye. Recall that money derives from “one eye”
which was usually that of the potentate whose image was usually
stamped in profile on THEIR coins; the “heads” side. Some of you
can bring up and print out everything on this blog and spread it
around. This is right now an “open source” idea and isn't likely
ever to be otherwise.
Q: What do you
stand for?
A: The rights of individual (not
collective) will, liberty and property (acquired by honest means) and
the Bill of Rights from the US Constitution. I also support the
Declaration of Independence as the founding document of the American
republic. I prefer civilization to barbarism, refined culture to
vulgar, quality to shoddy, rationality to anything else, truth to
lies, SANITY to insanity and the wish to live a life in REASONABLE
EXPECTATION of continuing peace as opposed to war, confusion,
hostility, etc. and a final end to war and poverty.
Q: What
do we get for joining?
A: Each A member gets an
account, an A member account. B member accounts are for businesses
that join the exchange. Each account belongs to the members, not the
exchange. The exchange does NOT lend money, nor is there anything
like fractional reserves to worry about. There is no need for
deposit insurance. All the Valuns in your accounts are yours.
If you want to invest your money in a B member business or have any
other reason to borrow money, you will have to contract for that with
a member business set up to handle financial traffic. If any
financial business fails, there is no cascading effect on the rest of
the system.
Since usury, specifically defined as asking
back from uncreated money as is practiced in THEIR system, is NOT
allowed in ours, all the costs of borrowing money will have to be
paid up front or in the case of purchases of capital goods, the
lender would buy the asset at a lower price and sell it back to the
borrower for more money over a longer series of installment payments
covered by a Credit Contract as described on this blog. Either of
these methods removes the onus of usury from the system. Lenders of
Valuns will of course need to have those Valuns from their credit
contractors, since they will not be able to issue Valuns from STOLEN
fiat (credit) as is done in THEIR system.
Oh and of course,
everyone gets 200 Valuns (V200) to start. That's the “you're at
GO, collect V200” which sets up a basic pool of purchasing power
among the members, again from an electrical analogy, the spark to set
the machine in motion. A monetary system is nothing more than an
accounting machine with its cash tokens as the observable part of its
functioning.
All members A or B get a checkbook. We encourage
the use of the proposed cash V-Checks to be used (with B member ads
on the reverse sides, so they would function as legitimate
advertising), but each member also would get a checkbook. A check
requisitioning V-Checks is made out to cash, the Valuns are moved
from the member account to the V-Check account associated with
specific V-Checks; like traveler's checks. No transaction fee is
charged. If the V-Check is not cashed in or recovered, it can be
traced back to the member that acquired it to determine what happened
to it, etc.
Some V-Checks might be acquired by a member
knowing they will expire in six months, but knowing also that they
can get replacements for them in newer V-Checks at any time in the
future, and may nevertheless stash them in a drawer and might forget
them. Each exchange will have as its principal service the making
good of any legitimate V-Check presented to them, either by deposit
or replacement. Depositing V-Checks into another account, not your
own, results in a transaction fee payable by the depositor. An
expired V-Check can be exchanged for another updated V-Check without
transaction fee; the records for the expired V-Check are removed from
the system – the Valuns are now associated with the new V-Check and
so on until the V-Check is deposited. A monetary system is all about
accounting and the transactions among accounts.
Q: What
would you do if someone brought in cash in some other money to
exchange for Valuns?
A: Since all of that money belongs
to someone else, we can't hold it on account; THEIR money is the
“notes” or debt instruments of THEIR system. We would also not
likely take too much of THEIR money at one time, probably each
exchange would set a limit of transfers per month per member because
it is THEIR money and THEY are always looking to tax it away and we
don't want to get ourselves involved with any of that until it is
obviously the only way for some people to survive with their wealth
intact. These are the intended financial lifeboats, THEIRS is the
Titanic and it is going down.
We would take THEIR money and
immediately buy gold and or silver bullion with it (the only brand of
THEIR money we can at this time hold) and that would go into the
vaults of the exchange and be owned by the members of the exchange.
In the case of all transfers of this kind, Valuns are exchanged for
THEIR money and spring into existence. These are “backed” by the
precious metals we buy, BUT there is no commodity association about
it; each Valun takes the silver or gold to buy it that we say it
takes, not THEM based on the present value of our initial
transaction.
Remember,
we take the present value of an inception transaction: the
purchasing value of our money stays right where it started, while
THEIRS moves below ours (Valuns always at premium to THEIRS, never at
discount) to be determined as THEIR markets trade every day. Our
yardstick of value measurement remains static while theirs are all
inflating. Want stable prices? Stick with Valuns: prices stated in
Valuns are far less likely to change due to anything but actual costs
and supply and demand. For once in your life, you'll have better
than gold; a fixed yardstick standard of value to measure everything
else reliably without the usual causes of inflation.
Q: Since
your transaction basis involves a piece of purchasing power, how did
you choose it?
A: Since our transaction involves gold,
I chose a transaction at a time close to the recent top in prices for
gold in US dollars on a date that would be easy to remember;
11/2/2011, we've just passed the fifth year in our experiment.
That's a big piece of purchasing power as represented by today's
value: we began at $2.16 and now the equivalent $2.69 (11/1/16),
still 24% above inception. But Valuns are not intended to be some
kind of “buy and hold” investment, like bitcoin for instance.
The Valun is intended to be used as money; spent and earned in a
working economy (co-money) and Valuns will die the same way in any
economy, in depreciation.
Q: What
happens when the price of gold exceeds your inception
transaction?
A: When that happens, a new inception date
is accepted by IVES and all extant Valuns will rise as long as gold
is actually attainable in US dollars. If any other of THEIR
currencies survives the collapse of the US dollar, perhaps it will be
used instead of US dollars; whatever is practical. When it isn't, we
revert to whole barter and 1 oz of gold gets V1,000 and an oz of
silver perhaps V20. By that time, as we would say, the lifeboats
would have been mostly sunk or unavailable. Whatever happens, the
Valun gets harder and heavier with each new inception and beats
inflation in any of THEIR money.
Q: How
does one earn Valuns?
A: Anyone with a job can
conceivably earn Valuns as they earn pay in their “public” money
running parallel Labour Contracts (LC's) as described elsewhere on
this blog. The limit would be based on income taxes in THEIR money
at the end of any tax period, because like it or not, THEY want a
piece of you no matter in what money you earn it. You accept the
fact of THEIR ability to impose FORCE on you as THEY determine
whatever the law is. That's being realistic. Law is FORCE, so you
pay your taxes in THEIR money. You are paid based on these LC's that
run for the same time you are being paid in THEIR money, a parallel
system.
Q: How are Valuns issued?
A:
Three ways:
1) We discussed the exchange for any of THEIR
money.
2) Probably 90% or more of the money will be issued
and “backed” by work done by the members as carried out under
LCs.
3) The rest, for our indigent or homeless members will
be what we described as “natural socialism.” Anyone living on a
pension of any kind may be qualified to issue Valuns. These would be
the only source of unbacked money in the system; Riegel called them
the “red inkers.”
We predict that since we would be
PRIVATE and therefore the wealth that we would establish in Valuns
would grow forth from us, trickle up economics, the numbers of people
who would be allowed to issue Valuns this way would gradually
diminish and eventually no one would be poor.
Q:
How will you end war?
A: War
cannot be ended until the means for making war becomes too expensive
and that means that THEIR money system must crash and NOT be replaced
but repudiated by the world at large, because we'll have ours and
none of us want to spend our money for war. Where then would any
source of money come from except from us and we would then be
hesitant to proffer very much of our money for any government that
promised us protection with too many strings. I said I stand for the
Bill of Rights from the US Constitution and that includes the right
to protect yourself, your will, your liberties, your property and
your loved ones. War will end when it no longer pays.
Q: How
will you end poverty?
A: Perhaps having your own money
is not enough to end poverty overnight, but eventually it will be the
difference. The allowances for “natural socialism” each
community exchange makes are amazingly low compared with what the
biggest governments spend for THEIR military or education aparat for
that matter. Besides which, as we explained, the poor must spend
everything they have and anything excess in an economy tends to
gravitate to the most productive. That's just what will happen in
our system. A man with a job and a poor man sit side by side in a
diner that takes Valuns and when V-Checks are proffered, each will
pay what's required without regard to how rich or poor they are.
Each will know that they issued the money they spent or acquired it
in their own business. If you spend it, you are of course willing to
take it back in return. That's how money works.
Q: Who
or what are forbidden entry into your system?
A: The so
called “public” corporations and governments are at this time
forbidden to join as members of our business. We pay our taxes from
the proceeds of the gold and silver we acquire in trade for Valuns.
Likewise the money we take in as membership dues goes into a regular
(one of THEIRS) bank account and that account belongs to the members
of each exchange. From that regular bank account (for the time
being), whatever is required to set up a system based on laptops and
thumb drives and at the center a larger computer to print the records
etc. is obtained. Records of this account would be available for any
member to see.
Q:
How many people would it take to make the
system profitable?
A: We'll start with how each
exchange makes its money; transaction fees. Riegel's suggestion will
be the standard we begin with; one tenth of one percent of a
transaction (V.001 of V1), for moving Valuns from one account to
another.
After some consideration, for V-Checks, you don't
pay a transaction fee for acquiring them, but you would for
depositing them into an account. If you bring in valid expired
V-Checks and get updated V-Checks in exchange, there is no
transaction fee. We want to encourage the use of V-Checks.
Exchange
profitability in Valuns is all that counts, the expenses in “public”
currencies, like US dollars, are in the dues accounting and the
exchanges of THEIR money for ours stored as precious metals. All
those are sources of income to the exchange as a business and must be
accounted for taxes. At the end of each taxing period the exchange
pays its taxes from a combination of dues and sale of precious
metals. The intent is to keep the taxable income and assets of each
exchange very low. Exchange offices and any extant Valun counters
that emerge may decide to operate on “bankers' hours” which were
from 9 AM to 3 PM. This would give office staff the extra time off
hours to deal with the business of each day.
If
it takes V .001 to move V1,
then it takes V1 to move V1,000 and
V10 to move V10,000 and
V100 to move V100,000.
That's
about the cheapest price to move money through an accounting system
that I know of. But we'll have to see if it provides enough to
maintain an exchange. Riegel recommended this as a start and if
necessary, we could raise the transaction fee structure. However
that may be, we the members/OWNERS will decide based on actual
records rather than by some arbitrary decision as is usually the case
in THEIR system.
Now
let's consider people. 1,000 members get V200 to start which makes
V200,000 which at $2.69 (11/1/16) = $538,000 in purchasing power and
it starts from there. Most communities will probably have little
trouble enrolling 1,000 A members, but that's not enough for a very
deep local economy. B member businesses have employees that are A
members. That way they buy part of their present jobs with LCs and
they issue Valuns before they get paid in them as described elsewhere
in other papers on self financing of labour. In future people will
decide who they prefer to work for and talent will seek its
expression wherever the need arises.
The
social result of such a monetary system would be to remove the excess
pressure on the state that perhaps THEY (globalists, central bankers,
elites) might have wished and return it to each one of us. We will
self finance our own labour and in process begin to build our own
economy (co-money) using our own money, the international standard
Value Unit or Valun.
Q: What do we
need to begin?
A:
A survey of your communities with the potential numbers of likely
OWNERS and the number of businesses, especially any family owned
businesses, which would be likely B member subscribers. Oh, one more
thing: each A member pays a V1 dues per year and are OWNERS, but
businesses pay nothing to join as long as some or all of their
employees are also A members.
B members would be privileged to
purchase advertising through each local exchange, payable in THEIR
money for now, and their advertising designs would be featured on the
reverse sides of our V-Checks.
The
V-Check (return of the traveler's check) is specifically designed to
be impossible and not worth counterfeiting, since there will be so
many designs and they will presumably change with the seasons on a
far more plausible production on demand, almost a “just in time”
process that stays well within the diminishing efficiency to scale of
print runs, so that we can keep our quality up and our costs down.
The first runs would be of the V1/2, V1, V2, V5 and V10. The present
comparable price points (11/7/16) would be would be at $1.36, $2.72,
$5.44, $13.91 and $27.22. Of course since all members will also have
individual checkbooks, these can be made out for any number of Valuns
down to the smallest named subdivision of a Valun; each Valun is
divided into 100 cends, cendos, fen, etc.; the smallest part.
These
represent the latest overall description of the proposal to date.
David
Burton
dpbmss@mail.com
Current
Hypothetical Value of a Hypothetical Value Unit
[11/8/16:
Q: You mentioned something about ledgers, about
the proposal having only one ledger? What are the advantages of
this? How can you bring about coordination and settlement?
A:
The proposed single ledger for the proposed monetary system is to be
a fully running accounting engine, always in motion, so the best we
will be able to do is to take snapshots at the last day of business
by the month, quarter, half and yearly as is done in any other
accounting system. We'd need to assess each exchange's earnings in
transaction fees, for tax purposes anyway.
But
each exchange has part of the entire ledger that would extend out all
over the world to all exchanges. What this does is allow those who
would do harm to be detected and thrown out of our system, after all,
it will be PRIVATE so we get to decide who stays and who goes and for
how long, probably not forever, but we do not want to sponsor any
scams, get rich quick schemes, racketeering (not offering anything of
value in a trade but taking money for it anyway – stealing),
gambling, gaming, etc. A member who moves his A membership account a
lot is suspicious. One can do it and the procedures for doing it
will be worked out by IVES. The reasons for moving their A
membership account may be perfectly legitimate, perhaps they just
haven't found their place yet, but there may be other activities they
are engaged in that would bring down the reputation of the Valun
exchange network (VEN) community. There are intangible things that
are of value. We identified these as goodwill. If any of our
businesses loses goodwill they soon lose any tangible value they
might have possessed as going concern businesses.]
