#113 .1: The Proposal - How It Works - Part 1

To be seen on all the proposed ciculating V-Checks.  The symbol for the proposed International Valun Exchange Society or IVES is a simple circle intended to represent a solid rock with the embossed letters for the organization and the interposed VU for Value Unit which together show a down to earth point and gathering together of the values associated with the people.

Before getting started, I have been asked about German economist Gottfried Feder. I am approximately halfway through his major work and right away I am struck by his obvious concentration on solving things for his nation and people through the state or through state fiscal and monetary policies. Feder was a statist, because he apparently didn't see the obvious: he was correct in his assertions that all value boils down to the value placed by measurement (in money) of labor. We agree with him about that. But he believed in saving as much as he could of the state. I believe that was also E. C. Riegel's intention as well.

We however are not Riegel or Feder. We accept that states exist, that the money that supports them is THEIRS (the usual suspects) and that taxes are as sure as death and must be paid, in THEIR money of course … until they are no longer to be paid. We view the state as a necessary evil that is best left to its own devices until it crumbles away of its own corruption and THEIR money with it. What's the saying? Nations matter, states do not. One is natural and will not be denied, the other is ephemeral and most of us could just as well do without most of what they claim to provide. Those who think otherwise usually believe they have a right to a parasitical life on others in society as a so called “expert” in something irrelevant or ridiculous. Again, I'm being far too kind.

By advocating an alternative or supplementary money (a means of conducting trade, business, buying and selling things, exchange) which springs directly from each of us, we are setting forth the bottom rung for ourselves when not if THEIR system eventually fails, but when it fails. Life rafts? Perhaps. But we intend on thriving and growing and “doing what we like” and “thinking what we like” too, because time is ticking by and we are all of us still alive and have tons of innate wealth (all of it must produce income in money or it isn't wealth) to express and we don't have the time to wait for anyone else to do it for us but ourselves! We will have our own money, free of any state or bank!

All we have proposed is that the STOLEN fiat, be returned to where it rightfully belongs, to We the People, who are individuals, who are natural persons; we came from nature, not from some fictitious and illegitimate legal pronouncement by some state or state official. The fiat belongs to us. It is associated directly with our individual will and includes why we bother even getting up and out of bed in the morning, etc. Our freedom (not having to ask anybody's permission) of speech, press, communication, organization, association, right to contract business with another natural person, includes the act of issuing money; our fiat. We decide, NOT THEM (the usual cast of characters). THEIR system can jolly well go straight to hell, which is where it is predicted to be going anyway!

Meanwhile we propose to conduct this whole business based on a few very simple agreements which are usually called contracts. The first one is the Membership Contract. The contract is between each A member and the organization that will support Valun exchange:

Each A member must be a natural person, 18 years of age or older, pass the domicile requirement (can't be an illegal alien: go back home and start a Valun exchange there and we can then trade with you) unless homeless and then must establish 2 sponsors anyway within the community, and all A members must have two sponsors who are already A members to recommend them for membership.

Each A member will pay a yearly dues that will be the equivalent of V1 (one international standard Value Unit – Valun) payable in local “public” money.

This is to be a PRIVATE association and NOT free to any who want to just walk in off the street. Well what about them? They obviously have to organize themselves under the same rules or find sponsors within settled communities. Then they could trade with us under the same monetary instruments under the same rules.

One thing I can tell you all is that any place has its opportunities, but it is up to the people there – can they work together, etc.? - even having the opportunity to have and use their own money, will they make something of their situations? We think that people most anywhere can and will. One actually can't do any better than this; if you do what is right, will you not be accepted?

Our rules are simple and fair and based on honorable dealing and standard honest weights and measures. The proposed Valun is just like a statute mile or a lightyear: a standard measurement, in this case affecting all units of the proposed money. It is NOT a commodity theory at all. Anyone believing in the validity of such trash economics (the usual hooey from those whose only interests are predatory) can take the exit right now. We will never be persuaded by what you may think you understand. This blog has specifically called out ALL economics and their adherents against the wall. We know all about you and who you represent. We'll have none of it! How about, get lost, since you are in all likelihood lost anyway!

Our money is based on a single transaction that has already happened so it can't be changed unless breached: 1 oz. of gold bullion for $2,160 US divided by a thousand on 11/2/11: V1 = $2.16 at inception. If that initial transaction is ever breached a new transaction above the last one, never lower, is chosen and the resulting Valuns all get progressively harder against all other money. We preserve purchasing power by preserving purchasing power directly in the design!

The present value of that initial transaction determines the day to day exchanges between THEIR money and ours. Right now V1 = $2.71 (8/14/17). It will never rise to $4.32 unless gold were to become worthless in dollars, which is absurd. So this is NOT another “buy and hold” fantasy investment where the sky is the limit and prices can rise as high as during the famed tulip speculation scandals, etc. (other schemes to make money on money without work, all of it capitalism).

There is no way around work. That's the time out of the rest of your life that someone pays you in some money to do something, provide a product or service, whatever. If you are sleeping, unless you are being paid by the hour to sleep, you are not working. Work is doing things, making things, providing a meaningful service to another, taking time out of the rest of your life to earn BARTER for things you really want or need and you are BARTERING USING MONEY. So all money is doing for you is splitting your barter. You worked the time, got the money and spent it and the things you bought were exchanged for the time you originally spent working. Barter never went away. The more and better work you have an opportunity to do, the better you might be able to live if the rest of your choices are efficient and correct, again, if you do what is right, will you not be accepted and moreover succeed?

Now did we say anything here about competition? Will there be any? I suppose so, but frankly, one person or one organization cannot fill all the needs out there. Monopolies are always prone to fail as a top heavy ship is to tip over. Economic redundancy is fundamental, natural and healthy and the only ones that stand against it are capitalists (people who make money on money without work) who don't like competition, unless THEY see it as an “opportunity buy” to make something bigger and expand or take over more of a market; as what Starbucks for example did for coffee, etc.

Membership contracts are not permanent. Your A membership comes to an end when you die, or you may decide to quit and that's always an option. But the resources the contract gives you are actual assets that can be passed on to another A member as again part of your will. These provisions will be mentioned to you when you become a member.

We will explain some of the features of our proposed accounting and record keeping, because frankly my dears, everything there is to know and understand about money are marks in account books, which used to be clay tablets and are now paper or microfiche or something attempting permanence, because when it comes to record keeping, the weakest pencil is always stronger than the sharpest memory (even if electronic). We aren't wasting our time pretending that the internet or wireless communications as we have come to know them are forever. We see many problems with accepting this,  including incredible vulnerability; placing too many eggs in one basket, asking that too many decisions are made by too few people, so that any one of their wrong decisions can adversely affect (and perhaps on purpose too) the lives of literally tens of millions of people overnight, as was recently done in India and soon to be tried in a country near you.

Three people get together and decide to start an exchange. This is not going to be an overnight sensation. They may all realize that even after a year of campaigning, they might still not get the membership they need. But we weren't kidding about wanting membership, which is why the dues are so low. We will set minimum requirements for opening exchanges for business for each area and we'll need active participation from local privately owned businesses too.

I was advised NOT to make A memberships free for a number of reasons: people usually don't respect anything they don't pay for and we will need the money to start the exchanges. A fraction of the dues will go to support IVES, the proposed International Valun Exchange Society. This group will support and coordinate, NOT oversee, the affairs of all the exchanges. It will know who and who is not a member and will determine the day to day exchange rates for all Valuns in each country. This IS an international proposal. This IS the call for a worldwide currency that is OURS not THEIRS. Do not accept any of THEIRS, just more fake speculation driven commodity based currencies all. THEY can't think straight about anything and haven't for hundreds of years! Don't expect anything new from them and bitcoin certainly is NOT anything new either.

Each A member will get an account. That account will contain accounting for your money. None of the money in that account will belong to anyone but you. There will be no loans that are credited based on the exchange's total Valun reserves as at a bank. None of the money in your account will have any specific claims against it unless it is placed in a certain balance on your account.

All A member accounts will have three balances. You will have an issuance balance of V200 to begin with. You will have an income balance and an escrow balance. All this is included in the Membership Contract. There is no need for deposit insurance, since none of the money in your account is anyone's but yours, with the exception of the escrow balance, which is a built in feature that you use to monitor and manage any debt you acquire within the VEN.

The income balance is the usual balance that all usual checking accounts have. This balance reflects all Valuns that enter your account (literally money under “public” law subject to income taxes); that is Valuns from somewhere else and an escrow balance. The escrow balance is the handy way to handle debt and to pay off any labor or credit contracts you might be party to.

Finance is being able to buy something you can't afford on the day of purchase. It is also the means to spread debt over longer periods of time. The success or failure of any proposed alternative money system MUST take finance into account. These time honored purchases are usually settled as credit contracts within a year (a bill), out to seven years (a note), out to forty-nine years (a bond). All debt is canceled or settled in the 50th year.  If we decided it would begin at the year following Valun inception, 2012, then the Jubilee Year might be 2062.  We will use these common words to describe credit contracts, though the structure and meaning of these instruments will be somewhat different from THEIRS: No compound interest allowed, no guarantees to the holders of debt instruments of any specified rate of return apart from a part of the rent of the money paid, always up front from existing money, so as to defeat usury, the paying back of that which was never created/issued elsewhere through real barter/trade.

No one can loan any money they do not have. That way finance is kept to where it serves and does not overpower a local economy, as in blowing credit bubbles, etc. To begin with, those who join as pensioners have the advantage of their WILL to issue more Valuns than most others. Here's an example:

We'll call him Werner. He is a veteran, 65+ years old. He has combined military and other government benefits of $1,500 a month, excluding all medical fees usually charged, etc. We're interested in what this total amount would be because we PROMISE our members in these situations to allow them to issue as many Valuns per month as they would be paid in dollars. Here's the thing though. Werner would be spending Valuns out of his WILL (literally out of his lifetime's accumulated estate measured in Valuns) and therefore would never see any Valuns he issued flow back into his income balance (subject to taxation) except of course unless he decided to buy some Valun denominated credit instruments that would pay him back dividends as declared based on the concerns of the managers of the finance business, or Werner might consider going into the finance business directly himself. After all, aren't those who have served the longest most deserving of living from money made on money without work? (Capitalism)

So we have established that Werner gets $1,500 per month right now. He would get that as long as the government pays him. What happens if or when they don't? Once Werner is an A member, he gets to issue the Valun equivalent of $1,500 per month from then on for the rest of his life and if he doesn't spend all his Valuns, they are property that he is allowed to bequeath to another A member upon his decease. The total in his issuance balance goes to whomever Werner designates as his heir.

Whatever amount Werner might have received from his pension might have been and probably was lower in November of 2011 than now. Perhaps Werner wasn't receiving any benefits back then. We'd want to know the nearest month with verification of course when Werner began receiving benefits. As long as that date is on or after 11/2/11 Werner gets a prefigured total of accumulated Valuns that would be placed in his issuance balance.

We can take what Werner gets now as a basis and work it back all the way to Valun inception and Werner ends up with a large number in his issuance balance as a result, because we have a contract with Werner that stipulates that he gets additional Valuns each month based on his status within the community: Werner is accorded the community asset privileges he deserves. Let's work out the number of Valuns as they are figured for Werner:

It turns out that he started receiving benefits in February 2012 and that he had many cost of living increases along the way. We can either take a conservative, tightfisted approach, or a realistic one. Werner gets $1,500 per month right now. The difference between August 2017 and February 2012 is 5 years and 8 months or 66 months. So if the contract were valid today, Werner would have placed on his account the equivalent in Valuns of $1,500 x 66 months or $99,000. So today a Valun is $2.71 so $99.000 in Valuns is V35,531.37 which is stated as thirty-five thousand and five hundred thirty-one Valuns and thirty seven send (Esperanto) or fen (Chinese). We could as well call them sou (Old French for a nearly worthless piece of purchasing power). 

Now that is a lot of potential purchasing power. Moreover it is an asset that can be willed, passed along to whomever you like within the Valun exchange network (VEN) who can be any valid member of any exchange. It is an extension of your will, your FIAT, expressed directly as part of your Membership Contract.

Anyone on a pension, social security, etc. will be accorded the same privileges. This is what we call natural socialism. It is only going to be used to start Valun exchanges because we will not expect to see anything like pensions necessary in the future, as Valun based business gets going.

We have other “dependent for the moment” groups within society that we will take care of, but they wont be able to have the same retroactive Valuns as Werner has. If you are now poor, adherence to our system is to make sure you don't stay poor. We expect that the assets of the future and their distribution will be far more natural, based on natural affinities and identities, rather than made up ones or those merely for some fashionable political gesturing, posing or some other perverse or noxious social engineering purposes.

Of course all A members are OWNERS of their local exchanges. They are each accorded the right to vote in all company elections for officers, etc. They are privy to any and all reports including the exchange's precious metals holdings and tax liabilities.

All B memberships in a local exchange are for businesses usually made up of A members. B members pay no dues but are expected to provide funds in “public” money to buy advertising that will appear on the backs of our circulating cash, the V-Checks. Advertising is what in fact our V-Checks are and so paying for ads on them is hence a legitimate advertising expense. Valun exchanges ARE going to be in the advertising business as far as their members are concerned. For B members, we're thinking family owned and operated businesses here and any other small businesses. The current “socialized” healthcare legislation under which much of the world lives is designed to starve out most small businesses altogether. Nevertheless, unless we are to endure a great technotronic Dark Ages from which it would be next to impossible for civilization to survive, we must perforce go into business for ourselves and our communities, to work for ourselves and for any family or anything worthwhile in life we want to come our way.

So the Werners in our system provide the mechanism to begin starting finance within the system; their accumulated retirement pensions are resurrected within our accounting and allow a market for honest dividend paying credit instruments to begin. We only have one proviso though. We have these 80% rules and one of them involves flight of capital. We insist that 80% of whatever Werner is willing to lend must be used in financing purchases within Werner's exchange area. You see, we want the people in the area Werner lives to benefit most from any money Werner might care to lend to the financial part of the VEN in his own community. 

Werner has capital that he doesn't want to spend that can earn something without him working (Werner is a useful capitalist). So he finds out that various items are offered for sale and he offers to finance a few of them; cars, boats, small cabins, other things that normally would fetch quite a few Valuns. He normally buys credit instruments as explained above and he collects whatever they pay and when the credit instruments fall due, Werner sees the return of his money to him and whatever dividends they pay. The dividends get paid into Werner's income balance, but the money he issued goes right back into his issuance balance and can be used again and again if he likes. All that money in Werner's issuance balance comes out of his will, his estate, and we are about preserving and building people's personal estates. Notice that Werner's stack of Valun issuance doesn't go up forever, as any money he earns is income and subject to taxation and doesn't get put back into his issuance balance. All of this sets a practical limit to what can be financed and how expensive something might actually become in realistic terms. We have an old saying that when something is offered for sale at too high a price the seller wasn't really interested in selling it.

Imagine! You thought all this time that the money tokens were important, but it is the accounting as we have just seen, that is essential! The tokens we've described as something like traveler's checks. Turns out they can be made of cheaper material because they are only intended to circulate for six months or so. We will determine how much it costs to print runs of them in V½, V1, V2, V5 and V10 numbered blanks. The IVES standards will be adopted so that all accounts are easily identified and verified. The B members will have either advertisements or get to put anything they like on the backs of these V-Checks. We can adjust for how these print runs meet the needs of our members or consider calls for larger denominations of these essentially open account checks that we'll use as our cash instruments. Members will be able to obtain them without any transaction fees and exchange them for new ones after the old ones have expired, or they can be deposited even when expired. The money hasn't gone anywhere, it is still in the exchange's cash account.

Now Werner decides he's going out to eat. He'll patronize a place that takes Valuns because all the dollars he gets are used to pay those things which must be paid in dollars; specifically, taxes. So he adopts the ways of all A members; he carries around two kinds of cash or maybe even a card and V-Checks. He sees a menu insert with prices in Valuns or sometimes the prices in Valuns are on the regular menu. He will have to pay tax on his meal in dollars, the rest he can pay in Valuns. More people do this and THEY are diminished.

Werner needs a lot of small chores done for him, so he pays for his help in a combination of dollars (for the taxes) and in Valuns. He chooses those around him in his own community who will take his payments and terms are adjusted based on taxes. So for instance if a job is V15 he'll expect to pay an additional 8% in dollars to cover whatever taxes might be due. Let's figure V15 at $2.71 per Valun = $40.65 (what Werner would have to pay for the whole job in dollars) and 8% of that is $3.25. So it might be customary for people to agree to a V15 + $3 deal to get a job done.

Patterns of spending begin to get more local as more local businesses accept Valuns and as more of those who have accumulated retirement in Valuns as described so far, begin participating in the financial business of their local communities.

Now there will be other members who see joining as a way up and out of their present miserable situation. These may be the so called “structurally unemployed.” I'm going to come right out and say a few things that most will find offensive, but the truth is often offensive to those who don't want their present situations overturned. No one is structurally unemployed. What I am saying is that somewhere someone is doing what you used to do before you got laid off. They are being paid less than you were and the net result is those who lent the money to make it all happen are getting paid first and ahead of and more than any that actually worked to make it happen. Capital gets rewarded while labor gets the shaft. And those people over in the Far East that have more work than they've ever had are getting the shaft too because they are NOT being adequately paid for what they do. So where's the fat, Jack? We had situations in the past where people were paid ten times, maybe even fifty times what members of their staff got, but these days the discrepancies in pay are monumental and immoral, sorry. There is actually no justification for bigness at all. None. But we'll let nature take its course while we begin to pursue ours.

Whatever that “structurally unemployed” skill can produce that can be sold for Valuns, well, as the saying goes, given a different financial level, a lot of “structural unemployment” goes away. But we have to decide what we want and don't want. We don't want a bunch of pseudo-scientific assholes limiting what we can do and how much we have to work for THEM. Now that's what taxes are, working (time out of the rest of your life that you get paid in money) for THEM and not for you. Getting it? Yeah and you need your own money and so don't we all.

David Burton
dpbmss@mail.com

Current Hypothetical Value of a Hypothetical Value Unit