Friday, February 21, 2014

#0 Why We Are In Decline – Cultural Marxism


While we do not agree wholeheartedly with everyone or everything in this video, we consider it an important salvo into an attack on alternative economic ideas; those adopted by the present world economies to our detriment and worse as long as we choose to live by them.

In particular, E. C. Riegel's solution did involve the issuance of fiat money. That was never the problem, as continually and stupidly barked by the purveyors of “gold bug” systems. The problem with fiat money we repeat is that states issue it. Riegel's solution is that only the poor ever get to issue fiat money. The rest of us must fairly bargain for any money in the Value Exchange Network or VEN. At any time, since money in the VEN will in some cases be tied up in real assets, where real value resides, the absolute quantity of money will have no bearing on prices since each unit of money will be determined by reference to the initial transaction that established it. Our Value Unit destroys the idea of ever treating money as another commodity used to measure other commodities including labour.

Only a measure of value that stands alone from everything it measures will ever break the present slavery to a money owned and run by gangsters, speculators and those presently self identified as the elites. We intend to make the Value Unit (Valun) an international standard of economic monetary value measurement suitable for implementation under a set of simple rules.

Likewise the video gives a nod in the direction of the Austrians, from which no help comes, nor shall any come, since they are all statists. Sorry. We will discount many theories and ideas on this blog.

Libertarianism, with its “gold bug” silent partners, needs a good exposure.

After what has already come to light, we seriously cannot believe there are still some out there who willingly consider themselves liberals. Are they kidding themselves or what? No, they usually work for governments. That's now approaching 50% of the employed workforce. You start with a socialized money system and you end up with a socialized economy and eventually a totalitarian state. Most liberals can't imagine themselves as fascists but their statism and frankly twisted ethics at least deserve mention.

Likewise, we consider misguided those chasing after traditional 19th century and earlier brands of liberalism. The Whigs and Republicans began this way. The founders of this economic philosophy were all people who had personal stakes in the great corporations that instigated the various European empires. They were and are globalists and of course their plans involved getting states to do things for them.

As for conservatism or paleo-conservatism (Constitutionalists, etc.), we're sorry to inform you that everything you thought to “conserve” has been either ruined or stolen by your opponents. Something went wrong with your thinking. You are now waking up to that fact, but you don't know quite what to do. Beware of some out there who want to hang a bad rap on anarchy. But equally beware of those advocating anarchy, who have no natural abilities to live well under it.

We're interested in approaching the discussion from an entirely different angle. If the ultimate value is each human life, first of all, how many out there even accept this? How many out there believe instead that somehow the fates of governments, corporations, banks and other institutions matters more than whether a single human life is lost?

How many out there don't know where they are or where they're going and are being led this way and that by other people with untested assumptions? Someone now tells you with a straight face some utter nonsense and you willingly accept its possibility because they were from such and such university, or were part of some science group where their studies were “peer reviewed” by other scholars.

Guess what people. You've been had if you buy into any of this. What exactly do you think “peer reviewed” means? It means in plan English that some panel of idiots who agreed with their point of view said it was OK.

You're all going to see the word “idiot” (and "clown") more often on this blog too, so let's get it straight from the start just what we mean by one being an idiot. An idiot is someone who does not know what they're talking about through sheer ignorance of the subject matter. All idiots may be redeemed by acquiring useful and TRUTHFUL knowledge. Truth is the ultimate authority. If one stretches something truthful into something more speculative, they have invented something which may no longer be true. This happens quite a lot. It is so pervasive that most take it for granted. Don't be an idiot, become more aware.

Monday, February 17, 2014

#54 This Blog's Valun Proposal

 
[12/17/17: This is an important paper dealing with the proposed monetary unit, the international standard - just like any other fixed measurement - Value Unit or Valun, a name selected by E. C. Riegel in his works.]

Throughout the numbered papers of this blog, there is presented but one consistent proposal, based on the works of E. C. Riegel, but updated to reflect subsequent history and geopolitical realities. The central focus of that proposal is the Value Unit (Valun) itself. Riegel originally proposed that the Value Unit would be based on the value of a US dollar on a particular date. Since his time, for a variety of reasons, the choice of the US dollar is no longer acceptable. US dollars (or any other national or surpra-national currency, for that matter) are herewith rejected as a basis for Valuns!
Therefore another basis was sought and among most people sampled, who of course had no idea of Riegel's clear observation that money is never “backed” by anything other than what it buys, they nevertheless chose precious metals by a wide margin.

Of course, what Riegel imagined would happen quickly turned out to take seventy years, but the results are the same; the 1950 US dollar bought $9.75 in today's money. Inflation, as Riegel says, is entirely due to government spending deficits over tax revenues, with which observation we concur. Therefore, concerning only a Value Unit based economy, before going forward, I want it thoroughly understood that however much money (quantity of money) may be in the hands of individuals out in the economy at any particular time, would make no difference to prices and would not ever over time; prices, as Riegel said, would seek their own levels relative to each other in a free market, and we have also suggested that the freest of such markets are full settlement on purchase “black markets,” which exist without debt, which is why we describe them as black. By contrast, all other markets are red; they allow the settlement of an exchange to lapse over time. Such markets are influenced by debt and debt financing, which most certainly must be determined to function within a Valun Exchange Network (VEN); our chosen name for a private market using Value Units as money.  [1/26/15: Since our feature series on Arthur Kitson's great work, we have come to some realizations concerning the nature of money, chief among them being that all money is a representation (evidence) of debt. That applies to even money tokens made out of precious metals or bitcoin. This also means that all transactions are not settled until they are paid off in goods and services, not money. What this implies is that all transactions are always barter. This changes a number of things including whether any other money created by fiat of states or banks is real debt or faked debt. If faked debt, then the demand that goods or services be provided for said money becomes spurious, and if spurious, then as the saying goes, the music stops when someone says, “I'm sorry, but I will no longer accept your money.”]

Whether we had used a dollar, a euro, some yen, whatever, as a basis for our proposed Value Unit, since they all invariably inflate, we would have chosen a date that was as close to the lowest point in a contemporary series (within say 5 years) and then adopted various indexes to determine variance from that original point; a value on a particular date chosen as Value Unit inception. These variances would of course determine what the Value Unit would trade for in terms of dollars (or other currencies) on a day to day basis. That's a question everyone asks and wants to know and of course it is a perfectly valid one; what is the purchasing power of one unit vs. another? They usually ask what a Value Unit is worth in dollars.

It is customary to believe that the daily value of money can be determined based on its quantity (money as a commodity) subject to availability (demand) and that further this demand can be determined by credit expansion (and contraction). But Riegel's clear observation of a Value Unit as a particular transaction at the date of its inception stands athwart the entire “money as commodity” concept. It literally defeats it. This is Riegel's understanding; that the Value Unit is always and everywhere whatever it takes to accomplish the purchasing power of the initial transaction chosen to represent it.

The proposed Value Unit of this blog is one one-thousandth of the price of a troy ounce of common (non-numismatic) gold bullion at the end of business on November 2, 2011, which is determined to be $2.16. A Value Unit shall never fall below this price. (An ounce of silver was capable of trading for 19.44 Value Units on the day of inception) But today, you'd have to pay $2.68 in fair trade for one Value Unit. Why? Because gold (silver) doesn't buy as much as it did at Valun inception. The rest, whatever it takes to accomplish the purchasing power of the initial transaction, determines the extra value in dollars required to make up the difference. Said another way, the purchasing power of the proposed Valuns has increased by 24% since inception.
The Proposed Value Unit from inception, showing the relationship of an oz. of gold bullion in US dollars
[2/21/14: The bars on this chart represent the equivalent in purchasing power across time from inception and the amounts of that purchasing power to be represented as gold and in green, the extra dollars required to make up the difference.]

At inception, 1,000 Value Units = 1 troy oz. gold bullion on 2 November, 2011, an easy day to remember. On that date, 1 troy oz. silver bullion converts to 19.44 Value Units. On 15 February, 2014, 1 troy oz. gold bullion = 758.63 Value Units and 1 troy oz. silver bullion = 12.36 Value Units. This folks is where the commodity meets the fixed basis, the Value Unit. We do not need to content ourselves with fiddling with arbitrary indexes of our choosing. We let them decide those things. After all, it is their money, not ours. As for ours, we want it to stay nearly forever the same in purchasing power. The only way to do that is to defeat quantity (commodity) as a basis for determining purchasing power, measuring value in a monetary system. You simply do that by choosing a transaction on a particular date as your representative Figure 1 and allowing their indexes to determine its variance from inception expressed on a daily basis in any other of their currencies.

Parenthetically, we note that bitcoin (to pick but one among many alternatives that are cropping up) advertises itself as having a built in scarcity as a feature, therefore bitcoin is automatically a commodity, just like any other commodity as money and therefore is subject to speculation.

The quantity theory of money allows any commodity to function as money as long as its quantity is tied to some supposed mechanism to control supply. Look how many worthless things they have created that are supposedly worth something because they are scarce and yet they are made up things of no real value. I see no difference between birtcoin and carbon tax quota trading. It's just another arena for speculation, which produces nothing of any value.

So said Georg from Germany. The value of each and every bitcoin is determined on the prospects of holding it for later sale or for buying something else now or in the future. The two reasons have different reasoning behind them. Holding something for future sale usually means one buys cheap and sells dear. One may take advantage of volume deals if one has the cash. But the value of each bitcoin is determined by speculators that presume there is someone out there willing to buy their bitcoins at an exalted price.

The second reason for holding bitcoin is the market for goods and services priced in them, which we remind everyone is always a reason for holding any money of any kind; that one knows where one can spend it. The authors of bitcoin (and any similar commodity monetary systems) have accomplished precisely nothing. They have specifically failed to address the issue of one commodity used as money to price all other commodities in their market.


Our proposal solves this problem. It says in effect, you want a Value Unit? You can have all you want, but you will pay the equivalent of its purchasing power at inception for each and every last one of them, no volume discounts, and that value will be reflected in the exchanges for gold and silver, since that also has the remarkable tendency to pull those means of exchange out of the market; to make them eventually as the stones under our feet. They would only be used to raise money in their currencies to pay taxes in their money to their governments. And of course we fully expect that before too long all the stupid speculation passing itself off as true investments; frauds, and yes certainly including bitcoin, etc. shall fail. When they do, we will have the solution. We have it anyway and it can be run in parallel with the existing system right now.

The proposed supporting network we called Independent Exchanges (IEs). These would be for profit businesses set up within the Value Exchange Networks they would support. Each would be given a suitable geographical area to serve. Within the US, we prefer the county level and suggest that a working VEN would in most cases need to service three counties within the same state, three or more IE's, serving a potential market of at least a few tens of thousands of people. 

[5 March, 2014: There really is only one VEN, though we could consider each limited trading area supported by an IE to possess its own VENness as further exhibited on the principal paper representations of Valuns, the V-Check and personal checks.  The VEN is literally the market created by Value Units, so it could theoretically exist anywhere.  There are even some who believe that since Valuns would not be monetary instruments covered under laws to govern national money monopolies, that their use in trade across borders presents no difficulties.  Our response is caution.  Don't count on anything right now without more information.]  

Institutionally similar to banks, except none would ever lend any money to anyone, we prefer to call them exchanges. These are the local record keepers the community of Valun users chooses to serve them. These businesses will be run by and for each local community with each A member having a vote in elections of the usual kinds of officers required to run such a business. Their organization type shall therefore be a private cooperative served by elected officers. This means, in case anyone thinks otherwise, that none of these will be organized as “public” corporations whose “shares” may be purchased by speculators. We want it thoroughly understood that unless one is willing to buy and run an actual business, we are not interested in the participation of “absentee owners” or “investors.”

IEs would be designed to benefit their owners paid in Value Units, not national currencies, though we will be discussing taxes as a necessary issue. Remember, we want to run parallel to the existing system for right now, eventually renouncing the present monetary system for our own. We further suggest that all locations of IE offices (and their associated Valun counters) be on private property, not subject to any public laws applying to public -customers walk in off the street- businesses, as these are in every respect to be private businesses that choose their own members. They would be open a limited number of hours each week.

Membership in any IE is determined by domicile; that you have a lawful right to live within the geographical service area of each IE. If you are joining as an individual human being, you're an A member. You will also need the recommendation of TWO existing A members. Each IE is formed by the initial three A members that decide to abide by the rules and form one. The rules are to be universally applied and agreed to. See IVES below.  
 
[12/17/17: The other change is dues.  People don't generally value anything that is completely free to them, but the dues is reasonable enough not to exclude many; each A member will be required to supply dues of the vale of V1 or one Valun in local "public" currency each year, payable to the local exchange, which shall have to maintain a regular bank account in one of THEIR banks to make this work.  This was and is the equivalent of E. C. Riegel's "sinking fund;" a once popular way of describing something we'd describe as crowd funding today.  So essentially, all of these organizations would be crowd funded by the A membership who would be its owners and vote for its officers.  A certain percentage of the budget would go to promote IVES and its activities which would involve advertising and printing of monetary tokens - V-Checks which would circulate as our cash in denominations of V1/2, V1, V2, V5 and V10 for openers.  Since a current proposed Valun can become no cheaper than $2.16 nor more dear than $4.32, it is not intended to ever be as much a "buy and hold" as an "earn and save" commodity.  Remember: THEY determine what all THEIR money is worth in THEIR deliberately speculation prone markets, whereas the Valun measurement in for example US dollars, tells us what our money is worth in terms of THEIRS.]       

If you are joining as a business, it would be as a B member. It is presumed that you are operating under your own name or under a DBA or equivalent in your area, that you are not owned in any way by any absentee partners, public corporations or governments. Private partnerships without state sponsorship or recognition would be admissible. Families running businesses, especially those engaged in farming, are practically assured membership. Public corporations, with their many disabilities, as well as governments are forbidden membership at this time.

This is another change from Riegel's period. He was idealistic concerning establishment help for a competing idea and was seemingly oblivious to the dangers of limited liability public corporations run amok. We are in hindsight of history not willing to be so naive.

A supporting organization, not a dominating one, shall be the International Value Exchange Society (IVES). IVES will be a B member of every exchange and though IVES isn't yet decided to be a for profit going concern, it probably will be. Each IE will supply someone whose duties include participation in IVES activities. We prefer to think of IVES as the glue holding individual IE's together, rather than as a superior authority demanding compliance to its rules. It's goals are as far as possible to ensure a uniform valuation of the Value Unit across all possible VENs. IVES personnel would be responsible for setting the exchange value of Valuns per business day, based on the value of gold and silver bullion at a bid price sufficient to secure physical possession. We will neither need nor use any other basis.

Another set of tasks assigned to IVES would be the registration of all circulating V-Checks, as well as the design and sale of Valun private checks.  These matters were described more fully here.

Among the possible responsibilities of IVES would be the usual information services – applications development IS – AD functions. The functions determined and developed under IVES rules would be used by all IEs and their Valun counters everywhere, most likely on stand alone laptop computers with flash drives and protocols to ensure that no private information ever reaches the internet.

Each member's account would consist of records applying to a ledger of journalled entries. An A member ledger record will look somewhat different from a B member ledger record. There might be a bunch of transactions consisting of journalled entries to both the members' accounts and the accounts of each IE that would be considered a transaction. Each transaction would represent movement within the system; someone bought or sold something or is making a payment in fulfilment of either a labour contract or a credit contract. These accounts were described in some detail here.  [12/17/17:  No matter how many accounts each exchange has, all exchanges operate on the same ledger as this tends to defeat certain identity frauds.]

For each of these standard transactions, a fee of one tenth of one percent of the Valun amount is charged to the initiator of the transaction. These fees become the only income stream for the IEs. (The subject of fees should be reviewed after a fair trial in a number of IEs to determine its adequacy).

Finance is a key function within any monetary system and just how it is allowed to operate within a VEN is among the most important dimensions of the proposal. All finance businesses, those engaged in extending credit or wiling to assume the risks of extending the terms of settlement of a sale, are separate business entities operating completely separate from the IEs. They must all be accredited B members of their IEs. They may operate as B members in any number of IEs. They must all be private companies, they must use Valuns that have already been created as they will not be able to create Valuns from nothing and they must adhere to acceptable credit contract restrictions that shall forbid payment of any uncreated money and all compounded interest. We simply throw out all the usual assumptions concerning the rights of idle money as baloney. You might offer your money for rental under IVES rules and you can get a decent return: you shall not get money on earnings compounded from such rents, as that is STEALING! If you don't happen to agree, that's too damn bad!

We expect finance to have the greatest application to items ranging from capital equipment, power tools, etc. to autos, trucks, land, housing, businesses, factories and farms. Orders of various kinds of material could likewise also be financed by a specialized business that knows these markets, etc. A suggestion has been made that each IE begin as well to set up an alternative land registry, though once again, this function might better be served by a business making this their speciality and charging a requisite fee for their services, in Valuns of course.

David Burton 
dpbmss@mail.com

Thursday, February 6, 2014

#53.1 What Some Would Do

The past six weeks have already been some of the most turbulent weeks of the past year as regards this blog. Numerous comments were received and further in conversations with closer associates, the overwhelming message was that I was not showing sufficient conviction -”backbone”- concerning the proposal for the alternative monetary system presented on this blog, specifically by suggesting that there would be any alternative to the proposed Value Unit as this blog proposes.

There were further calls for me to remove certain posts, there were others who insisted that the blog's proposal was acceptable to them, however that they would like to see the proposal's considerations for conducting financial business. A new paper to answer a number of their questions is in process and shall appear here when completed.

In the meantime, someone sent me a link to a recent, quite unnecessarily provocative article, Screw Up: 8 Million Americans Are On The List To Be Disappeared and asked me to comment on the suggestions presented by the author, etc. Their remarks will appear in blue.

1) The present welfare system was designed to destroy families and the incentive to work.

No, this statement is unsubstantiated. He'd actually have to prove that these were the intentions behind the legislation. These systems may in fact destroy families and pose a disincentive to work, but we contend that their real purpose always was and is to buy off a social revolution. What was the cause of the social upheavals requiring societal fixes from government? In a word, corporations, all limited liability and all operating under state charters including and especially the banks. We view the welfare system as an inevitable consequence, unless you want to have millions of people take out their genuine ire for having their livelihoods destroyed on those who truly deserve it, the money masters of organized capital who have made factors of commerce and industry into ... games of chance.

I would create a voter ID card. Non-citizens would not be able to get welfare and Food Stamps. This would force millions of illegals to self-deport. I would give them cash grants to leave and never return. The voter ID card would insure that dead people do not vote. They would allow only one vote per person. They would have to be scanned to permit voting. This would stop precinct workers from voting for people who did not show up because they did not like the candidates.

None of this is of any direct concern to this blog. We note however that these sentiments are widespread, especially the desire to see the “illegals” and their families, etc. go back to where they came from. There is also widespread sentiment for reforms that would “roll back the clock” to some previous era where things seemed to work better. We contend that there never was any such era, that to go backwards is simply that, and we aren't interested. Without monetary liberty there isn't any sense in attempting to gain political liberty. Since monetary liberty is not presently well understood or accepted, political tyranny of one form or another is a direct consequence. I'll further note that most of this author's suggestions (and those of the few others who commented on his post) represent yet other “statist” approaches which this blog, without any reservation, rejects. We remind those who think otherwise, that 1) no state solution has ever resulted in anything but tyranny and 2) to expect otherwise is not to understand the nature of states.

2) I would turn the IRS into the Internal Revenue and Benefits Service. I would cancel Food Stamps and a lot of other programs to fund a negative Income Tax. 

This was an idea at one time proposed by none other than Alan Greenspan. Why keep the IRS around? It is already among the most universally hated of all government organizations. It is clearly an arm of the Federal Reserve system, not the government. No government should EVER be in the position to tax someone's labour as THAT is a disincentive to work. Perhaps the author believes that the IRS collects tax money to pay directly for government services, when in fact it does not.

Suppose a citizen is making $8.50 an hour and is competing against illegal aliens for work. I would give people who work a subsidy equal to the amount required to raise their wages to $11.00 an hour. The illegals would get nothing and would lose Food Stamps as there would be none. I would also give citizens a child subsidy of $600 a month for the first child and $400 for the second and nothing thereafter. I will be eliminating millions of government jobs to fund this.


Notice that this solution involves state intervention where people haven't got the sense to come up with their own solution. Think any of that will ever work out well? What of the guy hiring the illegal aliens and his plight; that without their labour savings he might not even be profitable? How much of that is really going on out there right now? What's the culprit? 1) government regulation and 2) competition from the state's own creatures, the corporations. Somehow people have simply got to get focused on who their real enemies are in society and STOP SUPPORTING THEM, otherwise stop complaining and enjoy the tinsel framed tyranny while it is tolerable. Enjoy being free range slaves of your government collective. Don't whimper when it all comes down and you haven't anything better than to go crying and begging for the state to do something. It can't and it wont, because none of your concerns matter to them.

3) I favor worldwide Debt Cancellation. This will make returning home attractive.

Worldwide default will happen anyway as the present system is doomed. I expect many ex-patriots to return after that, if they can. Anyone who seriously mentions paying back past debts is kidding themselves. We've already explained (and most get it) that the way money is presently generated and issued guarantees that there will never be enough money to pay off all the debts as under the terms of genuine usury, that which is demanded as interest was never created and must be filched from already created money. In fact, and we don't much care what any maritime law has to say about it either, all contracts involving usury are invalid since they are based on this particular fraud.

In the U.S. I would offer adult citizens of sound mind who are not incarcerated $20,000 each in Debt Cancellation. This money could only be used to cancel debts or to be deposited into co-operative trusts for retirement.

NO! This merely supports the same societal cancer and shows the invariable negligible understanding of money, sorry. The author should read this blog thoroughly and then he'd have quite different ideas, more to the effect of finding and creating new jobs and opportunities that make sense long term to communities, states and nations more generally.

The one exception would be for a down payment on a house. Not much where you live. But there are places where that is substantial. The loss of immigrants and the sharp rise in wages will change the demand for housing in your area as well. But it will rebuild other parts of the country. I would pass an urban Homesteading Act to permit qualified applicants to buy boarded up homes for taxes owed.


NO. No old taxes may be repaid. We don't care about whether some city or county got themselves into debt on our behalf or not. These policies were stupid and we shan't give them credibility by allowing them to continue. We believe that when money is created and issued by private individual members of society rather than states, that most local governments will be forced to deal with real people, not their corporate creatures. Then and only then, will public finance ever be restored to a sound basis.

4) I would cancel all federal, state and local debt with all that money I seized from the wealthy elite stashed in offshore bank havens. That would require that we send our troops into the Cayman Islands, Lichtenstein and other such places. The Chinese have $4 trillion stashed in British Commonwealth Caribbean banks. I would use that to fund Debt Cancellation for China. I would also use the money government agencies have stashed in secret funds as described at http://www.CAFR1.com

Now really! Money is either electronic or represented as bills and coins. In either case it matters not how that money changes hands as that it does change hands. The music stops when someone either shouts, “I have no more money to pay you” or “I wont take your money.” If any “public” money reaches this status it is worthless. This by the way quenches the loathsome and stupid idea that money must have any intrinsic value. Anyone who maintains this is apparently unaware of Gresham's Law, which is a real law in that, if one tries breaking it, they face the consequences. If anything calling itself money has any intrinsic value then it is a commodity and cannot be money.  And yeah, if you still think so, you're an idiot!  An idiot by the way is someone deficient in knowledge, merely ignorant of the facts, not someone intrinsically stupid, so there is always hope for idiots.

[2-8-14: So does that mean that you agree with Mr. Burnanke? 

Yes, as a matter of fact, it was one of the rare instances where he dared to tell the honest truth.  Precious metals are fundamentally commodities, with definite quantities, operating within distinct markets for their use.  Obviously their other uses in trade, etc. preceded their use as money.  One of the attributes of money is that it represents a scale of monetary value attributed to each item of money as trade tokens, which is really what they are.  A colleague used to call them "tokens of appreciation."  Ask yourselves whether those currently making money on money without contributing any value to the system are being appreciated too much.  

That's what money is; tokens representing a scale of value, used in trade.  Gold and silver as circulating money are rendered obsolete by all modern representations of money largely through Gresham's Law, which basically says that if there are two competing tokens representing the same monetary value, one being in precious metals, the other in some other form, whatever that other form is will trade first and inevitably the gold and silver tokens will cease to circulate; the cheaper the money the more likely it will circulate; the cheapest money circulates more than all other contenders.  Obviously within the membership of a VEN, we intend that our money will be the cheapest available. 

If tokens of exchange do not circulate, they do not promote trade, they don't even promote local trade, which is more important than anything else.]


We stick with Riegel's observations and to hell with the rest of the economist's world! To us regular academic economists are all fools and liars if not both! You see right away that expecting military FORCE to be used to chase after stolen or otherwise expropriated monetary tokens is a colossal waste of effort not worth the blood of a single human being! As for Walter Burien's site, since it does contain some important information, though not the subject of this blog, we have posted a link to it among our news links.

5) I would issue a non-interest bearing currency like Lincoln’s Greenbacks.
 

We don't care, we don't want any. We're sick and tired of governments being the biggest spender in the economy, we're sick and tired of nannying by unwanted government “experts” and we have no respect for those who claim to care or know more about how we should live our lives, down to what we can or can't think, than we ourselves. We say to the world that money is the proper concern of every single human being as an extension of their individual private property and has no business being usurped by any state. We are likewise sick and tired of attempts to save any of the existing monetary infrastructure. Sorry, all of it, including maritime law, will simply have to go.

I would end fractional reserve banking.

If there is no alternative, banking will continue to operate the way it has for centuries, as a fraud, simply because people are too timid and dumb to expect anything else. Banks will hence rise, fall and take all the money with them when they depart. We propose the Value Exchange Network (VEN), a private market subject to black market rules, supported by independent Valun Exchanges (IEs). The unit of exchange is the proposed international standard Value Unit (Valun) which will in every case be issued by a human being, not a bank, corporation or a government. 

 I would only permit the Treasury to create currency. And only our new Central Bank would create checking account money.
 
Again, we don't want any and we certainly do not need or want a central bank. We don't care what governments must do to raise money for its usually
phenomenally wasteful projects.  It will be best when no government is ever allowed to borrow money as Jefferson and others suggested. 

 Prices are a ratio of the Money Supply to the GDP. Increase both at the same rate and you will have stable prices. 
 
NO, you idiot!  This never works because it is based on a LIE which you have accepted hook, line and sinker, because you have accepted the “commodity theory of money,” which we wholeheartedly reject. Stable prices are the result of two things only; supply and demand. The fact is that not all money in existence is ever available for any single sale. That is the essential lie. Economists, who make glib statements such as this, want the world to continue to be hoodwinked by believing that some expert knows better what a gallon of milk or a gallon of gas is supposed to cost in any particular locality than someone actually buying a gallon of milk or gas there. What happens when prices go up? People buy less. What happens when prices go down? People tend to buy more. It has nothing to do with the possible quantities of money involved. It has everything to do with how much money the buyer is willing to spend.


You will also be allowed to spend the increase in the Money Supply into circulation. That means you could fund $550 billion in new spending.

I guess he's a Keynesian then. We reject Keynes as we reject Marx or the so called Austrians. We do not want more government spending as THAT is the sole cause of inflation, because the government has nothing to sell back into the economy with which to recapture what it spends. It taxes as much back as it can in the vain attempt to keep inflation in check. I want everyone who reads this to understand that the machine these people envision to replace the old one is by its very nature just as incompatible with freedom as the old one.

6) We have a $4 trillion deficit of infrastructure projects that need to get done to prevent America from becoming a Third World nation. I would give each state their share of $100 billion a year in infrastructure repair but I would include school and hospital construction. This would work out to $2 billion a year for a state with 6 million people. I would match that with $100 billion in federal grants. 

Sure, just keep going with the usual, just knock it back a few years and it will all be better. No it wont. We have no idea what the infrastructure should be for our future since we are sitting on many unused ideas that could change things quite dramatically. None of this spending or financing would help anything. Sooner or later, the bill would come through and interest due which must come from uncreated money supply. You're right back where you started. We remember the Depression era song about the guy who built a railroad, made it run on time, etc. 
  
7) The cancellation of state and local debt combined with federal assumption of school, road, sewer, water and hospital construction will make state tax reduction a reality. 

This guy really must be a statist as his solution keeps the central government big and oppressive. As said earlier, debt repudiation shall be an inevitable fact, as people will have no money to repay past debts and shall not rest quietly as attempts are made to have their physical assets seized in an attempt to repay them, sorry. 

I want to eliminate property taxes on owner occupied homes. This will encourage family formation and allow savings for retirement in the form of a place to live. 

How nice of you. You sound like a swell politician. Shall we inevitably tar and feather you before sending you on your way? 

8) I should emphasize a few points about asset seizures.

Yes, do that, so we can see the scale of the FORCE you would wield as a state official.

Most stocks and bonds are held by brokerages for their clients. If you legalize drugs, you can seize the assets of the drug cartels and what I would call ‘War Criminals’. This money is to be used to fund Debt Cancellation worldwide for those who cooperate with us and also pass monetary and banking reforms.


You're a dreamer of the worst imaginable sort. What gives anything value is the ability to trade it. Stock and bond holders rationally decide to hold as long as these assets seem to be fetching higher prices and unload them when their prices begin to fall. Most amateurs hold longer than they should and usually end up no better off than those who call themselves professionals. You have missed the point of these assets in the first place, which is to create stores of value out of figments of the imagination, especially equities, and to ensure that the factors of production remain in selected hands.

Fractional reserve banking cause Depressions. You will find that many of the ‘War Criminals’ are not Jewish. The aristocracy of Europe and the wealthy of northern Italy are close allies of the Rothschilds. This has to be a worldwide revolution to work. We can offer the Italians, the Greeks, the French and everyone else Debt Cancellation and tax reductions. I would offer to pay the VAT tax which runs at 20 to 21% in Europe for any nation that joins us. 

We don't really care about any of this. It is all aimed at keeping something afloat that nature shall deem deserves death and destruction for failing to live by natural laws. A worldwide revolution may be in the offing anyway, we hope that it is peaceful, but it probably wont be because most people are frankly just too stupid and lazy to think for themselves as a matter of social conditioning.

Suppose the non-violent people of England are told that the Americans will pay their VAT and that they should refuse to pay it. That would eliminate a major revenue source. They would have to accept the money we seized from offshore banks. The public would support us. The parliaments would fall and we would get people to back currency and monetary reforms and even support more domestic asset seizures. 

We do not want any more domestic asset seizures! If their assets aren't worth what they imagine them to be, then what will their assets be worth in the final outcome of a sale where the owner is willing to part with them as a natural consequence of trade?  Who would want them if the monetary system behind them is no more?   Would such people expect to be paid in precious metals? They may have a long wait. What if he accepts Valuns instead? He'd have to be a member in good standing of a local IE and if not would not be permitted to operate within a VEN. What then of the value of his assets? How would he afford to keep them up? We'll tell you ahead of time; shares in corporations are a fictional part of a fiction created by the state. Bonds are other people's debt that one pays a discount for, expecting that the debtor will eventually pay off the face value. Are bonds any safer in a monetary system where usury guarantees there will always be a scarcity of money? You tell me.

9) I would give everyone 90 days to register at a bargain price the deed to their home with their county. We would be taking MERS (Mortgage Electronic Registration Service) mortgages and turning them into old fashioned deeds. The public will love that. But we will require all deeds to residences and commercial property be examined for true ownership. Anyone who comes forward with a deed held by a corporation registered overseas will have to divulge the true owners. This seizure of real estate assets will rebuild retirement funds. 

Nice try, but again we aren't interested. MERS is organized crime and those behind it are criminals. So what? Who is going to ever prosecute them? We advocate an alternative land registry with all properties denominated in Valuns. In order to make this happen, we shall inaugurate a new era of property refinancing that should make the purchase and acquisition of homes, farms and industries much cheaper than is usual. All we care about is paying them off to get the titles. After that, let nature take its course.  

10) I would give women who are citizens $10,000 to have a baby provided they are 18 and pass a mental competency test. The present system encourages 14 year-old girls to have babies. We have to stop that cold. That money could help fund home buying. The rebuilding of America would make high paying construction jobs available. That will help build families and give state and local governments increased revenues.

He sure likes giving money away, doesn't he? If he weren't such a statist he'd see that allowing an economy to work would provide all the incentives required for people to form stable families, etc. All you need do is get out of the way and let nature take its course. Since limited liability corporations that operate by state charters are artificial, as are all their maritime laws, since they run counter to natural law, they deserve to fail and their assets will require selling off. Smaller is better when it comes to any business and redundancy rather than specialization is also a preferred course of action looking forward.

11) I want to make pensions illegal. I want all retirement funds to paid as they accrue into an account in your name at a cooperative trust. This will permanently take away all power from Wall Street and the City of London.

NO. Making pensions illegal is one thing, forcing people to save is another. Both are matters best left up to individual cases, not governments. For the time being, we will use pensions as a measure of the amount of money we would allow each of our A members who have pensions to create. We know that long term, there simply wont be many if any pensions because they will not be necessary in our system as no member will ever have to go completely broke ever. This is our direct answer to state socialism. A Riegel based monetary system ultimately extinguishes poverty and deprives states of the abilities to finance wars.  If you really care about ending poverty and war, you should join us.

12) I should mention Hollywood and the media as special targets of asset seizures.

Seems this guy would really like to take things by FORCE from people as a solution. I think you'd best read this blog thoroughly before getting back to me about why anyone even cares about this. The Hollywood system exists because people buy into it. When people no longer buy or prefer something else, Hollywood will change or it will die of natural causes.

13) The US government has many secret patents. They seized Nikola Tesla’s lab experiments and notes (155 boxes) in 1943. The editor at Popular Mechanics told Art Bell more than a decade ago that material created in zero gravity exhibited new properties. Glass formed in zero gravity was stronger than steel.

Our view of patents is that they inhibit creative development and keep competing ideas from the marketplace in support of entrenched monopolies. We anchor our detestation of intellectual property and any and all so called laws applied to them as impositions on private property; if someone buys something they own it and the seller has no more claim upon it. It is strictly speaking unlawful to forbid an owner from doing whatever he likes with his property, including going into competition with an existing producer. That's real progress and creativity. If you don't happen to see it our way, we're sorry, you are most certainly an idiot!

If the secret government does have what I think they have (including free or at least cheap energy) I would issue patents to new corporations. I would issue them credits at zero interest with no payments due until the new American based manufacturing facilities are up and running. 

Do you see what I'm seeing? More corporations? More governments? No, we need those patents released and then let venture capital and nature take care of all the rest. If Tesla had anything worth pursuing, we would then find out. 

The value of stock shares would not be stolen through IPOs and through management issuing them selves shares. I would distribute shares in these stocks to people who would not retire for 20 years but will need help to fund retirement. 

Most people were able to retire comfortably enough before the 20th century, if they could live that long. What then are we to expect the government, any government, your government to somehow guarantee life expectancy? Have we had enough garbage from the existing order already? 

Young people would be released from Social Security. 

If people were not taxed on their income, there would not need to be any Social Security. As previously indicated, these programs are used to buy off potential problems from running state chartered corporations which unfairly compete and tend toward monopolies.

They would contribute directly into their trust account retirement funds.

 

These funds would then be invested in what to guarantee a return? Does anyone else see the problem? This proposal is really not a lot different from any Social Security. Nice try, but no cigar.  

Tesla energy sources would reduce energy costs making living easier for working families and also creating new industries and opportunities. 

That's taking quite a lot for granted and I wouldn't count on it. 

I might point out that the US has a plane that can fly 20,000 mph in the atmosphere. That material is able to withstand tremendous friction and is worth a fortune. It will go into the retirement funds. They also have batteries 20 years ahead of what we have. That patent would make electric cars a reality. That patent is also worth something as are all the other inventions they have been secreting away. The secret government created the semi-conductor and gave it away to AT&T. No more. 

Yes, no more of the same. You allow big government, big corporations, big everything to fail and then see where nature takes you. You start out with a new money that is based simply, everywhere and always, on an initial dated transaction and allow people to use it and develop what they will by their own efforts for everything they create will actually be theirs not someone else's. That's the only way forward. From another source, some more proposals: 

14) No one belongs in “Public Service” over 10 Years. A Cop, a Teacher, A fireman, a dog catcher, a street sweeper, any Government job, except military, and especially not a Politician. This eliminates 3 problems automatically the Pension problem, the Union problem, and the worst problem the Absolute Power problem. 

Fine, but none of this is of immediate concern to us except for allowing public employees of various kinds to join our IEs and participate in the VEN. Each IE WILL discriminate concerning which particular people in “public service” will be allowed to participate based on whether the other members regard the public employee's job as an essential service. Right now, all water, sewer and related work scores higher than almost anything else.  

15) The 8th amendment needs to be tweaked a bit to also say Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted nor “Cruel and Unusual ” punishment Shall be back to the people.

We have actually never liked the words “cruel and unusual punishment” as being far too vague and open to abuse. Instead we support a change to “the punishment shall fit the crime.” We note that it was usual to expect that thieves would pay back double of what they had stolen ... or work it off. This gives one some idea of what sums might be awarded the state through correct prosecution of organized criminals. However we doubt seriously whether anything like this will ever actually happen.

The Citizens are NOT responsible for other people who have children and cannot afford them as one example. The government Cannot be in any charity giving of the People’s money ever again.

It wasn't the people's money to begin with. Please get that through your exceedingly thick heads out there! Even if you allowed Lincoln greenbacks to return, you'd still be making the government the biggest buyer in the economy with nothing to sell back into it, therefore setting up perpetual taxation or runaway inflation. Our solution is far better.

IF one could arrange for the level of security that the French king used when he passed out the warrants for the arrest of the Templars leaders, possibly a civil war could be averted. 

Imagine, they assume that a civil war is coming or even necessary. You out there who smell injustice certainly want justice, but what if you can't ever get it? What if your anger is misplaced or rather misdirected? If you set out to try and do your own thing, perhaps someone will then move against you and stop you. Then you are in roughly the same position as the man who is struck once upon the cheek and then turns the other cheek to be slapped. If slapped again, his next recourse is combat because his natural rights (not given him by any government anywhere on earth) have been violated by a tyrant and or his company of usurpers. All tyrants deserve the same end. But shall we endure a governance that becomes that tyrannical? When is the last straw of tyranny reached? Look around the world at this very moment and you'll have some idea of the situation. 

In THIS age that level of secrecy is almost impossible. Hundreds of law enforcement officers all over Europe were informed by letter at the same time, moving on the wealthy and powerful Templars in syncronicity. BTW, those Templars who escaped with ALL the Templars treasure are most likely HSBC today, pursuing the same trade that made them wealthy in the fist place, banking between Asia and the west.

And so, in what did all these reprisals result? Yeah, for the common man (or woman), nothing! For the king and pope who arrested and imprisoned Templar leader Jacques de Mollay both died soon after and what of the Templars' fabulous wealth? It did no one any good. In fact to the contrary, de Mollay was esteemed by the common people as a great benefactor who gave vast sums away to the poor. That can't be said of either the king or the pope. So what good is going after other men's ill gotten gains?

I've noticed that as people have gotten more and more angry over the course of current events, yet they are so apparently blind when it comes to post-judicial solutions. Most are statists without the slightest thought that their idealized regime would be just as tyrannical as the one it replaced. It is time to stop all the nonsense about ever effecting change through a state. It is time to take an honest view of one's own talents and skills and then with the aid of a Valun measurement, to determine what those talents and skills might bring to the marketplace, not the world marketplace, oh no, your local marketplace. If you can't find a buyer there, you either move or do something else. That's the way of natural orders and no state has any right to alter it, without doing serious damage ultimately to itself.

David Burton
dpbmss@mail.com