AoiMasamune
12-03-2007, 03:08 PM
Well, I've been doing a great deal of thinking about our monetary problems and think I found a solution that adequetely addresses most of the difficulties we are facing. I believe it's well thought out and that I've addressed everything, but please look over the following proposal and give give me some feedback. I don't mind constructive criticism, or any criticism really, because it gives me a chance to expand, evolve, deepen, or defend this structure. Evolution of thought through fire, so to speak. This is going to get a little wordy, so if you don't like economics or philosophy, or if you don't like reading a couple pages of text, please skip right to the solution. I felt it was necessary to to outline what I recongize as a valid problem. Anything I didn't list, it can be safely assumed that I believe to be a symptom of the core problems instead of a direct problem in itself.
So without further ado.
The problems I considered:
1: A central banking system with access to an unlimited money supply, as permitted by fractional reserve banking, has created an ever inflating currency, driving prices up through inflation while wages do not increase. This amounts to a net loss for the vast majority of people involved, without allowing for individual financial decisions to protect the individual to any reasonable degree due to inflation and the ignorance of the process by the general population.
2: The creation of currency through the creation of debt, combined with an ever inflating and expanding currency has manifested an ever expanding debt load on the people of this country. As the amount of debt approaches the debt-limit threshold where borrowers cannot repay, poverty is generated. Left unchecked, this system will reduce a vast majority of the population to poverty. As poverty increases, borrowing decreases, however the system itself cannot exist without an ever-increasing money supply as generated by debt. This creates the need for ever increasing government intervention.
3: The artificial fixation of values of foreign currencies (namely China, but others are guilty of similar) has created for foreign companies, an artificially lucrative means of production, usually by circumventing or outright denying basic human rights. This has lead to our economy becoming 'polarized' where all currency tends to flow in this direction. This process is accelerating as the economy continues to perfect the flow of money, both upwards to the 'elites' and outward towards cheaper means of production. This exponential increase is due mostly towards the destruction of our own industrial companies and the elimination of our means of production, which in turn generates increased demand for foreign products resulting in an exponential increase in damage to our own economy.
This constant drain tends to negate (delay is more accurate) the effect of inflation on our buying power, as caused by an ever increasing currency supply, by forcing these foreign economies to remove currency from our economy and 'trap' it in foreign reserves to maintain the value of the money they already have. Our economy balances this loss of available currency supply by increasing the rate at which money is created. This is done both by increasing the rate of debt creation (which in turn generates greater poverty), and by artificially injecting funds into the economy through the use of the military-industrial complex. This in turn leads to a need for an ever-increasing need to dispose of the surplus of the complex, meaning weapons. This directly creates a need for war.
4: The three previous problems work together to force us into an ever increasing debt load, both to local financial institutions, and to foreign investors who continue to gain more US currency. This could be accurately considered as economic warfare, because we are definitely being conquered. Should this continue, eventually our military-industrial complex itself will buckle under international pressure, leading to a catastrophic economic collapse. This would render us completely defenseless to invasion and/or colonization by foreign interests.
5: The federal reserve has given the federal government access to unlimited funds, as long as the interest is gauranteed by a federal income tax. This has lead to a grossly oversized government, way beyond it's actual financial abilities, and with no forced limits on available capital. In a situation where you aren't deciding how to spend money based on how much is available, but instead choosing how much money is available based on perceived need for it, people will always over estimate need and therefore overspend.
6: Every day that passes pushes us closer to the 100% poverty mark while hiding it's cause from the general population. As poverty increases, the destructive forces acting on the economy both strengthen and accelerate, I feel this will lead to an catastrophic economic singularity ending in the destruction of the United States. Poverty will seem to explode overnight and cripple the whole country.
7: Corporate personhood has removed human emotion from the business process. Any corporation with any competition that attempts to sacrifice profitability by taking humanitarian means of production is undercut by competition that does not. This creates widespread exploitation of the working class and of the environment, as well as promoting the outsourcing of industry and just adds fuel to the fire.
Why a new idea is necessary:
1: Fiat money can not be responsibly regulated due to the natural occurance of corruption at the point of origion of a money supply. Fiat money by it's very nature is ever-expanding, leading inevitably to the scenario described above. It also allows for deceptive economic practices, like the creation of a military industrial complex to artificially hold up our system. A fiat system as is practiced today must be abandoned.
2: A precious metal backed system lacks the deceptive nature of fiat currency because of it's limited supply. Any economic downturn is immediately felt by the population as a whole, thus prompting a near immediate review of current practices. This is good, however, current and past banking practices have demonstrated the clear ability to gain a monopoly over precious metal based currencies. If and when this does happen, the precious metal currency BECOMES a fiat currency, because it's value is clearly regulated by a central authority, and assumes all the downfalls of the fiat system.
3: Multiple competing currencies are much harder to monopolize and thus control, however they are not immune to it. This is because a market will eventually gravitate towards a stable monetary unit. To elaborate on this point a little, I'll say this: Businesses will not tolerate measuring the value of their goods or services against multiple, floating currencies. After a term of chaos once the regulated fiat system is removed, businesses in general will adopt a very few widely accepted currencies with proven values, namely precious metals, thus opening them up to control and corruption. It has been argued that once a currency in this system begins to exhibit symptoms of an attempt to gain control of it, the market as a whole will shift towards an uncontrolled one thus remaining free. This is not only false (because businesses will have to change their whole accounting system including accountants, account values, debt values, and point of sale systems) but it is dangerous (any market move to a new currency that is a spontaneous change would not change smoothly, but shatter into fragmented communities each using an individual, specialized currency. This fragmantation would eventually coalesce back into a universal currency and thus spark a brand new cycle where absolute chaos is the downturn instead of debt created poverty.
Finally! The idea.
1: The federal government eliminates the federal reserve and IRS.
2: Fractional reserve banking is made illegal.
3: Corporate person-hood is abolished, only humans can own land and property. Further, the owner of the land on which a business operates is legally responsible for any actions of that business. This responsibility is not transferable via a contract or any other means. This would lead to human responsibility over otherwise uncaring businesses, the maintaining of land value, and the inclusion of transparency clauses in the formation of businesses to limit the exposure to risk of the landowner.
4: The minimum wage is abolished, and replaced with a fair wage system. This needs some description. Under a fair-wage system, no person associated with a business may take home any share of the profit greater than four times the share of the lowest paid person associated with a business. While at first glance this may seem to put a cap on individual achievement, it does not. The incentive to produce better and more profitable goods, and to further your individual goals still exists because there is not cap on the amount of income you can have, it just states that if a company succeeds overwhelmingly well, everyone contributing to that success must be treated fairly. For every 4 cent raise the owner gets, each employee gets a 1 cent raise. This would cause a greater focus on smaller businesses instead of multinational corporations, which by it's nature closes the gap between upper and lower classes, and greatly decreases the likelyhood ultra-powerful elites coming into power due to the distributed nature of the currency.
5: The US treasury is given the power to loan money at interest in the form of silver coins to individual state treasuries and only state treasuries. In the beginning, this silver will most likely be borrowed from foreign nations simply due to the terrible state of our industrial economy as well as the weakness of our current currency.
6: The government budget each year will consist of income from trade tariffs placed on imported goods combined with any interest earned from treasury loans. This simultaneously fixes three problems. The first is it places a spending limit of government bodies. Secondly, the necessarily high tariffs required to finance the federal government will make locally produced goods far more desirable than imported goods, which enforces our industrial sector, creating meaningful employment. Third, it forces the federal government to cut spending on less necessary programs and departments, and to prioritize it's actions.
7: Each state treasury can then loan their borrowed money to financial institutions at interest. State government budgets would consist of interest earned on treasury loans combined with fines issued for breaking petty laws. This would reinforce the rule of law, impose a spending limit, and encourage prioritization of state level government programs.
8: The military-industrial complex must be eliminated. This should be done by making gun ownership and maintenance a responsibility of every adult, however, they are allowed to choose which supplier and manufacturer that they prefer. Airforce, Navy, Marine, and Army necessary expenditures, such as base and equipment maintenance, should be included into the federal budget, but will be minimized by necessity, due once again to spending limits. However, arms and armoring should be the responsibility of each individual soldier, or the funds to purchase them should be collected by donations for that purpose.
9: Over time, domestic and foreign debt would be almost completely eliminated by becoming an export nation instead of a consumer nation. This would cause a gradual decrease in available government funding, leading in turn to a gradual decrease in government programs as people become more able to care for themselves.
To summarize, the above steps would accomplish the following:
Eliminate the need for expanding debt.
Provide for the ability to repay all debt and interest over time.
Remove the ability to have a deceptive economy.
Provide for a steady money supply.
Enforces spending limits, reducing government spending.
Enforces human rights for the working class.
Eliminates the need for a permanent military-industrial complex.
Empowers the individual at the expense of the corporation.
So without further ado.
The problems I considered:
1: A central banking system with access to an unlimited money supply, as permitted by fractional reserve banking, has created an ever inflating currency, driving prices up through inflation while wages do not increase. This amounts to a net loss for the vast majority of people involved, without allowing for individual financial decisions to protect the individual to any reasonable degree due to inflation and the ignorance of the process by the general population.
2: The creation of currency through the creation of debt, combined with an ever inflating and expanding currency has manifested an ever expanding debt load on the people of this country. As the amount of debt approaches the debt-limit threshold where borrowers cannot repay, poverty is generated. Left unchecked, this system will reduce a vast majority of the population to poverty. As poverty increases, borrowing decreases, however the system itself cannot exist without an ever-increasing money supply as generated by debt. This creates the need for ever increasing government intervention.
3: The artificial fixation of values of foreign currencies (namely China, but others are guilty of similar) has created for foreign companies, an artificially lucrative means of production, usually by circumventing or outright denying basic human rights. This has lead to our economy becoming 'polarized' where all currency tends to flow in this direction. This process is accelerating as the economy continues to perfect the flow of money, both upwards to the 'elites' and outward towards cheaper means of production. This exponential increase is due mostly towards the destruction of our own industrial companies and the elimination of our means of production, which in turn generates increased demand for foreign products resulting in an exponential increase in damage to our own economy.
This constant drain tends to negate (delay is more accurate) the effect of inflation on our buying power, as caused by an ever increasing currency supply, by forcing these foreign economies to remove currency from our economy and 'trap' it in foreign reserves to maintain the value of the money they already have. Our economy balances this loss of available currency supply by increasing the rate at which money is created. This is done both by increasing the rate of debt creation (which in turn generates greater poverty), and by artificially injecting funds into the economy through the use of the military-industrial complex. This in turn leads to a need for an ever-increasing need to dispose of the surplus of the complex, meaning weapons. This directly creates a need for war.
4: The three previous problems work together to force us into an ever increasing debt load, both to local financial institutions, and to foreign investors who continue to gain more US currency. This could be accurately considered as economic warfare, because we are definitely being conquered. Should this continue, eventually our military-industrial complex itself will buckle under international pressure, leading to a catastrophic economic collapse. This would render us completely defenseless to invasion and/or colonization by foreign interests.
5: The federal reserve has given the federal government access to unlimited funds, as long as the interest is gauranteed by a federal income tax. This has lead to a grossly oversized government, way beyond it's actual financial abilities, and with no forced limits on available capital. In a situation where you aren't deciding how to spend money based on how much is available, but instead choosing how much money is available based on perceived need for it, people will always over estimate need and therefore overspend.
6: Every day that passes pushes us closer to the 100% poverty mark while hiding it's cause from the general population. As poverty increases, the destructive forces acting on the economy both strengthen and accelerate, I feel this will lead to an catastrophic economic singularity ending in the destruction of the United States. Poverty will seem to explode overnight and cripple the whole country.
7: Corporate personhood has removed human emotion from the business process. Any corporation with any competition that attempts to sacrifice profitability by taking humanitarian means of production is undercut by competition that does not. This creates widespread exploitation of the working class and of the environment, as well as promoting the outsourcing of industry and just adds fuel to the fire.
Why a new idea is necessary:
1: Fiat money can not be responsibly regulated due to the natural occurance of corruption at the point of origion of a money supply. Fiat money by it's very nature is ever-expanding, leading inevitably to the scenario described above. It also allows for deceptive economic practices, like the creation of a military industrial complex to artificially hold up our system. A fiat system as is practiced today must be abandoned.
2: A precious metal backed system lacks the deceptive nature of fiat currency because of it's limited supply. Any economic downturn is immediately felt by the population as a whole, thus prompting a near immediate review of current practices. This is good, however, current and past banking practices have demonstrated the clear ability to gain a monopoly over precious metal based currencies. If and when this does happen, the precious metal currency BECOMES a fiat currency, because it's value is clearly regulated by a central authority, and assumes all the downfalls of the fiat system.
3: Multiple competing currencies are much harder to monopolize and thus control, however they are not immune to it. This is because a market will eventually gravitate towards a stable monetary unit. To elaborate on this point a little, I'll say this: Businesses will not tolerate measuring the value of their goods or services against multiple, floating currencies. After a term of chaos once the regulated fiat system is removed, businesses in general will adopt a very few widely accepted currencies with proven values, namely precious metals, thus opening them up to control and corruption. It has been argued that once a currency in this system begins to exhibit symptoms of an attempt to gain control of it, the market as a whole will shift towards an uncontrolled one thus remaining free. This is not only false (because businesses will have to change their whole accounting system including accountants, account values, debt values, and point of sale systems) but it is dangerous (any market move to a new currency that is a spontaneous change would not change smoothly, but shatter into fragmented communities each using an individual, specialized currency. This fragmantation would eventually coalesce back into a universal currency and thus spark a brand new cycle where absolute chaos is the downturn instead of debt created poverty.
Finally! The idea.
1: The federal government eliminates the federal reserve and IRS.
2: Fractional reserve banking is made illegal.
3: Corporate person-hood is abolished, only humans can own land and property. Further, the owner of the land on which a business operates is legally responsible for any actions of that business. This responsibility is not transferable via a contract or any other means. This would lead to human responsibility over otherwise uncaring businesses, the maintaining of land value, and the inclusion of transparency clauses in the formation of businesses to limit the exposure to risk of the landowner.
4: The minimum wage is abolished, and replaced with a fair wage system. This needs some description. Under a fair-wage system, no person associated with a business may take home any share of the profit greater than four times the share of the lowest paid person associated with a business. While at first glance this may seem to put a cap on individual achievement, it does not. The incentive to produce better and more profitable goods, and to further your individual goals still exists because there is not cap on the amount of income you can have, it just states that if a company succeeds overwhelmingly well, everyone contributing to that success must be treated fairly. For every 4 cent raise the owner gets, each employee gets a 1 cent raise. This would cause a greater focus on smaller businesses instead of multinational corporations, which by it's nature closes the gap between upper and lower classes, and greatly decreases the likelyhood ultra-powerful elites coming into power due to the distributed nature of the currency.
5: The US treasury is given the power to loan money at interest in the form of silver coins to individual state treasuries and only state treasuries. In the beginning, this silver will most likely be borrowed from foreign nations simply due to the terrible state of our industrial economy as well as the weakness of our current currency.
6: The government budget each year will consist of income from trade tariffs placed on imported goods combined with any interest earned from treasury loans. This simultaneously fixes three problems. The first is it places a spending limit of government bodies. Secondly, the necessarily high tariffs required to finance the federal government will make locally produced goods far more desirable than imported goods, which enforces our industrial sector, creating meaningful employment. Third, it forces the federal government to cut spending on less necessary programs and departments, and to prioritize it's actions.
7: Each state treasury can then loan their borrowed money to financial institutions at interest. State government budgets would consist of interest earned on treasury loans combined with fines issued for breaking petty laws. This would reinforce the rule of law, impose a spending limit, and encourage prioritization of state level government programs.
8: The military-industrial complex must be eliminated. This should be done by making gun ownership and maintenance a responsibility of every adult, however, they are allowed to choose which supplier and manufacturer that they prefer. Airforce, Navy, Marine, and Army necessary expenditures, such as base and equipment maintenance, should be included into the federal budget, but will be minimized by necessity, due once again to spending limits. However, arms and armoring should be the responsibility of each individual soldier, or the funds to purchase them should be collected by donations for that purpose.
9: Over time, domestic and foreign debt would be almost completely eliminated by becoming an export nation instead of a consumer nation. This would cause a gradual decrease in available government funding, leading in turn to a gradual decrease in government programs as people become more able to care for themselves.
To summarize, the above steps would accomplish the following:
Eliminate the need for expanding debt.
Provide for the ability to repay all debt and interest over time.
Remove the ability to have a deceptive economy.
Provide for a steady money supply.
Enforces spending limits, reducing government spending.
Enforces human rights for the working class.
Eliminates the need for a permanent military-industrial complex.
Empowers the individual at the expense of the corporation.