Post National Economies

Wow.

I need to think about this for a bit.

Currency and Script continued.

I have been rolling the ideas of currency and script around for the last few weeks. Without blinders on, it would seem that credit is a form of script. Script with terrible terms, but script nonetheless.

I kind of felt that bringing up Zimbabwe in the last post was a bit gratuitus, but on reflection it seems like there are a few ideas there to explore.

I did actually go and look on Ebay for A Zimbabwean trillion dollar note, and it's no surprise that you can absolutely buy them, for a mere 16.95. My hat is off to the trader who realized early that people would want them as curiosities.

Buy low and sell high right? It would seem to be one of the foundations of capitalism. I did get a chuckle out of that, but after some thought it occurred to me that our intrepid trader probably had to buy a bundle of Zimbabwe green backs. Well more than a bundle, most likely a bag full.

He bought in bulk and now he is selling them retail. Well I hope he did. I suppose a cousin could have mailed him a couple of them. I just assumed that he got them from the bank and that to get the bank to go to the effort of getting them he would have had to thrown down at least a few hundred dollars.

What if I threw down a few hundred dollars or however much it took to get 100,000 Zimbabwe individual notes and then gave them away to people who promised to accept them as local dollars?

Think about that.

How would it affect my local economy?

How it would affect Zimbabwe's economy?

Think about post-national economies.

The entire banking system once ran on a computer less sophisticated than whatever you are using to read this post.

Think about what would happen if a thousand US communities tried it.

Simultaneously.

Well,

"If the state can't save us, we need a licence to print our own money" Says George Monbiot

"A little secret that will make the world fall apart" Says Avery Pennarun.

Dave Winer, "The protoblogger." writes "I am not an economist"
(Note, he wrote his blog before I did, 11th vs. 13th but I just found it today while looking for my own blog. Guess I should bookmark mine so I can find it easier.)

Seems to me that my last post was on the money, so to speak.

If the local solution to a recession/ depression is local currency, that would indicate that the monetary system as it stands is a failure. Global liquidity is money going where businesses want it to go, not where it is needed by the citizens of the country that issued it.

We don't want to end up like Zimbabwe, because their currency is worthless.

They have too much currency, and we do not have enough.

I wonder if I can buy a Zimbabwean 100 Trillion Dollar bill on Ebay yet.

A Gaping Hole in your Failed Economic Theories

I have goods and services and you have goods and services.

I want what you have to offer and you want what I have to offer.

I am standing around with my thumb up my ass while you are standing around with your dick in your hand.

Let a conventional economist attempt to explain this and we would start crying in frustration and rage whilst tearing our hair out.

I will make this simple, because what you are hearing is wrong.

Those little green symbols we use to trade with are missing. Some people put them in Swiss Bank accounts. We call those people "The Problem".

Now there are not enough little green symbols here in America. We need more of them and we need to print them. Not borrow them, print them.

Convention wisdom fears inflation, but seriously take a look around and read the first three lines of this post again. Those little green symbols are never coming back and that's the real problem. The US is not a banana republic, we have many things to trade with each other that we can't because we have no longer have a domestic instrument of trade.

To recap, our economy is sitting on the side of the road like a 5 year old Pontiac because the primary tool that makes it function, currency, is in artificially short supply. This is the elephant in the room that no one with authority wants to talk about.

Available currency has been diminishing for a long time. This problem has been masked for at least ten years by the now exploding credit market. Credit has been making the problem worse. Credit is only a crutch to stopgap temporary currency shortages, not a sensible replacement for it, and it's even worse as a long term solution.

The solution is simple, I call it the "Give Me Five Thousand Dollars Plan".

Then give the approximately 250 Million people who paid taxes last year Five Thousand Dollars too.

The result is that 250 Million people go out and attempt to fix the economy in their own creative American way, without the problem types skimming 6.9 to 29.9 percent off the top and sending it to Switzerland.

There it is, a 1.25 trillion dollar stimulus right where is needs to go, into the hands of those that need it the most.