My education on the relationship between seemingly insane and cruel US foreign policy and our leadership's desperate attempt to maintain the US dollar as a "safe" refuge for wealth was served well by this piece. I am beginning to appreciate what dismantling American privilege and hegemony will require.
Thank you for reading and for the question. Israel is indeed implicit in the framework I've laid out, as a critical pillar of US hegemony in the Middle East, a key recipient of military financing, as well as a central actor in the conflict that sustains the system I describe. When I write about Iran and the wider Middle East being "ignited," the role of Israel in that ignition is assumed. That said, your question makes me consider whether the piece would benefit from naming Israel explicitly. The strategic relationship between the US and Israel is precisely the kind of "machinery" the piece examines. Perhaps the implicit is worth making explicit. I appreciate you pushing me to clarify.
The system of money is fatally flawed, but the focus still remains on the effects of this flaw instead of the flaw itself.
Abstract:
“This document is the result of a rigorous control system theory stability analysis of the current world de facto standard currency system and identifies a root instability in the form of the growth component of Debt associated with the money creation process. It first establishes the inherent instability of Common Lending Practices (application of interest). Then the analysis further charts the logical consequences of said root instability as it affects the economy as a whole and identifies how it provokes a systematic divergence between debt and value attributed to wealth in past cycles with the minimum value required in current and future cycles as those incorporate past unpaid debt i.e. systematic compounding of debt. It also identifies how the only means available within the system design for staving off inflation is through the continued contribution of collateral wealth as guaranty for the creation of new principal debt money commensurate with past debt growth. Finally it illustrates that compounding debt inevitably leads to a point where an inability to provide new wealth to guaranty new money to keep up with debt growth becomes chronic at which point either runaway inflation or a definitive collapse of the system inevitably ensues.”
We need to get Way More Specific and talk about the concepts and systems that keep people enslaved.
There is nothing legitimate about a government issuing and then determining access to the abstract acCounting unit. That is NOT a function of governance in a free society.
When the population goes along with this they then have to dedicate their working hours to acquire the imperialist's coin, so the imperialist has control and direction over what shall be done.
Marc Gauvin of the MSTA points out that our main focus should be "reasoning the problem of money from first logical principles not any socio political stance."
"For example, the requirement for defining and specifying currency as a unit is a generic requirement of applied mathematics in terms of any unit. This requirement then becomes a legal requirement when the Judiciary is reminded of this generic (technical) requirement without which any mathematical calculations in any domain are essentially indeterminate.
This then necessarily brings us to the fundamental fallacy of economics in all its socio political colours, which is to treat money as an natural/empirical phenomenon that exists independently. As if money were like the force of gravity that while we can objectively observe certain properties its full phenomenology is unknown. But if money has no such independent phenomenology then it is our actions or practices that are the only clue as to its nature. Thus, if we do not define money precisely in terms of empirical reality e.g. the true (physical) cost of goods and services then ultimately there is no valid independent association between money and any common independent reality. Conclusion, money is what we define it to be and in order for that definition to be applicable to any independent common reality in any determinable (decidable) fashion it must be defined in terms of that reality.
This approach aims at providing a necessary common logical framework to all and any discussion on money, that once such a framework is established, we can then begin talking about what is wrong with current practices in terms of applying the logic of stability and systems science as they apply to both logical and physical reality.
The goal is to generate a desire to understand such a framework as well as how that is accessible to most anyone who wishes."
Instability does not ever go away when you treat the unit of acCount for the representation of the value contained in other things as though it too is an item of value all by itself.
There is a way out that involves simple monetary literacy. Check this out!!
The question then remains as to why any populace needs a government to issue the abstract units of reference to their own activity and/or why they would limit their own capacity to the possession of some specific and highly corrupt and controlled commodity? Don't they already know how to count and do bookkeeping? Isn't this the heart of liberty!?
Many do not see the jumping off place as the conflation...maybe because it was so far back in human history. But the simple awareness of ancient social orders and, therefore, ancient economies, (ones that some call 'human economies') brings the opportunity to start the focus there and consider that not everything "modern" has come as a 'progression' of greater truth and accuracy. I like that some have the courage to express respect for the ancient human economies and hope that citing anthropological sources like Graeber means that the 'anthro analysis' does not have to remain limited to ancient currencies that "mediate the human economy and the spirit world."
Brett Scott, in a recent paper, points to the problem of the present day "reductive focus on the movement of commodified goods." My intent is to put the focus back to the 'mediation' within these 'human economies' and to point out that bookkeeping is that simple mediation process of keeping records for the eventual resolution of human interactions in an open and inclusive manner such that none are un-accounted for, and no commodities are in need of protection or imposed on colonized peoples.
Maybe the discourse will present the opportunity to add these thoughts.
My thanks to Marc Gauvin for bringing this focus and my attention to that historical moment of mistaken reasoning along with the peaceful process of resolution such an awareness can bring.
Thank you for this thoughtful engagement. You’re working from first principles, asking what money is and whether the unit of account can be logically coherent. That’s interesting, and worth taking seriously. My approach is different, but I think complementary rather than opposed. I’m doing critique of political economy in the Marxian tradition, which means I take money not as a logical abstraction but as a social relation, specifically as capital. In this frame, money is not merely a passive unit of account; it’s a store of value that exists to expand itself through the exploitation of labour. The question isn’t whether this arrangement is logically coherent in absolute terms, but how it functions, how it reproduces itself, and who it serves. How does money as capital sustain itself, and what happens when that process exhausts its conditions of possibility? This is where I think our perspectives could meet. The system I describe is what the exhaustion of capital looks like. When automation displaces labour, financialization replaces production, debt becomes the primary engine of accumulation, this means that the system can no longer expand through the old mechanisms. It turns to other means: war as deficit spending, crisis as monetary justification, geopolitics as yield-curve control, etc. So you’re right that the root flaw matters. But I’d argue that flaw becomes visible precisely at the moment of systemic exhaustion – where system is a specific historical formation. When the system can no longer deliver the growth it promises, the underlying contradictions surface, and that’s when reconceptualizing money becomes not just philosophical but urgent.
Marc Gauvin helped me with this query: "Are you assuming there exists a determinate nature of "money"/currency units ($,€, etc..) or not? If so please provide that first, if not please note that not having any independent existence of its own, money as a thing requires being assigned a logically valid formal (standard)definition in terms of the domain where it is to be applied. Currently all commentators are operating on a demonstrably absurd notion of money assumed as money's "independent" nature. However, as indicated previously, money has no independent nature of its own. It is from this initial false notion, referred to as "money's misrepresentation" that the MSTA and BIBO Currency initiate their unprecedented work."
When you "take money...............as a social relation, specifically as capital", then does it not have to address the question of its 'independent existence'?
I think your writing is telling of the present circumstances of 'systemic exhaustion' and the 'underlying contradictions" as the cause. So, the solution cannot attempt to maintain the conceptual error and somehow magically correct the effects. For example, 'debt cannot be the primary engine of accumulation' if the monetary unit is not mistaken to be an item of value all by itself. When you mention the urgency of the present situation we are watching the illegitimate "purchase" of the world and its resources all on the basis of the misrepresentation.
Thank you again, you've put your finger on the central issue, and I want to respond directly to it. You ask: if money has no independent nature, if it requires a logically valid formal definition, then how can I simply "take money as a social relation" without first addressing the question of its independent existence?
Here's my answer: I don't assume money has an independent nature. I assume the opposite: that money is a social convention, a collective fiction, a set of practices and beliefs and modes of enjoyment that have no necessary logical foundation. But that's precisely why it functions as capital. The "absurdity" you name – that money cannot logically be both a unit of account and self-valorising value (capital) – is the constitutive contradiction upon which the entire system depends. Every system requires belief. I think we're disagreeing about what kind of thing a society is. You see a logical structure that can be made perfectly coherent and transparent. I see a symbolic order ultimately held together by beliefs and modes of (unconscious) enjoyment.
Capitalism “works” as a social convention because people desire (and believe in) this absurdity. They derive enjoyment from chasing it. They organise their lives around it. They consider it perfectly rational and meaningful. As Walter Benjamin put it, with capitalism God did not die (Nietzsche’s proclamation), but descended into immanence, into the human condition. The capitalist system reproduces itself not despite the logical flaw but through it. This is what I mean by money as a social relation: it's not about what money is in some essential sense, but about what people do with it, how they structure their entire world around its impossible promise.
Your question is: how do we define money correctly so that the system can be logically coherent? Whereas my question is: what does it mean that a global civilisation organises itself around a logical incoherence? And, most crucially, what happens when that incoherence reaches its limits - when the contradiction can no longer be sustained, when the criminal absurdity becomes visible even to those who benefit from it?
This is where I think we're actually in agreement about the stakes. You write that debt cannot be the primary engine of accumulation if the monetary unit is not mistaken to be an item of value all by itself. Exactly. And my piece is about what happens when that mistake becomes unsustainable, when the system must resort to perpetual crisis management, to the manufacturing of one emergency after the other, simply to keep the contradiction afloat.
So I'm not defending the conceptual error, I'm tracing its consequences. And I suspect that work is necessary before a genuine reconceptualisation can take hold (as capital “took hold” some 500 years ago).
Hello Fabio, and thank you for the dialog. I do 'get it' about the process of informing people about consequences of this ancient conceptual error. Perhaps you will agree that we have no clue as to the how dire the consequences may become. And, if this process of the worsening of those consequences is already as old as it is, should we not focus on the conceptual error more than the consequences simply because those consequences are the product of the error?
My education on the relationship between seemingly insane and cruel US foreign policy and our leadership's desperate attempt to maintain the US dollar as a "safe" refuge for wealth was served well by this piece. I am beginning to appreciate what dismantling American privilege and hegemony will require.
Excellent. But where is Israel?
Thank you for reading and for the question. Israel is indeed implicit in the framework I've laid out, as a critical pillar of US hegemony in the Middle East, a key recipient of military financing, as well as a central actor in the conflict that sustains the system I describe. When I write about Iran and the wider Middle East being "ignited," the role of Israel in that ignition is assumed. That said, your question makes me consider whether the piece would benefit from naming Israel explicitly. The strategic relationship between the US and Israel is precisely the kind of "machinery" the piece examines. Perhaps the implicit is worth making explicit. I appreciate you pushing me to clarify.
The system of money is fatally flawed, but the focus still remains on the effects of this flaw instead of the flaw itself.
Abstract:
“This document is the result of a rigorous control system theory stability analysis of the current world de facto standard currency system and identifies a root instability in the form of the growth component of Debt associated with the money creation process. It first establishes the inherent instability of Common Lending Practices (application of interest). Then the analysis further charts the logical consequences of said root instability as it affects the economy as a whole and identifies how it provokes a systematic divergence between debt and value attributed to wealth in past cycles with the minimum value required in current and future cycles as those incorporate past unpaid debt i.e. systematic compounding of debt. It also identifies how the only means available within the system design for staving off inflation is through the continued contribution of collateral wealth as guaranty for the creation of new principal debt money commensurate with past debt growth. Finally it illustrates that compounding debt inevitably leads to a point where an inability to provide new wealth to guaranty new money to keep up with debt growth becomes chronic at which point either runaway inflation or a definitive collapse of the system inevitably ensues.”
http://bibocurrency.com/images/pdfdownloads/Formal%20Stability%20Analysis%20and%20experiment%20%28final%29%20rev%203.4.pdf
We need to get Way More Specific and talk about the concepts and systems that keep people enslaved.
There is nothing legitimate about a government issuing and then determining access to the abstract acCounting unit. That is NOT a function of governance in a free society.
When the population goes along with this they then have to dedicate their working hours to acquire the imperialist's coin, so the imperialist has control and direction over what shall be done.
Every jurisdiction can bring these resolutions!!
https://www.moneytransparency.com/msta-resolutions
Marc Gauvin of the MSTA points out that our main focus should be "reasoning the problem of money from first logical principles not any socio political stance."
"For example, the requirement for defining and specifying currency as a unit is a generic requirement of applied mathematics in terms of any unit. This requirement then becomes a legal requirement when the Judiciary is reminded of this generic (technical) requirement without which any mathematical calculations in any domain are essentially indeterminate.
This then necessarily brings us to the fundamental fallacy of economics in all its socio political colours, which is to treat money as an natural/empirical phenomenon that exists independently. As if money were like the force of gravity that while we can objectively observe certain properties its full phenomenology is unknown. But if money has no such independent phenomenology then it is our actions or practices that are the only clue as to its nature. Thus, if we do not define money precisely in terms of empirical reality e.g. the true (physical) cost of goods and services then ultimately there is no valid independent association between money and any common independent reality. Conclusion, money is what we define it to be and in order for that definition to be applicable to any independent common reality in any determinable (decidable) fashion it must be defined in terms of that reality.
This approach aims at providing a necessary common logical framework to all and any discussion on money, that once such a framework is established, we can then begin talking about what is wrong with current practices in terms of applying the logic of stability and systems science as they apply to both logical and physical reality.
The goal is to generate a desire to understand such a framework as well as how that is accessible to most anyone who wishes."
https://mrcenter.info/Doc/ConferencePapers/2015/MRC_2015_Gauvin_Meira_Final_Release_Amendement_for_Publication.pdf
Instability does not ever go away when you treat the unit of acCount for the representation of the value contained in other things as though it too is an item of value all by itself.
There is a way out that involves simple monetary literacy. Check this out!!
http://www.bibocurrency.com/index.php/downloads-2/19-english-root/learn/300-you-have-been-served
The question then remains as to why any populace needs a government to issue the abstract units of reference to their own activity and/or why they would limit their own capacity to the possession of some specific and highly corrupt and controlled commodity? Don't they already know how to count and do bookkeeping? Isn't this the heart of liberty!?
Many do not see the jumping off place as the conflation...maybe because it was so far back in human history. But the simple awareness of ancient social orders and, therefore, ancient economies, (ones that some call 'human economies') brings the opportunity to start the focus there and consider that not everything "modern" has come as a 'progression' of greater truth and accuracy. I like that some have the courage to express respect for the ancient human economies and hope that citing anthropological sources like Graeber means that the 'anthro analysis' does not have to remain limited to ancient currencies that "mediate the human economy and the spirit world."
Brett Scott, in a recent paper, points to the problem of the present day "reductive focus on the movement of commodified goods." My intent is to put the focus back to the 'mediation' within these 'human economies' and to point out that bookkeeping is that simple mediation process of keeping records for the eventual resolution of human interactions in an open and inclusive manner such that none are un-accounted for, and no commodities are in need of protection or imposed on colonized peoples.
Maybe the discourse will present the opportunity to add these thoughts.
My thanks to Marc Gauvin for bringing this focus and my attention to that historical moment of mistaken reasoning along with the peaceful process of resolution such an awareness can bring.
http://www.bibocurrency.com/index.php/downloads-2/19-english-root/learn/299-stop-wwiii
Thank you for this thoughtful engagement. You’re working from first principles, asking what money is and whether the unit of account can be logically coherent. That’s interesting, and worth taking seriously. My approach is different, but I think complementary rather than opposed. I’m doing critique of political economy in the Marxian tradition, which means I take money not as a logical abstraction but as a social relation, specifically as capital. In this frame, money is not merely a passive unit of account; it’s a store of value that exists to expand itself through the exploitation of labour. The question isn’t whether this arrangement is logically coherent in absolute terms, but how it functions, how it reproduces itself, and who it serves. How does money as capital sustain itself, and what happens when that process exhausts its conditions of possibility? This is where I think our perspectives could meet. The system I describe is what the exhaustion of capital looks like. When automation displaces labour, financialization replaces production, debt becomes the primary engine of accumulation, this means that the system can no longer expand through the old mechanisms. It turns to other means: war as deficit spending, crisis as monetary justification, geopolitics as yield-curve control, etc. So you’re right that the root flaw matters. But I’d argue that flaw becomes visible precisely at the moment of systemic exhaustion – where system is a specific historical formation. When the system can no longer deliver the growth it promises, the underlying contradictions surface, and that’s when reconceptualizing money becomes not just philosophical but urgent.
Marc Gauvin helped me with this query: "Are you assuming there exists a determinate nature of "money"/currency units ($,€, etc..) or not? If so please provide that first, if not please note that not having any independent existence of its own, money as a thing requires being assigned a logically valid formal (standard)definition in terms of the domain where it is to be applied. Currently all commentators are operating on a demonstrably absurd notion of money assumed as money's "independent" nature. However, as indicated previously, money has no independent nature of its own. It is from this initial false notion, referred to as "money's misrepresentation" that the MSTA and BIBO Currency initiate their unprecedented work."
When you "take money...............as a social relation, specifically as capital", then does it not have to address the question of its 'independent existence'?
I think your writing is telling of the present circumstances of 'systemic exhaustion' and the 'underlying contradictions" as the cause. So, the solution cannot attempt to maintain the conceptual error and somehow magically correct the effects. For example, 'debt cannot be the primary engine of accumulation' if the monetary unit is not mistaken to be an item of value all by itself. When you mention the urgency of the present situation we are watching the illegitimate "purchase" of the world and its resources all on the basis of the misrepresentation.
Maybe these links will be useful:
See: https://bibocurrency.com/images/MRC/2025/pres_demystifying_money%20rev.1-12-25.pdf
And
https://bibocurrency.com/images/MRC/2025/pres_hidden-compounding%20rev.3%20.pdf
bibocurrency.com
Thank you again, you've put your finger on the central issue, and I want to respond directly to it. You ask: if money has no independent nature, if it requires a logically valid formal definition, then how can I simply "take money as a social relation" without first addressing the question of its independent existence?
Here's my answer: I don't assume money has an independent nature. I assume the opposite: that money is a social convention, a collective fiction, a set of practices and beliefs and modes of enjoyment that have no necessary logical foundation. But that's precisely why it functions as capital. The "absurdity" you name – that money cannot logically be both a unit of account and self-valorising value (capital) – is the constitutive contradiction upon which the entire system depends. Every system requires belief. I think we're disagreeing about what kind of thing a society is. You see a logical structure that can be made perfectly coherent and transparent. I see a symbolic order ultimately held together by beliefs and modes of (unconscious) enjoyment.
Capitalism “works” as a social convention because people desire (and believe in) this absurdity. They derive enjoyment from chasing it. They organise their lives around it. They consider it perfectly rational and meaningful. As Walter Benjamin put it, with capitalism God did not die (Nietzsche’s proclamation), but descended into immanence, into the human condition. The capitalist system reproduces itself not despite the logical flaw but through it. This is what I mean by money as a social relation: it's not about what money is in some essential sense, but about what people do with it, how they structure their entire world around its impossible promise.
Your question is: how do we define money correctly so that the system can be logically coherent? Whereas my question is: what does it mean that a global civilisation organises itself around a logical incoherence? And, most crucially, what happens when that incoherence reaches its limits - when the contradiction can no longer be sustained, when the criminal absurdity becomes visible even to those who benefit from it?
This is where I think we're actually in agreement about the stakes. You write that debt cannot be the primary engine of accumulation if the monetary unit is not mistaken to be an item of value all by itself. Exactly. And my piece is about what happens when that mistake becomes unsustainable, when the system must resort to perpetual crisis management, to the manufacturing of one emergency after the other, simply to keep the contradiction afloat.
So I'm not defending the conceptual error, I'm tracing its consequences. And I suspect that work is necessary before a genuine reconceptualisation can take hold (as capital “took hold” some 500 years ago).
I'll read the links, thank you.
Hello Fabio, and thank you for the dialog. I do 'get it' about the process of informing people about consequences of this ancient conceptual error. Perhaps you will agree that we have no clue as to the how dire the consequences may become. And, if this process of the worsening of those consequences is already as old as it is, should we not focus on the conceptual error more than the consequences simply because those consequences are the product of the error?