The foolish attempt to make a commodity perform the function of measure and thereby annotate human interaction has shifted the focus of that human interaction first to the commodity and literally caused people to think that their interactive capacity is limited by, restricted by, and 'valued' by the value placed on the commodity. This has then confounded human activity such that hoarding of the commodity precludes genuine human activity of genuine value while energies are expended toward 'acquisition' of abstract units! Inside this insane thinking process, I promise you that if the focus shifted to sand as the 'commodity of value' the populace would seek the hoarding of that instead of using it to build housing.
There is a reason children's stories like The Emperor's New Clothes are told.
It is very hard for those who have been "educated" in the 'workings' of the present money paradigm to even attempt to 'think outside the box.' Because the pull is to remain faithful to what they have so heavily invested in during their 'education' and professional careers. The thing is that this 'faithfulness' becomes religiosity and abandons critical thinking and analysis and instead turns to repetition of dogma that cannot be made to work..
Elizabeth Black:
“Those who brag about their education, certification, degrees and what they consider qualifications are usually unable to unlearn the misinformation of the level of indoctrination they worked hard for, and paid, and their justification of their pride stands in the way of recognizing their own errors.”
It is interesting that the whole digital coin world touts the 'traceability' aspect of the transactions but stops at the original instance of the magical "creation" of the coins as though that process is legitimate!
Money creation, from nothing and yet turned into a thing of 'value' - Poof! - is NOT a power that anyone actually has, not anyone, not any government, not any bank.
The first premise most people willingly go along with is the absolute illiteracy and illegitimacy of there being these so called "financial powers." WE ALL are the ones accepting the nonsense that the origination of the monetary unit is a magical process of 'creation' by some magical monetary power within government or banking. And we accept this stupid shit because we think that the monetary unit is an actual item of 'value'.
When we stopped using fungible physical commodities as 'trade goods' and moved to bookkeeping about the value contained in the goods and services of our interchange, we mistakenly and foolishly and illiterately assigned "value" to the number units themselves using symbols ($, etc.) as though those units were still commodities that had just lost their physical form.
All very mysterious really, the claims of these magical powers. Where the hell did that come from!?
In ancient times the temple priests told the peasantry who came to make their offerings to God that the offerings brought by the peasants were not acceptable to God. The priests told the people they needed to take the coins, that only the priests issued, and leave the Real Goods that the peasants had brought to the temple with the priests, go lay the coins on the altar because that was acceptable to God, and then go home. The original claims of 'authority' about ‘money’ by the temple priests is where the eventual claim of authority about money by government originated.
But the claim of 'authority' is nonsense, and so is the system of money itself; since what is real is the wealth of a people, and money is made up nonsense that the people have been told is real (acceptable to god). It's a long history of lies and deception. It is like unto the miss use of genuine authority as egregious as telling kids lies!
We are not going to get out of this mess while using the very system instituted ages ago to enslave and deceive and steal. And we certainly are not going to solve a systemic problem that is based on illiteracy by moral condemnation of those still acting illiterately within the illiterate system and never condemning the system. That is like telling slave masters they have to be good masters but never challenging the system of slavery.
It seems absurd because it is absurd, yet in this the 21st Century we are still not using an economic accounting/credit/number system that gives direct credit to the doer after the doing is done. Many, many rightly point out that in this country the black slave population that basically built such a large part of this country did not get ANY credit for the doing that they did. Indentured servants of many races and places of origin also have been given No Credit for the doing that they did. Most all of the absolute most critical doing that a society needs done is given No Credit in the system we have today. (child care, elder care, environmental care, ….) And still today the very notion that there must be an issuer of the numbers before The People can give and receive credit amongst themselves persists. When one thinks about how rich a society can be if it does not use banks (or government or temple priests) to originate acCounting units but only gives and receives credit for real doing it boggles the mind to think that we are still borrowing the use of the numbers with which we do our acCounting!
'Never anywhere and at any time in history in the BIble, Quran or elsewhere has money's logical function been defined and specified as is required by any modern information system. This can be done authoritatively with formal information science and dynamical systems theory and practice. Here we have done just that!' - Marc Gauvin bibocurrency.com
We can do something about this by not conceding power to "them" and by reclaiming monetary literacy and bringing these resolutions to every jurisdiction.
“Markus, you are pointing at the load bearing beam most critiques politely step around.
Money is treated as if it were both a ruler and a thing measured, which is a category error so old it has hardened into theology. Once the unit of account is rebranded as an object of value, authority slides in quietly and never leaves. First the temple, then the crown, then the state, then the bank. Same move, different costumes.
That is why moral critiques of capitalism stall. People argue about greed inside a system whose imperatives reward extraction by design. You cannot ethically behave your way out of a structure that converts abstraction into power and power into violence. As you note, much of what we call “the economy” is bookkeeping in service of coercion, especially war. David Graeber was right to trace coinage, debt, and militarism as a single historical thread rather than separate domains.
Where I would sharpen your point is this. The problem is not just misunderstanding money. It is obedience to a measurement system that is allowed to rewrite reality. People delay building, feeding, healing, or creating until permission slips in the form of numbers appear. That is how a fiction begins to rule material life.
You are also right that blaming villains misses the deeper failure. The system does not persist because bad actors are clever. It persists because the conceptual error is rarely challenged at the root. Until money is understood as record keeping and coordination rather than wealth itself, the same cycles will repeat with different flags and uniforms.”
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 again for the thoughtful comment. A lot of what you write resonates with the concern I was trying to raise, and I touched on something similar in a reply to a comment from you on a previous piece. You’re right that anthropologists such as David Graeber have shown that many earlier societies organised economic life primarily around networks of obligation and reciprocity rather than around the exchange of scarce tokens. In those contexts, accounting existed, but it was subordinate to social relationships. What interests me is the historical reversal that occurs with the emergence of capitalism. Money ceases to function primarily as a medium of coordination and becomes capital – what Marx called “self-valorising value.” In other words, the monetary system is no longer simply measuring or facilitating socio-economic activity; it becomes the mechanism through which value must continually expand. My critique is therefore not a moral one about greed or human nature. It is a structural observation about how the monetary form itself developed historically and how, once money becomes capital, all socio-economic activity becomes subordinated to the imperative of accumulation, often with destructive consequences for humanity. That’s why the anthropological and historical perspective you bring in is valuable. It reminds us that the present arrangement is not inevitable or timeless. It is not destiny. It is "only" one historically specific way of organising social life, and therefore it is something that can be radically changed (for the better!).
Hear, Hear, Fabio Vighi!! "the present arrangement is not inevitable or timeless. It is not destiny. It is "only" one historically specific way of organising social life, and therefore it is something that can be radically changed (for the better!)"
by reclaiming monetary literacy and bringing these resolutions to every jurisdiction.
These resolutions are not dictatorial but call for the social order to convene and determine workable specifications for a unit based system of measurement of value while also stopping the instability caused by the present mistaken assumptions that have plagued humanity for so long.
The foolish attempt to make a commodity perform the function of measure and thereby annotate human interaction has shifted the focus of that human interaction first to the commodity and literally caused people to think that their interactive capacity is limited by, restricted by, and 'valued' by the value placed on the commodity. This has then confounded human activity such that hoarding of the commodity precludes genuine human activity of genuine value while energies are expended toward 'acquisition' of abstract units! Inside this insane thinking process, I promise you that if the focus shifted to sand as the 'commodity of value' the populace would seek the hoarding of that instead of using it to build housing.
There is a reason children's stories like The Emperor's New Clothes are told.
It is very hard for those who have been "educated" in the 'workings' of the present money paradigm to even attempt to 'think outside the box.' Because the pull is to remain faithful to what they have so heavily invested in during their 'education' and professional careers. The thing is that this 'faithfulness' becomes religiosity and abandons critical thinking and analysis and instead turns to repetition of dogma that cannot be made to work..
Elizabeth Black:
“Those who brag about their education, certification, degrees and what they consider qualifications are usually unable to unlearn the misinformation of the level of indoctrination they worked hard for, and paid, and their justification of their pride stands in the way of recognizing their own errors.”
It is interesting that the whole digital coin world touts the 'traceability' aspect of the transactions but stops at the original instance of the magical "creation" of the coins as though that process is legitimate!
Money creation, from nothing and yet turned into a thing of 'value' - Poof! - is NOT a power that anyone actually has, not anyone, not any government, not any bank.
The first premise most people willingly go along with is the absolute illiteracy and illegitimacy of there being these so called "financial powers." WE ALL are the ones accepting the nonsense that the origination of the monetary unit is a magical process of 'creation' by some magical monetary power within government or banking. And we accept this stupid shit because we think that the monetary unit is an actual item of 'value'.
When we stopped using fungible physical commodities as 'trade goods' and moved to bookkeeping about the value contained in the goods and services of our interchange, we mistakenly and foolishly and illiterately assigned "value" to the number units themselves using symbols ($, etc.) as though those units were still commodities that had just lost their physical form.
All very mysterious really, the claims of these magical powers. Where the hell did that come from!?
In ancient times the temple priests told the peasantry who came to make their offerings to God that the offerings brought by the peasants were not acceptable to God. The priests told the people they needed to take the coins, that only the priests issued, and leave the Real Goods that the peasants had brought to the temple with the priests, go lay the coins on the altar because that was acceptable to God, and then go home. The original claims of 'authority' about ‘money’ by the temple priests is where the eventual claim of authority about money by government originated.
But the claim of 'authority' is nonsense, and so is the system of money itself; since what is real is the wealth of a people, and money is made up nonsense that the people have been told is real (acceptable to god). It's a long history of lies and deception. It is like unto the miss use of genuine authority as egregious as telling kids lies!
We are not going to get out of this mess while using the very system instituted ages ago to enslave and deceive and steal. And we certainly are not going to solve a systemic problem that is based on illiteracy by moral condemnation of those still acting illiterately within the illiterate system and never condemning the system. That is like telling slave masters they have to be good masters but never challenging the system of slavery.
It seems absurd because it is absurd, yet in this the 21st Century we are still not using an economic accounting/credit/number system that gives direct credit to the doer after the doing is done. Many, many rightly point out that in this country the black slave population that basically built such a large part of this country did not get ANY credit for the doing that they did. Indentured servants of many races and places of origin also have been given No Credit for the doing that they did. Most all of the absolute most critical doing that a society needs done is given No Credit in the system we have today. (child care, elder care, environmental care, ….) And still today the very notion that there must be an issuer of the numbers before The People can give and receive credit amongst themselves persists. When one thinks about how rich a society can be if it does not use banks (or government or temple priests) to originate acCounting units but only gives and receives credit for real doing it boggles the mind to think that we are still borrowing the use of the numbers with which we do our acCounting!
'Never anywhere and at any time in history in the BIble, Quran or elsewhere has money's logical function been defined and specified as is required by any modern information system. This can be done authoritatively with formal information science and dynamical systems theory and practice. Here we have done just that!' - Marc Gauvin bibocurrency.com
We can do something about this by not conceding power to "them" and by reclaiming monetary literacy and bringing these resolutions to every jurisdiction.
https://www.moneytransparency.com/msta-resolutions
Bruce Fanger contributes:
“Markus, you are pointing at the load bearing beam most critiques politely step around.
Money is treated as if it were both a ruler and a thing measured, which is a category error so old it has hardened into theology. Once the unit of account is rebranded as an object of value, authority slides in quietly and never leaves. First the temple, then the crown, then the state, then the bank. Same move, different costumes.
That is why moral critiques of capitalism stall. People argue about greed inside a system whose imperatives reward extraction by design. You cannot ethically behave your way out of a structure that converts abstraction into power and power into violence. As you note, much of what we call “the economy” is bookkeeping in service of coercion, especially war. David Graeber was right to trace coinage, debt, and militarism as a single historical thread rather than separate domains.
Where I would sharpen your point is this. The problem is not just misunderstanding money. It is obedience to a measurement system that is allowed to rewrite reality. People delay building, feeding, healing, or creating until permission slips in the form of numbers appear. That is how a fiction begins to rule material life.
You are also right that blaming villains misses the deeper failure. The system does not persist because bad actors are clever. It persists because the conceptual error is rarely challenged at the root. Until money is understood as record keeping and coordination rather than wealth itself, the same cycles will repeat with different flags and uniforms.”
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 again for the thoughtful comment. A lot of what you write resonates with the concern I was trying to raise, and I touched on something similar in a reply to a comment from you on a previous piece. You’re right that anthropologists such as David Graeber have shown that many earlier societies organised economic life primarily around networks of obligation and reciprocity rather than around the exchange of scarce tokens. In those contexts, accounting existed, but it was subordinate to social relationships. What interests me is the historical reversal that occurs with the emergence of capitalism. Money ceases to function primarily as a medium of coordination and becomes capital – what Marx called “self-valorising value.” In other words, the monetary system is no longer simply measuring or facilitating socio-economic activity; it becomes the mechanism through which value must continually expand. My critique is therefore not a moral one about greed or human nature. It is a structural observation about how the monetary form itself developed historically and how, once money becomes capital, all socio-economic activity becomes subordinated to the imperative of accumulation, often with destructive consequences for humanity. That’s why the anthropological and historical perspective you bring in is valuable. It reminds us that the present arrangement is not inevitable or timeless. It is not destiny. It is "only" one historically specific way of organising social life, and therefore it is something that can be radically changed (for the better!).
Hear, Hear, Fabio Vighi!! "the present arrangement is not inevitable or timeless. It is not destiny. It is "only" one historically specific way of organising social life, and therefore it is something that can be radically changed (for the better!)"
by reclaiming monetary literacy and bringing these resolutions to every jurisdiction.
https://www.moneytransparency.com/msta-resolutions
These resolutions are not dictatorial but call for the social order to convene and determine workable specifications for a unit based system of measurement of value while also stopping the instability caused by the present mistaken assumptions that have plagued humanity for so long.
Perhaps you can promote these Resolutions ??