Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2001 11:20:21 +1200
From: (Peter Scott) - who does not want his email address
posted...
Subject: Re: Argentina resorts to UNILETS "bond-currency"
To: turmel@freenet.carleton.ca
John, We've been having a rigorous debate on this subject at CEA. Can you clarify exactly
how the bond and its interest works. Is the "interest" usury or demurrage?
Regards, Peter Scott
JCT: I've noticed debate going on at cea-usa@groups.yahoo.com Their
archives at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cea-usa/messages
I'd really not speak about how their 7% interest works when my
same article mentions the provinces in the 1980s where they did it without any such
positive feedback.
Demurrage is a fee that makes a guy want to get rid of it
quickly. This 7% is a bonus that makes a guy want to keep it longer. As long as the system
never allows a shortage of money to develop, I really don't care much about the 7% as long
as it doesn't leave the country.
The Province of Salta pays a million workers for 2000 hours a
year 10 pesos per hour for 20 billion pesos in bonds spent. At the end of the year,
everyone knows that their 10 hours always worth the same 100 pesos of taxes.
The Province of Buenos Aires pays out the same. At the end of the
year, they distribute 7 more pesos in interest to every holder of 100 pesos. Everyone
knows that the tax bill is now the 107 pesos for their 10 hours. No real difference.
You can't get something for nothing unless someone else gets
nothing for something. If no one is being robbed, paying interest has no effect! If you
let the poor get robbed, then paying has an unbalancing effect.
But the main reason I am taking time away from preparing upcoming
medpot battles is because the Argentinian example is so vitally important in showing us
the way.
The problem is that all the writers on the cea group, even the
good ones, don't seem to have the firm grasp of the topic that can only come from teaching
how interest works with the theory of games.
John Von Neumann, the man who wrote the book "Game Theory
and Economic Behavior" said "important questions in Economics arise in a
more elementary fashion in the theory of games." I'm one of the world's top expert
witnesses in the Mathematics of Gambling and I've developed a simple game you can use to
model how interest mort-gage death-gamble really works.
Until you've actually played the game and then taught it so you
then see the dawning of understanding in their eyes, it's much more difficult to penetrate
the veils of mystery surrounding this magical god-like stuff called money.
For instance, it's easy to tell when a writer is under the
impression that inflation is Shift A, an increase in the money chasing
the goods, when it's really Shift B, a decrease in the goods being chased by the same
money. Only by playing the game and watching one player's watch disappear can you make the
paradigm shift from the belief in inflation Shift A to Shift B.
Another problem is the belief that debt-money is somehow inferior
to asset-money. That if 10 guys all buy into a poker game with a hundred dollar bill or
100 chickens, those tokens are somehow better than 10 guys who who all buy in with a
hundred dollar IOU. That if my debt to Sears is $500 and that if your debt to Sears is
$500, and I then transfer that debt-money so that I owe $600 to Sears and you owe $400,
somehow that transaction will suffer some intrinsic damage that
doing the transaction with money based on chickens, rather than debt to Bell, doesn't
cause.
Those writers who say "It is only the interest that is the
problem" are 100% correct. It is only the positive feedback in the
system, not the system itself, that is bad.
I've noticed some of my favorite writers.
Brian Leslie from the UK Sustainable Economics Magazine. I first
read his writing ever since I did my 1997 or 98 British tour and Sister Dorothy Peart, the
Roman Catholic LETS organizer, let me read a whole stack of hers. Great Social Credit
stuff. And because Mr. Leslie is so sure that his system can do the job, he misses my
point.
I too admit that Social Credit government injection of debt free
money could keep the purchasing power balanced to the price tags. My hope page lists my
book report on the engineer, Major Douglas, as one of the great monetary reform
theoreticians at the time.
But what Mr. Leslie fails to account for is that there could
other forms of social credit, the Quebec variety, which was promoted by myself, John
Turmel, grand-son of Socred Adelard Turmel, and proven by the investment on the LETS
barter currency model at the time.
Australian Social Credit has always denied that LETS
interest-free credits are social credits even though the first LETS engineering design and
model was so completely and perfectly described in Louis Even's Salvation Island that the
first of France's Local Employment-Trading Systems, the SELs, les Systemes d'Echange
Locaux, acknowledges that they got the information from Louis Even's book, not necessarily
the LETS on the net that Michael Linton and I produced.
If there can be any doubt that LETS is a system of social credits
when the French LETS claim it's based on Louis Even's idea, which it is, then it's a
fascinating thing that Louis Even's version of social credit has scored the French world
directly and scored the English world indirectly through my investment in Linton's LETS
prototype.
So Brian, as I explain in my Douglas Book Report, Social Credit
would work but needs supervision compared to UNILETS which also works but needs no
supervision. They're both versions of social credits but the UNILETS version is 100%
efficient, Social Credit is only 99%. But I don't want to have to watch every pot to
collect a rake when I can come around every half hour to collect a time charge.
Cal Schindel always has interesting and valuable contributions to
make. Even though I've run into it all in my own researches, I can always count on good
reading from Cal.
And Peter, though I've not had much time to really parse your
writings, my initial vibes like most of what I read.
Again, for a bunch of guys who don't yet have the "feel for
the game," you've defeated most of money's conditioning.
But get the inflationary Shift B due to the disappearing watch
right and you'll attain a whole new understanding of the banking systems engineering under
your observation.
And remember, mine is the only accurate advanced engineering
analysis of the banking system in the world (with blueprints and plumbing modelling) and
it's been unassailed for over 20 years. Bishop Selby's book Grace & Mortgage
states that Galbraith and all the world's economists are wrong about curing Shift A
inflation with interest rate hikes and John The Engineer Turmel is right about curing
Shift B inflation with interest rate abolition. Really sticking out his neck saying
they've all got it backwards and I've got it right. But I do. No graduate engineer would
bet I'm wrong. And win.
Last of all, we have Wally World. Everyone seems to spend an
inordinate amount of time trying to explain it to Wally World. I have never read a guy so
off-base and so arrogant about it. And he foments divisiveness. But rather than spend time
re-explaining it to our slower cousin, we must focus not on what Walt doesn't understand
but on what we all agree that we do understand.
The Salta Bond-Currency system was a perfect provincial or Local
Employment-Trading System and though the Buenos Aires Bond-Currency system suffers a minor
inefficiency, it will still fly.
But before any specific questions, I want to be sure that the
people I am dealing in the Internet Monetary Reform fraternity are on the same frequency.
Would it be too much to ask that before I engage in answering any questions about the
system I proposed 19 years ago that is being adopted today and is proposed at on the
Millennium Declaration, that before anyone comment further on this question, they have
tried teaching the disappearing watch trick to some others.
Without a "feel for the game" called
"mort-gage" or "death-gamble" you'll never see the overview as
clearly. It's not hard to
teach. I've explained at the end of the bankmath. You should give it a try. Seeing that
spark of understanding in someone's eyes when they get where the 10th watch went to is the
greatest thrill any monetary reformer can have. Try it, you'll like it.
Then we'll go over how the 7% will cause minor complications for
the Buenos Aires LETS currency that the 0% did not cause the Salta LETS currency.
But what is interesting is that the only way they will be able to
cope with the interest owed is to use the old Social Credit "debt-free"
injection, in the only sense I accept debt-free" to match the interest owed.
Of course Salta's LETS was great because they didn't have any
imbalance they needed to compensate for with an injection of debt-free money! That's what
makes LETS superior to Social Credit. No supervision.
That Buenos Aires province chooses to inject a new 7% debt-free
to meet the 7% interest on the bond has no major impact since it's spread throughout the
whole economy. But it is the that "infamous" Social Credit "debt-free"
"funny money" injection they have always talked about distributing to compensate
for the missing interest which the bankers have always labelled as inflationary when in
reality, it was quite the opposite.
Social Credit would have worked. Now UNILETS is here to work
slightly better.
Once again, try the little game theory example at the end of http://www.cyberclass.net/turmel/bankmath.htm
Nothing beats teaching to understand the topic.
John C. "The Banking Systems Engineer" Turmel, Author of the UNILETS
interest-free time-based currency United Nations C6 recommendation to Governments in the
http://www.un.org/millennium/declaration.htm
Visit http://www.cyberclass.net/turmel
/ http://www.medpot.net
Amen to Jubilee in 2000 with L.E.T.S. interest-free bank accounts for all. If saving the
planet from usurious debt does not interest you, mail to: turmel-unsubscribe@egroups.com
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