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Subject: Re: forerunners The money system.
jennyhabib wrote:
> A few more comments on your document, which was a very good way to
> start searching for the right path.Thank you. I agree with the two
> suggestions made by Lawrence Bivort. The international money system
> grew from a simple barter system between farmers, originally the
> easiest way that items made by different people in far away places
> could exchange their goods in a fair way. It is very difficult to
> exchange radio sets for potatoes. So a method had to be found to allow
> measurable values for goods to be exchanged. Some people needed
> potatoes but had surplus tomatoes, some needed radios but had cars
> etc...etc... No system without a way of establishing comparable values
> for goods can exist. I think what has gone wrong with the system is
> the scale of bank involvement. Banks lend money to start up business.
> The problem arises when the scale gets very big, the owners are
> thousands of small shareholders but the power lies in a few hands,
> often the same hands who own the banks.
> It is also correct that the money system is a mirror of the hard
> work, greed and spirit of adventure in the human character. The
> combination of these traits keeps the system running. Business must
> make profit in order to feed the workers and must save in order to
> invest in growth and to cover bad times caused by weather etc... If
> enough profit cannot be made then the business fails. It is usually
> the banks who take over, sell off the assets so as to offset the
> unpaid debts. There is definitely one step which needs to be taken
> which is to reduce the percentage of interest charged to under
> developed countries and also to small business. I have been horrified
> by the level of bank charges for business accounts, they are much
> higher than for personal accounts. They even charge for paying money
> in! There is a lot that could be done to encourage individual
> enterprise all over the world.The problem of the 37.000 babies is a
> problem of customs and beliefs as well as money. Why do very poor
> people in very poor countries have 7 or 8 children who they cannot
> feed? What caused the poverty in the first place? (Farms in Africa
> have been lost due to wrong use of the soil and poor understanding of
> sustainable farming methods.)These are questions which need truthful,
> unbiased and logical answers. (The truth is often not politically
> correct, but if it is the truth it must be said.)This subject needs a
> lot more debate in order to find a workable and possible way to shift
> the emphasis. Blessings to the builders of the right path.
Jenny
Date: Sun, 09 May 1999 20:56:52 -0600
From: "Roan Carratu" href="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]
Reply-To: href="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]
(My email editor is malfunctioning, for some reason, so I pasted your statements into chunks and responded between them.
It is required for human survival to question the most basic axioms of human behavior. We have the capacity to invent and impose self-consistant logic structures, that is, a system of thought which seems to explain all aspects of what it concerns, and which can, when it's roots are unexamined, block any perception of any other way of looking at the evidence or natural system.
The self-consistant logic structure of 'economics' can be superimposed over almost any system and seems to make sense to those who apply it, but to do so requires ignoring any aspect of the system that does not fit the self-consistant logic structure.
Environmentalists have been known to apply economics to all kinds of natural phenomina, and their results seem to explain everything, but such logic systems limit data analysis to the system, and thus produce false results. These results, made into policy and human response, tend not to work in the long run.
A previous example of this was the logic structure of the Catholic Church, back in the Middle Ages of Europe, where demons, devils, angels, and other supernatural 'entities' were used to explain chemical reactions, medical problems, and which supported their tight social control system which resulted in 1/4 of all the people in many countries under their control being tortured to death in the Inquistion.
Jenny
>I agree with the two suggestions made by Lawrence Bivort. The
>international money system grew from a simple barter system between
>farmers, originally the easiest way that items made by different people
>in far away places could exchange their goods in a fair way. It is very
>difficult to exchange radio sets for potatoes. So a method had to be
>found to allow measurable values for goods to be exchanged. Some people
>needed potatoes but had surplus tomatoes, some needed radios but had
>cars etc...etc... No system without a way of establishing comparable
>values for goods can exist.
Your explaination as to the source of money is the very myth I was talking about in my essay. There is no evidence that money began in that way. The evidence points more to the imposition of money by warlords who had enslaved agricultural people 8 to 10 thousand years ago. Before that, the still existing Gifting 'economy', which still exists in traditions of isolated tribes all over the world explains the evidence of goods spread from origional source areas better than any barter or trade system as proposed by european archeologists. They were pretty influenced by eruopean culture, and often read into the data their own cultural bias.
The evidence is that Gifting has no comparable measurement system involved and that all tribes before the advent of 'civilization' 10,000 years ago were tribal and had no barter or 'economic' system. Sharing and 'gifting' were the only practice they needed.
Jenny
>These are questions which need truthful, unbiased and logical answers.
>(The truth is often not politically correct, but if it is the truth it
>must be said.)
I agree, but the assumptions which lay under economics are deeper than most people have gone, and must be questioned. 'Ownership', for instance, has rarely been the right of anyone but the 'Kings' of old, which included 'owning' all the farm animals and people, including the results of their labor, under the military's power. The idea that ancient farmers or craftmen or herders 'owned' their crafts, field yeilds, or animals is not supported by history.
The evidence supports military control, (King is a military title) and 'ownership' of everything in all the areas under the control of that subculture globally. Even in America, the evidence is that the native tribes had no concepts of barter or money until French trappers moved into their areas, and their lack of use of money was often cited by the government of the US as the reason for destroying the tribes as social entities.
The logic of the conceptual system of economics almost defines the troubles this planet, and there is no evidence that I have found that reform of that system will happen or would be sufficient to alter the destructive course of human behavior towards the natural world and provide a survivable path. The eventual and slow elimnation of all economics is the only path I can find, going back to a prehistorical view of Nature and our relationship to it, even if modernized into a more advanced system.
Thanks for your feedback. It's great that folks are thinking about this, even if they reject my conclusions. Your thoughts are appreciated and extremely welcome. I am going to post this to the Forerunner's list and the NCN lists. Please send your responses to the list also. Your statements and the questions they inspire are what folks are thinking widely right now, and I would really like to respond to them publically. I hope that's OK with you. If it's not, please let me know.
Love and Peace, Roan Carratu
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