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Foray into an area reserved too: money - Part 8

By On 17/10/2014 0

In Historical Manifesto

Foray into an area reserved too: money - Part 8

banqui11.jpgPart 1Part 2Part 3, Part 4Part 5 Part 6Part 7

part Two

Vb)
Liberation

"Who will tell the untold power of association when it turns into cooperation ...?" Jacques Duboin (Liberation)

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By cons, it does not need to be an economist to see the result. The unlimited growth is unsustainable, its consequences are already such that it is the biological balance of the planet is in danger. What do foresaw few lucid minds there a few decades now seems the obvious: we can not continue this blind race. "No tree may climb to heaven!"

As for competitiveness, it leads to a profound social imbalance. This ongoing economic war which requires to be the best in anything, disinherit losers too little combative ... or who have not had the chance to be born among the privileged. By dint of promoting "the best" at the expense of all others, the tremendous advancement of knowledge and its technological applications has been put at the service of a tiny minority, while nearly 840 million people (YH: in 2003) (55) malnourished, lacking even a piece of land to grow their own hands to survive.

Both pitfalls of capitalist money

While the catastrophic effects of these imperatives for growth and competitiveness are increasingly evident, yet we continue to pretend unavoidable. And with such hollow arguments that "it is in the nature of things" or "this is how men work," without realizing how these two traps in which our civilization is lost, are contained in the existing mechanisms of the currency, which, however, are obviously not the laws of nature. Indeed:

• The requirement for growth is contained in the mode of creation of money: you have an investment worth more than it cost that can be paid the interest on the loan or "return on investment".
• The widening gap between rich and poor is contained in the choice of the customers to which credits are open, because a credit agency, to avoid being made ​​bankrupt, requires collateral, mortgage, insurance. It can not lend to the rich and
the "snow-ball" effect of compounding, and only the rich can afford to get rich.

While the opinion is being gradually to become aware of the dangers of growth at all costs and is outraged to see that exploitation of resources can not be reduced, on the contrary, poverty in this world, it is clear that the monetary mechanisms are so poorly known that their relationship with this high productivity and individualism is not generally denounced. To believe that it is not even perceived.

This link will yet manifest. It manifests itself, for example by the public reaction against money in times of economic crisis we find that it is creating its own currency that minorities while trying to survive. The experiments that were launched in response to the Great Depression of the 1930s, those, for example, slush money Gesell or WIR circles, as well as those that are springing up everywhere from the liberal turn of the 1980s, by example in Argentina since 2002, are manifestations of the rejection of the official currency. But these parallel currencies, because they are topical, restricted, marginal, can, at best, that saving, but only for association members who create, some of the adverse effects they see.

monnaie-tank.jpgAnd, secondly, how can we not see that everywhere money as mobile when large human catastrophes as we deplore the tainted blood, or environmental disasters such as oil spills or in gégazages sea, when we become aware of the effects of the commodification of public services and the patenting of life, or when you discover the power and role of pension funds, currency speculation and tax havens on economic choices, etc. I need regular. Money is the common denominator of all these inhuman behavior, it is indeed the common origin of these disasters that have nothing natural

This should help to understand that trying to fix it, when possible, the effects of these mechanisms does not help, as they renew indefinitely, or even increase, as is still common cause

Delete this cause is certainly not easy, but we must realize that it has become inevitable, it is the necessary condition to give the company bases other than those who are destroying it. But this reconstruction through a new transformation of money: for it no longer requires growth, it is necessary that its creation no longer requires payment of interest, and takes into account other criteria that profitability financial to make it possible to produce, in respect of the human rights and environment, goods and services accessible to all, without exclusion. No coup should this time be necessary to achieve such a transformation since, unlike the previous ones, it aims to increase the general interest before the interest of a few. But it is urgent to think about it, and it is to this end that we make the following three propositions.

First proposal: Return to the regality

Clearly, the intangible currency corresponds to the current state of technology, commodity money is over. It would be absurd to deny the virtual currency while dreaming of return of gold Louis exists, it is convenient, therefore accept without us linger, the currency of tomorrow will be in book-entry form, as it is almost completely today, smart cards and transactions transmitted over the internet going again develop.

But we must be aware of the danger of this modern form of money simply because it is naturally materially unlimited!

His creation is so easy that having abandoned the right to create money to private companies with their own interest objective, seems like an aberration, obvious source of many abuses of unpredictable consequences, incalculable. We have seen that when goldsmiths signed more than they had received gold in their cellars, their only limit was ... fear that their customers find that they had exaggerated Inefficient method, since several panics have marked history We also remember that when too many bankers have followed the example of goldsmiths, because they realized that it made them hurt that some of them were intrigued to get a monopoly And the history of central banks shows that it is still to prevent abuse, panic or bankruptcies they have received a certain power, not to set a limit on the money supply, but only an attempt by the through their discount rate, speed up or slow down the growth of the mass, hoping that these changes would ultimately affect the economy. And since these rates do not obey to the markets, we can not count the number of countries ruined by currency crises ... It is clear that political power should not be content to imagine dikes to prevent abuse or plug in the consequences, it is up to him to determine the necessary money to the economy

It is not without reason that the "right to coin money" was, par excellence, a prerogative of the sovereign, he is a part, under the monarchy, the "sovereign rights" with those to tax , ordered the police and the army, to render justice to declare war or to sign the end. Why any of these rights Prince has he done except when the people won sovereignty? We do not understand that democracies have abandoned some new preferred one of those essential rights that decide the life of a nation The right to create money is too important for it to be dissociated from the other attributes that are used to decide all on their behalf. (because they are not democracies!)

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It must be returned to political power because a developed society, as it can be designed in the XXI century must be able to decide that it will meet the needs, according to the means available to it in respecting the rights of living human beings, and to come. From this perspective, if the essential choice for the overall direction of the economy is a fundamental political decision therefore can not be left to private interests.

Today the company serves finance, dictating policy to governments. Hand over responsibility for all money creation to the government, is to reverse the roles: the economic choices then become political choices and finance them subject.

But this is not enough. In a true democracy, entrust the economy to political power would be entrusted to the people, but the whole society, even in the XXI century, is not guaranteed to be democratic and to remain so. To put the economy at the service of all and keep it there, we need rules that prevent abuses by officials to issue paper, and for this, impose monetary limit mass concrete, objective.

Second proposal: Fix objectively money supply

Such a natural limit is simply the result of two aspects of money: it is a right to draw on the wealth produced and recognition of common debt as required by law to accept payment From these two facts leads to the following rule: representatives of a population, having a monopoly on creating the currency undertake in his name, can not issue the equivalent money to wealth and that this population produces sells

The creation of money and being committed to production, new production automatically create its equivalent in other currencies And, conversely, when a product reaches the consumer, money that he uses to buy it has served its purpose and has no reason to exist then it is canceled at the time of sale In other words, the currency becomes a parallel flow and equivalent to the wealth produced to be sold This is obviously an equivalence principle, which will result in practice, adjustments by calculations similar to those that stock computers do today to view quotes in a continuous and permanent.

But we must insist on another aspect For that equivalence is the origin of money creation, we need the price of a good or service offered for sale is evaluated when is committed to its production, rather than after, when it has already been produced This has the disadvantage of disrupting the habits, and the reflex is likely to believe, but a little faster, it comes to remove the market. All those who boast incessantly its irreplaceable merits rest assured, it is not at all to remove, but rather, to return him his virtues (56), that is to say, to allow the selling price of a good or service really is the result of a discussion between producers, sellers and consumers buyers.

But this is only if the democratic evaluation takes place upstream, so before it's too late, it is possible to discuss the modes of production, encourage or proscribe.
Specify, if necessary, that these discussions are intended to define the bases and not to fix prices each, one by one, and that one should provide margins of error and uncertainties, such as for agricultural production, which will result mathematics necessary changes described above. and add that this is not utopian, as evidenced by the Seikatsu, the producer-consumer associations and work in Japan for the past 20 years, or the Community supported agriculture (CSA), the consumer associations (57 ) pass contracts with farmers who purchase and before the season, part of their farm harvest.

Compared to the current situation, currency retains its role as a unit of account and means of payment, even offline. It is a purchasing power that is used only once because it is out of date when he served as a ticket or stamp, leaving its owner the ability to use it for any purchase of his choice. By cons, this reformed currency ceases to be a source of enrichment and inequality, so domination, where an appropriation not involve payment of interest.

Reorganized on this basis, the currency appears as a way to distribute it among all consumer goods and services produced by the economy of a region The logic of accumulation policy, ie accumulation, gives way to a logic of sharing, distribution

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This reform, much simpler and more objective than those that have marked history, led to a turnaround: the law of the financial jungle that prevails today, it substitutes a social control of production, economic decisions-finances are finally subjected to reflection and policy debate, informed by surveys conducted objectively.

But until such a prior debate will not consider other aspects as profitability, the warnings of experts and warning cries against the dangers of the current high productivity can multiply indefinitely, they will only be wishful thinking. (see History 2007-2016)

With regard to international trade if the currency of a country (58) is the book event that residents commit themselves to produce (using human knowledge to grow the wealth of soil and sub soilless), trade relations between the two regions are only barter agreements between the two populations, the international exchange of goods are zero-sum and there is then a more international debt. It goes without saying that these contracts may include deadlines, their equity and their enforcement may be subject to supranational control, etc. The important thing is that this transformation of the bases of foreign trade would supply the population with the right to dispose of themselves, to ensure that their own vital priority sufficiency, "living in the country" and flourish developing their culture.

Our third proposal is inspired by what we have observed about the concept of value:

Third proposition: Separate property management from that of the people

We recalled that when economists speak of value, it is exchange value and that it is, in fact, the selling price of a commodity. Besides this award, as set today, no way the result of a debate as claimed by classical economics, but rather the law of the strongest, financially speaking, this approach compared to the standard what the single currency, which is measurable and what is not, leads to considering human labor as a commodity, a first among other matters, and finally the human being as a replaceable object, going to treat employees "like kleenex" in case of "redundancy", "false dismissals bankruptcies."

On the other hand, a little bit of insight predicts that the production of tomorrow will increasingly collective and intellectual work (59), which will make less use of labor, measurable (-ish) work time, and more and more human participation imponderable linked to the personality, culture, experience, imagination and creativity, qualities not measurable by gasoline. So pretend to estimate individual participation to buy it at a "fair price", "wages", becomes an absurdity or a scam.

To avoid this aberration, we must separate the management of people in the property. Do not mix in the same accounting being and having is bringing the economy to its natural place, that of stewardship. Let us not forget that the role of a production company is to transform the raw materials to make available to people the things they need, and that is not to provide employment, it is not create jobs to warrant income. The fact that the transformation of the material requires human intervention does not require treating "human resource" as a commodity, and it is separating materials accounting from humans that this distinction becomes possible and that be remembered that work and jobs are not the goals, but the means. Then only the income received by a human being will not be the price at which it sells to a company. We no longer talk about salary, price of sweat, but individual income based on personal needs and whose goal is to provide everyone with the means to develop their own skills to effectively perform the activities by which it assumes its participation in society. While this contribution may not be fully measurable and produce quality, even for the long term. Even if it means that income is paid by all of society and throughout life, not by companies, to those they employ, and only for the duration of the job.

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In today's economy, money profit is used to "commodify" the field of the intangible. Encroaching this area of ​​freedom, finance, submit it to profit and control or restricts access. The General Agreement on Trade in Services, GATS is being installed this appropriation of a common heritage of all mankind, makes knowledge slowly developed over history. Art and culture are some already standardized, it will soon be impossible for farmers to renew their crops, as they have done for so many generations, without buying new seeds from Monsanto. When will the obligation to buy the right to have their own offspring?

The reform we propose is to make it impossible that appropriation, making the currency the instrument of management only real. To separate what is naturally the domain of the economy, which is measurable and which must, in some cases, be "saved" so counted, and that which is the domain of the unmeasurable, the imponderable and intangible, that of knowledge, culture, information to be given without discard the use of which, far from having to be limited if it is not used to harm, shall be delivered besides, and thus be free.

These two areas are obviously not independent, since there is a link between them, man, who lives in the area of ​​real and must flow freely in the area of ​​intangible its own. But to the extent that the economy produces goods and not financial gain, where money is a stream that burns at the same time as the goods produced, it becomes possible to determine objectively the economy. So people can be grouped into a network of cooperatives of all sizes and all take objective decisions that affect them directly, since it is first to decide what to produce to consume and in what conditions this also defines their activity and the total money they have. It is then up to them in the budget and set the share paid for the material means of production, it is necessary to make public services and that which constitutes their personal income work.

The debate is largely open to the public and focus on public interest criteria. This is an extension of democracy to the economy that is available, allowing any resident to participate, if not always directly, at least by delegation to these decisions that are both social and economic.

(55) Read Passet, Financial Globalization and Terrorism

(56) Even the contrary, it is the financialization of the economy that has resulted from the virtues of the book market, to those professionals "Markets" (Stock and currency markets or other commodities , etc.) and remove them for the rest of the world, who is offered goods at prices fixed in advance by the seller: it's "take it or leave it", you do not market ...

(57) include the CSA model of Poughkeepsie, pre-installed in urban areas at a hundred miles north of New York and in France the Alliance peasant ecologists consumer network that brings together organizations working together to promote the development of ecological agriculture products quality.

(58) or a region or group of regions whose residents choose to associate economically.

(59) read about the deep analysis of André Gorz, for example in the immaterial, knowledge, value and capital.

Sources: http://www.france.attac.org/

To be continued for the last part: Appendix and Bibliography

 

Yves Herbo, 23-10-2014

politic mouvement association silver money financials sociéty égality fraternity political movement currency finance liberty equality

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