Wow! That's quite a thought process, Tim. I'm unsure, though, how one would achieve the buy-in to such a change, what with all the people in a position to effect change already being very comfortable, thank you, with the current arrangement. ...I have little faith in human nature right now. The world is evidencing too much self-interest, without balance. Your mention of the US external debt under Nixon due to the cost of war did make me ponder. I had thought war tended to benefit the US, but maybe it's only war they did not precipitate (e.g. WW1 and 2, where others ended up owing them money)?! And I'm very mindful that the 'great' America they so ardently sloganise was the US that situation generated. Nothing quite like munitions manufacture to generate productivity, eh? ... about which I also have thoughts, for another day!!
Thanks Annie, I know how you feel! I figure the best we can do when faced with manufactured dispondency is to leave "ideas lying around" 🤣... My basic premise is that, money works because of shared belief rather than it actual worth (always true, but Nixon made it explicit when he took the global reserve currency off the gold standard). So, we can choose to believe it's 'for' something else if we want to. What we can't do, is also retain the freedom [sic] our existing money is imbued with; hence my thinking that we need an independent currency with its own belief framework. And that's where your bringing up war is great, because war shows us that this works in practice, because war is so strongly correlated with economic beliefs: patriotism energises industrial and volunteer economies; destruction and disruption wrest economic power from incumbants, and so on. It is a powerful example of belief-driven economics and creates fully-functional "war economies" (like the current Russian one). What it might take to turn our present Western economies to (for example) 'Green' or 'Wellbeing'-oriented ones, I don't know—we seem to have a strong stomach for inflicting unnescessary suffering on a large portion of our populations!—but maybe we can build a parallel belief currency, and that way the predatory class still get to play their games but the rest of us also get basic infrastructure.
Wow! That's quite a thought process, Tim. I'm unsure, though, how one would achieve the buy-in to such a change, what with all the people in a position to effect change already being very comfortable, thank you, with the current arrangement. ...I have little faith in human nature right now. The world is evidencing too much self-interest, without balance. Your mention of the US external debt under Nixon due to the cost of war did make me ponder. I had thought war tended to benefit the US, but maybe it's only war they did not precipitate (e.g. WW1 and 2, where others ended up owing them money)?! And I'm very mindful that the 'great' America they so ardently sloganise was the US that situation generated. Nothing quite like munitions manufacture to generate productivity, eh? ... about which I also have thoughts, for another day!!
Thanks Annie, I know how you feel! I figure the best we can do when faced with manufactured dispondency is to leave "ideas lying around" 🤣... My basic premise is that, money works because of shared belief rather than it actual worth (always true, but Nixon made it explicit when he took the global reserve currency off the gold standard). So, we can choose to believe it's 'for' something else if we want to. What we can't do, is also retain the freedom [sic] our existing money is imbued with; hence my thinking that we need an independent currency with its own belief framework. And that's where your bringing up war is great, because war shows us that this works in practice, because war is so strongly correlated with economic beliefs: patriotism energises industrial and volunteer economies; destruction and disruption wrest economic power from incumbants, and so on. It is a powerful example of belief-driven economics and creates fully-functional "war economies" (like the current Russian one). What it might take to turn our present Western economies to (for example) 'Green' or 'Wellbeing'-oriented ones, I don't know—we seem to have a strong stomach for inflicting unnescessary suffering on a large portion of our populations!—but maybe we can build a parallel belief currency, and that way the predatory class still get to play their games but the rest of us also get basic infrastructure.