From: "John Zube" To: "Thomas H. Greco, Jr." References: <01f701c234f3$9f144c00$d650c043@v4dq1> <000701c24f3c$40a85180$553ecacb@e1d9k7> <008a01c252ae$24f63ea0$399db3d1@v4dq1> <000901c25bd3$57eef3a0$293ecacb@e1d9k7> <008801c25d8c$f22c7680$1b28b83f@v4dq1> Subject: 020918 Greco FB notes. Date: Wed, 18 Sep 2002 14:11:40 +1000 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Unsent: 1 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2600.0000 Dear Thomas, thanks for that hint. I do intend to contact Cal Schindel. By coincidence, yesterday I received a message from Destiny Worldwide Net rcg@destiny-worldwide.net, originally from Jack Alpan mailto:jalpan@attbi.com which reproduce the introductory remarks by Rep Ron Paul, 9-13-2 on Legislation Introduced To Abolish the Federal Reserve, but seeing as an alternative only the most widely known form of the gold standard. I had made some notes on your previous letter, rightfully criticising my wrong assumptions on your proposal - but overlooked them yesterday in my reply to you. Obviously some of the better credit cards are already offering an international exchange medium and they do reckon already in a variety of national paper currency standards. Their acceptance is almost universal in developed countries but they do have considerable flaws still: The are targets for theft and fraud, cost too much for consumer and acceptor and their credits have to be paid in one of the national currencies, whose exchange rate may also be manipulated. Thus your target might be defined as follows: Make them safer against theft and fraud, more competitively priced in their services and more versatile, by permitting them to dispense and to accept local, optional and competing currencies in their accounts. Since my 1990/91 trip, when I used mine to withdraw occasionally some cash for current spending, I hadn't used mine at all, except as an ID when withdrawing cash from my bank account. Consequently, recently, I did not renew it. I do get the same limited service from my driver's licence as an ID. The world-wide system of payment may need less changes and less urgently that do local payment systems, especially the payments of wages, salaries and consume spending, with sound local currencies in notes or local clearing systems. Most of our income is not from the world and most of our spending is not to world-wide offers. Instead, we earn locally and buy local goods and services for most of our earnings and spending, even though the goods as well as the information supplied may have originated from all over the world. Liberating that payment and income sphere from monetary despotism is most important to me, and, perhaps, objectively, although not yet subjectively so, for most of the other people in any locality. Their ready for sale goods, service and labour potential should be fully mobilized, monetized or liquidified to serve as an exchange medium for those of other local providers, to the extent that this can be done via voluntary acceptance at par with a chosen value standard or close enough to that par value not to greatly reduce the potential temporary circulation of such "ticket-money" or local clearing house certificate. To use a analogy: We will be able to solve the world-wide problem of racism and prosecution or suppression of of other nationalities and religions and that of the censorship of dissenting opinions and the suppression of different but tolerantly taken free experiments by dissenters only once we manage to solve that problem locally. On the smallest level we have done so largely by e.g. voluntary marriages and optional divorces. (Admittedly, both are still somewhat restricted) and by voluntary de-facto marriages, at least for a few years. The same contractual freedom ought to be introduced in all spheres. To try to solve all of them in a uniform way and territorially, is as unrealistic a utopia on the national level as it is on the international one. Instead, we need full freedom of contract, for experiments and voluntary associations, locally, nationally and world-wide, with as many systems, methods, models and forms of organisations existing and functioning in parallel, for their volunteers, as are wanted and maintained by them. For me full monetary and financial freedom are just particular aspects of full panarchistic freedom or individual sovereignty, including individual secessionism, individual associationism and exterritorial autonomy - or "religious" freedom or tolerance in all spheres of living. With this liberty all the local problems can be solved, as far as possible, by the release of all local creative energies. Likewise the national and the world problems. Not by uniform and territorial organizations but by networks and associations of volunteers doing their things to and for themselves, all at their own risk and expense. In the developed countries individual choice of alternatives has spread to all spheres of living except those still preempted and regulated by territorial governments, especially in the political, economic and social spheres. Need I stress what messes governments have done and are still doing by their legal or illegal interventions, in these spheres? Most people put up with them precisely because in their own private spheres and range of interests, which is of greatest importance to them, they do already feel quite free. To the extent that they do not, the territorial model has rendered them rather helpless with periodic elections giving them the illusion of decision-making power, while in effect, as individuals, they are largely disfranchised in these government-preempted spheres. Even representatives like Ron Paul experience many of the frustrations of ordinary voters - for they remain one or a few among many and are usually outvoted. And they are not free to opt out - to become, if they wanted to, e.g. presidents of their volunteer communities. In a way it was good that I misunderstood you, because that made much more clear your tolerant voluntaristic position than did the short statement of your value standard ideal and aspiration. This difference of expressed opinions might also have helped to make you more realistic regarding my own limited knowledge and abilities in this sphere. I never felt like an expert but merely as a freedo seeker in this sphere as well, one that had been given some good leads by others. That knowledge, ideas, opinion and literature sphere as well is vast - and all too much of it is not yet readily and cheaply accessible. Instance: Even the Federal Reserve Act with all its amendments! Although one should have presumed that this legislation of the most important economy in the world would be very widely and cheaply published and much more easily accessible than xyz obscure texts on monetary and financial freedom options. I am all in favour of theorizing and speculating about, researching into historical experiences and fully publishing all findings on better value standards and exchange media and clearing systems than we are saddled with now, and also exploring how we could, at least for ourselves, get rid of the present systems and replace them by those which we would prefer for ourselves. But in this we are almost in the same position as a few Protestants were, at first, in a Roman Catholic Europe. The potential leverage of monetary and financial Protestantism is great - but it requires that the lever may be freely applied at a suitable leverage point and long enough to clearly demonstrate its rightfulness and effectiveness. The established monetary and financial religion is so far not prepared to give it that chance. Glorified local garage sale networks, like LETS, even when computerized, are still far too marginal in their activities and volumes of transactions, even in the local economies, to demonstrate monetary freedom options sufficiently, even to their members and leaders. And they have made many of their members intolerant towards diverging ideas and practices rather than tolerant. In this they have much in common with religious sects. The same applies even to national and international computerized barter exchanges, largely only between manufacturers and traders, who were already, for centuries, somewhat liberated in their trading actions. But that liberation did not extend to the consumer buyers and wage and salary earners. For them money and finance remain most despotically legislated and regulated with very few and limited self-help options remaining. They need monetary and financial liberation primarily not as buyers and sellers on the world market but on their local markets, where most of their income is derived from and is spent. Here they are made dependent upon a legalized and regulated banking, credit and payment system, exchange medium, value standard and privileged and limited clearing avenues and an moral and useful self-help action can lead to huge fines or even imprisonment. Sometimes even members of the central bank are not sufficiently informed on its powers. My youngest, many years ago, got a reply from a member of the Australian Reserve Bank, in Western Australia, indicating that the issue of goods warrants not resembling Australian dollar notes and not redeemable in them would be quite free! Unfortunately, I do not have a copy of this letter. I could have used it to get quite different replies from different sections of that monstrous institution. The Duke of Avram's bank of issue in Tasmania was closed down and all his notes confiscated. But then he had merely assumed otherwise recognized territorial privileges in Tasmania, asserting, that it would not be part of the continent of Australia and thus not under its legislative and juridical powers. He himself did not see himself as a monetary freedom advocate and his scheme, if not suppressed, would probably have aimed at becoming the central bank of issue for Tasmania. A survey of all the suppressive actions of all central banks in all countries would be most instructive. It might make the organizers of monetary freedom experiments at least much more careful in their researches, planning and preparations and in chosing time and place for their actions. Local currency experiments, to be successful, must involve local supermarkets and shopping centres, as well as many to most of the local employers and many to most of their employees. They need not offer, at least not initially, a value standard that would not only be widely accepted locally but also world-wide. In times of mass unemployment, under still moderate inflation, they should deal with the exchange media problem first of all and mainly and only on second thoughts with alternative value standard options. The monetary and financial problems are not even solved as yet in the minds of most radical libertarians, far less in the minds of the general public and of the official decision-makers and their recognized experts. Furthermore, we have difficulties even in reaching all those libertarians who would have some interest in these problems and their solutions. As individuals, and even as computer and website users, we find ourselves more or less in the position of Don Quichote, fighting wings of windmills. Seemingly, we can bring our case before the general public, via websites, but its judges, experts and visitors to this court will largely continue to ignore what we have to say. So, what can we do? I still believe in trying to bring all the literature on the subject together and then surveying it and extracting it sufficiently, together with all monetary and financial experiences of the past and present. Going on to ignore most of that literature and experience cannot help us greatly. But doing our bit to systematically - and always recording and publishing - to spread some truths in this sphere, combining them and trying to popularize them, while trying to undermine or refute the worst and all too popular errors, myths and prejudices in this sphere, might, gradually, get us somewhere, if enough people participate in this enlightenment effort. Whatever value standard options and exchange media and clearing options many to most people in the world, once they are free to do so, and can be interested to do so, will finally accept for themselves and their exchanges, I am quite prepared to leave up to them. In a free market for value standards, as for wrist watches and tooth brushes, the better ones are sure to be most widely employed, at least after a certain period of experimentation and information spreading has passed. Hayek at first only recommended free choice among national currencies and later made some general recommendations on alternative standards. I have not yet studied them. Wherever or whenever value preserving clauses are permitted in long term credit arrangements, much experience with a variety of them would have accumulated and would, apart from black market transactions, still be recorded somewhere for scholars to dig up. Ideally, a value standard should not only be calculable and comprehensible for a few experts, e.g. statisticians and mathematicians, but also for the man in the street, even if it would be less perfect than the one the experts would recommend. I doubt that one could interest trade union members in this subject. They are still stuck upon long refuted errors, myths and prejudices on labour questions and not receptive for free market and free contract ideas, least of all in the sphere of money. Moreover, they have a vested interest in the continuance of deteriorating currencies, since that gives them a larger and more frequent role in wage negotiations. One of the most fruitful approaches would be, I believe, to attempt to tabulate the various value standards that have been proposed or experimented with, indicating their characteristics, their plus and con, the literature in which they have been discussed, their degrees of monetary despotism or monetary freedom, etc. The same attempt could and should be made for exchange media options. Too many people remain confined to their own limited world views, in this sphere as well, thus ignoring the vast variety of the real world. They live in their heads, on cloud nine. E.g., Silvio Gesell and Major Douglas followers and even the gold bugs. Enough of my bias in this sphere, for now. Speaking of a techie for cleaning the system up, SEVERAL TIMES NOW LOST MY CAPS OPTION with my keyboard, or it became reversed! I shook a lot of grit and hair etc., out, by upending it and knocking it, also knocking the letter into the drafts folder, twice, but this flaw props up again. Perhaps I need a new keyboard, too, best with one very flexible plastic cover, to be kept on during typing. I do wish I had a libertarian techie nearby able and willing to keep my system maintained at optimum performance level. High technology when a grain of dust can damage it? PIOT, John + ----- Original Message ----- From: "Thomas H. Greco, Jr." To: "John Zube" Sent: Tuesday, September 17, 2002 12:09 AM Subject: Re: 020914 Greco, Batch 5 of 7 on free banking. No. 6 to come. > Thanks, John, > Yes, computers can be frustrating. I try to minimize the number and scope of > the changes I make to my system. It also helps to have a "techie" on call to > clean things up from time to time. > > I do not have a complete set of the Federal Reserve Act with all amendments. > There have been many amendments and the FED's powers have changed > considerably over time. Cal Schindel may be able to steer you in the right > direction ( maniac@micro-mania.net). > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "John Zube" > To: "Thomas H. Greco, Jr." > Sent: Saturday, September 14, 2002 2:42 AM > Subject: 020914 Greco, Batch 5 of 7 on free banking. No. 6 to come. > ----- Original Message ----- From: "Thomas H. Greco, Jr." To: "John Zube" Sent: Tuesday, September 17, 2002 12:09 AM Subject: Re: 020914 Greco, Batch 5 of 7 on free banking. No. 6 to come. > Thanks, John, > Yes, computers can be frustrating. I try to minimize the number and scope of > the changes I make to my system. It also helps to have a "techie" on call to > clean things up from time to time. > > I do not have a complete set of the Federal Reserve Act with all amendments. > There have been many amendments and the FED's powers have changed > considerably over time. Cal Schindel may be able to steer you in the right > direction ( maniac@micro-mania.net). > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "John Zube" > To: "Thomas H. Greco, Jr." > Sent: Saturday, September 14, 2002 2:42 AM > Subject: 020914 Greco, Batch 5 of 7 on free banking. No. 6 to come. >