unemploy.d92, version of 2 Jan. 93

FULL EMPLOYMENT THROUGH MONETARY FREEDOM? Some notes on the subject by John Zube, 30 December 1992. A few dozen attempts to concisely state the problem and its solution, in search of better ones and the best. Help needed and wanted. No copyrights claim made. Write to John Zube, 7 Oxley St., Berrima, NSW 2577, Australia.

I have had this subject on my mind for over 40 years, largely through the influence of Ulrich von Beckerath, 1982 - 1969, whom I learned to know in 1952, frequently visited to 1959 and corresponded with to his death. He wrote 3 major books on the subject, dozens of articles and thousands of letters, since before WW I. Many of these, after 1943, I have reproduced and many more I intend to microfiche, too. His collection of it was burned in a 1943 air raid. I seek especially copies of his earlier letters, before 1943, for microfilming. Those since 1943 I have now nearly complete but the second batch is not yet readied for filming. A few are missing, e.g. in case he lent some letters to someone and did not get them back.

On this subject he often said to me : If one succeeded in describing the close connection between full employment and monetary freedom on a single page, convincingly and in a popular war, one could with this page bring about the greatest social revolution ever. Developing this thought a bit further, one might say : If one could state this solution as concisely and convincingly as 2 x 2 = 4 and as popularly as : Make love, not war!, this would be still more promising - for how many people are prepared to read one thoughtful page and remember it correctly as against the number of people who can easily remember a catching and plausible phrase? Better still, it would be, if the full employment slogan or one page exposition, could be rendered in a popular song, one that would reach the top 40.

I heard recently ( 24 October 1992 ) a song by John Williams, whose sentiments on the subject of depressions  are typical in their empty-headedness and prejudices. Perhaps it might inpire a songwriter to write a sensible song on the subject. He included sentiments and generalities like : Believe in yourself. Look to the future. Build your family up for the family. Get your values in place. Put out a good value product. Battle on. Neighbours should talk to each other. A spirit that holds all of us together. Time to fire up. Get this country rolling. We got to shake it up. Got to get up early in the morning. This is Australia calling. We ought to come out fighting, the back against the wall. - No knowledge of or interest in economic liberties and options was expressed in this song at all. Like almost all political talks, it was a pep talk full of rethorical phrases and slogans and empty of positive ideas. Especially missing was any insight into free banking and free trade, free enterprise and free work and cooperative options. A deterrent bad example can sometimes stimulate creative people into producing an attractive alternative. Otherwise I would have made no note of this one. This treatment of depressions is all too depressing for me. J.Z. 31.12.92.

A host of misconceptions, errors and myths stand in the way of reaching full employment. Their refutations would require many volumes. I would rather see them become part of a general encyclopedia of refutations which are obstacles to social progress. Thus the statements here do mostly simply ignore them and try to be appealing and convincing nevertheless. However, I will introduce this compilation with some hints towards these prejudices and attitudes, which are not always verbalized by those who hold them.

If the premise is right i.e., a one page could be as effective, then it might be worthwhile to make dozens if not thousands attempts in this direction. And if one does not succeed with any of them, then it might still be worthwhile to jot down and duplicate all these, in the faint hope that these wordings might reach others and stimulate one of them into coining the right catching phrase or convincing and popular short article. They should be so appealing that they would e.g. be reproduced in the letters to the editor column by most newspapers and spread widely from mouth to mouth, like good jokes often are.

Naturally, if one coined such a phrase or drafted such an article and then copyrighted it, one could hold the world to ransom. Should anyone claim such a monopoly? Is any delay in the abolition of unemployment justifiable? How many unemployed and underemployed are there in the world at any time? Dozens to hundreds of millions! Moreover, there is a close connection between the risk of bloody revolutions and civil wars and even international wars and high degrees of mass unemployment.

In ignorance of the real solution governments do also resort to inflationary measures which can and do bring about similar disasters, apart from general empoverishment.

If I had a million to spend, I would like to put it up as a prize in a world-wide competition for such a formula or article. If enough of the unemployed took their own situarion seriously enough, and if those with the so-called "social conscience" were putting their money were their mouth is, then a million unemployed or a million of "concerned" people should be willing to put up at least $ 1 each towards such a prize competition. However, I doubt that as many could be found who would show at least this small degree of interest.

Since many rich sponsors or many poor sponsors are very hard to find, even for as important research as that, I have simply to rely and the few more or less isolated researchers and writers like myself, hoping that their networks, old-fashioned micrographic and electronic ones, will get enough of them to act upon this suggestion. I could only offer to microfilm all such contributions.

Ulrich von Beckerath and myself have also attempted to embody such statemetns in the economic rights sections of declarations of individual rights, using the still all too limited interest in this concept of natural rights as a launching pad. See my compilation of private human rights drafts in PP 589 & 590.

However, I do not hold that we can rely merely upon achieving sufficient enlightenment on this question via verbal educational efforts, no matter how well organized they might one day become e.g. via ideas archives and information centres. Essential for progress is not only freedom of expression and information but also freedom of action and experimentation, in every sphere, especially those now monopolized by territorial governments. Thus the solution to the problem of unemployment should also be described as a self-help measure that could be realized in practice by relatively few people with very limited financial resources, if only they do fully mobilize their brains and working ability and willingness and their sales potential and are willing and able to risk ignoring all relevant legal and juridical restrictions.

I refer to all previous treatments of this subject by Ulrich von Beckerath, Professor Heinrich Rittershausen, Prof. Edgard Milhaud, Dr. Walter Zander, Dr. Best and myself and hope that I will be able in a future bibliography and index to this series to point out all of them.

I do also need help in translating all relevant contributions on this subject by Ulrich von Beckerath, those which I have already microfilm published in German or intend to publish in this way.

Obviously, any introduction should not be longer than the intended text. But in order to realize that the intended text, if it can and will be drafted and sufficiently publicized, would not altogether without any hope for success, we should remember that there were a few relatively short texts in history that had an enormous influence upon it: The Ten Commandments, The Declaration of Independence, Declarations of Rights, The Gettysburgh Address etc. Some day I might get around to compile a monographs on the successful public appeals that history reports.
Furthermore, short popular song texts, no matter how meaningless they may be, are often attentively listened to and remembered by millions of people. Why should it not be possible to make such songs really meaningful and educational, too? Songwriters of the world, unite in an attempt to offer the solution to mass unemployment in a song! Poets of the world, try to offer it in a poem. Writers of the world, try to coin a bon-mot on it or your best short essay ever. Economists of the world, try to find this solution and state and prove it as consisely. Unemployed of the world, try to enlighten and help yourself in this way.

Any individual might finally successfully launch a thought or proposal of this kind but it would still require at least a small local action group to successfully realize it in some local community and thus demonstrate its practicability to the rest of the world - if that demonstration is sufficiently publicized. Alas, there were numerous more or less primitive or developed monetary freedom experiments in most countries and so far they are still severely under-recorded and under-reported.

Peace Plans has propably published in its series more writings dealing with this problem and its monetary freedom solution than any publisher has ever before.
It is working towards a handbook and data bank on the subject. All help is welcome. So far no more can be promised that to sooner or later microfiche all written contributions in this series and to allow their free reproduction, to the extent that Peace Plans or Libertarian Microfiche Publishing is legally the copyrights holder.

Many more such thoughts are presently still buried in my Slogans for Liberty file and my notes on monetary freedom, which are to be combined in alphabetized form.                 

I added catchwords for alphabetical sorting in larger compilations dealing with monetary freedom ideas and arguments and observations.

Seeing the potential importance of such thoughts and how little they have penetraed so far, I am not afraid to repeat myself with the same or similar phrases. Anyone is invited to offer more concise and accurate wordings. 
                            
That the proposed solution is illegal or unconstitutional does not bother me but it should bother the constitutionalists and legalists and their victims.

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1.) Some notes on errors, myths and prejudices and lack of interest in unemployemnt :

Ignorance and lack of interest : Unemployment persists because the unemployed themselves, the employed who fear unemployment, the employers, most of the economists and all of the politicians are quite ignorant of and not interested in its real causes or are even prejudiced in favour of these causes. J.Z. 29.12.92.

Interest in the problem, lack of interest : The unemployed take no interest in the correct theories and techniques for the abolition of unemployment. In this they are like the slaves of ancient history, who took no interest in the theories and techniques for the abolition of slavery. But wrong theories on unemployment do happen to interest and motivate them to look for political solutions for a problem that can only be solved economically. J.Z. 21.12.92.

Political solutions to the problem of unemployment amount in essence to a mere waste of labour and resources, to costly pyramid buildings, which empoverish the general population even further. J.Z. 30.12.92.

Survey of proposals : A full survey of all employment theories and proposals and of all criticism of them, would soon reveal what has not worked, does not work and never can work - and what always has and does and will. J.Z., 21.12.92. Alas, most "surveys" so far, concentrated almost exlusively on popular but non-working proposals. J.Z. 31.12.92.

Governments and legislators, get out of the way. You cannot produce anything, least of all additional productive jobs, prifitable sales and productive services. Let us produce jobs and sales, by freeing our exchanges from your laws, regulations, institutions and jurisdiction, especially from your monetary despotism. J.Z., 21.12.92, 30.12.92.

Monopoly money is not only troublesome but wrong. It leads to mass unemployment, inflations, stagflations, poverty, revolutions and wars. J.Z. 21.12.92.

Marches and demonstrations :The unemployed have demonstrated and marched on behalf of numerous causes. But have they ever really stood up for their own basic individual rights, even if only by marching and demonstrating for monetary freedom and against monetary despotism? Did they ever wear placards demanding the abolition of legal tender paper money and of the issue monopoly of the central bank and their claim their right to issue notes and to choose reliable standards of value and to refuse to accept or to discount the monopoly paper money of the State or its central bank? I do not favour marching and demonstrating as means towards self-liberation. But the unusualness of marches and demonstrations against monetary despotism and for monetary freedom would provide them possibly with some extra publicity. The world has seen too few monetary revolutions. They are among the few which can be quite positive and bloodless. But for such a revolution it is more important to put one's brain rather than one's feet into gear. J.Z. 30.12.92.

Interest in the cause of unemployment : Is there even one among dozens of millions of unemployed who is willing to make the "supreme" sacrifice of some of his plentiful spare time, to read a truthful book on cause and cure of unemployment, like Ulrich von Beckerath's "Must Full Employment Cost Money"? ( Reproduced in PP 10. ) J.Z. 30.12.92.

Most people imagine they know the cause of unemployment or manage to deny its very existence. What they believe in is just one or the other wrong theory, prejudice or myth on the subject. At best some know some factors which do also make for unemployment - but they ignore the main one : monetary despotism. J.Z. 30.12.92.

Neither "employers" nor unions nor governments can supply jobs. See their helplessness in December 1992, when faced with 1 million unemployed in Australia. They can and do only offer hopes for better conditions in the future and by all the measures they support they prevent better conditions from occurring now or fast. They only hope for some positive changes in the labour market to occur through some forces unknown to them or which they do not understand and do not know how to influence. Their combined efforts have so restricted free exchanges and developments that they have partly immobilized the economy or prevented many exchanges. Years ago already a friend told me that every year of ca 50 possible and desirable, because mutally profitable international exchanges, that he had arranged as economically possible and desirable and profitable for all participants, all but 2 or 3 were rendered impossible for him, every year, by our own or the foreign legal or unionist restrictions. J.Z., 31.12.92.

Monetary despotism is one of the main pillars of any modern despotism. J.Z. 30.12.92.

Monetary despotism can and does lead to all other kinds of despotism. J.Z. 31.12.92.

Demand for jobs : Men must not only want work but must also want and work for what makes for productive work, instead of ignoring or even opposing it.J.Z. 21.12.92.

Governments can create unemployment but they cannot abolish it - except by getting out of the way. J.Z., 21.12.92.

Politicians : If politicians knew how to provide employment, do you think they would do without the votes of e.g. a million unemployed and of their dependents? J.Z. 21.12.92.

Recession-fighting : The recession need not be fought but ended, by stopping its causes, especially monetary despotism, which is the worst kind of economic monopoly power and interventionism. J.Z. 15.12.92, 31.12.92.

Government make work programmes are economically no better than lotteries : They may re-distribute money and job opportunities but do not provide new and sound purchasing power and jobs. And, like lotteries, their administration costs and profit margins are much too high, while their output is all too low and largely unwanted, i.e. free consumers would not pay for them willingly with their own dollars. And morally they are even worse than lotteries since financial participation in these unproductive job schemes is compulsory - for the taxpayers. J.Z. 15.12.92, 31.12.92.

Politicians and bureaucrats : Each politician and bureaucrat, by his very position and income, parasitically extorted from taxpayers, and through his power over and restrictions imposed upon the taxpayers and consumers, destroyes at least one, if not a multitude of productive jobs. J.Z. 14.12.92, 31.12.92.

Governments can't create jobs. They can only shift over jobs from some groups to others - while destroying many jobs in the process and making others unproductive. J.Z. 14.12.92.

Governments can ony mismanage the economy - even if they have the best intentions and with their best means and programmes. Only free producers, traders and consumers can, between them, run it well. J.Z. 14.12.92

2. Attempts to positively state the problem and its solutin : 

Issue principle : Beat recessions, depressions, inflations and stagflations with your own sound money, issued by yourself, based on your own goods and services and those of your associates. J.Z. 29.12.92.

Issue principle of freedom of note issue : Everyone should be free to offer his labour, service and goods supply potential to willing acceptors in certified and freely transferable form, in money denominations, using a freely agreed upon standard of value. To the extent that one succeeds in putting these into temporary circulation one will soon succeed, upon their reflux, in achieving corresponding sales of one's labour, services and goods.  J.Z. 30.12.92.

Transferability and values : Free transferability maximizes exchange values. Labour will maximize its salability only once it can be freely offered in certified form, in money denominations, redeemable either in its products or in payment for its wages. Spending such certificates would lead to corresponding orders and work - when they stream back for the promised redemption in labour and goods. J.Z. 30.12.92.

Money monopoly : With the abolition of the money monopoly inflation, unemployment and stagflation will soon disappear. J.Z. 29.12.92.

Refugees : Allow the dozens of millions of refugees in the world to be paid for productive work with private an cooperatively issued purchasing vouchers for goods and services, in money denominations, using standards of value of their choice, based largely but not exclusively on goods and services which are now hard to sell, and they would soon all find jobs thus paid, and consequently become able to pay for their accommodations, too. Moreover, they would then tend to become welcomed guests and helpers in a further division of labour that would tend to enrich everybody, rather than being hated as foreign competitors. The system could easily be expanded to similarly benefit all the native unemployed and underemployed, too. J.Z. 29.12.92.

Alternative monies : All of us, as producers & consumers, as employees or employers or self-employed, can only be fully free when we can produce or agree upon a money of our choice for all our trades with each other. Any imposed monopoly money can only cause us trouble - and fail to achieve all the exchanges we desire and which would otherwise be possible for us. J.Z. 21.12.92.

Ready for sale goods, services and productive labour are ideal covers or redemption funds for private and competitive money issues. Such issuers, by such paying their way, would inevitably sell their goods, services and labour to the same extent. J.Z. 21.12.92.

Refugees : According to radio news on 29. 12. 92, there exist now ca. 19 million refugees in foreign countries and another 24 million refugees who are internally displaced. Under freedom the own acute needs and wants of these millions of unemployed and of the other unemployed in all countries, could express themselves monetarily as a demand for labour equivalent to the demand for labour in a large and producive nation. It would not be an insuperable transport problem to either bring supplies, temporary buildings and machines to these labourers or to bring these labourers to the existing factories and supplies and machines that work below their full capacity. J.Z. 30.12.92.

Capital shortage? It does not exist before and after periods of mass unemployment and is thus unlikely to exist during them. What is short, instead, are serviceable exchange media to pay wages with and move presently unsalable consumer goods and services. These goods and services themselves can be the basis of such exchange media and should be so utilized. J.Z. 30.12.92.

Sacrifices required? Full employment need not cost the taxpayers or investors or charitable donors anything. It can and should pay for itself, immediately, when we right away and profitably mobilize the existing and ready for sale consumer goods and services by allowing their owners to use them as redemption funds for private exchange media issues. J.Z. 21.12.92.

Private local currency issues based on locally ready for sale goods and services, would express a corresponding demand for local labour and services and goods, to the extent that they can be spent, i.e. are voluntarily accepted by people, as ready customers for the goods and services they represent. J.Z. 31.12.92.

Ticket money : Private local exchange media issues, based on goods and services of the issuer, must stream back to the issuer, like cinema, bus, railway or sports stadium tickets, to purchase the goods and services of the issuer. To the extent that they can be issued they do supply the issuers with corresponding sales of their goods and services and labour. J.Z. 31.12.92.

Transition period : How long would it take to achieve full employment? Australian politicians now hope merely for a lower degree of unemployment than 11% within a few years. I guess one should not expect anything better while central banking remains. I assert that full employment via monetary freedom would be possible within a week - if it still would have to be discussed and would be fully discussed in the mass media. However, it could be realized within hours if this option were already known. J.Z. 21.12.92. Compare the self-help sucessess of businessmen during the currency famine of 1893, described by John DeWitt Warner. His essay is reproduced in the Peace Plans series, e.g. in No. 9 and in its reproduction of "Sound Currency" of 1896. ( Peace Plans 350-54. A more legible copy has been obtained of this and the 1895 volume but not yet readied for filming. )

Ability to pay : Anyone would have a much better chance to pay his own way, to the limit of his ability to supply goods and services, if he were free to pay with assignments upon his own labour services and goods. By combining his own issues with a sufficient number of other issuers, he would make the combined issues sufficiently acceptable as means of payment, at least locally, as an alternative local currency. J.Z. 31.12.92.

IOUs : A man's I.O.U.s, issued by him for all his spending, and readily accepted by his suppliers under a perfect clearing system, would inevitably stream back to him  in payment for any wages or other debts due to him. He could issue them to the extent that he is able to supply goods and services wanted by others in the issue area or by people prepared to import them from it. In a system where every productive person would be free to spend to the limit of his productive potential with his own I.O.Us. and to the extent that they would be readily accepted and cleared, everyone could be fully employed via the mutual settlement of such debts, even if not a single gold or silver coin or governmental paper money note existed in the country or in the world. Any person free to pay his own way with his own I.O.U.s and clearing certificates ( those of his voluntary associates ), both issued as basically sound money substitutes, or, rather, as sounder money than any government could provide, would inevitably and by his own purchases with these means of exchange, bring jobs and sales to himself and to his associates. However, that is a self-help measure which is presently outlawed. Such laws are among those which ought to be massively ignored, even by those supposed to apply them. J.Z. 31.12.92.

Wage payment means : How much of your income would you be willing to take e.g. in a shop currency of your favourite local shopping centre and in petrol, gas, electricity, railway and bus money issues? Why shouldn't you be at liberty to do so and why shouldn't these shops and companies be at liberty to make you such offers? J.Z., 31.12.92.

Consumer sovereignty restricted : When consumers and their agents ( the employers ) are only allowed to ask for labour ( goods and services ) with the money of monetary despotism, then mass unemployment, recessions, depressions, inflatins, stagflations and mass bankruptcies must follow inevitably and frequently and for long periods. J.Z. 21.12.92. Let all consumers, and their agents, the employers, be free to choose in a free market, with their own ( not the government's ) dollar notes, or those among competitive private issues which they prefer. Then they could and would soon employ every willing and able worker for the satisfaction of their wants. J.Z. 21.12.92.

Restrictionism : How unfree need prices and wage rates be, how regulated labour and business, how high and penal the taxes, how numerous the monopolies ( worst of all the central bank's monopoly ) and how high and numerous the subsidies, in order to create and perpetuate involuntary mass unemployment? J.Z. 21.12.92.

Consumers and employers, as indirect suppliers of jobs, cannot bear unlimited burdens and restrictions, taxes, regulations and monopolies, and, worst of all, monetary despotism, without this affecting the general job situation, i.e. the rate of unemployment. Full employment can only be certain and permanent on a fully free market, including e.g. freedom for the issue of private and free market rated notes and value standards and clearing processes and institutions. J.Z. 21.12.92.

Demand for labour : Free the demand for labour, services and goods, by allowing any exchange medium or exchange method or clearing many and any freely agreed upon value standard to be used for expressing, measuring and satisfying this demand, anything that is acceptable to the contracting partners. This to be in addition to any other labour and sales conditions acceptable to freely contracting individuals and groups. Under monetary and financial freedom the conditions for the suppliers of goods, services and labour will also be found to be much more acceptable for them and their customers and employers. J.Z., 21.12.92.

Gresham's law reversed : When good monies are not free to drive out bad monies then the bad monies force not only good monies but sellers of quality goods, labour and services out of the market. Only those exchanges will take place which can be arranged via the forced and exclusive currency of the State and the all to limited clearing and turnover credit options that remain under such a monopoly currency. J.Z. 31.12.92.

Monetary despotism : Forced and exclusive currencies can, like any other monopolies, never fully, permanently and satisfactorily mediate all possible and desired exchanges of goods, labour and services, no matter how and how much they are verbally, juridically, legally or constitutionally excused and defended. Monetary despotism cannot substitute for monetary freedom, no despotic act can, for any liberty. J.Z. 31.12.92.

Competition and choice : The unemployed can never have too many employers bidding for their labour with too many different exchange media and value standards, based on too many real redemption funds consisting out of goods, labour and services, i.e. they cannot have too many competing currencies offered to them, as long as they remain free to refuse, discount and negotiate any such offers. J.Z. 31.12.92.

Voting with one's own dollars : Once the owners of goods, services and labour become free to vote on a free market with vouchers upon their own goods, services and labour for any labour offered on that market and once the unemployed and employed are free to accept any such alternative means of exchange at par or to discount or refuse them, good issues of that type will search out any remaining unemployed or under-employed able and willing workers. These exchange media  will be acceptable to them at par and will be used in employing and paying, according to their productivity. J.Z. 31.12.92.

Job offers are now conditional upon the employer being able to acquire sufficient of the forced and exclusive national paper currency to pay for the jobs he wants done and upon consumers in general being sufficiently supplied with such a currency to guarantee the employer sufficient sales. To the extent that both of them are insufficiently supplied with exchange media they cannot provide jobs or consume and thus provide jobs directly or indirectly. What can one expect or should one predict when the supply of exchange media is monopolized? J.Z. 31.12.92.

Full employment : Once all the ready for sale goods and services and labour in a country can be monetized in competing private currency issues, expressing a cash or clearing demand for all existing goods, services and labour, and once sellers of goods, services and labour are free to accept, discount or refuse such payment offers, while remaining obliged only to accept the own notes and IOUs and clearing certificates at par at any time, then and ony then will any sales difficulties and involuntary unemployment soon disappear. Then any desired and possible market exchanges could and would be brought about by the means of a truly free market. J.Z. 31.12.92.

Employers : Employers are not really employers but merely middlemen and agents of the consumers. Consumers employ - if they are free to employ on a free market, via their consumer choices and the agents and middlemen acting on their behalf. In a fully free market they can express their demands for goods, services and labour in any exchange and clearing medium and method which they and their agents and the middlemen, the employers and they themselves as producers and consumers are satisfied with. Thus no exchange medium or clearing method or value standard should be imposed upon them and monopolized and regulated and restricted and manipulated independent of their individual choices. Under full monetary freedom all desired and possible and economic exchanges, including those of all labours and services and goods, can and would take place. Involuntary unemployment and sales difficlties would be ended. J.Z. 21.12.92.

Employment : Job provision should be not be run at a loss, like a private charity or at the expense of the taxpayers. All but useless and unwanted and bad jobs should and can pay for themselves via satisfied customers. Those offering only useless, unwanted, bad or overpriced labours, services and goods do deserve the consumer and employer reaction they get and must change to provide some goods, services and labour that is acceptable for others so that they would bid for them in a free market. In a truly free market jobs for all willing and able labourers, service and goods suppliers are assured when labourers and other suppliers are free to pay for all their expenses, including supplies, taxes, salaries and wages, in private and money-like assignments upon the goods and services they provide, alone or, preferably, in association with others, and when all their suppliers, including the suppliers of wages and services, are free to accept or negotiate the acceptance of these alternative means of payment or clearing. J.Z. 21.12.92, 31.12.92.

Employment : Any employment is just an act of exchange. As such it is dependent upon the provision of exchange media and the value standard used. Under monetary despotism the exchange media and value standards are monopolized and mismanaged and phenomena like deflation, inflation, stagflation, recessions, credit restrictions, depressions and mass unemployment do appear and persist. Without going to their root causes and abolishing them, i.e. without the introduction of full monetary freedom, these problems will persist and recur again and again. J.Z., 31.12.92.

Unemployed themselves to blame? Are the unemployed themselves to be blamed, too, for the existence of unemployment? I can only offer a qualified "yes!" to this question. Why? They are the main victims but they do not show any real and deep and persistent interest in the cause or causes of unemployment but rather accept it as if it were a natural catastrophy. They are e.g. not interested in the right to work interpreted as the right to undertake any monetary, financial and organizational measures to provide themselves with work, without depriving anybody of a job. They show no interest in their own individual economic rights, least of all in their monetary rights and liberties. Very few of them show any interest in replacing dependent employee positions by cooperative and partnership jobs, becoming self-employed capital owners and businessmen and entrepreneurs. They do not believe in self-help in changing the established system into a self-help and self-employment system. They do not recognize the situation as  one in which artificial, legal and constitutional barriers are put up against free exchanges of labour, goods and services, especially those of monetary despotism. They remain unaware and disinterested in conditions that do not allow them to freely exchange their labours under conditions acceptable to all contracting partners. If questioned, they rather defend and rationalize about than attack such restrictions. To that extent they do deserve their unemployment and employment difficulties. They are emancipated in many way, e.g. in religion and sexually, with regard to science and technology but monetarily they still have to become emancipated, i.e. free to vote with their own dollars in a free market. They should no longer consider the dollars of monetary despotism as their own or as the only or best possible dollars, as sufficient to solve all their difficulties. J.Z., 21.12.92, 31.12.92.

Freedom to work isn't free and capable to achieve full employment, lastingly and assuredly, when you may not contract to be paid in alternative exchange media and value standards to the exclusive and forced paper currencies now imposed by the governments. J.Z. 26.12.92.

Asset currencies : Monetization of suitable and real assets ready for sale : Not everything can be or should be monetized but most of what could be hasn't been and much of what shouldn't be has been. J.Z. 25.12.92.  Since most consumers, most of the time and with most of their money just want to buy ready for sale consumer goods and services, most of the money the use should be based precisely upon these and not upon medium or long term capital goods which these consumers do not want now and to the same extent. Other issues than currency issues, like shares, bonds and mortgage letters, are more suitable to facilitate the distribution and transfer of capital goods. Currencies are only suitable for purchasing capital certificates, too, if and whenever and wherever they are wanted by someone. Even now many to most capital certificates are bought or traded with other old or new capital certificates. Transforming all medium and long term capital assets into ready cash in the consumer market for ready for sales consumer goods and service market would flood this market with exchange media and would depreciate them. In any fully free and fully informed because fully publicized market for exchange media and value standards all such issue attempts would rapidly lead to discounts and refusals and would rebound upon the issuers and work to their disadvantage, now and in the future. Good and better issues, soundly based, would drive out such ill conceived and constructed asset currency issues. J.Z. 25.12.92, 31.12.92.

Slave block mentality : A free labour market would have nothing in common with a slave market and would in no way be perceived as such. The unemployed should get off their slave imagined market blocks, on which they wait and wait all too patiently for a financial bidder for their labour to appear, bidding for them with the State's monopoly money. In their concepts and attitudes and actions they think and show themselves as being in such an undignified and unfree position. Instead they should interest, inform and train themselves in order to monetize their own labour potential, skills and services and those of all other goods and services, so that they can appear competitively and in many hands on a truly free market, bidding for all competitive labours and services and goods. In consequence of such issues all productive labours and wanted services and goods would automatically be salable - being paid in vouchers, tickets, warrants and certificates issued upon them and redeemable in them. Only the free monetization of all producive labours, services and wanted consumer goods, can get the unemployed of their slave blocks and the blocks and taboos in their minds, which keep them unemployed. In my 1990/92 visit to L.A. I have seen groups of unemployed waiting around certain street corners, for potential employers driving by and making a bid for them as occasional and temporary labourers. That was as close an example to anyone waiting on a slave block for a bid, as I have seen. I presume they expected to be paid only in the by now customary and unquestioned forced and exclusive paper dollar of the State. When they assemble, instead, at official employment offices only, their basic attitude is the same but they show then even less initiative. Others, in L.A., showed a bit more initiative, as hawkers, offering e.g. fruit for sale, on the dividing strips of the road, near traffic signals to drivers stopping at the signals. And in N.Y.C., e.g. in Broadway, one can find for kilometers in a row sidewalk hawkers of books and other used goodies. Much less initiative is shown by job applicants waiting patiently by the dozens or even hundreds , for each advertized vacancy, always under the assumption that there are real abd able amployers about and that the unemployed could not arrange for their full employment themselves.( Neither the State nor employers, with the present employer mentality, are miracle workers, who can provide jobs on their own with ideal currencies. Both are observably helpless and ignorant and merely prejudiced in the face of mass unemployment. They are not only the agents of and believers in monetary despotism, together with the present unemployed, but also its victims.) From the above limited intitiatives to monetary freedom interest, thinking and actions there are many large steps to be taken. However, monetary freedom can begin simply among a few and can gradually but fast expand to a free local, nation-wide and even world-wide exchange network and numerous private payment and clearing communities. I will describe some such options elsewhere. Here I try only to point out the conceptual connection between monetary freedom and full employment. J.Z., 25.12.92, 31.12.92.

The jobless should give up pinning their hopes upon the jobberies of politicians and union officials, of nationalists, racists and co-religionists, all practising their exclusive jobs for their boys policies. Instead, they should engage in their own jobberies or attempts to provide jobs for themselves, especially by considering, pondering and experimenting among themselves and with others with alternative exchange media and methods for the exchange of their labours and services and goods for the labours, services and goods they want and need and would be willing and able to work for. Monetary and financial freedom ideas, programes and techniques can offer them the jobs which governments, unionists and employers cannot offer them. J.Z., 25.12.92, 31.12.92.

Transferability, free : Fully free transferability for all owned assets for their owners, including especially labour and service abilities and readiness to sell for the owners of consumer goods. At a freely agreed price, i.e. and one satisfactory to both sides, all such services are transferable, provided only the means of payment and the standard of value used in pricing out goods, services and labour and expressed in the currencies, are also mutually agreeable rather than imposed by a powerful, monopolistic and centralized third party, like a government's central bank. The transferability of everything, including labour and services, becomes greatly increased if every value can be expressed in freely transferable and stndardized certificates, notes or clearing or credit accounts or incapital certificates or accounts. J.Z. 31.12.92.

Exterritorial autonomy for all dissenting groups : Each exterritorially autonomous group of volunteers to be at liberty to provide for its own productive employment and remaining welfare, credit and insurance arrangements, its own monetary and financial system, and to be exempted from all present territorial constitutions, laws and jurisdictions and those of all other such voluntary and exterritorally autonomous communities, in all its productive and creative activities.  Based on such exterritorial autonomy the resulting freedom of action and experimentation among volunteers would soon demonstrate the fallacies and errors and prejudices involved in most of the currently popular employment schemse and the efficiencies of monetary and financial freedoms for all who make use of them, in providing jobs and sales for them. J.Z. 14.12.92, 31.12.92.

Immigration barriers : Neither restrictions of immigration nor subsidies or "welfare rights for immigrants at the expense of the general taxpayer. But full liberty for their mutual support groups and for those of their friends and sympathizers. And full autonomy for all their productive and free exchange self-help efforts, especially their use of monetary and financial freedom. We would greatly benefit from freely trading with them, as soon as they have settled here, more so than we could when trading with them while they remained overseas and were under the restrictons of their overseas governments.  J.Z. 14.12.92, 31.12.92.

Public services and exterritorial autonomy of volunteer communities : Anyone to be at liberty to offer public services on a subscription and fee for service basis. No constitutional and legal or juridically protected monopolies in this sphere. All public services, including currencies and exchanges, courts, police and defence and penal services, to be operated on a competitive and voluntary subscription or user pays basis. Different exterritorial and autonomous protective communities of volunteers would arrange them differently under their personal laws. Any unemployed to be free to offer such services under such conditions - and for wage and salary or fee and subscription payment means that satisfy him and his customers. J.Z., 31.12.92.

Experimental freedom or freedom of action for all volunteer groups, at their own expense and risk, on the basis of exterritorial autonomy, under their own personal laws, especially for actions and experiments to abolish unemployment. J.Z. 31.12.92.

Parties : All parties to enjoy full exterritorial autonomy to apply own work provision schemes to their own members and voters. None to be given the chance any longer to impose the costs and restrictions of their schemes upon non-members and non-voters or the voters and members of other parties. Full self-responsibility and the experiments of others would soon teach them what does work and what does not. I simply predict that all schemes embodying monetary and financial freedom would succeed. J.Z., 31.12.92.

Creative energies and their free exchange : No obstacle to any creative energies and their free exchanges. J.Z. 14.12.92. Free after L.E. Read's : "Release all creative energies."

De-sovietize our economy : Let us finally start to de-sovietize our own economies, starting with the abolition of our own monetary despotism and financial restrictions, established, centralized and monopolized or regulated under the statist model of the communist manifesto. J.Z., 31.12.92.

Free and full employment means being free to exchange ( trade ), under mutually satisfactory conditions, whatever one has to offer ( labour, goods, services ) with all others. This freedom, to be full and effective, must include monetary and financial freedom, free enterprise, free work relationships, free internal and external trade, and all other contractual economic liberties. J.Z. 31.12.92.

Right to work : The right to work, properly defined, means not the charitable or legal provision of some unproducive jobs via donations or compulsory taxes, but, rather, the right to provide oneself with work, without depriving anybody of it, by undertaking all monetary, financial and organizational measures required for this purpose. J.Z., 31.12.92, free after Ulrich von Beckerath.

Licensing, compulsory : All compulsory licensing and registration to be confined to members of those volunteer groups that favour it. No unemployed, not engaged in any deceptions or false pretences, to be hindered by compulsory licensing and registrations or their fees to offer his labour and services under agreeable conditions, for acceptable currencies, to satisfied customers. J.Z. 31.12.92.

Foreign investments and foreign ownership to be unrestricted, especially in the interests of the unemployed and underemployed. No foreign bank or credit institution, especially no foreign owned note-issuing bank or clearing centre to remain outlawed or restricted. J.Z. 31.12.92.

Capital market : Capital security issues and trades and the establishment and maintenance of exchanges for them to be free, i.e. self-regulated and quite unrestricted by territorial laws and jurisdiction. A sound, lasting, stable and satisfactory capital market, however, can only be achieved via full monetary and financial freedom. J.Z. 31.12.92.

Tax exemption : Especially all attempts to provide employment should be exempted from all tax impositions. All taxes to become automatically voluntary only - aong the voluntary members of protective communities that are autonomous on an exterritorial basis and are established by those who individually seceded from the present territorial States. J.Z. 31.12.92.

Rare metal markets, especially gold markets : Rare metal ownership and transactions to be freed from all legal restrictions, taxes, duties and territorial jurisdictions. To be subjected only to the rules and publicity of fully freed markets and traders. Freedom but no monopoly for them to be used as exclusive exchange media or value standards or covers or reserves - except among exterritorially autonomous volunteer groups that do not know or do not want to apply anything better and less costly. J.Z., 31.12.92.

Free coinage : Free private coinage does not mean merely that all should be free to suitably and acceptably coin rare metals but also freedom to "coin" or "note" or "certify" or "issue" one's own labour, services and goods in money like coins, notes, certificates or clearing accounts which others find acceptable because they can and want to use them to buy with them our labour, services and goods. J.Z. 31.12.82.

Payments and means of payments to be free or a matter of choice for payers and payees. Wages, salaries, pensions, supperannuations, rents, purchases, transport, petrol, interest, imports, etc., etc., to be payable in means of payment and value standards which the contractors can agree upon - not exclusive and forced currencies which are imposed upon them and with which all too many of them are unsufficiently or unsatisfactorily supplied. J.Z. 31.12.92.

Prices and wages to be free : All prices, wages and salaries to be subject to free negotiations, not only as to their size and duration and conditions but also with regard to the means of payment and the standard of value to be used. Monetary freedom instead of monetary despotism. Only then should we expect full employment to prevail, because all restrictions upon free exchanges of labour, goods and services would be removed. J.Z. 31.12.92.

Welfare payments : All social service payments and unemployment benefit payments to be from now on payable only as loans, which would have to be guaranteed by relatives, friends and neighbours and whose repayment would be efficiently enforced by private and competitive agencies. Moreover, the payment to be in means of exchange that are either private and competitive or issued on a tax foundation basis, i.e. for the payment of the corresponding imposed social security taxes and contributions.  J.Z., 31.12.92.

Tax foundation money : While compulsory taxes still exist, governments and their agents, the central banks, should be allowed to issue nothing but tax foundation money, i.e. money which they alone would have to accept at par at any time in all tax and other payments legally due to them. All others should become free to refuse or discount such means of exchange. Thus the public financial sphere could and would be sufficiently provided with exchange media while the rest of the market would not be coercively flooded with a depreciated and forced currency which would drive out any sound alternative currencies. All voluntary tax and contribution and insurance and mutual aid schemes and systems to be at liberty to issue their own contribution money and to be obliged to accept it at any time at par with its nominal value, while all others remain free to refuse or discount it. To avoid deflatinary effects, no large payment sphere should be without its own note issue and clearing facilities. J.Z. 31.12.92.

Tax payments. All taxes and public fees and charges to be payable in private goods and clearing warrants at their market value, so that no one need any longer be made unemployed by enforcing tax payments in an exclusive and forced currency with which he might be insufficiently supplied. But any productive person would always be able to pay to a large extent with assignments upon his own goods and services, in as money-like a form as he could arrange, alone or in associations with others.  Ultimately, naturally, all tax slavery is to be abolished, too or reduced to its practice among exterritorially autonomous protective communities of volunteers, thus becoming essentially voluntary, too. J.Z., 31.12.92.

Monetary freedom : No exchange media and value standards or clearing and payment systems to be prohibited for anyone or forced upon anyone. Individuals and groups to be free to adopt, issue and use or establish their own and to refuse or discount those of others. With competitive exchange media and value standards and clearing systems any possible and desirable and economic exchange of labour, goods and services can be easily arranged. J.Z., 31.12.92.

I invite anyone to add to these attempts to shortly express correct and rightful solutions to the problems posed by unemployment and depressions.

The copying and duplicating of these formulas is free and desired, as long as the source is mentioned.