From: John Zube To: Larry Parks Subject: Your e-mails of 6 & 9/1/2000 - Monetary Freedom, including Free Choice of Value Standards in ALL contracts Date: Tuesday, 11 January 2000 9:03 John Zube, 35 Oxley St. or PO Box 52, Berrima, NSW 2577, Australia Tel. (02) 48 771 436 RESEARCH CENTRE FOR MONETARY AND FINANCIAL FREEDOM, MONETARY FREEDOM SERIES, PEACE PLANS, ON PANARCHY, SLOGANS FOR LIBERTY etc., all published by LIBERTARIAN MICROFICHE PUBLISHING Dear Mr. Parks, I still think that I came across a website that offered something like hundredthousands of monetary freedom pages, over 300,000, I believe, but only to people who had subscribed to it. That was at the beginning of my Internet browsing. I intended to e-mail this organization later - since by then I had not even mastered e-mailing yet, and was very impressed by the fact that someone else had finally got around to publish more on the subject than I had. I thought that it was a FAME website, but, apparently I was mistaken. Usually, I am not likely to engage in as vivid day or night dreams. So, I still do hope to come across a reference to this site in the numerous notes that I made on websites to be explored further or contacted. About 200 monographs are impressive but not quite as impressive, unless each of them has over 1,000 pages. But you mention "some full length books" separately, which seems to imply that the monographs were not as long. I have never as yet added up all the articles and books on monetary freedom that are so far reproduced in my series. The closest to such a listing is a 124 pp bibliography I compiled, over 10 years ago and have still not got around to update. I enclose it in PP 1022 in my air mail letter. But that presumes that you have a microfiche reading machine or access to one. I could also send you this bibliography on disk, if you are interested and can convert it from the word processor I used: Sprint. Possibly, I have also an ASCII version of it. Someone had, years ago, put it on the Internet. But it disappeared there and never led to a single response. That is somewhat typical on such subjects. This list does, as a bibliography, include not only my own titles but all others I heard or read about somewhere. A few are titles that merely sound like free banking ones but, in reality, may not be such titles but deserve to be checked out and listed. For instance, I once came across a book on Mutualism in the library of Robert Carnaghan, also a monetary freedom advocate, who knew Henry Meulen, but this particular text had nothing to do with the historical school of anarchists, who called themselves mutualists and advocated monetary freedom, among other liberties. There are other texts that seem to advocate monetary freedom in the title - while in the text they promote central banks of issue! I bibliography should include warnings against such titles. A leaflet on my other hat, the "Research Centre...", and a short one on the German Monetary Freedom School will be sent to you by air mail. 2 of my own monetary freedom articles you can find appended to my website. Precisely because I do not consider myself to be an expert on the subject have I postponed, for many years, writing a handbook on monetary freedom. As a preparation for it I wanted first access to many more such freedom writings and to put all the very extensive Beckerath writings on this, apart from his 3 monetary freedom books, onto my series and index them. Naturally, such a work could also be made to grow otherwise, if one could get enough collaborators and agreed that one would accept from all of them their viewpoints on all aspects of monetary freedom for a single encyclopaedia, no matter how divergent their views still are. Alternative media have the space for all of them. Later discussions, retractions and amendments would reduce their remaining disagreements. But whatever disagreements remained, one one point they would have to agree between them, namely: monetary freedom. No one's supposedly optimal system would have to be advocated as the only one which could and should exist in a whole country or the whole world, contrary to the views of all dissenting minorities or majorities. Between them, their historical studies could most likely reveal that almost anything possible in this sphere has already been tried by some people, in some places, for some time, more or less successfully. And from the failures they could learn almost as much. Someone should write a book on monetary crises, that would point out how much worse they would have been if various truck payment, clearing and emergency money issues had not taken place during them, in spite of all contrary prejudices and legislation or customs. You are invited to reproduce any of my own, my father's Kurt H. Zube, also writing under K.H.Z. SOLNEMAN, or Ulrich von Beckerath's writings on this subject (officially, I am the latter's literary heir) and neither Prof. Heinrich Rittershausen's nor Dr. Walter Zander's heirs would object, as I believe, to the reproduction of any of their monetary freedom writings, The less explicitly (for monetary freedom) econmic writings of Prof. Rittershausen are still under copyrights and of less interest to you. Some of his most important ones have never been published outside my series. Alas, I cannot recommend my father's monetary freedom writings beyond short general statements that he favours such freedom. In detail, he was engaged in advocating and further developing a private clearinghouse system, which he believed would still be legal and remain so and would even be, via various discounts and premiums for the participants, better than free ordinary clearing transactions. On this he, Beckerath and I never came to agree. He was also much more interested in the exchange medium and clearing approach to facilitate transactions, rather than mainly in reliable, sound and honest standards for free transactions. Beckerath, Zander and Rittershausen dealt with both and their interrelationships. If the government's paper money (like many paper monies of the 19th century) were to apply at least the classical gold standard and if they were not legal tender, then the situtation would be much improved but, as long as private means of payment alternatives would still be largely legislated against, the monetary problem would not be solved. On the contrary, gold redemptionism, under fractional covers and the legal authority of all creditors to demand, instead of clearing and paper money, gold coins, could lead to monetary crises, as it has in the past. Nor would 100% redemptionism, 100% enforced, be able to avoid all monetary crises - in spite of the teachings of e.g. Rothbard on the subject. That is still one of the major points of disagreements among monetary freedom advocates, a disagreement that is not systematically tackled by confronting all contrary views on this subject. On the one side, you make a good point of not wanting to overwhelm people with reading matter. But any catalog of any large library does, seeing that almost no one, in a long and active reading life, can manage to read more than about 20,000 volumes. And no user of phone books intends to ring everybody listed there. But if everybody were not listed then phone books would be only of limited value. Too much material can be a turn-off - but comprehensive bibliographies, abstract and review compilations as well as alphabetical indexes can also be a turn-on - at least for scholars and students and so can surveys which do not leave out all too much, often some of the most important writings and ideas. There is also a limit for popularizing monetary freedom ideas and techniques, as there are a limit to popularizing e.g. the technique of brain surgery. It would be enough if enough potential issuers were aware of their monetary rights and sound issue and reflux as well as value reckoning systems, to produce sufficient sound exchange media and value standards that enough people would readily come to use them - without understanding the theories and techniques involved. Few people know the theories and techniques of radio, tv and computers - or of electric power production and distribution - but they are capable enough users of such technologies. How inaccessible many monetary freedom writings are is exemplified, anecdotically, by the example of Ulrich von Beckerath, who searched for such writings in English, French and German, for most of his life. Nevertheless, of all the issues of the journal SOUND CURRENCY, during all his life, he managed to obtain only a single issue, that of 1895. In our times, I believe Brookhaven Press, made it available, almost complete, except for one monthly issue, if I remember right, my order for this set, some years ago, which set me back ca. $ 60. I have still to either print-out and fiche or transcribe many of its essays that interest me. Another example was given by Friedrich Hayek, who still believed in 1975 that he was the first economist who ever considered monetary freedom. I once photocopied some of these older monetary freedom texts in the economics library of the University of Freiburg, situated under his office and had a 20 minute talk with him, in which he was still unaware of the other German montary freedom advocates and their writings. He even managed to misunderstand Prof. Rittershausen in a short reference somewhere, as an inflationist. That's like calling a pacifist a war monger. Perhaps that misunderstanding was due to R.'s thick volume on the central bank (Die Zentralnotenbank), in which he tried to suggest that as long as we have this kind of institution, we should at least make the best possible use of it, within its inherent limitations. One has to read very much between the lines to see his own freedom stand in this work. Until the middle 70-ties no monetary freedom book could be published in Germany. Almost by a miracle a single article appeared ca. 1947 that took such a stand in a German academic journal - but did not lead to a breakthrough, either. Rittershausen had a monetary freedom book prepared, to appear just before the German monetary reform of 1948 but there were delays and the reform occurred, establishing the DM. Afterwards, there was again no demand for such a book or a publisher willing to risk putting it out. So it appeared only in my own series, much later. Most of the modern monetary and academic writers for monetary freedom are unaware of most of the older literature on this subject and so they have mostly adopted only a rather limited monetary freedom position. Even when I pointed out to some of them some of the other writings in my series, did they, usually, continue only their limited discussions of their own recent writings and ignored pioneering writings by monetary freedom advocates who had passed their positions by decades before them. Some even adhered to ancient wrong views regarding e.g. the real bills doctrine, which had been often refuted in literature since they were uttered almost 200 years ago. Well, the Malthusians are with us still and so are the modern protectionists and interventionists, essentially centuries behind the best economic insights, even when using modern academic jargon and camouflage terms. Academics are under pressure to deal with all the relevant writings of their contemporaries - and since they have only limited time and energy, they do inevitably tend to ignore many of the prior writings on the subject. Thus they are also victims of economic theory fashions of their times. When they study older ones - or try to - they confine themselves largely to the discussion of some famous classics, like Adam Smith, J.S. Mill and H.Spencer. One reason for this is that most of the other monetary texts are extremely scarce. I believe I saw not a single of the older and less famous ones in Henry Hazlitt's library, attached to the FEE library. Perhaps you can get FAME to post a search request for all kinds of monetary freedom titles, can point out that I would gladly fiche them, if they would not be willing to do so themselves, on fiche, floppies, CD-ROM or online, and that I do work towards a complete library on such subjects, that would sell all titles in cheap duplicates in alternative media. Exchanges of literature between all people interested in such subjects, in form of photocopies or fiche or floppy disk editions, could greatly increase the reference collections of each of the participants. You could also publish a bibliography of such titles and invite additional entires to it. Likewise, abstracts and reviews of them, indexes and combined indexes. Collaboration among monetary freedom advocates, using e-mail, could achieve so much. They would not have to be formal members of any association. But if costs were involved and a centre or individual coordinator could not finance them, then only very small contributions would have to be asked for, per page, if alternative media are used. Among my many projects for myself or others in this sphere are 2 tabulations: One dealing with all kinds of exchange media, all their rightful and necessary features and all the wrongful and unnecessary features they have been given by writers, practicioners and legislators. The second would similarly deal with all kinds of value standards of the past and present or produced for the future, all their good and bad points. Both tabulations should also point out some to all references in which these features are either proposed and defended or attacked. Perhaps the same kind of job should be done on all the fundamental monetary concepts, like legal tender, fiat money, fiduciary issues or tax foundation, free market rating for exchange media and value standards, the right to refuse acceptance at par or altogether of exchange media and value standards that one has not obliged to accept oneself, acceptance or shop foundation, debt foundation, the real bills doctrine, redemptionism in rare metals or debts or consumer goods and services, etc., and all these could and should be combined in a handbook on monetary and financial freedom - one that would abstract the economic science on this subject altogether from the host of wrongful and harmful legislation on this subject. We should also advocate, I believe, the renunciation of all copyrights claims for such titles, at least until full monetary freedom is attained. I feel as strongly about this as about somebody, who believes that he has the answer to war or all kinds of sickness but is prepared to publish it only if royalties are paid to him. One should perhaps distinguish between a website that tries to popularize monetary freedom ideas and one that appeals mainly to scholars and students on the subject. Sorry, but I cannot identify the N.Y.C. public service union that was considering value preserving clauses in their salary contracts when the U.S. dollar was fast inflated. I read only a short notice on this, either in my own public service periodical in Australia or in one of the major papers, like THE AUSTRALIAN or THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD. The reference is currently probably buried in boxes and boxes of as yet not sorted out clippings, photocopies and notes. A letter to the Public Service Union of N.Y.C. might not go amiss. In this case they had nothing to be afraid of, for as far as I know there is no law against such clauses in the U.S. Here one monetary freedom experiment, in which unions were involved, in the 60's, was hushed up, because of the severe penalties involved. Their camouflage term for this, when I asked for details on this experiment, which I described as far as I could in my series, was: "For reasons of industrial security we cannot reveal any information on this". (John Ducker, of the Labour Council of N.S.W., to me, some time after 1964.) As for legal tender legislation supposedly being necessary, according to "experts" at the German Bank Enquete of 1908, to conduct Germany's next war, an enquiry that led to the formal introduction of legal tender in Germany, by a law that came in force on 1.1.1910, I can only say that Ulrich von Beckerath had a copy of this report, had marked the passage there, showed them to me, and referred to this point several times in his letters,. Alas, it was not one of the books I was able to take along to Australia in 1959 or obtain from the heir of his library lateron. In my last attempt only a fraction of his library was accessible, and his remaining correspondence, the rest was stored in one room literally filled with boxes of books - and there was no room in the corridor or other rooms to take out these boxes and go through their contents. Maybe one day I will get this option. But in the meantime, I suppose you could contact one of the large Reserve Bank libraries and would find that reference there. If I had already got around to reproduce not only a good portion but all of the remaining Beckerath papers accessible to me and to index all of them, then I could give you, probably, the page reference, the quote and the expert or experts concerned after a short search. But that may be still years in the future. I am very glad to hear that you are not a "gold bug" or authoritarian advocate of one classical form of the gold standard for all people, whether they like it or not. Beckerath's view on the subject was that a gold weight unit, merely as an accounting and clearing value standard, was objectively the least evil or most reliable - but that even it should not be forced upon any dissenter - since there are so many value standard sectarians with contrary beliefs, a condition which requires the equivalent of religious freedom or tolerance. The "fight for honest monetary weights and measures" must include, to be consistent, full monetary freedom, for exchange media, of whatever kind, if they are not themselves to effect a value standard by e.g. monopoly supply conditions, must be competitively supplied and competition in exchange media, expressing value standards, requires also free choice in value standards and publicity of all aspects of these value standards and issues. If, for instance, only gold coins or silver coins or a prescribed proportion between them are exclusive and forced currencies in any country, then this exclusiveness and forced acceptance and forced value will give them an above free market value rating - compared with the condition of full monetary freedom. In other words, a legislated dishonesty would be involved, one than lead and has led to monetary crises. The same applies when fractional reserves or 100% redemption are not voluntary contractual arrangements between issuers and acceptors but legislative prescriptions for paper substitutes for what is considered by some as the only honest money, namely rare metal money. Remember Henry Ford's famous remark: You can have your car in any colour - as long as it is black! Some goldbugs take a similar stand. And this in times when some people have something like an almost religious aversion against gold. In this they are like many anarchists, who insist upon using this term in times and places and among vast majorities of people who connect quite opposite notions with this term. Capitalism and gold only among consenting adults! - is a tolerant stand that does not provoke as much opposition among the less informed. If, without coercion and deception, some people readily accept even the worst kind of exchange media and value standards, then dishonesty is not involved but, rather, an extreme kind of ignorance, prejudice or apathy towards the own rightful and rational interests. Most people and even most monetary experts are still very far from being monetarily emancipated. Ulrich von Beckerath used to speak of a popular monetary religion among the people and of most of the academic and the government's experts on this as its priests. You are at liberty to post any of the LMP publications that are not under prior copyrights by others, like e.g. many of the modern monetary freedom essays in academic journals, especially since Hayek wrote his first two and essays on the subject in 1975 and 1976. I would hardly know where to start with my recommendations. Among the short and popularly written ones are Beckerath's Berlin Program of 1952, in PP 41, The Four Law Drafts, by several authors, in the early thirties - which came very close to being introduced as emergency legislation by Chancellor Bruening, whose right hand man was a Dr. Munzer, one of the co-authors, who had placed this proposel already on Bruening's desk. But then B. was overthrown. This draft would have ended the severe monetary despotism which led to the Great Inflation and Great Depression in Germany and with them to the Hitler Regime and W.W. II - and its aftermath. Another case for history as if or history if such and such seemingly minor thing had happened or not happened or had happened a little earlier or later. Since the conception of many to most people has not been planned, one should think that such suppositional alternative histories would have been frequently written. But even history from the monetary point of view has so far received only all too few sensible titles. You might also like Dr. Walter Zander's short pamphlet: A Way of the Monetary Chaos, 1935, 14pp in PP 9 and in an appendix to a book by Prof. Edgard Milhaud, 1936, 21pp, in PP 770. Look in my catalog under monetary freedom and free banking, especially under Beckerath, Ulrich von Beckerath's extensive draft of monetary freedom rights is contained in PP 428ff, on p. 1651ff, also in my collection of human rights drafts in PP 589/590. I do not yet have learned how to maintain and supplement my website. With the current server, limiting me to 5 MB, I have only a few KBs let. On 21 Feb. I will attend a course on how to handle websites and I do intend to open another website with one of the free suppliers for most of my intended additional material, among them an Australian Freedom Address Directory. The latter will be supplemented also by international addresses, that are through the Internet even easier to access to many Australians than are Australian freedom addresses by mail or personal contacts. Until then, I will ust mention many websites and e-mail addresses in the contents listings of each of my editions, which are later embodied in my literature list, of which supplements and integrated lists will appear online. I have already joined, in my own way, the fight for honest monetary weights and measures, as well as for freely competing exchange media and clearing options, - since I met Ulrich von Beckerath and joined his small associations in 1952 and have not ceased working in this direction since then, By formally joining some other association, like your own, I could not do or spend more in this direction. I welcome you to this struggle, which does not depend upon associational affiliations but upon sufficient collaboration among interested groups and individuals, utilizing all the affordable and efficient media that are now accessible to them, after they have experienced a vast neglect of monetary freedom writings in print on paper - for centuries. Even most such writings that had temporarily reached print, usually in small editions and one language only, are inaccessible not to most of those interested, in most countries and most of even the largest libraries. Writers, publishers and editors like Henry Meulen (with his own and all too limited free banking scheme), made the mistake of passing on their references to the Goldsmith Library, within the British Library, where professional librarians guard these rare titles like dragons against photocopying. I had the same experience with some other libraries. So far I have downloaded over 50 pages from your website and do intend to reproduce them in full in one of my upcoming LMP microfiche, My series contains many issues dealing exclusively with monetary freedom but lately I have also interspersed some such contributions among general libertarian texts. Sometimes I have entered a reference like: a monetary freedom or a free banking titles to my listings and via such references at least these titles can be found. I have also reproduced on microfilm the contents listings, by PP numbers and do intend to digitize these listings and put them on line. They will then also make the search for some titles easier, via the automatic search function. However, my website had to have a-z subdivisions (even these are already too long) and searching the complete list easily would perhaps require downloading all of them into one large file, on a CD-ROM. In the meantime, I can only refer you to the free banking bibliography compilation in PP 1022 for PP titles on this subject to this issue - and other such literature I heard or read about. To my knowledge there exists nowhere a complete collection of all monetary freedom writings. My own may still be the only effort that at least tries to approach this target, as far as one individual, with several other commitments, can try to do. I not only try to archive such texts in my library, where they would be largely inaccessible to most people in the world, most of the time, but to share many of them with my microfiche editions. A few such activists could solve this task in a reasonable time, with moderate expenditure of energy and funds.So far the freedom of exchange and sound value standard advocates, who are also naturally in favour of freedom of expression and information, have not yet got around to do so. Why not? I do not know. So many other problems would be solved or would be much closer to their solution once the monetary problems are solved. Can you explain to me why your association shows no obvious interest in the alternative exchange media and clearing options - in spite of their close linkage to sound value standards? 1022, German School, RCfMaFF leaflet: sent by air mail. PIOT, John Zube