From: "John Zube" To: "Thomas H. Greco, Jr." Cc: "Stephen DeMeulenaere" References: <000201c21d68$7ea5e200$a34d343f@v4dq1> Subject: Re: Papua New Guinea Project Date: Sun, 30 Jun 2002 21:30:35 +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-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2600.0000 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2600.0000 Dear M. Stephen DeMeulenaere and Dear Thomas, thanks for your informative letter. Judging merely by the name, the free banking advocate Henry Meulen may have been a distant relative. Sometimes, certain interests seem to be "in the blood". One ancestor (grandfather?) of Ulrich von Beckerath was a banker in the Rhineland, a revolutionary of 1848 and later a finance minister. One of Beckerath's brothers was also an economist - but one of the mainstream of dogmatists and true believers. If some arrogance or condescension was unintentionally expressed in my previous letter to Thomas, regarding the Tolai people, about whom I know nothing, I do apologize. What happened was more the kind of pessimism that develops with old age. The supposedly civilized, educated and developed people are still subscribing to largely primitive, monopolistic, centralistic and coercive ideas, theories and institutions regarding money and finance and may have more prejudices of this kind in their heads than have those who were not, for all too long, miseducated and conditioned into them. In some respects older and supposedly less developed cultures have experimented with flawed systems long before we did - and rejected them. E.g the Chinese peoples under the rule of the Mongols, which was an almost totalitarian regime. I believe it was the Ashanti in Africa, who, about a century or more ago, experimented with the misnamed "Welfare State" before we were foolish enough to do the same. And when it comes to genuine local self-government then, in the 19th and 20th century, before "advanced" territorial statism was adopted there, e.g. the ca. 1,000 tribes of New Guinea practised more of it than we have been able to for a long time. But then so did some of the earlier settlers of Ireland and England, before feudalistic and royal systems where imposed upon them - and only sorry and nominal remnants of such self-governments remain. As I mentioned before the "modern" and "scientific" index currencies proposed did have their ancient precedents in "primitive" monies. The speedy and public justice by Kadis in Islamic countries has also great advantages over some of our systems, in which all too often unjust decisions are arrived at - after huge costs and huge delays. When it comes to monetary reform - and to many other reforms - then 2 or 3 people by chance thrown together, all having some interest in monetary reforms, even in more monetary freedom than exists today, do rarely come to a complete agreement, unless all of them have happened to adopt popular prejudices. This is one of the reasons why, in this sphere as well, full experimental freedom - i.e., the most diverse arrangements, all practised among volunteers only, combined with sufficient publicity for all their experiments - is the optimal way to achieve and maintain progress. Dr. Shann Turnbull, as well as Conrad Hopman of New Caledonia (I haven't heard of him for many years - but did microfiche some of his writings) do have their own particular monetary reform "hobby-horse" to ride. Like most monetary reformers, they do want a whole country to adopt all of their reforms, often amounting to a whole utopian system and peaceful competion with other reform systems is not high on their agenda. I have no information on the Tolai people and their money and banking traditions, unless something is mentioned about them in two books that I have somewhere on supposedly "primitive" money systems, one by Paul Einzig. I have not yet checked them for this. As for ponzi, pyramid and multi-level-marketing schemes - to which a few have been added according to my e-mail, I do regret that otherwise well informed libertarians have fallen for it, like my father fell for some roulette system. There seems to be no limit to human foolishness. On some subjects all too many people simply refuse to use their intelligence and judgment. Naturally, the initiators of such schemes are smart enough to make money from them. How creative people can be when neither traditions, customs, jurisdictions, laws and powerful institutions do hold them back - we still do not know. I was made optimistic by the experiences gathered with Matsushita's advanced suggestion box scheme, later exceeded by those of Sony, which extracted from employees an astonishing number of useful improvement suggestions, simply by invitation, paying attention to them, using the ones that were useful and paying small rewards for accepted ones. The percentage of suggestions - coming from "average" and otherwise quite "ordinary" people, under these conditions, which were not practicable, or useful enough, was rather small, quite contrary to the percentage of most of the systems offered by ideologues - socialists to anarchists - utopians and reformers of all kinds, often quite out of touch with reality. But then employees, making suggestions about their work sphere and competence, have to stick to their kinds of realities and they do comprehend them much better than many of their superiors, directors, shareholders and managers and, naturally, the various utopians etc. comprehend the whole world and how it works - without "the help" of their utopian or idealistic reform schemes. When I condemned the double currency in divided Berlin, I condemned not the fact that there were two currencies (I would have welcomed many more) but merely the fact that both of them were despotic government currencies and as such, almost inevitably, as well as constantly, mismanaged. Local currencies (not necessarily one only in each locality or province) competing with and supplementing a centrally run and imposed currency for a whole country, can offer definite advantages. Money is not like water, spreading itself quite evenly, where there are interconnections - and ultimately in the level of large lakes and oceans. When there are certain barriers then parts of a country may be over-supplied with currency while others are undersupplied. I remember being paid, for considerable periods, as a public servant, with notes apparently fresh from the printing presses employed by the Reserve Bank of Australia, since the notes were quite unused and still had consecutive numbers. Other segments of the economy had not such springs of "fresh water" at their disposal. Money, too, tends to flow better in some channels than in others. A quite even circulation of a single money, issued only from one center, is merely a mental construct, not the reality. Country people are often under-supplied with cash and credit - and other opportunities, compared with city peoplel. I feel sure that if tickets to all performances were to be issued only by a central ticket office of a country then many performances could not be sold out, or sufficiently sold, simply due to lack of tickets. Bureaucrats are infamous for the time delays they manage to create. However, if every performance group is free to either print its own tickets or hire one of many small printers for this purpose, then neither lack of tickets nor quality of tickets will ever be a serious problem for them. There is nothing problematical, mythical, secret, incomprehensible or dangerous about the issue and reflux of tickets. With private and competing currencies it could be quite the same, provided there is no legislative intervention and coercion and control involved. Ulrich von Beckerath used to state that one central bakery in a large country cannot sufficiently supply the whole country with fresh bread. Particularly the French tradition of small local bakeries seems to confirm that observation. On the other hand, among the numerous pollutants now added to flour for bread and other bakeries, there are also preservatives, and transport for the spread of newly baked bread has been greatly improved. Reports of extended countries like the US and Russia, have often pointed out that in some areas the country was well supplied wish cash - while in others there was a great scarcity of it. That applied to silver and gold coins as well as to "modern" legal tender paper money. As for Gresham's Law, in the pop version, of misunderstanding it, no distinction is made between legal tender money and market rate and optional money. Under legal tender the worse tends to supplement the better one, because it is better for the payer than the payee and the payee has no come-back: He can neither refuse nor discount it. Remove this coercion. Then the better money will be more readily accepted, the worse money more readily refused or discounted and so the better money, tends to drive out the worse one. The worse one will have difficulties, then, to be issued at all, to any considerable amounts. That sounds a simple distinction but over the centuries only relatively few economists have seen it clearly and, I believe, an anthology of all the different understandings and misunderstandigns of Gresham's Law may still have to be compiled. Such a survey will be somewhat complicated by the fact that a great variety of degrees of legal tender have been experimented with. In my little booklet on legal tender, in PEACE PLANS 19, I came to list 19 different kinds or degrees of it but am feel quite sure that more different kinds did exist. Judging by some vague hints in various books that I have read, there existed, for decades in the Pacific, a European trading company, called, I believe, Burns & Phillip - or similar. It was an exporter and importer, shipping company, almost monopolizing the island trade for many decades, and also running a chain of general stores, which, in many instances, in small localities, were probably the only ones. This company experienced the usual cash flow difficulties - the natives had hardly any cash earning options, most cash or credit was only earned by large exporters and tourism was not yet a major money spinner. So this company had also difficulties in paying with cash (earned in its general stores) its local debts, while it had probably no difficulties in getting cash and settling its debts or paying cash in London, San Francisco, Paris or Sydney. Thus, as a self-help measure, it had, regardless of the currency laws formally applying, issued its own store currency, which was readily accepted in its own stores, and thereby become locally liquid in paying its local debts, while supplying a useful local currency to whatever there was of a local economy, extending the options beyond the shell money options. (Which were limited, accordint to you, due to traditional and systematic hoarding of this supposed "exchange medium". - Thus this "exchange medium" was taken out of the exchange process and prevented rather than facilitated exchanges, most of the time!) Nowhere did I find a detail record on this (Burns & Phillip enterprise and its note issues) - but I must also admit that I did not make a systematic search for such information. Most likely, the company histories were also purged of such details, in order not to involved the company in official charges against it, for having offended against various currency act clauses. Some old-timers may remember some of the details or have written them down in private records. But, then, it was largely a foreign corporation, somewhat disliked as such, not paying much attention to local traditions and acting largely like most monopolists did. Probably they did not purchase many or enough local supplies with their shop currency, nor did they sufficiently act as local bankers, with short term loans, payable in their currency - like some of the Scottish Bank Note issuing companies did and thus this experimentation, like other experiments, over the centuries, with "truck" "payments, factory shop money and cantine money, was not always fully comprehended and welcomed - and never fully developed to its optimal capacity. Perhaps you have heard or read much more about this experiment than I did. Theoretically, each local payment circle, e.g. that of local government taxes, rates and fees, and that of local government services, could also be optimally serviced by its own means of payment, which the government pays out to its employees and suppliers and which the local people then use to pay their local taxes, rates and fees with to the local government. Like all such schemes, if and to the extent that they were properly run, over centuries, and experimented with again and again, they worked quite well, the more so, the less force was used. If acceptance and valuation was quite free, and a sound value standard was used, then no more could be issued than could be issued at par or slightly below par. And few were driven into bankruptcy because they could not pay their taxes, fees and rates. And local government was largely independent from loans by local or central banks. I for one, and all too few others, desire monetary independence, as far as the issue and acceptance of exchange media and value standards is concerned, for all people, in the same way as I demand independence in the use or non-use of any goods, products, tools, machines and raw materials, peacefully, productively and tolerantly used in the own affairs. Using diesel oil and nitrate fertilizers to indiscriminately and explosively murder other people is quite another matter, not an aspect of freedom but of tyranny. Naturally, local governments would not be the only potential issuers. Others do supply many more goods and more necessary wanted and less unnecessary and unwanted services. All exchanges that facilitated by competitively issued currencies, for which the most suitable issuers and acceptors are the producers and sellers - and their local combinations. You say that "We have some cultural issues as well '..." - Money, if free from political and legal intervention, is an essential instrument and institution of any somewhat developed culture and any country, in which it is more or less monopolized and mismanaged, suffers greatly in its culture, not only in its politics and economics - and may become as uncultured as the Nazi and the Soviet and Maoist regime have been, in spite of all their attempts to governmentally organize and provide their kind of "culture" as well. Bastiat summed that up very well with his remark: "Society is exchange!" Many Governments, that called themselves socialist, from the National Socialists to the Soviet ones, were to that extent not social or exchange cultures at all or societies at all but, rather, Beds of Procrustes, crippling society and chaining its individuals and groups. The best kinds of tax foundation money were those which used a sound value standard, free market rates against it in general circulation and legal tender only towards the issuer, the tax authority. Bonds, shares and other capital assets, land, wholesale stocks of raw materials etc. were mostly only imaginary or legal "covers" for currency issues, for most holders of these currencies did not want to convert them into such covers but, rather, into consumer goods and services in daily demand. That applies even to stocks of gold and silver, as redemption goods or guaranty funds. The daily user of a currency, does not want to buy gold or silver but, e.g., some tobacco or a newspaper or a loaf of bread or some fruit or a meal with his currency. Asset "currencies" are thus not "currencies", not current or liquid or immediately redeemable into greatly wanted and needed goods and services. In free competition with soundly based private currencies they would soon be widely and finally generally refused. Thus issuers like tea houses, brothels, barber shops, general stores, restaurants etc. - and, naturally, their associations in streets or villages or parts of a city, were more successful issuers - if not interfered with by officials. Whatever value standards free people agreed upon, between themselves, for their transactions, was sounder and more relevant to them than was any value standard offered by a distant center. During the last few decades there have been three competing currencies in strife-torn Israel: 1. the official and legal tender money, the "Shekel", always more or less inflated. 2. the official and every few month or every month adjusted index standard and 3. the unofficiel street currency, the US dollar. On the black market some other of the better currencies have probably a limited circulation as well. Even some illiterate youths around the Mediterraenean, given the opportunity, learned to distinguish between quite a number of currencies, enough to accept them at their market rate and to convert them into each other. National and international bankers, by comparison, hugely equipped with computers, are much less capable of such transactions. I just tried to transfer US $ 325 cash to a US bookshop for a book order. The bank could do it only by first expensively changing the US cash into Australian dollars, then using these Australian dollars to buy a US $ international cheque and that procedure would cost me almost A $ 50! Oh the efficiencies of modern communications and bankers! The Post Office in Australia would not accept US $'s at all but would only charge A $ 2.50, if I bought an international money order with Australian dollars. Now, the Post Office is government run, and has become more expensive and more unreliable and slow in its services, rather than faster. And the honesty of these governmental employees does also leave something to be desired. Here they protested once against the installation of video cameras while they were sorting mail in an postal exchange office! By implication, they wanted to be able to steal unobserved! Nevertheless, I will probably send the cash in one or two letters, which will cost me only $ 1.50 or $ 3. Generally, banks have been run so inefficiently, that they had to increase their charges more and more and had to close down more and more of their branches. Thus community banks or credit unions were established to replace them. Political borders have a reality and relevance only to interventionists, to dictocrats, not to people allowed to produce and trade freely. Monetary freedom does not have to be considered by authorities or by the general population, as an option to be studied and then, upon agreement, to be generally accepted. It has only to remain permitted and unpunished among volunteers, to the degrees that they are willing to accept it, in order to spread, quite naturally, like some pop music, fashion, dance or other fad, among all those who come to like it. It is part of a natural growth and development among free people, not in chains or barriers, not in any ways serfs or mere subjects or obedient robots or conscripts or tax slaves. However, even the worst kinds of monetary despotism, once driven to the extremes, have to become somewhat relaxed or reformed, however temporarily, to tolerate some alternatives. With regard to ideal, free, competing money systems there are no enlightened peoples in this world but only a handful of reformers who have seen some of the freedom potentials and have come to doubt or despise some of the imposed monetary shackles or regulations or systems and their exclusive and forced currencies. The way your describe the Tabu, it seems similar to the accumulted gold or silver stores or treasures of jewelry of the rich, the European nobility in the past and the Indian nobility for much later. It is more used as capital and a status symbol than as an exchange medium to facilitate all possible and desirable exchanges between productive people. In some instances these treasures even served as basic funds to finance wars or feuds. That at the end of the life of such a big Tabu accumulator his treasure is all given out, is not a good enough substitute for it being widely used as A MEANS OF EXCHANGE, for all the local exchanges happening during his lifetime. Imagine the U.S. president or Treasury hoarding all US currency, for the life of a president, or the duration of his office, and only afterwards spreading them and thus permitting their subjects to use them as exchange media, while outlawing all alternative exchange media and clearing options! Something very different from "culture", prosperity and contentment would result. Thus, I believe, the TABU should be liquidified or mobilized, by a kind or ticket money, that anyone or any group could issue - but must also accept, at par, for its goods and services. It would find, then, that it could issue it only to the extent that he or his association do provide, locally, the currently desired goods and service, paid for with this ticket money, and with the prices expressed in, and negotiated in TABU units, but payable only, if the payers has not TABU cash available, in the TABU tokens or substitutes, whether expressed in coins, plastic tokens or paper slips, marked clear enough with all the necessary details for issuers and acceptors. Culture would make this quite clear, under freedom. Governments would never quite comprehend it and any attempts by them to control it would tend to end in major mismanagement, in spite of the best initial intentions. Monstrosities would be created like governmental central banks, Amtrack railways, government post offices etc. Precisely because I am more interested in culture than in government, I would like to see taxes and government spending abolished, starting with private and voluntaristic competition with it by autonomous cultural groups, doing their own things to and for themselves, exempted from government laws, jurisdiction, administration, institutions and taxes - as long as they do act peacefully and not as governmentalists towards dissenters, i.e., members of other volunteer communities. Individual and group secessionism and full exterritorial autonomy for volunteer communities, rather than government-run culture, economics, politics, traditions, culture, money, finance, education etc. The "civilized" and "enlightened" people in the most "advanced" countries (with the most powerful mass murder devices!) are presently no more ready for this kind of liberty or even thinking about it, than are the most "primitive" people - this in spite of the fact that they do have better and easier access to better information. I did use the wrong term when I used "barter" in connection with the Makuta. A kind of advanced and abstract mental arithmetic was involved regarding the Makuta as value standard. It was the general indicator of all prices. Like the TABU appears to be among the Tolai and others who may use it. But it was not a physical means of payment. As such may have operated, among people, who largely knew each other by business relations and reputation, a kind of "credit", expressed in Makuta. People probably appeared in the market with their goods, not with ready cash, "sold" them for Makuta "credits" - and used these "credits" to purchase, what they wanted, from other suppliers in the market. In the end, there not being much surplus production and much in long term storage options, everybody appeared on the market with the goods he could supply - and left with the goods he wanted or needed. The whole accounting may have been kept in the heads, like oral contracts were before written contracts were developed. In these times memories were much better. The recital ability of most people was more developed. Otherwise, a local market authority, established and maintained by volunteers, could keep a record of all transactions, would grant credit or clearing notes or book account credits and allow them to be traded for goods wanted and would clear the accounts of the participants. Exact descriptions, in writing, by well trained economists, are, alas, lacking. The concept of cattle, expressed finally in pictures or names of some of the earliest coins, may have served other "primitive" free trading arrangements similarly. Much more than mere "barter" was involved. At least, quite different from "legal tender" money, the value standard was quite clearly separated from whatever was used as a means of "payment" or to settle mutual accounts. The concept of clearing or the mutual cancellation of debts, not only bilateral but multilaterally, appeared late in the minds of bankers and theorizing economists, often centuries, if not thousands of years after traders had extensively - but not consistently and optimally developed - used in it practice. And it is still quite insufficiently comprehended in most orthodox monetary theories as well as in the theories of most monetary reformers, even of many people who advocate degrees of monetary freedom. - They, too, still uphold notions of "money creation" or "credit creation" out of nothing or out of thin air and accuse bankers of doing that. Indeed, people who use an abstract value standard are to that extent at least intellectually developed. The brains of somewhat developed animals, like dogs, for instance, have advanced to the degree of recognizing property as well as something of value - but have not yet arrived at an abstract value standard - and are quite incapable of comprehending something like an exchange, except in play with companions. An exchange medium is as incomprehensible to them, as it is to a baby. If a value standard - of whatever kind, as long as it is useful, at least locally, is freely agreed upon, then, theoretically, unlimited exchanges become possible, locally, using it, between all local people, to the extent that they can and will supply locally wanted goods and services to each other. They can do so via all kinds of clearing and short term credit arrangements, whether they are kept merely as promises and verbal contracts in their minds, expressed in accounting books or in clearing certificates on paper or in any kind of token coins. Moreover, to the extent that their local economy does supply goods and services to other local economies, they could then also trade accounts, short term credits, clearing certificates, tokens, all free market rated and optional, with other productive communities, with which they already tended to trade, to the extent that there was communication and transport and goods and service exchange possible and desired between them. In other words, their own local payment communities could also issue their national and international clearing certificates to the extent that they are or could become involved in such exchanges, i.e., go beyond the local subsistence economy. Naturally, such book credits, clearing certificates, electronic accounts, expressed in TABU value standards - or whatever is agreeable - would tend to be only locally accepted at par. At other and more distant places they might come to suffer a considerable discount, i.e., goods bought with them, from the other communities, would become correspondingly more expensive. At the same time, for the foreign earners of these credits or tokens, expressed in TABU or otherwise, the goods and services of the local issuers of these tokens and credits, would become correspondingly cheaper, thus encouraging purchases from them, by which these credits or tokens would stream back - balancing the mutual accounts and trades, withdrawing the exchange media issued, or credits or accounts, from circulation. You are quite right, numerous steps between total freedom and total despotism are possible and rarely do whole communities jump from one to the other in a single jump. Individuals and small groups might - and thinkers might in their thought experiments. At least in one book that I have read, long ago, the Australian Aborigines were also described as continent-wide traders, with traditional trade routes all over the continent, although only for small and easily portable goods. They had no pack animals - and did not, to my knowledge, use their women and children as such, either, as some tribes may have done - and they did not have the advantage of an ocean and boats to carry considerable quantities of goods. Nor did I ever hear of them having developed a kind of value standard for their exchanges. Due to the climate, they did not even use furs as value standard, nor was tobacco known to them, nor did they, as Red Indians did, later, use blankets or axes as value standards. Somewhat close to the abstract TABU of the Tolai is possibly the abstract Wampum of the Red Indians, which was only symbolically represented. - Alas, I have heard of no attempts of Red Indians, in their reservations, wanting to revive Wampums as value standards and alternative exchange media for their exchanges. It would not take much and prolonged experimentation among them and their sympathizers, if free to do so, to develop a better value standard and exchange and clearing medium than is the present U.S. dollar or any other government paper money that is also a forced and exclusive currency. Yes, if people are free of governmental interventionism - and also of all too restrictive faiths, customs and traditions, then it is quite astonishing what they can manage to do for themselves. But shell money and all its traditions should not be taken too literally as the only supplementary means and only as quite physical or material options. Substitutions for shells, using the term, and its fixed value in numerous heads, are quite possible and could make this value standard very useful if it may be freely expressed in a variety of different and competing exchange media, in the same way that paper monies, using gold weight units only as value standards, for free accounting and clearing, and marking out prices, but not as obligatory redemption goods or reserve funds or exclusive means of payment (gold coins), greatly expanded monetary exchanges and did so without inflation and currency famine risks, via optional acceptance or rejection and free discounting, with only the issuer being obliged to accept his own issues like legal tender, at any time at par, regardless of how much it may have been discounted in general local circulation. "... designing appropriate community exchange systems..." - I do not know but somewhat doubt that "designing" is the most appropriate term here. To me it "smells" too much of "centrally planning" the affairs of others, whether they agree or do not. We should not have our lives, our dreams, our actions, our liberties, our rights, or productivity, our exchanges, our own business, "designed" by others, no matter how famous and recognized or official they are, as "professionals" or "experts". As long as there are no legal, administrative, juridical, religious, ideological, customary or traditional difficulties or barriers, alternative exchange, clearing and credit media, as well as value standards, will be freely developed by those wanting and needing them. The would grow and spread quite naturally, like any other product and service. Tooth brushes and tennis rackets are also designed now, by their producers, but a central design office and a universal design for all their potential users, is not required. A locally optimal exchange medium is partly a product and partly a service. It is part of locally freely concluded contracts that does not have to have bureaucratic designs inflicted upon them, no more so than any locally or nationally fashionable dress or a widely popular local dish. Apart from some common features, publicity aspects, common sense and honesty requirements, the exchange media and clearing avenues and widely accepted local value standards can have a large number of small and diverse features that their users prefer among themselves. There is not mathematical or exact limit to the variety of contracts and associations that are possible, in this sphere as well. That tends to become clear to any collector of notes or coins or any reader of the numerous handbooks published on the subject. Ideally, unification and standardization should take place only to the extent that the participants desire it and find it beneficial for them. And to that extent they do not need any prohibitions for deviations from them. Nor do the issuers and acceptors of "tickets" or gift vouchers require unification or standardization. The storehouse of TABU is not the ideal issuing centre. Currency should be current or liquid or cash for daily, even hourly, wanted and needed purchases, not of some supposedly necessary currency good, or asset, but of consumer goods and services. It should also be liquid or cash in the payment of all other kinds of debts, for which its use has either been agreed upon or is optional. Take the extreme cases of asset currencies: Bonds, shares and land. The holder of a currency does not, every shopping day, want to buy one or several shares or square feet of land. His needs and wants are very different. And if he appeared at a shopping centre or real estate office with a few shares or claims to square feet of land or some mortgage letters, instead of with cash or with bank credit, he would not be very welcome. Not everything that is valuable is suitable or optimal as currency, as cash. Genuine exchange media should not, like TABU, be accumulated and stored, until a death occurs, and then be distributed, either among heirs, or via death duties among all tax payers or government benefit recipients, but, instead, should circulate, better oscillate, quite shortly, to bring about the turnovers they were intended for and which provide their essential value and cover. If a provincial currency were issued based upon the treasures accumulated by the prominent TABU holders, then this would almost be comparable to the satirical proposal by Wolfgang von Goethe, in his "Faust" drama, in which it was proposed that a paper money be issued, based upon the value of all the gold and silver treasures still buried somewhere, not yet found and brought into circulation. Quite obviously, these values did and do exist still - somewhere, location unknown. (Here these treasures, their size and location would be known - but they would still not be immediately accessible and useful as exchange media.) To merely anticipate them, their future possession, with certificates etc., is quite wrong, at least for those, who are forced to supply consumer goods and services for them - while these suppliers remain suppressed as potential issuers of exchange media. "... these ideas just wouldn't work." - Quite right. They would not immediately be accepted by all or by the majority. At most only by a small minority. But that small minority should be free to do so! "People trust the tabu because it is tied to culture". Cultures differ. Each culture differs in itself and changes, constantly, fast or slowly and to different degrees for different individuals and different associations. We do no longer have any universal culture or locally universal cultures, either, no more so than we have any universal philosophy or religion or ideology or art or craft. People will trust the "ticket money" that they they issue and have to accept and also their voluntary customers will - as they will trust a quality tool they produced or supplied or use. "The idea of giving freedom to anyone to issue their money would directly conflict with culture, and would be stamped out quick by the Big Men, who can mobilize their clan armies." - To the extent that such a situation exist - it may be traditional but hardly cultural, no more so than the imposition of any religion, ideology, economic or political system is "cultural". Coercion is coercion, in every sphere - and a blight upon any genuine culture and free development or free and voluntary continuance of any custom or tradition. Indeed, and more than you may be aware of, any degree of monetary and financial despotism is closely associated with political and bureaucratic and ideological and religious despotism. At the same time, monetary freedom, intelligently used, is one of the most powerful means to resist and overthrow any kind of despotism. Here I will not go into the details of this. Let me just point out that e.g. the Nazis and the Soviets made maximum use of their monetary powers for their terror and war machines. "The Germans banned the money". Officials in Germany were probably more thorough than other officials somewhere else, to ban, e.g., most Germans from using the kinds of exchange media and value standards that they, their various minority groups, would have preferred among themselves, over the official, exclusive and forced currency, especially when and while it was extremely abused, either in an inflationary, deflationary or stagflationary way. Germans many numerous more or less sound and practical attempts to break the chains of this monetary despotism - but it remains "democratically" imposed upon them, via a monopolistic and coercive miseducation in its favor. That Australian authorities where somewhat tolerant in this respect was news to me and I would like to find out some more details on this degree of monetary tolerance. I know that some Australians were active in spreading productive cooperatives in China, e.g. among ammunition workers, during the war with Japan, while such cooperatives remain still very rare in Australia. Sometimes it is easier to promote a certain reform in another country than in the own. Glad to hear that at least 3 Tolai Tabu money exchange facilities do already exist. These could become multiplied, as needed, and they could also come to trade in more than 2 currencies. Exchange media intended to promote daily exchanges, rather than storage during the lifetime of a Big Man, should have a limited life span, like tickets have, and like the goods and service offers have, upon which they should be based. The money issued by a baker or a green grocer, based upon their products for sale, should have a limited life span. If they were hoarded by a Big Man, then to that extent they would not stream back, be exchanged for bread and fruit or vegetables and the bread and produce would rot away and be thrown away. However, if Big Men hoarded them, then the issuers should be free to declare that, e.g., after 3 months, they would no longer accept them and they should be free, at any time, to issue replacement monies of their own, to the extent that they are able and willing to redeem them in their own ready for sale goods and services. The Big Men would then accumulate monies no longer valid and about as useful to their heirs as the "money" of the game called "Monopoly". Indeed, via private or official armies, they could enforce the acceptance of their monopoly money or requisitioning certificates. But that would hardly make them more popular and would lead to their more rapid overthrow - inspite of "tradition" und "culture" and "customs" being on their side. When soldiers and bureaucrats are paid in more and more value-less government "money" then they do tend to become disobedient or run away, as well as the other citizens. I see that you have been busy with many other affairs. The study of freedom in the monetary sphere, on its own, can be a lifetime's job, seeing that monetary despotism is still so predominant in ideas, writings, institutions and faiths. Credit unions free to develop their own honest games and savings and credit rules are one thing. Forced under government legislation and into governmental forms and conditions, is quite another thing. "Post-conflict social reconstruction" can be upon the coercive, territorial, centralistic and monopolistic model, bureaucratically financed and run, or can be free, voluntary, competitive, experimental and exterritorially autonomous. For me it is obvious which model is preferable. "Civic education". Like general, religious, political, economic, philosophical, ideological, psychological and moral education, becomes a problem when government run, under territorial government notions. How can one man know, even if he is an extraordinary genius, what would best suit a whole culture? This is the ancient monarchical fallacy, now continued by prime ministers and presidents, as well as by other leaders, authorities, professionals and experts of committees. Every man knows best where his shoe pinches. And most people cannot even run their own lives optimally, far less the lives of all members of their close or distant relatives and still far less the lives of their local community or of a national or of the world community. If they think that they can, then this is, objectively, a sign of insanty, although no government trained and certified psychologist would be prepared to so certify them. "But in introducing new systems, some basic changes are required to ensure trust, transparency and simplicity of management..." I would put voluntarism and tolerance first, also autonomy. Ensuring trust via government action? It rather ought to be privately earned. And readiness to accept is much more important than trust. Distrusted exchange media can be almost immediately presented to those obliged to redeem them into their goods and services, for which they have been issued, or rather, in the range of goods and services they do offer. With this presentation and use any unfounded distrust would rapidly disappear and be replaced by the knowledge of the acceptability of an exchange medium. But transparency or publicity, as well as simplicity would help. Among the simplicity required is the option to refuse to accept an exchange medium or a value standard, or to discount it. Any system not offering this very simple free choice deserves to be distrusted. You might ponder the continued existence of certain customs, ceremonies and traditions, without the backing of any positive and written laws about them. Free people are free to do the things that are important to them, that do preserve their lives and improve their lives, including the issue of alternative exchange media and their acceptance or market rating. However, all too many of these unwritten and "unlawful" customs etc. were as intolerant and despotic as the numerous legal ones we suffer under. "after the fall of capitalism". - Capitalism hasn't fallen yet and cannot fall, because it is still the unrealized ideal. This you say after one of the best publicized falls of State socialism and a wider spread of pro-capitalist notions and practices than has happened for many decades before! Who lives in cloud nine? Who is more realistic? Who is more of a dreamer? It is the fragments of capitalism that are still allowed to exist and to be practised that keep us alive, every day. But on this, too, we will have to agree to disagree. In spite of our disagreements, your letter contained much that is of interest to me. For that I thank you. PIOT, John Zube (Monetarily this means: To each the monetary system or non-monetary system of his or her dreams!)