John Zube, 7 Oxley St., Berrima, NSW 2577          9/May 1992

Kurt Schuler, 4045 N 21st. St., Arlington, VA 22 207 or
Dept. of Economics, George Mason University, 4400 University Drive, Fairfax, Va. 22 030

Dear Kurt,
           The microfiche which you had ordered for Algirdas Degutis, c/o INTO Corporation, Karlstr. 5, Ludwigsburg, W. Germany, had been returned to me as unknown there. I had waited for a query from him with the new address, but in vain - and then forget about it until I looked into your file again. Do you know his new address?

I enclose my latest supplementary list. An integrated one does not yet exist but I have included all my titles in a libertarian bibliography compilation that comes presently to 2.5 MB but will only be printed out and filmed after further growth efforts, most of them, hopefully, largely automated via scanning and disk copying with the aid of Brian Martin at Wollongong U. ( If these are really so labour saving then why hasn't anybody compiled a close to complete bibliography as yet? )

The free banking listing which I had compiled for my trip has finally been included in this supplement & I have not yet got around to add the titles I collected or listed since.

The newly independent governments (still all too dependent upon their ancient bureaucracies and prejudices and spleens), are e.g. unaware of the strong connection between massive unemployment and economic relapses or development difficulties - and monetary despotism. To decentralize this despotism is as unsatisfactory as to decentralize an empire into smaller empires. As far as I know, no monography exists as yet which clearly points out this connection and the massive historical evidence for it, visible only to those who look for it. (Perhaps PCs and data banks might help in compiling the relationships between a) massive unemployment cases and civil unrest in these areas and times, b) the severe cases of legal tender abuses: rapid inflation, and civil unrest, c) the close relationship between rapid inflations and mass unemployment. 
To compile a chart d) Instances of diverse competing exchange media and value standards and of corresponding reductions of unemployment, depressions and inflations, would probably be harder to compile in this way because data banks are unlikely to be sufficiently programmed with this kind of information.
During my trip, which lasted a full year, I managed to acquire a number of coin- and money collector reference works that included references to private token money issues. The frequency and spread of such issues has been astonishing, at least for me. If one could get figures on the total issues and turn-overs involved, one could get an impression on their total economic role. I believe these largely illegal issues were very significant. But because of their illegality exact figures on them would be hard to impossible to obtain. But much evidence could be gathered for this purpose from this source. The collectors and their writers mostly do not and did not understand the economic implications of this kind of people's money.

This might be a worthy subject for your scholarship. However, to merely point out this negative proportionality: monetary despotism = economic crisis = political, civil and international crisis, would not be enough without pointing out how to cut this Gordian Knot. And it cannot be fully and fast enough cut without at least some of the possible grass roots monetary freedom options being sufficiently discussed and finally tried.

To tell people in any region, engaged in the hatreds and bloody struggles following massive unemployment, that they ought to wait until one of the other of the competing governments would finally cease inflating and monopolizing its currency and instead provide a sufficiently stable and supposedly ideal currency or until 100% gold standard advocates would have accumulated a large enough gold treasure to issue 100% gold redemption notes, is contrary to the experience we have had with most goverments. But what could be done immediately is to introduce at least in theory, as individual human rights in the economic sphere, freedom in the choice of standards, among them e.g. optional silver, gold and platinum weight standards and note issue and clearing freedom, in form of competing clearing systems as well as goods voucher and service warrant note issuers, providing their certificates in money denominations, which express either of the competing value standards but promise no redemption in them but merely the use these standards for their promised clearing, goods and service settlements.

With such ideas being clearly enough expressed, in the areas of civil unrest, were old laws are already anyhow widely ignored, even militarily disobeyed, sooner or later some will dare to put such monetary theories into practice, if offered in their languages and be it only with the initial motivation to finance their own struggle better. The "enemies" would be likely to copy the successful systems and the resulting relative prosperty among the combatant groups would make them less hostile.

Naturally, such efforts could and should be supplemented ideologically with something that is the ultimate opposite to the former territorial totalitarianism: exterritorial tolerance for all kinds of systems that find voluntary support. Such a development could be promoted from the outside by first unofficial and then official recognition of all kinds of "goverments in exile" that do not aim at territorial domination but merely at exterritorial self-rule and tolerance. In a former empire with over 100 ethnical minorities alone, apart from religious and ideological ones, such approach is not mere theoretical dream building but could be of immense immediate practical value. As valuable as the idea of religious tolerance was during and towards the ending of religious wars.

And the unity spleens could be defused by pointing out the continent- and world-wide options for exterritorial federations between like-minded groups.
The system would even provide immediate employment for all kinds of politicians. They would not have to win new votes and more votes than their opponents but merely have to open their "subscription lists" to their kinds of share-holder goverments. In all following elections under this exterritorial autonomy practice, all participating politicians would win - and all voters would get the government they voted for. We would only lose secret voting.

We have to get away from the notions of ideal currencies (value standards and exchange or clearing media) and ideal governments - towards competing and correspondingly tolerant ones. This is one of the ideas whose time has come and which can be stronger than the strongest army - if it can be and is properly launched. But how many of the old and modern academic writings on free banking have imbibed sufficient of this tolerance? How many are still almost as intolerant as most members of the new churches of the Age of Reformation were?

To make the value standard and exchange media (and methods) alternatives more believable, I would also like to see them as far as possible tabulated, with references towards the writings in which they were advocated and towards historical experiences with them. This kind of knowledge does already exist, spread over x more or less obscure references in x libraries. Can computers and existing data banks help sufficiently to bring it together? Can the correlations be sufficiently proven in this way?

I am still involved in getting x more or less obscure texts together on microfilm. My next step in this sphere would still be an alphabetical compilation of free banking observations, ideas and arguments, towards a free banking encyclopedia.

Our territorial governments and conventional academic schools of politicians and economists are likely to ignore these approaches because their minds are stuck in the quagmire of territorial sovereignties. (Free banking is just one but a very important example of exterritorial autonomy among volunteers - in my eyes.)

The larger schools of economic free marketeers have so far largely failed to apply free market thinking to the competitive supply of wanted government services - which would require personal laws, personal constitutions and exterritorial autonomy, based on voluntarism, individual sovereignty and individual secessionism. In other words, the solution would largely have to come from outsiders or from a few academic dissenters, who let their creative imagination free reign in these still relatively unexplored or generally still unknown spheres. 

I have still a several boxes of free banking and many others of general libertarian material and x books and magazines to process into more of my microfiche - but more material from your pen would always be welcome here, for fiching or for my fb collection if I cannot fiche it.
                                       
1022                  PIOT, John Zube.