| Subject: | Re: [socialcredit] Inflation and Usury | | Date: | Monday, February 13, 2006 21:21:39 (-0800) | | From: | Joe Thomson <thomsonhiyu @....ca>
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| In reply to: | Message 3396 (written by Daniel Morin) |
(Dan Morin wrote:-) Creating money is usury... regardless who does it.
This whole theorem of
A+B is to compensate the lost purchasing power, however if the bank was not
allowed to print money, prices of goods and services would go down every
year (similar to computers and electronics).
>
(Joe replies:-) How is creating money 'usury'? Money is a tangible
representation of 'credit'. A portable accounting demand system using some
type of token to represent 'credit' ~ the beneficial outcome of some line of
action, or, if you will, a contract calling for future performance.
If I give you my personal promissory note stating what I 'offer' to do at
some future time, and you 'accept' it in exchange for some good or service
you provide me, it is a form of 'money'. The three elements of a 'contract'
are present. The 'offer', the 'acceptance', and the 'consideration' (what's
being exchanged).
You have expressed a 'belief' that whatever was promised will be (a.) of
benefit to you, or you wouldn't 'accept' my note, i.e. you are going to
'profit' somehow from our transaction; and (b.) what was promised or
'offered' will actually be delivered on demand.
What is usurious about that? Is a 'profit' of this nature 'usury'? I don't
think so. Even if I receive and enjoy the use of your goods or services
now, while you are not going to receive anything 'real' from me until
sometime in the future, as per the terms of the note you've accepted, and in
consideration of your waiting I agree to pay you more than I would have paid
you if we were making an on the spot 'barter' type trade of
your-stuff-for-my-stuff, what is 'usurious' about that? Is there not a
certain truth to the old saying "a bird in the hand is worth two in the
bush''? For you are assuming a 'risk' when you accept my note. And it's up
to the two parties to agree on what or whether that 'risk' is worth
anything.
Our dealings would only become a 'usurious' transaction if I were somehow
in a position where I could take an unfair advantage over you, knew it, and
was out to exploit the situation for all I could.. And you had virtually no
choice but to agree to my terms. Where I had you under 'duress', in other
words. That is 'usury', and is rightly to be condemned, as it has been all
down through the ages.
A futher difference between 'usury' and 'profit':- even in straight
'barter' there is a concealed 'profit' in our transaction. Each of us is
presumably getting something we'd sooner have than that with which we're
parting, or we wouldn't be 'trading', would we?
But say you don't want to 'accept' my note. Not that you don't have faith
in my good character, but perhaps, even though I'm a good mark(et) for what
you're peddling, I don't produce or have anything you want right now. Nor
do you feel I will in the future. And you don't know if you 'accept' my
note, whether or not you'll be able to get rid of it to someone else who
just might have something you do want. Whether they might accept it in
exchange for what they have.
They might not know me from Adam. And you might not be able to convince
them of my sterling character. My note is not generally 'fungible', in
other words. And you, and whomever you're going to be dealing with, want
something that is. Something everyone will accept as 'money'.
Enter a creature called a 'banker'. For consideration he agrees to provide
us with a form of credit instrument that is fungible. How? By exchanging
my personal 'credit instrument', my promissory note, for his credit
instrument. A deposit entry on his books to the credit of my account.
One that I can draw upon by means of bank notes, cheques, or any other
form of bank backed creditary instruments that are generally going to be
acceptable to all. Why? Because the banker has, in effect, promised to
accept as HIS 'liability' any amounts drawn to the limit of the deposit
he's created.on my behalf. And you 'trust' him, because his business is to
be 'credible'. And he wouldn't last in it five minutes if he were not.
The 'credit' he has created is 'based on future performance'. Not just
mine, but the whole 'community's'. Everyone who is willing to 'accept' the
banker's creditary instruments in their transactions with one another.
Though it is a 'claim' on property in general, it is not the banker's credit
that is ultimately behind it, but the community's 'real credit'. It's
willingness and ability to 'produce and deliver' goods and services in
exchange for it. The banker is merely the administrator, though he may
think of himself otherwise. And act like it, as long as we allow him to.
It's not the 'banker's credit' in any sense any more than your house
'belongs' to the Insurance Company with whom you might carry fire insurance.
But he, like your insurer, has agreed to assume a financial liability'.
Which in your banker's case, he will be stuck for regardless of whether he's
ever able to collect anything from you in regards to your promissory note
that he holds as his 'asset'. He is most certainly entitled to be fairly
recompensed for what he does, don't you agree?
True, he has in a sense, "parted with nothing", (other than the costs of
operating his business), and hopes to 'profit' from it. But he has taken a
'risk'. A very real risk, which can indeed 'cost' him if he can't collect
from you what you've agreed to pay.
And just try to operate without him, or some other way, if there is any,
of generalising 'credit'. Can you imagine how little progress the world
would have ever achieved if we attempted to use just barter? Or some form
of 'commodity money', like 'gold', instead of the 'creditary' system we do
have? Imperfect though it definitely still is. Most of us wouldn't be
alive today if we'd been restricted to that kind of set-up.
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