| Subject: | [socialcredit] a conversation | | Date: | Wednesday, August 15, 2007 10:09:59 (-0700) | | From: | william_b_ryan <william_b_ryan @.....com>
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The conversation appended below was related to this
excerpt from Douglas' 1934 testimony in Alberta:
>> beginning at page 82 of the PDF posted by the
Moderator earlier this morning...
"Q. Take the farmer. His wealth is, to a large extent,
in this province, wheat?
"A. From his point of view, wheat is nothing whatever
except something for which he exchanges purchasing
power. He doesn't grow, from his point of view, any
wealth at all. From the world's point of view he does,
but, from his point of view, if he is left with the
whole of his wheat on hand, he has no wealth.
"Q. In other words, if the exchange possibility for
his wheat for other things remains constant? That is
what you are aiming at?
"A. No. We are looking at the problem from a
diametrically different point of view. The point of
view that I have is that the function of money is no
longer that of a medium of exchange.
"Q. I agree with you in that entirely, that money is
simply the means of transferring real wealth from one
person to another.
"A. No, that is exactly what it is not.
"Q. You state it is like a ticket on the railway that
enables you to get transportation from one place to
another. I will take that view, that money is a means
of transfer for that transportation.
"A. That is not the correct interpretation of money.
The only correct one is, I believe, that all wealth at
the present time is produced by synthetic purposes:
that the wheat that the farmer grows does not produce
any wealth at all; that the manufacturer of motor cars
does not produce any wealth at all. Those things only
become wealth by reason of the fact that somebody else
produces roads, and somebody else bakes the farmer's
wheat, and a number of such things. So it is
impossible to say that anyone, at the present time,
produces wealth, except considered in the light of
what everybody else is doing at the present time.
Under those conditions, wealth is a central pool into
which everybody is contributing, and the proper
function of money is not to interchange between those
separate producers of wealth, but to give the general
community, by whom the wealth is produced, the
necessary power to draw from the central pool of
wealth."
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Conversation:
"In a superficial interpretation it [meaning the
ticket metaphor] implies that everyone can endlessly
'draw' from the pool of wealth without returning
anything to it."
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That's not what it means, because labor displacement
is not yet complete, nor will it ever be, except at
the theoretical limit. But it does mean that you and
everyone together can draw more from the central pool
of wealth than the aggregate of what each is
contributing in financial terms. It stands in direct
opposition to the conventional marginalist approach to
economics, where outputs cannot exceed inputs. The
Douglas theory is based on the concepts of the
Cultural Heritage and the personally Unearned
Increment of Association.
-
"Meanwhile, the issue under discussion is the
redistributive effect from poor to rich of a
particular type of money created through interest
bearing debt. Since Douglas was strongly opposed to
money created by that means, and argued for other
kinds, it is absurd to use his arguments in an attempt
to support what he opposed."
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Since you are presenting yourself as being an expert
on what Douglas was opposed to, please point to where
Douglas even once expressed that he opposed bank loans
or the collection of interest on bank loans. The fact
is that he was contemptuous of what he called "usury hunters."
____________________________________________________________________________________
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