On Sun, 8 Jun 1997, Tresy Kilbourne wrote:

> You, Dan Clore, wrote:
>
> >> Money is made from something physical and exchanges hands,
> >
> >Not necessarily. Most money now is just data in computer banks. Money is
> >now pure information.
> True. The history of money is in the direction of increasing abstraction,
> from cowrie shells to gold, to currency to bytes in a bank's computer.

I'll say more about this in my reply to Dan Clore.

<snip>
> No one can compel anyone
> to accept a note from AT&T in satisfaction of a debt. Only payment of
> currency always and everywhere accomplishes that.
>

I am not advocating forcing anyone to accept so and so's money as payment
for a debt. I am trying to *describe* that people are routinely
forced and/or coercised to accept a nations "legal" tender in order to
secure the basic requirements for living. The money-system demands that
everyone sell themselves (call it a "free" labour contract if you want)in
order to live.

The systematic oppressiveness of the current money-system is routinely
glossed over by apoligists who appeal to the "convience" and
"self-evident advantages" of a single legal tender. Deep down, we aren't
prisoners of capitalism (or socialism)...we are prisoners of the current
nation based money-systems.

If 'N' legal tenders are allowed to be created (and they should be) the
fundatmental problem is how, where, and when all these new
currencies will be transformed into one another. The rules and methods of
transformation should be determined through a combination of judicial and
legislative methods and then implemented and regulated by a professional
body eg. a revamped and expanded banking profession. (The "price"
of money, as determined by a system of money traders is not
the only means of transforming money...all it takes is a little
imagination to envisage countless, fair alternatives. )Currency is not
fundatmentally about the right of nations to exist...it is first and
foremost about the right of individuals to exist.

The economic and technological realites of today
demand that the money-sysem be rethought if the ideals of liberty
and freedom are to have any serious meaning today. The money-system,
allowed liberty and freedom to exist at the beginning of
the industrial era ( at least among white Americans), because people
enjoyed a *realistic* opportunity to leave or at least minimize their
dependence on the nation's money-system by becoming farmers and hunters.

Today liberty and freedom have been squashed because of a money-system that
hasn't evolved POLITICALLY (democratically) to keep abreast of the
incredibly powerful means of global production AND global distribution we
now enjoy. Only the *form* of money has changed.

The best thing national governments can do now is to distribute the
power to create money among its citizens. This will be a most effective
way of protecting the individual from the the power and vagaries of the
global marketplace.

Harry Veeder





> ----------------
> Tresy Kilbourne
> Seattle WA
>
> "The world makes the assumption that the exposure of an error is
> identical with the discovery of the truth--that the error and truth are
> simply opposite. They are nothing of the sort. What the world turns to
> when it has been cured of one error is usually simply another error, and
> maybe one worse than the first one." -- H.L. Mencken
>