I asked this question in my sociology class yesterday and it shut the class down. I know we treat it as private property, but is it really?
The definition I am using (feel free to add your own definition if you don't agree with this one) is that money is a government-defined representation of the exchange of goods and services, used as currency in trade.
I consider it little slips of paper (or ones and zeros on a piece of plastic) that say ive worked x amount of hours so im entitled to that beer.
Or maybe put a little better- a measurement of my energy expended on things which can then be exchanged for things generally agreed upon to be worth a certain amount of my time the hospital thinks is worth.
Wow, mind lazors! I was musing about that topic this morning.
I was thinking that if we lived in a more communal society, hoarding wealth would be seen as depriving the community of resources. Everybody would see it as decadence. As opposed to in capitalism, somebody that's wealthy is clearly doing it right.
I visualize these anti-tax libertarians, they feel like taxes are stealing their wealth. And they probably don't see roads, libraries, schools, police departments as their property too.
Is wealth the amount of cash you have hoarded, or your amount of cash-flow? I think if you view wealth as cash-flow, money-as-private-property makes less sense.
Quote from: Billy the Twid on January 25, 2012, 07:15:20 PM
I consider it little slips of paper (or ones and zeros on a piece of plastic) that say ive worked x amount of hours so im entitled to that beer.
Right... so we're on the same page regarding the definition. But do you think it's private property?
Quote from: Cramulus on January 25, 2012, 07:22:51 PM
Wow, mind lazors! I was musing about that topic this morning.
I was thinking that if we lived in a more communal society, hoarding wealth would be seen as depriving the community of resources. Everybody would see it as decadence. As opposed to in capitalism, somebody that's wealthy is clearly doing it right.
I visualize these anti-tax libertarians, they feel like taxes are stealing their wealth. And they probably don't see roads, libraries, schools, police departments as their property too.
Is wealth the amount of cash you have hoarded, or your amount of cash-flow? I think if you view wealth as cash-flow, money-as-private-property makes less sense.
Oooh, good! I'm glad the question is out there floating around and getting into people's brains!
I like your thoughts on this...
Perhaps money is potential private property? If you don't use it, it doesn't do (or mean) very much. But you can use it to purchase private property. Money is the means to aquire private property.
Did I just call money a verb?
No i wouldnt say i consider it private property. I would say more that it represents my contribution to society (in my case understanding cancer or entertainment).
Its more like evidence rather than something. If you steal ten dollars off of me youre not stealing me of something i own but rather negating an hour of my time that i could have had fun with (after taxes).
I think this question also only makes sense for fiat currency. If the dollar is like an ownership deed for a small piece of a gold bar somewhere, then it's definitely private property, no?
In totally straight legal terms, of course money is private property -- I can't just help myself to money from your wallet, that's
your money.
Quote from: Nigel on January 25, 2012, 07:10:37 PM
The definition I am using (feel free to add your own definition if you don't agree with this one) is that money is a government-defined representation of the exchange of goods and services, used as currency in trade.
Forgive me if I'm squinting too hard at this, but how can money symbolically represent the trade AND be the thing being traded?
Money makes sense to me as a verb. I like that idea.
how did the discussion in your class go, Nigel?
Actually, in strictly legal terms, money is NOT private property, at least not in the USA. I'm pretty sure it's the property of the federal reserve.
It's a federal crime to deface currency in a manner that renders it unfit for circulation.
I think money is like a debt, like if you have X amount of money, that means the rest of the world owes you some amount of good and services that is worth X.
You can spend your money to acquire someone else's private property, but you can also use it to get someone to perform a service (is the time of the person providing the service "private property"?).
I think money it sometimes makes sense to think of money as a form of private property, especially in the case of microeconomics. It makes less sense in the realms of finance and macroeconomics, though.
This question clearly has to be dealt with on at least two levels.
Are individual bits of money private property? I can see arguments for both sides of this.
Is money as a concept private property? Not really. In this case, the actions of individuals can have very large impact on the holdings of all, or at least a large number of people within a nation-state territory. Hoarding it, burning it, engaging in highly volatile speculative practices, spending it on expensive programs... all of these can and will impact on the value of money you "own". In that larger sense, the idea of money as private property is a kind of fiction, as one cannot assert sovereign control over it. If I had 3000 iPods, and then burnt them, I'd be an idiot, but it wouldn't otherwise affect anyone elses iPods. I have £3 billion and I burnt it, however, it would have significant impact on all the money everyone else owns.
Quote from: Fuck You One-Eye on January 25, 2012, 07:40:56 PM
Actually, in strictly legal terms, money is NOT private property, at least not in the USA. I'm pretty sure it's the property of the federal reserve.
It's a federal crime to deface currency in a manner that renders it unfit for circulation.
Do you mean the little slips of paper we trade, or the value that those slips represent? I think the green slips of paper are definitely owned by the Federal Reserve, but are the assets in your bank account federal property? If so, it would be illegal (theft, in fact!) to move your money offshore, right?
I feel so uneducated about economics right now.
Quote from: Cain on January 25, 2012, 07:42:56 PM
In that larger sense, the idea of money as private property is a kind of fiction, as one cannot assert sovereign control over it.
great point... here's my question - is value something you can have sovereign control of? I mean, in your ipod example, burning 3000 ipods might actually change apple's supply/demand, and thereby affect everybody's ipod's value.
By that logic, could you say NOTHING is private property, because its value is determined by stuff like market forces?
The difference is, money's only utility is in value.
iPods might be worth less, but they'll still do what they were designed to do, play music, and that doesn't change no matter how much I affect the iPods in my property. It may affect value, but it wont affect utility.
When you affect the value of money itself, then you affect its utility. That is what places money on a different conceptual level to normal property.
Quote from: Cramulus on January 25, 2012, 07:36:25 PM
I think this question also only makes sense for fiat currency. If the dollar is like an ownership deed for a small piece of a gold bar somewhere, then it's definitely private property, no?
In totally straight legal terms, of course money is private property -- I can't just help myself to money from your wallet, that's your money.
Quote from: Nigel on January 25, 2012, 07:10:37 PM
The definition I am using (feel free to add your own definition if you don't agree with this one) is that money is a government-defined representation of the exchange of goods and services, used as currency in trade.
Forgive me if I'm squinting too hard at this, but how can money symbolically represent the trade AND be the thing being traded?
I am not sure I said that? It doesn't represent the trade (a contract, aka a receipt represents the trade), it is the currency used to represent the goods or services being traded.
Quote from: Cramulus on January 25, 2012, 07:39:30 PM
how did the discussion in your class go, Nigel?
My teacher said that money is too complicated and shut it down.
Of course, all my arguments are predicated on the idea of a fiat currency. A currency where something like gold is used as the base unit of currency would follow different rules, naturally, because it is a) a limited resource, and b) has utility aside from acting as a form of currency.
Quote from: Nigel on January 25, 2012, 07:10:37 PM
I asked this question in my sociology class yesterday and it shut the class down. I know we treat it as private property, but is it really?
The definition I am using (feel free to add your own definition if you don't agree with this one) is that money is a government-defined representation of the exchange of goods and services, used as currency in trade.
It's legal tender (as you say above). As such, it can be considered private property in the same way a cow is a farmer's private property (ie, the value of said property is set by society, but it's still yours until you trade it).
Quote from: Nigel on January 25, 2012, 08:21:53 PM
Quote from: Cramulus on January 25, 2012, 07:39:30 PM
how did the discussion in your class go, Nigel?
My teacher said that money is too complicated and shut it down.
Your teacher is defective.
Quote from: Cain on January 25, 2012, 08:20:29 PM
The difference is, money's only utility is in value.
ahhh that makes sense!
Quote from: Nigel on January 25, 2012, 08:20:56 PM
Quote from: Cramulus on January 25, 2012, 07:36:25 PM
I think this question also only makes sense for fiat currency. If the dollar is like an ownership deed for a small piece of a gold bar somewhere, then it's definitely private property, no?
In totally straight legal terms, of course money is private property -- I can't just help myself to money from your wallet, that's your money.
Quote from: Nigel on January 25, 2012, 07:10:37 PM
The definition I am using (feel free to add your own definition if you don't agree with this one) is that money is a government-defined representation of the exchange of goods and services, used as currency in trade.
Forgive me if I'm squinting too hard at this, but how can money symbolically represent the trade AND be the thing being traded?
I am not sure I said that? It doesn't represent the trade (a contract, aka a receipt represents the trade), it is the currency used to represent the goods or services being traded.
ah, I see - I had gotten tripped up on the phrase "money is a government-defined representation of the exchange"
I think (and this is just my uneducated opinion) that with fiat currency, the value is itself the thing being traded; the cash isn't
really a symbol of goods or services. When I buy something from a store, the currency I hand them doesn't represent a brick of gold somewhere, it's just a symbol of value.
Typing that paragraph gave me a headache and I'm actually more confused than when I started.
Quote from: Nigel on January 25, 2012, 08:21:53 PM
Quote from: Cramulus on January 25, 2012, 07:39:30 PM
how did the discussion in your class go, Nigel?
My teacher said that money is too complicated and shut it down.
:lulz:
Quote from: Cramulus on January 25, 2012, 08:34:58 PM
When I buy something from a store, the currency I hand them doesn't represent a brick of gold somewhere, it's just a symbol of value.
Gold is largely only a symbol of value, as well. Industrially speaking, it has less use than zinc or iron.
Quote from: Cramulus on January 25, 2012, 08:06:30 PM
Quote from: Fuck You One-Eye on January 25, 2012, 07:40:56 PM
Actually, in strictly legal terms, money is NOT private property, at least not in the USA. I'm pretty sure it's the property of the federal reserve.
It's a federal crime to deface currency in a manner that renders it unfit for circulation.
Do you mean the little slips of paper we trade, or the value that those slips represent? I think the green slips of paper are definitely owned by the Federal Reserve, but are the assets in your bank account federal property? If so, it would be illegal (theft, in fact!) to move your money offshore, right?
I feel so uneducated about economics right now.
Quote from: Cain on January 25, 2012, 07:42:56 PM
In that larger sense, the idea of money as private property is a kind of fiction, as one cannot assert sovereign control over it.
great point... here's my question - is value something you can have sovereign control of? I mean, in your ipod example, burning 3000 ipods might actually change apple's supply/demand, and thereby affect everybody's ipod's value.
By that logic, could you say NOTHING is private property, because its value is determined by stuff like market forces?
I think you (and perhaps several other people) are confusing money with wealth.
can you elucidate?
Quote from: LMNO, PhD (life continues) on January 25, 2012, 07:27:29 PM
Perhaps money is potential private property? If you don't use it, it doesn't do (or mean) very much. But you can use it to purchase private property. Money is the means to aquire private property.
Did I just call money a verb?
This is basically how I view it. I mean it's a certificate/representation of an
investment in a system that honors it for a certain amount of end-value that yes, belongs to you. You own the entitlements as implied by its acceptance and also the
responsibilities of being one of the people to keep your chips in that game.
I mean, money, at its purest, represents work saved up. The problem is not that there are people who have enough work-hours saved that they never have to work again but that the amount of work-hours assessed in trades isn't consistent.
Here's another mind-number: how much more in work-hours do you think it's fair for a person to save up over and above hours left in their own and their children's lives combined? Isn't owning a whole bunch more than you have hours in your life like owning the hours of another? At what point does that become a form of servitude/slavery?
Odd when you think of it that way, eh?
Money, as RAW said, is the Schroedinger's cat of society.
In a sense.
You can own it, but it has no value if you keep it. You can use it to increase your standard of living, but then you don't own it.
I just calculated how fast I'm losing money, and then I couldn't find it anymore.
Quote from: LMNO, PhD (life continues) on January 25, 2012, 09:04:19 PM
I just calculated how fast I'm losing money, and then I couldn't find it anymore.
Stop counting, and it's still gone. So it's like Schroedinger's cat, only when you open the box, someone gave the cat to Goldmann-Sachs.
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on January 25, 2012, 08:54:58 PM
You can use it to increase your standard of living, but then you don't own it.
Not entirely true. A lot of people improve their standard of living without giving up ownership of their money. Sometimes by taking a risk that they will, in fact, give up ownership (gambling/stock market). Sometimes with the threat of what they could do with that money (a company that threatens smaller competitors with lawsuits even when they have no legal case because they know they can win through attrition).
Quote from: kingyak on January 25, 2012, 09:10:23 PM
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on January 25, 2012, 08:54:58 PM
You can use it to increase your standard of living, but then you don't own it.
Not entirely true. A lot of people improve their standard of living without giving up ownership of their money. Sometimes by taking a risk that they will, in fact, give up ownership (gambling/stock market). Sometimes with the threat of what they could do with that money (a company that threatens smaller competitors with lawsuits even when they have no legal case because they know they can win through attrition).
Eventually, you have to spend money. I'm not talking about the generation of additional funds.
Chaoflux had this to say on Facebook:
Quote from: ChaofluxMoney is a certificate of debt, as defined by the Federal Reserve, and upheld by bonds ponied up by the government. You can't own it, you can only be someone who controls it or is controlled by it. The Man doesn't take your money away from you, he increases your debt.
Currently, the actors in the economy who have any impact/control over the flow of money are the organizations (government, IMF, financial sectors, etc) who
farm and
control debt.
Yup. Your credit cards, phone bills, car payments, property mortgages, etc are all filtered down into a Farmville-like risk game for some bureaucrat-addict somewhere (who probably bribed Hillary Clinton a few million for the privilege to trade your debt on the international market).
Quote from: Cain on January 25, 2012, 08:23:05 PM
Of course, all my arguments are predicated on the idea of a fiat currency. A currency where something like gold is used as the base unit of currency would follow different rules, naturally, because it is a) a limited resource, and b) has utility aside from acting as a form of currency.
Yes, that's what I'm basing my question on, too... money as it is currently used in capitalist society.
Quote from: Telarus on January 25, 2012, 09:26:32 PM
Chaoflux had this to say on Facebook:
Quote from: ChaofluxMoney is a certificate of debt, as defined by the Federal Reserve, and upheld by bonds ponied up by the government. You can't own it, you can only be someone who controls it or is controlled by it. The Man doesn't take your money away from you, he increases your debt.
Currently, the actors in the economy who have any impact/control over the flow of money are the organizations (government, IMF, financial sectors, etc) who farm and control debt.
Yup. Your credit cards, phone bills, car payments, property mortgages, etc are all filtered down into a Farmville-like risk game for some bureaucrat-addict somewhere (who probably bribed Hillary Clinton a few million for the privilege to trade your debt on the international market).
I like his take on it; it's interesting.
Quote from: Cramulus on January 25, 2012, 08:50:08 PM
can you elucidate?
Money is just one way in which we represent wealth. While the wealth that the money represents may be (mostly) your own, the physical money itself is not. If it was, you'd be able to do any damn thing you want with it without fear of prosecution.
After all, there's no law on the books that says you can't cut your car in half, or drill a hole in your laptop.
You can make almost anything you own unusable in any way you see fit. You have to keep money in reusable condition, though, which seems to imply that it is not so much private property as a tool used by the public to facilitate private exchanges. At a certain point it even ceases to be a physical tool and becomes a virtual tool. In addition, taxation implies that money is not private property, because when it changes hands, the government (the public) automatically owns part of it.
It's pretty weird stuff.
Damn, the Facebook thread seems to have stalled out at 56 posts. http://www.facebook.com/kalera/posts/10150517468114069?ref=notif¬if_t=feed_comment
I was really expecting better from the FB people. Hardly anyone there has even tried pulling apart the question of why it might not be private property.
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on January 25, 2012, 09:20:56 PM
Quote from: kingyak on January 25, 2012, 09:10:23 PM
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on January 25, 2012, 08:54:58 PM
You can use it to increase your standard of living, but then you don't own it.
Not entirely true. A lot of people improve their standard of living without giving up ownership of their money. Sometimes by taking a risk that they will, in fact, give up ownership (gambling/stock market). Sometimes with the threat of what they could do with that money (a company that threatens smaller competitors with lawsuits even when they have no legal case because they know they can win through attrition).
Eventually, you have to spend money. I'm not talking about the generation of additional funds.
I think I read "standard of living" as a bit broader than you intended it. Purely in terms of creature comforts, you're right, but I think there are some intangibles (power, status, sense of security, misappropriated self-esteem) that come with having a lot of money even if it isn't spent (or, probably more often, at a lower cost than someone without huge piles of cash).
Money in itself is not wealth. It's a promisary note, sanctioning a third party access to wealth, on your behalf. Thing is Money promises access to wealth that hasn't actually been generated yet. And the handlers charge you a fee for generating the wealth that they've promised you access to. Think of one $10 bill. In any one day, it can generate many times it's face value. It can be used as a contract for dozens of transactions in a day, but this isn't reflected in it's face value.
Although it may have generated perhaps 1000% of it's face value to the economy, it still only allows you personally to access $10 worth of this wealth. So somewhere along the line, someone is getting $990 per day, on the strength of this one $10 bill. That you may have used to spend $4 worth of wealth. That is lent to you at interest. By Pirates.
ETA; SO no, it is not private property. (Well, it is, it's just not your property)
I am close to viewing money as a resource rather than as property. It's a pretty tricky topic.
Quote from: Nigel on January 25, 2012, 10:55:57 PM
Quote from: Cain on January 25, 2012, 08:23:05 PM
Of course, all my arguments are predicated on the idea of a fiat currency. A currency where something like gold is used as the base unit of currency would follow different rules, naturally, because it is a) a limited resource, and b) has utility aside from acting as a form of currency.
Yes, that's what I'm basing my question on, too... money as it is currently used in capitalist society.
I suspected a few people would bring it up, so I thought it best to forestall it by being completely open about the premises I am operating under.
Quote from: Nigel on January 25, 2012, 08:21:53 PM
Quote from: Cramulus on January 25, 2012, 07:39:30 PM
how did the discussion in your class go, Nigel?
My teacher said that money is too complicated and shut it down.
Hey that's the same thing your government almost did in September :lol:
On topic, isn't this whole idea about whether money itself is useful, or even "property", if you're not spending it, closely related to the economic term liquidity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_liquidity) ?
Like, to paraphrase the saying: You can't have your money and buy cake with it too?
Quote from: Cain on January 26, 2012, 11:04:10 PM
Quote from: Nigel on January 25, 2012, 10:55:57 PM
Quote from: Cain on January 25, 2012, 08:23:05 PM
Of course, all my arguments are predicated on the idea of a fiat currency. A currency where something like gold is used as the base unit of currency would follow different rules, naturally, because it is a) a limited resource, and b) has utility aside from acting as a form of currency.
Yes, that's what I'm basing my question on, too... money as it is currently used in capitalist society.
I suspected a few people would bring it up, so I thought it best to forestall it by being completely open about the premises I am operating under.
Perfect... probably wise to get that definition in early in the conversation.
Quote from: Triple Zero on January 27, 2012, 12:27:33 AM
Quote from: Nigel on January 25, 2012, 08:21:53 PM
Quote from: Cramulus on January 25, 2012, 07:39:30 PM
how did the discussion in your class go, Nigel?
My teacher said that money is too complicated and shut it down.
Hey that's the same thing your government almost did in September :lol:
On topic, isn't this whole idea about whether money itself is useful, or even "property", if you're not spending it, closely related to the economic term liquidity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_liquidity) ?
Like, to paraphrase the saying: You can't have your money and buy cake with it too?
OOOH SNAP
And yes, it is related; I need to think about it more.
Today in class, money-as-public-resource was brought up by one of the other students. I'll copypaste my reply to Net vaguely regarding it in my FB thread:
QuoteWell, for one thing, if money is not private property but a public resource, it puts a very different spin on taxation. It really might even change the way people view extreme concentrations of wealth. We live in a capitalist democracy, and the monopolistic capitalism we practice here is really damaging our democracy. In democracies that utilize a form of socialistic capitalism, they tend to have much more democratic systems, and an economically healthier public, even though they also practice a high level of wealth redistribution via taxation and public services.
Aside from government and banking institutes (who are essentially just gaming the system for profit) I don't think money is property, aside from valueless little chunks of paper with some pictures and shit printed on them. Those bit of paper are merely tokens, the "real" money is the power to acquire property that those tokens represent. Nowadays, with electronic money replacing physical currency tokens more and more this distinction is even easier to see.
The real purpose of money is to facilitate exchange of goods and/or services, ie. the exchange and aquisition of property. Therfore money is not property in and of itself merely a metric by which property changes hands. There is, however, a tendency to believe in money as a thing, in and of itself, rather than a score or level and this leads to much strangeness and misery.
Okay there's some thoughts I've had stewing for a bit, so I'm presenting them now without having read the last several posts too closely.
"Wealth" is an individual's private collection of value, in whatever form. It comes in various degrees of liquidity (ease of transference for purposes of trade), with things like real estate being at the far end of non-liquid and currency being the most liquid.
Fiat currency contains the implicit agreement that value can be abstracted into something with no utility, or in some cases, no real physical presence. A lot of wealth is currently being stored not even as paper slips, but as digital ones and zeroes.
Paper currency is a service issued by the government to provide a physical representation of an abstract unit of value. It regulates the creation and destruction of this currency as part of the process of regulating the economy.
As such, I would argue that the value represented by that dollar bill is yours, but the actual piece of high-tech paper is a government service and is not yours. BUT, since part of what makes the fiat currency "work" is the assumption that the abstract unit of value is inseparable from that piece of paper, the paper is treated like private property for most purposes. You hold on to it, trade it in exchange for goods and services, and can sue for damages if it is unlawfully taken from you. The paper currency is a government service which allows you to do all of this within a commonly understood system of currency.
Of course, we can see that the value represented by the government-issued piece of paper is not truly inseparable from that piece of paper. If you deposit a $100 bill into your bank account, you can't ask for that exact $100 bill back. You used the government-issued piece of paper as a service which enabled you to turn your $100 of abstract value into information; information known as your bank account.
*It is no doubt infinitely debatable as to when, precisely, the paper currency printed by the government has the abstract value it is intended to represent "attached" to it, but I think it is fair to say that the first moment when we can definitively say that the paper currency is assigned its value is the moment when someone withdraws it from their bank account. At that point, the abstract units of value that were previously stored as information are transferred to the paper currency and given to you as a physical representation of the wealth that you own.
Obviously, the abstract value is unquestionably detached from the paper bill when the paper is destroyed. However, since the paper bill is a government service, it's not legal for an individual to destroy it themselves, even though it's that individual's own wealth that they are destroying. The government wants to maintain control on the distribution of currency, and private, unregulated destruction of currency screws with that. The right to destroy a piece of currency which has become too worn-out or damaged to reliably perform the service it was made for is given to certain agencies (I'm assuming banks are those agencies) as part of this regulatory process. When someone deposits a worn-out, piece-of-shit $100 bill into their bank account, and that $100 bill is taken out of circulation and destroyed, the abstract value of $100 that was put into the bank account is not also destroyed.
*Being almost completely ignorant about the production, distribution, and destruction of paper currency, I'll be speaking even more out of my ass from now on than I was before.
So yeah there's some disjointed and half-baked thoughts on the matter. Apologies if I stepped on anyone's (or everyone's) toes by restating something already discussed.
Quotepiece of high-tech paper
:lulz:
000,
has seen your bills, you don't fool anyone, it's monopoly money.
Quote from: Triple Zero on January 28, 2012, 01:02:26 AM
Quotepiece of high-tech paper
:lulz:
000,
has seen your bills, you don't fool anyone, it's monopoly money.
That's because we don't have pinko commie terrorist-loving librul fascists printing
our money.
:teabagger1:
Pshh.
You try counterfeiting that shit without a plate from the mint.
I'm a criminally-minded motherfucker and I couldn't do it even with one of those. I mean, if I had ever come across such a thing.
Michael Ende (http://www.michaelende.de/en/book/fantasy-culture-politics), author of "The Never Ending Story" (in German, not English) had some interesting discussions about money in his book "Fantasy/Culture/Politics". He came from the standpoint of communal ownership (using the same fiat framing), observing that healthy economies rely on currency being circulated, like blood through veins. Some of his ideas were odd, though, but perhaps applicable- like printing money with an expiration date to discourage hoarding.
As far as it being personal or private property, I don't think it is. It's definitely not a
personal property, since the bills are owned by the FED, and the debt is owned by the GOV'T (which, in turn, is now "OUR" debt).
It certainly isn't used very much as a public property, or a resource, as much as I can tell, either. So I'm not sure what exactly I would call it.
On a tangent:
Quote from: About M. Ende Page1984:
Michael Ende sees the film Die unendliche Geschichte (The Neverending Story) and is shocked. Furiously he has his name removed from the project.
1985:
On 3 February, the commissioned opera Der Goggolori (The Goggolori) has its successful premier at the Münchner Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz. Wilfried Hiller wrote the music. On 27 March Michael Ende's wife Ingeborg Hoffmann dies of pulmonary embolism, after having seen the film version of unendlichen Geschichte (The Neverending Story). Michael Ende returns to Munich.
:lulz: :horrormirth:
The expiration date thing isn't that weird, and I believe has been trialled before. I'd have to have a hunt for the source.
it's demurraged currency (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demurrage_%28currency%29).
see, for instance, the Worgl (http://www.lietaer.com/2010/03/the-worgl-experiment/)
Wow, I just found out it's possible for me to hate banks even more than I already did, based on the story of Worgl. I wonder if this sort of thing would be so easily quashed in these times, with the advent of bitcoins, e-gold, and other forms of alternative digital currency.
I'm shocked they haven't already burned down everyone involved in bitcoins. Maybe they're just waiting for the point where generating a bitcoin costs less than it's worth.
In the US, we have a long and shitty history of taking down any alternative currency, as far as I know Norton I was the only one who got away with it.
I believe Ithaca Hours (http://www.ithacahours.org/) are still in use...
Others have not fared as well. for instance, the Liberty Dollar (http://coins.about.com/od/coinbuyingadvice/qt/libertydollars.htm). of course, it probably didn't help that it was not a locally bound currency, and the makers were named NORFED. (National Organization for the Repeal of the Federal Reserve Act and the Internal Revenue Code)
also, he did some dumb things, like putting a dollar denomination on this coins, and having a multilelevel marketing type setup.
that guys in prison, i believe. but i've got a half dozen of his one ounce silver coins that i bought for spot price, and they really are nice coins.
I hadn't heard about Ithaca hours, that's pretty awesome. Too bad it sounds like people are cutting back on them when they should be relying on it more.
perhaps some of the others (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_community_currencies_in_the_United_States) are increasing?
Thanks Iptuous. Gesell was the name I was trying to think of.
I hadn't heard about Ithica Hours or the lot, either.
Quote from: Queen_Gogira on January 30, 2012, 03:56:57 PM
I'm shocked they haven't already burned down everyone involved in bitcoins. Maybe they're just waiting for the point where generating a bitcoin costs less than it's worth.
In the US, we have a long and shitty history of taking down any alternative currency, as far as I know Norton I was the only one who got away with it.
This is a very good point actually. I've wondered about that myself for some time. Bitcoin, apart from its own problems and failures, seems to be relatively successful. Why haven't they squashed it yet?
Quote from: Queen_Gogira on January 30, 2012, 03:56:57 PM
I'm shocked they haven't already burned down everyone involved in bitcoins. Maybe they're just waiting for the point where generating a bitcoin costs less than it's worth.
In the US, we have a long and shitty history of taking down any alternative currency, as far as I know Norton I was the only one who got away with it.
And that only worked because it was in that time, at that place.
Anywhere else, anywhen else, and Norton would have been beaten to death by treasury agents.
Not that the Treasury really has anything to fear. It's an axiom of economics that bad money drives out good.
It's why social democracy is a doomed project: the current system crashes even more often, but it generates lots of money in the mean-time, and that money buys influence and power and pressures other nations to follow suit. Economic race to the bottom.
This is why, in theory, we have international frameworks and agreements on trade. Except they've been ruined by economic illiterates and free-loaders like Apple (http://prestowitz.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/01/23/apple_makes_good_products_but_flawed_arguments), and people who think foreign treaties are Satan.
Quote from: Iron Sulfide on January 30, 2012, 04:32:34 AM
Michael Ende (http://www.michaelende.de/en/book/fantasy-culture-politics), author of "The Never Ending Story" (in German, not English) had some interesting discussions about money in his book "Fantasy/Culture/Politics". He came from the standpoint of communal ownership (using the same fiat framing), observing that healthy economies rely on currency being circulated, like blood through veins. Some of his ideas were odd, though, but perhaps applicable- like printing money with an expiration date to discourage hoarding.
As far as it being personal or private property, I don't think it is. It's definitely not a personal property, since the bills are owned by the FED, and the debt is owned by the GOV'T (which, in turn, is now "OUR" debt).
It certainly isn't used very much as a public property, or a resource, as much as I can tell, either. So I'm not sure what exactly I would call it.
On a tangent:
Quote from: About M. Ende Page1984:
Michael Ende sees the film Die unendliche Geschichte (The Neverending Story) and is shocked. Furiously he has his name removed from the project.
1985:
On 3 February, the commissioned opera Der Goggolori (The Goggolori) has its successful premier at the Münchner Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz. Wilfried Hiller wrote the music. On 27 March Michael Ende's wife Ingeborg Hoffmann dies of pulmonary embolism, after having seen the film version of unendlichen Geschichte (The Neverending Story). Michael Ende returns to Munich.
:lulz: :horrormirth:
Hmmm, see, that national debt thing is a really interesting factor.
Quote from: Telarus on January 25, 2012, 09:26:32 PM
Chaoflux had this to say on Facebook:
Quote from: ChaofluxMoney is a certificate of debt, as defined by the Federal Reserve, and upheld by bonds ponied up by the government. You can't own it, you can only be someone who controls it or is controlled by it. The Man doesn't take your money away from you, he increases your debt.
When I think of a $10 bill as debt, it means that the rest of the world owes me a debt of $10 worth of sandwiches or whatever.
But I think Chaoflux was getting at something different. Can you explain?
Quote from: LMNO, PhD (life continues) on January 25, 2012, 09:04:19 PM
I just calculated how fast I'm losing money, and then I couldn't find it anymore.
I laughed but forgot what at.
Quote from: Triple Zero on January 27, 2012, 12:27:33 AM
Like, to paraphrase the saying: You can't have your money and buy cake with it too?
If that saying actualy said THAT, it would make a hell of a lot more sense.
But it means almost exactly that, doesn't it?
it's a very confusing phrase until I had it explained to me.
Quote from: Golden Applesauce on January 31, 2012, 03:23:33 AM
Quote from: Telarus on January 25, 2012, 09:26:32 PM
Chaoflux had this to say on Facebook:
Quote from: ChaofluxMoney is a certificate of debt, as defined by the Federal Reserve, and upheld by bonds ponied up by the government. You can't own it, you can only be someone who controls it or is controlled by it. The Man doesn't take your money away from you, he increases your debt.
When I think of a $10 bill as debt, it means that the rest of the world owes me a debt of $10 worth of sandwiches or whatever.
But I think Chaoflux was getting at something different. Can you explain?
I think you're nearly there. The debt comes first (you eat a sandwich). Then the demand to settle the debt comes next.
Money is the simplest thing we carry around that will settle debt.
I think Terry Pratchet's "Making Money" book will prove useful here as well. While you control those $10, the banksters control is largely "at another scope" than yours, and
they've got control over thousands of mortgages, car-loans, student loans, credit card accounts, etc, etc. This is all fueled by the interest payments, and the advertising. They use advertising to initiate a desire in you, and then offer an easy way for you to settle that desire (credit), which in turn, makes
you part of a "financial product" that they move around like a monopoly piece to extract the most profit from. Nearly all of those insidious methods which the System/the Spider uses to ensure that we are dependent on the System involve leashing you through debt. Woe be to those who break the holy rules of the Big 3 (credit reporting agencies) for they shall be cast from the temple.
Historically, this was referred to as "rent-seeking activity", and was compaired negatively to productive economic activity, not least because rent-seeking was usually the preserve of feudal landowners, and did not result in greater numbers of products, but rather was brought about due to near-monopolistic control of a necessary resource.
Money is not private property, its bits of inexpensive paper or tiny amounts of metal that the government deems to be of worth and has nearly all control over it. You think its private property because you own it but you don't, If this was true then you would decide the deemed worth of it and not be required to pay or transact money because it is yours. Things for barter are private property because it is a civil exchange of private property.
Essentially in one fell swoop the government could push up inflation so high by simply gushing out money, and make all yours worthless leaving them free to do whatever they want because they hold all the valuable things that people today have become so accustomed to depending on for all of their daily functions leaving those in charge of the amassed wealth free to do as they see fit.
So no, no it isn't.
Quote from: Sir Bearington on July 27, 2012, 04:03:50 PM
Money is not private property, its bits of inexpensive paper or tiny amounts of metal that the government deems to be of worth and has nearly all control over it. You think its private property because you own it but you don't, If this was true then you would decide the deemed worth of it and not be required to pay or transact money because it is yours. Things for barter are private property because it is a civil exchange of private property.
Essentially in one fell swoop the government could push up inflation so high by simply gushing out money, and make all yours worthless leaving them free to do whatever they want because they hold all the valuable things that people today have become so accustomed to depending on for all of their daily functions leaving those in charge of the amassed wealth free to do as they see fit.
So no, no it isn't.
See, this is a reasonably intelligent post which appears to exist for purposes other than attention-seeking. If you keep this up and consistently minimize the trolling and attention-whoring, I'll probably start interacting with you again.