Saturday 6 November 2010

Monetary reform, interest

Some critics of the current system see monetary reform as a key way forward. TVP/TZM advocates (or at least some) think it may be a help in the transition to an RBE.

Interest is a problem in the current system. If you've got money, you can lend it at interest. If you haven't, you have to borrow it at interest. Thus it is a mechanism for making the rich richer. Also, the money to pay the interest has to come into the system. In effect it is simply created and lent - at interest. Thus more money is owed than actually exists, and there must be default on debts by definition.

But if someone has a bit of money to spare, it does make sense for them to lend it to someone who needs it. This leads to us asking why they should lend it without interest. Of course the money is no good to them  stuffed under the proverbial mattress- the only real use of money is to pay for goods and services. It has no intrinsic value. For this reason, an increase in the amount of money that exists should correspond to an increase in the amount of goods and services available, but that is hard if not impossible to quantity - hence prices (the trade off between supply and demand) are set by markets.

I am still looking around / trying to understand how the true advantages of money (or apparent advantages) can be gained without the disadvantages.

2 comments:

  1. It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning. (Henry Ford. Motorcar producer)

    As discussed in other pages on this site, wealth can only be produced from work. In times of unemployment work is lost and poverty is the result.
    Our present monetary systems cannot lower government debt without creating high unemployment. This is because the means of exchange (money) is not similar to what it has to exchange (work and produce). Work or produce is lost when it is not used. Money is not. Therefore a new type of money with the possibility of bearing both positive and negative interest cannot be avoided if the problems of high unemployment and high government debt are to be solved. This new money is the Aurum. It's value is to be kept at a twenty years simple moving average (SMA) of the price of 0.1 gram (100 mg) of gold. But linking a new type of money to a broad commodity index or even to the SDR is also a possibility.
    Every country can introduce the Aurum without any international agreements, but it would help if all countries would use the same basis. www.digigeld.webklik.nl

    ReplyDelete
  2. Poverty only results from loss of work because we insist that people have to work to survive. Normally we want more output for less work (efficiency) but if we achieve optimal efficiency the reduction in work will cause problems for our current system, if it isn't already. Poverty is the lack of fulfilment of our basic human needs. We don't need to fulfil these through work, but access to the planet's resources.

    ReplyDelete