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Re: The Marks Plan, and nontraditional money
I agree with your comments about the corruption problem. I haven't thought about how people trying to pervert the kinds of economic systems that Lietaer suggests would affect the systems as a whole (but undoubtedly, human nature being what it is, ways would be found to corrupt any new system that can be conjured up). On the inflationary point (not to mention the insufficiency of food, clothing, housing, etc. etc. etc.), I think that most of Lietaer's sytems could deal with those fairly readily, given that basic raw materials (such as water for agriculture, and sand for adobe-like construction) are available locally. Most of the good systems that he proposes, by construction, automatically have the money supply in balance: No fiat money; No central bank; I do an hour of work for you, and you owe (perhaps someone else) an hour of work, whereas somebody owes me an hour of work in return. One kilo of beans (or a cinder block made from local concrete) is priced and valued in hours of work. The hour of work *is* the unit of currency. No national government is needed to maintain a medium of exchange (which is perhaps, the whole point in this context). Lietaer's work is fascinating stuff (from my point of view as a mathematical geophysicist, not an economist). One of the major lessons to be learned from the last twenty years of nonlinear dynamics/chaos theory is that the zero'th order stuff of a system affects the "regime" in which the system operates. Lietaer's proposals, and principally the demurrage concept, have the self growth of the system, and the storage of value in productive assets (farms, tree groves, concrete factories, etc.) as zero'th order effects. Value is not stored in money, because at the end of each month that money is guaranteed to lose purchasing power. That last paragraph is my attempt to summarize the entire contents of Lietaer's book. Any such summary is doomed to failure. I'd urge you to read the book and decide for yourself. IMHO, if there is anywhere on Earth that Lietaer's ideas need to be implemented, the Marks plan for rebuilding Afghanistan/fighting the root causes of terrorism is the absolutely obvious place. I look forward to the day when our kids can buy Afghani computers on the open market, just like we now can buy Japanese ones, and German automobiles, etc. etc. etc. There are responses to this message:
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