Breaking Free of the Money Tyranny by Louis Evan Palmer
There are alternatives to money and the more and better they are, the stronger our collective liberty will be: for there is no doubt that money is the key to the now creeping, now galloping, enslavement we find with us and all around us. As with everything, there are good alternatives and problematic alternatives.For example, Liberty dollars, issued by the National Organization for the Repeal of the Federal Reserve Act and the Internal Revenue Code, have been targeted by the US Justice department as illegal. You may not want to get too deep into that source of value even though they're mostly made of silver and backed by silver and gold.
Company script is another option although one that has seen its share of abuse especially in company-run towns of the type made infamous by the Ernie William's song "Sixteen Tons". For those who may not have heard about this, it's where you have a one company town, usually resource-based, and everything in the town is owned and operated by the company; in addition, everything is paid for in company script - food, clothes, shelter, etc. Of course, if you have a monopoly, you're going to get robber-baron prices and the workers ending up owing the company money so they can't even quit. If we did this to prisoners, they'd never get out!
There are other types of script from stores, usually chains, or "destinations" like Disney where you can spend their money in their stores and parks and ships. The city of Toronto has an alternative money called "Toronto dollars". Several American cities also have their own type of script or "dollars".
As long as these alternatives don't encompass much of the economy, they won't attract the wrath of the government. However, when they do, such as the above mentioned "Liberty" dollars, then the government can be expected to act. There is something profoundly wrong with this though. Some countries will allow foreign currency, say American dollars, to circulate either officially or without protest. With currencies trading across borders, countries have given up a measure of control to persons and entities that have, and can move, large amounts of currency quickly.
With other financial instruments such as Bonds and Stocks, the government has permitted themselves, corporations, other governments and various money managers to inject supply into the system as these instruments must at some point translate into dollars or yen or euros, etc.
Then there are any and all types of credit cards and debit cards and checking accounts with overdraft privileges. All ways of creating money. So, there shouldn't be an issue with ordinary citizens taking some control and benefit for themselves.
In theory there is nothing to stop a group of like-minded individuals from setting up a trading & supply organization that is sufficiently large enough to be able to provide for all the necessities of life and issues its own trading vouchers. For people working within that trading block, they can be paid in these vouchers and pay for everything they need from within it. To some degree, they will have broken away from the official economy although they will have to accrue official currency or credits for it to pay taxes and the like but aside from that they will be autonomous.
Alternate systems of exchange are happening on a widening scale and with the right push here and there, it can become the mainstream way of running things. At the very least, it will serve as a brake and a check on the runaway robber-baron system we currently have.
Copyright 2007 Louis Evan Palmer lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications.
No comments:
Post a Comment