hi doug,

perhaps you have a section of your book that can be excerpted for this, on the p2p blog?

I'm interested in that particular historical passage,

Michel

On Fri, Feb 18, 2011 at 3:24 AM, Douglas Rushkoff <rushkoff@gmail.com> wrote:

Well, I wrote a whole book on this called Life Inc.: How Corporatism Conquered the World and How We Can Take it Back.

Most simply, p2p currencies were made illegal because the people were getting wealthy. There was a new middle class actually creating and exchanging value, and the aristocracy had to stop this before they lost their artificial hold on power. So they made money illegal, and chartered monopolies to do all the business (in return for passive returns).

In US, the right to issue money went to a private corporation for other reasons.

On Feb 17, 2011, at 2:30 PM, Kevin Carson wrote:

> On Thu, Feb 17, 2011 at 12:56 PM, Patrick Anderson <agnucius@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> So governments had the authority to issue currency for themselves,
>> but then gave it away to private corporations?
>
> As far as I can tell, the private corporations are the government.
> (In the same sense that feudal landlords, optimates, etc., were the
> government under previous dispensations).
>
>> How funny.
>>
>> I wonder why they did this.  It must be for the best, right?
>>
>> I've heard people say "It is to control inflation" as though those
>> private corporations have more self-control than governments.
>>
>> If this logic is true, does that mean all the P2P currencies are
>> fundamentally flawed?
>
> Sure.  And if high fructose corn syrup and rubber tomatoes are good
> for you, people like Michael Pollan and Frances Moore Lappe are
> fundamentally flawed.  But that's not the way I'd bet.
>
>> If this logic is false, does that mean our governments and the
>> corporations that operate those governments are lying to us?
>
> You just won a cigar!
>
> --
> Kevin Carson
> Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
> Mutualist Blog:  Free Market Anti-Capitalism
> http://mutualist.blogspot.com
> The Homebrew Industrial Revolution:  A Low-Overhead Manifesto
> http://homebrewindustrialrevolution.wordpress.com
> Organization Theory:  A Libertarian Perspective
> http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html
>
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