[P2P-F] money as debt p. 2

Sun Oct 16 15:07:30 CEST 2011

This is a difficult debate for me Tadit, as I have never truly studied MMT,
and what kind of money is best.

I'd like to posit some general principles as to what a commons/p2p friendly
policy would be ...

- first of all, I think monetary freedom is important, which for me means
that next to sovereign money that is governed by the collective, and we need
at least a  national and global level, we also must accept community-driven
'socially sovereign' money ... so repression of successful local money by
the state is not acceptable

- money should be a commons, I'm not sure exactly what that means, but it
should not be subjected to speculation, and is a public utility that should
be protected from private misuse ...; how exactly can we make money into a
commons, that is an important question for me, in which I would like to be
educated ; instinctevely I'm against the private for-profit creation of
money as it is currently practiced

- third, money has a design, and that design should be a design that does
not permit excessive accumulation, nor require infinite growth

before encountering MMT, the people I listened to were:

* Bernard Lietaer, because of his recognition of all the levels, and his
effort to have an answer for each level

* Thomas Greco, and his idea for local credit commons, based on the real
interactions of local players; weakness here is that it can't be applied
rapidly enough in national crisis situations

and this is why I liked the approach of Ellen Brown, because of her
insistence, with many documented examples of the past, that people-friendly
governments can issue money as a productive investment, and that it is not
inflationary in such circumstances

to summarize:

- a pluralist money system that can operate on local, regional, national,
and global levels, issued by either sovereign states or local or affinity
communities

- conceived as a commons / public utility that cannot be manipulated by
private interests

- designed in such a way that it does not create negative social and natural
externalities (counter-example: bitcoin is socially sovereign but has the
wrong design)

Perhaps if you have time one day, you could write about how you see money as
a commons, and how MMT stacks up against these contemporary 'p2p' driven
demands

One question for MMT, what kind of government would want to implement this?

Michel

On Sun, Oct 16, 2011 at 7:41 PM, <ideasinc at ee.net> wrote:

>
>
> ------- Forwarded message -------
> From: ideasinc at ee.net
> To: p2p-foundation <p2p-foundation at lists.**ourproject.org<p2p-foundation at lists.ourproject.org>>,
> "Michel Bauwens" <michel at p2pfoundation.net>
> Cc: chris at cataspanglish.com
> Subject: Re: [P2P-F] money as debt p. 2
> Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2011 08:20:51 -0400
>
> Thank you, -Michel
>
>        I watched the entire video, and have seen Money as Debt One several
> times. First, the sophistication of Grignon understanding of economics has
> greatly expanded. There are a few quibbles in details and the development
> and identification. He is advocating for a version of MMT/FF. He never
> actually addresses the state origin of money per se, and it is a major
> objective. He never explicitly defines money as a COMMONS, and it is
> central to his narrative.
>
> You will have to excuse me on two points of irony. Grignon mentions both
> the Money Masters crew and the American Monetary institute, and he never
> mentions MMT/FF or any of the participants in that discourse. It is a bit
> like rolling out a plan and then not giving credit to the community which
> has co-developed that bundle of ideas and principles. Not posing the
> MMT/FF position as a legitimate participant in this immediate discussion
> becomes a significant problem for me. The MMT/FF position on monetary
> reform is actually the discovery that the bus named "Our Economy" actually
> has a steering wheel and other control features. The advocacy of monetary
> reform ends up being a bit pointless unless there is a substantial body of
> practice that can propose new policies and move toward new fiscal
> objectives.
>
> To a large degree, MMT/FF is what we can do with monetary reform that
> reoccupies the currency commons being held as a privately held franchise.
> The MMT/FF people are also of the opinion that new major legislation is
> not necessary, the reforms that are needed could be done as easily as US
> Pres. Nixon closing the Gold window in 1971 by executive order. Most of
> the banking process that would be necessary to support the MMT/FF
> instrumental process as already established though currently under private
> franchise.
>
> The MMT/FF people seem to feel that the move for legislation, is more of
> an educational and political strategy toward a public discourse, not
> necessarily having a value in the literal reform agenda. In his roll out
> of "alternatives" he mentions LETS (1.0) and Timebanks, which are
> specifically debt based exchange models. They are credit union based, in a
> sense, currencies that operate under banking laws and conventions. In that
> there is a strong similarity between credit unions/thifts and debt based
> "alternatives," it would likely be that there could be a legal point here
> that debt based "alternatives" should be placed under the same banking
> legislation and regulations. Operating across national boundaries would
> seem to attract the same sort of scrutiny as is being given the hawala
> networks.
>
> The second irony here for me is that although Grignon seems to advocate
> for MMT/FF practices and principles, that energy is primarily directed
> toward debt based alternatives. The CRX becomes a sort of missing link in
> the process and in the discourse of what alternatives are possible. To
> rely so much upon the MMT/FF discourse only tacitly acknowledged, and then
> channeling reform energies into the centralization of electoral politics
> and toward debt based semi-alternatives does not seem particularly
> progressive in detail. There are nuances of the word "Open" that seem to
> be absent in the named cast of participants. Perhaps there will be a
> "Money As Debt III: Money as Asset/Sustainable Economics".
>
> as we go, Tadit
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Sat, 15 Oct 2011 03:43:07 -0400, Michel Bauwens
> <michel at p2pfoundation.net> wrote:
>
>  http://www.youtube.com/watch?**v=lsmbWBpnCNk<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsmbWBpnCNk>
>>
>> hi chris, could you embed this with the youtube abstact, post-date oct 25
>> or
>> after,
>>
>> perhaps Tadit could offer an extra comment to add to it,
>>
>> Michel
>>
>

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