Kevin,<br><br>can we really say there is a monopoly now, with all the local currencies in existence, bitcoin, the private creation of money by banks, commercial currencies such as airmiles etc ...<br><br>I notice that your comments align well with MMT principles ... (spending money into circulation)<br>
<br>Michel<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Oct 26, 2011 at 8:20 AM, Kevin Carson <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:free.market.anticapitalist@gmail.com">free.market.anticapitalist@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;"><div class="im">On Sun, Oct 23, 2011 at 1:16 PM, Michel Bauwens<br>
<<a href="mailto:michel@p2pfoundation.net">michel@p2pfoundation.net</a>> wrote:<br>
> I would love to publish a debate about this position:<br>
><br>
> see:<br>
> <a href="http://www.alternet.org/story/152810/four_things_occupy_wall_street_should_know_about_the_federal_reserve" target="_blank">http://www.alternet.org/story/152810/four_things_occupy_wall_street_should_know_about_the_federal_reserve</a>?<br>
><br>
<br>
</div>This is not so much a left-wing argument as a managerialist-liberal<br>
one. There seem to be a lot of people who assume that the only<br>
alternatives out there are vanilla-flavored managerial liberalism and<br>
"right wing." And anyone who makes decentralist noises or has<br>
problems with large institutions or bureaucracy is a "right-winger."<br>
It's the left-wing counterpart of the talk radio idiot who hears a<br>
Paulista talking about non-intervention and thinks it's a "librull."<br>
<br>
And it makes some utterly unsupported assumptions -- for example, that<br>
everyone calling for the abolition of the Fed is a right-winger or a<br>
hard-currency goldbug.<br>
<br>
In fact the anti-Fed movement is a house with many mansions, all over<br>
the political spectrum. I'm a left-winger more friendly to Greco's<br>
barter currencies than to the gold standard, but I'm all for<br>
abolishing the Fed.<br>
<br>
It's certainly true, as Blumgart says, that central banks control the<br>
money supply. But the Fed is a bank-owned cartel that controls the<br>
money supply by lending it into existence at interest. Even if I<br>
believed in the need for a central government control of the money<br>
supply, it would make just as much sense to meet the need for more<br>
currency by spending it into existence along the lines of Lincoln's<br>
Greenback policy, or depositing it into existence in people's checking<br>
accounts as the Social Credit people want to do.<br>
<br>
I'd like to see something with Bitcoin's decentralized, encrypted p2p<br>
architecture, but organized on the principles of Greco's mutual<br>
credit-clearing network, as a subplatform of Freenet, that could be<br>
adopted on a scalable basis by the people in any locality who wanted<br>
to organize a local currency under cover of a darknet. But to the<br>
extent that such systems advance credit by allowing members to run<br>
negative balances, they fall afoul of bank licensing laws. We need to<br>
eliminate the state's money monopoly and let a thousand flowers bloom.<br>
<font color="#888888"><br>
--<br>
Kevin Carson<br>
Research Associate, Center for a Stateless Society <a href="http://c4ss.org" target="_blank">http://c4ss.org</a><br>
Homebrew Industrial Revolution: A Low-Overhead Manifesto<br>
<a href="http://homebrewindustrialrevolution.wordpress.com" target="_blank">http://homebrewindustrialrevolution.wordpress.com</a><br>
Desktop Regulatory State: The Countervailing Power of Super-Empowered<br>
Individuals <a href="http://desktopregulatorystate.wordpress.com" target="_blank">http://desktopregulatorystate.wordpress.com</a><br>
Organization Theory: A Libertarian Perspective<br>
<a href="http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html" target="_blank">http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html</a><br>
</font><div><div></div><div class="h5"><br>
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