biffvernon wrote:UndercoverElephant wrote:
What use is "virtual money" in a real world where most people can't afford computers anymore?
Sorry, I didn't mean 'virtual' money in the computer sense, like bitcoins. That would be no use in a world without universal computers, as you say. No. I meant 'virtual' as in the case of a money that is not backed by stuff that needs digging up like gold. IOUs are fine - that's what those fancy sheets of paper with a message saying "I promise to pay the bearer..." on them are. Except that, as we have seen, they are not quite fine.
David Fleming, in
Lean Logic, has a good deal to say about money. He concludes the several pages thus "Deference crowds in with every sweep of the broom intended to get rid of it. This dominant, expert, sycophantic, infantile vision, seeing only monetary value, and full of certainty that it is true, eats its way through the human ecology."
And of course Mark Boyle has written the Moneyless Man, a jolly good read.
We need a paradigm shift in our thinking to equip ourselves for the future.
Logically, money can only take three forms
1) A particular thing in the real world that has a relatively stable (in the short to medium term) universal exchange value.
2) A promise to pay a particular thing in the real world
3) A state imposed (or equivalent physically powerful body) credit token that is not backed by any particular promise to pay any particular thing in the real world.
In a world as complex as ours is now, (1) is impractical and (3) is too easily corruptible.
Despite all of its difficulties, (2) is the least of all evils in a world of complex economic transactions. However, over the longer term, as our complex societies wind down and become less complex, there may even be some room for a return to (1), at least at a local level.
Whatever else is true, systems of physically un-backed promises to pay always end up in disaster in very short order. There is not one single historical example of the contrary. Not one.
