It's a pity google video appear to have removed the view counter from the page - I seem to recall it being in the 100s of Thousands last time I looked at it a year or so ago.TB wrote:
Be interesting to know what it is now.Here's another (<5mins, about Gesell) which is fast burning into my memory:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxdPIOUTd2k
It briefly covers the Worgl 'experiment' - a concrete example of the practicalities of implementing his ideas.
MacG, cheers, I'll have to look at Magdeburg - any good links recommend?
To my mind, Gesell went a step further than condemning the mechanism of usury, in that he recognised a systemic fault in the (metaphysical) nature of 'money' itself: Namely, it's qualitative difference from the things it is *merely* supposed to represent.The basic problem is interest, at least compounding interest, and all of them understood it. What sets Gesell apart is that he saw it so clearly in a time when everyone else was high on that growth-drug.
What he termed 'the logic of Rats, moths and rust'.
By 'engineering' into the 'money' a mechanism of atrophy, it's velocity increased, since there was a strong disincentive to 'hoarding'.
Even with a debt-free currency, this mechanism does not exist, hence by 'hoarding', saving or withholding currency from circulation, you artificially restrict availability, hence the 'value' of the currency (like any 'commodity') increases - the resultant feedback-loop ensures that the rich get richer still.
Gesell prevents such feedback-loops even getting established, by introducing his own.
It's a challenging idea, and not one I'd quite encountered before reading Gesell - as you note, even Marx failed to make this observation. I've pondered before whether this systemic fault on which Marx constructed his theories rendered Marxim 'harmless' to the status quo... that being the reason Marx is a household name while Gesell remains obscure.
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