Dollar Cost Averaging (Quora question)

“How can I evaluate returns from a dollar cost averaging (automatic investment) into a leveraged fund (e.g. SSO) over a longer term (10+yrs)?”

(Link to Quora question and answer)

Early in my career I wrote an application for “financial criminals” to move people away from “whole life” insurance to “term” insurance, and investing the premium saved by dollar-cost-averaging into their mutual fund. The “illustrations” I produced for them were dramatic. Basically, the “investment income” goes to you and the mutual fund managers and not to the insurance company.

Well, to do this, the “law” demanded lots of small print. But it also demanded I show the cash flows precisely as if they were done into the mutual fund historically. That meant going back the 30 years (the planning window) and saying “if the next 30 years are exactly the same, this is where you would be”.

But it was really pitching “if you’d done this 30 years ago with our mutual fund, this is where you’d be” … and it was dramatically better than what the whole life scenario delivered (unless you used a poorly performing mutual fund … or had zero inflation).

This was 30+ years ago. Back then you had “whole life” insurance salesmen … with a comfortable annual commission stream. It tipped their cart. These insurance salesmen now call themselves “financial analysts”. Follow the money.

None of this would work if we had a “proper” Medium of Exchange (MOE) process … that “guaranteed” zero inflation … all the time and everywhere. If we had that, you could put your surplus money under a rock and do better than either alternative.

Leveraging doesn’t work with zero inflation (i.e. (1+i)^n is always “1.000” for all “n” when “i” is perpetually zero). So don’t expect a “proper” MOE process to be adopted any time soon. It puts the money changers and the governments they institute out of business.

(see http://MoneyDelusions.com (http://MoneyDelusions.com))

Todd Marshall
Plantersville, TX

September 19, 2017September 19, 2017

FT: The virtual currency boom echoes dotcom fever

The virtual currency boom echoes dotcom fever

MD: Remembering what money really is … “an in-process promise to complete a trade over time and space” … that it is only created by traders … and that for any given trading promise, it only exists for the duration of that promise … and that during that interim time, there is perpetual perfect supply/demand (i.e. zero inflation) of that money created … knowing all that, look how silly such articles like this become.

by Izabella Kaminska

In 1999, the actor Whoopi Goldberg made a bold decision. Rather than be paid for an endorsement for a dotcom start-up, she took a 10 per cent stake in the business. It seemed wise. At the time, everyone was investing in internet businesses and a rush of initial public offerings was making early investors into millionaires. I was reminded of this amid a flurry of news about the new boom in cryptocurrencies — and their celebrity backers. Ms Goldberg’s venture, Flooz, was billed as the future of money in a digital world and it hoped one day to rival the dollar.

MD: Let’s see if there is evidence that they had any clue about what money is before starting this venture. Nope!

The way it worked, however, was much less revolutionary. The service resembled a gift certificate: customers paid in dollars and received Flooz balances. These could be redeemed at participating merchants, with the hope that credits would one day circulate as money in their own right.

MD: What’s the point? How were they supposed to work without dollars kicking them off in the first place? When they replaced the dollar, what was going to create them?

The problem for Flooz was that little prevented mass replication of its model. One prominent competitor, Beenz, differed only slightly, by allowing its units to trade at fluctuating market prices.

MD: A “proper” MOE process can have no competitors. A competitor either does the exact same thing as this proper MOE process, or it isn’t competitive. And since there is no money to be made in the process (contrasted to the similar casualty insurance process where money is made on investment income), it’s not going to attract many competitors. It would be the trading commons themselves who would steward the process. We have experience with this. The internet is just such a process example … a technology commons.

Like banking syndicates before them, the ventures decided to club together for mutual benefit by accepting each other’s currencies in their networks. Even so, by 2001 both companies had failed, brought down by a lack of the one ingredient that counts most in finance: trust. Flooz was knocked by security concerns after it transpired that a Russian crime syndicate had taken advantage of its currency, while the fluctuating value of Beenz soon put users off.

MD: Fluctuating value turning users off is a good sign. Users aren’t as clueless as these entrepreneurs.

Their loss turned into PayPal’s gain, the latter succeeding precisely because it had set its aspirations much lower. Rather than replace established currencies, PayPal focused on improving the dollar’s online mobility, notably by creating a secure network that gained public support. This, it turned out, is what people really wanted.

MD: And PayPal missed the real opportunity by not following up. If they had gone ahead and implemented micro-transactions, I would be paying a tiny (what 1 cent; 5 cents?) price for reading this article. That day has to come. Supporting the likes of FT with advertising and subscriptions is just plain nonsense.

Did we learn anything from the failures of the internet boom? Apparently not. In what is looking increasingly like a new incarnation of dotcom fever, celebrities are endorsing virtual currency systems. Heiress and reality TV star Paris Hilton tweeted this week that she would be backing fundraising for LydianCoin, a digital token still at concept stage. It offers redemption against online artificial intelligence-assisted advertising campaigns.

MD: Advertising campaigns “are” artificial intelligence. We know it as propaganda. It’s annoying … and really dangerous when it reaches the minds of the stupid.

Baroness Michelle Mone, a businesswoman, announced she would be accepting bitcoin in exchange for luxury Dubai flats. What is particularly striking about this path to riches is its “growing money on trees” character.

MD: What is “particularly striking” is that someone would part with their bitcoins for one of her flats … knowing the extraordinary deflationary nature of bitcoins.

While the internet boom was dominated by IPOs, linked to a potentially profitable venture to come, this time it is “initial coin offerings” igniting investor fervour. Most ICOs do not aspire to deliver profits or returns. Indeed, from a regulatory standpoint, they cannot — most lawyers agree doing so could classify them as securities, drawing regulatory intervention which would force them into stringent listing processes.

MD: If they knew what real money was, they would know that every trader (like you and me contracting for a house or car with monthly payments) is making an ICO. What in the world is it going to take to get these brilliant idiots to recognize and understand the obvious?

That opinion was substantiated in July when the US Securities and Exchange Commission warned: “Virtual coins or tokens may be securities and subject to the federal securities laws” and that “it is relatively easy for anyone to use blockchain technology to create an ICO that looks impressive, even though it might actually be a scam.”

MD: Now isn’t that the pot calling the kettle black. The SEC is itself a scam.

So most ICOs make do by selling tokens for pre-existing virtual currencies for promises of direct redemption against online goods, services or concepts, or simply in the hope the tokens themselves will rocket in value despite offering nothing specific in return.

MD: Stupid is as stupid does. If you know that zero inflation is the right number for any money you don’t go looking for “rocketing” value. An ideal unit for money is the HUL (Hour of Unskilled Labor). We were all a HUL doing summer jobs in high-school so we can relate to them any time in our lives … and to any trade we make. The HUL itself has not changed over all time. It trades for the same size hole in the ground. With median income now at about $50,000 per year, the median person is able to trade his skilled hours for about 3.5 HULs these days.

They still think they can succeed where other parallel currency systems have failed, by bolting into pre- established blockchain-distributed currency systems such as Ethereum or bitcoin.

MD: A proper MOE process is totally transparent when it comes to the money creation/destruction parts of the process. Block-chain techniques (i.e. universally accessible ledger) would be helpful to enhance that transparency. But there would be no mining involved. New blocks would have to be created at any time at zero cost.

These already come with a network of token-owning users. But with the numbers of conventional merchants that will accept these currencies falling rather than rising, these holders need something more compelling to spend their digital wealth on. As it stands, the real economy can only be accessed by cashing out digital currency for conventional money at cryptocurrency exchanges. This comes at some expense.

MD: So far, the expense is insignificant … because of the enormous “guaranteed” continual deflation of the cryptocurrency itself (their ridiculous mining process). It’s kind of like the reverse of our government run lotteries. With government lotteries, you are guaranteed to lose (except for the minuscule chance you win). With cryptocurrency, you are guaranteed to win (until everyone loses as what is essentially a Ponzi scheme … with no Ponzi … comes down).

But with regulators clamping down on how exchanges are governed, token holders who cannot or do not want to pass through know-your-customer and anti-money laundering procedures remain frozen out.

MD: What’s disconcerting is the knowledge that if we instituted a “proper” MOE process, the regulators would clamp down on it too. It would make their current counterfeiting impossible … and it would make it impossible for money changers to demand tribute. That would just not stand. Regulators and governments everywhere are a major part of our problem.

That leaves their holdings good for only three things: virtual currency speculation, which is ultimately a zero-sum game; redemption against dark-market goods or capital control circumvention. It is assumed ICOs offering real goods, services or real estate in exchange for cryptocurrencies can somehow tap into this sizeable, albeit potentially illicit and restricted, wealth pool.

MD: Real estate wants positive inflation. Money changers in real estate do not want real money (there’s no leverage in it … time value of real money is guaranteed to be perpetually 1.0000) … and for sure they don’t want money that is guaranteed deflationary.

Yet if competing unregulated economies really start gaining traction, governments will act. China’s central bank has already branded ICOs an illegal form of crowdfunding and more rulings are expected from other jurisdictions in coming weeks.

Then again, if history teaches us anything, the system’s own propensity to cultivate fraud and unnecessary complexity in the face of more secure and regulated competition may be the more likely thing to bring it down.

MD: Actually, if you crowd the money changers existing con … “they” are likely to bring it down. “Real” money crowds money changers out of existence. That will not stand. Too bad for us traders and producers in society.

When given the choice, people usually opt for security.

MD: Which of course we don’t have … if you call government taking 3/4ths of everything we make …. you can’t call that security. I call it slavery. If you call money changers taking “all” taxes we pay as tribute … leaving governments (which the money changers instituted to protect their con) to sustain themselves by counterfeiting … I call that criminal.

izabella.kaminska@ft.com Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2017. All rights reserved. You may share using our article tools. Please don’t copy articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web.

MD: I am openly violating this request. My comments are far more valuable than anything to be learned in this article. And the fairest way to make my comments is to intersperse them in the disinformation that these articles present.

August 28, 2017September 20, 2017

Cafe Hayek: insurance against exploitation,

MD: I wonder if Boudreaux and Buchanan have read the Anti-Federalist Papers. Let’s see if they have clue.

Quotation of the Day…

by Don Boudreaux on August 28, 2017

in Myths and Fallacies, Virginia Political Economy

… is from pages 171-172 of my late Nobel-laureate colleague Jim Buchanan‘s 1987 paper “Man and the State,” as this paper is reprinted in James M. Buchanan, Federalism, Liberty, and Law (2001), which is volume 18 of the Collected Works of James M. Buchanan:

The monumental folly of the past two centuries has been the presumption that so long as the state operates in accordance with democratic procedures (free and periodic elections; open franchise; open entry for parties, candidates, and interests; majority or plurality voting rules) the individual does, indeed, have quite apart from any viable exit option.

MD: That is a badly constructed … long sentence. It ends “individual does have”. Does have “what”? And then adds “quite apart from any viable exit option” has nothing to refer to. If it means the individual has a viable exit option to leave the government, he certainly doesn’t. Neither does a state. The Constitution is obviously flawed with its failure to include a buy/sell clause.

Modern states have been allowed to invade increasing areas of “private space” under the pretense of democratic process.

MD: We here at MD of course know that democracy … and thus the democratic process … has no chance of working with more than 50 people involved. And our USA process has 500,000 people involved at our “most” representative level.

From Anti-Federalist Papers #17: Federalist Power Will Ultimately Subvert State Authority:

DBx: People whose understanding of democracy is no more advanced than what they learned in fifth grade believe that the democratic procedures listed above by Buchanan are both necessary and sufficient to ensure a free, open, vibrant, and prosperous society. And when such people – people such as Duke historian Nancy MacLean – encounter serious discussions of the need for constraints on majoritarian rule, these people leap to the conclusion that those who counsel such restraints are undemocratic enemies of the People. Whatever you think of democracy, such leaping is a sign of terrific ignorance of both intellectual and political history. And yet displays today of such ignorance are unthinkingly celebrated in “Progressive” circles as signs of deep wisdom and moral superiority.

MD: Boy is this the pot calling the kettle black. DBx seems to be clueless about democracy too. Earth to DBx! Democracy can’t work with more than 50 people involved!

For democracy to work, the voters must be intimately familiar with the issues on which they are voting. For democracy to function in a republic, those choosing the representative for the next lower level must personally know the person they choose … and that person must personally know them to represent them (the individual being at the top level and himself dealing himself with all issues under his control … like his own welfare) .

August 27, 2017September 20, 2017

Cafe Hayek: Prosecuting price gougers

MD: Every once in a while, even the Mises Monks get it right.

An Open Letter to the Attorney General of Texas

by Don Boudreaux on August 26, 2017

in Prices, Reality Is Not Optional, Seen and Unseen

Mr. Ken Paxton, Attorney General
State of Texas
Austin, TX

Mr. Paxton:

You boasted today on Fox News that your office, in the wake of hurricane Harvey, will prosecute so-called “price gougers” – that is, merchants who charge prices deemed to be too high by Texas politicians. I urge you to quit your witch hunt.

MD: Hear hear!!

Because each ‘gouging’ price paid for any item is paid voluntarily by a consumer spending his or her own money – and because that consumer cannot conveniently find that item elsewhere at a lower price – the consumer clearly doesn’t deem the price to be too high. That is, while the consumer would, as always, prefer to pay a lower than a higher price, the consumer prefers to pay the high price and actually get the item than to save money by going without the item. Formal legalities asides, why should the judgment of politicians about what prices in the aftermath of natural disasters ‘should’ be override the judgments of on-the-spot consumers about the appropriateness of prices?

Government intervention is often justified as a means of correcting “market failure.”

MD: Government itself is a “sanity” failure. No government at any level, even at the bottom (the individual being at the top) should do anything the level above it cannot do itself. Big government is for wide cooperation … not wide control. The individual clearly is able to make their own decision here … and implement it.

But by enforcing prohibitions on “price gouging” your office causes market failure. Penalizing merchants who raise the prices of goods and services prevents markets from truthfully conveying an unfortunate but undeniable truth – namely, the natural disaster caused available supplies of goods and services to fall significantly relative to the demand for those goods and services. By forcibly keeping ‘legal’ prices lower than their actual market values, you not only encourage black markets and other corrupt and corrupting processes, you obstruct the information and incentives that are necessary both to encourage consumers to now use those goods and services more sparingly, and to encourage suppliers from around the world to rush to the devastated areas additional supplies of those goods and services.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
and
Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030

MD: Congratulations Cafe Hayek. Even the blind squirrel sometimes finds a nut.

August 25, 2017June 19, 2022

Wikipedia: Nash – Ideal Money

MD: It has been suggested that we at MD study Nash’s “ideal money” as an assignment (presumably to see it disproves our case) … by someone who won’t admit what we describe here is indisputable … or even give evidence they have even read the less than 500 words that present the principles of “real” money. As usual the assignment comes from those who resort to just handing out reading assignments … rather than reading our simple 500 words. This one is of particular interest because it claims “ideal money”. The “proper” MOE process described here at MD maintains the only “real” money imaginable … so it “has” to be as ideal as anything out there or proposed to be out there:

It is in perpetual free supply;
it maintains perpetual perfect supply demand balance of the money itself (zero inflation);
it imposes no restraint nor interest load on responsible traders;
it is fair in imposing interest loads on irresponsible traders commensurate with their propensity to default;
it maintains perpetual perfect transparency of the creation and destruction of the money process itself;
it requires no resources (reserves) at all;
the cost of its operation is negligable;
it is measured using an unvarying scale (the HUL);
there is not money to made in operating it (as there is in insurance … i.e. investment income)
and its behavior is totally objective and the results easily provable;

There is “nothing” more ideal … so this should be interesting. Nash looks like an egghead … I presume he will think like one too. Expect lots of footnotes.

Ideal money

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article contains too many or too-lengthy quotations for an encyclopedic entry. Please help improve the article by editing it to take facts from excessively quoted material and rewrite them as sourced original prose. Consider transferring direct quotations to Wikiquote. (April 2015)

John Forbes Nash, Jr.

Ideal money is a theoretical notion promulgated by John Nash (Nobel Laureate in Economics), to stabilize international currencies. It is a solution to the Triffin dilemma which is generally about the conflict of economic interests between the short-term domestic and long-term international objectives when a currency used in a country is also a world reserve currency in the meantime.

MD: “To stabilize international currencies”? Tilt!!! Real money is an inherently and perfectly stable process. It has the automatic negative feedback mechanism of immediately mopping up defaults with interest collections of like amount. Now, with a statement like that first thing out of the chute, we here at MD know its silly to read further. But we’ve been given the assignment. We trudge on.

“Triffin dilemma”? Conflict of economic interests? A “proper” MOE process has no sensitivities to such things at all. There is no difference between short term and long term. The time value of money is provably 1.0000. When a proper MOE process exists anywhere, there is no such thing as a world reserve currency. “All” monies either come from a proper process or they are competed out of existence in an instant. Thus all moneys exchange at a constant rate … 1.000 if denominated in HULs (Hours of Unskilled Labor). And no “real” money requires “reserves” of any kind whatever!

Introduction

How does the idea of Ideal Money appear

“Money can be recognized as a technological development comparable to the wheel and of similar antiquity. Among the more recent developments in the technology that facilitates transfers of utility (in the sense of game theory) are systems like those of EZ Pass, by means of which vehicles traversing toll bridges or toll highways can pay their toll fees without stopping for the attention of human personnel manning the toll booths. In this lecture, I present remarks about the history of monetary systems and about issues of comparative quality or merit , along with a specific proposal about how a system or systems of ‘ideal money’might be established and employed.”^[1]

MD: He describes a transfer system. The real money process is insensitive to the myriad of transfer systems employed in the money’s circulation. The process itself is only interested in its media’s creation and destruction and prevention of “all” leaks. He talks of a technological development. Exotic transfer systems are not it. There is nothing technical in addition and subtraction. That’s just simple accounting. I’m going to ignore all his noise about history. I’m just going to look for his solution to all the historical failings. We here at MD already know the best … and yet untried solution.

Main value standard of ideal money

Ideal money is working in the theory similar to the gold standard, but it is generally based on a Nonpolitical Value Standard. “A possible nonpolitical basis for a value standard that could be used for money would be a good industrial consumption price index(ICPI) statistic. This statistic could be calculated from the international price of commodities such as copper, silver, tungsten, and so forth that are used in industrial activities.”^[1] John Nash said in his lecture.

MD: Tilt!!! All money is a perception held by two traders at an instant in time. One has money. The other has an object they will trade for money. In the negotiation step (1) of a trade, they decide how much money is involved. In all our illustrations our money will be measured in units of HULs (Hours of Unskilled Labor). A HUL has traded for the same size hole in the ground for all time … and is expected to do so in all future time. There is no “standard” … .political or otherwise. If the trade is made using existing money, the trade is complete for both traders. Promise to deliver (2) and Delivery (3) happen simultaneously on-the-spot. That trade is done. It has no impact on any other trade in the entire trading environment. It is just between those two traders. While the trade “uses” money, it doesn’t “create” money.

Money is “created” when one trader promises to do the trade over time and space. And we have all done that. We have bought a house, a car, a washing machine, or a steak dinner by creating money and then returning it a little bit at a time. Our trading promise is certified, the person with the house, the car, the washing machine, or the steak gets money (which we created on the spot). We then go about working to return that money and destroy it as we promised to do. If we are responsible traders (i.e. we don’t default), we pay no interest. If we have a propensity to default, we pay interest actuarially based on that weakness.

So Nash need not make this more complicated than it has to be. We can ignore references to anything “political” for example.

Why gold can not be an ideal money

MD: Not only can gold not be “ideal” money. It can’t be money at all. Anyone holding gold is doing just that … holding gold. They’re no more holding money than someone holding a ribeye steak.

The gold does not reach the standard of ideal money, despite its merits. The main problem is because the silver and gold do not have a constant value all the time.

MD: One gold star for Nash. Real money guarantees perpetual perfect balance between supply and demand for the money itself.

“To the undiscerning minds of the mass of men a pound sterling of gold, a silver five-franc piece, or a paper dollar, represents always a definite unit.

MD: So does a pound of ribeye steak. The pound is the unit … what it is a pound of can play no role at all. We choose the HUL as the best candidate for unit. It is related to time, which is unvarying, and what can be delivered in that time … which is relatively unvarying. Who knows how big a hole an ounce of gold traded for 100 years ago? Most don’t even know what it trades for today. But everyone can put a spade in their hand and in one hour make a hole that is one HUL in size. And they can know that their hole, for all intents and purposes, is the same size hole a HUL would have produced 100 or 5,000 years ago. We don’t need to search the Dead Sea Scrolls for proof.

It has not escaped attention, however, that a given amount of money buys much less at one time than another.”^[2]

MD: May have to take back Nash’s gold star. A given amount of “real” money will always trade for the same size hole in the ground … always! It may trade for a different size car or different size ribeye steak or a different number of gold ounces … but that’s because of the supply/demand relation of those things themselves. The supply/demand for the money itself is perpetually perfect and plays no role whatever in the pricing.

in other words, people are used to measuring the value of goods by money, but due to some reasons the value of money itself changes, which causes the value of silver or gold changes. We can’t tell the constant value of the metal, and the fixed mind-sets can not easily be changed.

MD: What he says is only true of an “improper” MOE process like that run by the Fed and every other central bank which ever existed. if everyone does the same thing wrong, that is only one thing being done wrong. People thinking in HULs will never have this problem. Thinking in dollars, a HUL was $1.50 when I was one. It is about $8.00 for those who are HULs today. In both cases, it trades for the same size hole in the ground.

Related factors mentioned in Nash’s lecture

Welfare Economics

“A related topic is that of the considerations to be given by society and the national state to ‘social equity’ and the general ‘economic welfare’.

MD: But we at MD know that (welfare) has nothing whatever to do with money. So we should be able to skip this whole topic … but of course we can’t because we’ve been given this study assignment.

Here the key viewpoint is methodological, as we see it. How should society and the state authorities seek to improve economic welfare generally and what should be done at times of abnormal economic difficulties or ‘depression’?

MD: I don’t know and don’t care … as long as they don’t try to do it by manipulating the MOE process.

We can’t go into it all, but we feel that actions which are clearly understandable as designed for the purpose of achieving a ‘social welfare’ result are best.

MD: Best for whom? “real” money is not concerned. People can “use” it to do the things they feel are good. They can even “create” it to do so … as long as they also return and destroy as they promise to do. But they absolutely cannot “counterfeit” it to do the good things they want to do. That results in bad things for others … and a “proper” MOE process cares nothing about good or bad. It just cares about strict adherence to the process, thereby achieving the predicted and desired result … with zero outside meddling.

And in particular, programs of unemployment compensation seem to be comparatively well structured so that they can operate in proportion to the need.”^[3]

MD: Unemployment compensation is no different than broken car compensation. If you can’t cover the risk through self insurance, you better be buying insurance. Regardless, that is no concern of a “proper” MOE process. Nash, this is oh so easy! Are you being paid to give these lectures?

Generally, the social welfare is what we always expect to be improved, and if there is really an ideal money, the whole economy would be influenced, including the social welfare.

MD: Why say the ideal money should do it? Why not say the ideal drug should do it. Or the ideal bullet should do it? “Social welfare” is not the business of money. Trading over time and space is the business of money.

Money, Utility, and Game Theory

MD: You gotta love it when they throw in game theory. Can string theory be far behind? How about global warming?

The concept of utility generally appears in the field of economics but it can be connected with the game theory in mathematics. In the game theory of economics, “utility” is a very important and essential factor. In the book (on game theory and economic behavior) written by the mathematician John von Neumann and the economist Oskar Morgenstern, a utility function is proved, which can be used to put the individual’s preference on the interval scale, and the utility is always preferred to be maximized. (More details can be found in Von Neumann–Morgenstern utility theorem.)

MD: And this is the exact same kind of nonsense Mises spends most of his really boring words on. When it comes to money, why traders make the trades they do is completely irrelevant. We see time and time again “buyers remorse”. It can happen in a day. Or it can happen over several years (e.g. in the case of a boat purchase … two days of glee, the day they buy it and the day they sell it … other than that, it’s just a hole in the water into which they throw money). That’s all irrelevant to the subject of money. But we have our assignment to study this nonsense!

In John Nash’s lecture about ideal money, he gave the opinion that we can through observing the changing relationship between the money and the utility transfer to see “how the ‘quality’ of a money standard can strongly affect the areas of the economy involving financing with longer-term credits.

MD: With a “proper” MOE process, quality is in the transparency and the efficacy of the process. The quality of the governor on a diesel engine is more complicated than that … its parts can break. The MOE process is either operating objectively as dictated … or it is not. Only in the former case does it have quality of any kind … and that quality is of the perfect kind.

And also, we can see that money itself is a sort of ‘utility’, using the word in another sense, comparable to supplies of water, electric energy or telecommunications.

MD: Absolute nonsense. It is never proper to think of money “supply”. A proper MOE process has media is perpetual free supply. There is always exactly as much there as is needed … no more … no less. Nash … no gold stars for you!

And then, if we think about it, money may become as comparable to the quality of some ‘public utility’like the supply of electric energy or of water.”^[3] The game theory of economics is a good way to check whether the quality of a money is ideal or not.

MD: The way to check the quality of money is by observing its universal acceptance in use … and observing its trait (built in) of perpetual zero inflation of the money itself. The latter will enable and result in the former.

“Keynesians“

“The thinking of J. M. Keynes was actually multidimensional and consequently there are quite different varieties of persons at the present time who follow, in one way or another, some of the thinking of Keynes.

MD: “Multidimensional”? As in wishy washy? … yep … as in wishy washy.

A very famous saying of Keynes was ‘…in the long run we will all be dead…’”^[3] Keynesian economics gives the opinion: in the short run, the change in economic output has a strongly relationship with the change in aggregate demand, the output is always affected by the demand.

MD: How about this from us here at MD: In the long run, inflation of real money will be zero; and in the short run inflation of real money will be zero. It’s more true than what Keynes said … some people die before the long run.

And look what they’re talking about: “aggregate demand”. Money doesn’t care about demand. It is in free supply. There is always in circulation the exact amount that is needed … or some trader is creating it as we speak.

If there is an ideal money which can be stable in a very long period, we do not really need to worry about lots of problems in the long run.

MD: Real money is perfectly stable … perpetually … as is a HUL and the size hole it trades for. It never worries about any problems … long run or short. It perpetually mitigates defaults experienced with interest collections of like amount and this is a stabilizing negative feedback loop.

Asymptotically ideal money

MD: OH PLEASE!!!!!

Main idea

Asymptotically ideal money is the currency close to but still not ideal money. In John Nash’s lecture, “Ideal Money and Asymptotically Ideal Money” focused on” the connection between fluctuation in inflation and exchange rates and the perceived long-term value of money”, he mentioned that: “‘Good money’ is money that is expected to maintain its value over time. ‘Bad money’ is expected to lose value over time, as under conditions of inflation.

MD: So money from a “proper” MOE process (i.e. real money) is “good money”. It (the process) guarantees it (the media) will hold its value in HULs over all time everywhere. It cannot be made to do otherwise without violating the process … at which point it is no longer “the process” … it is no longer “real” money.

The policy of inflation targeting, whereby central banks set monetary policy with the objective of stabilizing inflation at a particular rate, leads in the long run to what Nash called ‘asymptotically ideal money’ – currency that, while not achieving perfect stability, becomes more stable over time.”^[4] That means if a currency has shown a trend to be more stable，it could become an asymptotically ideal money or even the ideal money in the future.

MD: A “proper” MOE process is subject to no such manipulation. Thus it can only produce “ideal” results. But the results are only ideal for the traders. They are far from ideal for the money changers or the governments they institute for their protection and force in applying their scam. And they are not ideal results for those in the business of finance. Their cherished and worshiped expression (1+i)^n from which they claim the time value of money … well, it always produces 1.000 … i.e. “real” money has zero time value. So those in the scam of finance need to find other work.

Euro

Currencies may become (asymptotically) ideal money

Euro

John Nash mentioned in his lecture that Euro might become an ideal money in the future, because Euro is used in a large range of places and has a good stability.

MD: We here at MD wished they talked to us when they created the Euro. We could have told them exactly how to do it to make it perfect “real” money (for traders that is). But the Euro was created by money changers to gain control over lots of countries at the same time. It is an open scam … and BREXIT is saying, we’re out … we want to run our own scam. Note, the Euro scam, like our own Constitution scam has no buy/sell agreement.

It is the currency used by the Institutions of the European Union and is the official currency of the eurozone which consists of 18 of the 28 member states of the European Union. In general, Euro has a macroeconomic stability, people in Europe owning large amounts of euros are “served by high stability and low inflation.” Moreover, in March 2014, Euro was commented as “an island of stability” by the head of the European Central Bank.^[5]

MD: Every one of those individual entities in the European Union could have instituted their own “proper” MOE process. Ideally, they all would have adopted the HUL as the logical choice for unit of measure. If they had done that, all their money would be freely exchanged with a constant exchange rate … that being 1.000. Had they done that, there would have been no reason to “unionize”. And there wouldn’t be a European Central Bank; or 18 central banks; or 28 central banks. there would be “no central banks”. Just certified certifiers with transparent operations employing a “proper” MOE process. What’s not to love about the simple and the obvious?

References

“Ideal money”. Southern Economic Journal, 2002, Vol.69(1), pp.4-11 [Peer Reviewed Journal]. July 1, 2002.
“Is an Ideal Money Attainable?”. Journal of Political Economy. 1903. JSTOR 1820954. doi:10.1086/250969.
“Lecture by John F. Nash Jr. Ideal Money and Asymptotically Ideal Money” (PDF).
“Nobel winner Nash critiques economic theory”. April 27, 2005.

“ECB boss Draghi brands euro an ‘island of stability’ despite sluggish growth and high unemployment”.

External links

Categories:

Monetary economics

August 21, 2017August 21, 2017

Cafe Hayek: Assumptions of Right

Quotation of the Day…

by Don Boudreaux on August 21, 2017

… is from page 359 of the late Paul Heyne‘s insightful 1981 article “Measures of Wealth and Assumptions of Right: An Inquiry” as it is reprinted in the 2008 collection of Heyne’s writings, “Are Economists Basically Immoral?” and Other Essays on Economics, Ethics, and Religion (Geoffrey Brennan and A.M.C. Waterman, eds.) (footnote deleted):

MD: Notice how the Mises Monks never just cite an article and not its author. As in this case, there is always hyperbole … e.g. Paul Hayne’s “insightful” article. This is a Mises Monk marker.

Marxists have long complained that conventional economic analysis takes for granted the existing system of property rights. The charge is fundamentally correct.

MD: Let’s see if he exposes the alternative to this? Hint: No he doesn’t.

Am I likely to paint a house that isn’t mine? Am I likely to build a house on property that isn’t mine?

Offers to supply goods and efforts to purchase goods always depend upon people’s expectations of what they can and may do under specific contemplated circumstances. What a person may do expresses, in the broadest sense, that person’s property rights.

MD: Remember … a right is a defended claim. Here we have an implicit claim and no defense suggested. Do we really think we have a right being talked about here?

In order to predict, explain, or even talk intelligibly about those patterns and instances of social interaction that we call “the economy,” we must begin with people’s expectations, that is, their property rights.

MD: Why do they see the economy as a “social” interaction? If everything was an automat, would it still be a social economy? An economy is about trade. There is nothing social about trade in most cases. The purpose of advertising is to socialize it … but that’s not an attribute … it’s just a tactic

DBx: To avoid possible misunderstanding, I would have slightly reworded the final sentence of this quotation to read: “In order to predict, explain, or even talk intelligibly about those patterns and instances of social interaction that we call “the economy,” we must begin with people’s legitimate expectations – namely, those expectations that are widely shared and agreed to throughout the community – that is, their property rights.”

MD: Ah … now you talk about a great Misesian improvement. Add more words and say even less.

Heyne’s point is profound and important. Obviously, we cannot possibly distinguish illegitimate coercion against others from the legitimate exercise or defense of one’s rights until we know in sufficient detail the property-rights arrangement.

MD: Which will be found in a spaghetti of conflicting laws, rather than a simple statement of principle … like the golden rule.

If I break the window of a house at 123 Elm St. and then enter, you cannot know from this physical act if I am burgling the house (and hence, violating someone’s property right) or entering the house with the permission of the homeowner (namely, in this example, myself who locked myself out of this house that I own).

What is less obvious, but no less important, is the fact that property rights boil down to shared expectations.

MD: And of course “principles” are shared expectations. Laws are not.

In modern America (as in most modern societies) ownership of a house includes the widely shared expectation that in all but extreme circumstances – for example, when the house is engulfed in fire – the right to decide who may enter the house is reserved to the homeowner. Ultimately, this right rests on widely shared expectations. If I, a modern American, move to some community in which the widely shared expectation is that anyone who wishes may enter unannounced into any house in that community, with or without the permission of the owner or occupants, and by whatever means, then no right of mine is violated if some stranger breaks into my house.

MD: And can we picture any collection of people who would see this behavior as adhering to the golden rule? Actually we can. Most utopian societal communal failures see things this way.

Expectations, being what they are, can be affected by the formal legal and legislative codes, but expectations can also diverge from these codes.

MD: Which makes those codes pretty worthless, doesn’t it … especially when we get 40,000+ new ones every year.

(An example of such a divergence is the fact that in some U.S. states – I think, for instance, in Massachusetts – it remains an ‘on-the-books’ criminal offense for two adults who aren’t married to each other to have consensual sex with each other. Yet community expectations now no longer regard such activities to be unlawful.) Expectations change more frequently (especially in open societies) than does the formal law and the legislative codes, and expectations are always more nuanced and ‘granular’ than articulated legal rules or legislative commands can possibly be.

MD: But if were about principles rather than laws, the golden rule principle would easily address this … i.e. it’s only the business of the two people involved.

At bottom, a society’s laws are its widely shared expectations about how individuals may and may not act toward each others’ persons and toward the material things, as well as the symbols and markers, that individuals possess and use as they conduct their affairs both individually and in groups.

MD: A misstatement. Its principles, not its laws, are the widely shared expectations. Its laws are a hopelessly flawed attempt to nail down the jello which is those principles. As I’ve stated before, it would take an unlimited number of laws to nail down the principle of the golden rule.

(By the way, do watch the 1997 movie, The Castle.)

August 15, 2017August 15, 2017

Cafe Hayek: Who’d a Thunk

MD: Here at Money Delusions, we know the only “proper” value for inflation of money itself is zero. Any argument for it to be non-zero is to support manipulation of the economy to the advantage of some traders, and disadvantage of others.

With zero inflation guaranteed, the issue of minimum wage never comes up. A person delivering a constant amount of value will be continuously paid the same amount for delivering that value … regardless of their skills.

But when you have an improper MOE process that strives for a 2% leak and delivers a 4% leak, well, every thirteen years things are going to get out of wack by a factor of two. The economic mechanisms are sticky. Wages don’t rise smoothly as governments smoothly counterfeit money … nor do prices. So, from time to time, an epoch is reached … we have lots of hand ringing … and whammo … a leap in wages (increase of minimum wage and ratcheting up of all other wages to maintain the spread) … and usually an immediate leap in prices as everyone uses the wage step increase to justify their price step increase..

Right after these epochs, the traders see an opportunity that didn’t exist just before. Every job is continually being crowded by automation. But automation is a form of retooling. The costs of retooling must be justified by the cost reductions and/or product improvements it delivers. When you make a minimum wage change, you immediately release automation initiatives that weren’t viable the day before. And that automation removes jobs that will never return. Without these epochs, automation would have a more difficult job getting a foothold and crowding out labor. Believe it or not, automation is the single biggest long term threat to our way of life. With nothing left for any of us to do we no longer have a means of keeping score.

Keeping in mind the zero inflation attribute of a “proper” MOE process, let’s see what delusions we can discover in this scholarly article.

Who’d a-Thunk It?

by Don Boudreaux on August 14, 2017

in Reality Is Not Optional, Seen and Unseen, Work

We study the effect of minimum wage increases on employment in automatable jobs – jobs in which employers may find it easier to substitute machines for people – focusing on low-skilled workers from whom such substitution may be spurred by minimum wage increases.

MD: If we had a “proper” MOE process, those engaged in conducting these studies would be out of work. Thus, we probably can’t expect them to be supportive of a proper MOE process … and zero inflation … can we!

Based on CPS data from 1980-2015, we find that increasing the minimum wage decreases significantly the share of automatable employment held by low-skilled workers, and increases the likelihood that low-skilled workers in automatable jobs become unemployed.

MD: Those who are engaged in compiling CPS data and pondering it would be out of work with a zero inflation proper MOE process. Increasing the minimum wage does not decrease the share of automatable employment … it increases it (but that’s really what he meant to say). Instituting a “proper” MOE process will eliminate a huge number of government jobs … and financial and economics jobs in industry as well. Rather than automating away what they do (which computers continuously do), it eliminates the necessity of their work all together. When inflation is guaranteed to be zero, what is a CPS analyst to do? (1+i)^n is perpetually 1.00000. In that case, it’s not about replacement, it’s about wasted counterproductive effort in the first place. But then what are the scholars of articles like this … who haven’t been able to “get it” in the face of the “obvious” … what are they going to do?

The average effects mask significant heterogeneity by industry and demographic group, including substantive adverse effects for older, low-skilled workers in manufacturing.

MD: Automation has in fact helped “older” low skilled workers. Where they would normally become physically incapable of doing the work, they can continue to do it with hydraulic and electrical assistance … just by pushing buttons. Without the automation, they would have “taken themselves” out of the game earlier. Automation is really a boon for older unskilled … and skilled … workers. But that’s really what he meant to say … right?

The findings imply that groups often ignored in the minimum wage literature are in fact quite vulnerable to employment changes and job loss because of automation following a minimum wage increase.

MD: Well duh!

That’s the abstract of a new paper by Grace Lordan and David Neumark, titled “People Versus Machines: The Impact of Minimum Wages on Automatable Jobs.” (emphasis added)

Reality is not optional and the law of demand holds for low-skilled labor no less than it holds for kumquats, for yoga instruction, and for high-quality jewelry.

MD: But the mechanism is sticky and has a dead band. Eliminate the relative motion (i.e. inflation) and then the effects of the coefficient of static friction and deadband don’t come into play at all. The static forces remain constant … they don’t build up to a point of violent release!

Indeed, the law of demand is universal. Therefore, government diktats requiring all workers to insist on being paid at least some minimum hourly wage from employers will cause the quantities of any given kind of low-skilled labor demanded by employers to be fewer than these quantities would be in the absence of such diktats.

MD: Government cannot survive with zero inflation. That “is” what sustains all government. And that inflation is also what lets the money changers maintain their illusion of the “time value of money” and thus their demand for tribute (for their claim of being the creators of the money). With zero inflation, both money changers and the governments they institute are “high, dry, and looking for a ball player” … i.e. they’re out of business.

Minimum-wage proponents fancy themselves to be champions of the poor, but these fancies are belied by the reality that minimum wages reduce the employment prospects of the very people that well-meaning minimum-wage proponents intend to help.

MD: But when you have a 4% leak in the money, how in the world are you going to keep from grinding the unskilled labor right into the dirt? Remember, we were all unskilled labor at one point in our lives.

(HT Frank Stephenson)

August 11, 2017July 20, 2023

Rockdale Principles

MD: For some time it has been obvious to me. If we should be a nation at all … and I think we would be better off if we were not … we should be a nation, not of men, not of laws (40,000+ new ones each year proves that); but of principles.

Turns out my views are not new. I tripped over Rochdale Principles today while researching electric cooperatives. Since and Medium of Exchange process is a cooperative process, lets see what we can learn from what is already known.

Here I annotate what Wikipedia has to say on the subject.

Rochdale Principles

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The original Toad Lane Store in Rochdale, United Kingdom.

The Rochdale Principles are a set of ideals for the operation of cooperatives. They were first set out in 1844 by the Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers in Rochdale, England and have formed the basis for the principles on which co-operatives around the world continue to operate. The implications of the Rochdale Principles are a focus of study in co-operative economics. The original Rochdale Principles were officially adopted by the International Co-operative Alliance (ICA) in 1937 as the Rochdale Principles of Co-operation. Updated versions of the principles were adopted by the ICA in 1966 as the Co-operative Principles and in 1995 as part of the Statement on the Co-operative Identity.^[1]

1 Current ICA version of co-operative principles

Current ICA version of co-operative principles

The Rochdale Principles, according to the 1995 ICA revision, can be summarised as follows.^[2]

Voluntary and open membership

The first of the Rochdale Principles states that co-operative societies must have an open and voluntary membership. According to the ICA’s Statement on the Co-operative Identity, “Co-operatives are voluntary organisations, open to all persons able to use their services and willing to accept the responsibilities of membership, without gender, social, racial, political or religious discrimination.”

MD: One might question the wisdom of allowing deadbeats (like governments) to be part of a Medium of Exchange, but a “proper” MOE process automatically excludes them anyway. When a trader is irresponsible, the interest load he must bear on his promises can preclude him from getting his promises certified as money.

This would be the case for “all” governments. They make promises but never deliver. They just roll them over.

Further, it brings up the question: Should any entity except individual traders be allowed to create money? I think not. Further, all traders creating money should be transparently authenticated and uniquely identifiable.

Anti-discrimination

To discriminate socially is to make a distinction between people on the basis of class or category. Examples of social discrimination include racial, religious, sexual, sexual orientation, disability, and ethnic discrimination. To fulfil the first Rochdale Principle, a Co-operative society should not prevent anyone willing to participate from doing so on any of these grounds. However, this does not prohibit the co-operative from setting reasonable and relevant ground rules for membership, such as residing in a specific geographic area or paying a membership fee to join, so long as all persons meeting such criteria are able to participate if they so choose.

MD: Setting ground rules “is” a form of discrimination. Singling out deadbeats and exposing them as such in a proper and transparent MOE process is a necessary method of maintaining the integrity of the process. Most “poor” people would be classified as deadbeats. Hopefully, with a proper MOE process, there would be few reasons (and excuses) for being poor.

If someone is willing to make a trading promise and deliver on it, they should be in no way inhibited from doing so. Further, if they default, they should be able to make up their default over any period of time (money having no time value in a proper process with guaranteed zero inflation) and completely clear their record … again becoming a responsible trader in the eyes of the process.

Motivations and rewards

Given the voluntary nature of co-operatives, members need reasons to participate. Each person’s motivations will be unique and will vary from one co-operative to another, but they will often be a combination of the following:

Financial – Some co-operatives are able to provide members with financial benefits.
Quality of life – Serving the community through a co-operative because doing service makes one’s own life better is perhaps the most significant motivation for volunteering. Included here would be the benefits people get from being with other people, staying active, and above all having a sense of the value of ourselves in society that may not be as clear in other areas of life.
Giving back – Many people have in some way benefited from the work of a co-operative and volunteer to give back.
Altruism – Some volunteer for the benefit of others.
A sense of duty – Some see participation in community as a responsibility that comes with citizenship. In this case, they may not describe themselves as volunteers.
Career experience – Volunteering offers experiences that can add to career prospects.

MD: This is a little too social for me. First, there is no such thing as “altruism”. Everyone, without exception, acts in their own self interest … all the time. Some just have little clue of what their self interest really is or should be. Further, the idea of a “sense of duty” is a con. It’s how you get people to enlist as cannon fodder as the elites play their global “war of worlds” game. Finally, I don’t agree with volunteering. Anyone who delivers a service should be compensated for it … if that service is worth something. A “proper” MOE process with media denominated in HULs (Hours of Unskilled Labor) makes the score keeping accurate, transparent, and fair. Notice that the above enumeration has elements of self interest sprinkled throughout.

Democratic member control

The second of the Rochdale Principles states that co-operative societies must have democratic member control. According to the ICA’s Statement on the Co-operative Identity, “Co-operatives are democratic organizations controlled by their members, who actively participate in setting their policies and making decisions. Men and women serving as elected representatives are accountable to the membership. In primary co-operatives members have equal voting rights (one member, one vote) and co-operatives at other levels are also organised in a democratic manner.”

MD: This doesn’t speak to the issue that democracy doesn’t work with more than 50 people involved. I favor representative control, where representatives are chosen by small groups comprised of no more than 50 people. If those people cannot deal with an issue, their representative is sent to the next lower level to a collection of no more than 50 people to deal with it there. At the layer directly below, 2,500 people are democratically represented (50 groups of 50). With this organization, the entire world’s population can easily be represented with just six layers … two times the current 6+ billion world population.

Member economic participation

Member economic participation is one of the defining features of co-operative societies, and constitutes the third Rochdale Principle in the ICA’s Statement on the Co-operative Identity. According to the ICA, co-operatives are enterprises in which “Members contribute equitably to, and democratically control, the capital of their co-operative.

MD: In reality this is nonsense … and unnecessary. Most people who “use” a MOE process media (money) don’t give a thought to how that money came into existence (though most have actually created money themselves).

At least part of that capital is usually the common property of the co-operative. Members usually receive limited compensation, if any, on capital subscribed as a condition of membership. Members allocate surpluses for any or all of the following purposes: developing their co-operative, possibly by setting up reserves, part of which at least would be indivisible; benefiting members in proportion to their transactions with the co-operative; and supporting other activities approved by the membership.” This principle, in turn, can be broken down into a number of constituent parts.

MD: Setting up of reserves is an actuarial concept. It is an inventory control concept … like safety stock. It’s just a technique … not a principle.

Democratic control

The first part of this principle states that “Members contribute equitably to, and democratically control, the capital of their co-operative. At least part of that capital is usually the common property of the co-operative.” This enshrines democratic control over the co-operative, and how its capital is used.

MD: This is starting to look like social gobledygook.

Limitations on member compensation and appropriate use of surpluses

The second part of the principle deals with how members are compensated for funds invested in a Co-operative, and how surpluses should be used. Unlike for-profit corporations, co-operatives are a form of social enterprise. Given this, there are at least three purposes for which surplus funds can be used, or distributed, by a Co-operative.

“Members usually receive limited compensation, if any, on capital subscribed as a condition of membership.”
“Developing their co-operative, possibly by setting up reserves, part of which at least would be indivisible;” in other words, the surplus can be reinvested in the co-operative.
“Benefiting members in proportion to their transactions with the co-operative;” for example, a Consumers’ Co-operative may decide to pay dividends based on purchases (or a ‘divvi’).
“Supporting other activities approved by the membership.”

MD: This again largely doesn’t apply to a proper MOE process. There is nothing to own. It’s not like a mutual insurance company where each insured shares the risk of all the others insured; when CLAIMS = PREMIUMS but money is made on investment income.

Autonomy and independence

The fourth of the Rochdale Principles states that co-operative societies must be autonomous and independent. According to the ICA’s Statement on the Co-operative Identity, “Co-operatives are autonomous, self-help organizations controlled by their members. If they enter into agreements with other organizations, including governments, or raise capital from external sources, they do so on terms that ensure democratic control by their members and maintain their co-operative autonomy.”

MD: There can be any number of “proper” MOE process in existence at any time. They are only proper if they have transparency attributes and controls that make them proper. And thus, as money creators, they are all equal. They are only distinguished by their efficiency. In practice they would all be denominated in units of HULs (Hours of Unskilled Labor).

Education, training, and information

The fifth of the Rochdale Principles states that co-operative societies must provide education and training to their members and the public. According to the ICA’s Statement on the Co-operative Identity, “Co-operatives provide education and training for their members, elected representatives, managers and employees so they can contribute effectively to the development of their co-operatives. They inform the general public – particularly young people and opinion leaders – about the nature and benefits of co-operation.”

MD: No education is needed. Any 3rd grader can easily grasp the concepts of a “proper” MOE process … if they don’t have to unlearn our “improper” MOE process first.

Cooperation among cooperatives

The sixth of the Rochdale Principles states that co-operatives cooperate with each other. According to the ICA’s Statement on the Co-operative Identity, “Co-operatives serve their members most effectively and strengthen the co-operative movement by working together through local, national, regional and international structures.”

MD: The concept of exchange doesn’t exist … it is 1.000 for all instances. But “discrimination” will be among the major tools each instance uses to be competitive. Thus discrimination is not only allowed … it is necessary for efficient and competitive operation.

Concern for community

The seventh of the Rochdale Principles states that co-operative societies must have concern for their communities. According to the ICA’s Statement on the Co-operative Identity, “Co-operatives work for the sustainable development of their communities through policies approved by their members.”

MD: A proper MOE process has no concern for community. It has only concern for perpetually delivering the attributes that defines the process: Transparency, authentication, free creation, mitigation of defaults immediately by like interest collection. That’s it.

It should be noted that “improper” MOE processes like Baltimore Green and Ithaca Hours are clueless when it comes to a “proper” MOE process … as is the Federal Reserve.

July 30, 2017October 24, 2022

What is money?

WHAT IS MONEY?

Definition: Money is an “in-process promise to complete a trade over time and space”

Proof:

Examine trade: (1) Negotiation; (2) Promise to deliver; (3) Delivery.

In simple barter exchange in the “here-and-now”, (2) and (3) happen simultaneously, on the spot. Any exchange of “value for value” (e.g.corn for piglets; gold or gold backed exchange for other stuff; etc.) is in this category and does not involve money.

Money enables simple barter exchange over time and space. Thus, money is obviously “a promise to deliver”. It can be nothing else. It doesn’t exist before the promise is made nor after delivery is made”.

Money is only created by traders (like you and me buying things over time). It is not created by banks nor the governments they institute. In fact, “all” governments are just traders. But unlike you and me, they never deliver on their trading promises which create money. They just roll them over. And that is DEFAULT. And purposeful DEFAULT is COUNTERFEITING.

Banks sustain themselves on tribute collections (and all your tax payments go to the banks as tribute collections). Governments sustain themselves on counterfeiting. You give them sustenance through the INFLATION their counterfeiting generates.

We have never had a proper Medium of Exchange (MOE) process. But it is trivial to institute one. And anyone, or any group of traders, can create a “proper” MOE process. And multiple processes can co-exist and compete (by minimizing costs).

DESCRIPTION OF A PROPER Medium of Exchange (MOE) PROCESS:

The trader sees clear to make a trade over time and space and chooses to create “money” to effect the trade. For example, you or I choose to trade 360 monthly payments for a house, which we can take possession of and live in now and over the whole term of the promise and beyond.

The trader gets his promise “certified” (now bankers make you come hat-in-hand begging for what they fictitiously call a loan “of their capital” … that’s the scam). “Certification” means the trader’s identity and the terms of his promise are recorded and performance on the promise are transparently displayed to all lookers.

The certificates … first in the form of a simple ledger entry that creates the money and then transfers it to the seller … then circulate as the most common object in “virtually” every simple barter exchange. We know it as money (it may be a ledger entry; coin; or currency … but only one at a time).

The dollars we use everyday come from a “nearly proper” MOE process run by the banks and their “association”, the Federal Reserve. It has a leakage goal (i.e. INFLATION) of 2% and delivers 4% INFLATION on average. It gives its members privilege to create 10x as much money as they have … earning 4%x10 or 40% annual return … doubling “their” money in less than two years. Thus “a capitalist is simply two years”.

“A proper” process monitors performance on the promise (e.g.: did the trader make his monthly payment). If he did, all is well in paradise. If he didn’t, the process “immediately” makes an INTEREST collection of an amount equal to his DEFAULT … reclaiming the money as if he paid it back. This guarantees perpetual perfect balance of the supply and demand for the money … it guarantees perpetual zero INFLATION.

The operative relation is: INFLATION = DEFAULT – INTEREST = zero.

Who pays the interest? Non-responsible traders do. An existing well known model is the Mutual Casualty Insurance Company. Here INCOME = PREMIUMS – CLAIMS = zero. The money is made on the investment income and works to reduce premiums actuarially. Another distinction with the money process is that “all” members of the insurance group pay PREMIUMS. With a proper MOE process, responsible traders (i.e. traders like you and me who never DEFAULT) experience zero INTEREST load over the duration of their promise.

Note: For any given money creating trade, no money exists “before” the trading promise is certified, nor “after” final delivery (delivery returning the money which is then destroyed). And since “all” money is created in this way, “all” money in circulation is an “in-process promise to complete a trade over time and space”.

With a “proper” MOE process, banks are “competed” out of existence. A “proper” MOE process could be instituted right now (unless the governments they institute outlaw it) and banks would have to change or go out of business. And since INFLATION is perpetually zero, the governments “must” sustain themselves only on tax and fee collections. They cannot counterfeit. Irresponsible traders are drummed out of the marketplace.

What could be simpler and more obvious?

What hoax could be larger than that leveled on virtually all of us by the banks and the governments they institute?

Why did WTC7 fall down?

Category: Principles

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Cafe Hayek: Assumptions of Right

Quotation of the Day…

Cafe Hayek: Who’d a Thunk

Who’d a-Thunk It?

Rockdale Principles

Rochdale Principles

Contents

Voluntary and open membership

Anti-discrimination

Motivations and rewards

Democratic member control

Member economic participation

Democratic control

Limitations on member compensation and appropriate use of surpluses

Autonomy and independence

Education, training, and information

Cooperation among cooperatives

Concern for community

What is money?

WHAT IS MONEY?

DESCRIPTION OF A PROPER Medium of Exchange (MOE) PROCESS: