Jan 09
6
Consumer Money
The trouble with Money is
that there is never enough. Its value is curiously both its scarcity but also in its ability to be
acquired ubiquitously, globally by the simple premise of exchanging value
(goods and services) for it.
It is apart from the fairer
sex, the single most cited reason for war. It forms the fundamental basics of
Education and is the single constant of many of our life decisions.
The Euro was introduced at a
time when eastern Europe was in the initial stages of divorcing communism; as
such the Euro was no doubt the instrument that assisted in bringing together
540 million souls into a strong and almost united effective economic block that
has emerged as a (GDP based) super power in its own right..
It is my contention that the
world today is in a very similar economic situation as Europe
was in the early 90’s.
I cannot help but draw
parallels between the (Berlin)
Wall coming down between east and west and Wall Street crumbling.
Then, the strong Western
Nations were forced to take on (and make good) the unfortunate financial status
of their poorer neighbours.
Today, the situation has
almost come full circle.
It is time for the weaker and
poorer nations to take on the financial responsibility for the richer west.
How can that be you
ask…
Before we answer that
question, let us examine the definition of real wealth.
An octogenarian might say that real wealth is health.
An economist might say that
that the wealth of a country is the sum total of its exports measured against
its imports.
Religious leaders would have
us believe that the real wealth is only attainable by purity of spirit and
actions through helping ones fellow man.
And utopians would tell us
that real wealth was the state of being where we were lacking for nothing.
OK, so lets get back to
solving the worlds problem. A lack of trust in the financial machine that
results in jobs being lost and homes being repossessed.
One way to solve the problem
is to give everyone a money printing machine and let them print enough money so
that they can live. After all isn’t that what the Federal Reserve is doing in
the USA ? Issuing money with no mortgages to back it up. (The
traditional methodology of issuing new currency.)
So I ask, again, what is the
problem with the man in the street having his own printing press and being able to issue currency to
allow him to be able to survive.
Yes, I know all the
arguments, it would mean that the scarcity value was discarded. OK, well how
about we give him a printing press and rules about when he can print his own
coinage.
An abstract example:
Rule no. 1. If you have done X then you may print 10
Notes worth Y
Rule no. 2. If you print Notes without doing X you lose
your printing press.
Rule no. 3. The United Nations will oversight your
adherence to Rule no. 1.
And now for the Conclusion.
The mechanism already exists.
Carbon
Credits. All that remains is for the Clean Development Mechanism of the
UNFCC to be expanded to include consumer generated Carbon Credits from such
activities as Walking to work one day a week; Buying an electric lawn mower,
Planting a tree in the back yard.
And the way to do it is to
breakdown Tons of Carbon to Grams of Carbon.
If I knew I had to walk 216
kilometres to earn a Carbon Credit (CC), I might not do it. But, if I could
earn 3 grams of CC from planting a tree, and 1800 grams from walking to school
once a week, 3200 grams from mowing the lawn and 35 grams every time I car
pooled to work then that would be something I could educate the next generation
about.
Especially if the CC’s were
on a Credit Card that I could use to buy my P2P music or Television
Programming.
I use P2P as my example
because coincidently, the potential
value of the P2P carbon credits since 1998 equals about the same amount as the
Federal Reserve has utilised over the last twelve months to bail out the US finance industry – almost two trillion dollars.
I conclude by returning to my
earlier statement about the poorer East supporting the wealthier West.
A joke proverb, “It is easier
for Chinese man to learn how to bicycle than it is for an Australian; Chinese
man doesn’t have to wear stupid pointless bicycle helmet.”
Tomorrow I will discuss the
ultimate money machine – the all green Human Power Generator.