Book of the Week:the Natural Economic Order, by Silvio Gesell
One of the crucial elements of P2P Theory invoves a needed examination of the issues of Abundance vs. Scarcity, and how to reverse pseudo-scarcity and pseudo-abundance. P2P social dynamics arise most easily in a abundant and/or distributed environment. This refers to the distribution/abundance of intellect, of the means of production (shareable computing), but also crucially: distributed finance. One of the aspects of p2p-inspired social change policies will undoubtedly be monetary reform.
So, a crucial issue is: should we accept a monetary system based on scarcity, and which leads to such a flawed distribution of prosperity across the world and inside countries?
One of the first thinkers to examine this topic was Silvio Gesell, and Greg Martin, who will co-maintain our P2P Monetary Concepts page, has volunteered to choose a number of significant concepts of Gesell’s still significant book: The Natural Economic Order.
Here is the introductory paragraph by Greg:
“In 1916 Silvio Gesell, economist and entrepreneur, wrote “The Natural
Economic Order.” In it he proposes reforming the nature of money into what
he calls “free money,” or money that is at liberty to circulate freely. He
saw that the best way to make money circulate was to abolish interest and to
have money gradually loose its value over time. This placed its holders
under compulsion to spend it sooner rather than later, creating employment
and prosperity.
More importantly his ideas were proven in practice during the Great
Depression and with astonishing success. So successful, in fact, that the
State Bank of Austria considered Gesell’s ideas a threat to its monopoly.
Not only were they proven in practice, but in their prediction of future
events. In 1918, just after the 1st World War, Gesell stated “If the present
monetary system, based on interest and compound interest, remains in
operation, I dare to predict today, that it will take less than 25 years for
us to have a new and even worse war.”
His theories are explained simply, logically and from various points of
view. It shows in intricate detail why the current monetary system fails,
will continue to fail, and how these failures can be remedied by the use of
free money. You can read his book or download it from
www.systemfehler.de/en/neo/“
December 12th, 2006 at 8:09 pm
Our monetary system will never be changed until the people of the world truly understand the current, fraudulent money creation methods.