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Rodney wrote: I think that Dan may be missing a
point about Social Credit money and Islam. To the Islamicist, Social
Credit money is fiat money because a) it is created out of nothing and b)
it has no intrinsic value.
Dan answers:
I'm sorry if I wasn't clear that I wasn't
disputing what Islamists
believe, just
that they were wrong. Gold, of course, has
intrinsic value, but
only as a communications and health
material. Paper money would have
more intrinsic
value if one was
stuck on a desert isle and had matches.
RS: Moreover, it is viewed (rightly or wrongly) as inflationary.
DP: Again, the Islamists are wrong about this,
but the solution they desire
is not a big issue to me, as it seems to be an
honest, if suboptimal one.
RS: Furthermore, it is a weak argument to say that
"Socred money issuance is approximated on the actual wealth capability of the
sytem". The word "approximated" is where the problem lies. In
reality, Socred money has no direct relation with productive capacity,
particularly, no direct relation with the individual elements of productive
capacity e.g. a particular piece of machinery or a factory.
DP: Your knowledge of social credit seems similar
to my knowledge of binary
economics :-). For the Draft Social Credit
Scheme for Scotland in the book
Social Credit, the first step is to take an
inventory of all the capital assets of
Scotland and place a valuation on them, (property,
machines etc); said amount
to designate the
original credit or monetary creation for the
area.
It will be approximated of course, even in the
computer world, as even if every
item was precisely
valued, any measurement would only be a snapshot that
could not be acted on instantly. Any
complex system would require a bit of
'play' anyways, to provide the needed flexibility for growth etc.
RS: I will now be blunt about
something which has to be said. Whenever monetary reform is mentioned in
conventional economic and political circles it is always alleged that the
printing of money is proposed ("Just as in Germany in 1923, dear boy") and that
government public spending is being favoured over market spending with
consequences for allocative efficiency. Indeed, James Robertson is
building a big file of all the answers from bank officials, politicians, civil
servants etc. I have not yet seen that file but I bet that the answers are
ALL as I have indicated.
DP: The inflation argument is always the first
barrier to overcome. A while back
I was involved in getting the executive of the City of Edmonton to
pass a resolution
calling for the Bank of Canada to issue interest-free money for municipal
infrastructure.
By moving a few items on a table, I was able to show clearly to the councillors how
Bank of Canada money would replace some privately issued money (by increasing
the reserves of the private banks). The
councillor who originally asked the question
immediately caught on as to how it was an issue of money replacement, rather
than addition, and was satisfied; and was one of the main supporters in getting
the resolution passed.
The inflation charge will fly no matter what, and
we just have to deal with it, on
a case by case basis.
RS: So Dan's defence of Social
Credit is, frankly, sneered at by the conventional mind. That may not be
fair but James Robertson's file will be proof of rejection by the
conventional mind.
DP: The question is not the
material in my opinon, but how to gain that material
a hearing, when the mass media is beholden to the mainstream view.
Vested
interests will sneer at the idea that black is
white, if such meets their needs,
and they can get away with it. Quite
possibly binary economics may be given
a more serious look by the mainstream, if they
see it as an alternative to
more radical impetus for change that is growing in
another area.
A good file to build would be one where the experts
directly contradict each
other. Put them side by side, like Monetary
Reform Magazine does. There
is good one in from Australia that I just read
about, where two conventional
experts answered the
same question by giving opposite answers. I think it
was Bill Still, of the Money Masters, who
commented with the ease on which
one could discredit mainstream stream experts.
Ironically, social crediters would say I was
attacking their movement by
rejecting the compensated price mechanism and
belonging to a
political party that uses the Social Credit
name.
RS: Dan also
says "There is no reason that a pure Social
Credit economy could not exist in one country or region, and interact well with a pure system of binary economics in
the next." That sounds to me a nice theory but it is missing the key
issue -- how to open up the monetary reform debate successfully. The
Seven Steps do that nicely because they address conventional concerns and open
up the monetary debate as well as enabling all sorts of monetary
reformers more hope of achieving their goals than would otherwise be the
case.
DP: I think this where the decentralization
aspect of Social Credit, or Peter
Drucker etc. if
one wants to avoid the Social Credit label, shows its
value.
I live in Alberta, where the name Social Credit
is familiar. We were able to
get about 30 people to attend a seminar, by
advertising the seminar and
talking of Social Credit ideas. I was able
to show several the effects of the
current money system by going through an excercise in which I distributed fake
money to members of the audience, at interest, and showed how
the repayment
system worked. The visual display was buttressed with quotes
from
authorities, and in this case I read out the
credentials of Bernard Lietaer,
and the part of his Yes magazine interview that
stated the exercise I was
doing was the reality according to an expert (I
used two or three others
as well).
There were converts, some of who are now actively
involved. This would
not have occurred, had we advertised Binary
Economics, nor would the
understanding have
been there from a reading of the Seven Steps of Social
Justice. This is not to say which theory is best, just which one creates
the platform for the next step, in a particular set of circumstances.
Conversely, for the Federal Election, I ran
under the auspices of the Canadian Action
Party, because they allowed a
monetary reform stance. In addition to being a
political
party, CAP also advocated full employment
which is against a central tenet of social
credit philosophy, and my own preference as well;
but it was a platform that allowed
the basic idea of monetary reform to remain
true. Our leader, ex-deputy prime
minister Paul Hellyer also gave us the cachet to
get in some doors. I even got
my 15 seconds on national TV, although there were
some interesting incidents
once our platform became known.
Anyways, my point is that it will take all types,
taking all kinds of approaches to
get this job on its way.
Regards
Dan Parker
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