email with Armstrong

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Paul
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email with Armstrong

Post by Paul »

Dear Mr Armstrong,

I would first like to thank you for the best education I ever had, If it wasn't for your articles I would still be wandering through the dense forest of political spin.

My profession is computer programmer, And it is from that perspective I started to look at the monetary system. When you set yourself the task of writing a functional model to catch all the flows to be able to write the software, you will discover the problems are in the money itself. It is all about double functionality. Done like this this sucker will never perform.

In one of your last articles you write there should be a seperation between politics and economy, just as we seperated church and state. I came to the same conclusoen myself a while ago, there is this strange balance between money and power that is almost fractal. three functions, and all three should be separated. And I am thinking they are also in function alike. church = store of value, state = unit of account, market = medium of exchange.

What I did not see is how we could possibly seperate market and state, where I could see it as a necessity. This was until I read the work of Bernard Lietaer.
The solution for this problem is to create a different complementary state currency to be used in those domains where competition is unwanted. we are living in the information age now, networktechnology, economy is about scarcity, but education, healthcare and public order to name a few, are domains in society scarcity has nothing to do with. These domains are, just as information, about sharing. and these domains call for a different currency to get the resource and the demand together, A unit of account in hours would seem most logical. a nice name for it, I am european, would be the houro.

Currencies like this are starting all over the world and are marginal at the most now, My guess these are like open source was 10 years ago. these are the future !

Would that be a thought you also played with ?

I am trying to start up a currency wright now in the Netherlands, trying to get the correct people at the same table. I hope we have enough time to get currencies like these going on bigger scale. When euro fails in a couple of years they might be our only salvation ...

sincerely,

Paul

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Martin Armstrong


The idea of the euro was good in that it was removing borders for trade.

The politicians and just idiots, and they act not on reason or necessity, but

On political expediency. They would not consolidate the debt at that time

Fearing it would be too hard to sell. Now it is too hard to fix.

They should have consolidated the debt then, and any new debt would have been local state

And then had Greece failed it would not have taken down all of Europe and note required a bail out.



The new currency will have to be practical, but political. They will have to swap the old

For the new and be able to pretend the new one is much better than the old.

What spin they choose may vary.



Just keep in mind it must be politically salable.



All the best


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Dear Mr Armstrong,

Thank you for your response !

I realise the importance of consolidating the European debt. Without the eurobonds, euro will crash, I totally agree with the scenario's you pictured in your articles. Realisticly politicians in Europe will not fix this in time. They are unable to sell the truth. Real men, such as yourself, are on different playing field. Politicians will play the blame game again, but these times are different. People, like myself, are waking up and are taking action to prevent some damage and we will face them with proper questions when time comes.

It is hard to imagine the Netherlands going back to the gulden. The costs will be unbearable, but it is also hard to imagine a partial euro still functioning with just Germany and it's neighbours as participants. The debt of other countries is spreaded through the bankingsystem, these costs will also be intolarable, because politicians willl try to rescue the banks at any costs. The unhealthy relationship between banking(market) and politics(state) is what is causing this mess in the first place. We should print the currencies not borrow. we will stop this, It was always my question how we could possibly accomplish this without total revolution.

It is this possible solution which I tried to point out in my remarks about a complementary currency. It will be a currency functioning next to the currencies we already have. It is complementary. It is like yin and yang. yang would be the euro/dollar/market currency. It is yang government should stay away from. I probably do agree with you yang has flaws we wll also have to deal with. a one world reserve currency, a world court, just to name a few. The change in yang is beyond my influence, this is world scale market. You will have much clearer view about how this should be done. I hope you will get your chance to play. I am no expert here, where you certainly are. This should be done by proffessionals who know what they are doing !

What we also need to do is to adopt a political yin currency. This I can vision for myself, and this I can do something about. This is already starting locally all over the world, and is what will break status quo between market and state. It is this yincurrency goverment will use to reinvent itself. It is yin currency market has nothing to do with. This way we effectively will seperate market and state, also acceptable to politicians. They will have other function, but can still manage a currency. a currency with hours as a unit of account, to be used in those domains where marketcompetition is unwanted but were currency is needed to get the people and the work together. there will be arbitrage in value between the yin and yang, as there is arbitrage in everything, but functionally they will be seperated.

Japan, the oldest population, has "Fureai Kippu" for healthcare now, hundreds of thousands already participating. They can choose between using yen or Fureai Kippu, and Fureai Kippu is the more popular. Brasil is creating "Saber" as a currency for education. It is bringing resource and demand together in a different way, accounted in hours. Information age calls for different aproach. We just need more currencies to deal with this. Information age changes everything, It would be strange when the most important informationsystem of all, our money, would stay untouched.

It is like an ecosystem where diversity makes all the difference to be sustainable ...

I hope I clarified, just my 2 cents.

sincerely,

Paul
"Taxes are a barbaric relic of the past"
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