From Goldsmiths to Bankers, from Money to Currency, 12

This step could be defined, “paper money addiction”; goldsmiths turned into bankers had infiltrated just where the growing body needs more oxygen carried by more blood: their receipts provided the society with a better medium of exchange, more abundant and more easily circulating, therefore economy and society could improve thanks to that; expanded and expanding economy and society in turn needed an adequate and increasing supply of media of exchange, and they more and more depended on it. Here is where the goldsmiths−bankers have reached the power to blackmail the society and its established power: Oh, I see now you’re getting fussy about our shady profits on our “nothing backed” bank notes−banknotes? Well, no problem; just rule them out as legal tender. What do you say? The society’s economy would collapse? Would be too bad, isn’t it?

How come that the medium of exchange had to be an ambiguous type of money, and that goldsmiths−bankers had to have the oligo−monopoly of it? The same – or perhaps greater – positive social effects could be produced by media of exchange not subject to these two more than dubious arbitrary restrictions.

It was just a matter of establishing a “fiat” money, without intrinsic value, based explicitly and solely on social agreement, duly protected against counterfeiting and – the key point – honestly regulated as to who is the owner of its purchasing power the moment it gets born: the individual who produces is entitled to a quota of “fiat” money, a quota of its purchasing power commensurate to his/her valuable production. Simple as that. The more it’s simple, the more its concealment is evident and criminal.

It must be that the philosopher’s stone works well enough to produce enough purchasing power fast enough to co−opt enough dishonest or ignorant people powerful enough to make good use of the established power to cover up.