[CymnMaync]

possibly usurping the focus from adam and eve - i envision our earliest ancestors being hunter gatherers. i also envision my greatest grandfather growing extra potatoes and raising extra sheep. because winter is a son of a bitch when it comes to growing things. so its best to grow gigantic crops in the summer and stock pile them. at some point these stock piles were too much even throughout the winter.
what to do with these stock piles? well. i can shower my neighbors and relatives with these gifts. but at some point i'm going to tire of unreciprocated kindness. so i'll tell you what. i want a physical token of what i just gave you. no more haziness about who owes whom what favor.
for every amount of food that one man can carry - you give me one palm sized thing. that can't be easily duplicated. rocks aren't going to work. magnificently aesthetic shells, if we were closer to the coast. tell you what. this gold rock is kind of hard to find. chances are people wont find many of these. which makes me feel secure in its rarity if nothing else. so if you give me a palm full of this gold rock i'll give you an arm full of food.
what in the sam hell am i going to do with this gold rock? its a freaking rock.
oh well not to worry. i got a fed family. abundance. "gold" - life is good.
infrastructure you say? you want to come colonize with my cave brethren? you're going to need some things first, passerby caveman. do you have any references? thats cool - nobody does. because they don't exist yet. do you have a wagon full of meat or potatoes? oh you don't? o for real? thats why you're all nomadic and wondering? cause your family's starving to death? tell you what -
you guys can settle here. i'm going to issue you these coins. okay? each one of these silver and gold circles equals food. you guys get it back to me when you can.
(fast forward a couple generations)
okay you guys are all nomadic and stuff. i get it. thats cool. check this out though - we're actually doing this new thing. instead of silver and gold coins i'm just going to issue you these iou's. which are totally stamped in wax and initialed by me - so they cant be faked. if you really really insist - you can turn them in for coins. but just - everyones been cool so far - so please be cool too - these coins are as good as gold. ok? cool.
thus the dollar of feudal europe was born.

i'm a very accomplished farmer slash rancher and i have all sorts of food. my dad did too. he died and gave me all his gold and silver coins, which i call inheritance. what in the world am i to do with all of this abundance?

well. simple survival and wellbeing of self seems to bore me. perhaps i shall embark on some sort of trechary upon the new and enslavable masses - in a position vulnerable to my wills.
first i shall print money. it shall be called money. exchangeable for goods and services. iou's made of paper. redeemable for coins. coins pressed of gold and silver. which, gold and silver are hella valuable somehow.
at some point it becomes unsafe and impractical to keep your gold and silver in your house. people keep their gold and silver in the trusted town place. the bank.
the guy whose job it is to conduct the affairs of the bank names himself the banker.
the banker issues ious. not in the name of a person, but of a bank.
this is the birth of money.

money equals the amount of gold and silver in the bank's vault. cool.
only guess what?
who in the hell is going to have the audacity to ask the banker for the bank records? nobody, dude.
the amount of gold and silver is in his command. since we give such human deference to the banker, inevitably the banker sees that he can issue more "iou"s than will be cashed in.
wait.

wait.

what? the banker issues more ious than exist in the form of gold or silver?

yes. thanks what a banker does.

when i was born a hundred dollars would command all kinds of resources. that same hundred dollars in cash currency would now be worth forty five dollars. http://www.westegg.com/inflation/

we missed a step. during mankind's enlightenment - his ever developing and promising enlightenment -

in 1933 the government of the united states declared that gold would be removed from circulation. all subsequent coins would be replaced with something else. the circumstances of this are best left to somebody else. sorry - i just don't get it.

in 1964 the silver standard was removed. now even silver didn't compute into what american money was worth.

oh. sorry double. in 1912 the federal reserve took hold of the money of the united states.
what does this mean? well let me tell you -
a private institution (you and your friend craig start a lemonade stand. its super successful. cool. now you guys are an institution)
yes. a private group of nobodys and yahoos meet behind closed doors in a private resort on an island in new england and create the federal reserve.

bam.

since my birth all money was counterfeit.

thomas jefferson said "i believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. already they have raised up a moneyed aristocracy that has set the government at defiance. the issuing power (of money) should be taken away from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs."

either i'm wrong, with the founding fathers, or the entire world is imbalanced.

so i ask you - what is a dollar worth?


food points. thats all a dollar ever was. and thats all it will be. especially in the coming days. take heed. one love.

word.

[Efonukmp]

hi, welcome to the forum!

that was a neat, down to the foodstuffs explanation of the origin of money.

for those interested in money matters here is great video that will explain
how money in the present system is built on --not gold stashed away -- but on, believe it or not, debt

money as debt

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...74362583451279

incidently, those readers who pay off their credit cards on time each month are referred to by those in the banking interests as "dead heads".

my best! bbb

[Gymnfacymoota]

since my birth all money was counterfeit.

thomas jefferson said "i believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. already they have raised up a moneyed aristocracy that has set the government at defiance. the issuing power (of money) should be taken away from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs."

either i'm wrong, with the founding fathers, or the entire world is imbalanced.

the origin of money may lie in gold and silver. this is true. the modern financial system is based on interest and the creation of debt. this too is true. but what does money really represent? how does it circulate, how do some people acquire it, and why are some people cut out of the loop so much?

money, at the root level, is just a unit of exchange. how do you convince people to give you money? work (exchange your time and skilled labor), run your own business (provide goods in demand) or use capital (lend out your 'assets' to someone else). if you can provide value to the economic system, money will find a way to flow back to you. this is not a value judgement, it's just a measure of how 'useful' you are to the economy.

as in the final scences of the matrix, humans represent batteries, human energy batteries. the higher your 'wattage' the higher your 'money'. money is an abstracted form of energy. as measured by economics.