Tapping the money supply for space development

> Thought you might find this interesting because of your previous
> mention of the Social Credit movement.
>
> Heinlein's first novel, "For Us, the Living: A Comedy of Customs,"
> has been found and published.
>
> For all you Heinlein fans, read this review:
>
> http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=6139

TangoMan-

Thanks for the link!

By the way, the article may be very wrong to cite only Alberta as a
history of using this technique. See for example:
http://www.xat.org/xat/moneyhistory.html
which suggests the American Revolution itself involves the best example!

And perhaps showing maybe why a truly free society will have to start at
a new space colony like James P. Hogan suggests in _Voyage from Yesteryear_?

A reformatted excerpt from that first link:

"By the mid 1700's Britain was at its height of power, but was also
heavily in debt. Since the creation of the Bank of England, they had
suffered four costly wars and the total debt now stood at 140,000,000,
(which in those days was a lot of money). In order to make their
interest payments to the bank, the British government set about a
programme to try to raise revenues from their American colonies, largely
through an extensive programme of taxation.

There was a shortage of material for minting coins in the colonies, so
they began to print their own paper money, which they called Colonial
Script. This provided a very successful means of exchange and also gave
the colonies a sense of identity. Colonial Script was money provided to
help the exchange of goods. It was debt free paper money not backed by
gold or silver.

During a visit to Britain in 1763, The Bank of England asked Benjamin
Franklin how he would account for the new found prosperity in the
colonies. Franklin replied: "That is simple. In the colonies we issue
our own money. It is called Colonial Script. We issue it in proper
proportion to the demands of trade and industry to make the products
pass easily from the producers to the consumers. In this manner,
creating for ourselves our own paper money, we control its purchasing
power, and we have no interest to pay to no one."

America had learned that the people's confidence in the currency was all
they needed, and they could be free of borrowing debts. That would mean
being free of the Bank of England. In response, the world's most
powerful independent bank used its influence on the British parliament
to press for the passing of the Currency Act of 1764. This act made it
illegal for the colonies to print their own money, and forced them to
pay all future taxes to Britain in silver or gold.

Here is what Franklin said after that: "In one year, the conditions were
so reversed that the era of prosperity ended, and a depression set in,
to such an extent that the streets of the Colonies were filled with
unemployed. ... The colonies would gladly have borne the little tax on
tea and other matters had it not been that England took away from the
colonies their money, which created unemployment and dissatisfaction.
The inability of the colonists to get power to issue their own money
permanently out of the hands of George III and the international bankers
was the PRIME reason for the Revolutionary War."

By the time the war began on 19th April 1775 much of the gold and silver
had been taken by British taxation. They were left with no other choice
but to print money to finance the war. What is interesting here is that
Colonial Script was actually working so well, it became a threat to the
established economic system of the time. The idea of issuing money as
Franklin put it "in proper proportion to the demands of trade and
industry" and not charging any interest, was not causing any problems or
inflation. This unfortunately was alien to the Bank of England which
only issued money for the sake of making a profit for its shareholders."

WOW! If I can believe this, how much we have forgotten as a country --
or how much has been hidden or obfuscated or, dare I say it,
intentionally lied about:
http://www.uvm.edu/~jloewen/
http://www.uvm.edu/~jloewen/liesmyteachertoldme/liesmyteacher.html

Apparently, after a few internal political struggles (including perhaps
the real reason Lincoln was assassinated if one can believe the
conspiracy theories :-), the USA seems to have lost its way in this
regard, see:
http://www.siue.edu/~rblain/usdebt.htm

Anyway, the fractional reserve debt based money supply is perhaps as
much as twenty trillion dollars which the US Congress could reclaim
overnight (since it already has the authority from the Constituion to
create the money supply). And it would be essentially inflation free,
since it doesn't involve printing new money -- just taking over
fractional reserve debt that has already been issued by private banks to
create the bulk of our money supply. Year by year, as the economy needed
new money, then it could be added electronically by creating new credits
owned at first by the government (instead of private banks) -- and
leading to neither inflation or deflation if the right amount was
created to keep uop with economic growth (I'm guessing perhaps $500
billion annually for 5% annual GDP growth on a ten trillion GDP?).

That's a nice chunk of change up front (as well as annually) to fund a
sustainable human adventure on Earth or in self replicating space
habitats (or even on Mars, etc.)

Anyway, just goes to show the problems we have on earth are more
failures of the imagination or ignorance or greed -- not any lack of
resources including money supply.

--Paul Fernhout