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There was a man who wanted to adapt the economy to human nature. His name was Silvio Gesell. He called his economic order "natural" not because it was a constan
by imtringued 2y ago
There was a man who wanted to adapt the economy to human nature. His name was Silvio Gesell. He called his economic order "natural" not because it was a constant of the universe, but rather because existing economic theories expected the humans to adapt to the economic system, they had to be convinced and forced to do things against their will in communism and capitalism.
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/werner-onken-a-market-economy-without-capitalism https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/werner-onken-a-marke...
Even if you disagree, consider this: the economic system that is being proposed can coexist next to a capitalist or communist country. The reason for that is that the hoarding of gold or non-demurrage currencies only harms the division of labor of the countries still using gold or non-demurrage currencies. People who claim that demurrage is unnatural can just go ahead and do whatever they want. It doesn't harm the system at all. There is no exploit or escape hatch which ruins it.
As weird as it sounds the exploits that people come up with only work with the conventional currencies, because they have this misconception about holding money being the same as saving money. Holding money is more akin to hitting the pause button in a video game. If people understood the economy was a multiplayer game kind of like Civ 6 with each turn being delayed until a player ends his turn, you could take a bath for half an hour while the rest of the players have to wait, then the waiting people would get angry and know exactly who they are waiting for. Unfortunately money is anonymous, so we don't know who we are waiting for.
To prove that holding a turn (hoarding) is not the same as making a decision (saving), consider the hypothetical case where you could play the next 20 turns in one go and then take a bath. Nobody should be angry about your decisions.
- deprecative 2y agoHow do you reconcile money being anonymous with the fact that financial institutions and the government both keep records?
- actionfromafar 2y agoInformation imbalance then.