U.S. Currency Becoming
Worthless As It Sits Idle
Photo by mynameissharsha and used under a Creative Commons License.
By Gentry Braswell
Modern Times Magazine
Feb. 20, 2013 — Something is wrong with the currency system. Or to phrase it more accurately, the currency system is mismanaged and misunderstood. This is not the worst of news, though, because such things can be corrected.
There is a misunderstanding regarding the ethic that fundamentally underwrites the United States Dollar, which is how actual value is correlated to symbolic coinage or paper script. The currency represents particular ideals, that is, it has no significant worth unto itself, rather it is assigned or bears a value. It serves to both entitle and obligate the currency bearer in particular ways. People do not necessarily bear capital equity (except perhaps if considered strictly in terms of livestock, but that is not an ethically equitable proposition), and it is even further afield to say that one person engenders more equity in the marketplace than another person only because he holds more script notes. That would be to say that he is more enfranchised in the marketplace because he possesses a larger “bill of goods.” It is a fallacy, and people who would tell you the currency works in such a way are awry in their grasp of it.
One does not use 25 wrenches to tighten one bolt, and a hammer hanging on a hook does not drive nails: Practically, currency is worthless anytime it is not being exchanged in a marketplace, such as when it is being collected in great volumes in puffy banks or buried coffee cans, instead of being used as guaranty in transactions or agreements in an open market.
A deal, exchange, or transaction is either equitable or not equitable. If a market situation is equitable, then someone may or may not underwrite it with currency, and in doing so, the situation is proposed as marketable. Essentially, the ideals underwriting the currency system are intended to invoke the circumstances that must exist to enable a fair deal in good faith to occur, such as: open communication, common understanding, mutual trust, and honesty regarding terms. The currency also establishes certain assumptions regarding the definition of a good investment climate, including the prerequisites for sustained market activity (this transaction is not going to injure me or de-facilitate the marketplace), optimism (tomorrow will come, possibly bearing new opportunities), helpfulness (my/your product/service is worthwhile), service (let’s negotiate instead of cheat or steal), hope (I am happy that the system functions and provides opportunity), amity (I enjoy conducting business with you, business is fun), and adventurousness (business activity is legitimate and worthwhile, this new product/service is exciting).
No value-based system correlates value with meritless products or services, intractable propositions, non-incumbent transactions, or non-functional market parameters. The Dollar has a bullish disposition by design as a result of its proscription for brokering only transactions that are made in good faith. The currency underwrites the transaction in which it is being exchanged, therein stabilizing the market right-of-way that is shared among the parties involved in a conversation or agreement about the exchange of goods or services. The Dollar’s sell-side function is as a tool with which to enfranchise market activity, by allowing goods or services to be exchanged for a symbolic guaranty in good faith. Its backside role is served as its presence bears a standard of faith in the mettle of the market itself.
So, the currency is intended only to be encountered in marketplaces where the involved entities have already agreed, by formal caucus or informally as a community upon its meaning and value. It follows that the currency invokes a common law contract and as such, its bearer or bearers play a critical role in deciding what products, services, and business locations are determined to be acceptable for retaining designation in a currency’s market realm. Do not assume, just because you transact using currency at a given market location, that other people are doing likewise at that location; you may be the only one. Moreover, do not assume that other people are using the same currency system, nor that others’ systems are underwritten in the same way, nor that others understand the system as the tool it is.
Consider the Modern Times Magazine media project, for example. The business model is designed to allow the publication to exist in a marketplace, incidental to an economic ontology among many other sociological factors, value systems, and cultural benchmarks. Our model is intended to generate revenue to maintain reliable business operations, accommodate careful growth if necessary, and fairly compensate the staff and managers. The model is not configured to rapidly generate revenue without some meaningful end, as a virus attempts to replicate itself in a host system for no other reason than simply to multiply. Enterprises with this sort of goal in mind have missed the point regarding what currency means and is. The attainment of currency cannot be a philosophical goal or objective (barring some sort of test or experiment involving research about currency). Currency is not real property, it is a tool. It is a tool to help enfranchise business in a marketplace.
It is important to know who you are sharing a currency system with (if anyone), because sharing the system or even using a common model amounts to a true partnership and even partisanship. A partner’s actions with the currency, in very real ways, bind all of the system’s users to the agreements underwritten and any consequences thereby. This should compel a person to scrupulousness and shrewdness when engaging in business activity, so as not to lose one’s effective business partners in exchange for inferior ones or none at all. Birds of a feather flock together, so the saying goes, and such common law contracts are as real as rain.
This is where currency management, whether active or passive, becomes important. For example, I would never recommend that anyone purchase any kind of lottery ticket. Furthermore, I do not wish to share a currency system with anyone who purchases lottery tickets and defines it to be a reasonable investment. If old friends of mine wish to purchase a lottery ticket as some sort of novelty, barring forensic purposes, I would be very interested to hear their proposed logic as to why such a transaction is beneficial or equitable.
In essence, lottery players are attempting to underwrite a contest to reach “high” “values” attached to a bill of goods (“lottery”), on behalf of themselves and their potentially unsuspecting business partners. This sort of activity debauches a currency system, because it is not an equitable opportunity and cannot be underwritten in good faith. Furthermore, it is dubious and impeachable when institutions, organizations, or people collude to enable or encourage this sort of misappropriation and/or proliferation of misunderstanding or disinformation. For me, any lottery involvement begins and ends with a boycott, based on my understanding that purchasing lottery tickets is a waste of my good time, a poor investment on behalf of myself and the people with whom I may now or in the future share the marketplace at large, and a weakening of the currency tool itself. I do not recall entering into any contract whereby I condone the accommodation of habitual lottery players’ ticket purchasing habits, or the regularly purchase of things like lottery tickets instead of a much more direly needed bus ticket to a 12-step meeting for example.
Yet, as of Monday, the Ohio Lottery’s Classic Lotto “jackpot” was USD 27.9 million. The Texas Powerball was USD 50 million on Wednesday, and so was Arizona’s. So, apparently, someone, somewhere is doing preposterous things with the United States Dollar. People or organizations who demonstrate any such irresponsibility (such as buying lottery tickets or holding lotteries) or misunderstanding (trying to cash a bill, defrauding people or abusing the tool by claiming real property value for a bill of goods), precipitate a force majeure market situation that must result in the reduction or elimination of their enfranchisement in the marketplace. This protects the marketplace, its ethical operators, and the system itself.
Gentry Braswell is the Nation/World Editor for Modern Times Magazine.
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