Sound principles of money, by Arthur Kitson

Arthur Kitson published a book, A scientific Solution of the Money Question, in 1895. It’s accessible for free. This is a very interesting book because he’s a strong proponent of the free market, even using the analogy of natural selection in arriving at the form money should take to maximize the welfare of as many people as possible, and comes down hard on any sort of monopoly regarding the creation of money, arguing against both banker and government control of money. With this kind of attitude, the capitalists, or socialists, or free market proponents can’t dismiss his arguments right off the bat.

He has a very nuanced discussion on wealth, value, standard of value, price, purchasing power, the wisdom of keeping money scarce, etc. This book needs to be summarized, but for now, the most interesting parts will do.

The price of something for sale is dependent on supply and demand for this thing. It’s also dependent on the supply and demand for money. So there’s plenty of room for bankers to make a profit. Now let’s add a third variable, which is to base money on a commodity. Now, the commodity on which money is based can be hoarded, exported, imported, cornered or thrown upon the market, and thus the purchasing power of money affected. Now you know why some people insist that money should be based on a commodity. The third variable plays into the hands of the bankers. Obviously, the bankers have no interest in proposing a commodity to base money on that’s plentiful. They propose a commodity that’s scarce, such as gold, because a scarce commodity is easier to manipulate.

Kitson cites numerous examples of a gold standard being forced upon people, and shows that a free market would never accept money based on gold. Kitson’s thesis is a devastating critique of basing money on a commodity. Kitson followed with an addendum or reply to critics in 1917, titled A fraudulent standard : an exposure of the fraudulent character of our monetary standard, with suggestions for the establishment of an invariable unit of value.

So money established by law, a concept going back as far as Aristotle, is sound as fiat money, i.e., money not backed by a commodity. But who should issue it? Kitson comes down hard on bankers issuing money, as well as a government monopoly on the issuance of money, citing instances of government corruption. Keep in mind that the book was published in 1895. From 1866 to 1886, the volume of money in America had been reduced by almost 80%, causing a depression. Superficially, the government did it by removing greenbacks (debt-free government-issued money) and silver from circulation. Silver was also removed from circulation in many European countries around this time. The actual reason was the bankers had used their control over the governments to bring this about because they wanted to force a gold standard. The American dollar went on a gold standard in 1900.

So who should issue money? According to Kitson, money should be issued by the people! He proposes a mutual banking system. Mutual banks are owned by communities. They create money for loans, out of thin air, against any commodity or IOU (someone promising to pay back the loan). There’s a service fee but no interest. At any given time therefore, the amount needed for repayment of loans doesn’t exceed the amount created as loans, and no one’s forced to default. Money created in this manner goes through an accounting cycle, the same as under commercial banking today: it’s created when a loan is made and destroyed when the loan is paid. The money for the service fee is created out of thin air when a loan is made and used by the mutual bank for its operations.

There are four important differences between Kitson’s proposal and how commercial banks currently operate:

1. Commercial banks charge interest, which isn’t issued. Just to maintain the volume of money under commercial banking, total loan activity must exceed total repayment activity of the principle sum, which is the reason for spiraling debt and inflation. A $100 loan at 10% interest needs to be paid in the amount of $110 in one year, and this $110 can only come from money that has been issued as debt [doesn’t matter that one has earned it]. The new $110 loan at 10% interest amounts to a payback amount of $121 in one year, which, again, can only come from money issued as debt. And so on.
2. Commercial banks operate under the oversight of a private central bank. This facilitates coordinated reduction in the amount of loans granted or coordinated increases in interest rates, thereby diminishing the volume of money in society, forcing many to default. This, in a nutshell, is an economic bust. The bankers now foreclose and obtain assets for pennies on the dollar. But a community that runs its own mutual bank has no reason to do this to itself nor any reason to coordinate with other communities’ mutual banks and trouble other communities along with itself in this manner.
3. Commercial banks issue loans against very specific items as collateral, whereas mutual banks will issue loans against any commodity with the understanding that when the commodity ceases to exist in functional form, the money created and issued against it must also be destroyed.
4. Commercial banks claim ownership of the money they create as debt. When people default, commercial banks foreclose. Mutual banks won’t foreclose, as a community wouldn’t want to see its members homeless, but work out an arrangement with the person unable to pay the debts to do community service without pay or perhaps allow another member of the community as a roommate who pays rent to the mutual bank.

Under Kitson’s proposal, there’s no shortage of money and no inflation. Abuse is prevented via internal policing, rotation of mutual bank employees, non-hereditary appointment of mutual bank employees, and random external audits by a central authority that can only intervene in the case of fraud.

How will a government obtain the money for its needs? Taxes.

Whereas the government can create its own money, if the government is dependent on the people to pay for its expenses and the people control the money supply, the people decide the nature of the government.

In the special case of advanced technology replacing a lot of human labor with machines, which creates a scenario where specialized factories can produce goods at great initial cost but the displaced don’t have the income to buy these goods, whereas the government may create money out of thin air to extend as social credit to the displaced, since it’s desirable that the government obtain money from the people, the central government should be taking money from mutual banks to extend to people as social credit, in which case the mutual banks make an exception by creating the money out of thin air but not as a loan.

The mutual banking system proposed by Arthur Kitson is clearly superior to the solution that I’ve been promoting for a couple of months, which is that money should be created in a debt-free manner and issued by a government, in which case money that’s created truly circulates as opposed to going through an accounting cycle whereby it’s created and destroyed. The accounting cycle under the charge of mutual banks is easily able to achieve a level of fine tuning to needs that circulating debt-free money created by a government can’t. Technically, mutual banks could be extensions of the central government’s Treasury, in which case the government will be the sole authority creating money, and this wouldn’t require a Constitutional Amendment in nations such as the U.S., where the Constitution only grants Congress the power to create money, but the argument that placing control of money in the hands of a society that uses it is better than a few hands controlling money holds, even if the few hands compirse of an elected and accountable government, and therefore mutual banks had better be community owned.

Now, there’s no way to go from the present system—where commercial banks create nearly all money as debt and people are indebeted to private bankers to the tune of tens of trillions of dollars—to a mutual banking system. This reminds one of the 25-point program of the NSDAP. At the outset, they emphasized the necessity for a strong central government to undo the damage caused by the bankers, noting that the 25 points of the program were temporary. At present there’s a need for a central government to take full charge of the creation and issuance of money, creating debt-free money to retire the national debt and prohibiting private banks from creating money in any way. After a few years, one could transition to mutual banking for the masses and the government only creating money for its own needs. This can transition to a government solely relying on taxes for its expenses and obtaining money from mutual banks for social credit money. But activists don’t have to wait for government control of money before attempting to implement mutual banks. The problem needs to be attacked from many fronts, and one can work on mutual banks right now [to be discussed].

So I need to overhaul the money FAQ and note that the solution offered there as of the date of this posting should be regarded as an intermediate solution, not the final solution.

Kitson wasn’t the first to propose mutual banks. Others have proposed a similar system. The Local Exchange Trading System (LETS) works on a similar principle. John Turmel has shown the mathematical soundness of LETS or Kitson’s proposal. I believe the same idea is described in Paul Grignon’s Money as Debt volume 3 video. Islamic banking—not to be confused with banks operating under the auspices of international bankers in the typical Middle Eastern or predominantly Muslim nation—incorporates one of the proposed principles, too, such as not charging interest.

Posted by R-news on Tuesday, January 31, 2012 at 03:59 PM in Business & Industry,  Economics & Finance
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