Governor Gary Johnson decided to run for President as the Libertarian Party candidate. In 2008, the Libertarian Party nominated Rep. Bob Barr, who garnered less than a million votes like most Libertarian Party candidates. A big ticket name does not result in big ticket results. With Rep. Ron Paul also running for President as a Republican in 2012, as he did in 2008, the Libertarian message is split, and the Libertarian Party is perhaps weaker than it could be.
I took a look at the candidates running for President in the Libertarian Party. I did not see a single candidate who I recognize, with the exception of Bill Still, until Gary Johnson decided to run for President as a Libertarian.
Bill Still is not your usual Libertarian Party candidate. He does not promote the usual Libertarian economic message as promoted by the Austrian School of Economics. Bill Still vehemently opposes the Austrian School of Economics for their promotion of the gold standard. As mainstream pundits laugh at Ron Paul for his support of the gold standard, the Libertarian Party has their own William Jennings Byran derailing the gold standard.
The Libertarian Party is no longer your dad’s Libertarian Party, as a political arm for the Rockefeller Foundation’s Austrian School of Economics. The vacuum left by Bob Barr gave rise to Libertarians such as Carl Person who is concerned about the mainstream media trust as a creation influenced by the government rather than blindly supporting the mainstream media trust as ordained by the free market.
The vacuum also gave rise to a new type of Libertarian, one who opposes the Austrian School of Economics. Georgists, who have long skirted the Libertarian Party and who consider themselves the “Real Libertarians,” in opposition to the “Royal Libertarians” at the Austrian School of Economics, are supporting Bill Still, since Georgists, like America’s best-selling and self-published American economist, Henry George, are also opposed to the gold standard and debt-based monetary systems as government interference in free markets, allowing private individuals who were granted the privilege to provide the public money supply to steal earned income from those who give money value.
Gov. Gary Johnson might be in for a surprise, since many Libertarian delegates, including the Georgist Libertarian faction, have already pledged votes for Bill Still. Bill Still, like Henry George, gained in popularity with a self-published populist message in his his documentaries, The Money Masters and The Secret of Oz, where he brushed with top economists like Milton Friedman to figure out how to fix the financial problems of the United States.
Henry George’s populist message, as described in his best-selling book, Progress and Poverty, was ending taxation on earned income and replacing it with a single tax on land values, to break the cycle of poverty among progress, to tax the land monopoly and the unearned income of economic rent out of existence, a monopoly created by government granting title to land as private property.
Bill Still’s populist message is to pay off the national debt with debt-free Greenbacks, printed into existence by the government rather than borrowed from bankers as interest-bearing debt into existence under our debt-based fractional reserve banking system, and to have the Congress regulate the value, as the U.S. Constitution demands, by controlling the quantity of the legal tender to meet inflation rates set by the Congress. Bill Still’s message is to end the monopoly and control the government-chartered banks have on our public money supply, to end the boom/bust cycle caused by mismanagement of the money supply by private, unaccountable, and “too big to fail” banks with credit expansions and contractions, resulting in periods of inflationary booms, deflationary busts, and in our increasingly global markets, stagflation recessions.
Bill Still is not alone in his message. George Washington funded the American Revolution with public debt-free legal tender. Lincoln funded the Civil War with public debt-free legal tender. L. Frank Braum promoted debt-free legal tender in the thinly veiled metaphors of the Wizard of Oz. Milton Friedman promoted the idea. Dennis Kucinich promotes the idea in his bill (HR2990), the NEED Act of 2011. However, Bill Still is the one who made the idea popular today in his documentaries which have been viewed millions of times on-line.
Gary Johnson’s decision to run as the Libertarian Party candidate will surely bring new people to hear Bill Still’s populist message. The goal of the Libertarian Party candidates for President have realistically been to promote ideas rather than win elections. I seriously doubt Gary Johnson will get any traction and win the election running as a Libertarian. However, he will help bring exposure to Bill Still and his populist message to reform the monetary system. It would be nice if Bill Still won the nomination, but I am sure if he did, there would be silence in the media anyway. Gary Johnson’s supporters would have the opportunity to meet Bill Still and be exposed to his message.
Libertarian politics just got interesting. There will actually be a debate rather than just a flocking of the sheep around the biggest name. The cowardly lion, Williams Jennings Byran, has found his voice and courage to debate the wicked witches of the globalist bankers and their Austrian School of Economics in the Libertarian Party, to help the scarecrows of agriculture, the tin men of industry, and Dorothy, with her tightening ruby slippers of debt, to find the Emerald City of debt-free Greenbacks. The Wizard of Oz just gave Bill Still a big ticket name to help promote his message. We just hope Dorothy won’t have to find her silver slippers if we have to travel down the yellow brick road again. The journey could get bumpy.
Great article. As a student of Milton FRIEDMAN I knew he had a great respect for Bill Still and his solutions. One may note however Milton disagreed that the fiat currency and greenbacks were actually fiat currencies. They were indirectly currencies based upon the productivity of the American people. As in the colonies, script was only created when a loan was made to the public. A loan is a promise to be productive. Then the government printed the interest and spent it into the economy. It was America’s sovereign currency for it’s. Sovereign States and sovereign citizens. Currency was not just arbitrarily printed in the colonies. It was based upon the industrious nature of Americans. Would be nice to get back to an elastic commodity based currency that the government doesn’t control and that we the people control through our labor.
sorry, i vehemently disagree. any legal tender based on commodities is a corruption of commodity markets in the worst possible way by government. the currency doesn’t have to be backed by american labor paying gold miners, land owners, and bankers economic rent and interest since it gains the value of american labor when american labor uses it. please, take your banker myths, gold boiler room, and WEALTH STEALING strategies elsewhere.
Not directly but indirectly associated which I agree with the relationship you point out.
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The greenback need not be directly based on labor to have the effect of American laborious using it.
I know Milton believed this as I was actually a student of his at Rutgers.
Sorry I offended you but I am no friend of our current banking system. I thought the article was great just that Milton had disagreements with some of Bill Still’s theories.
fiat is by government decree. if government declares gold or any free market currency legal tender, the currency becomes fiat. a greenback would not be fiat since it is already a sovereign, legal instrument created by the government.
going back to the colonial system, the elastic commodity-based system, creates a problematic situation where the government is still declaring commodities to be legal tender, corrupting those commodity markets. it is also prone to money market manipulation and creates a situation where you have volatile valuations, where the little guy always loses.
Not that I disagree with anything you’ve said Keith but you will still probably rip me. My problem is exactly that of Milton… what is money?…..when currency enters the market it ceases to be based upon what the government says it is but would naturally become based on labor….would it not? Laborious is what makes the world go round and laborious is an elastic commodity that grows with the population and their ability to enjoy the fruits of their labor. For example if you work hard but don’t get your money because of the bank or government you probably won’t work as hard the next day. So banks and government have an effect on how elastic the commodity of labor is.
Now, let’s call it productivity to include intelluctual creativeness. I fail to see a purpose for currency if no one is productive. Milton believed this was natural and a method could be developed to base a currency upon labor because it would grow and shrink as needed…naturally. it would be in abundance as people would be self motivated to labor. Banks and government could not control this currency unless they could use tyranny to make you work. I believe as Milton believes the only way to free people is for the people to control the currency. But I also agree with Bill Still on most item but I believe currency should not be used to manipulate the economy and I believe that is where Milton was going with his research before he died. He was looking at the natural organic growth of a currency. I believe he found it in. labor..
Yes, it’s quite common in interest free monetary theory to say that the credit of the nation is what is backing debt free Government money.
That’s basically the idea of Mutual Credit.
It seems to me both of you are looking at the same thing from a somewhat different angle.
Although I believe Bill Still’s (whom I greatly admire for his utterly brilliant Money Masters film) solutions are better than what we have now, the Greenback is 1850 technology. It has some major problems: http://realcurrencies.wordpress.com/2011/10/13/reassessing-the-greenback-and-other-alternative-monetary-systems/
Interest free currency, and interest free credit in particular, have made great strides since then and it’s no use ignoring them.
Social Credit and Ellen Brown’s Public Banking are more modern and adequate solutions for reform at the Government Level.
Mutual Credit is the real solution of the future:
http://realcurrencies.wordpress.com/2012/01/03/mutual-credit-the-astonishingly-simple-truth-about-money-creation/
the greenback was flawed because of the 1:3 reserve ratio, but the circulation did initially originate debt-free. i just use the term “greenback” as a shortcut to imply a currency originating debt-free at the benefit of the tax payer. i haven’t looked too far into ellen brown’s proposal. i assume it is a public banking and monetary system.
i tend to favor the zarlenga’s hybrid system which allows for banks to loan from a centralized reserve beyond their own reserves but which restricts how much they can loan according to how much is in the central reserve while most of the new money supply would originate debt-free at the u.s. treasury and spent into circulation at the benefit of the tax payer. that is probably politically the most plausible solution since it would still enable commercial banks to function without having to rely on a pure public banking system.
however, banning commercial banking might not be a bad idea if you could still have credit unions, mutual banking for business, and investment banking for large businesses (corporate bonds would become more important).
I agree that ending banking is not a bad idea. These people have lost all legitimacy. All its leaders should’ve been locked up years ago.
Would this credit be interest free? If not, the money supply will be back in the Money Power’s hands in max 2 decades:
http://realcurrencies.wordpress.com/2012/01/05/debt-free-money-alone-does-not-solve-compound-interest/
What is your position on the idea that it is better to have the people spend the money?
Govt, after all, has a record of war and other plutocracy pet projects.
People most likely know better what is needed for them and the country.
It would also immediately solve the shortage of demand due to leaking purchasing power to interest.
This is Social Credit.
the updated zarlenga plan (kucinich need act of 2011) does suggest a citizen dividend for initial monetary expansion, which is “social credit,” though i don’t like the term due to it’s conflation with socialism. i prefer a classical liberal term of monetary justice, which is more specific. the justice is making money origination benefit the tax payer rather than the usurer. the productive (the tax payer) gives money value. you could rebate the tax payer for inflation, though it should be more of a rebate according to average daily balance rather than productive value even though productive value is value given to the monetary unit. if you distribute directly to the citizens, it really isn’t monetary justice, since being an idle citizen does not add value to the currency, though some would argue that the citizen is idle due to monetary injustice and thus deserves compensation. a flat rebate (citizen dividend) would be sufficient to cover the expense of usury in general for monetary justice. agrarian justice is different. the case for every citizen deserving an equal amount of agrarian justice is more clear.
i can see where you might want origination through the use of citizen dividend, like social or mutual credit, or monetary justice. if it originates from government since the economy organizes around government employees and contractors since that is the origination of money supply. it would also originate into the hands of the bond holders of current national debt. there is an argument for a citizen dividend to serve interest-free monetary origination more evenly distributed into the economy. this is the reasoning that i believe zarlenga used when suggesting a citizen dividend, to help make sure origination is more evenly distributed into the economy. if you just pay off the national debt with the money, all the new interest-free money ends up in the hands of the bond holders, and thus, the economy would organize around where they would put the money to work, mostly likely in low-risk corporate bonds.
i agree with what you are saying. i believe after minimum government is funded with land value taxes and monetary expansion that the remaining funds should be used to issue a citizen dividend, and that a minimum citizen dividend should always be issued for agrarian justice (the profit of the earth is for all) and monetary justice (making sure monetary origination is evenly distributed).
the idea of mutual credit is good. everyone starts off with a credit line and pays no interest on the credit line since the borrower is originating money supply which is deposited into the lender’s account as a positive balance. the money supply increases when you add new citizens. in that sense, you don’t even need to have it negative, everyone can start with their credit limit as their credits. if you want to increase the money supply, you just deposit money into everyone’s account. and if someone wants to borrow beyond, then, you’re into the interest-bearing banking system where reserves are bonded and are loaned at rates according to credit rating, which will probably be fairly high. it would be too controversial if everyone had a different credit limit according to credit rating for the mutual credit system.
not sure how you convert from the existing system to a mutual credit system and address the national debt. i’m sure people would consider such a system to be a system where you’re getting something for nothing with your initial credit limit since you don’t have to pay it off. you can stay negative. in a sense, it is like a citizen dividend more like the thomas paine plan. you get your dividend when you first open an account. they might want to start at age 16 with a reduced number of credits and have your full credits at age 18-21 or something like that. this leads people to believe interest-free origination should be at the treasury at the benefit of the tax payer.
you could go around and allow everyone a certain amount of credit and increase the credit line if you want to expand the circulation. that is fine for a pure barter let, though you often find the exchange wanting to charge interest on negative credits. otherwise, everyone would just use up their credit limit and forget about it. you just don’t want it to become legal tender. otherwise, the let becomes the money power. you basically want congress to manage such a let, except we aren’t starting with a clean slate.
you’d want people to be able to exchange their current fed notes for treasury credits. as debts under the old system are paid, the treasury originates new credits and spends into circulation (pays off national debt to the bond holders). this brings the system to full reserves and banks lend their full reserves and keep whatever interest is charged. the money originates debt-free without interest. it can sit in a bank and can be lent out to someone else, which then, there would be interest charged, but the bank lost control over money supply. you don’t have to borrow if money originates debt-free and is spent into circulation.
banks can dip below reserves but can’t originate new loans if they are beyond their reserves if you want to allow liquid cash deposits, such as savings or checking accounts to count as reserves. if everyone withdraws from a bank over a certain thresold, you can declare the bank out of business and have accounts taken over by another institution with adequate reserves to cover loans. one advantage of this is that a bank run into cash/coin or into another bank would increase money supply, which is one way for the people to fight deflation. this is one reason why you’d probably just want a centralized management of the money supply like the zarlenga system, where you more directly oversee the money supply. otherwise, you’re looking at a system where reserves are bonded, which means you’re looking at high rates.
mutual credit means origination starts with an initial citizen dividend and equally benefits every citizen. full reserve system (or a limited hybrid) means origination starts at the treasury at the benefit of the tax payer. both would still allow a savings and loan banking system, though at rather high lending rates if the reserves are bonded. if the reserves are liquid and the can go negative, you have an increase in money supply, which would need to be monitored. a hybrid system like the zarlenga allows for more flexibility in management of the money supply and allows for commercial banking to still operate in a profitable way without really high rates.
also, you also have to consider the other factors other than population for money supply, such as velocity. if someone is sitting on a pile of credits, it has a deflationary effect and more credits would need to be injected into the system.
paying off national debt and going to full reserves would actually lower rates since those holding national debt would likely chase cash deposits as well as low-risk corporate bonds. cash deposits would dramatically increase, which would be necessary to bring reserves to full reserves as banks would no longer be able to originate money as debt.
legal tender, like land, is the common wealth, and the citizen dividend (social credit) is justified in that sense. monetary origination like land is unearned wealth and the wealth belongs to all people. monetary origination and land value taxes are the best ways to fund government. if monetary origination is inflationary, that is fine since it encourages production and benefits the debtor, and since inflation is an ideal progressive tax. those who hold a lot money without using it productively would pay the most tax. those who hold little would pay very little in taxes. there also would be no forms and no tax collectors. inflation if it originated for government expenditure or as a citizen dividend would also not be destructive like money originating as debt since there would no credit contraction to “correct” the inflation.
Keith,
Great work first of all.
You have guts and heart.
I just plugged you on Huff Post.
My handle is scrappydog
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/09/employment-rate-young-adults_n_1264241.html?show_comment_id=134027175#comment_134027175
Here’s what I posted…
End Neoeconomics – Embrace Geoeconomics
“Don’t forget to bookmark and share”
Simple introduction
http://www.henrygeorge.org/isms.htm
Origins of our “crisis”
http://www.amazon.com/Corruption-Economics-Georgist-Paradigm/dp/0856831603?tag=duckduckgo-d-20A
Professor Mason Gaffney speaks “The Corruption of Economics”
http://www.wealthandwant.com/docs/Gaffney_Intro_TCOE.html
His suggested Policy Fixes.
http://www.amazon.com/After-Crash-Designing-Depression-free-Economic/dp/1444333070/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1328707968&sr=1-1
http://libertyrevival.wordpress.com/2011/01/09/ending-poverty-and-political-turmoil/
Professor Michael Hudson
http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/hudson-michael_theory-of-rent-needs-theory-of-history.html
Usufrunct Explained
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usufruct
- On the Monetary System -
American Monetary institute
http://www.monetary.org/
Critique
http://libertyrevival.wordpress.com/?s=monetary
http://useconomy.about.com/od/monetarypolicy/p/gold_history.htm
Silvio Gesells Natural Money
http://www.mindcontagion.org/worgl/worgl2.html
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Demurrage_%28currency%29#
Professor Ingo Bishoff – comparing and contrasting Georgist and Libertarian thought
http://www.thedailybell.com/503/Ingo-Bischoff-Henry-George.html
Critiques by CHM
Beyond policy tweaks?
http://www.oftwominds.com/blogfeb12/beyond-policy-tweaks02-12.html
The Paradoxes at the Heart of the “Progressive” Project
http://www.oftwominds.com/blogmar11/faux-progressive3-11.html
The Paradoxes at the Heart of the “Conservative” Project
http://www.oftwominds.com/blogmar11/faux-conservative3-11.html
Back to our simple model
http://www.henrygeorge.org/isms.htm