A farmer produces more wheat than his
caloric desire for bread needs to consume.
As such, exchanging representational value
that can be used for something other than
bread makes sense. The concept of money - a unit of temporary stored representational value - is entirely rational in community. But the moment a community decides
to “value” the farmer using a monetary
metric based on a bumper crop in one year
and a drought the next, neither the community nor the utility serve their purpose.
An astute observer realizes that over the
course of modern human societies, conscription to military service and minting
of money are the two most ubiquitous
features of power and control fiercely
controlled by the imperialist state. By no
coincidence, both of these usurpations of
human sovereignty frequently appeal to
religion for their justification: battle cries,
“For God and Country”, and money emblazoned with “In God We Trust” are neither
random nor accidental. And in the past
150 years, tolerance for community expressions of peaceful coexistence and currency
has greatly diminished.
Why are we vaccinated against challenging the consensus illusion we call money
today? What would be so dangerous if
people actually remembered the obligations they’ve made and repaid them in
appropriate form or scale? It’s appropriate
to examine the underpinnings of what we
call “money” so that we can tell the difference between community recognized
stored value units and imposed agencies
of power, seduction, and control.
Money: Imperial State Succour
In the version of history we promote to
justify our incumbent systems, we see
taxation and tribute as far back as the first
records of civilization on the fertile plains of
the Tigris and Euphrates and the Nile Delta.
As with all systems, the impulse for perpetual growth gives rise to the expediency of
subterfuge schemes promoted as efficient
or in the public interest. After a certain
scale, a conqueror can no longer consume
the fruit of the land and the product of
labor and, refusing to discern sufficiency or
enough, dictates monetary tax and tribute
to fund greater expeditionary tyranny. Far
from responding to the exigencies of seasonal value storage, money served as a
means of anonymizing both production and
the producer. And the more imperial the
impulse, the more important the control of
mintage. After all, it’s not just gold or silver
- it’s gold and silver imprinted with the visage of the deity.
Building absolute reliance on state-con-