“A silly, inexplicable, inhuman dictatorship”

A dictatorship over public institutions

There are hundreds of pot holes in the streets of Montreal, and in the same city thousands of unemployed people are looking for work. But both the pot holes remain and the unemployed, who could repair the streets, remain.

In the province of Quebec there are hospitals to be built, roads to be constructed and repaired, and at the same time, many unemployed people looking for work.

What is preventing the city of Montreal or any jurisdiction from using the labour force that is waiting to do the work that needs to be done? Administrators tell us it's the lack of money.

Why doesn't society finance what it can produce? Why is what is physically possible and demanded by all made impossible due to a limited supply of printed pieces of paper or numbers in a bank account?

Why does the money system hinder the exercise of the production system? What makes the money system the arbiter?

The money system does not come from God or from nature. It was established, is accepted and maintained by men. Can one believe that intelligent people established a money system in order to introduce obstacles and to make the execution of wanted projects impossible?

The purpose of the money system cannot have been to prevent men's hands from taking stone, wood, steel, and building what is needed. Nor can its purpose be to prevent men from filling pot holes in city streets!

Is this not the silliest, most inexplicable dictatorship, as well as the most inhumane and cruel to those who suffer both in the flesh and in the mind?

Dictatorship over our lives

This tyranny does not only affect public services. It is even more visible in the lives of individuals and families.

Ask a father or mother of the family what is their most constant concern for today and tomorrow. What does the mother worry about every time she has to buy supplies for the family? Does she fear that tomorrow she will not be able to find bread, meat, butter, milk, shoes, clothes, medicines, to meet the families needs? Of course not. What she fears is that she will have no money to pay for these necessities.

Why can't citizens be reassured about tomorrow? Why should they be afraid of running out of the essentials of life, when Canada is able to provide more than enough for all?

On the contrary, would it not be logical for a family's standard of living to be in line with the production capacity of the country? This productive capacity is far from being fully utilized.

Is this not absurdity as well as barbarism? What is it that prevents all possible and desired production from being made and from entering the homes where it is needed?

Always the same obstacle: a lack of money. Once again, the money obstacle is neither divine nor natural, but man-made. It is a purely artificial obstacle.

Unless it was the work of a sadistic tyrant, the money system was not designed to prevent products from passing from the merchant who wants to sell to the mother who wants to buy.

A system of roads was not built to prevent movement, but to promote movement. Similarly, the purpose of a sound money system is to promote the distribution and flow of goods to needs, not to impede them.

Social instrument turned anti-social

But while it may have been good in the past, our money system is no longer healthy. It is flawed, very flawed. It has lost its vocation. It has become a hardship; a punishment instead of a service.

Those who make or remove money exercise control over the production and the productive capacity of a country. They issue, or withdraw, according to their judgment, the tool that makes it possible to purchase goods that would address needs.

By controlling money and credit in this way, they hold our lives in the palms of their hands.

Since the dollar entitles anyone to the products of anyone else, the making or removal of money is a function of a social nature. This function should therefore be carried out by society, not by a profit-making institution. We would not accept that justice be dispensed by a private company for its own profit. Why do we accept that the control of money, a function of a social nature, is in the hands of private institutions existing and operating for their own interests?

It is not you, nor I, nor your mayor, not even your government, that decides that there will be so much money, and no more, in circulation. Governments tell us that they have no money other than what they get from those who have. Your employer tells you the same thing.

A system of perpetual indebtedness

But where does money start? Who brings it into the world? Who puts so much of it, and no more, into circulation? Who can make it scarce by taking it out of circulation?

[Douglas] Social Crediters have shed light on this so-called mystery. All money in circulation starts when a bank lends to a borrower. The borrower may be an industrialist, a person, or a government.

And every time the bank lends credit in this way, it obliges the borrower to return it on such and such a date, with interest. So, the money starts as a debt to be repaid; and the repayment is always more than the loan.

The borrower will therefore be obliged to "pump back" from circulation, through prices if he is a private individual, through taxes if he is a public institution, more money than his loan has put into circulation. Prices will therefore have to be increased beyond the value of the product; and the taxes will have to be increased beyond the value of the public service. One may well find life expensive and taxes heavy.

In order to be able to extract more money from circulation than the loan had advanced, more money has to be put into circulation somewhere, and it is always put into circulation in the same way: by a debt to be repaid with interest. It is a system of perpetual indebtedness, sometimes in one place, sometimes in another. It is impossible, globally, to pay back more money than there is in circulation. If someone pays their debts to the banking system, it is at the expense of someone else. The debts may change shoulders, nominally; but the sum of the debts can only increase, and it is always the public that pays for it, either in prices or in taxes.

There is a great vice in the money system. Control belongs to profit-making companies called banks who literally make money which is loaned into existence. Perpetual indebtedness is unavoidable.

Progress turned into punishment

Another defect of the money system is that it does not distribute all production and it distributes it poorly. This defect can only grow with advances in production methods and techniques.

One of the features of the current system is that in order to obtain purchasing power one must work. However, progress replaces men with machines. There is a resulting contradiction in which progress produces more goods with fewer workers, yet jobs are necessary to procure those same goods!

One tries to remedy the situation by creating new jobs which leads to materialism. The second so-called remedy is production for war. This flows well since it is distributed on the heads of others.

The system leads either to materialism or war, rather than liberating society to pursue leisure activities freely without the risk of starvation.

Servant Money: Economic Democracy

Economic Democracy offers a financial system that is both social (in line with productive possibilities and responsive to human needs) and which does not indebt the community and efficiently distributes production, leaving no one behind.

Economic Democracy, in fact, would make money the exact, mathematical, accounting expression of what is produced and what is destroyed, and then, through a National Dividend to all, would guarantee a share of products to all.

Economic Democracy would not abolish the wages for work that production still needs but it would introduce a National Dividend to all. As progress reduces the need for human labour, more money would be distributed as a National Dividend in relation to the total amount distributed via employment.

Progress and Economic Democracy go hand in hand. Progress and peacemaking go well together. Leisure and [Douglas] Social Credit go well together. Humanism and Economic Democracy go well together. Family and Economic Democracy go well together.

When a person has nothing, he can be made to grovel for food. By guaranteeing the necessities for all, Economic Democracy would put an end to modern slavery. When one is assured of at least the necessities of life, one can then refuse to be enslaved.