Making financially possible what is physically possible

Money can be either an instrument of service or a tool of domination

The importance of money

A system of barter was the norm in the past when one's neighbour produced what another neighbour needed and vice versa. 

But this type of primitive economy is long gone. Today, except for some farmers'products, goods are intended for the general marketplace, and everyone purchases what they require from the same marketplace. Under such a system, money plays a pivotal role.

Modern economies are complex, and production relies on a division of labour.  Global productivity means more goods than are produced nationally are available in the marketplace. In order for a complex system to function, the economy must have more than just the capacity for production. There is also a corollary need to access, or purchase, what is produced.

Workers are compensated by their employers. The compensation does not consist of products made by the same workers, however. If Paul makes shoes he will not be paid each week in shoes. Paul and his family need other goods. If Jim works in a paper mill, he will want something other than wood pulp in return for his services.

Paul, Jim and their families will go to the marketplace to meet their other needs. This is why money was invented. Paul's employer pays him using money, and sells the shœs he manufactures for money to others. Likewise, Jim's employer pays him with money, and sells his wood pulp to whœver wants it, for money.

If the companies that hired Paul and Jim had no money, they would be unable to hire workers and produce shoes and wood pulp. Physically, production would be possible but, financially, such production would not proceed for the lack of money. 

In the same way, if all the Pauls and Jims were provided with enough money, they would be able to fully participate in the marketplace and purchase the products they needed. Without money, they would not be able to do so, regardless of how many products were for sale. Unsold products would accumulate, producers would reduce their outputs, and workers would be laid off, resulting in unemployment and a further restriction on the access to goods.

Finance decides

Countless manufacturers have closed or tempered their operations due to a lack of financing. How many consumers have suffered and done without necessities, or contracted long-term debts, simply because they did not have the means to pay for the goods they needed?

In these cases, production was physically possible. Distribution was also physically possible, as there were sufficient merchants and no lack of delivery options. Yet, distribution came to a standstill because what was physically possible was not financially possible.

Decisions were made based on financial matters and not as a function of reality.

This is also true of governments at all levels. Public projects could easily be completed if municipalities had the money to pay for them.The proof is that they are undertaken as soon as money is borrowed.Financiers, who produce absolutely nothing of value, benefit.

Finance is the final arbiter, whether in the private or public sphere. Yet society did not invent the financial system to be a burden that penalizes the ordinary person. We consider the financial system flawed. It acts like a tyrant rather than a servant.

Overthrowing tyranny

The Pilgrims of St. Michael denounce the tyranny of the financial system over economic life.

Financial problems ought not exist. Money can be easily made. This is attested by the fact that a world that went without money for ten years during the Great Depression suddenly found the billions necessary to wage an international war that endured for six years.

Douglas Social Crediters argue that "whatever is physically possible and desirable should, by that very fact, be made financially possible."

It is not a matter of promising the moon. It is a matter of committing ourselves to reaching a goal that can readily be attained. We are not the only ones who say that this can be done. A man well versed in the ways of finance, Graham Towers, who was the first governor of the Bank of Canada, held the same position.

In 1939, before the House of Commons'permanent Committee on Banking and Commerce, a question was asked by Norman Jacques, M.P. and answered by Towers. Here is the discussion, recorded on page 771 of the Minutes of the Common's Banking and Commerce Committee:

Jacques: Do you concede that anything physically possible and desirable can be made financially possible?

Towers: Certainly!

This was in 1939. A few months later, war was declared. Subsequent events proved that it was quite easy to render financially possible all that was physically possible. There was no purely financial problem that prevented the Second World War from being waged after the financial limitation was remedied.

President Roosevelt called these purely financial problems "nonsense" — and so they are! When the United States entered the war, he declared publicly that he would not allow the war effort to be handicapped by financial nonsense.

The goal is not to render financially possible all that is required to conduct a war, but instead to render financially possible all that can be executed physically in response to the needs of the population and society.

Is it physically possible to provide enough food, clothing, housing and medical care in order that all people might have their basic needs met? No one would deny that it is physically possible to meet the population's needs. If these needs are not met, it is for one of two reasons. The first is that there is a shortage of financing for production. The second is that the money required by the population to meet their needs is not available.

We refuse to accept this divorce between what is physically possible and what is financially possible. The question is no longer "Can it be paid for?" but instead, "Can it be made? Can it be transported? Can the product be delivered?" If the answer is "Yes all this is physically possible" then, in all logic and by human reason, it should be made financially possible.

The same applies to the needs of municipalities, school boards and other public institutions. Insofar as development projects are physically possible, they must be made financially possible. New money must be created whenever new wealth is made, and money must be cancelled out only at the rate at which consumption takes place.

Only then will you have a humane economy; not an economy that is designed by bureaucrats and politicians, but an economy that is regulated by the consumers themselves, private and public. This would be an economy that is not controlled but one which responds to the clearly stated needs of free men who possess the means, money, to demand what they wish.