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The MoA Week In Review – OT 2025-149
Last week's posts on Moon of Alabama:
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Other issues:
Gaza:
Europe:
Syria:
Africa:
Zionists:
Use as open (not related to the wars in Ukraine and Palestine) thread …
Barter
It’s almost funny when anyone uses the word barter as some kind of inferior concept, the realm of a third world market or backstreet dealing.
It is as if ‘money’ were some kind of decisive definition of reward, where prices are fixed and service guaranteed at those prices. A consumer superiority complex if you will, or a state ordained framework of mechanical perfection.
In reality all is barter.
Every decision of exchange of an individual, whether it be material, time and effort, or money/’money’ is their own negotiated exchange, which is barter.
That there is little discussion during an exchange is purely a western standard of assumption that prices offered are at a minimum feasible, or an imposition by suppliers where the buyer is expected to negotiate between different market offer beforehand, and not with the individual supplier who will say ‘if you do not accept our prices, go somewhere else’.
There are exceptions of course, and those are often understood to be confined to the realm of shady dealerships, where prices are set high and even a negotiated reduction is still a ripoff. Such is the reputation of the world of vehicle and real estate dealerships.
Where does this sense of superior command of ‘money’ originate, some might ask. After all there appears to be no obligation for the seller to accept any payment or currency ? This obligation to accept payment is actually written into law via legal tender, meaning the obligation to settle and PAY in a particular currency when there exist legal settlement of a contention.
This used to be metals, hence the use of the word ‘standard’, but has since been migrated to government fiat. The most obvious legal contention (everywhere) is government taxation. There is no previous contract between buyer and seller (citizen and government supplier), and therefore no independent choice of medium of payment by the individual. Simply put, the matter is settled by obliging payment in legal tender, now fiat. Obliging, meaning forced (or else you face jail). As payment must now be made in fiat, accounting must be done in fiat, and as accounting must be done in fiat, so prices are set and offer accepted in fiat. Hence a forced use of currency.
To do otherwise is possible, but by force of law all economic activity must be declared and accounted for in legal tender, meaning a non monetary exchange must be documented and its equivalent fiat values accounted and presented for taxation. Meaning, anyone might trade using say gold as currency, but every single transaction would have to be converted into fiat at suitable market values, and taxes paid on that in fiat. So people just use fiat, normally.
This is how government gets its claws into an economy, how it accesses reams of data, how it ‘legitimises’ fiat. That monopoly provides the channels for intervention and graft, it provides means of surveillance and exclusion, it allows endless forms of intervention. The population represent that imposition. Usually cluelessly.
Some call that a superior approach, and they dream of the possibilities of controlled organisation of the economy and society, at best “for its own good” but always their own will and ideals imposed on others, or the will of a select group of ‘superiors’ (ideological, trained, informed, charismatic, scientific etc.) . Being voted for does not count, because one highly limited delegated ‘decision’ every few years is absolutely no comparison to the myriad of day to day negotiations any person makes in the real world in any single day.
How did money itself get its definition though ?
By barter via weight.
Certain metals being rare, fungible, of limited physical use, durable, sought after, gained their own value and were used as storage of value and medium of exchange, allowing accounting : Individual economic calculation within a broader economy of prices in a particular medium.
The coining of metals, though sometimes disputed if a form of clipping or prestige, is widely understood to be the application of a stamp, a mint, to a fixed quantity of metal of certain fineness, to allow easier recognition and exchange. The mint was paid a fraction of metal for its service.
Up until 19th century, all kinds of coinage was recognised for its content, not its mint (which only indicated content).
However, it was noticed from early on that the mint mark itself could be used instead of content, by obliging payment using face value only. This was the start of devaluation, and the move to fiat, where coinage/currency became token and issued at ruler discretion , and so disconnected from market value. The obligation to pay using that currency gave it ‘value’.
The rest is history, the reality is that financial and government cumplicity under a fiat regime allows complete manipulation of the money supply, always drawing on and from market worth, that being the value individuals give to the currency via barter with each other.
No one is saying with the above, however, that government cannot create its own money, that financial instruments, discount notes, forward markets, etc. , cannot exist or be allowed at the same time.
It does not say communism or capitalism. Capitalism is an individual’s natural incentive, where communism is a form of public insurance scheme which fits with capitalism as self preservation or continuity. Capitalism fits into communism also, by the notion that being productive for gain is achieved by providing goods and services to others (the community) in exchange (barter) for what others are able to provide in return.
What it says, though, is to not force use of a invented manipulable currency on people. It says that if you want to tax, you have to visibly take money off people instead of increasing supply and diluting their share : For all the accountability and responsibility that implies. Goes for finance (moral hazard, bank runs) through to “government largess” and its endless corruption.
People litteraly are paying to be told what to do, paying to have their wealth confiscated:
“Pay me and call me stupid” has become “I will pay you to call me stupid”
And people think it’s great !
:-/
(Not answering …post and walk, for others to consider and/or argue 🙂 )
Posted by: Ornot | Jul 7 2025 15:25 utc | 114
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