Mr. Carpenter
Thank you for your response. There is something that needs to be cleared up,
however. I am not suggesting that we return to a gold standard, per se, and I
wouldn't advocate returning to a gold standard. Although it does seem to me
that a "default position" should be established for currencies that are only
loosely attached to anything tangibly real; the electronic bits and bytes I
referred to. Mentioning the time-bomb-bug of Y2K was meant to illustrate that
electronic systems, even networked ones, are vulnerable systems that cannot
be relied upon 100%
As long as we're busy brandishing quotations, there's a favorite quotation of mine by
Milton Friedman: "Any system will work as long as everybody believes in it." Money,
currency, is a symbolic representation of real, tangible, wealth. Bits and bytes are
meant to further symbolically represent what we really would do with money if it were
physically possible to move hundred dollar bills through tubes at the speed of light.
And we all really really believe in the electronic system so, a la Mr. Friedman, it
works!
That is, it works and We All Believe until, inevitably, something breaks down; bit
by bit or all at once. Who will assure me that Electronic Fund Transfer mechanisms
are 100% invulnerable to all perturbations? Who will assure me that there is not
some critical threshold which appears insignificant now that when crossed creates
unavoidable, irreversible, catastrophe?
How much more so will the teeming masses of humanity view our vaunted internet and
electronic-currency-grid? The IMF has been spoken of on this thread as "elite."
Compared to the bulk of humanity *anyone* long into the future conducting any
electronic transaction will be "elite." The thirty million or so people on-line
globally represent a fraction of a percent of the world's population. And it's a
safe bet that if you yourself still can't program the clock on your VCR few of
these humans alive now ever can become part of any electronic global revolution.
I selected a personal "global currency default standard" in 1973: Food; and The
Ability to Continue to Produce It to The Foreseeable Future. The absolute essential
standard to insure this seemed, to me, to be soil fertility giving us the ability
to sustain sufficient agriculture into the future. Food is one "reality currency."
Jerard's corollary to Mr. Friedman's assertion would be; "Anything that everyone
believes in better be a part of the system." This is why I see "gold" maintaining
an "irrationally important" position long into the future; so many people believe
in it. (As this discussion extends I will explain why I placed gold in quotation
marks above.)
You posted <<One clear example of these imbalances in this country has
been the discarding of the nation's small farming families. Their life
sytles and heritage has been thrown-out by powerful forces of agri-business
that benefit the most from electronic technology. The system is discarding
them as irrelevant.>>
Below find a copy of a letter I wrote to President Jimmy Carter in 1977 when he
visited the Strategic Air Command Headquarters at Offutt Air Force base in Omaha.
It further explains my thinking about the relations of symbols to the realities
they are supposed to represent. One mile off the end of the active runway I
constructed a replica of the Presidential Seal rendered in two tons of compost
and ten tons of limestone.
Thank you for taking the time to read this posting. Pay particular attention to
the quotation from Rudolph Steiner at the end of my letter to President Carter.
It has particular relevance to the topic of this thread.
Jerard P
October 19, 1977
President Jimmy Carter
Dear Mr. President,
Your co-operation is needed to complete an art project. When you land at
Offutt Air Base tomorrow please look out of your window just before you
touch down. Using stable composted pen waste from the stockyards in Omaha,
I have constructed a symbol you will recognize. The art project will be
complete when you look at the symbol and it will end when you look away.
The purpose of this art project is to depict the interaction between symbol
and reality. For either to be experientially valid each must bear some on-
going relationship to the other. When symbol strays too far from the reality
it expresses it distorts and confuses rather than clarifies. When reality
slides out from under its symbolic representation invidious fanaticism attempts
to strengthen the symbolic construct at all costs by forcing greater adherence
to what then becomes myth. Myth is the decay of reality as probability is its
prophet.
When symbol and reality move closer a stability is reached which cannot otherwise
be obtained, e.g. gold is both symbol and reality, and its persistent value
attests to this relationship.
The land we live on is held in trust for all Americans, even those yet to be born.
This trust is being eroded by agricultural policies which do not input soil life
and fertility in its formulations. Humus is the gold of the soil and compost its
Fort Knox. Both the problem and the solution are implicit in the art project.
I have full confidence that as a farmer you will understand the needs of the soil
upon which the reality of our True National Wealth depends. Please remember the
words of Rudolph Steiner spoken in 1924: "No one can judge of Agriculture
who does not derive his judgment from field and forest and the breeding
of cattle. All talk of Economics which is not derived from the job
itself should really cease. So long as people do not recognize that all
talk of Economics -- hovering airily over the realities -- is mere empty
talk, we shall not reach a hopeful prospect, neither in Agriculture nor
in any other sphere."
Thank you for your attention to this project. Respectfully,
Jerard J. Pearson
I never found out if he looked. If anyone knows him please ask. |
