I'll bet that when you clicked on the link to this page you were expecting to read about yet another conspiracy theory or a combination of conspiracy theories. Nothing could be further from the truth. Things are the way they are because of human nature. Nothing more sinister than that. But...
The fact is that for well over a thousand years we, in what is popularly termed "Western Civilization", have been making a very simple mistake and that mistake has cost us dearly in lost economic growth, lost life as a result of wars and pogroms, and lost individual liberty. That simple mistake is an erroneous concept of money. (And, by the way, this simple mistake has apparently been made in every civilization. It is not unique to Western Civilization.) And what is this erroneous concept of money?
The erroneous concept of money is that only governments can issue money. This is, in fact, exactly backwards since the correct concept of money is that individuals must issue the money necessary to buy their production and, in fact, no one, whether government or private individual or institution, can issue money for another. Also...
Money can be issued only in the act of buying and can be backed only in the act of selling. Any buyer who is also a seller is qualified to be a money issuer. Government, because it is not and should not be a seller, is not qualified to be a money issuer.
These concepts can be neatly summarized in the following statement:
Anyone should be able to buy products and services using money they don't already have provided only that they are ready, willing, and able to sell their own products and services in the free market.
Now where did these strange ideas come from? They came from a free-thinker and a money genius named E. C. Riegel. You can find the ideas above, as well as a coherent and logical theory of money in his book, "Private Enterprise Money". The book was written in the 1940s so some of the things he talks about will sound a bit strange but the theory is still valid today.
Presuming that the erroneous concept of money is responsible for our dire situation today, how did this happen? The following articles address this question.
Copyright at Common Law, West El Paso Information Network, 1998