| | Michael:
For money to act like that[re interest] is a violation of natural law.
I enjoyed your post, but that particular old world myth needs to die. There is nothing unnatural or coercive or perverting of economies about interest. It is the logical ying to the yang of depreciation. We can no more abolish the justification for the charging of interest(a recognition of the time discount of value now exchanged for a promise of value in the future) than we can abolish the fact of depreciation(ie, a recognition that value deteriorates over time), in the universe as it really works.
The two concepts are tied together, bound by a universe with hard laws, including, hard thermodynamic laws.
In a child's understanding of 'value' in a game of poker or monopoly, there is a zero sum game, with fixed and unchaging value proxies that are swapped. That isn't anything like actual economies of exchanged value for value(by way of value proxies.) It is from that child's understanding of 'interest' that the confusion over irrational mysterious 'growth' in the money supply comes.
In economies, we deal with two fundamentally different concepts of 'money'; static and dynamic. Static money is standing still, we can hold it, we can touch it. It is savings, it is money in an account. Money in motion -- income, spending is a 'flow' through our hands.
The two concepts are complementary and consistant, via accurate accounting principles, but they are separate concepts. If we focus only on 'static' money, as if the sum of all economies was a zero sum game, then we get confused over what 'interest' really is (as well as what depreciation really is.)
In healthy economies, value circulates(via the convenience of value-proxies.) We all exert human effort -- pull at our individual pump handles to create actual value -- which is an 'uphill' effort in this universe, as it is. The equivalent downhill effort -- consumption -- is the exchange of the value we create(or obtain or steal or tax)for the value produced by others.
Without the uphill effort -- the pulling on pump handles -- all that remains is consumption of deferred value, carcass carving. We can't eat the value-proxies, the value-proxies are IOUs, lubricant -- the water in the pipes. When we carry IOUs -- proxies for previous pulls on the pump handle -- into the future, the actual value that those value proxies will be exchanged for may not have actually been created yet, at the time we deferred present spending and accepted static value-proxies for our puls on the pump handle.
We can immediately spend current pulls on the pump handle -- income. No problem value for value in the present economies.
We can defer spending as savings, and spend them in the future. Spending in future economies.
We can sell interest in future pulls on the pump handle, in exchange for credit in the present economies-- future value for present value. We get credit -- the ability to consume present value in the present economies, in exchange for a promise to provide value in future economies. We pay for that credit with a future time series of pump handle pulls over time.
But, value deteriorates over time. If we buy a new Chevy on credit, and keep it for 5 years, and then decide we don't want it anymore, if we return the Chevy to the economies, we are returning less value than we originally took. It has depreciated over time. We've consumed part of the Chevy over time, simply by posessing it. If our incentive to payback our promise of future pump pulls is minimal, we might choose to payback that loan over ten years, or twenty years. The longer we take to payback the loan, the less energetically are we pulling on pump handles in the future to payback that loan. And yet, the Chevy deteriorates at a rate not governed by our incentive to payback our loan. So, there is a point at which the premium we pay on present value for future value incentifies us to payback our loan with sufficient additional pulls of future punp handles that makes up for the time factor of depreciation of value in the economies.
If we did not pay interest,(while the natural process of depreciation was 'allowed' to proceed), then over time, our economies would become perverted if we offered credit at all.
There is plenty of room for abuse in the concept of credit, but the process of charging interest, per se, is not abuse, no more than the process of 'allowing' depreciation to proceed is abuse.
Savings is deferred past pulls on the punp handle -- for which folks recive 'interest' from the institutions they lend to. Where does the deferred present value go? Economies have 'over-produced' if there is only savings without credit, resulting in a deflationary pressure. Fewer dollars chasing more actual value.
Credit is present consumption of future pulls on the pump handle? Where does the present value come from? Economies have 'under-produced' if there is only credit without savings, resulting in an inflationary pressure. More dollars chasing less actual value.
Our personal credit history has both a past and a future; the future is where the growth on our personal account history comes from.
Governments, by way of a properly functioning central bank, can adjust the total amount of water(value proxies) in the pipes to adjust for population growth, but only if they add the 'new water' in the private credit tanks, and not the government credit tanks, and end up holding a non-spendable 'note' in exchange for their manufactured new water. Central banks end up with two things : an obligation manufactured out of thin air(the value-proxies they printed and handed over to another bank), and an asset they can do nothing with(like spend in the economies) but exchange for returned value-proxies! As long as central banks do not directly participate in the economies with their manufactured value-proxies, they serve only as the boiler feedwater valves of the economies, admitting water into the pipes to maintain healthy circulation of value proxies.
They can even receive fees for their services, and not pervert the economies. However, it's clear, when governments take over a central bank and 'spend' the manufactured out of thin air new currency(which represents credit), they pervert the economies. Personal 'credit' is not infinite -- our future histories are not boundless, we are limited by population and personal factors. A nation in aggregate also does not have infinite credit, and can't directly inject manufactured value-proxies(credit not balanced with a personal liability or collateral to pay back)without perverting the economies.
'Interest' is abusable, but it is not the concept of interest itself that is the abuse. It is in fact required not to pervert the economies.
regards,
Fred
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