Power To The Currency Cranks

As HG Wells commented writing in 1932, “Circumstances have recently stirred up in the general intelligence to the main factors of the currency situation. It has never hitherto been a very attractive subject. People have avoided it if they could because it made them feel slightly uncomfortable and had an air of being highly technical and inconclusive - it was at once as intimate and as unconvincing as talk about one's liver - and general discussion has been further burked by dubbing anyone who raised the question a "Currency Crank". Still, there may come a time when a man will be obliged to look his doctors in the face and consider the state of his liver, and the time has certainly come for mankind at large to consider the working of its monetary organisation”.

This year the London Times writes that 80% of the UK population is worried about their finances. The history of money is the history of a new global commons of information exchange technology that has the potential to bring about the next positive step of human social evolution. However, it has to be noted that the software currently operating the system is based on outdated violent notions of human exploitation that are clearly now not serving human development. A metaphorical line in the sand has been crossed and it’s time to update the software or crash the machine. We can clearly see that the history of money has been characterised by ever faster and more widespread information flows that have been intimately connected to technologies available that have been driving the ever-greater dematerialisation of money. From shells to precious metals to sources of power now we see that 97% of it is generally pure information that is becoming ever more sophisticated enabling the ‘backing of money’ to move away from scarce commodities to human capacity itself and bringing into question the need for centralised issuing authorities at all. The fundamental bio-psychological purpose of money is to enable the meeting of human needs and intrinsically this requires regard to community, the need for which is fundamental to all humans. So far money functions have focussed on physical and some personal emotional needs and by neglecting social and higher developmental needs humanity is being left in an ever poor state of mental health. The relationship between the growth of the global money supply and the growth in depression is almost identical. To quote Glynn Davies “Conversely, only the most loose-fitting (but none the less useful) garment could possibly cover the variety of models [of money]. One such simple theory does, however, emerge the quality–quantity pendulum; although it must be borne in mind that its repetitional swings become discernible only where a long period of time is taken into consideration.” It’s time to swing the pendulum back in the direction of quality.