You have to list your policies and pitch them to a normie. What do you say?

submitted by NeoRail from (self.debatealtright)

sorted by:
top
newinsightfulfun
you are viewing a single comment's thread.

view the rest of the comments →

[–]NeoRail[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (6 children)

Can you tell me what the effects and purpose of a labour-backed currency are?

Essentially there is no interest, instead they have like shared liability and such. So instead of receiving a loan the bank will become a partner and share in profits and losses, you can eventually buy out their share too.

This sounds really interesting.

[–]MarkimusNational Socialist 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

Kerry Bolton wrote a relevant article that talks about some of the financial/monetary side of Germany

Can you tell me what the effects and purpose of a labour-backed currency are?

"We were not foolish enough to try to make a currency backed by gold of which we had none, but for every mark that was issued we required the equivalent of a mark's worth of work done or goods produced. . . .we laugh at the time our national financiers held the view that the value of a currency is regulated by the gold and securities lying in the vaults of a state bank."

In Germany it was pretty much done by necessity because they had no gold. The value of the currency is tied to the productive economy itself rather than FIAT or metal speculation, for me it's moreso of a philosophy thing rather than thinking the backing of a currency has some real world effect as if by magic. There's the sperg arguments about FIAT vs gold and shit but these are ultimately meaningless, the value of your currency is about how much power the state has not the arbitrary distinction between a tangible good and abstract FIAT. Simply because both of them become abstracted by speculation anyway and we are in the era of MMT and stuff so the actual backing of currency is actually just irrelevant.

With that said I prefer this method because it embodies the anti-speculation, pro-work philosophy of a folkish/nationalist/socialist state. Instead of the value of the currency changing depending on speculators on a market it is non-inflationary and how much is printed is directly related to the productive capacity of the Folk. Something like the classic George Soros currency crash destroying economies wouldn't be possible in a non-speculative economy.

An article on the topic

[–]NeoRail[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

Can you clarify a couple of things for me? Should I assume that a labour-backed currency would work with single-use banknotes, so that each labour hour can only be redeemed once? If you are familiar with Richard Wolff's work, is it like labour credits that you can "use up" or do these notes remain in circulation? If they remain in circulation, would that not cause inflation, since you would presumably need to print more banknotes to match each hour of labour?

Entirely circumventing the use of currency in foreign trade seems pretty clear.

The second article also referred to this system as a type of FIAT currency, which I find a bit confusing. Transferring control of fiscal policy (like printing money, determining value etc) from a private bank (like the Federal Reserve) to the government seems pretty intuitive to me, but I always thought of that as a FIAT approach and not something necessarily related to backing up currency with labour. I just thought of it as "nationalised" modern fiscal policy, I suppose. I feel like this might differ from what you are describing in some way, though.

[–]MarkimusNational Socialist 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Can you clarify a couple of things for me? Should I assume that a labour-backed currency would work with single-use banknotes, so that each labour hour can only be redeemed once? If you are familiar with Richard Wolff's work, is it like labour credits that you can "use up" or do these notes remain in circulation? If they remain in circulation, would that not cause inflation, since you would presumably need to print more banknotes to match each hour of labour?

Ok I read about it again. When Hitler did the infrastructure projects he issued the MEFO bills (Labour Treasury Certificates) which were 1:1 with Reichsmarks, they could exchange them for a reichsmark and it would be a 1 time use thing like you said. So it wasn't printing new money it was just making 1 billion reichsmarks that were dormant and getting them active in the economy again. Increasing the velocity of the currency rather than the total amount.

[–]NeoRail[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

So they didn't print any money at all? Just inject inactive money stuck at banks etc. back into circulation?

[–]MarkimusNational Socialist 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Yeah for the public works program. They could be swapped with any of the banks for reichsmarks, then the banks swapped them with the Reichsbank to get their money back and the finance ministry paid the Reichsbank back over time from taxes from the new economic activity created.

Outside of the battling unemployment public works stuff I don't know though, they probably did print new money at some point.

[–]NeoRail[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Alright. Thanks for the information.