Burgess COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

Money is important

Think...

“Since the monetary question directory impacts all areas of human activity, in order to make real progress towards justice, a clean environment, a sound energy policy, decent health care and retirement systems, a greater real freedom of choice and action for the citizenry requires the monetary problem to be addressed and solved first.” ~ Stephen Zarlenga

“The study of money, above all other fields in economics, is one in which complexity is used to disguise truth or to evade truth, not to reveal it.” ~ John Kenneth Galbraith

Reflect before moving to the next slide:

How do you feel about the scale of the claims made by some monetary reformers, about the damaging consequences of our modern monetary systems? Does it draw you to study this, or do you feel skeptical and repelled? Notice the feeling and then try feeling the opposite. What might a spirit of learning feel like?

The barter origin of money?

Try one of these videos on barter:

Understanding Money, part 1 – the Origin of Money

Gold Standard Institute

https://youtu.be/1Wd6MW8gPK4

Charming homemade animation.

The American Dream

https://youtu.be/YC1tlVXYZiE

'The Provocateur Network'

https://youtu.be/tGk5ioEXlIM

To see the contemporary usage of this narrative, search google news for “Back to Barter”

The Story of Your Enslavement

https://youtu.be/Xbp6umQT58A

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Properties of money Aristotle's (extrapolated) properties: Valuable Durable Divisible Portable Reflect before moving to the next slide: What commodities would be suitable as a medium of exchange for modern day barter? We could debate what has “intrinsic” value, rather than any “value” existing in relation to the wider l living world, but that would be another MOOC other philosophers, from East, West and beyond.

BeerTobacco Monetising commodities Many commodities have Aristotle's properties, more-or-less... Beer - Tobacco - Honey - Tide detergent - Gold & Silver HoneyTide

The Myth of Barter IMAGE OR...! “No example of a barter economy, pure and simple, has ever been described, let alone the emergence from it of money; all available ethnography suggests that there never has been such a thing.” ~ Caroline Humphrey, 1985. Barter

Functions of money Think... Medium of exchange Store of Value Measure of value Reflect before moving to the next slide: If a measure of length has to be long, and a measure of weight has to be heavy, does a measure of value have to be valuable?