Why Dollars Aren’t My Favorite Form of Exchange

It’s obvious that dollars are the most common form of money in the United States and globally. It is typically what people work for and exclusively how they pay taxes. Unfortunately the dollar is a debt based currency meaning on aggregate there is more debt in existence than actual dollars needed to pay that debt. This fact alone creates a system of victims and victimizers. Someone is holding debt that can never be paid back, which I find inherently dishonest and impoverishing. 

 To illustrate, let’s say 1 car represented the collective output of our society. Represented by the car is every cabinet installed, every surgery provided, every class taught, and all gold, silver etc. Everything that requires effort to produce is represented by this car. Now let’s say someone wanted to buy this car but not with a good or service that could be represented by the car itself but with a promise to repay (ie debt). What would the value of this promise be? How would it ever be repaid? This is in essence the problem of the US dollar. In the above scenario, it looks like an outright lie, on the aggregate people are getting deceived into accepting it and we are all paying dearly for it. It’s a game of musical chairs and people are increasingly being left out and impoverished because of it. Not only does this represent the problem of a debt based economy, it also illustrates the need for a durable form of money, one that takes effort to produce and holds its qualities overtime. 

The quality of a people’s society follows the quality of people’s money. If the money is of high quality, a society will become progressively wealthy. If the money is of low quality, everything else will be of low quality. If money is worthless (like the dollar), the goods and services of that society will increasingly reflect that. This is why America and the whole world is so “consumer driven”, “short-term”, and “increasingly impoverished”. We are working for the dollar. If we were all working for gold or something similar, those who hold gold would be incentivised to trade it for something of similar value and durability. Those who hold dollars have very little incentive to hold dollars for ANYTHING. Dollars rot in savings accounts, seeking its natural value of zero. A bag of potatoes over time rots. A house over time needs to be maintained. Overtime the qualities of most products and services are degraded by consumption or the natural weathering of time. 

There are a few exceptions to this. Historically one of the most common goods that holds its qualities over time is gold. More recently another good on the market has been bitcoin. The durability of these goods allow the holders to not feel the pressure to consume them knowing that saving these across time and space will not negatively impact their intrinsic values. Other goods are consumed with progressive necessity. An apple is consumed within a week. After a week, it is no longer valuable. A car is consumed over 10 or so years. A house might last 30 years without significant maintenance. Gold and bitcoin, however, provides a store of wealth for hundreds of years, allowing society to delay consumption for the sake of a prosperous future, perhaps one that completely solves the need for short-term consumption because the allure of those saving in a durable goods like gold makes them less likely to exchange it for goods that degrade quickly. The quality of homes, cars, and the long term value of services all start to mirror the quality of the money a society uses. 

In a society that uses gold, quality increases. In a society that uses something like a fiat dollar, quality decreases and is seen in the amount of misery people have in their home lives, work lives, and lack of satisfaction with the goods and services offered. For this reason, the dollar and other forms of debt based money is the worst form of money and is no different than collective societal theft. Those who have dollars trade something that is essentially worthless for actual goods and services. What can the people selling goods and services do with debt alone? 

Now perhaps you see the blackhole sucking up every gift, every act of creativity in the service of state sponsored suppression, repression, and control. To me it seems only honest to exchange my services with my clients in the form of a durable good like gold, silver, or bitcoin, or something else of value. Most people have no choice but to accept dollars for their work and most people can only pay their suppliers in dollars. But at least you can tell the truth, and express reluctance to trade in something so worthless and damaging as the US Dollar