Oddbean

I believe the thread above might become one of the most important summaries that I have put together about events in the history of monetary policy. Some of the wording is a cut and paste from many, many sources that I browsed before writing it. I therefore take no credit for the wording. I just puzzled the pieces together, and made sure that it was readable, factual and to the point. Having reflected over the post afterwards, I feel I have to add that the story about the last days' of Jesus from Nazareth demonstrates to the full extent how evil monetary policy is. I'll explain: Pontius Pilate probably wanted to have everything related to money as close as possible to the temple in Jerusalem: - the mint where he produced the coins - the money lending - the exchange of money - the trading with money, goods and services - the taxing of the pilgrims As other rulers, he wanted to monopolize and centralize everything related to money and to do it to the highest degree possibly. This enabled him to extract wealth at all levels which involved exchange between people who didn't know each other or who needed a medium of exchange in order to interact or to follow their people's religious traditions. Furthermore, it maded it possible for Pontius Pilate to amass wealth and power at the lowest cost possibly - as it would have been a lot more costly for him to maintain an apparatus that travelled all places where people were in order to steal the fruits of their labor. As you see - monpolization of money and centralization of everything goes hand in hand. The story also strengthens my perception of the monetary system as being the most valuable and powerful social network that we have seen in history. As a specie, we have a deep desire for interacting with people that we don't know, and perhaps especially so when we gather in large religious feasts. Money developed as a means to make it possible to a much higher degree to cooperate with strangers. Monetary policy, on the other hand, puts up a virtual wall between strangers. Monetary policy is at its core a tax on our desire to interact with people we don't know, and a tax on visiting places. It's a policy that aims at making it possible for the ruling class to amass their wealth and power to the greatest extent, and at the cost of the rest of the people, who for the most part just want to be social and friendly with each other. Finally, this story makes it even clearer to me that monetary freedom is the only ethical system that we can have in relation to our need to use a general medium of exchange when we interact with each other. Again - thanks for your interest in following my reflections on this important political subject. (I mentioned the algorithms above, but I guess we don't have this yet here on Nostr, do we? Cut and paste between different platforms isn't always easy :-))