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I like mom and pop family owned restaurants, and local craft breweries, two businesses that are currently doing great in America.
Giant corporations, on the other hand, are legally bound to the government, which causes most of the corruption in the corporate and government world. They end up taking advantage of people and bludgeoning their competitors using the government.
The United States of America is a giant corporation that is entering its dinosaur phase. Do you remember what happened to the dinosaurs? Their extinction paved the way for mammals to be the top species on earth. And in the same way, the collapse of the American financial system will pave the way for better smaller governments, and governance.
The collapse does not have to be apocalyptic and full of death and destruction. If people start taking action now, they can arrange their local and regional governments, as well as their own independent finances, as a cushion. People are already poised to reject monopolistic corporations (the USA being the largest of these), and currency should reflect these values.
Personally, I am not a big fan of how government operates, which is why I promote governance instead. The difference is that government is monopolizing power by force, while governance is gaining the consent of those governed in a particular group or land area. In currency, many organizations are experimenting with the governance of financial systems.
But I also realize that moving quickly to an entirely new system of governance could cause some major upsets. People might not be ready to adjust that quickly, and the adjust or die philosophy does seem a bit cold for 2017.
That is why adjustment should be gradual while allowing the people that are ready for quicker adjustment the freedom to go their own way. In fact the more people we have who are ready to go out and forge an example of how an area or group of people or internet community can be governed effectively, the more options we will have for solving many societal problems.
But there is one last major ace in the hole that the United States government is holding. That is control over money.
States Governments Can Help
Before anything goes down on the federal level, we need to make sure the states have the ability to cushion a collapse. Money is the main thing that would be an issue if the federal government ceased to exist, especially since a financial collapse is the most imminent threat to America.
Just this week Arizona passed a law officially recognizing gold and silver as legal tender by eliminating the capital gains tax on precious metals. Ron Paul helped campaign to pass the law and said:
By allowing the people of Arizona to use an alternative to Federal Reserve-created fiat currency, HB 2014 will help the people of Arizona survive the next Federal Reserve-created recessions. Passage of this bill will also help make Arizona more attractive to the growing number of people seeking alternatives to fiat money in order to protect themselves, their families, and their business from the effects of Federal Reserve policy. Thus, this bill will help attract new investments and jobs to Arizona.
This is actually better than a state government asserting more control over currency. Instead of trying to push their own fiat currency, or trying to issue their own silver or gold backed currency (which would cause friction with the Fed and Feds), they have simply freed up the market to give more options to residents.
And you don’t need to necessarily carry around a sack of gold to pay your debts. Banks are now theoretically free to hold your gold or silver safely, and issue their own representation of those coins, say on a debit card, which can then be spent, and redeemed in real gold or silver at the bank.
This type of solution is an opt-out style where it requires no action to end the Fed, or friction with the federal authorities. Arizona residents can now protect themselves from financial ruin by holding and using real currency, not fiat dollars.
Berkshares
Shift your attention to New England for another small example of a region setting up a backup plan for economic exchange.
In the Berkshires, a mountainous county in Western Massachusetts, locals have been using what they call Berkshares for over a decade.
The currency is accepted only regionally and is meant to keep wealth in the area. They encourage people to use the currency by making the exchange rate favorable: one Berkshare costs 95 cents effectively giving anyone who uses them a 5% discount on anything they buy.
For a community like the Berkshires, this makes sense. There are plenty of local artisans, farmers markets, and small businesses that foster a sense of cohesion. There is only about $140,000 worth of Berkshares circulating, but the proof of concept is interesting.
It should be noted that Berkshares are still a fiat currency, with the only value being their wide acceptance by businesses of the region, and the fact that local banks convert them back into U.S. dollars if you so choose. I would be interested to see the same concept applied but backed by silver.
Other communities are different and will need different solutions. That is the point, that one size fits all approaches–centralizing government–does not do what is best for people.
Cryptocurrencies
For online commerce and communities, there is much buzz surrounding cryptocurrencies, and enormous potential. However, the actual use of cryptocurrencies as currencies is still relatively minimal. Many people are treating them as investments right now, hoping to grow their worth, and sometimes even trading them back into fiat dollars in order to spend them.
But this is just the very beginning phase where people work out what makes sense and what does not in terms of the underlying governance and technology of the cryptocurrencies. If a particular coin’s value levels off and it becomes widely accepted, this will become a very freeing mode of exchange.
And of course, all these ideas on currency can be melded to form more stable mediums of exchange. There are already gold backed cryptocurrencies coming out; one company is called DinarDirham. A co-founder said:
If you have an asset that follows real-time gold price, which can be redeemed or claimed for physical gold and if you combine the benefits of digital currencies with benefits of gold as a store of value, in a transparent way, you get a match made in heaven. This is a cheap way to store, trade and use gold globally. Our unique and innovative trading technology based on blockchain makes this possible.
This is not to endorse the actual company DinarDirham; four people involved were arrested by the Brunei Commercial Crime Division. It is unclear if this was in response to actual fraud or simply backlash from the government for threatening the status quo.
But other options for gold and silver backed cryptos are emerging, including one called ZenGold with the same idea:
ZenGold aims to create crypto assets that are backed by physical gold in order to enable investors to instantly buy and transfer even a very small fraction of gold anywhere in the world while having pertinent asset information securely stored onto an unalterable Metaverse Blockchain.
As with anything else, especially new technologies, cryptocurrencies should be thoroughly vetted to make sure they are legitimate, and even then there is no guarantee that it is a safe store of value. But with the battle being taken to centralized banks, including the Federal Reserve, on so many fronts, it is a time to be optimistic about the impending collapse of the old world dinosaurs controlling our lives.
Experimentation Phase of Governance
These are all examples of communities experimenting with governance that will provide options for those of us who seek economic freedom, and freedom from centralized banks, and the oppression that comes with them.
Diversify your wealth, and encourage local and state governments to distance themselves from centralized government.
People need to be able to say, “No thank you, I will take my business elsewhere.” That is the only way to make sure that a sinking ship doesn’t suck everyone down with it. Having control over your financial health and freedom, even in the event of emergencies, is an invaluable lifeboat.
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