Chapter 3: What Is the True Function of Money/Currency?

The forms, protocols and significance of the production and distribution of goods and services in and among human communities have changed dramatically since the early days of our species.

This chapter was written when the Transition was imagined as a single, rapid, coordinated event. Passages from that original plan are kept for transparency in marked boxes; the current approach is gradual, voluntary and democratic (how the approach has evolved).

The earliest human communities had no need of currency. All members of the community had, among them, the skills necessary to make sure everybody had food, shelter, and all other necessities and amenities according to the times. Each member of the community did their part. Enough of everything was produced or gathered to take care of everybody’s needs.

Between tribes there was trade, mostly in the form of barter in which all parties met as equal participants in negotiation of an exchange acceptable to all parties. The degree or room for abuse of the process was extremely limited and minimal compared to what is commonplace today.

Agriculture, herding and other developments created more specialization in communities. Currency in various forms, from recorded debts and tallies to coins, tokens and seashells, developed over time to keep track of obligations and to facilitate the exchange and distribution of goods and services. Contrary to the familiar textbook story, anthropologists have found no society in which money grew out of everyday barter among neighbors; credit, gifts and mutual obligation came first, and barter appears mostly between strangers (Humphrey, 1985). At that point in history, currency was a reasonably practical way to simplify the process of distribution of goods and services.

Eventually, certain metals and minerals became widely-accepted exchange media. People assigned them an almost mystical aura of value, completely independent of their physical or aesthetic properties. Make no mistake about it, the “intrinsic” valuation ascribed to gold, silver, platinum, diamonds and the like, over which so much human brutality, treachery and atrocity has been committed, is as arbitrary and made-up as the rules of Monopoly, poker or soccer.

At various points in time, however, the antecedents of modern Capitalistic behaviors began to establish themselves. Some people realized that if they controlled and blocked access to vital resources, usually through physical force, they could extort goods, services, and compliance to their will on the part of people who needed or wanted those resources. The parties doing this then chose others to act as their agents to enforce their will upon everybody. Thus emerged the embryonic blueprint for the Feudalistic paradigm. From withholding access to vital resources, some of these incipient dictators realized they could also get their way through direct threat. Give me what I demand or I’ll beat you up, kill you, or just take it from you and hurt you in the process. That is how many royal dynasties were established. The aura of respectability, nobility, and inherent entitlement to power and control were crafted and spun for generations over centuries until the entire population believed it to be a fact of nature. This is equally the way that generations of people in modern times have been trained to believe that the ultra-wealthy are ultra-wealthy because they are that much more inherently worthy, hard-working and deserving than the overwhelming majority of the population who are trained to believe that the reason they are struggling paycheck to paycheck is because there is something inherently inferior, defective or undeserving about them. (Hint: another myth) The difference between a royal family, a billionaire, a Mafia don, and a “third-world” dictator is as insignificant as the difference between a Muslim terrorist, a Christian terrorist, a Hindu terrorist, and an Anarchist terrorist.

At this point in history, currency/money no longer functions as an interface to simply the flow of goods and services among individuals and communities. It has come to act as an instrument of control by those highest in the socio-economic pyramid, to limit and restrict access to goods and services, including everything from luxuries to basic needs. Its form has morphed from metals deemed precious, to pieces of special paper, to bits in databases at financial institutions. It is a means of ensuring that we modern-day serfs and peasants have little or no choice but to work for them under their terms so they will pay us carefully-scarcified currency in order to purchase everything from basic necessities to desired items, also kept scarcified in order to ensure that the cost of living adds up to more than we are paid. Credit as a proffered “solution” only deepens the degree of our servitude. Currency has morphed from an instrument of exchange among peers to a weaponized instrument of control over the population by a neo-Feudal economic power elite. For some of those at the top, the motive for this control is to feed a deeply-ingrained and enabled compulsion for power, privilege, opulence, and control over others, one that follows the pattern of a behavioural addiction. As with anyone caught in an addiction, people caught in this one can be dominated and driven by it, even at the expense of committing acts profoundly damaging to others and themselves. Sadly, Capitalist societies have extolled this compulsion and held up those caught in it as role models for success, to be emulated and admired, rather than recognising it for what it is and helping them get free of it.

As we see it today, Capitalism is a very efficient pyramid scheme that very effectively siphons and redistributes ever-increasing portions of wealth, power, and resources into the hands of the very few at the top of the pyramid and out of the hands of the rest of the population. In its basic structure it works much like the pyramid schemes the law forbids: wealth flows steadily from the many at the base to the few at the top, and mostly the terminology differs.

Nowhere is the function of currency as barrier as clearly visible as in the matter of real estate and the question of how people find a place to live, to occupy space. There are only two choices under Capitalism: renting or buying. Renting is paying a wealthier person, often a rental company or wealthy landowner, for the privilege of living in a place that they own. Home ownership is preferable. However, most people who consider themselves homeowners still owe on a mortgage, and their ownership is far more fragile than they think. On paper, they hold the title. Functionally, as long as they owe, the lender holds their home in its hands. If they become unable to pay, even after paying out more than the original price of the home (the “Principal”), the lender can foreclose and have it sold, usually at a steep forced-sale discount. Whatever is left after the lender’s debt and costs are paid belongs to them, but it is often little or nothing, and the home is gone. Since homes are priced far beyond the ability of all but a very few to afford to pay in cash, the only way the vast majority of people can buy a home is to take a loan. Whether you are paying rent or a mortgage, the arrangement is basically one of paying “protection money” or ransoming your own existence every month under threat of homelessness if you don’t. If you choose to neither buy nor rent, where will you live. All land that is not public land is owned by individuals or businesses. Even if such land or buildings are not in use, it is illegal to even walk into them. Most public lands are also off-limits. If you try to live in a motorhome or other mobile residence, most jurisdictions in a Capitalist setting have ordinances, regulations, and laws that make it impossible or nearly so to do so unless you are paying rent at a mobile-home park. In other words, you are literally forced to pay someone for the privilege of occupying space. Without that right, all of your rights are empty theory with no substance. The enforcement of compliance to the Capitalist paradigm has reached such extremes that dozens of U.S. cities have restricted or penalized sharing food with homeless people in public places (National Coalition for the Homeless, 2014), and police are empowered to confiscate the belongings of homeless people. In a society that proclaims that “possession is nine tenths of the law,” a homeless person will be arrested for living on land owned by a billionaire because of the sanctity of property, but will be deprived of their own possessions because under Capitalism your rights, options, access to resources and opportunities, the respect you are afforded, and the degree of slack you are allowed when something goes wrong are directly determined by your place in the economic pyramid. If you are at the top, your rights are vigorously enforced and defended. If you are at the bottom, your rights are nonexistent. Your right to own a sleeping bag, tent or winter coat is not respected. This is not democracy. This is not freedom. This is the antithesis of a free, democratic, empowered and thriving society.

Even if you own a home outright, some towns and homeowners’ associations have banned or fined front-yard vegetable gardens, under the umbrella of “zoning” laws and protecting “property values.” One Florida village threatened a couple with fines of $50 a day for theirs, until the state outlawed such local bans in 2019 (NPR, 2019).

The concept of “free enterprise” is touted as a democratic model that allows everybody to do business in freedom and empowerment. Yet it is not so. Under Capitalism, the ultra-wealthy and their corporations experience free enterprise while the small entrepreneur or businessperson experiences a caustic environment that favors the mega-corporation at their expense. If a mammoth corporation is mismanaged, the government takes taxpayers’ money to bail them out and the CEO who mismanaged the company is respectfully let go with a multi-million-dollar severance package. If a small business is mismanaged or encounters hard times, it is allowed to fail without any bail-out. If the small business owner mismanages, they are left with the fallout. If an employee mismanages or makes mistakes, they are fired with no severance package and negative references to dog their heels and make sure they won’t easily find another job.

Psycho-social awareness and energy that could lead to a concerted effort among the people to end the Capitalist pyramid are also dissipated by the abundance of distractions and diversions available. Keeping the population overworked, hyper-stressed, and subgroups blaming each other for their plight instead of perceiving the bigger picture, are some of the methods used by the neo-Feudal Lords to keep the pyramid operating unchallenged. In the United States, people are brought up from birth to believe that they have freedom and democracy, a carefully cultivated belief that further turns people away from rising up to change the operating paradigm.

As daunting as it is to contemplate supplanting the dominant socio-economic paradigm on a national or global scale, it is not impossible. The American, Chinese and Soviet revolutions, the non-violent ousting of the British from India, and ending of Apartheid in South Africa are all examples of major paradigm-shifts that occurred against what would at the time have appeared to be overwhelming odds. The first three were armed struggles, and their violence is exactly what this Transition rejects; the ousting of the British from India shows what determined, unyielding nonviolent resistance can achieve. If we are to truly achieve government of, by and for the People, and a thriving community of empowered, symbiotic fully-actualized people, then this is a critical and necessary step.