Castle of Cards Coming Down
Unveiling the Money Riddle

By Marc Gauvin

Copyright ©27/8/2014 rev. 31/8/2022

Reproduction expressly granted provided attribution is given and original link is provided.

I don't believe in the idea that there are a bunch of conscious evil doers, it is more like a bunch of unconscious doers doing really stupid things that turn out to be so harmful they seem evil.   Regardless,  it is up to us to put a stop to all this and it starts with YOU realising that all your aspirations for making a better, safer and more liveable world for everyone, are ALL contingent on solving money.  No one disagrees that money is key, the left predicates its theories on money being managed one way and the right wants it managed another way,  all the NGO's want more money for themselves or they can't do their jobs,  and the alternative money people want money to operate differently, i.e. they want to "re-design" money "systems". 

But what if we all shared one common and fatal error?  What if the real problem with money was just a simple error in its very definition, so simple that it is easy to overlook, particularly if that error has become socially and culturally engrained so that we ASSUME it to be an immutable fact of life, almost a fact of nature itself.  Well, it turns out that is the problem and we can and do prove it  here.   Undoing this error in the minds of a large enough minority, is the only means by which societal collapse can be averted,  giving way to a quick yet smooth transition to where the world suddenly relaxes,  breathes a new rhythm and initiates a new steady pulse that all can and want to conform to.  It is the only means by which we can create a world where offence loses its allure and defence becomes too heavy to bother with, where leaders let go of blind beliefs and people everywhere start feeling a deep sense of realistic hope and meaningful responsibility.  A world where communities begin to be empowered from below while linking across to one another. 

In a recent exchange, I realised how this problem arises from not realising three key points about all money and money systems:

1) They are all rudimentary informat¡on technologies, historically not digital but nonetheless they are all forms of IT.  Which means they are logical in nature and any physical aspects are strictly auxiliary to that logic.

2)  Because they are IT systems, they can be evaluated entirely in terms of the logical consistency of their definition.  In the same way that it makes no sense to claim that you need to ride a camel to prove the absurdity of claiming that tables can be used as vehicles because like horses and camels, they also have four legs,  we can also show that money systems that are logically consistent are superior to money systems that are not, irrespective of implementation.  It may be the case,  that humans will only use irrational money systems but that still doesn't validate irrational money.

3)   As IT systems, we don't need the history of money to build valid ones, just as we don't need the history of flat earth beliefs to prove that the world is not flat.  That is, we can choose any point in time to define money from first principles.

The IT design approach starts with an idea that all system designers should know without flinching, called the problem statement.  A problem statement is an unequivocal enunciation of the problem you are trying to solve. 

Logically,  before you decide how to solve a problem you need to define the problem first, which means that a good problem statement is free or devoid of any preconception of how it will be resolved.  For example,  if we desire a practical means to cross a river, it makes little sense to ask: how do we build a bridge using ice because ice is hard and floats?   First and depending on all the resources available, expected traffic and many other details, you have to clarify if a bridge is a smarter idea than a ferry for example and only then,  decide what resources are needed to build the best solution. That is, a problem statement is NOT a description of a solution,  it is a purely logical definition of what is required,  expressed in the most generic terms so as to not, at the onset, prejudice any solution proposal that may prove most appropriate.  This means, that everything has to follow from the problem statement and anything in the solution that doesn't speak either directly or indirectly to the problem statement is simply wrong.  

So, the first question we have to ask,  is what is money's problem statement?  Whoever wants to propose a money system to the world has both to provide and unequivocally commit to a logically valid and consistent problem statement.  If they can't do that,  they literally don't know what they are talking about.   So please think deeply about this,   how many people know the current problem statement that conventional money answers? This is what the MSTA project is all about. Remember descriptions of implementations simply won't do. I think practically no one does this and least so in rigorous formal logical terms that can be used to completely validate all and every aspect of how money is defined and used today.  In our work at www.bibocurrency.com we do provide one and it goes like this:

We require: "A Decentralised self-regulating robustly stable Currency (defined as: Unit of economic exchange) for the free and unimpeded evaluation of value in exchanges of Wealth (defined as: any discretely measurable goods and services) between any number of individuals or economic entities."

For which the following high level requirements apply:

1. The Currency shall be Abundant:

2. The Currency shall be Stable:

3. The Currency shall serve Transactions not determine them:

4. Transactions shall be free of coercion by virtue of monopoly of units:

5. Units shall represent not determine the value of Wealth in Transactions:

6. Units shall be accessible to anyone or any entity:

7. Units shall be accessible to any location:

8. Units shall not be subject to counterfeiting or falsification:


Such a problem statement is par for the course in developing IT systems and any other engineering or scientific field,  but is totally non-existent in modern finance,  instead we are provided with puzzling descriptive definitions mostly built on allegory from which we are expected to get it "wink wink nudge nudge" without realising there is nothing substantial to get.   

So,  before we try to convince ourselves and the world that our particular implementation proposal is the answer,  should we not all decide on what we want money for first?  Maybe we aren't dumbed down as much as simply not trained to understand that all logical systems require a clear problem statement THAT ALL USERS CAN UNDERSTAND and in order to be valid, any implementation of any solution must answer to and only to that statement. 

We have had the excuse that money is an IT system that pre-dates the IT revolution and therefore not conceived as IT systems are built today, with clear unequivocal problem statements and subsequent requirements.  But that excuse has now expired and with so much weighing in the balance, isn't it time we all demand answers to our now smart questions, instead of accepting answers only because we don't know how to evaluate them?

So, now imagine a world where every financial and economic talking head and money system "engineer" is bounded by a clear, formal and unequivocal statement of exactly what money is and does, one that the whole world can understand.  It may make finance more boring but certainly a lot less lethal.  And it will change everything for the better, in ways that seemed unthinkable prior to all of us "little people" knowing more than today's "experts".   So remember, if you get the importance of this don't hesitate to pass it on.

For more info on the current money fallacy see this document.


Break out of  "The Money PSYOP" and give your kids

a future they can be proud of you for.

 

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