My friend and colleague Prof Len Seabrooke reviewed my blog on Facebook and its planned new currency this morning and sent me this:
You can get a copy here. It was published by that friend of all things to do with economic freedom for a few, the Institute for Economic Affairs.
To get a taste for what it says, note this from page 33:
And now Facebook is delivering.
And you wonder why I am worried?
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
There are links to this blog's glossary in the above post that explain technical terms used in it. Follow them for more explanations.
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
Buy me a coffee!
“Denationalised money”? Would that be the euro, then?
More seriously, actually what ‘freedomists’ like Hayek and the IEA should have been and still be arguing for is democratised money, i.e. strengthening democracy (individual freedom) against the overarching power of capital.
Bizarrely, the euro does look like one outcome
I much prefer yours Charles
Link not working. Here’s one:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Denationalisation-Money-Large-Print-Argument/dp/1495251438/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2E792RA3R9P7P&keywords=denationalisation+of+money&qid=1561546325&s=gateway&sprefix=denational%2Caps%2C231&sr=8-1
This is a large print edition, which I find unreadable.
‘Denationalisation of money’ pffff.
What Libra is doing, is giving us new governments. Facebook / Visa / etc and all the other companies involved, will be our new, unelected governments. They would be still governments, they would still be able to use their will, to override the will of the private people.
I don’t want to be ruled by an unelected government.
Same goes for these ‘freedom’ bitcoin bugs. No, they don’t want a freedom based on anyone able to pull themselves up by the boot laces, they want those who have huge quantities of bitcoins, to rule over those who don’t.
I agree about bitcoin,
I thought it was a clever idea, a way of creating something trustworthy enough to be used for currency transfers via the internet that bypassed the traditional clearing banks,
I convert my currency into bitcoin, send you the approprate amount of bitcoin digitally to cover our transaction, you receive it and convert it into your currency,
we could trade goods back and forth internationally without ever having to involve any major financial institution,
the value of the bitcoin should be merely a necessity to calculate exchange rates not a thing in itself,
but yes, the whole bitcoin concept was quickly hijacked and turned into a speculative asset and a thing to ‘own’ not a mechanism to facilitate online trades,
bitcoin as a ‘thing’ is as ephemeral as paper gold certificates, one good solar flare and the electro-magnetic wave could wipe all bitcoin from the face of earth’s computers,
at least you could still wipe your bottom with your paper gold certificates!
I feel quite proud of myself given that I mentioned Hayek in a previous response to a post before reading this so its nice to know I’m not the only one thinking this.
Poor old Fredrich – such a deluded oaf. The writing is far from academic – it is loaded with bias. It’s that that really shocks me.