You’re right dollars are not fixed but dollars are worthless. They’re an abstraction of real value. When you create a product you accept dollars in the place of the things of real value because someone else is willing to do the same later.

When you remove dollars one more step – by charging someone more dollars in exchange for dollars you remove the value of those dollars because you’ve not tied them to anything other than a promise that you’ll get the dollars the other party agreed to give you. If they die without any objects of real value that can be exchanged for those dollars you’re left with what? Nothing. Because the dollars you agreed they’d give you were tied to nothing. Had you exchanged a group of goats for a small stand of trees (something real) but he died before you got the goats the goats would still be there for you to take as part of the agreement. Even better if his estate chooses to keep the goats you don’t have to give them the trees, you may be bitter but you are not out anything.

We feel we need dollars because they make the exchange of values easier by providing a translation device but that is all they really are and we’ve lost sight of that. When we collect a bunch of money based on the trade of other money we are abstracting it one step too far and that is what the financial industry has been doing since the 1980s. They pretend that dollars themselves have value and they inflate and increase the number of dollars based on their assumptions and further abstraction of the dollar away from things of real value.

In the end though there is only so much potential for worker output and only so many resources. Once these are at their capacity we’ve reached zero-sum and no matter how many dollars are printed or how many times they are removed from actual value there will still be no more value added only the egotistic and sociopathic belief that having the most digits makes one person better or more valuable than the next.

The sad truth though is that those digits and dollars that are removed from real value are mixed with those that have actual value so for the time being telling them apart is impossible. This is why we need to restore regulation that minimizes these false and valueless dollars or we risk catastrophic collapse and devaluation.

We’re not at a point of zero-sum yet but that is because we’re not at capacity, not because it’s false. If we don’t stop destroying resources and begin to be at least sustainable, if not regenerative, then we’re going to reach that point some day very soon as we can already see it happening in places. We choose to improperly use timber in the US so we import tons of it from poor countries who’s governments do nothing to stop us. We’re taking from their piece of the pie already because we can’t manage our own properly.

So to recap, don’t be an idiot. – you’re right dollars are not fixed but the value behind them is.

Consider that in terms of constant 2006 dollars, median household income has increased steadily since forever (chart below). At the same time the number of households has increased steadily. Our GDP = households * income/household has been increasing steadily.

How is that possible if there’s only a fixed number of dollars?

Lastly, thank you for reminding me that I needed to close comments on posts older than 14 days. I wish WordPress had that defaulted to yes but I’ll toss you the SEO points you’ve earned with your back-link there ;0)

I understand your excitement about Square. And I think for individuals such as yourself it is a perfect solution, however small businesses that process more than $5000 per month through credit cards would be better off using a traditional merchant account.
I know many business owners have been burned by bad contracts and poor merchant service companies, but there are good options available that can save individuals significant amounts of money over Square.
Additionally items like customer service, and account limits and something that make true merchant accounts a needed service and not the danger they can be made out to be.
Gerald Evans

Don’t just fantasize about it – make it a reality!!!

According to this link Allegheny County is an easy place to build alternative houses (with little red tape). I’m still waiting to find out if Pittsburgh is as easy but even if it isn’t I’m confident that we’ll still succeed. When we start to build if you would be willing to help I’d help you build yours too! I’m going to draw up an agreement that I’ll sign for all of our helpers as I think the city could really benefit from having a dedicated group of cob and straw bale builders in the area to all help each other build much like the Amish do.

We’re also going to be building a cob oven with an integrated rocket stove and covered cob bench. We’ll be building it here: garfieldbridge.schmutzco.com. If you want to come help or just stop and see it once it’s done let me know and I’ll give you the heads up when it’s ready.

I’ll post updates here as things change! Thanks for your interest and I look forward to talking to you more about it!

Sumitta