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Post by Antti Jokinen on Dec 9, 2017 21:11:20 GMT
Yes, I agree with that. I was merely trying to point out that if government or a firm for that matter, has goods, these do not belong to the executive in person. Again, there's exceptions to that rule. And it is in that sense that one can understand the concept of a liability. The bank may have house money (specie or gold) but there is an fiduciary responsibility attached to it. An obligation towards the stake holders. The same goes for government, I'd say, no matter whether it issues notes against its assets or not. I fully agree on the liability. I guess what I was trying to say is that the claim side differs. Shareholders have claims, but citizens don't, not in the same way at least. In the case of a company, all shareholder contributions are kept track of, in the same unit of account. I give double compared to you, I have double the amount of shares. But if you pay double the amount of taxes, you have one vote and I have one vote (or not, depending on, as you say, where we are). But I see what you mean. The distinction is not that clear. You might see it a little bit better if you remember where I come from: a balance sheet is a report of the ledger, and the ledger consists of records of all individual contributions and subtractions, givings and takings, measured in the unit of account. When a taxpayer gives, his contribution doesn't create a claim. It only erases his debt. On the record, he is never a creditor, only a debtor.
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Post by oliver on Dec 10, 2017 12:57:40 GMT
Can you pass around credits on your bank account? You can send an electronic order (modern day smoke signal) to the bank to credit someone else's account and debit your's accordingly. You cannot do the opposite (order to have your account credited) without prior consent by the creditor. Good point! I like the "modern day smoke signal". Your last word, 'creditor', seems wrong, though. Generally, there are no creditors or debtors in these meetings. The account which is being debited could as well have a debit balance, in which case you should have said 'debitor', not 'creditor'. Right? And that's the best argument against "passing around credits". The one whose account is being debited might not have any 'credits', yet the other account is being credited and might end up with (more) 'credits' -- or a smaller debit balance. (I assume you agree.) You're right. I couldn't find another word so I left it and hoped nobody would notice :-).
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Post by JP (admin) on Dec 18, 2017 17:23:06 GMT
I don't know if there's something we still disagree on. I think we are more or less in agreement on these: 1. The smoke signal is a way to let the government know that Taxpayer A has delivered goods worth £5 to the horse trader -- and has not received any goods in return. The signal isn't anyone's debt/IOU. 2. The Virginian notes were a way to let the government know that goods have been delivered to the horse trader (the first recipient of the notes), if not directly by Taxpayer A, then indirectly, so that Taxpayer A has delivered goods worth £5 (without receiving any goods in return) to someone who has delivered goods worth £5 (or more; this person could have initially received more than one £5 note from the horse trader) to the horse trader, or to someone who has delivered goods to someone... etc. The notes, passing from hand to hand, allow the taxpayers to deliver goods indirectly to the horse trader. The notes are like a "bearer smoke signal", hovering from person to person, with the last taxpayer-holder adding his name to the signal just before it reaches the tax office. Like the smoke signal, the note isn't anyone's debt/IOU. How does that sound? Yes, that's probably right. As long as we agree on the point that a note is an obligation to perform a certain action. If that action has no value and/or the obligation owed is revoked, the note would have no value.
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Post by Antti Jokinen on Dec 19, 2017 12:53:47 GMT
I can agree on that.
Do you agree that a LETS operator has likewise an obligation to perform an action when he receives a certain message/signal (could be a paper note, like in some local currency schemes)? He has to make a credit entry on an account, and this entry either increases a user's credit balance or decreases a user's deb(i)t (balance).
You have earlier said that the note/message is not the LETS operator's IOU. The operator doesn't owe people, even if he has obligations to perform certain actions. Correct?
My aim is to show that money is a LETS credit, and not an IOU. Here we have something you consider money and which seems to work just like a LETS credit. Right?
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Post by JP (admin) on Dec 19, 2017 18:11:55 GMT
I can agree on that. Do you agree that a LETS operator has likewise an obligation to perform an action when he receives a certain message/signal (could be a paper note, like in some local currency schemes)? He has to make a credit entry on an account, and this entry either increases a user's credit balance or decreases a user's deb(i)t (balance). You have earlier said that the note/message is not the LETS operator's IOU. The operator doesn't owe people, even if he has obligations to perform certain actions. Correct? My aim is to show that money is a LETS credit, and not an IOU. Here we have something you consider money and which seems to work just like a LETS credit. Right? "Do you agree that a LETS operator has likewise an obligation to perform an action when he receives a certain message/signal (could be a paper note, like in some local currency schemes)? He has to make a credit entry on an account, and this entry either increases a user's credit balance or decreases a user's deb(i)t (balance)." Yep. "You have earlier said that the note/message is not the LETS operator's IOU. The operator doesn't owe people, even if he has obligations to perform certain actions. Correct?" Well, we can quibble about the word IOU. But it certainly isn't a debt of the LETS operator. He does owe them the obligation to perform certain actions, which might be called a type of IOU. i.e. I owe you this action. "Here we have something you consider money and which seems to work just like a LETS credit. Right?" Could be. Not sure yet. I was arguing for the most part with your horse trader abstraction in mind, which certainly seems to work like a LETS credit. I'm not sure how much actual colonial currency corresponds to the abstraction, however.
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Post by Antti Jokinen on Jan 13, 2018 20:39:00 GMT
"You have earlier said that the note/message is not the LETS operator's IOU. The operator doesn't owe people, even if he has obligations to perform certain actions. Correct?" Well, we can quibble about the word IOU. But it certainly isn't a debt of the LETS operator. He does owe them the obligation to perform certain actions, which might be called a type of IOU. i.e. I owe you this action. Happy New Year, JP (and Oliver)! Yes, we can quibble about the word IOU. (Actually, Eric Lonergan ended up thinking his "feud" with Wray, which in a way made me start this thread, was nothing more than quibbling about the word IOU.) But let's stay away from there: With IOU we mean an acknowledgement of debt. If I promise to punch you in the face if you punch me in the face first, then, based on that promise, we can say I owe you a certain action if you deliver me your punch. But I would never call your punch my IOU. Would you? We'll get there, JP. We need to reconstruct the picture piece by piece. Let's say you had been shown this picture every day for 40 years, from the day you learnt how a duck looks like, and you'd been told it's a picture of a duck. The chances are good that you'd not see a rabbit in the picture if someone told you there's one. Right? That someone would probably need to show you where the ears and the mouth of the rabbit are, and you'd still struggle to see the whole rabbit, and not the duck. I don't think one can see both at the same time. Take a local bank with a monopoly in a more or less self-sufficient community. The bank loses its contact with other banks, including the central bank. It continues its local business, which consists of keeping accounts of the local citizens who trade among themselves. Every citizen has an account -- one account -- at the bank. Some have overdrawn their accounts, some have credit balances on their accounts. How does this bank differ from a LETS operator? Why would the credit balances in its ledger denote its liabilities, if that is not true for a LETS operator?
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