August 12, 2022
For the love of communications theory.
Ripple, XRP, Gold, Bitcoin, the BIS and All the Money
I’ve been reading through the speeches and documents posted on the Bank for International Settlements website this week. As every week for the past number of years. Like you do.
Seeing the directives handed down to commercial banks, nations and other players, I was also reading the Ripple website and came upon this phrase in the FAQ: “…solutions for a world without economic borders.”
No economic borders?
The question we’re all asking is the one of sovereignty – the ability to make decisions that impact our own options and success.
In history, individuals joined enclosed social systems for mutual benefit and protection from rivals. For example, family units joined into clans, and clans into geographical locations. The combined new enclosed system became more physically powerful than those outside the border, and the ‘insiders’ used that combined physical force to gain more resources – land, humans for undesired labour, gold.
Some groups maintained equilibrium in the social structure through force and/or a level of status, which was representative power in the form of options.
In non-literate societies this evolved into a rich, multti-layered symbolic systems involving the roles each member played, and a strict adherence to the tribe. The natural resources in the area were harvested in abundance in their season, with the excess traded as a commodity to those within traveling distance.
The excess resources beyond those that would saturate the market were fashioned as a gift or sacrifice to the gods. This gave status to the giver, without allowing too many individuuals to rise to new levels of wealth and power, which would upset the traditional order.
(This is today, the very thing of concern to those who benefit from the present world.)
It was in the best interest of the powerful to maintain order to efficiently use resources, human and otherwise. It was in the best interest of those without power to maintain order if it served their needs for the peaceful ability to fulfil their role in society, which gave them status within their family and smaller social group.
Peace and self-sovereignty within a fair structure is best for the most.
As pre-literate cultures transferred into the new technology of the phonetic alphabet, the symbolism changed.
Everything changed.
Including money, maps, art, status, power and thought.
The all encompassing change included communication, the way of valuing people, society, commodities, systems and power.
Value which was once bartered in public through discourse heard by the whole tribe, dynamic and symbiotic, became a repeatable understanding codified into a string of visual squiggles, decoded in the privacy of one’s mind.
Communication became owned by those who could read/decode, and ideas about value became commodified, weaponized, repeatable, and without the creator having to be within earshot.
One voice could influence many. Media, a group of mediums, became one-to-many.
Only now, with the internet and digital, instant communication, has it returned to a form of many-to-manyy.
With print, material power became codified, broken into repeatable pieces.
Information, data, and each person themself, became a unit of account.
At this time money also became codified, and the King of Lydia stamped his brand onto similar sized pieces of the commodity electrum, a natural combination of gold and silver, transforming it into a representation of value as stated by the power of the king.
Each unit repeated by stamp and not individual weight.
This was our first ‘fiat’ currency/money. It was used to transfer value, as well as being a store of that value in the unit size that looked all the same, so was trusted on sight as being familiar, but the brand/signature of the king gave it a stated value, even if the quality of your individual piece was less than your neighbours.
That was switched to paper quickly for travel by land, and gold and silver for durability and trust via sea trade.
Money as a commodity transfered into money being representative of value instead of being that value itself.
Money is a social construct.
Fear the king’s army and you will trade using the the coin. The king’s army will ensure the trading partner will fulfill the stated value. See the king’s army being surrounded by a group of smaller kings’ armies and that value might be questioned.
The world changing technology shift of our era is the shift from represenative value to commodity value, as we see armies aligning and grouping Add to this the technological ability to create self-sovereignty inside nations, blocks of nations and the world as a whole unit.
We trade commodities to those within reach. One hand holds out the good we are offering as the other reaches to grasp the good we desire. It is our individual decision, as we extend and grasp in a flowing succession, as monkeys swinging from branch to branch.
Let go and grasp. Let go and grasp.
But beyond our physical reach there is represenative money, based on trust to exchange over time for a good/service of our choosing.
And there is credit, which allows trust over time with evolving exchange of value with parties in a closed economic border.
And so, as famed communications theorist Marshall McLuhan stated in Understanding Media, money is the poor person’s credit card.
One’s relationship inside the economic border of, for today, a credit card or Big Tech private company, is the relationship trust inside a border.
That is why those in power, the BIS and others, want the data on each citizen. Data is knowledge of relationship and a powerful trust tool for money creation over time/credit.
My thought is on this shift as a new monetary system is being hammered out between nations, banks, central banks, the very powerful, and private businesses like Big Tech, and insurance companies.
So much credit was extended over the last economic summer that there are not enough goods or services, even in a combined extended future, to settle the debt.
The representative money must settle or be sacrificed to keep the traditional social structure of haves and have nots.
The revaluing of a nation’s social credit to other nations, the reevaluating of armies and borders, of the ability to declare a fiat value, to enforce it by sabre rattling threats or all out force, must be decided in order to move forward in commerce, and a new thought pattern for future innovation.
The new world economy has to shift back from literate to symbolic, as the participants shift back from ‘jobs’ to ‘roles’ for a functioning, trusted interdependence.
Even after the Covid lockdowns, the labour participation has not returned. People don’t want to work we hear. I have the opinion that people have reevaluated their lives and want roles of value, and not ‘jobs’.
That brings me to the quote on the Ripple website. Their stated mission is to “build breakthrough crypto solutions for a world without economic borders.” http://www.ripple.com/faq
“Without economic borders.”
A border is an edge, a perimeter, where there is sovereignty to make decisions on options within.
So what does a world without economic borders look like?
If it is one global perimeter then within it there is either one entity that rules it all, or a trusted system that allows for an exchange that is trusted by all jurisdictions.
Or, an option being explored through the digital technology, is where the system itself needs no ‘trust’ because it is self evident and self sustaining.
It is the grasp and release of instant settlement.
No trust is needed because no time has to pass.
The ’thing’ exchanged would have to travel across the world in an instant to fulfill the settlement issue of no trust.
So it can’t be physical.
It would not be able to be scarce, or the transfer and settlement would not be instant, and the “thing” traded would become its own commodity to be hoarded and exploited.
It would have to be liquid, like water that flows – more, like water in a gas or plasma form. Instantly there.
The ‘thing’ would have to have either an unquestionable value in itself, being socially agreed upon without coersion, or a declared fiat value by the rulers of the whole world, who would crush opposition through force.
That is where we are.
Gold. Silver, nation’s currencies by fiat representing their GDP being the combined production of their people? Cryptocurrency? Something else of value?
Perhaps a basket curated by the world’s rulers, into which is stuffed some group/nation’s fiat or value, some gold, some crypto, digital assets, all represented in a “thing” – a token with a unit of account, that as a total was representative of the value of the basket as a whole – agreed on by all major jurisdictions.
Over time the contents of the basket could be renegotiated as powers rise and fall, without the system, itself needing to be changed.
That token would last a long time.
That token would fly across a world without economic borders.
It would be all the money at once in space and time.
All the money.
Elaine~
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For news regarding the BIS:
For news regarding gold and the new case for a gold backed standard:
http://www.twitter.com/JamesGRickards
For news regarding crypto, XRP, Ripple and DeFi:
Crypto Eri
http://www.twitter.com/sentosumosaba
Digital Perspectives
http://www.twitter.com/digperspectives
Ripple website:
XRP and various riddles:
David Schwartz – CTO of Ripple
http://www.twitter.com/joelkatz
Bitcoin:
Max Keiser
http://www.twitter.com/maxkeiser
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For those inclined to tipping, thank you.
Bitcoin – bc1qdyzjzzdqxeq9fnm560e2hjctslcstr4ccxn069
XRP – rDQwoBKuuBBbgo7SbWhnf8cmdGwnBUjgA3
Gold and Silver – :) Let’s see when the jewellery is done and available for sale. Raw flakes of placer mined British Columbia Gold Rush Trail gold, unrefined and beautiful. Very limited release. Each in the set is unique. Encased in a hand torched glass pendant. My art. Handmade in my studio.
Music – available on iTunes and direct via digital download/with fully design lyric book from my shop. Link above.
New release – “Janet Louise” regarding Janet Yellen, the QE free punchbowl, the banker ballroom, the coming hurricane (as Dimon proposed), and an old English poem. This little piggy went to market.
Coming soon in a live-off-the-floor livingroom recording. Like I do.
Thank you for visiting this site.
Nothing here is financial advice – we’re all watching which way the wind is blowing.
Elaine~
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As @coloradotravis put it on Twitter.
Today it is the wolf who carries the day, but one cannot help feel for the caribou.
All they want is green grass, glacier-cold water, and peace.
But on this frozen waste, there is only war.
— Travis.web1 (@coloradotravis) May 11, 2022
I don’t know about you but I see a soothsayer’s moon.
Elaine~
Elaine Diane Taylor 