1. To clarify the historical evolution of money as we understand it today from barter and coinage.
2. To show how greed is inescapable in economic dealings, which is why Gresham’s Law still stand validated even today.
3. To show that many of the things we consider new today have in fact appeared in one form or the other during the long history of money. For instance, in addition to John Law’s notes, John Law’s shares in the Mississippi Company were also exchanged freely as equivalent to currency as long back as 1719 – virtually in the same way that derivatives of various descriptions have been exchanged, and in the process multiplied, in the past twenty years. With, one might add, the same basis in real estate and the same bubble, boom and bust effects.
4. To show how money is not created as equivalent to barter, but is in fact created literally out of “thin air” through the printing of money.
5. To show how solutions to economic problems have always existed and have been found to work, but not necessarily according to the standards of human right, values etc, that are mandatory today, and to demonstrate that economic policies often have the objective of the management of greed.

It is nobody’s case, least of all mine, that we should go back to the command economies of the Nazis or the Soviets. But let us give credit where credit is due and recognize that they found a way out when it was necessary.

My posts were in no way intended as any prescriptions or recommendations, but only as information. As I mentioned in the beginning, since I am not the author of these extracts, the writing should at least have been found correspondingly more entertaining.

As for the specific issue of the use of airtime as a form of specie, I would only say, at this point in time, that this falls squarely into the ongoing debate about the gold standard vs. the dollar-linked floating exchange rate, about which so much writing has already taken place in the past couple of months.

Having said (and posted) so much, I will now step back and request the others to contribute their share if so inclined. Personally, I would like to get back to Paul’s three critical factors of Consumption, Investment, and Labour, and the interlinking between the three.

They are all command economies, where every aspect of the economy is rigidly controlled. As against this, genuine growth and equitable distribution of wealth is believed to be better achieved in a lightly controlled market economy.

Obviously, the latter is not entirely true, just as the former isn’t either.

What might have been thought acceptable for a few million people, for economies/nation-states whose population numbered somewhere in that scale, is patently ridiculous to imagine will be acceptable when we have countries the size of India, and going beyond that, to a global economy on which the lives of six billion plus lives depend.

Theoretical constructs are no longer acceptable as solutions. The impact of the meltdown we currently witness is horrifying, and the thought of experimenting with a bandaid approach, as appears to be the case in both Europe and the US, is equally reprehensible. Not only must our suggestions appear workable, they must hew to a higher sense of values than has been the case till now.

If we are to use this forum to make suggestions, therefore, it behooves us to work out detailed methodologies, as well as ensure that the metaphysical value base is consistent and inclusive.