Grounded scrip
Writing this....

"Money Value Transfer Services" are the salvation for sanity. Essentially the same thing as scrip. These services are REAL banks running the old-fashioned way, within an ethnic trust network or a local trust network, OUTSIDE of the official lunacy network. The REAL banker handles verbal or written drafts and deposits up to the limits of his present assets and liabilities; at regular intervals the bankers in the network reconcile and clear transactions. If the limits are observed and clearing is done properly, very little official currency changes hands. These REAL banking systems can continue to operate even after official cash is gone, just as scrip operated during a period when official cash was unavailable.

... led to another thought.

Hawala or scrip is the economic implementation of a principle that's painfully familiar and even trivial in other areas.

Decentralizing works ONLY when the modules or units share a common ground.

A trust network holds up ONLY when the units are built with a shared purpose. Ideally each unit should be physically incapable of harming the network.

When you can count on the units to follow the same rule in the same situation, you don't need a heavy controller sending commands to the units, and you don't need a lot of communication between the units.

When the modules have different grounds or different limits or different operating systems, you need a strong central controller, and even then the overall system will be inefficient. Most energy will be chewed up in the contradictory and redundant operations of the bureaucratic control system.

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In electronics the common ground is literal, and the modules may also need to agree on limits of output voltage and input impedance, or may need to be sync'd to a common phase. It's easy to design modules that are physically incapable of violating the limits.

= = = = =

In law and morality, the common ground is a shared immersion in the same system of commandments and taboos. Natural Law works best because Natural Law was scientifically settled by 50k years of experimentation. Other systems and charters and constitutions are generally designed to violate Natural Law, so they don't hold up. (Our insane constitution held up for only 16 years, 1787 to 1803.)

Chaotizers understand this principle better than anyone. After you eliminate the common operating system, the common understanding of reality, the units will DEMAND a strong controller.

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With hawala or scrip, the separate bankers share a common PURPOSE of helping the ethnic group or township. A banker isn't quite physically incapable of breaking trust, but he knows that the group or township will physically break his legs if he goes wrong, so he remains trustworthy.

Hawala has both sticks and carrots. The banker earns a small fee on each transaction. The American scrip system didn't last long enough to grow carrots, but a fee structure would undoubtedly evolve given more time and experience.

Labels: Natural law = Sharia law, scrip

  ¶ 4:19 PM