“Flat Earth” Money, and why there doesn’t have to be a global cashflow problem

This is the fourth in a series of articles about how mutual credit can help us get through the economic problems caused by the corona virus. The main points to get across are:

1. There’s going to be a shortage of money.
2. Mutual credit is a moneyless trading system.

That’s it! Mutual credit can help local economies survive when there’s no money around.

Here Geoff Turk asks why money has to be scarce, and why we can’t just exchange products and services with each other, without using money, that’s issued (as debt) and controlled by giant banks.

Questioning the money system today is like questioning that the Earth was flat centuries ago when it was a widely established “fact”. The common view of money is that it is a scarce thing controlled and manipulated by banks and the governments that sanction them. We have been conditioned to believe there is never enough money to satisfy our needs, and that people and nations need to quarrel and sometimes even fight each other over scarce money.

But what if this is not really the case? What if, like the flat Earth model, this is an outdated, inaccurate way to view money? What if there is another, more enlightened way to view it? Maybe money does not need to be scarce, but can be abundant and available just like the air we breathe.

It was a significant mind shift in the past to switch from the flat Earth model to the reality of a spherical Earth. And it is a significant mind shift now to let go of the deeply ingrained ideas and emotions related to money, and to see it in a completely new way.

Any community of people who trust each other can transact with each other without requiring a scarce token like a dollar or a pound. They simply need to establish a reliable accounting system amongst themselves and honour their commitments to pay back the interest-free credits they grant to each other. This is the essence of mutual credit. Although it is a simple model, we have to remember that sometimes the simplest “inventions” can be the most profound, just like it was “simple” to realise that the Earth was a sphere, not flat.

Sometimes radically simple ideas take a long time to propagate. The flat Earth model was first proven to be false in the Western world by Aristotle around 330 B.C., but it took nearly 2,000 years before that idea was established in China. Thankfully we have the internet now and enquiring minds who are eager to find solutions to the problems around us, be they environmental, economic or political.

Humanity would do well to start by understanding and then implementing a new way to view and use money. It’s the key to a better future for everyone. To quote E.C. Riegel, one of the first individuals to write about mutual credit:

“Money must be seen as the means of mastery of all economic and political problems. Until we have mastered money we shall not master any of our problems.”

It’s time to move past the flat earth view of money and make it work for all of us.

About the author

Geoff Turk is the technical lead developing the initial open source mutual credit software being used by the Open Credit Network.