The Madagascar Experiment.
A true social credit experiment, using dividends and compensated
discounts in a small community seen as an island.
Please, see video with swiss wir bank and other videos how to create
your own money sytem and improve it with social credit.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=uQehEGGwy0Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pH47531SbE&list=PLcbJw3cmEXuabhn-vGs_LVM13WROdDuEa&index=15
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxDLZBo2SpE&list=PLcbJw3cmEXuabhn-vGs_LVM13WROdDuEa
Who is interested to join wir-international ( Wir means in german we together, us the living, as
the Robert Heinlein science fiction book describing such a system,
book to be destroyed on orders of the “masters”). The future society
has a Social Credit structure — something which may come as a
surprise to those who were not acquainted with Heinlein’s early
leftist leanings.
www.michaeljournal.org/appenA.htm
At a number of points in For Us, the Living , Heinlein describes an
environment in which individuals are able to choose whether or not to
accept a job. Passing references are made to the large number of
individuals who take up art or other careers that traditionally do not
pay well. The book also points out the short working hours and high
wages paid to employees. The book ascribes this flexible working
environment to the social credit system (the “Dividend”) adopted by
the USA.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_Us%2C_The_Living:_A_Comedy_of_Customs
http://www.heinleinsociety.org/news/newsFUTL.html i.e. people who have
the technology to give more free time for the best ? Most of the work
can be done by robots, computers and so on… You need to organize as
Singapoor did, taking some ideas from the swiss. You can copy our
legal articles of ass.
Switzerland was the poorest country in the world.
Financial Crisis is when the public loses confidence in financial
institutions such as banks, and therefore want actual legal money from
them, rather than their promises to pay, which are normally accepted
as money. This takes us back to the many sorts of money that we can
use in our economy. One is legal tender money, coins and notes issued
by or on behalf of the state, which creditors are legally obliged to
accept in settlement of what is owed to them.
The second is bank created credit (at least 95% of the total money
supply), which is no more than a bank’s promise to deliver legal
tender money on demand, given in exchange for a borrower’s promise to
repay, usually over a period of time.
The others are all other means used as money ( coupons, tires, reka,
mana, etc…) 1) Money #1 cannot be destroyed, and therefore
circulates from producers to consumers and back again. M1 is public in
Switzerland but private in many countries, the US FED is owned by
private people and work for their pockets… 2) Money #2, 3, 4, n are
continually being created and destroyed by private banks for profits,
as loans are made and repaid. This leads therefore to “trade cycles”,
where inflation alternates with recession, as bank money is created
and withdrawn. A particular effect of financing business capital
through bank loans (a very common practice) is to create credit money
at a time when capital goods (factories, machinery, etc. etc) are
being produced, workers are receiving incomes, but nothing more is
going on the market for people to buy. When the factory is completed,
and workers are laid off, goods start reaching the market, businessmen
start wanting to repay their bank loans, but the laid off workers now
have no money either to buy the products, and the businessman
therefore finds it impossible to repay his bank financing. (This
explains the Douglas A+B theorem, where A is wages, and B is capital
costs). Therefore we have recessions. 3) Money “swiss wir” is our wir
system, a social system free and efficient.
4) Social credit creation, S3C, a better system based on C.H. Douglas
principles and applied locally in Madagascar .
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Social_Credit&oldid=73100008
http://www.pavie.ch/articles .php?lng=en&pg=711
http://www.complementarycurrency.org/ccvideo.html The Wirtschaftsring
in Switzerland, WIR. WIR Economic Circle Cooperative www.wir.ch in
german, french and italian, Please, see wir bank on google The
Wirtschaftsring in Switzerland, formed in 1934 is one of the oldest
complementary currency systems in existence. See our websites and our
work at www.complementarycurrency.org and www.network-economies.com a
very simple system to begin with…
http://www.pavie.ch/articles.php?lng=en&pg=263 If you want
computers… We are happy to announce that a new version of Cyclos has
been published on Source forge http://sourceforge.net/projects /cyclos
. Cyclos is published under the GPL license which means it can be used
at no costs and it will run on a variety of platforms like Linux,
Windows, Macintosh and Solaris. But, even more important, anybody is
free to download the source code and add new functions, make
improvements or modifications.
Report summarized of a small community of creditists.
To begin, the social crediters came from Canada and Switzerland
and provided 100 $ CDN of hens in 2004, plus the countable
notebooks, the large countable book, the pencils and two envoys on
the spot during a day, with the formation of one responsible local
person during a few hours and three visits of a local specialist
trained in Canada. 4 zebus (1000 $ ) were given in 2006. The saffron
bulbs were lost in the post office. The community is composed of
66 people in quasi autarkical situation, without electricity nor
telephone and 100 % ecologist.
There is 0 pollution.
Thanks to the system, no more usury at around 1’000 percent
interest. They more than doubled the production of rice and
vegetables. Despite several hurricanes, they could build or rebuild
all buildings themselves, including the Church, the presbytery and
improve all their houses of terra cotta bricks. They built in more of
the cattle sheds and the shelters for 7 zebus (from 4 to 7), for
1454 hens, a school and began to build a multifunction center. 148
chickens were eaten and 346 sold. They also made a system of
irrigation, with 5 permanent dams and several provisional dams to
improve. The roads all are remade thanks to the communal efforts.
The total value of the appreciations is higher than 5 million local
currency. The requirements of official money are met by the sale
for eggs and hens.
People: They engaged three teachers, a fourth arrives. A person became
the doctor of the area. The committee meets at least once per
week. The families pray three times per day, Lauds, complies and
vespers. They make recollections and retirements.
The accounts are audited by two elected persons, then by Dina. More
than 4 flowers (vocations of priests). Their motto is to prayers, work
and eat.
Projects: Community bank of local seeds. A system to alert thanks to a
goose herd to drive out the robbers. To test the saffran Medicinal
plants. To continue the afforestation (eucalyptus). Impression of
tickets of local currency to open the exchanges with the
neighbours expressed as a percentage freely negotiated governmental
currency, as the Mana system as www.wir.ch To organize visits,
come and see. We thank all those which who made it possible.
Signed: Rev. Father Alain Thiery Raharison, Cathedral of Antananarivo
http://desiebenthal.blogspot.ch/2013/02/infinite-interest-rate.html
Quote of Michael Lane….February 2005
Since April 2002 I have been urging on the world social credit
community — in a letter to my fellow directors of the Social Credit
Secretariat, in issue after issue of Triumph of the Past , in Bill
Ryan’s social credit e-mail discussion group, in the concluding
chapter of my book on Charles Ferguson, in five talks in Australia and
New Zealand in October 2002, and on the Australian League of Rights
website — that we no longer wait but implement social credit
immediately at the local level, adapting Douglas’s ideas for that
purpose.
Last May two representatives of the Pilgrims of St. Michael –
full-time pilgrim Marcel Lefebvre and “our good friend of Switzerland,
Mr. Francois de Siebenthal consul general of the Philippines and an
economist” – visited Madagascar as guests of the Catholic Episcopal
Commission on Justice and Peace. The following is the account of this
visit published in the Pilgrims’ Michael journal for May-July 2004:
Then we went into the bush, driven by the secretary, in the pastor’s
“4 x 4” vehicle. We were invited by the Secretary General of the
Justice and Peace Commission, Mr. Jean Marie, a father of 8 children,
who is involved with church activities. He managed to gather all the
people of the village to meet us.
We began with the recitation of the Rosary, and then gave a talk on
the cause of their poverty, and the way out, by establishing a local
money system, like in Switzerland and in Argentine, where they call it
“social credits.” We told them about the possibility of creating their
own figures (money) to develop their area, without waiting for the
International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and all the other
money-lenders who exploit them. We founded together the first Social
Credit bank, just as the five islanders did in ” The Money Myth
Exploded .” They brought all their belongings to create a fund to
start the new bank. It was really moving and impressive to see them
bring all they had. They are really good people. Bishop Raymond told
us that within a year, there will be 500 small banks like this one in
Madagascar.
So where we founded this first bank, we gave a Rosary to every family
that enlisted, and made them promise to say the family Rosary every
day for the success of this important undertaking. Before founding the
bank, Mr. de Siebenthal asked the priest who was accompanying us to
confess the Faithful. There will be no interest charged in this bank;
on the contrary, dividends will soon be given to every participant.
They will develop their own area in an impressive manner.
De Siebenthal gave a presentation about this at the Pilgrims’ Annual
Congress in September at their center in Rougemont, Quebec. From
October-December issue of Michael :
Mr. Francois de Siebenthal spoke to us of his apostolate with Mr.
Marcel Lefebvre in Madagascar last May. In a small county in the bush,
far from large cities, our two fervent Social Crediters established
Social Credit in a simple manner, a bit like the story in ” The Money
Myth .” “Madagascar,” Mr. de Siebenthal told us, “is the concrete
example of a talk given by Mr. Louis Even. I re-read all the early
writings by Louis Even in a small pamphlet. He spoke of Switzerland,
of methods, of referendums, and of local banks in Switzerland. We
simply applied this project from the 1930’s of Louis Even, applied it
in Madagascar.
Guest speaker Bill Daly of New Zealand summarized de Siebenthal’s
presentation as follows:
An experienced banker, now working for a Catholic TV station, he had
only a short while before heard of Social Credit. But being a man of
action he had earlier in 2004 spent several weeks at Rougemont
learning as much as possible and had then gone to Madagascar with a
colleague and started a small local credit scheme in one of the
remotest and poorest districts. While initially very simple it is
intended to introduce other aspects as the scheme develops, such as a
national dividend and the compensated price. The Cardinal of
Madagascar wants to see such schemes established in every one of his
more than 100 parishes.
This exciting idea became a main focal point of the Congress. Again
from Bill Daly:
What was evident at Rougemont was the new possibility of such
developments emerging within, but not exclusively, the third world.
More than one Bishop was present from Mexico and the Philippines and
there were a number of priests and lay professional people, some
associated with universities. . . . Certainly those attending from
Poland, Mexico, Ecuador, Benin and the Philippines only demonstrated
great enthusiasm and hope for genuine reform in their own diocese,
parishes, towns and countries.
Another speaker, Vic Bridger of Australia, put it this way:
It was stimulating because of the enthusiasm shown by all the
delegates from Poland, Mexico, Ecuador, and the Philippines in
particular. . . . Each of the Bishops and Monseigneurs [Monsignors]
declared that they would be furthering the cause through their
pulpits. . . . I left the Congress with the view that it may well be
the poorer countries who will give the lead because they have nothing
to lose but their poverty.
According to the same issue of Michael , “Fr. Jozef Jakubiec and
Doctor Jan Wilk want to found, at the Shrine of the Holy Family in
Krakow . . . a bank that lends interest-free money, working along the
Social Credit principles.” Finally, a recent Pilgrims flyer released
in advance of a series of public meetings in New Zealand says: “With
the help of local church and community leaders they initiated an
exciting complementary currency in an impoverished area of Madagascar.
Presently similar projects are planned in Poland, the Philippines and
elsewhere.”
Actually, the first interest of the Pilgrims in this concept can be
dated a little earlier, namely, a conference at Zakopane, Poland in
December 2003, hosted by that same Fr. Ja kubiec. In an e-mail to the
Social Credit Action Group, Diane Boucher, who represents the Pilgrims
and has a master’s degree in economics, states:
The subject of the conference in Zakopane was about practical ways to
implement social credit policies. People interested in social credit
in Poland do not want to use a top-down strategy but a bottom-up one.
That is to say they choose not to implement social credit at the
national level, but to create small communities using local monies. .
. . People in the Louis Even Institute [Pilgrims] think that the way
Poland chose is a good way to begin an implementation of a social
credit system.
It is now going on a year since the foundation of the “first Social
Credit bank.” But not only have we had no progress report, we don’t
even know what was done in the first place. The sketchy account above
is all that has been published. Diane Boucher has supplied a little
more information in two e-mails to the Social Credit Action Group:
September 3, 2004: What the villagers did with their belongings was to
put a monetary value on them. So the accountant of the Bank was able
to write these values to the account of each member of the Social
Credit Bank. The credit (positive side) transaction and debit
(negative side) transaction . . . are simply written in a small
accounting booklet for each member and in the great book of the
accountant during each sale. When somebody needs credits to make
products, the accountant writes the new credits in the producer’s
account. So the new credits are created with the new production.
Without any interest. The credits are cancelled when the products are
sold, that is to say they are cancelled with the consumption of the
products. Periodically, new credits are written to the accounts of
every member of the Social Credit Bank in the measure where there is
social progress. It is the (local) dividend. It is the same way of
functioning as in the story of the five islanders. The discount is not
implemented yet, because this economy is very simple. When it will
become enough complex to have producers of intermediate goods or
equipment goods, it will be necessary to implement the discount to
consumers with compensation to the producers.
October 5, 2004: Their belongings are their private properties: cows,
hens, tools, etc. they can use as producers, plus the communal
property: the school being built, for example. They brought these
properties together to give a value to the local assets. These assets
will grow with social progress and their monetary value will increase.
The local dividend will be calculated on the value of the local
assets. For example, the school will have a greater value when
finished and the dividend will be greater because of this increased
value. If a typhoon destroys the school, the monetary value of the
local assets will decrease and the next dividend will be lower.
I think that the villagers’ belongings are not a collateral: the new
credits are created to equal the value of the new products being made
by the local producers, not to equate the value of the local assets.
For example, the eggs from the hens are new products and have a market
value based on the producer’s cost: if a child takes care of the hens
and the hens feed themselves around, the value of the child labour is
the cost of the eggs. The eggs will be used as food and also in an old
roman recipe to make cement for building the school. The villagers
were unable to finish the building because they are too poor to buy
cement.
It is really a social credit experiment on a small scale. The credit
of this small community has a value as a productive capacity!
To this small cache of evidence we can add the passage alluded to from
” The Money Myth Exploded ,” by Louis Even, founder of the Pilgrims of
St. Michael. The pamphlet is an illustration of economics on a desert
isle, such as economists have been making for centuries. There are
five castaways: a carpenter, a farmer, an animal breeder, an arborist,
and a metallurgist. The relevant passage is in the words of Tom, the
metallurgist:
I open an account in the name of each of you. In the right hand column
are the credits which increase your account; to the left are the
debits which subtract from your account. Each wants $200 to begin
with. Very well. We write $200 to the credit of each. Each immediately
has $200. Frank buys some goods from Paul for $10. I deduct $10 from
Frank leaving him $190. I add $10 to Paul and he now has $210. Jim
buys from Paul to the amount of $8. I deduct from Jim $8 leaving him
$192. Paul now has $218. Paul buys wood from Frank for $15. I deduct
$15 from Paul leaving $203. I add $15 to Frank’s account and it goes
back to $205. And so we continue; from one account to another in the
same fashion as paper banknotes from one man’s pocket to another’s. If
someone needs money to expand production, we issue him the necessary
amount of new credit. Once he has sold his products he repays the sum
to the credit fund. The same with public works; paid for by new
credits. Likewise, each one’s account is periodically increased but
without taking credits from anyone, in order that all may benefit from
the progress society makes. That’s the national dividend. In this
fashion money becomes an instrument of service.
We have to make the best here of very scanty information. I submitted
it to Tom Greco, an expert in alternate currency systems, and he
concurred: “The details in that account are insufficient to make a
proper assessment.” We don’t know the name of the village. We know
nothing about its size, ethnicity, language, history, manners and
customs, social structure, or civic life. It appears to be a Catholic
village. We know nothing about its diet, clothing, shelter,
sanitation, health care, natural resources, distance from a road,
distance from a town. We don’t know what it produces besides milk and
eggs. We don’t know where it gets its tools. 1 We don’t know what
products it most needs from outside itself. We don’t know if is in
debt.
I think we can assume that money is so scarce there that it is
virtually a moneyless economy. The school building project was halted
because the village was too poor to buy cement. The people probably
made their own bricks by pouring mud into wooden forms and baking them
in the sun, but the mortar to hold them together would have to come
from outside. 2 They have plenty of eggs, so if they can make a
cement from eggs, they can be more self-sufficient.
Each member 3 was provided with a “small accounting booklet,” and the
“accountant of the Bank” keeps a “great book.” The villagers
physically brought their “cows, hens, tools, etc they can use as
producers” to one place, the accountant put a value on them in the new
unit (we aren’t told what it was called), and that became their
initial account balance both in their own booklets and in the great
book. This was not a loan but the representation, in figures, of what
they already owned. The village thus took a step forward from a
moneyless economy to a money economy. The villagers now had a simple
way to trade around their cows, hens, and tools according as each had
need and opportunity to make use of them. The assessment provided a
basis for prices: people knew what a hen was assessed for and would
not expect to pay more unless there were a reason.
In addition, anyone with a good plan could have his account written up
in advance on the strength of the goods he was likely to produce. This
would be a loan, signifying the village’s faith in him as a producer.
To use Boucher’s example, you could get an advance from the Social
Credit Bank to pay your next-door neighbor’s child to take care of
your laying hens. You could then sell those eggs to someone or to the
community to make cement for the school and repay your advance, all by
means of these ledgers.
“The same with public works; paid for by new credits,” says Tom. In
other words, the village council will also have its own account, which
will be credited with the budgeted amount for the school. This would
be expended on eggs to make the cement and perhaps also on labor if
the labor is not a share-and-share-alike undertaking. This money would
be recouped, I would guess, from parents’ paying new credits to send
their kids there. Is it anticipated that the school will serve
neighboring villages as well and, if so, how will they pay?
So far, this describes a change from a moneyless economy to a money
economy but without any specifically social credit features. Boucher
states, “These assets will grow with social progress and their
monetary value will increase. The local dividend will be calculated on
the value of the local assets.” She also implies that the initial
booklet entries included a share to each of the value of the partially
completed school building and that the completed building would
generate a monetary dividend in every member’s account booklet.
I fear this is not sound. There is no justification for writing up
people’s money accounts merely on the basis of increased local assets.
In fact, there is no justification for writing up people’s accounts
initially on the strength of their “private property: cows, hens,
tools, etc. they can use as producers, plus the communal property.”
Their accounts should only be written up for new goods and services
that they can buy. 4 And why are milk and eggs – more likely to be
sold than hens and cows – left out of the account?
There seems to be confusion as to whether the new credits issued to
the egg producer and the school represent the eggs and education it is
hoped they will produce or (as it should) an allocation of the things
they or their paid workers will buy with them immediately. It cannot
be both at the same time. And what will be the consequence of issuing
new money on the strength of goods yet to be produced without regard
to what exists to buy with it?
Dividends will be payable as the village economy succeeds in producing
the same sufficiency with less and less loan money. Less money/time
required for production means more money/time freed for consumption.
Both Bishop Raymond and the cardinal of Madagascar hope to found other
banks along the same lines. Will they all use the same unit, or will
each use its own? The Pilgrims hope to found other banks along the
same lines in other countries. What problems have arisen in the
operation of the village bank, how were they addressed, and with what
success? Has this experience enabled the Pilgrims to make any
improvements to their model?
I call on the Pilgrims of St. Michael to issue a thorough report on
the “first Social Credit bank” so that other communities can benefit
from the experience of this Madagascar village and create similar
institutions for themselves to help raise themselves out of poverty!
Notes
1. When I was in the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone, the village
blacksmith made tools out of scrap metal from Datsuns.
2. In Sierra Leone, the people in my village made bricks in exactly
this way for a school, but the U.S. government donated the cement and
also zinc pan for the roof.
3. Who is a member? Every person? Every adult? Every household?
4. Greco comments, “When credits are created [for the people] to pay
for capital projects, like building a school, those credits should not
be available for spending until the capital project begins to produce
goods or services, then those credits should be paid for the goods or
services.”
Unquote
Michael Lane
http://www.alor.org/Triumph%20of%20The%20Past/The%20Madagascar%20Experiment.htmttp://www.alor.org/Triumph%20of%20The%20Past/The%20Madagascar%20Experiment.htm
