I won’t go into all the fallacies that attend this topic normally, so much as point out how it COULD work. Consider the story of Joseph from the Bible, and the Pharoah’s dreams. As it happened, he was being told to set aside from his surplus crops enough food to tide them over for 7 bad years. They had 7 good years, then 7 bad years.
If we had a real Federal RESERVE system–which saved money from tax receipts, in a condition of actually having excess tax receipts, and no net debt–that money, which would be “real” money, could be put back into circulation when the economy slowed down. It could be gradually taken out again when things improved. This would work.
A further, rather radical idea I had was returning to State-issued currency. What if we had 50 different currencies in the United States? Would it impede the movement of money? Yes. What it would tend to do is make businesses operate more locally, and discourage massive transnational corporations. What I want is more diversity. I want less sameness. I want every State to have their own identity.
And frankly, I think we would all be happier if we moved around less, and settled into something approaching a complacent parochialism. As it is, we don’t know who we are. We move here, there, everywhere. And everywhere we go, we see the same damn shops, same construction, in many cases. You don’t know if you are in Boise or Dallas, depending on the street.
We need a massive transfer back to localism. It has been the case throughout our history that many currencies were issued. We forget this, but at one time, if memory serves, we had some 30,000 currencies. Banks would issue their own money. That, obviously, is too much, but if we had each State issue–once–their own money, and backed it with gold–with gold obviously being the means by which to move it around the country–I think some good might come of it.
If efficiency is the sole good, then a time may come when human beings are superfluous. Efficiency for WHAT? This is the question. We don’t want things: we want what things provide, such as comfort and time.
Why don’t we do a better job of thinking these things through? Personally, I blame the 24/7 media, which is slowly making brain dead zombies of us all.