Abraham Lincoln tried to do it with the Greenback.

JFK tried to do it with Executive Order 1110.

Notice a pattern?

Edit: Fixed link.

Small typo in your link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenback_(1860s_money)

Yeah, I should have just let the entire link show. Reddit doesn't like links that end in a parenthesis.

Thanks.

Oh that's interesting. I wonder if there is a way around that.

Edit: huzzah! Looks like you can use a \ in the link to prevent it from closing the tag.

You did it, what's the trick?

Edit: TIL. Thanks for that.

The world's population is now twice what it was in the early 1970s. It has been rising exponentially for many generations. We will not see another doubling that tracks the curve: if we ever reach 15 billion, it will take a long time and a profound readjustment of our lifestyle expectations. The human population WILL peak in the near future. How far it subsequently falls - and how precipitously - remains to be seen.

As Calhoun's experiment showed, we are not likely to reach our mathematical carrying capacity.

Our biggest problem is that our economic system - our means of organization - is based on growth, and debt created on the expectation of it. Debt is nothing more than imaginary current value leveraged on the promise of future gains in value, and entirely dependent on the participation of the debtors and their ability to honour it.

Economizing used to mean saving what we have; now it means spending what we don't.

Generations of clever "leaders" have enjoyed fabulous lifestyles convincing us to allow them to bet - on our behalf, they claim - on the future generation of value. This is, in its very essence, a confidence game, and we have allowed our system to select for the con-men.

For now, the global population is still growing, so they've kept inflating our money supply, and the pump keeps functioning through upwards pressure. The base of the pyramid is still sound. But the contraction is already taking hold in developed countries. They are reshuffling the deck - sloppily - to try to mitigate this.

Orders of magnitude of false wealth - sleight-of-hand mirages of value, not real value - are still being created, and they increasingly have no basis in reality. There is no way to differentiate a dollar created by fraud from a dollar created by work, once they both vanish into the system.

Superordinate to that, no dollar figure could ever approximate the integrity of our ecology.

And yet our lives are ruled by easily-fudged ones and zeroes on computer drives.

This is the great flaw in the endgame of usury-based organization of human activity, and the bills are coming due. When our population levels off - and it must, we simply lack the chops to mount space colonization - the mathematical house of cards is bound to come down.

The few who enjoy the fruits of this system know very well that this is written in the cards - it's their deck. Are they worried? After all, they have the furthest to fall and nowhere to go.

Those whose status has always been greater than what they've earned - whose ongoing gluttony depends on keeping us all convinced that WE should honour the bets they've made - are doing everything they can to keep us distracted, vain, satiated, demoralized, misinformed, and mired in fighting each other. Numb or dumb, they do not appear to care.

Their sociopathy will only magnify. You see, they've painted themselves into a bit of a corner.

The pageant of abominations and razzle-dazzle sideshows will continue: wars, gadgets, crises, and Deus ex Machina fabrications like AI and ET (regarding AI, I propose a reverse Turing test: what could possibly convince me it's NOT a bunch of humans behind a computer? for ET, I'll believe it when I meet one in person. I suspect they'll try to pull off a hybrid illusion of the two).

Perhaps it's best if they succeed, and the yarns they spin stay so completely pulled down over our eyes that they soak up our drool. To paraphrase Twain, it's easier to keep fooling someone than to convince them they've been fooled all along. Sure, the population will level off... but the self-chosen will always have their private armies, and the rest of us will have no choice anyway, if we want to keep eating. The party will go on for the few, at least for longer than everyone else.

Heck, what we now call corruption may be seen, in the not-too-distant future, as simple self-preservation. Morals will be anachronisms, indulgences. Weaknesses. By that point we won't be human anymore. The great tragedy has always been that those who treat others as subhuman lack humanity themselves.

One thing's for sure: we are about to confront a turning point in the unfolding of the human story that has no precedent. This is our test.

dont you think Bitcoin may be the future currency, once the dollar fails?

I don't know enough about it, but I would be surprised if it's un-gameable. Still bits on hard drives.

Honestly, you can't beat good old-fashioned self-reliance and trading with people you trust.

When the cordless drill dies, the manual screwdriver still works.

You're not wrong, but the only reason Bitcoin was made was to see if it was possible to exchange money globally with no man in the middle (like PayPal or banks) while still providing public proof that the transaction is done. Bitcoin fits really well in the Internet of Things unlike the creditcard and arguably the debitcard, but it won't replace the dollar in the next few decades.

What makes Bitcoin so resilient, is that it is decentralized. Bitcoins are entries in a public ledger called the blockchain. Anyone can download this blockchain on their computer, so if someone were to fraudulently change the ledger, all the other copies would verify that it is fraudulent. So someone would have to change 51% of the ledgers that exist (a 51% attack, basically) in order to create fraudulent bitcoins, and while this is possible it is much more secure than our current financial system.

I would be surprised if it's un-gameable

It is, which I believe. But I am not so sure if it would stand other types of attacks, outside the web, if the power elite decide to go against it.

Seeing as no one knows where bitcoin comes from, it could be gamed from inception.

Yeah, I've suspected this. I read that there is actually nothing democratic about it because those who got in first, with the best hardware to mine up the first coins and who continue to mine and hold the most, have the most power. Those people (the Winklevoss twins for example) push others to accept bitcoin because they are the ones in power who need others to play their game.

If you think about it, every system is gamed in some way where certain people will benefit the most from it and need followers or masses of people to play the same game for the owners to have control. The monetary system for example has the big central banks in power because most people accept fiat currency. Religious heads have the most power when they have millions of followers. Every single thing that has many followers grants power to the owners or masters of that game.

You are absolutely right. ALL civilized systems we have had on this planet work like this. Always the few ruling the many, and it continues to this day on all levels sadly.
Its just too bad that any attempt at abolishing these systems will result in chaos and loss of life unless everyone agrees :(

Gold will always carry value

Very interesting post. Humans gonna human I guess.

I can relate to what you are are saying, but at the same time I like to be optimistic about the future because technically overall we live in the best age of humanity so far. There are people who are living over 100 years old. There is actually an abundance of food out there, where something like 40% of all food is being wasted due to inefficiencies, negligence and on purpose by the government to keep a status quo. We can sustain ourselves completely on renewable energy and should no longer require oil or coal or even nuclear. Certain countries and cities have already done it. Pretty much every single need has been exceeded already. Automation should replace human labor and allow people to experience more leisure than ever before. The problem is making that transition. Right now shit is happening because the power elite see the world changing that even they cannot control and they have to resort to desperate measures in attempt to keep things the same. It is the elite who are dinosaurs much like the very crude oil that they try to pump and invade other countries for. I like to believe that eventually, hopefully in my lifetime, we can transcend our primitive behaviors, master ourselves and unite as free and educated civilized people and look beyond to the stars instead of fighting each other and allowing ourselves to be divided and conquered time and time again when we are all human.

That's the kind of attitude I'd love to have more often. Thank you.

Some things we can change, other things we can't, but what we can control is how we react to our situation.

Because the government is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Fed. The tail doesn't wag the dog.

You should watch Princes of Yen, a documentary about central banks. The documentary shows how the Central Bank of Japan got it's independence through gaming the whole of japan. If a central bank is free, it's hard to change that.

Central Banks can achieve political, structural and economic reforms within countries through crisis initiation.

Best to watch this part from the documentary to see how the ECB is gaming Europe.

why cant people force governments to do this ?

In the EU, it's forbidden to try and influence the ECB. So there's that. I don't know how it is handled in other countries though.

"People who will not turn a shovel full of dirt on the project (Muscle Shoals Dam) nor contribute a pound of material, will collect more money from the United States that will the People who supply all the material and do all the work. This is the terrible thing about interest... But here is the point: If the Nation can issue a dollar bond it can issue a dollar bill. The element that makes the bond good makes the bill good also. The difference between the bond and the bill is that the bond lets the money broker collect twice the amount of the bond and an additional 20%. Whereas the currency, the honest sort provided by the Constitution, pays nobody but those who contribute in some useful way. It is absurd to say our Country can issue bonds and cannot issue currency. Both are promises to pay, but one fattens the usurer and the other helps the People. If the currency issued by the People were no good, then the bonds would be no good, either. It is a terrible situation when the Government, to insure the National Wealth, must go in debt and submit to the ruinous interest charges at the hands of men who control the fictitious value of gold. Interest is the invention of Satan."

-Thomas Edison

All private banks have the power to create money with fractional reserve and the velocity of money.

Because bankers are smarter than politicians?

Simply put, the danger is that an unfettered government will over print and cause mass inflation. By borrowing the money instead, interest has to be paid which reigns in the degree to which money can be created out of thin air.

Still, there is no reason this can't be don't by a People's Bank rather than a private one. But that was the concession to the Money Trusts of the era.

A government with power to print money without restraint will inevitably abuse this power. It is easier to get elected by giving handouts than by responsible governance. Therefore incumbents would likely print in excess during election season to try and stay in power. Or the challenger would over promise and deliver by way of the printing press.

This is not generally an issue if the country uses sound money. You cannot over print silver or gold coins. It is interesting to note, however, Rome went through a crisis of this sort where they debased their silver coins by mixing with impurities. Over the span of ~100 years the Denarius went from nearly pure silver to <5%. Of course the Roman government insisted that the debased coins were worth the same. Hah!

Interesting related fact. It would be possible to get rid of all federal income tax, if the federal government could keep it's spending within the accepted inflationary window. So for instance, if the GNP is 18 trillion, the government could spend about 540 billion without collecting a single dime in tax revenue. Unfortunately, our government currently shells out almost that much in interest payments alone!

Governments absolutely should have the power to create their own currency. That way the money can be issued, debt free. But the reasons as to why they can't are mostly to do with history.

That's not how an economy works. If you just start mass printing money it's value will decrease. We've already screwed up the monetary system of this nation when it was taken off the gold standard. We don't need to screw it up more by devaluing the dollar with an influx of new currency.

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Oh ok I see what you're saying now. Thought you basically saying we can just print our way out of the current debt.

Because, the argument goes, it would be politicized. Instead of the Fed banks doing for profit on the loans and assets of the member banks it would be done by politicians looking for short term support due to boom economies at the cost of long term damage to the economy. The easy solution to this would be limiting the printing of new money to the population growth of the previous year except in times of specifically defined emergency. Some people argue for going back to the gold standard but gold is easily manipulated by relatively few ultra-rich actors.

The law actually states that the Treasury Department has the sole right to coin money, but that is now a technicality since the Federal Reserve Act. In total the nation has gone from public to private or private to public central banking like 7 or 8 times. Andrew Jackson's tombstone says "I killed the bank" as he managed to end the private central bank of his time which he considered an enemy of the country and his own primary political enemy.

In short ... they can, and they do. Treasuries collect and create money all the time. The Fed is there for "stability" and "security" of the money supply, not legitimacy. They are the visible hand on the "free market" and do a great deal to regulate the money supply, but they are not the holders of the American purse.

This can be a rather complex subject, but I suggest exploring it outside of this sub if you want actual answers, rather than nonsense about gold standards and the Fed as the Illuminati.

Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) is a growing study of fiat currency, debt, and the various economic systems that exist, and is the direction to head in towards understanding the nature and the history of money (/r/mmt_economics is somewhat active, but probably not the best place to start).

I would highly recommend "Debt: The First 5000 Years" as a jumping off point to really start getting your head around it. Its a well known, and often discussed book that dispels many of the myths surrounding the history of trade, money, and debt, and the many ways that financiers have secured their positions as central powers.

Please be aware that MMT is only one direction to head in when trying to understand our current economic system. Austrian monetary theory is a good resource for a dissenting opinion.

This is very true, I probably should have put an opinion alert on my 'MMT is the one' statement. There are in fact many competing theories, and getting at least a sense of their differing approaches is rather important towards understanding the various systems and mechanics at play here, and finding the answers to OP's questions.