2008-2-20 14:02:00
In response to the Parable on Money Systems, Susan wrote:
"Now that the city was built, the people turned to other things to occupy their time. Some of them wrote beautiful music and sang them for others. Artists started filling the halls with beautiful artwork. The buildings had to be maintained and food needed to be grown and prepared. Everyone did what suited them best and all were paid for their services. If it took one hour they were paid $1. If it took 5 hours they were paid $5."
JJ:
I was surprised you got this interpretation from the parable. If others got this idea I may have to rewrite parts of it to clarify. You see a socialist system being incorporated here but such is not the case. In this particular city society operates on a similar basis to modern society. There was no intention of implying that all got paid the same wage. In our society we use fiat money and all receive different wages. The same applies to the parable. The guy who produces more will get more money.
The $20 for an hour in the parable represents the average dollar wage in the United States today . This doesn't mean that everyone gets paid the same wage per hour. All would be free to set any price they want just as happens today.
There was no plan to present a Utopian society in the parable, but one similar to what we have today.
Susan:
"All went well until the next generation of children were born and raised. One especially talented and fast artist was especially sought after to adorn not only public buildings but private dwellings as well. There was another talented young girl who also was very sought after. Because the young man was quite fast his paintings fetched about $45, while the young girl was more thoughtful and liked to feel the painting growing and would often meditate to tune into the painting and where it should go next. She was very slow at producing paintings and her paintings fetched about $200. The young man started to feel cheated. Why should he be punished because he was a faster painter? Weren't his paintings as well executed and as equally sought after? Why shouldn't he be compensated equally as the young woman?"
JJ:
This is no more applicable to the parable than it is to living in the United States today.
Susan:
"Then other problems started to surface. One old man who had originally help build the city could no longer build and was used to maintain the buildings. He swept and dusted and cleaned windows, but because of his age it took him a long time to do his work. Then others began to figure out that if they did their work slower, they would be paid more. Slowly, but surely, the fiat money system began to fail as inequities and laziness began to creep into the beautiful city. No one wanted to do their best work anymore. The easier the job, the more sought after it became. After all one hour of labor was one hour, so why break a sweat to do the hard jobs?"
JJ:
Again, this does not apply. A forced socialist system was not talked about in the parable. Employers in the parable can pay whatever hourly wage they want.
Susan:
"The new president could see that one hour of labor was not a good way to base their currency on."
JJ:
There is no reason this would happen because you misunderstood the premise. We are talking about the average value of an hour of labor and not implying that all get paid the same.
Susan:
"They considered again the long unused gold mines. It was true they were going to have to pay workers to mine it, refine it and pour bars with it. Since gold was so heavy, paper notes were going to have to be made to represent the gold or fractions of a gold bar. They decided the benefits of having a standard to base their dollar on made more sense as a dollar per hour labor just wasn't practical. It took a while and the lazy ones protested loudly, but finally the gold standard was in place. It was left to the people to decide how much gold an item was worth. Employers decided how much gold a particular laborer earned based on his talents and abilities."
JJ:
Because gold can just be picked up off the street in the parable then a gold standard here is impractical. You couldn't use sand, for instance, to back paper money.
Incidentally DK said that the day would come that we could manufacture gold ourselves. He states:
"The secret of the transmutation of the baser metals into gold will be revealed when world conditions are such that gold is no longer the standard and hence the free manufacture of gold will not lead to disaster."
(Treatise on Cosmic Fire, Page 640)
Going back on the gold standard would only delay this great revelation.
Copyright © 2008 by JJ Dewey, All Rights Reserved