Initially it was barter, people exchanged goods/services of equal value amongst each other.
but it had few problems.
- Availability of traders who have equal amount of goods/services that they want to trade.
- Mutual trust between traders to judge the value of g/s.
- It was difficult to store and carry these g/s across distance and time.
Although gold was relatively easier to carry, but it was still a problem. So Goldsmiths came up with an idea to issue receipts against gold, which people can use just as gold. This was kinda currency backed by equal amount of gold. Then the goldsmith went one step ahead, and started renting out the gold on interest to people in need. And then the goldsmith went one giant step ahead and started giving out the receipts even when not having the sufficient gold. but beware, overdoing this would result in devaluation of currency and could also lead to failure of currency. This made him very powerful and had very high control over actual producer and consumer. Our governments and bank are also such kinda goldsmiths that controls the economy by floating and pulling currency.
Lender charges interest on currency that he gives out. But total amount of currency is controlled by goldsmith and not the producer. So from where would the borrower pay the interest. This extra money can be payed only when goldsmith puts in more currency in the system. This brings in the GDP number that represents this growth. Inflation is also a by-product. This balance is governed by goldsmith. Now the interest part can be very heavy for the producer, who does the actual work. This setup encourages money begets money philosophy instead of productivity begets g/s. this leads to possibility of creating balloons, that when busts, gives recession, crises etc..
Out of the whole journey so far, I guess we can have a system where barter is simulated with commodity backed currency and technology. Your account should contain various commodities, that will act as currency.
each commodity can be defined in following rows:
type brand qty expiry DeliveryPlace
rice A1 100 12 Aug 2012 Delhi
TCS NULL 100 NULL NULL
Now just like various currencies are traded today, we can have exchanges that trade these commodities and thus govern conversion rates of commodities against other commodities. And using technology we can have system where people can charge in commodity for g/s and vice versa. This can eliminate issues that were deterrent for barter in a large system. Now the currency you hold will always be actual commodity, and the fair price would be self governed from the market. So the currency would never fail and there would not be inflation. Basically the control should be self governed by producers, consumers and traders.
Instead of interest, borrower should pay the lender by giving g/s he produces. eg - If A has crude, B borrows crude from A to produce petrol, then A would have to return petrol to B. This would encourage philosophy of productivity. And would curb the possibilities of balloons, recession etc..
Although possibility of .com bubbles would be there, but problems like sovereign debt europe crisis and subprime crises should not reoccur.
What are your views on the topic, do write as comments.
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