KZ:   In his book “The History of Money,” anthropologist Jack Weatherford points out this about money.

“Greece was the first civilization to be transformed by money, but in a relatively short time, all cultures followed the Greeks down the same road and underwent the same metamorphosis. Humans have found many ways to bring order to the phenomenological flow of existence, and money is one of the most important. Money is strictly a human invention in that it is itself a metaphor; it stands for something else. It allows humans to structure life in incredibly complex ways that were not available to them before the invention of money. This metaphorical quality gives it a focal role in the organization of meaning in life. Money represents an infinitely expandable way of structuring value and social relationships—personal, political, and religious as well as commercial and economic. Everywhere that money went it created marketplaces. Money created a new urban geography by giving rise to towns and cities centered on the market rather than the palace. The exchange of goods necessitated new commercial routes over land and sea from one urban nodule to the next, thereby linking Greece and neighboring lands in a new web of commerce. This new social network founded on commerce and money gave rise to a new political system.” Monarchies of great empires that spread money and commercial life around the world of the middle east, and even into Europe and China.

Weatherford also points out. “The great struggle of history has been for the control over money. It is almost tautological to affirm that to control the production and distribution of money is to control the wealth, resources, and people of the world. Over time, competitors have aligned themselves into various factions, institutions, governments, banks, guilds, corporations, religious orders, and great families; but from the minting of the first coin until today, the struggle has never abated for more than a brief respite of a century or two. The money wars have sometimes been literal ones fought on great battlefields with large armies, tanks, warships, bombers, and missiles. At other times they have been metaphorical—but no less serious—struggles conducted in private chambers, corporate boardrooms, courts of law, and legislative halls as well as on the floors of the great stock and mercantile exchanges of the world. As soon as a battle is settled in one arena, the actors and interests switch to another where they fight with new rules and new weapons. Throughout history, whenever one faction or institution seemed to have won control of money, an outside player invented another form based on a new technology, and another struggle erupted.” The term technology as used here by Weatherford includes not just what is most often considered technology – new materials like paper and metal and new devices to protect money, like magnetic strips, but also new ideas and concepts about money, such as banks, taxes, denominations, and new market designs such as the one proposed by neoliberalism.

Me:  Excellent and very accurate post. It enumerates the many ways that the present paradigm of Debt ONLY has almost completely woven its way into the woof and warp of EVERYONE’S daily life. As mentioned in my book this is why the new monetary paradigm will have such incredibly broad and deep beneficial consequences. It will be a greater step upward than the last mega paradigm change from Hunting and Gathering to Agriculture/Homesteading/Urban Civilization. In fact one of these changes will be the ability to de-centralize urban civilization.