E C Riegel quotes pop up all through the Money as Debt series, and he is a favourite of Tom Greco as well. This short book ( 50 pages) shows how, by adopting his alternative currency, the Valun, the peoples of the world can be free of government counterfeit money and hence the other evils of government.
Riegel's analysis (from 1949) comes across clearly, but as somewhat simplistic and sometimes grandiose. His condemnation of government and fiat money lacks nuance or historical justification.
Seventy years later his exhortations to set the market free leave a bitter taste, because neoliberal economics uses the same term to describe a global marketplace run by and for the largest corporations.
For this reason the book, as a political tract has dated badly, but it still describes excellently how money systems should work. The proposed Valun system reads like a lot of modern proposals from monetary cranks in that it optimistically describes the monetary mechanics but fails to appreciate the difficulty getting people to actually use it.
For me the books best sentiment is that we are the money power, and we have no-one to blame but ourselves for the system's corruption.
Full text is here.
Comments2
Matthew, thanks for preparing
Matthew, thanks for preparing that audio version of this important book.
I'm glad to see that Riegel's work is beginning to get the kind of attention that it deserves.
Dear Mat, Thank you as
Dear Mat,
Thank you as always for sharing your knowledge and making these resources available to us and thinker such as Riegel accessible to us. I really do appreciate the newsletters and the updates. It helps me stay connected and up to date all the way down here in South Africa. Will spread the word amongst my networks.
THANKS AGAIN AND BEST WISHES
NISHARA