After some thought and reading I’d like to post a follow up to this last post on money and debt.
Debt money, which is basically based on an assurance from one person to another that the debt will be paid (you may wish to re-read the above mentioned post) can suffer from a confidence problem.
When you accept a promise from someone you are trusting that it will be kept in the expected manner. However, over history many governments (the largest promiser of IOUs) just attempt to print their way out of trouble, creating more and more ‘IOUs’ (credit notes/cash that doesn’t have intrinsic value) thus making the existing money more and more worthless.
So the promise of efficient money by using promises to repay (debt money) is tempered by the risk that the promise will be undermined.
On the other hand using valuable assets as money is far less risky – what is the risk that an asset that is considered to have worthwhile value will plummet to a tiny fraction of it’s current worth? However, it can happen, asset values do vary. So what kind of asset would you want to bank with – something which is useful perhaps, something which is rare?
Ultimately, it is a speculative choice either way – debt money (promises) or asset money (valuable commodities).
With regards to yesterdays post “Having All in Common” I’m tempted to imagine that money isn’t something that would exist in the full on coming (and here) Kingdom of God. After all isn’t money something that gives us ownership of something, something we use to trade something we own for something someone else owns?
So, does God prefer asset money to debt money? I don’t know! He says don’t owe others stuff, but then he says that we should continue to return the debt of love…
Ah well, maybe the above discussion is irrelevant? Maybe I’ll have to give it some more thought…
