L.W. Nicholson  1998 Published in: Technocracy Digest, 3rd quarter 1998, No. 329 

Great progress has, and is, occurring in the transferring of money from one individual, or corporation, to another. First, the direct exchange of goods with the old barter system, then to the use of seashells as a medium of exchange, then to the coining of little metal disks, to the printing of various quantities on paper, and now to electronic transfers on a world-wide basis. However, in all the progress in such money exchanges, the old money and value concepts remain the same as in the days of the barter system, and the same old problems continue to plague humans.

Perhaps the greatest change in money concepts has been from the time when the money changers were run out of the temple, to today’s “money changers” who now hold the mortgages on modern-day temples.

After all the historic interest in money, and the great buildings that have been built to contain the “dealers” of money, and the thousands of bank mergers, and the enormous money-changing in the world’s commerce and stock markets, it would seem that more effort would have been applied to determine its size, weight and atomic structure. What is money?

Answers to these questions have never been successfully established by scientific analysis. Even its existence anywhere in the physical world has never been proven. It doesn’t grow on trees, so where does it grow?

The concept of money is only a mental concept. It exists only in the “minds” of humans. It is a human belief, and is used and accepted by no other animal on earth. It is only a superstition, designed by humans, to control their own operations in the physical world. People’s desire for the accumulation of money has grown out of all proportion to the far more important aspects of human life in a physical world.

For the past 65 years, the U.S. has destroyed farm products, and paid farmers to produce less; has subsidized the foreign purchase of farm and manufactured products, to keep local farmers and businesses in business, and to provide jobs for the nation’s labor force in a technological age — all because of the monetary concepts of a past age. Forty-million Americans live in poverty as a result.

These trends clearly indicate a need for more efficient designs for the distribution of goods and services in a technological age of rapidly increasing abilities in the production process, with a declining need for human labor. We will have no choice but to make the necessary changes so that the distribution process will be as efficient as the production process. To do otherwise will only increase the problems of the debt structure, poverty, crime and war.

Everyone wants these problems corrected, but few are willing to make the changes required. To abandon old concepts and learn new ones is never easy — and are almost impossible for the chief beneficiaries of the old system. If 40 million living in poverty, and another 40 million living only a little better, is not incentive enough, then it is obvious that North Americans are not ready to insist on important social change.

However, the time is rapidly approaching when it can’t be postponed any longer.