Excerpt from the book »
Gradido – Natural Economy of Life«
»If we
hadn’t planned for the money in our system to be perishable, there would be
inflation. Decay is a natural law and so inflation would be unplanned decay.
The cycle of growth and decay makes the gradido a self-regulating system. The
money supply is stable and can’t be manipulated. It automatically evens out at
the value where money creation and perishability are in balance.«
– Joytopia
From the atom to the galaxy, everything in the
world follows cycles, everything comes into being and decays with only the
duration of the cycles differing. We encounter this cycle of life everywhere in
nature. And in our daily life we are also subject to a variety of cycles. For
us the cycles of hours, days, weeks, months and years are the most important
cycles that likewise influence leisure and business life. All life plays itself
out in these cycles.
And life itself can also be seen as a cycle of
growth and decay. Life plays itself out between birth and death. Many religions
see physical death as a rebirth in the spiritual world. In any case death
belongs to life, dying to birth, exhaling to inhaling. No living being can only
inhale. Nobody can only take without giving. But in the existing economic
system they always only want growth without consciously making provision for
the related decay.
But the natural cycle of growth and decay is
inevitable. All human attempts to escape it only brought death. Almost the
entire indigenous populations of America were exterminated in cold blood
because of gold, which was valued as a means of payment of enduring worth.
Today gold mining is devastating the environment. And the attempt to create
enduring money, which if possible increases through interest, regularly leads
to calamities. We know them as economic crises, financial crises, inflation,
monetary crashes, poverty, hunger, wars and natural disasters.
Economic crises, poverty and hunger..., that is
easy to understand. But what do wars and natural disasters have to do with the
monetary and economic systems? A lot, if not everything!
Wars
In wars it is never a question of protecting
human rights or differing religious views. Such issues only serve to fuel people’s
emotions so as to get their consent to a war. All wars without exception are
about economic advantages or power (which in the end is the same). And oil -
the black gold (!) - is one of the biggest businesses in the world. That is why
genuine alternatives to oil are always suppressed. Besides the oil industry,
the war industry is one of the most profitable industries in the world. In an
economic system where growth ranks first the war industry naturally has to grow
as well and that means new wars.
Natural disasters
Natural disasters are partly sparked by
environmental damage. And whether natural events have disastrous consequences
often depends on the man-made circumstances. Here are three examples from
recent history.
When the tsunami overran the coast of
south-east Asia on 26 December 2004, it swept away everything that stood in its
path. More than 200,000 people died in the monster wave. If a smaller number of
coral reefs and mangrove forests had been destroyed on the coasts, the impact
of the tsunami would have been drastically reduced and many people would still
be alive. The coral reefs act as breakwaters and mangroves inhibit coast
erosion and form a second buffer to protect the interior of the country. There
is a growing consensus among scientists, environmentalists and Asia’s fishing
communities that the consequences of the tsunami were considerably aggravated
by tourism, shrimp farms and other industrial developments. For they have
destroyed or degraded the mangrove forests, coastal dunes, coral reefs and
areas of sea grass so that these were scarcely able to provide any protection
from the big tidal wave. Our present economic system compels the promotion of
industrialisation and tourism to boost the economy and raise the standard of
living. This would not be necessary in the Natural Economy of Life as everyone
is provided for through the threefold creation of money.
The earthquake in Haiti on 12 January 2010 was
force seven on the Richter scale. The epicentre was approx. 25 kilometres
south-west of Port-au-Prince, the Haitian capital. The buildings were so badly
constructed that they collapsed like houses made of cards. The slums of the
megacity were badly hit as the slopes where the huts were situated mostly slid
down. According to a United Nations estimate, the initial situation was more
devastating than the tsunami disaster in the Indian Ocean in 2004 because of
the lack of infrastructure. The number of dead is estimated at 316,000. Haiti
was already a poor country before the earthquake. That is why the inhabitants
were apparently not able to afford better types of constructions to provide
more security in the case of earthquakes. With the Natural Economy of Life
Haiti would be a wealthy country like all others. There would be no more slums
and people could afford sturdier buildings which could withstand earthquakes
better.
The earthquake in Tokyo on 1 February 2012 was
also force seven but damage to buildings were not reported. Japan is a rich
industrialised country and the Japanese are prepared for earthquakes. On the
other hand, the tsunami in Fukushima on 11 March 2011 hit them all the harder
as they had built their nuclear power stations along the coast. They had
hitherto not considered alternative forms of energy to be economic. The Equalisation
and Environment Fund would have subsidised environmentally friendly
technologies to such an extent that nuclear energy would have been
unprofitable. The worst nuclear disaster in human history would thus have been
avoided.
The consequences of all three events would have
been less severe if the Natural Economy of Life, which follows the cycle of
growth and decay, had already been
introduced.
Hunger
But let’s come back to poverty, hunger and
thirst. 24,000 people die of starvation every day. That is more deaths every
month than all the victims of the three natural disasters mentioned above
together. Nature appears relatively gracious compared with this greatest of all
man-made disasters.
Sometimes we have to think a bit laterally to
recognise the direct and indirect connections between today’s system of debt
money and the disastrous situation on our earth and then open ourselves for the
Natural Economy of Life, which brings solutions due to its system.
Nature – a self-regulating
system
Life is transient, death is constant. That is
the one side. On the other hand, nature brings off a feat which economists can
only dream of – eternal growth in a limited space. This eternal growth is
inseparably linked to eternal decay.
The cycle of growth and decay is a
self-regulating system. It enables nature to constantly give birth to new
living beings and make new products with the total mass staying constant. This
self-regulation has the effect that the system automatically settles into its
optimal state with just as much flowing back into the cycle as what is created.
This simple principle is universally applicable and therefore also works with
the gradido.
Let’s have a look at the gradido cycle. Its
»growth« is the threefold creation of money with 3,000 gradidos. Its decay
amounts to 50% a year. That is approx. 5%
a month. The average credit balance per person automatically regulates
itself at the value at which the monthly decay is equal to the monthly creation
of money. This is the case with 60,000 gradidos, for 5% of 60,000 is 3,000. If
the credit balance increased, the higher decay would bring the amount down. If
it was lower, creation of money would predominate and drive it up again. Here we speak of a stable
balance because any deviation from the normal state is automatically
regulated back to the norm.
The self-regulating system is thus constantly
striving to level off at the norm of 60,000 gradidos as the average assets per
person. It permanently ensures a gentle equalisation. We can imagine the
self-regulation as the surface of water: there are repeatedly waves from time
to time but in the long run the water level remains constant.
Let’s summarise the main points:
- Together with the decay the threefold creation of money forms a self-regulating system that keeps the money supply constant. The money supply cannot be altered either by debt or speculation or any other manipulation.
- The cycle of growth and decay is a natural law. If this natural law is not voluntarily integrated into the monetary and economic systems, we get to feel it in an involuntary and painful way, in the form of economic and financial crises, inflation, monetary crashes, poverty, hunger, diseases, wars and natural disasters.
- As the cycle of growth and decay is integrated as a permanent component of the Natural Economy of Life, the above-mentioned involuntary forms of decay are avoided or at least greatly mitigated.
The mathematical foundation of our new monetary
and economic model has now been elaborated. We have developed a self-regulating
system after the pattern of nature that furnishes the needs of the threefold
good with the necessary financial resources and keeps its optimal state in a
stable balance. How can people save for the future and how can major investments
be financed? In other words, will there still be a lending system? If so, what
will it look like?
