Extremely eye-opening discussion with economist L. Randall Wray about, among other things, how money is ultimately valuable only as payment for taxes, which is how labor is compelled and the government controls the populace.  If you want to check it out, go to about 16:33 .  It’s a very engaging look behind the curtain at the Oz-like nonsense that serves as the basis for the wage slavery that is the bane of our everyday existence.

And don’t miss this exchange at 21:07:

“People need to understand what is the purpose of the tax—I just want to repeat this.  When the British went to Africa, they didn’t need to get pounds from the Africans.  They didn’t need pounds.  All the pounds in Africa came from Britain.  The Africans didn’t use pounds, they didn’t print pounds.  Every pound that an African had came from Britain.  So, the colonial governor in Africa did not need the pounds, he needed the labor.  He wanted the roads built.  OK?  So the purpose of the tax was to move resources, that is, labor, to the colonial governor.  It was not to get pound revenue.

And that is still true today in the UK and in the United States. Our governments do not need dollars or pounds. All the dollars and pounds that they receive came from the government.  The purpose of the tax is to drive a demand for the government’s own currency. The government doesn’t need its own currency—it issues the currency.  It can never run out.”

Wray doesn’t say this in so many words, but the extrapolation from the words he does say is inescapable: the U.S. government does not need our taxes, it needs our labor.  Given this fact, the idea that we use fake money created out of thin air by banks as a “medium of exchange” and so that we can trust each other in the marketplace is absolute piffle and poppycock.  And let’s be clear—by “government” in this sense, I don’t mean “we the people,” I mean the banks and corporations that are the government by virtue of being the entities that finance putting our “representatives” in their positions.

This is why self-issued currency is no more—and is in fact a lot less—absurd than our present system:

“It is beyond dispute that money can be–and has been–anything: gold, paper, shells, sticks, salt, binary code, cigarettes, fabric, etc., etc.  So it stands to reason that money can (and arguably ought to) be the following:  a check written by a buyer for any amount requested by a seller and drawn on a fictional, non-existent account.   In other words, self-issued currency.  And everyone would have this same check-writing power.  The only problem with this scenario?  No more poverty, no more control of the masses, no more larceny, no more want, no more war, no more prostitution, no more slavery, no more debt.  Oh wait, those aren’t problems at all–unless you’re one of the few people benefiting from the present system of rapaciously fraudulent currency.”