89. Print Money and Invest Wisely

Print Money and Invest Wisely.
Bob Komives
::

Today, we print our money on valuable paper. Corporations print common stock on cheaper paper. Banks print unsecured loans on the most ordinary of paper. Stocks and loans are forms of private money. They become worthless more easily than their sibling, national currency. No one seems to complain that they are paper.

What works for banks and corporations works for our national governments. Our politicians can print money to pay for good projects. They should never print money —or tax it or borrow it— to pay for bad projects. The key does not lie in the printing but rather in the investment. A good project meets moral criteria, retains the value of the resources invested, complements the biosphere, and creates new wealth that equals or exceeds the face value of the money spent.

Projects that meet these criteria in an economic sense but fall somewhat short as measured in the marketplace may still be good projects. The low inflation that they cause has proven to be tolerable.

Politics can work for us. Our leaders can debate the investment potential of each law and expenditure. If we know how government economics really work, we may teach our officials to manage our future responsibly. We will debate as hotly as ever, but our disagreements can be more productive. No resources will be wasted on false taxes, false borrowing from citizens, or useless borrowing of foreign currency from foreign nations. We will debate projects and policies on their broadly defined economic value. Within the limits of our expanding knowledge of economics and our insight to the future we will fund projects on their merits. We will subsidize meritorious private efforts explicitly, not through loopholes hidden in a useless tax code.

Economic development strategies and our debates about these strategies will improve as economics integrates other life sciences. We will  reach out more to the energy of the sun and the solar system —to increase biospheric capture rather than destroy biospheric wealth. We will recirculate energy productively through natural and man-made systems. As we learn, we will do more and more with less and less and (if we wish) do it faster.

If we invest our money in complex and just distribution of wealth among people of varied skills and tastes, we will deepen our wealth, keeping captured energy at the service of our species for an ever increasing time. Our byproducts will be less waste and more product as we recirculate them back through our distribution system. Our wealth and the biosphere's wealth will grow.

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 89. Print Money and Invest Wisely  ::
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