anonymous question

Free money is a very interesting scam. The essence of freigeld, an invention of Silvio Gesell, is that absolutely all money used in a certain, usually local, economy is de facto borrowed at a fixed interest rate from a “central bank.” At the same time, as is customary among leftists, he explains the meaning of the word freigeld as money that is free from — you guessed it — loan interest!

Naturally, all attempts to implement this scheme were eventually suppressed as fraudulent — central banks find it more profitable to use a more sophisticated scam instead of a direct one: modern fiat money, which has been written about extensively, and that is a topic for a separate story.

A modern follower of Gesell, Bashkir economist Rustam Davletbayev, implemented the freigeld system in the village of Shaymuratovo, where the village’s primary enterprise had problems with ruble liquidity. By creating a local currency, it effectively took on banking functions, bypassing the Russian banking licensing system, for which, of course, it faced attacks from the prosecutor’s office.

I see nothing wrong with issuing private money and lending it to people at interest if there is a market demand for it. It’s just that in a situation where the state vigilantly monitors the money production sphere, one must either camouflage themselves, as Gesell’s followers do, or issue money that the state simply cannot block, as Nakamoto’s followers do. Technically, there is no fundamental difference between whether demurrage occurs periodically, causing money to be plannedly depreciated by a certain percentage, or whether money emission occurs periodically, increasing the total money supply by a certain percentage. Both lead to the fact that the value of the money held by holders decreases, while the one who issues the money makes a profit. As long as people use such money voluntarily, this is a perfectly fair reward.

By the way, in personal communication, Davletbayev is a sweetheart)

If you like this channel, you can sponsor it in bitcoins — this is money uncontrolled by the state with programmed decentralized emission. Here is the wallet: 1A7Wu2enQNRETLXDNpQEufcbJybtM1VHZ8

Accepting donations in shaymuratiks or other varieties of freigeld is much harder and completely unprofitable, because they cannot function as a store of value, so bitcoins are better after all 😉