https://youtu.be/ZFBP_9HDJXA
So to get things started off and introduce our guest, the general theme that we're going to be touching on is on law and legal studies. And as we mentioned in our first kind of introductory episode, we really take on an interdisciplinary approach and look to bring in perspectives from other disciplines other than economics, to understand what the economy is and what economics is. And so our guest today is Rohan Grey, and he is an assistant professor at Williamette University College of Law, where his research focuses on the legal design and regulation of money and finance, including digital fiat currency, as well as broader issues of law and political economy. He's also the president of the Modern Money Network and director of Public Money Action. So Rohan has advised multiple members of The Squad in Congress on bills, including Rep. Rashida Tlaib, her ABC and STABLE acts, as well as Representative Ayanna Pressley on her Public Banking Act of 2020. You may have seen Rohan on Jon Stewart's show The Problem alongside Funny Money's first guest, Stephanie Kelton. So we're really excited for our guests. Rohan, thank you for being here. Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure. All right. So Rohan, you have an approach known as Legal Realism. Can you kind of started off here? Can you tell us what Legal Realism is and how does that help us think about the economy and understand it better? Yeah. So just like in economics, there is a sort of ongoing divide between orthodoxy and heterodox and different intellectual traditions that have been excluded from mainstream journals, universities, discourse, not allowed to, be considered part of what is conventional economics. In law, there have been similar ideological disagreements or divides. But because the law is always sort of politically contested and it's a place where even now you have kind of very far right, very far left or to a degree left people in the legal academy. You don't have the same hegemony that you have in economics, but you do have these different schools of thought of different ideas and the Legal Realist one is actually quite old. So when I say I'm a Legal Realist, it's sort of harkening back to an intellectual tradition that really originates in the late 19th, early 20th century. People like Oliver Wendell Holmes are considered one of the kind of proto Realists, but it was really in the 20’s and 30’s with people that would eventually become part of FDR’s brain trust and others that what becomes known today as Legal Realism kicked off. And it has had a number of successive movements or children, things like Critical Legal Studies, Critical Race Studies, Critical Gender Studies, those kinds of things, and their relationship to the law. But the original Realists were really concerned with an attack or a dispelling of what was the kind of then dominant approach to law, which was Legal Formalism. And so the idea of Legal Formalism was that you can look at the rules, you can look at the words in the text, you can look at previous cases and the sort of opinions the judges write. And from that you can define the law, you can find the answers. You know, the answer to the next legal question is somewhere in the text. If you kind of study it hard enough, that kind of thing, you can come up with the answers to the next legal question. And what the Realists were really pushing back on at that point was this idea that law is therefore kind of apolitical. It's almost a grammar debate, it's almost a philosophy debate. And they were saying no law is, of course, political. Law is about power. Law is about who is in charge. You know, famously law is what judges do, right? Not just judges, but also policymakers and legislators and things like that. Nowadays, it would be administrators and regulators. People who manage agencies are making law every day. So if you want to kind of get a sense of what Legal Realism isn't, I think probably the best articulation is Chief Justice John Roberts, when he was getting nominated saying that he just wanted to be an umpire, calling the balls and strikes like he sees them. Right. Famously nonpolitical. Right. Just trying to work out what the truth is. I think anybody who's been watching the court at all over the last decade has to know that that's a complete joke. But the Realist idea is recognizing that power and law are inseparable. And while it isn't reducible to pure naked violence, there is a difference between doing something with your fist and doing something with a pen in a courtroom. There is still a political contestation going on in the way that we manifest and debate law. And nowadays, I would say, you know, the kind of larger, more popular movement that has grown is the Law and Political Economy (LPE) movement. And I would say they're also very influenced by Realists. And to your opening credit point, it's also very interdisciplinary. So some of the earliest Realists that a lot of us sort of draw inspiration from people like Robert Hale and John Cummins and things were also economists or maybe even economists in the first instance, and they brought a lot of economic ideas to law and a lot of the analysis was around political economy and the way the economy is structured and the way that money and finance drives the law itself. Wait, so the thing that came to my head. Like sometimes judges, like Supreme Court judges aren't just totally neutral and they can take bribes from billionaires? I know. It's crazy stuff, right? I mean, you have everything from looking at the psychology of judges, where their parents came from, how their upbringing was, whether they've had enough glucose before lunch, everything from that theory to the way that the Federalist Society has been planting judges as part of a right wing takeover of the judiciary. But most importantly, I think it's this idea that there is no neutral law. And as it's always contestable, there's always power in politics underneath it, even if it's not reducible to pure politics, or at least law as a mode of political action is different from other modes of political action. I think, Rohan, something you bring that is unique about your perspective is the way you look at money. And a lot of people get their definition of money wrong. We want to play a short video for our viewers and listeners of just a summary of that, maybe silly or mainstream definition of money. Let's watch that. Well, the truth is that money has always been sort of imaginary from people agreeing to agree that two lumps of silver are definitely worth a goat or some scribbling that totally means you're rich to today's crypto stacks. Can you just briefly tell us how your definition of money is a little bit different than something like this?
Yeah. So I found myself as a contracts professor nowadays. I don't know how I did that. My five year old self would be pretty shocked, I think. But whenever I hear these early stories of money that are grounded in this idea of barter, you know, what are we actually talking about? We're talking about two people agreeing to agree, whatever the hell that means, right? You can imagine two people standing on two Robinson Crusoe Islands, like those kind of cartoons separated by a bit of water. And they're going, how about I throw something over? And the other one is saying how about I throw something over? But eventually they agree and they throw things over and voila, you have an economy. Whereas of course, in reality, the way that people actually are born and grow is into families, right? They're small and there are bigger people around them and eventually they maybe hand over the power or maybe they don't. And Oedipus comes into the mix or whatever else. You have entire communities, whether that's tribes or kinship based networks or eventually large societies where the relationship between people can't be reduced to who you know, Right? If you're in a small village, you know everybody, you know all their business. You don't even need to worry about last names. Whereas if you're in a large, even a temple society 5000 years ago in a ziggurat in Ur or something, you might not know 50,000 people personally. So you need to build institutions, systems that can govern relationships between strangers. And so at that point, you are going beyond the kind of in-person or socially embedded relationships to something more institutionalized. And so when I think about the law, I am thinking about institutions, whether that's courts or legislatures or executive branch or warlords or armies and generals or whatever else, everything down to a family or the university or a corporation. Right? All of these are institutions that are legally constructed. And it doesn't mean that you can get everything from looking at the legal dimension right? There's culture, there's, you know, religion, there's all these other kinds of things that intersect. But when we are thinking about sort of predictable rules, we are thinking about systems that not only exert power, but try to legitimize that power with regards to notions of fairness, notions of consistency. Right. If somebody says...I had a friend when I was growing up whose parent would always say, “why can’t I do X?” He said, “Because I'm in charge. And I mean, that's why.” That's not really law in the sense of trying to build, rules and institutions. It's just sort of naked, despotic power. But nowadays, of course, we have a whole range of institutions and systems where no one person can manipulate every lever. No one person can move every piece of it, no matter how powerful you are. And so whether we like it or not, we do live in a legally constructed system. And that system isn't built around consensual agreements. In fact, even contracts themselves. When you come to an agreement and something goes wrong, what happens? You sue, you go to court and some third party then interprets what you thought you agreed to. Or maybe you didn't even agree to it. And the court says you should have agreed to it, or maybe you don't go to a court, but you end up coming to some agreement between the two of you, a settlement that is based on what it would be like if you did go to court. So even when you think you're being kind of consensual, you're doing so against the backdrop of a system of institutionalized laws and legal enforced. And so that's what I think of when I think of laws is not sort of two people horizontally coming together. I think of social systems and the institutions and rules that govern those systems and the ways that they are talked about and legitimized and so everything from a table manners, customs like that, very soft customs through to very hard laws. And in the middle you might have something like speeding laws where not everybody is doing it because there's a cop there. You're doing it because you believe in it, or tax payments where people mostly voluntarily comply. So there's a bit of a kind of Gramscian hegemony element there. Not every law has a guy with a gun behind you. Sometimes people just do it because of the way that we've been trained and incorporated. But it's about hierarchy, it's about power, it's about history, it's about where those laws came from and the institutions that are evolving and being contested. And most of that stuff is not resolvable or reducible to barter or to voluntary consensual relations. That's the kind of stuff you say when you're in power and trying to hide the power that you get to exert.
Yeah. So when we take that perspective and we apply it to the economy and to money, one of the big takeaways from our last conversation with Stephanie Kelton was that governments don't operate like households and in terms of their budget that they actually spend before they tax back, right. How does that get applied to the history and kind of origins of money as a legal and debt relation?
Yeah, I mean, there are different communities, there are different societies that have created different kinds of money. And of course, the major ones nowadays that matter to us. The reason we usually have the word modern in front of modern money are the ones that are based around large, hierarchical, non face to face societies. We're not talking about 200 person tribes or, you know, voluntary utopian communities or kibbutzim. We're talking about empires, we're talking about civilizations, we're talking about Rome and Greece and China and the nation states and all those kinds of things. And what we see is that, generally speaking, some sort of authority, whether it's a warlord, it can be an electorate, it can be a Demos like Athens. Maybe they have slaves, maybe it's only white men, maybe it's only men over 40. And for some reason, it seems to be mostly only men if it's going to be restricted. Certainly it's usually people who are only from one area, not, immigrants or foreigners. They get to impose the tax on another group of people. Often it's conquered people. Often it's the larger, poorer community. And in doing so, that community now needs to earn dollars, earn the currency, whatever it is they might not have needed to earn it beforehand. They might have been able to live in subsistence living. They might have been able to live off the land, the commons might have been available or open. And so in for example, in England, Marx talks about the enclosure of the commons, people who are forced off the land and forced into the cities where they have to sell their labor power to survive. Right. All of those are examples where you go from not needing money to needing money. All right. Whether it's an explicit tax or it's a tariff or it's a customs duty or for me as a lawyer, the stuff that I'm increasingly most interested in is the stuff that's a little more subtle. And when you've got a gun and you say you have to pay me $100, it's pretty obvious how much you owe. But in a world like today, you live in a fog of legal liability risk. Every time you walk down the street, there's a chance you might accidentally knock into somebody and trip them over. And the next thing you know, there's a lawsuit. You might be driving down the road and miss a red light, and the next thing you know, you're getting sued, right?
You might think you bought something at a store and you might use the wrong note. The next thing you know, you're being arrested and you have to pay legal fees to get out on bail. Right. The amount of money that we need on a daily basis is always above zero, even when we have nothing to buy, even when we have no taxes to pay. Because there's always a risk that something that we can't predict is going to happen and make us pay money. I've just been dealing the last two days with a sewer pipe breaking in our backyard. I could say, Well, I pay my tax bill. I'm good for the year. Well, no. Funnily enough, the plumber wasn't willing to take music lessons in payment or legal advice about the history of money as payment for my plumbing. Right. So I need money not only to buy stuff, but also to deal with the risk of an uncertain world where everybody interacts with a system where if something goes wrong, you sue for money, right?
When you do legal analysis in your first year at law school, whether it's contract law, property law, tort law, the damages that you pay are denominated in money. So these are laws about money. And if you have non-zero legal risk, you have a non-zero demand for money. And the minute you need money, then you need to have it issued by somebody. So it's the need to acquire it that comes first. And from there you have the person that issues it. It's sort of like someone saying, Hey, would you would you like this special item? And you say, No, I don't need it. And then you have to go to the next level of the game. And in order to pass the special doorway, you need that item or something. You go: Oh, no, I should have gone and got that item. Alright. Whether you thought, you need money or not. You're going to come across a point in your life where you need it, and that's when the demand is going to come in.
15:33
B:
Now, a lot of people that we all encounter on the great app of Twitter will fight with us and say, Oh, well, this perspective fails to consider that if we add more money to the economy, it's going to throw off balance the gold we have backing our dollars in Fort Knox. Many people still think we have a gold standard in the United States. And we have to remind people, you know, the Gold Reserve Act of 1934 and then in the 70’s, when foreign countries couldn't exchange dollars for gold. This general history, I think, is important to cover and the impact on fiscal capacity when we move from a gold standard to a fiat currency. And I want to show to frame this a tweet from Joe Weisenthal about gold standards coming to an end. He said, “I've said it before, but one fact that never ceases to astound me is that 100% of all currency regimes that have survived has been fiat currencies, and 100% of all gold based currencies have come to an end.” Can you walk us through a little bit of the history of the gold standard, the impact on our fiscal capacity, and why maybe you think the only surviving regimes are those with fiat currencies?
Joe Weisenthal
@TheStalwart
Y51666195 40
DVEN
$1
6:25 AM - May 3, 2023 543.1K Views
OLLARS 101
Y95666195 40
I've said it before, but one fact that never ceases to astound me is that
100% of all currency regimes that have survived have been fiat
currencies. And 100% of all gold-based currencies have come to an end.
103 Retweets 65 Quotes 1,110 Likes 47 Bookmarks
He said, "I've said it before, but one fact
that never ceases to astound me
Joe Weisenthal @TheStalwart Y51666195 40 DVEN $1 2023年5月3日午前6時25分 543.1K Views OLLARS 101 Y95666195 40 以前も言ったが、私を驚かせて止まない事実は、生き残ったすべての通貨体制の100％が不換紙幣だったということだ。そして、金ベースの通貨の100％が終焉を迎えている。103 Retweets 65 Quotes 1,110 Likes 47 Bookmarks
彼は、「前にも言ったが、私を驚かせてやまない事実が一つある」と言った。
R:
Yeah, Joe is a top level troll. I love it. I mean, so for a lot of history, there have been different kinds of money. You've got money that functions as essentially credit, right? So you and I create an IOU or you accept my IOU. And if other people accept that, that will circulate and have some degree of moneyness, it's sort of like a property. You can have more or less of it, right? So we can have more or less shine something more on the sweetness, if your cooking, right? Moneyness is not a binary, it's a spectrum like most things in 2023. So we have this world where you can give money to different instruments. And within a community, credit instruments are often quite good as money because even if you don't know that person, that person is not kind of going anywhere. They're part of the same community. And you have rules that standardize your credit, that they take your personal debt and turn it into a kind of homogenized product. It's sort of like the way that you would have all sorts of shipping containers. And now we just have one called the box. And it's the way that every kind of shipping company works. So nowadays, you know, you don't have 25 different kinds of personal credit. You just have the credit card, the mortgage, the personal IOU, promissory note. But you also have sort of what you consider to be money that is designed to operate across jurisdictions, across regions, places where you are talking to people that might not agree with you about your laws. And in a world like today, what is the money that works across most international borders? It's the US dollar. Why is that the case? Because we live in a unipolar world where the United States is the imperial hegemon. I come from Australia, all right? You try to do things that are too out there in Australia. You get a phone call from the United States saying, stop doing that. And we stop doing that because we're also English speaking white European country that likes to keep on good terms with America, but other countries that don't listen too well, maybe find their leaders replaced or killed or assassinated or whatever else. And of course there are 200 military bases around the world and nuclear weapons and, you know, aircraft carriers, etc.. That's before you get to most of the major post-World War two institutions run by the United States, whether it's the WTO or the Security Council or whatever else. So the United States serves the role of being the kind of international glue today. But in a world where there isn't a single imperial hegemon or a network of a gang of elites, not just one country, but a group like Europe, England, Japan, Canada, Australia, that all kind of align enough on interest, whether it's NATO plus a few others or something else. Then you need something else. You need some other way of countries basically agreeing with each other that their money can exchange. And the way that gold works as well as silver was that it had value that individual countries or public legal authorities, whether it was a monarch or a republic or democracy or whatever else would give to it, and that would be the number on the coin. And then we have the metal value. And so what you had was a sort of two tier system where you were trading the value on the face of the coin. But if something went wrong, if something went wrong with the government, if the government collapsed, if the monarch lost their head, if they went to rogue with their policies, if it turns out they were a little too Catholic for a Protestant country or whatever else, then you could simply melt down the coins and either recast them to another public legal authority. And then you have a kind of transition of the infrastructure. It's almost like going into the government and taking off the Republican of the wall and putting a Democrat on the wall in the building. Or you could simply send that gold to another country. So the gold served as a kind of real collateral underlying the coins themselves. Now, as I said, coins are only one kind of money. A lot of it was based around credit in the United States. For example, before 1788, a number of colonies use paper money. Massachusetts and others used paper money that were based on their own IOUs, a lot of them based around land. So they would create a kind of almost like a mortgage or a claim on land, and they would issue notes backed by the land. When the United States was formed, they switched kind of formally to a gold standard across the country. But almost immediately, this was under challenge, right? Individual states who kind of didn't really want to hand over the money power to the federal government. But Article one, Section Ten of the Constitution said “no state can accept can create their own money in payment of taxes except gold and silver coins issued by the United States” immediately started chartering banks, issued banknotes, and those bank notes in theory, had a relationship to gold for a while. But by the time you get to Lincoln in the Civil War, there is a whole political party called the Greenback Party that is fighting for pure paper money. These are people whose grandparents remember what it was like to use paper money. And also they know that gold was historically undersupplied. Silver was undersupplied in America. There wasn't enough of it. It was being shipped back to London for the Europeans to play their games internationally, within the Americas. What they needed was credit to keep the country alive. And so the Greenback Party said, We can do it. We don't need a precious metals. By the time you get to the populists in the late 19th century, they're talking about not only paper money but also a bi-metal standard. So they saying we don't need just gold. Let’s flood it with silver as well. We can do the same thing with silver as we do with gold. And then we essentially have twice as much available. So what we had was a systematic under provisioning of money relative to what the economy needed. By the time we get to FDR, who of course had the confidence to do what needed to be done, he just says we're off the gold standard. And so we have a second round of Supreme Court cases. The first round was in the Lincoln era called the Legal Tender Cases. And by the time you get to FDR, we have the Gold Clause Cases. And in both situations, the Supreme Court says it doesn't really matter how we started back in 1788, the power to shape money and reshape money is a core governmental power. If we want to say it's got gold in it, fine. It's going to say it doesn't have gold in it. Fine. If we want to say it's purely paper, it's purely nominal. Fine. And by the time we get to the 1970s, the international regime has completely shifted to the United States. Right after World War Two with Bretton Woods. The idea was every country goes to the United States. The United States goes to gold. That was the kind of vision. But of course, once everybody was dependent on the United States as its central point of settlement, central connection, you don't really need the gold anymore. That was always just a kind of gimmick for everybody to get on board with the United States centric regime. So the gold standard is something that people who like what they call “hard money” they like money that is issued less. It benefits creditors because creditors have the money already. So people need to go into debt. They like the gold standard, people who don't trust government. They don't believe in collective government. They like the gold standard because they think, incorrectly, that it imposes a restraint on governments when in fact what actually happens is governments just change the value of gold. But largely what the gold standard represents and nowadays we see it with Bitcoin as well, is an opposition to democratizing money just like we might want to democratize the economy in general. If we made it around gold, then it would be apolitical. Then nobody would be able to mess with me and my money. That's the general thought. And, you know, it's to me, it's the political equivalent of the Trunchbull from Matilda saying they want a school with no children. And it's a very simplistic narrative for people that are fundamentally misanthropic.
24:35
A:
That's really interesting. I mean, from a philosophical perspective. Right. One of the confusions out there in debates is that, as you were alluding to right, there is this belief that there's something about the metal itself. Right. And this is connected to this long tradition of Metallism as the explanation for money that's valuable or that can save us from what you described as these military and political regiments. Right. But from this kind of broader perspective. Right. Why should we then pursue fiat or public money if you know, so much of history has been defined by political and military aggression. Right. What where's the hope in that view of public money as something better than the banal, the finitude of gold or a metal? Yeah, If you think of gold as the thing that emerges in the absence of society, in the absence of social provisioning, It's the thing in between communities. It's the thing when you don't trust people. It's the thing when you don't have a system of accountable laws to a population. Now, most of human history, we didn't give women equal rights to men. We had huge forms of caste systems. We had, you know, imperial systems that were constantly waging war on the rest of the world. There were a lot of people that didn't want that to happen anymore right? Their entire populations where we stopped going to war with each other. Europe is trying to work out how to do that internally right now. So the question I think is, do you want to assume that we are going to have a nasty, brutish world where people cannot fundamentally trust each other? Or do we want to try to build trust? And when you go to places where there are extremely high standards of living like Scandinavians, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, what you have is trust. You have people that trust each other, you have people who can trust that the roads work, that they can go in and get health care, all those kinds of things. That is a world when people get it, they like it, right? It's like saying, hey, you know, it's kind of rough when parents abuse their kids, right? That can always happen. But do we want to build a society where the presumption is every kid's going to be abused by their parents, or do we want to try to build a society where the presumption is every kid will can have a loving home? We want those things because when we've experienced and we said that's way better than the alternative. So the history of public fiat currencies is the history of taking more and more responsibility for the economic well-being and governance of our economy, to say, Hey, we can make it different if we want to build roads, we can if we want to build health care, we can If we want to build better schools, we can. For most of human history, the vast majority of children who weren't rich could not learn to read. We made a decision to do that and we did it. That decision requires public money, and I think those are the kinds of things that a collective governance system of the economy is trying to achieve. It doesn't always achieve it. Of course not. Are there huge examples of failures? Absolutely. Does that mean it's edgy or mature or sophisticated or adult to give up on that stuff? No, it's just nihilism. It's teen boy libertarians thinking that because they never have to raise kids, that they are somehow more adult than the people who do the messy job of actually building community. That's so powerful. I mean, so for our viewers and our listeners, right, we've heard these two frames and narratives about what money is and where it comes from. On one hand, we have Metallism and this almost pre or anti-political view that it's in this thing itself that's valuable. But what Rohan's kind of described here is sometimes referred to as Chartalism or this view that it's politics and the construction of the public itself that gives value to these economic instruments, these financial instruments. And so from what I'm hearing from you, Rohan, is really that it's the challenge of politics and governance to implement justice, to re-imagine society in different ways that gives us the possibility to move beyond the limits of what states and societies have been up to now. Am I kind of getting that right? Yeah. And I think the other thing worth noting is that most of the theories or most of the groups that really, really strongly defend the gold standard also really strongly defend property rights, that is to say violent, aggressive enforcement of certain people's right to own resources and to exclude everybody else from resources. So they say, oh, how could you trust the state? And then they draw a big square around 500,000 acres and say, That's all mine, and I will have police and federal troops to protect it if you try to come and sit on it. Right. So that's the kind of world in which we are talking about it's not anti state, it's not anti governance, it's just governance for a small group of people who nobody else gets to hold accountable. But imagine you can get taxed on your land and somebody else can earn the money. Now you maybe have to give up some of those acres to somebody else. Now, maybe that person who's owned a plantation in Louisiana doesn't get to own that for the rest of time. Maybe they owned the people on the plantation. So in one respect, I think the gold standard hard money debate is a cousin, if not a subset of the property rights above all debate. Taxation is the way that we set a system of property that is not absolute, that we are accountable to the collective. If you want the right to have your plot of land, you have to be accountable to a system to make sure everybody has enough versus: Fuck you, it's mine. That’s the alternative. Yeah, it certainly rings true with that kind of misanthropic, hyper competitive view of just like “I get mine.” Build a big wall, hire some private security guards, make sure they got a lot of guns, and then wait for global warming to hurt everybody else. Right, right. Alright. Thanks, everybody, for tuning in. It's always a pleasure to talk with Rohan Grey, not only because he's brilliant, but he has a great accent. So make sure you tune in to the rest of the episodes in this three part series and we'll see you at the next episode.
エピソード 2ポイント 1 - ローハン・グレイのお金と法律
https://youtu.be/ZFBP_9HDJXA
それでは、話を始めてゲストを紹介します。私たちが触れようとしている一般的なテーマは法律と法学です。そして、最初の種類の導入エピソードで述べたように、私たちは実際に学際的なアプローチを採用し、経済とは何か、そして経済とは何かを理解するために、経済学以外の他の分野からの視点を取り入れることに努めています。さて、今日のゲストはローハン・グレイです。彼はウィリアメット大学法学部の助教授であり、そこでの彼の研究は、デジタル法定通貨を含むお金と金融の法的設計と規制だけでなく、より広範な法的問題や法的問題に焦点を当てています。政治経済学。彼はモダン マネー ネットワークの会長であり、パブリック マネー アクションのディレクターでもあります。そこでローハン氏は、議会のザ・スクワッドの複数のメンバーに法案についてアドバイスした。ラシダ・トレイブと彼女のABCとSTABLEの出演者、そして2020年の公共銀行法に関するアヤンナ・プレスリー下院議員。ジョン・スチュワートの番組「ザ・プロブレム」でファニー・マネーの最初のゲストであるステファニー・ケルトンと一緒にローハンが出演しているのを見たことがあるかもしれない。ですから、私たちはゲストの皆さんに本当に興奮しています。ローハン、ここに来てくれてありがとう。私を迎えてくれて本当にありがとう。喜んで。わかった。ローハン、あなたは法的リアリズムとして知られるアプローチをお持ちですね。ここから始めてもいいですか？法的現実主義とは何ですか、またそれが経済について考え、より深く理解するのにどのように役立つのか教えていただけますか? うん。つまり、経済学と同じように、正統派と異端派の間には、ある種の分断が続いており、主流のジャーナル、大学、言説から排除され、許可されていないさまざまな知的伝統が存在しています。従来の経済学の一部とみなされます。法律の分野でも、同様のイデオロギー上の不一致や意見の相違があった。しかし、法律は常にある種の政治的論争があり、法曹界には現在でも極右、極左、またはある程度の左派の人々がいる場所だからです。経済学と同じ覇権主義はありませんが、さまざまな考え方のさまざまな学派があり、法的現実主義者は実際にはかなり古いものです。したがって、私が法的現実主義者であると言うとき、それは実際には 19 世紀後半から 20 世紀初頭に始まった知的伝統を思い起こさせるようなものです。オリバー・ウェンデル・ホームズのような人は、原始現実主義者の一種とみなされています。しかし、実際には、今日リーガル・リアリズムとして知られるものが始まったのは、最終的にFDRのブレーン・トラストの一部となる人々やその他の人たちの間で、実際には20年代から30年代でした。そして、それは、批判的な法律研究、批判的な人種研究、批判的なジェンダー研究、そのようなもの、そしてそれらと法律との関係などの一連の運動や発展を続けてきました。しかし、当初のリアリストたちは、当時主流だった法へのアプローチである法形式主義を攻撃または払拭することに本当に関心を持っていました。法形式主義の考え方は、規則を調べ、本文の言葉を調べ、過去の訴訟と裁判官が書いた意見の種類を調べることができるというものでした。そしてそこから法則を定義し、答えを見つけることができます。ほら、次の法的な質問に対する答えは本文のどこかにあります。十分に熱心に勉強すれば、次の法的な問題に対する答えを見つけることができます。そして、その時点で現実主義者たちが本当に押し返していたのは、法はしたがってある種非政治的なものであるという考えでした。それはほとんど文法論争であり、ほとんど哲学論争です。そして彼らは、法律はもちろん政治的なものではないと言いました。法とは権力に関するものです。法律というのは誰が責任者かということです。ご存知のように、法律は裁判官の仕事であることは有名ですよね？裁判官だけでなく、政策立案者や議員なども同様です。今日では、管理者や規制当局がそれを指します。代理店を管理する人々は毎日法律を制定しています。したがって、法的リアリズムが何ではないのかを少しでも理解したい場合は、おそらくジョン・ロバーツ首席判事が最もよく説明していると思います。彼が指名を受けたとき、自分が見たとおりにボールとストライクを判定する審判になりたいだけだと言っていた。右。ノンポリで有名。右。真実が何であるかを解明しようとしているだけです。過去10年間、法廷を少しでも見てきた人なら、それが完全な冗談であることを知っているはずだと思います。しかし、リアリストの考え方は、権力と法律が切り離せないものであることを認識しています。そして、それを純粋な裸の暴力に還元することはできませんが、法廷で拳で何かをするのとペンで何かをするのとの間には違いがあります。私たちが法律を表明し議論する方法に関しては、依然として政治的論争が続いています。そして今日、私は、ご存知のように、より大きく、より人気のある運動として成長しているのは、法と政治経済 (LPE) 運動だと思います。そして、私はこう言います。リアリストからも大きな影響を受けています。そして、冒頭のクレジットポイントとして、これは非常に学際的なものでもあります。ですから、私たちの多くがロバート・ヘイルやジョン・カミンズのような人々からインスピレーションを得ている初期の現実主義者の何人かは、経済学者、あるいはおそらく最初は経済学者でさえあり、彼らは多くの経済的アイデアを法律にもたらし、多くのことを実現しました。分析の中心は、政治経済と経済の構造、そしてお金と金融が法律そのものを動かす仕組みに関するものでした。待って、それで私の頭に浮かんだこと。時々裁判官のように、最高裁判所の裁判官は完全に中立であるだけでなく、億万長者から賄賂を受け取ることができるのですか？知っている。それはクレイジーなことですよね？つまり、裁判官の心理、両親の出身地、生い立ち、裁判官の心理を調べれば、あらゆることがわかります。その理論から連邦主義協会が司法の右翼乗っ取りの一環として裁判官を配置している方法まで、昼食前に十分なブドウ糖を摂取した。しかし、最も重要なのは、中立的な法は存在しないという考えだと思います。そして、常に論争の余地があるものであるため、純粋な政治に還元できない場合でも、政治の根底には常に権力が存在し、少なくとも政治的行動の様式としての法律は他の政治的行動の様式とは異なります。ローハン、あなたの視点のユニークさは、お金に対する見方だと思います。そして多くの人がお金の定義を間違っています。私たちは視聴者とリスナーのために、お金の愚かな定義や主流の定義を要約した短いビデオを再生したいと考えています。それを見てみましょう。良い、真実は、銀の塊2つが間違いなくヤギ1匹の価値があることに同意する人々や、今日の暗号スタックに完全に金持ちを意味する落書きに同意する人々から、お金は常に一種の想像上のものでした。あなたのお金の定義がこのようなものとどのように少し違うのか、簡単に教えていただけますか？
0:02So to get things started off and introduce our guest, the general theme that we're going to be touching on is on law and legal studies.
0:10And as we mentioned in our first kind of introductory episode, we really take on an interdisciplinary approach
0:16and look to bring in perspectives from other disciplines other than economics, to understand what the economy is and what economics is.
0:24And so our guest today is Rohan Grey, and he is an assistant professor at Williamette University College of Law,
0:33where his research focuses on the legal design and regulation of money and finance, including digital fiat
0:40currency, as well as broader issues of law and political economy. He's also the president of the Modern Money
0:46Network and director of Public Money Action. So Rohan has advised multiple members of The Squad in Congress
0:55on bills, including Rep. Rashida Tlaib, her ABC and STABLE acts, as well as Representative Ayanna Pressley on
1:02her Public Banking Act of 2020. You may have seen Rohan on Jon Stewart's show
1:07The Problem alongside Funny Money's first guest, Stephanie Kelton. So we're really excited for our guests.
1:15Rohan, thank you for being here. Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure. All right.
1:20So Rohan, you have an approach known as Legal Realism.
1:26Can you kind of started off here? Can you tell us what Legal Realism is and how does that help us
1:33think about the economy and understand it better? Yeah. So just like in economics, there is a sort of ongoing divide
1:41between orthodoxy and heterodox and different intellectual traditions that have been excluded from mainstream journals, universities, discourse,
1:50not allowed to, be considered part of what is conventional economics. In law, there have been similar ideological disagreements or divides.
1:59But because the law is always sort of politically contested and it's a place where even now you have kind of very far
2:06right, very far left or to a degree left people in the legal academy. You don't have the same hegemony that you have in economics,
2:14but you do have these different schools of thought of different ideas and the Legal Realist one is actually quite old.
2:19So when I say I'm a Legal Realist, it's sort of harkening back to an intellectual tradition that really originates in the late 19th, early 20th century.
2:27People like Oliver Wendell Holmes are considered one of the kind of proto Realists, but it was really in the 20’s and 30’s
2:34with people that would eventually become part of FDR’s brain trust and others that what becomes known today as Legal Realism kicked off.
2:41And it has had a number of successive movements or children, things like Critical Legal Studies,
2:47Critical Race Studies, Critical Gender Studies, those kinds of things, and their relationship to the law.
2:53But the original Realists were really concerned with an attack or a dispelling of what was the kind of
3:00then dominant approach to law, which was Legal Formalism. And so the idea of Legal Formalism was that
3:07you can look at the rules, you can look at the words in the text, you can look at previous cases and the sort of opinions the judges write.
3:15And from that you can define the law, you can find the answers. You know, the answer to the next legal question is somewhere in the text.
3:23If you kind of study it hard enough, that kind of thing, you can come up with the answers to the next legal question.
3:30And what the Realists were really pushing back on at that point was this idea that law is therefore kind of apolitical.
3:36It's almost a grammar debate, it's almost a philosophy debate. And they were saying no law is, of course, political. Law is about power.
3:43Law is about who is in charge. You know, famously law is what judges do, right?
3:48Not just judges, but also policymakers and legislators and things like that. Nowadays, it would be administrators and regulators.
3:55People who manage agencies are making law every day. So if you want to kind of get a sense of what Legal Realism isn't,
4:03I think probably the best articulation is Chief Justice John Roberts, when he was getting nominated saying that he just wanted to be an umpire,
4:09calling the balls and strikes like he sees them. Right. Famously nonpolitical. Right. Just trying to work out what the truth is.
4:16I think anybody who's been watching the court at all over the last decade has to know that that's a complete joke.
4:22But the Realist idea is recognizing that power and law are inseparable. And while it isn't reducible to pure naked violence, there is a difference between
4:31doing something with your fist and doing something with a pen in a courtroom. There is still a political contestation
4:39going on in the way that we manifest and debate law. And nowadays, I would say, you know, the kind of larger, more popular movement
4:46that has grown is the Law and Political Economy (LPE) movement. And I would say they're also very influenced by Realists.
4:52And to your opening credit point, it's also very interdisciplinary. So some of the earliest Realists that a lot of us sort of draw inspiration
4:59from people like Robert Hale and John Cummins and things were also economists or maybe even economists in the first instance, and they brought
5:07a lot of economic ideas to law and a lot of the analysis was around political economy and the way the economy is structured
5:14and the way that money and finance drives the law itself.
5:21Wait, so the thing that came to my head. Like sometimes judges, like Supreme Court judges aren't just
5:28totally neutral and they can take bribes from billionaires? I know. It's crazy stuff, right? I mean, you have everything from looking at the psychology of judges,
5:36where their parents came from, how their upbringing was, whether they've had enough glucose before lunch, everything from that theory to the way
5:45that the Federalist Society has been planting judges as part of a right wing takeover of the judiciary.
5:51But most importantly, I think it's this idea that there is no neutral law. And as it's always contestable, there's always power in politics
5:59underneath it, even if it's not reducible to pure politics, or at least law as a mode of political action is different from other modes of political action.
6:08I think, Rohan, something you bring that is unique about your perspective is the way you look at money.
6:14And a lot of people get their definition of money wrong. We want to play a short video for our viewers and listeners
6:21of just a summary of that, maybe silly or mainstream definition of money. Let's watch that.
6:27Well, the truth is that money has always been sort of imaginary from people agreeing to agree that two lumps of silver are definitely worth a goat
6:36or some scribbling that totally means you're rich to today's crypto stacks.
6:42Can you just briefly tell us how your definition of money is a little bit different than something like this?
6:48Yeah. So I found myself as a contracts professor nowadays. I don't know how I did that. My five year old self would be pretty shocked, I think.
6:54But whenever I hear these early stories of money that are grounded in this idea of barter,
6:59you know, what are we actually talking about? We're talking about two people agreeing to agree, whatever the hell that means, right?
7:06You can imagine two people standing on two Robinson Crusoe Islands, like those kind of cartoons separated by a bit of water.
7:12And they're going, how about I throw something over? And the other one is saying how about I throw something over? But eventually they agree and they throw things over and voila, you have an economy.
7:19Whereas of course, in reality, the way that people actually are born and grow is into families, right? They're small and there are bigger people around them
7:26and eventually they maybe hand over the power or maybe they don't. And Oedipus comes into the mix or whatever else.
7:32You have entire communities, whether that's tribes or kinship based networks or eventually large societies
7:40where the relationship between people can't be reduced to who you know, Right? If you're in a small village, you know everybody, you know all their business.
7:46You don't even need to worry about last names. Whereas if you're in a large, even a temple society 5000 years ago
7:52in a ziggurat in Ur or something, you might not know 50,000 people personally. So you need to build institutions, systems
8:00that can govern relationships between strangers. And so at that point, you are going beyond the kind of in-person
8:08or socially embedded relationships to something more institutionalized.
8:13And so when I think about the law, I am thinking about institutions, whether that's courts or legislatures or executive branch
8:21or warlords or armies and generals or whatever else, everything down to a family or the university or a corporation.
8:31Right? All of these are institutions that are legally constructed. And it doesn't mean that you can get everything
8:38from looking at the legal dimension right? There's culture, there's, you know, religion, there's all these other kinds of things that intersect.
8:45But when we are thinking about sort of predictable rules, we are thinking about systems that not only exert power,
8:52but try to legitimize that power with regards to notions of fairness, notions of consistency. Right.
8:57If somebody says...I had a friend when I was growing up whose parent would always say, “why can’t I do X?”
9:04He said, “Because I'm in charge. And I mean, that's why.” That's not really law in the sense of trying to build, rules and institutions.
9:11It's just sort of naked, despotic power. But nowadays, of course, we have a whole range of institutions
9:18and systems where no one person can manipulate every lever. No one person can move every piece of it, no matter how powerful you are.
9:27And so whether we like it or not, we do live in a legally constructed system. And that system isn't built around consensual agreements.
9:35In fact, even contracts themselves. When you come to an agreement and something goes wrong, what happens?
9:41You sue, you go to court and some third party then interprets what you thought you agreed to.
9:47Or maybe you didn't even agree to it. And the court says you should have agreed to it, or maybe you don't go to a court,
9:52but you end up coming to some agreement between the two of you, a settlement that is based on what it would be like if you did go to court.
10:00So even when you think you're being kind of consensual, you're doing so against the backdrop of a system of institutionalized
10:07laws and legal enforced. And so that's what I think of when I think of laws is not sort of two people horizontally coming together.
10:14I think of social systems and the institutions and rules that govern those systems and the ways that they are talked about
10:22and legitimized and so everything from a table manners, customs like that, very soft customs through to very hard laws.
10:30And in the middle you might have something like speeding laws where not everybody is doing it because there's a cop there.
10:35You're doing it because you believe in it, or tax payments where people mostly voluntarily comply.
10:41So there's a bit of a kind of Gramscian hegemony element there. Not every law has a guy with a gun behind you.
10:47Sometimes people just do it because of the way that we've been trained and incorporated.
10:52But it's about hierarchy, it's about power, it's about history, it's about where those laws came from and the institutions that are evolving
11:00and being contested. And most of that stuff is not resolvable or reducible to barter
11:06or to voluntary consensual relations. That's the kind of stuff you say when you're in power and trying to hide
11:13the power that you get to exert. Yeah. So when we take that perspective and we apply it to the economy and to money,
11:21one of the big takeaways from our last conversation with Stephanie Kelton was that governments
11:27don't operate like households and in terms of their budget that they actually spend before they tax back, right.
11:34How does that get applied to the history and kind of origins of money as a legal and debt relation?
11:42Yeah, I mean, there are different communities, there are different societies that have created different kinds of money.
11:48And of course, the major ones nowadays that matter to us. The reason we usually have the word modern in front of modern money
11:54are the ones that are based around large, hierarchical, non face to face societies.
12:00We're not talking about 200 person tribes or, you know, voluntary utopian communities or kibbutzim.
12:06We're talking about empires, we're talking about civilizations, we're talking about Rome and Greece and China
12:13and the nation states and all those kinds of things. And what we see is that, generally speaking, some sort of authority,
12:22whether it's a warlord, it can be an electorate, it can be a Demos like Athens. Maybe they have slaves, maybe it's only white men, maybe it's only men over 40.
12:30And for some reason, it seems to be mostly only men if it's going to be restricted. Certainly it's usually people
12:36who are only from one area, not, immigrants or foreigners. They get to impose the tax on another group of people.
12:43Often it's conquered people. Often it's the larger, poorer community. And in doing so, that community now needs to earn dollars, earn the currency,
12:52whatever it is they might not have needed to earn it beforehand. They might have been able to live in subsistence living.
12:57They might have been able to live off the land, the commons might have been available or open. And so in for example, in England, Marx talks about the enclosure
13:05of the commons, people who are forced off the land and forced into the cities where they have to sell their labor power to survive.
13:11Right. All of those are examples where you go from not needing money to needing money.
13:17All right. Whether it's an explicit tax or it's a tariff or it's a customs duty or for me as a lawyer, the stuff
13:25that I'm increasingly most interested in is the stuff that's a little more subtle. And when you've got a gun and you say you have to pay me $100, it's pretty obvious how much you owe.
13:33But in a world like today, you live in a fog of legal liability risk.
13:38Every time you walk down the street, there's a chance you might accidentally knock into somebody and trip them over. And the next thing you know, there's a lawsuit.
13:44You might be driving down the road and miss a red light, and the next thing you know, you're getting sued, right? You might think you bought something at a store and you might use the wrong note.
13:51The next thing you know, you're being arrested and you have to pay legal fees to get out on bail. Right.
13:57The amount of money that we need on a daily basis is always above zero, even when we have nothing to buy, even when we have no taxes to pay.
14:06Because there's always a risk that something that we can't predict is going to happen and make us pay money.
14:11I've just been dealing the last two days with a sewer pipe breaking in our backyard. I could say, Well, I pay my tax bill.
14:18I'm good for the year. Well, no. Funnily enough, the plumber wasn't willing to take music lessons in payment
14:24or legal advice about the history of money as payment for my plumbing. Right. So I need money not only to buy stuff,
14:32but also to deal with the risk of an uncertain world where everybody interacts
14:38with a system where if something goes wrong, you sue for money, right? When you do legal analysis in your first year
14:44at law school, whether it's contract law, property law, tort law, the damages that you pay are denominated in money.
14:52So these are laws about money. And if you have non-zero legal risk, you have a non-zero demand for money.
15:01And the minute you need money, then you need to have it issued by somebody. So it's the need to acquire it that comes first.
15:08And from there you have the person that issues it. It's sort of like someone saying, Hey, would you
15:14would you like this special item? And you say, No, I don't need it. And then you have to go to the next level of the game.
15:20And in order to pass the special doorway, you need that item or something. You go: Oh, no, I should have gone and got that item.
15:25Alright. Whether you thought, you need money or not. You're going to come across a point in your life where you need it, and that's when the demand is going to come in.
エピソード 2ポイント 1 - ローハン・グレイのお金と法律
https://youtu.be/ZFBP_9HDJXA
それでは、話を始めてゲストを紹介します。私たちが触れようとしている一般的なテーマは法律と法学です。そして、最初の種類の導入エピソードで述べたように、私たちは実際に学際的なアプローチを採用し、経済とは何か、そして経済とは何かを理解するために、経済学以外の他の分野からの視点を取り入れることに努めています。さて、今日のゲストはローハン・グレイです。彼はウィリアメット大学法学部の助教授であり、そこでの彼の研究は、デジタル法定通貨を含むお金と金融の法的設計と規制だけでなく、より広範な法的問題や法的問題に焦点を当てています。政治経済学。彼はモダン マネー ネットワークの会長であり、パブリック マネー アクションのディレクターでもあります。そこでローハン氏は、議会のザ・スクワッドの複数のメンバーに法案についてアドバイスした。ラシダ・トレイブと彼女のABCとSTABLEの出演者、そして2020年の公共銀行法に関するアヤンナ・プレスリー下院議員。ジョン・スチュワートの番組「ザ・プロブレム」でファニー・マネーの最初のゲストであるステファニー・ケルトンと一緒にローハンが出演しているのを見たことがあるかもしれない。ですから、私たちはゲストの皆さんに本当に興奮しています。ローハン、ここに来てくれてありがとう。私を迎えてくれて本当にありがとう。喜んで。わかった。ローハン、あなたは法的リアリズムとして知られるアプローチをお持ちですね。ここから始めてもいいですか？法的現実主義とは何ですか、またそれが経済について考え、より深く理解するのにどのように役立つのか教えていただけますか? うん。つまり、経済学と同じように、正統派と異端派の間には、ある種の分断が続いており、主流のジャーナル、大学、言説から排除され、許可されていないさまざまな知的伝統が存在しています。従来の経済学の一部とみなされます。法律の分野でも、同様のイデオロギー上の不一致や意見の相違があった。しかし、法律は常にある種の政治的論争があり、法曹界には現在でも極右、極左、またはある程度の左派の人々がいる場所だからです。経済学と同じ覇権主義はありませんが、さまざまな考え方のさまざまな学派があり、法的現実主義者は実際にはかなり古いものです。したがって、私が法的現実主義者であると言うとき、それは実際には 19 世紀後半から 20 世紀初頭に始まった知的伝統を思い起こさせるようなものです。オリバー・ウェンデル・ホームズのような人は、原始現実主義者の一種とみなされています。しかし、実際には、今日リーガル・リアリズムとして知られるものが始まったのは、最終的にFDRのブレーン・トラストの一部となる人々やその他の人たちの間で、実際には20年代から30年代でした。そして、それは、批判的な法律研究、批判的な人種研究、批判的なジェンダー研究、そのようなもの、そしてそれらと法律との関係などの一連の運動や発展を続けてきました。しかし、当初のリアリストたちは、当時主流だった法へのアプローチである法形式主義を攻撃または払拭することに本当に関心を持っていました。法形式主義の考え方は、規則を調べ、本文の言葉を調べ、過去の訴訟と裁判官が書いた意見の種類を調べることができるというものでした。そしてそこから法則を定義し、答えを見つけることができます。ほら、次の法的な質問に対する答えは本文のどこかにあります。十分に熱心に勉強すれば、次の法的な問題に対する答えを見つけることができます。そして、その時点で現実主義者たちが本当に押し返していたのは、法はしたがってある種非政治的なものであるという考えでした。それはほとんど文法論争であり、ほとんど哲学論争です。そして彼らは、法律はもちろん政治的なものではないと言いました。法とは権力に関するものです。法律というのは誰が責任者かということです。ご存知のように、法律は裁判官の仕事であることは有名ですよね？裁判官だけでなく、政策立案者や議員なども同様です。今日では、管理者や規制当局がそれを指します。代理店を管理する人々は毎日法律を制定しています。したがって、法的リアリズムが何ではないのかを少しでも理解したい場合は、おそらくジョン・ロバーツ首席判事が最もよく説明していると思います。彼が指名を受けたとき、自分が見たとおりにボールとストライクを判定する審判になりたいだけだと言っていた。右。ノンポリで有名。右。真実が何であるかを解明しようとしているだけです。過去10年間、法廷を少しでも見てきた人なら、それが完全な冗談であることを知っているはずだと思います。しかし、リアリストの考え方は、権力と法律が切り離せないものであることを認識しています。そして、それを純粋な裸の暴力に還元することはできませんが、法廷で拳で何かをするのとペンで何かをするのとの間には違いがあります。私たちが法律を表明し議論する方法に関しては、依然として政治的論争が続いています。そして今日、私は、ご存知のように、より大きく、より人気のある運動として成長しているのは、法と政治経済 (LPE) 運動だと思います。そして、私はこう言います。リアリストからも大きな影響を受けています。そして、冒頭のクレジットポイントとして、これは非常に学際的なものでもあります。ですから、私たちの多くがロバート・ヘイルやジョン・カミンズのような人々からインスピレーションを得ている初期の現実主義者の何人かは、経済学者、あるいはおそらく最初は経済学者でさえあり、彼らは多くの経済的アイデアを法律にもたらし、多くのことを実現しました。分析の中心は、政治経済と経済の構造、そしてお金と金融が法律そのものを動かす仕組みに関するものでした。待って、それで私の頭に浮かんだこと。時々裁判官のように、最高裁判所の裁判官は完全に中立であるだけでなく、億万長者から賄賂を受け取ることができるのですか？知っている。それはクレイジーなことですよね？つまり、裁判官の心理、両親の出身地、生い立ち、裁判官の心理を調べれば、あらゆることがわかります。その理論から連邦主義協会が司法の右翼乗っ取りの一環として裁判官を配置している方法まで、昼食前に十分なブドウ糖を摂取した。しかし、最も重要なのは、中立的な法は存在しないという考えだと思います。そして、常に論争の余地があるものであるため、純粋な政治に還元できない場合でも、政治の根底には常に権力が存在し、少なくとも政治的行動の様式としての法律は他の政治的行動の様式とは異なります。ローハン、あなたの視点のユニークさは、お金に対する見方だと思います。そして多くの人がお金の定義を間違っています。私たちは視聴者とリスナーのために、お金の愚かな定義や主流の定義を要約した短いビデオを再生したいと考えています。それを見てみましょう。良い、真実は、銀の塊2つが間違いなくヤギ1匹の価値があることに同意する人々や、今日の暗号スタックに完全に金持ちを意味する落書きに同意する人々から、お金は常に一種の想像上のものでした。あなたのお金の定義がこのようなものとどのように少し違うのか、簡単に教えていただけますか？
うん。それで私は今、自分が契約書の教授になっていることに気づきました。どうやってそんなことをしたのか分かりません。5歳の私はかなりショックを受けると思います。しかし、この物々交換の考えに基づいたお金に関する初期の話を聞くたびに、私たちは実際に何を話しているのでしょう？私たちは、それが何を意味するにせよ、2 人が同意することに同意することについて話しているのですよね？漫画のような、少し水を隔てた 2 つのロビンソン クルーソー島に 2 人が立っているところを想像してみてください。そして彼らは行きます、私が何かを投げたらどうですか？そしてもう一人は、何かを投げたらどうですかと言っています。しかし、最終的には彼らも同意し、物事を放棄して、経済ができたということになります。もちろん実際には、人が実際に生まれ、成長していくのは家族ですよね？彼ら' 私たちは小さく、周りにはもっと大きな人がいて、最終的には彼らに権力を譲るか、譲らないかもしれません。そこにオイディプスも加わります。部族や親族関係に基づいたネットワーク、あるいは最終的には人々の間の関係を自分の知り合いだけに還元できない大規模な社会など、コミュニティ全体がありますよね? 小さな村にいるなら、誰もが知っており、彼らの仕事をすべて知っています。姓についても心配する必要はありません。一方、あなたがウルのジッグラトなどにある 5000 年前の大規模な寺院社会に属していても、個人的に知っている人は 50,000 人もいないかもしれません。したがって、見知らぬ者間の関係を管理できる制度、システムを構築する必要があります。そしてその時点で、あなたは、対面での関係や社会に埋め込まれた関係を超えて、より制度化されたものへと移行しようとしています。ですから、私が法律について考えるとき、それが裁判所であれ立法府であれ行政府であれ軍閥であれ軍隊であれ将軍であれその他何であれ家族、大学、企業に至るまですべての機関について考えています。右？これらはすべて合法的に設立された機関です。そして、法的な側面を見ればすべてがわかるというわけではありませんよね？文化があり、宗教があり、その他あらゆる種類のものが交差しています。しかし、私たちが一種の予測可能なルールについて考えるとき、私たちは権力を行使するだけでなく、公平性の概念や一貫性の概念に関してその権力を正当化しようとするシステムについて考えています。右。誰かがそう言うなら...私が子供の頃、親が「なぜ私はXができないのですか？」といつも言っていた友人がいました。彼は「私が責任者だから。つまり、それが理由なのです。」それは、ルールや制度を構築しようとするという意味では、実際には法律ではありません。それはまさに、裸の専制的な権力です。しかし今日、もちろん、私たちはあらゆる種類の制度やシステムを持っており、一人の人間がすべてのレバーを操作することはできません。あなたがどれほど強力であっても、誰もそれをすべて動かすことはできません。したがって、好むと好まざるにかかわらず、私たちは合法的に構築されたシステムの中で生きています。そしてそのシステムは合意に基づいて構築されているわけではありません。実際、それ自体も契約します。合意に達したときに何か問題が発生した場合、何が起こるでしょうか? あなたは訴訟を起こし、法廷に行き、そして第三者があなたが同意したと思っていた内容を解釈します。あるいは、同意さえしなかったのかもしれません。そして裁判所は、あなたはそれに同意するべきだったと言います、あるいはあなたは裁判所に行かないかもしれませんが、結局あなたは二人の間で何らかの合意に達することになります。裁判所に行く。つまり、ある種の合意に基づいて行動していると思っている場合でも、それは制度化された法律と法的強制力のシステムを背景にしていることになります。法律について考えるときに私が思い浮かべるのは、2 人の人間が水平方向に一緒になるようなものではありません。私は社会システムと、それらのシステムを管理する制度やルール、そしてそれが話題にされ正当化される方法、そしてテーブルマナー、そのような習慣、非常にソフトな習慣から非常に厳しい法律に至るまで、あらゆるものについて考えます。そしてその中間には、警官がいるからといって全員が違反をしているわけではない、スピード違反の取り締まりのようなものがあるかもしれません。あなたはそれを信じているからそれをしているのです、あるいは人々がほとんど自発的に従う税金の支払い。つまり、そこにはグラムシアン的な覇権主義の要素が少しあります。すべての法律で銃を持った男が後ろにいるわけではありません。時々、私たちが訓練され、組み込まれてきた方法のために、単にそうする人もいます。しかし、それは階層、権力、歴史、法律がどこから来たのか、そして進化し、争われている制度についてです。そしてそのほとんどは、物々交換や自発的な合意関係に解決したり還元したりすることはできません。それは、権力を握っていて、自分が行使できる権力を隠そうとしているときに言うようなことです。あるいは人々がほとんど自発的に従う納税。つまり、そこにはグラムシアン的な覇権主義の要素が少しあります。すべての法律で銃を持った男が後ろにいるわけではありません。時々、私たちが訓練され、組み込まれてきた方法のために、単にそうする人もいます。しかし、それは階層、権力、歴史、法律がどこから来たのか、そして進化し、争われている制度についてです。そしてそのほとんどは、物々交換や自発的な合意関係に解決したり還元したりすることはできません。それは、権力を握っていて、自分が行使できる権力を隠そうとしているときに言うようなことです。あるいは人々がほとんど自発的に従う納税。つまり、そこにはグラムシアン的な覇権主義の要素が少しあります。すべての法律で銃を持った男が後ろにいるわけではありません。時々、私たちが訓練され、組み込まれてきた方法のために、単にそうする人もいます。しかし、それは階層、権力、歴史、法律がどこから来たのか、そして進化し、争われている制度についてです。そしてそのほとんどは、物々交換や自発的な合意関係に解決したり還元したりすることはできません。それは、権力を握っていて、自分が行使できる権力を隠そうとしているときに言うようなことです。訓練を受け、組み込まれています。しかし、それは階層、権力、歴史、法律がどこから来たのか、そして進化し、争われている制度についてです。そしてそのほとんどは、物々交換や自発的な合意関係に解決したり還元したりすることはできません。それは、権力を握っていて、自分が行使できる権力を隠そうとしているときに言うようなことです。訓練を受け、組み込まれています。しかし、それは階層、権力、歴史、法律がどこから来たのか、そして進化し、争われている制度についてです。そしてそのほとんどは、物々交換や自発的な合意関係に解決したり還元したりすることはできません。それは、権力を握っていて、自分が行使できる権力を隠そうとしているときに言うようなことです。
うん。したがって、その視点を取り、それを経済とお金に当てはめてみると、ステファニー・ケルトンとの前回の会話から得られた大きな教訓の 1 つは、政府は家計のように運営されておらず、予算という観点から言えば、実際に支出する前に政府が支出しているということです。税金が戻ってきますね。それは、法的および債務関係としてのお金の歴史と起源の種類にどのように適用されるのでしょうか?
そうですね、つまり、さまざまなコミュニティがあり、さまざまな種類のお金を生み出してきたさまざまな社会があります。そしてもちろん、私たちにとって重要な今日の主要なものです。私たちが通常、現代のお金の前に「モダン」という言葉を使う理由は、大規模で階層型の非対面社会を基盤とした社会だからです。私たちは 200 人の部族や、ご存知のように、自主的なユートピア コミュニティやキブツのことを話しているのではありません。私たちは帝国について、文明について、ローマ、ギリシャ、中国、国民国家など、あらゆる種類のことについて話しています。そして、私たちが目にしているのは、一般的に言えば、ある種の権威、それが軍閥であろうと、選挙民であろうと、アテネのようなデモであろうと、ある種の権威であるということです。もしかしたら奴隷がいるかもしれないし、白人男性だけかもしれないし、40歳以上の男性だけかもしれない。そしてなぜか、制限されるとなると男性だけになることが多いようです。確かに、それは通常、移民や外国人ではなく、1つの地域のみから来た人々です。彼らは別のグループの人々に税金を課すことになります。多くの場合、それは征服された人々です。多くの場合、それはより大きな、より貧しいコミュニティです。そうすることで、コミュニティはドルを稼ぎ、事前に稼ぐ必要がなかった可能性のある通貨を稼ぐ必要があります。彼らは自給自足の生活をすることができたかもしれない。彼らはその土地で生活できたかもしれないし、共有地が利用可能か開放されていたかもしれない。たとえばイギリスでは、マルクスはコモンズの囲い込み、つまり土地を追われ都市に強制的に押し出された人々が生き延びるために労働力を売らなければならないことについて語っています。右。これらはすべて、お金が必要ない状態からお金が必要になる例です。わかった。それが明示的な税であれ、関税であれ、関税であれ、あるいは弁護士としての私にとって、ますます最も興味を持っているのは、もう少し微妙なものです。そして、あなたが銃を持っていて、私に100ドル支払わなければならないと言ったとき、あなたがどれだけ借りているかは明らかです。しかし、今日のような世界では、法的責任のリスクの霧の中に住んでいます。道を歩くたびに、うっかり誰かにぶつかってつまずいてしまう可能性があります。そして次に気が付くと、訴訟が起きています。道路を運転していて赤信号を見逃して、気づいたときには訴訟を起こされているかもしれませんよね？関税なのか、それとも関税なのか、あるいは弁護士としての私にとって、ますます最も興味を持っているのは、もう少し微妙な問題です。そして、あなたが銃を持っていて、私に100ドル支払わなければならないと言ったとき、あなたがどれだけ借りているかは明らかです。しかし、今日のような世界では、法的責任のリスクの霧の中に住んでいます。道を歩くたびに、うっかり誰かにぶつかってつまずいてしまう可能性があります。そして次に気が付くと、訴訟が起きています。道路を運転していて赤信号を見逃して、気づいたときには訴訟を起こされているかもしれませんよね？関税なのか、それとも関税なのか、あるいは弁護士としての私にとって、ますます最も興味を持っているのは、もう少し微妙な問題です。そして、あなたが銃を持っていて、私に100ドル支払わなければならないと言ったとき、あなたがどれだけ借りているかは明らかです。しかし、今日のような世界では、法的責任のリスクの霧の中に住んでいます。道を歩くたびに、うっかり誰かにぶつかってつまずいてしまう可能性があります。そして次に気が付くと、訴訟が起きています。道路を運転していて赤信号を見逃して、気づいたときには訴訟を起こされているかもしれませんよね？あなたがどれだけ借りているかは明らかです。しかし、今日のような世界では、法的責任のリスクの霧の中に住んでいます。道を歩くたびに、うっかり誰かにぶつかってつまずいてしまう可能性があります。そして次に気が付くと、訴訟が起きています。道路を運転していて赤信号を見逃して、気づいたときには訴訟を起こされているかもしれませんよね？あなたがどれだけ借りているかは明らかです。しかし、今日のような世界では、法的責任のリスクの霧の中に住んでいます。道を歩くたびに、うっかり誰かにぶつかってつまずいてしまう可能性があります。そして次に気が付くと、訴訟が起きています。道路を運転していて赤信号を見逃して、気づいたときには訴訟を起こされているかもしれませんよね？
お店で何かを買ったと思って間違った紙幣を使ってしまうかもしれません。次に気づくと、あなたは逮捕されており、保釈金を支払わなければなりません。右。私たちが毎日必要とするお金の量は、買うものが何もないときでも、支払う税金がないときでも、常にゼロ以上です。なぜなら、予測できないことが起こり、お金を支払わされるリスクが常にあるからです。ここ二日間、裏庭で下水管が壊れて対処していたところです。「私は税金を払っています」と言うことができます。今年も元気です。うーん、ダメ。面白いことに、その配管工は、私の配管工事の支払いとして音楽のレッスンを受けたり、お金の歴史についての法的アドバイスを受けたりする気はありませんでした。右。お金が必要なのは物を買うためだけではなく、
法科大学院の 1 年目に法的分析を行う場合、それが契約法、財産法、不法行為法であっても、支払う損害賠償金は金銭で計算されます。つまり、これらはお金に関する法律です。そして、法的リスクがゼロではない場合、金銭の需要もゼロではありません。そして、お金が必要になったら、誰かに発行してもらう必要があります。したがって、それを取得する必要性が最初に来ます。そしてそこからそれを発行する人がいます。それは誰かが「ねえ、この特別なアイテムが欲しいですか?」と言っているようなものです。そしてあなたは、「いいえ、必要ありません」と言います。そして、ゲームの次のレベルに行かなければなりません。そして特別な出入り口を通過するには、あのアイテムか何かが必要です。あなたは「ああ、いや、そのアイテムを取りに行くべきだった。」大丈夫。お金が必要かどうかは関係ありません。あなた'
15:33
B:
さて、Twitter という素晴らしいアプリで私たちが出会った多くの人たちは、私たちと一緒に争ってこう言うでしょう、ああ、この視点では、経済にさらにお金を追加すると、金のバランスが崩れるということを考慮していません。私たちはフォートノックスに資金を裏付けています。多くの人は今でも米国には金本位制があると考えています。そして、私たちは人々に、ご存知のとおり、1934 年の金準備法と、その後外国がドルを金に交換できなかった 70 年代のことを思い出さなければなりません。この一般的な歴史は、金本位制から法定通貨に移行する際の財政能力への影響をカバーすることが重要であると思います。そして、これを組み立てるために、金本位制の終焉についてのジョー・ワイゼンタールのツイートを紹介したいと思います。彼は「前にも言いましたが、しかし、私を驚かせてやまない一つの事実は、生き残ったすべての通貨制度の100％が法定通貨であり、金ベースの通貨はすべて終焉を迎えたということです。」金本位制の歴史、私たちの財政能力への影響、そしてなぜ法定通貨を使用する体制だけが生き残っていると思うのかについて、少し説明していただけますか。
R:
ええ、ジョーはトップレベルのトロールです。大好きです。つまり、長い歴史の中で、さまざまな種類のお金が存在してきました。本質的に信用として機能するお金を持っていますよね？したがって、あなたと私が借用書を作成するか、あなたが私の借用書を受け入れます。そしてそれを他の人が受け入れれば、それは循環してある程度のお金性が生まれる、ある種の財産のようなものです。多かれ少なかれそれを得ることができますよね？それで、あなたの料理なら、多かれ少なかれ、甘味にもう少し何かを加えることができますよね？お金の価値は二元的なものではなく、2023 年のほとんどの物事と同様にスペクトルです。そのため、さまざまな手段にお金を与えることができる世界が存在します。そして、コミュニティ内では、たとえその人のことを知らなくても、その人はどこにも行かないので、信用手段はお金として非常に優れていることがよくあります。彼らは同じコミュニティの一員です。そして、あなたの信用を標準化し、あなたの個人的な借金を引き受けて、それを一種の均質化された商品に変えるというルールがあります。それは、あらゆる種類の輸送用コンテナを用意するようなものです。そして今、私たちはボックスと呼ばれるものだけを持っています。そして、それがあらゆる種類の運送会社のやり方です。つまり、今日では、25 種類の個人信用を持っているわけではありません。あなたが持っているのは、クレジット カード、住宅ローン、個人借用書、約束手形だけです。しかし、あなたはまた、管轄区域を超えて、地域を超えて、あなたの法律についてあなたに同意しないかもしれない人々と話している場所を超えて運用されるように設計されたお金であると考えているもののようなものを持っています。そして、今日のような世界では、ほとんどの国境を越えて機能するお金とは何でしょうか? それは米ドルです。なぜそうなるのでしょうか? なぜなら、私たちは米国が帝国の覇権者である一極世界に住んでいるからです。私はオーストラリアから来ました、いいですか？オーストラリアではあまりにも突飛なことをやろうとしているんですね。アメリカから電話がかかってきて、「そんなことはやめなさい」と言われました。そして、私たちはそのようなことをやめます。なぜなら、私たちは英語を話すヨーロッパの白人国でもあり、アメリカと良好な関係を保ちたいと思っているからです。しかし、あまり耳を傾けない他の国々は、おそらく指導者が更迭されたり、殺害されたり、暗殺されたりするかもしれません。そしてもちろん、世界中には 200 の軍事基地があり、核兵器や空母などが存在します。それは、WTO であるかどうかにかかわらず、米国によって運営されている第二次世界大戦後の主要な機関のほとんどに到達する前の話です。あるいは安全保障理事会その他何でも。したがって、米国は今日、国際的な接着剤のような役割を果たしています。しかし、単一の帝国的覇権国やエリート集団のネットワークが存在せず、1つの国だけでなく、ヨーロッパ、イギリス、日本、カナダ、オーストラリアのようなグループが利害に関して十分に一致している世界では、それが NATO プラスその他のいくつかのものであっても、あるいは他のものであっても。そうすると、何か別のものが必要になります。基本的に各国がお互いのお金を交換できることに同意する他の方法が必要です。そして、金が銀と同様に機能する仕組みは、それが君主か共和制か民主主義かその他何であれ、個々の国や公的法的当局が金に与える価値があり、それがコインの数字となるということでした。 。そして、金属の価値があります。それで、あなたが持っていたのは、コインの表面の価値を取引する一種の2層システムでした。しかし、何か問題が起こった場合、政府に問題が発生した場合、政府が崩壊した場合、君主が正気を失った場合、政策を不正に進めた場合、プロテスタントの国にしてはカトリックすぎることが判明した場合、またはそれ以外の場合は、単純にコインを溶かして、別の公的法的機関に再鋳造することができます。そして、インフラストラクチャの一種の移行が起こります。それはまるで政府に入り込み、壁の共和党員を外して建物の壁に民主党員を置くようなものだ。あるいは、その金を単に別の国に送ることもできます。したがって、金はコイン自体の基礎となる一種の実質担保として機能しました。さて、先ほども言いましたが、コインはお金の一種にすぎません。その多くは米国の信用に基づいたものでした。たとえば、1788 年以前は、多くの植民地で紙幣が使用されていました。マサチューセッツ州などでは、独自の借用書に基づいた紙幣が使用されており、その多くは土地に基づいたものでした。そこで彼らは土地に対する抵当権や債権のようなものを作り、その土地を裏付けとした手形を発行するのです。米国が建国されると、国全体で形式的に金本位制に切り替えました。しかし、ほぼすぐに、これには異議が唱えられました。各州は連邦政府に資金力を譲渡したくありませんでした。しかし、第一条、憲法第 10 条は、「米国が発行する金貨と銀貨を除いて、いかなる国家も税金の支払いのために独自の通貨を作成することを認めることはできない」と述べ、すぐに銀行のチャーターを開始し、紙幣を発行し、理論上はそれらの紙幣は次のような関係にありました。しばらくはゴールド。しかし、南北戦争のリンカーンに到着する頃には、グリーンバック党と呼ばれる政党全体が純粋な紙幣のために戦っています。これらの人々は、祖父母が紙幣を使うことがどのようなものだったのかを覚えている人たちです。そして彼らは、歴史的に金が供給不足だったことも知っています。アメリカでは銀の供給が不足していました。十分ではありませんでした。ヨーロッパ人がアメリカ大陸内で国際的にゲームをプレイできるように、それはロンドンに返送されていました。彼らが必要としていたのは、国を存続させるための信用だった。そこでグリーンバック党はこう言いました。できますよ。貴金属は必要ありません。19 世紀後半のポピュリストに到達するまでに、彼らは紙幣だけでなくバイメタル規格についても話しています。だから彼らは、金だけは必要ないと言っているのです。これも銀で埋め尽くしましょう。ゴールドと同じことがシルバーでもできます。そして、実質的には 2 倍の量が利用可能になります。したがって、私たちが持っていたのは、経済が必要とするものに比べて体系的に不足した資金供給でした。私たちがFDRに到着するまでに、彼はもちろんやるべきことをやる自信を持っていましたが、彼は私たちが黄金基準から外れていると言うだけです。そして、最高裁判所での第二ラウンドの訴訟が行われます。最初のラウンドはリンカーン時代に法定入札事件と呼ばれたものでした。そして、あなたが FDR に到着する頃には、ゴールド条項訴訟が待っています。そしてどちらの状況でも、最高裁判所は、1788年に私たちがどのようにスタートしたかは実際には問題ではなく、お金を形成し、お金を再形成する権限は中核的な政府権力であると述べています。金が入っていると言いたければ、それでいいでしょう。金は入っていないと言われます。大丈夫。純粋に紙だと言いたいのであれば、それは純粋に名目上のものです。大丈夫。そして1970年代に至るまでに、国際体制は完全に米国に移行しました。ブレトンウッズ率いる第二次世界大戦直後。すべての国が米国に行くという考えだった。米国は金メダルを目指す。そういうビジョンでした。しかし、もちろん、誰もが入植地、中心的なつながりとして米国に依存するようになると、もう金は必要なくなります。それは常に、誰もが米国中心の政権に参加するための一種の仕掛けにすぎませんでした。つまり、金本位制とは、いわゆる「ハードマネー」を好む人々が、発行量の少ないお金を好むものなのです。債権者はすでにお金を持っているので、債権者に利益をもたらします。したがって、人々は借金をする必要があります。彼らは金本位制を好み、政府を信用しない人々です。彼らは集団政府を信じていません。彼らが金本位制を好むのは、実際には政府が金の価値を変えるだけなのに、金本位制が政府に制約を課すものだと誤って考えているからです。しかし、主に金本位制が象徴するもの、そして今日ではビットコインにもそれが見られるのは、私たちが経済一般の民主化を望むのと同じように、お金の民主化に対する反対です。ゴールドを中心に作ったら、そうすればそれは非政治的になるでしょう。そうすれば、誰も私と私のお金に干渉できなくなります。それが一般的な考えです。そして、ご存知のとおり、これは私にとって、マチルダのトランチブルが子供のいない学校が欲しいと言っているのと政治的に同等です。そして、それは根本的に人間嫌いな人々にとって非常に単純化された物語です。
24:35
答え:
それは本当に興味深いですね。つまり、哲学的な観点からです。右。議論における混乱の 1 つは、あなたが右でほのめかしたように、金属自体に何かがあるという考えがあることです。右。そしてこれは、貴重なお金、あるいはあなたが言うところの軍事的および政治的連隊から私たちを救うことができるお金の説明としてのメタリズムのこの長い伝統に関連しています。右。しかし、このような広い視点から見ると。右。ご存知のとおり、歴史の多くは政治的および軍事的侵略によって規定されてきたのに、なぜ法定通貨や公的資金を追求する必要があるのでしょうか。右。公的資金をありきたりの金や金属よりも優れたものとする見方のどこに希望があるのでしょうか？そう、金を社会のないところに生まれるものだと考えると、社会的供給がない場合、それはコミュニティの間にあるものです。人を信じられなくなったときのことです。それは、国民に対して責任を負う法律体系がない場合に起こることです。さて、人類の歴史のほとんどにおいて、私たちは女性に男性と同等の権利を与えませんでした。私たちは巨大な形態のカースト制度を持っていました。ご存知のように、私たちは世界の他の国々に対して絶えず戦争を仕掛ける帝国主義システムを持っていました。もうそうなってほしくないと思った人もたくさんいたんじゃないでしょうか？彼らの全住民は、私たちがお互いに戦争をするのをやめました。欧州は現在、それを内部で実現する方法を模索している。それで私が思う質問は、私たちがひどいことになると仮定したいですか、ということです。人々が根本的にお互いを信頼することができない残酷な世界ですか？それとも信頼関係を築きたいのでしょうか？スカンジナビア人、オーストラリア、ニュージーランド、カナダのような非常に生活水準の高い場所に行くと、得られるものは信頼です。お互いを信頼している人がいて、道路が機能していること、入って医療を受けられること、その他すべてのことを信頼できる人がいます。それは人々がそれを理解すれば、彼らはそれを気に入る世界ですよね？それは、「親が子供を虐待するのは、ちょっと大変なことですよね？」と言っているようなものです。それは常に起こり得ることです。しかし、私たちはすべての子供が親から虐待を受けるという前提がある社会を築きたいのでしょうか、それともすべての子供が愛情に満ちた家庭を持つことができるという前提のある社会を構築したいのでしょうか? 私たちはそれらのものを望んでいます。私たちは経験しており、それが他の方法よりもはるかに優れていると言いました。つまり、公的法定通貨の歴史は、経済の健全性と経済のガバナンスに対してますます責任を負う歴史であり、「道路を建設したければ、道路を建設することができます、私たちが望むなら、それを変えることができます」と言うのです。医療を構築したいなら、それは可能です。より良い学校を構築したいなら、それは可能です。人類の歴史のほとんどにおいて、裕福ではない子供たちの大多数は文字を読むことを学ぶことができませんでした。私たちはそうすることを決定し、それを実行しました。その決定には公的資金が必要であり、経済の集団統治システムが達成しようとしているのはそういうことだと思います。必ずしも達成できるわけではありません。もちろん違います。大きな失敗例はありますか? 絶対。そういう意味ですか』エッジが効いているのか、大人っぽいのか、洗練されているのか、それとも大人がそんなものを諦める必要があるのか？いや、ただのニヒリズムだ。10代の少年リバタリアンたちは、自分たちは子供を育てる必要がないので、実際にコミュニティを構築するという面倒な仕事をしている人々よりもどういうわけか大人であると考えています。それはとても強力です。つまり、視聴者とリスナーにとって、お金とは何か、お金がどこから来るのかについて、これら 2 つのフレームと物語を聞いてきました。一方では、メタリズムと、このもの自体に価値があるという、ほとんど政治以前の、または反政治的な見解があります。しかし、ローハンがここで述べているようなものは、チャータリズム、あるいはこれらの経済手段や金融手段に価値を与えるのは政治や公共そのものの構築であるという見解と呼ばれることもあります。そして、私からすると、ローハン、あなたの話を聞いていると、正義を実行し、さまざまな方法で社会を再考することが、これまでの国家や社会の限界を超える可能性を私たちに与えるのは、政治と統治の課題であるということです。私はそれを正しく理解していますか？うん。そして、もう一つ注目に値することは、金本位制を本当に強力に擁護するほとんどの理論やグループのほとんどが、財産権、つまり特定の人々の資源を所有する権利の暴力的で攻撃的な強制も非常に強力に擁護しているということだと思います。そして他の全員をリソースから除外します。それで彼らは言う、ああ、どうして国家を信頼できるのか？そして彼らは、50万エーカーの周りに大きな四角形を描いて、「それはすべて私のものです、もしあなたがそこに来て座ろうとするなら、私は警察と連邦軍に守ってもらいます」と言います。右。つまり、それは反国家ではない、反統治ではない、それは他の誰も責任を負わない少数の人々のための単なる統治である、それが私たちが話しているような世界なのです。しかし、あなたが自分の土地に課税され、他の誰かがそのお金を稼ぐことができると想像してください。今、あなたはそれらのエーカーの一部を他の人に譲らなければならないかもしれません。さて、おそらくルイジアナ州にプランテーションを所有していた人は、残りの期間そのプランテーションを所有することはできないでしょう。おそらく彼らはプランテーションの人々を所有していたのでしょう。したがって、ある意味では、金本位制のハードマネーの議論は、すべての議論の一部ではないにしても、財産権の従兄弟だと思います。課税は、私たちが集団に対して責任を負う、絶対的ではない財産のシステムを設定する方法です。自分の土地を所有する権利が欲しいなら、システムに対して責任を持って、全員が十分な量を確保できるようにする必要があります。「くそー、それは私のものだ。」それが代替手段です。そうですね、「私は私のものを手に入れる」というような、人間嫌いで過度に競争的な見方には確かに真実味があります。大きな壁を築き、民間の警備員を雇い、大量の銃を用意してから、地球温暖化が他の人々に被害を与えるのを待ちます。そうそう。大丈夫。皆さん、ご視聴いただきありがとうございます。ローハン グレイと話すのはいつも楽しいです。彼は優秀なだけでなく、素晴らしいアクセントを持っているからです。この 3 部構成のシリーズの残りのエピソードもぜひ視聴してください。次のエピソードでお会いしましょう。「私は私のものを手に入れる」というような非常に競争的な見方。大きな壁を築き、民間の警備員を雇い、大量の銃を用意してから、地球温暖化が他の人々に被害を与えるのを待ちます。そうそう。大丈夫。皆さん、ご視聴いただきありがとうございます。ローハン グレイと話すのはいつも楽しいです。彼は優秀なだけでなく、素晴らしいアクセントを持っているからです。この 3 部構成のシリーズの残りのエピソードもぜひ視聴してください。次のエピソードでお会いしましょう。「私は私のものを手に入れる」というような非常に競争的な見方。大きな壁を築き、民間の警備員を雇い、大量の銃を用意してから、地球温暖化が他の人々に被害を与えるのを待ちます。そうそう。大丈夫。皆さん、ご視聴いただきありがとうございます。ローハン グレイと話すのはいつも楽しいです。彼は優秀なだけでなく、素晴らしいアクセントを持っているからです。この 3 部構成のシリーズの残りのエピソードもぜひ視聴してください。次のエピソードでお会いしましょう。
0:02So to get things started off and introduce our guest, the general theme that we're going to be touching on is on law and legal studies.
0:10And as we mentioned in our first kind of introductory episode, we really take on an interdisciplinary approach
0:16and look to bring in perspectives from other disciplines other than economics, to understand what the economy is and what economics is.
0:24And so our guest today is Rohan Grey, and he is an assistant professor at Williamette University College of Law,
0:33where his research focuses on the legal design and regulation of money and finance, including digital fiat
0:40currency, as well as broader issues of law and political economy. He's also the president of the Modern Money
0:46Network and director of Public Money Action. So Rohan has advised multiple members of The Squad in Congress
0:55on bills, including Rep. Rashida Tlaib, her ABC and STABLE acts, as well as Representative Ayanna Pressley on
1:02her Public Banking Act of 2020. You may have seen Rohan on Jon Stewart's show
1:07The Problem alongside Funny Money's first guest, Stephanie Kelton. So we're really excited for our guests.
1:15Rohan, thank you for being here. Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure. All right.
1:20So Rohan, you have an approach known as Legal Realism.
1:26Can you kind of started off here? Can you tell us what Legal Realism is and how does that help us
1:33think about the economy and understand it better? Yeah. So just like in economics, there is a sort of ongoing divide
1:41between orthodoxy and heterodox and different intellectual traditions that have been excluded from mainstream journals, universities, discourse,
1:50not allowed to, be considered part of what is conventional economics. In law, there have been similar ideological disagreements or divides.
1:59But because the law is always sort of politically contested and it's a place where even now you have kind of very far
2:06right, very far left or to a degree left people in the legal academy. You don't have the same hegemony that you have in economics,
2:14but you do have these different schools of thought of different ideas and the Legal Realist one is actually quite old.
2:19So when I say I'm a Legal Realist, it's sort of harkening back to an intellectual tradition that really originates in the late 19th, early 20th century.
2:27People like Oliver Wendell Holmes are considered one of the kind of proto Realists, but it was really in the 20’s and 30’s
2:34with people that would eventually become part of FDR’s brain trust and others that what becomes known today as Legal Realism kicked off.
2:41And it has had a number of successive movements or children, things like Critical Legal Studies,
2:47Critical Race Studies, Critical Gender Studies, those kinds of things, and their relationship to the law.
2:53But the original Realists were really concerned with an attack or a dispelling of what was the kind of
3:00then dominant approach to law, which was Legal Formalism. And so the idea of Legal Formalism was that
3:07you can look at the rules, you can look at the words in the text, you can look at previous cases and the sort of opinions the judges write.
3:15And from that you can define the law, you can find the answers. You know, the answer to the next legal question is somewhere in the text.
3:23If you kind of study it hard enough, that kind of thing, you can come up with the answers to the next legal question.
3:30And what the Realists were really pushing back on at that point was this idea that law is therefore kind of apolitical.
3:36It's almost a grammar debate, it's almost a philosophy debate. And they were saying no law is, of course, political. Law is about power.
3:43Law is about who is in charge. You know, famously law is what judges do, right?
3:48Not just judges, but also policymakers and legislators and things like that. Nowadays, it would be administrators and regulators.
3:55People who manage agencies are making law every day. So if you want to kind of get a sense of what Legal Realism isn't,
4:03I think probably the best articulation is Chief Justice John Roberts, when he was getting nominated saying that he just wanted to be an umpire,
4:09calling the balls and strikes like he sees them. Right. Famously nonpolitical. Right. Just trying to work out what the truth is.
4:16I think anybody who's been watching the court at all over the last decade has to know that that's a complete joke.
4:22But the Realist idea is recognizing that power and law are inseparable. And while it isn't reducible to pure naked violence, there is a difference between
4:31doing something with your fist and doing something with a pen in a courtroom. There is still a political contestation
4:39going on in the way that we manifest and debate law. And nowadays, I would say, you know, the kind of larger, more popular movement
4:46that has grown is the Law and Political Economy (LPE) movement. And I would say they're also very influenced by Realists.
4:52And to your opening credit point, it's also very interdisciplinary. So some of the earliest Realists that a lot of us sort of draw inspiration
4:59from people like Robert Hale and John Cummins and things were also economists or maybe even economists in the first instance, and they brought
5:07a lot of economic ideas to law and a lot of the analysis was around political economy and the way the economy is structured
5:14and the way that money and finance drives the law itself.
5:21Wait, so the thing that came to my head. Like sometimes judges, like Supreme Court judges aren't just
5:28totally neutral and they can take bribes from billionaires? I know. It's crazy stuff, right? I mean, you have everything from looking at the psychology of judges,
5:36where their parents came from, how their upbringing was, whether they've had enough glucose before lunch, everything from that theory to the way
5:45that the Federalist Society has been planting judges as part of a right wing takeover of the judiciary.
5:51But most importantly, I think it's this idea that there is no neutral law. And as it's always contestable, there's always power in politics
5:59underneath it, even if it's not reducible to pure politics, or at least law as a mode of political action is different from other modes of political action.
6:08I think, Rohan, something you bring that is unique about your perspective is the way you look at money.
6:14And a lot of people get their definition of money wrong. We want to play a short video for our viewers and listeners
6:21of just a summary of that, maybe silly or mainstream definition of money. Let's watch that.
6:27Well, the truth is that money has always been sort of imaginary from people agreeing to agree that two lumps of silver are definitely worth a goat
6:36or some scribbling that totally means you're rich to today's crypto stacks.
6:42Can you just briefly tell us how your definition of money is a little bit different than something like this?
6:48Yeah. So I found myself as a contracts professor nowadays. I don't know how I did that. My five year old self would be pretty shocked, I think.
6:54But whenever I hear these early stories of money that are grounded in this idea of barter,
6:59you know, what are we actually talking about? We're talking about two people agreeing to agree, whatever the hell that means, right?
7:06You can imagine two people standing on two Robinson Crusoe Islands, like those kind of cartoons separated by a bit of water.
7:12And they're going, how about I throw something over? And the other one is saying how about I throw something over? But eventually they agree and they throw things over and voila, you have an economy.
7:19Whereas of course, in reality, the way that people actually are born and grow is into families, right? They're small and there are bigger people around them
7:26and eventually they maybe hand over the power or maybe they don't. And Oedipus comes into the mix or whatever else.
7:32You have entire communities, whether that's tribes or kinship based networks or eventually large societies
7:40where the relationship between people can't be reduced to who you know, Right? If you're in a small village, you know everybody, you know all their business.
7:46You don't even need to worry about last names. Whereas if you're in a large, even a temple society 5000 years ago
7:52in a ziggurat in Ur or something, you might not know 50,000 people personally. So you need to build institutions, systems
8:00that can govern relationships between strangers. And so at that point, you are going beyond the kind of in-person
8:08or socially embedded relationships to something more institutionalized.
8:13And so when I think about the law, I am thinking about institutions, whether that's courts or legislatures or executive branch
8:21or warlords or armies and generals or whatever else, everything down to a family or the university or a corporation.
8:31Right? All of these are institutions that are legally constructed. And it doesn't mean that you can get everything
8:38from looking at the legal dimension right? There's culture, there's, you know, religion, there's all these other kinds of things that intersect.
8:45But when we are thinking about sort of predictable rules, we are thinking about systems that not only exert power,
8:52but try to legitimize that power with regards to notions of fairness, notions of consistency. Right.
8:57If somebody says...I had a friend when I was growing up whose parent would always say, “why can’t I do X?”
9:04He said, “Because I'm in charge. And I mean, that's why.” That's not really law in the sense of trying to build, rules and institutions.
9:11It's just sort of naked, despotic power. But nowadays, of course, we have a whole range of institutions
9:18and systems where no one person can manipulate every lever. No one person can move every piece of it, no matter how powerful you are.
9:27And so whether we like it or not, we do live in a legally constructed system. And that system isn't built around consensual agreements.
9:35In fact, even contracts themselves. When you come to an agreement and something goes wrong, what happens?
9:41You sue, you go to court and some third party then interprets what you thought you agreed to.
9:47Or maybe you didn't even agree to it. And the court says you should have agreed to it, or maybe you don't go to a court,
9:52but you end up coming to some agreement between the two of you, a settlement that is based on what it would be like if you did go to court.
10:00So even when you think you're being kind of consensual, you're doing so against the backdrop of a system of institutionalized
10:07laws and legal enforced. And so that's what I think of when I think of laws is not sort of two people horizontally coming together.
10:14I think of social systems and the institutions and rules that govern those systems and the ways that they are talked about
10:22and legitimized and so everything from a table manners, customs like that, very soft customs through to very hard laws.
10:30And in the middle you might have something like speeding laws where not everybody is doing it because there's a cop there.
10:35You're doing it because you believe in it, or tax payments where people mostly voluntarily comply.
10:41So there's a bit of a kind of Gramscian hegemony element there. Not every law has a guy with a gun behind you.
10:47Sometimes people just do it because of the way that we've been trained and incorporated.
10:52But it's about hierarchy, it's about power, it's about history, it's about where those laws came from and the institutions that are evolving
11:00and being contested. And most of that stuff is not resolvable or reducible to barter
11:06or to voluntary consensual relations. That's the kind of stuff you say when you're in power and trying to hide
11:13the power that you get to exert. Yeah. So when we take that perspective and we apply it to the economy and to money,
11:21one of the big takeaways from our last conversation with Stephanie Kelton was that governments
11:27don't operate like households and in terms of their budget that they actually spend before they tax back, right.
11:34How does that get applied to the history and kind of origins of money as a legal and debt relation?
11:42Yeah, I mean, there are different communities, there are different societies that have created different kinds of money.
11:48And of course, the major ones nowadays that matter to us. The reason we usually have the word modern in front of modern money
11:54are the ones that are based around large, hierarchical, non face to face societies.
12:00We're not talking about 200 person tribes or, you know, voluntary utopian communities or kibbutzim.
12:06We're talking about empires, we're talking about civilizations, we're talking about Rome and Greece and China
12:13and the nation states and all those kinds of things. And what we see is that, generally speaking, some sort of authority,
12:22whether it's a warlord, it can be an electorate, it can be a Demos like Athens. Maybe they have slaves, maybe it's only white men, maybe it's only men over 40.
12:30And for some reason, it seems to be mostly only men if it's going to be restricted. Certainly it's usually people
12:36who are only from one area, not, immigrants or foreigners. They get to impose the tax on another group of people.
12:43Often it's conquered people. Often it's the larger, poorer community. And in doing so, that community now needs to earn dollars, earn the currency,
12:52whatever it is they might not have needed to earn it beforehand. They might have been able to live in subsistence living.
12:57They might have been able to live off the land, the commons might have been available or open. And so in for example, in England, Marx talks about the enclosure
13:05of the commons, people who are forced off the land and forced into the cities where they have to sell their labor power to survive.
13:11Right. All of those are examples where you go from not needing money to needing money.
13:17All right. Whether it's an explicit tax or it's a tariff or it's a customs duty or for me as a lawyer, the stuff
13:25that I'm increasingly most interested in is the stuff that's a little more subtle. And when you've got a gun and you say you have to pay me $100, it's pretty obvious how much you owe.
13:33But in a world like today, you live in a fog of legal liability risk.
13:38Every time you walk down the street, there's a chance you might accidentally knock into somebody and trip them over. And the next thing you know, there's a lawsuit.
13:44You might be driving down the road and miss a red light, and the next thing you know, you're getting sued, right? You might think you bought something at a store and you might use the wrong note.
13:51The next thing you know, you're being arrested and you have to pay legal fees to get out on bail. Right.
13:57The amount of money that we need on a daily basis is always above zero, even when we have nothing to buy, even when we have no taxes to pay.
14:06Because there's always a risk that something that we can't predict is going to happen and make us pay money.
14:11I've just been dealing the last two days with a sewer pipe breaking in our backyard. I could say, Well, I pay my tax bill.
14:18I'm good for the year. Well, no. Funnily enough, the plumber wasn't willing to take music lessons in payment
14:24or legal advice about the history of money as payment for my plumbing. Right. So I need money not only to buy stuff,
14:32but also to deal with the risk of an uncertain world where everybody interacts
14:38with a system where if something goes wrong, you sue for money, right? When you do legal analysis in your first year
14:44at law school, whether it's contract law, property law, tort law, the damages that you pay are denominated in money.
14:52So these are laws about money. And if you have non-zero legal risk, you have a non-zero demand for money.
15:01And the minute you need money, then you need to have it issued by somebody. So it's the need to acquire it that comes first.
15:08And from there you have the person that issues it. It's sort of like someone saying, Hey, would you
15:14would you like this special item? And you say, No, I don't need it. And then you have to go to the next level of the game.
15:20And in order to pass the special doorway, you need that item or something. You go: Oh, no, I should have gone and got that item.
15:25Alright. Whether you thought, you need money or not. You're going to come across a point in your life where you need it, and that's when the demand is going to come in.
15:33Now, a lot of people that we all encounter on the great app of Twitter will fight with us and say, Oh,
15:41well, this perspective fails to consider that if we add more money to the economy, it's going to throw off balance the gold we have backing our dollars in Fort Knox.
15:50Many people still think we have a gold standard in the United States. And we have to remind people, you know, the Gold Reserve Act of 1934
15:59and then in the 70’s, when foreign countries couldn't exchange dollars for gold. This general history, I think, is important to cover
16:07and the impact on fiscal capacity when we move from a gold standard to a fiat currency.
16:14And I want to show to frame this a tweet from Joe Weisenthal about gold standards coming to an end.
16:21He said, “I've said it before, but one fact that never ceases to astound me is that 100% of all currency regimes that have survived has been fiat
16:31currencies, and 100% of all gold based currencies have come to an end.”
16:37Can you walk us through a little bit of the history of the gold standard, the impact on our fiscal capacity, and why
16:43maybe you think the only surviving regimes are those with fiat currencies?
16:48Yeah, Joe is a top level troll. I love it. I mean, so for a lot of history, there have been different kinds of money.
16:54You've got money that functions as essentially credit, right? So you and I create an IOU or you accept my IOU.
17:01And if other people accept that, that will circulate and have some degree of moneyness, it's sort of like a property.
17:07You can have more or less of it, right? So we can have more or less shine something more on the sweetness, if your cooking, right? Moneyness
17:13is not a binary, it's a spectrum like most things in 2023. So we have this world where you can give money to different instruments.
17:23And within a community, credit instruments are often quite good as money because
17:28even if you don't know that person, that person is not kind of going anywhere. They're part of the same community.
17:34And you have rules that standardize your credit, that they take your personal debt and turn it into a kind of homogenized product.
17:41It's sort of like the way that you would have all sorts of shipping containers. And now we just have one called the box. And it's the way that every kind of shipping company works.
17:49So nowadays, you know, you don't have 25 different kinds of personal credit. You just have the credit card, the mortgage, the personal IOU, promissory note.
17:59But you also have sort of what you consider to be money that is designed to operate across
18:05jurisdictions, across regions, places where you are talking to people that might not agree with you about your laws.
18:12And in a world like today, what is the money that works across most international borders? It's the US dollar.
18:17Why is that the case? Because we live in a unipolar world where the United States is the imperial hegemon. I come from Australia, all right?
18:24You try to do things that are too out there in Australia. You get a phone call from the United States saying, stop doing that.
18:30And we stop doing that because we're also English speaking white European country that likes to keep on good terms with America,
18:36but other countries that don't listen too well, maybe find their leaders replaced or killed or assassinated or whatever else.
18:42And of course there are 200 military bases around the world and nuclear weapons and, you know, aircraft carriers, etc..
18:49That's before you get to most of the major post-World War two institutions run by the United States,
18:54whether it's the WTO or the Security Council or whatever else. So the United States serves the role of being
19:02the kind of international glue today. But in a world where there isn't a single imperial hegemon or a network of a gang of elites,
19:11not just one country, but a group like Europe, England, Japan, Canada, Australia, that all kind of align enough on interest,
19:18whether it's NATO plus a few others or something else. Then you need something else. You need some other way of countries basically agreeing with each other
19:27that their money can exchange. And the way that gold works as well as silver was that it had value
19:33that individual countries or public legal authorities, whether it was a monarch or a republic or democracy or whatever else would give to it,
19:40and that would be the number on the coin. And then we have the metal value. And so what you had was a sort of two tier system where you were
19:47trading the value on the face of the coin. But if something went wrong, if something went wrong with the government,
19:54if the government collapsed, if the monarch lost their head, if they went to rogue with their policies, if it turns out they were a little too
20:00Catholic for a Protestant country or whatever else, then you could simply melt down the coins
20:06and either recast them to another public legal authority. And then you have a kind of transition of the infrastructure.
20:13It's almost like going into the government and taking off the Republican of the wall and putting a Democrat on the wall in the building.
20:20Or you could simply send that gold to another country. So the gold served as a kind of real collateral
20:28underlying the coins themselves. Now, as I said, coins are only one kind of money.
20:33A lot of it was based around credit in the United States. For example, before 1788, a number of colonies use paper money.
20:40Massachusetts and others used paper money that were based on their own IOUs, a lot of them based around land.
20:46So they would create a kind of almost like a mortgage or a claim on land, and they would issue notes backed by
20:51the land. When the United States was formed, they switched kind of formally to a gold standard across the country.
20:59But almost immediately, this was under challenge, right? Individual states who kind of didn't really want to hand over the money
21:06power to the federal government. But Article one, Section Ten of the Constitution said “no
21:12state can accept can create their own money in payment of taxes except gold and silver coins issued by the United States”
21:19immediately started chartering banks, issued banknotes, and those bank notes in theory, had a relationship to gold for a while.
21:26But by the time you get to Lincoln in the Civil War, there is a whole political party called the Greenback Party
21:31that is fighting for pure paper money. These are people whose grandparents remember what it was like to use
21:36paper money. And also they know that gold was historically undersupplied.
21:42Silver was undersupplied in America. There wasn't enough of it. It was being shipped back to London for the Europeans
21:48to play their games internationally, within the Americas. What they needed was credit to keep the country alive.
21:55And so the Greenback Party said, We can do it. We don't need a precious metals.
22:01By the time you get to the populists in the late 19th century, they're talking about not only paper money but also a bi-metal standard.
22:07So they saying we don't need just gold. Let’s flood it with silver as well. We can do the same thing with silver as we do with gold.
22:12And then we essentially have twice as much available. So what we had was a systematic under
22:17provisioning of money relative to what the economy needed. By the time we get to FDR, who of course had the confidence to do
22:24what needed to be done, he just says we're off the gold standard. And so we have a second round of Supreme Court cases.
22:31The first round was in the Lincoln era called the Legal Tender Cases. And by the time you get to FDR, we have the Gold Clause Cases.
22:38And in both situations, the Supreme Court says it doesn't really matter how we started back in 1788,
22:44the power to shape money and reshape money is a core governmental power. If we want to say it's got gold in it, fine.
22:51It's going to say it doesn't have gold in it. Fine. If we want to say it's purely paper, it's purely nominal.
22:56Fine. And by the time we get to the 1970s, the international regime
23:02has completely shifted to the United States. Right after World War Two with Bretton Woods.
23:08The idea was every country goes to the United States. The United States goes to gold. That was the kind of vision.
23:14But of course, once everybody was dependent on the United States as its central point of
23:19settlement, central connection, you don't really need the gold anymore. That was always just a kind of gimmick for everybody to get on board
23:26with the United States centric regime. So the gold standard is something that people who like
23:32what they call “hard money” they like money that is issued less. It benefits creditors because creditors have the money already.
23:40So people need to go into debt. They like the gold standard, people who don't trust government.
23:45They don't believe in collective government. They like the gold standard because they think, incorrectly,
23:51that it imposes a restraint on governments when in fact what actually happens is governments just change the value of gold.
23:59But largely what the gold standard represents and nowadays we see it with Bitcoin as well, is an opposition
24:06to democratizing money just like we might want to democratize the economy in general.
24:12If we made it around gold, then it would be apolitical. Then nobody would be able to mess with me and my money.
24:19That's the general thought. And, you know, it's to me, it's the political equivalent of the Trunchbull from Matilda saying they want a school with no children.
24:27And it's a very simplistic narrative for people that are fundamentally misanthropic.
24:34That's really interesting. I mean, from a philosophical perspective. Right. One of the confusions out there in debates is that, as you were alluding to right,
24:43there is this belief that there's something about the metal itself. Right. And this is connected to this long tradition of Metallism as the explanation
24:51for money that's valuable or that can save us from what you described as these military and political regiments.
25:00Right. But from this kind of broader perspective. Right. Why should we then pursue fiat
25:08or public money if you know, so much of history has been defined by political and military aggression.
25:17Right. What where's the hope in that view of public money as something better than the banal, the finitude of gold or a metal?
25:26Yeah, If you think of gold as the thing that emerges in the absence of society, in the absence of social provisioning,
25:35It's the thing in between communities. It's the thing when you don't trust people. It's the thing
25:41when you don't have a system of accountable laws to a population. Now, most of human history, we didn't give women equal rights to men.
25:50We had huge forms of caste systems. We had, you know, imperial systems that were constantly waging war
25:56on the rest of the world. There were a lot of people that didn't want that to happen anymore right? Their entire populations where we stopped going to war with each other.
26:02Europe is trying to work out how to do that internally right now. So the question
26:07I think is, do you want to assume that we are going to have a nasty, brutish world where people cannot fundamentally trust each other?
26:15Or do we want to try to build trust? And when you go to places where there are extremely high standards of living like Scandinavians,
26:22Australia, New Zealand, Canada, what you have is trust. You have people that trust each other, you have people who can trust
26:29that the roads work, that they can go in and get health care, all those kinds of things. That is a world
26:34when people get it, they like it, right? It's like saying, hey, you know, it's kind of rough when parents abuse their kids, right?
26:42That can always happen. But do we want to build a society where the presumption is every kid's going to be abused by their parents,
26:47or do we want to try to build a society where the presumption is every kid will can have a loving home?
26:54We want those things because when we've experienced and we said that's way better than the alternative.
26:59So the history of public fiat currencies is the history of taking more
27:04and more responsibility for the economic well-being and governance of our economy,
27:10to say, Hey, we can make it different if we want to build roads, we can if we want to build health care, we can If we want to build better schools,
27:18we can. For most of human history, the vast majority of children who weren't rich could not learn to read.
27:24We made a decision to do that and we did it. That decision requires public money,
27:30and I think those are the kinds of things that a collective governance system of the economy is trying to achieve.
27:37It doesn't always achieve it. Of course not. Are there huge examples of failures? Absolutely.
27:42Does that mean it's edgy or mature or sophisticated or adult to give up on that stuff?
27:49No, it's just nihilism. It's teen boy libertarians
27:55thinking that because they never have to raise kids, that they are somehow more adult than the people who do the messy job of actually building community.
28:04That's so powerful. I mean, so for our viewers and our listeners, right, we've heard these two
28:09frames and narratives about what money is and where it comes from. On one hand, we have Metallism and this almost pre or anti-political view
28:18that it's in this thing itself that's valuable. But what Rohan's kind of described here is sometimes referred to as Chartalism
28:25or this view that it's politics and the construction of the public itself that gives value to these economic instruments, these financial instruments.
28:34And so from what I'm hearing from you, Rohan, is really that it's the challenge of politics and governance to implement justice, to re-imagine society
28:43in different ways that gives us the possibility to move beyond the limits of what states and
28:51societies have been up to now. Am I kind of getting that right? Yeah. And I think the other thing worth noting is that most of the theories
28:58or most of the groups that really, really strongly defend the gold standard also really strongly defend property rights,
29:04that is to say violent, aggressive enforcement of certain people's
29:10right to own resources and to exclude everybody else from resources. So they say, oh, how could you trust the state?
29:18And then they draw a big square around 500,000 acres and say, That's all mine,
29:23and I will have police and federal troops to protect it if you try to come and sit on it.
29:28Right. So that's the kind of world in which we are talking about it's not anti state, it's not anti governance, it's just governance
29:35for a small group of people who nobody else gets to hold accountable. But imagine you can get taxed on your land and somebody else can earn the money.
29:43Now you maybe have to give up some of those acres to somebody else. Now, maybe that person who's owned a plantation in Louisiana
29:51doesn't get to own that for the rest of time. Maybe they owned the people on the plantation. So in one respect, I think the gold standard hard money
30:00debate is a cousin, if not a subset of the property rights
30:07above all debate. Taxation is the way that we set a system of property
30:13that is not absolute, that we are accountable to the collective. If you want the right to have your plot of land,
30:20you have to be accountable to a system to make sure everybody has enough versus: Fuck you, it's mine.
30:26That’s the alternative. Yeah, it certainly rings true with that kind of misanthropic,
30:31hyper competitive view of just like “I get mine.” Build a big wall, hire some private security guards,
30:38make sure they got a lot of guns, and then wait for global warming to hurt everybody else. Right, right.
30:44Alright. Thanks, everybody, for tuning in. It's always a pleasure to talk with Rohan Grey, not only because he's brilliant, but he has a great accent.
30:51So make sure you tune in to the rest of the episodes in this three part series and we'll see you at the next episode.
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