Our people’s cumulative knowledge & education is unarguably our Nation’s greatest National Treasure. It’s greater than all material wealth that currently exists in the American economy and also the key source of creating all that material wealth.
Even the few people who claim, “A public K-12 education is worthless!” are making use of it because K-12 schooling is where most people learn to read, write and develop their vocabulary. And, if you think about it, the absurd irony of these people trying to discredit the inherent value of education while they rely upon it to make their points is quite comical — it’s like watching people hack at the roots of the tree of knowledge with axes whose handles are hewn from its branches.
However, the value of an education is no joke.
When we look at the Nations of the world, the single greatest determining root factor between a 1st World Nation and a 3rd World Nation is the existence & quality of their general education & higher education systems. We can also look at history and notice that when any Nation or culture developed a general education system, those cultures and Nations evolved rapidly from that point forward.
Knowledge & education is not only a form of wealth in and of itself, it is the source of all other wealth a Nation’s people create.
When we look at the wealth that a diploma, degree, or certification abstractly represents, we find:
- That these credentials evidence various kinds of public domain intellectual property is held by the graduate — graduates hold many sets of distinct collections of all manner of public domain knowledge.
- That thousands of assignments & tests were completed successfully over the years we attended school in order to graduate from high school, college or certification programs. We have proven — extensively — that we hold these sets of collections of public domain intellectual property AND the results of all these assignments & tests are well documented by the school registrars.
What are “Sets of Collections” of Public Domain Intellectual Property Held By Graduates
To give some basic examples of what this means:
The broad topic of Mathematics would be a set, and the collections of subject matter that constitute this set would be Arithmetic, Algebra, Geometry, Trigonometry, etc..
The various sets of collections of intellectual property that constitute the IP asset a diploma or degree represents would include Mathematics, Language, the Sciences, History, Civics, Music, etc..
Each of these sets of subject matter all include large collections of sub-sets. By “Education as an IP Asset“, we’re talking about a substantial amount of intellectual property constituting the asset that every graduate holds, not some insignificant flimsy body of work.
It is also imperative that people recognize that all this subject matter we’re talking about is public domain— It belongs to We, the People. Some people make the mistake of thinking that public property belongs to the government, but that is false. We, the People “own” all public property, it is Our common wealth. The state only acts as a custodian or trustee in some instances.
Also note, that any private intellectual property students may develop during the education process is not included in the scope of what constitutes the educational IP assets we’re talking about.
Further, while it is true this IP asset is substantially different than a Patent or Copyright, it is none the less a legitimate IP asset, it has value, and it is worthy of being accounted for just like any other class of intellectual property asset. Just because it’s public domain doesn’t negate its value.
Doctrine of Scarcity vs Doctrine of Usefulness — The Basis of Inherent Value of the Educational IP Assets
Unlike gold & silver assets (and other kinds of assets — like land — which have been used successfully for thousands of years to back money creation at National Treasuries in every system of government), and whose inherent value is grounded in the doctrine of scarcity (the scarcer something is, the more valuable it becomes), the inherent value of an education is grounded in the doctrine of usefulness (the more useful something is, the more valuable it becomes).
Consider the telephone for a moment. 300 phones are obviously useful to everyone who has a phone, and due to there only being 300 phones, each phone would be very valuable due to scarcity. However, when 300 million people own a phone, it is far more useful to everyone who owns a phone even though each phone would sell for much less.
Likewise, to use reading & writing for example, the more people in a society that can read & write, the exponentially more useful the ability to read & write becomes to everyone who can read & write, and it ends up with a cumulative value that vastly exceeds its value if only a select few people have such education.
While both doctrines have their place, the doctrine of scarcity is not the only doctrine that can be used when considering types of assets worthy of being used to back money creation at a National Treasury.
The Power & Right of the US Treasury to Account For & Monetize Education Intellectual Property Assets
There is no need to elaborate upon the general Power of the Treasury to create asset backed money.
However, the Treasury is limited to only using public assets to do this. The Constitution expressly forbids the taking of private property for public use. Ergo, we couldn’t have the Treasury use any form of private IP to create money directly at the Treasury.
Unlike all the private IP in existence (which is used indirectly to create money via the banking system — it is used as collateral to secure loans), since the subject matter taught in schools is all public domain intellectual property, there is no issue with accounting for and using these public domain IP assets to create money.
We the People’s common wealth, being used by We the People’s Treasury to create We the People’s money supply.
Redeem-ability of the Money in the Asset Backing It
One major element of sound asset backed money is the ability to redeem the money in the asset backing that money. This would accurately be described as a natural law of money creation.
Take a US Silver Certificate (a Bill of Credit) for a well known example of this. It could be taken to any bank or to the Treasury and exchanged for the amount of silver worth the dollar value shown on it’s face. This is redemption, or the redeem-ability of the money.
Another example that is a bit more obscure is a US postage stamp. Everyone has heard about postage stamps, however, technically, a US Postage Stamp is tiny a Bill of Credit and this Bill of Credit is redeemable in postal services and this is not well known.
Likewise, were money created by the Treasury to represent Education IP Assets it would be redeemable. However, it subtly different than the way Silver Certificates or Postage Stamps are redeemed. Any time you pay someone to do anything that requires them to put this knowledge and education they have to work for you, you would be redeeming the money in the asset backing it. So, rather than take the money to the Treasury or a bank or a Post Office, the money is redeemable with anyone who holds these Education IP Assets.
Services vs Knowledgeable Services
We could raise the issue that the money is not actually being redeemed in the asset backing it, but rather, it is being redeemed in labor. This point would be something a fan of Marxism would raise based on Karl Mark’s Labor Theory of value.
As a counter point, consider the following anecdote:
If we were to take a layman, an apprentice blacksmith, a journeyman blacksmith and a master blacksmith and give each of them an identical forge, set of tools, the same amount of raw bars stock to make a set of knives from, and the same number of hammer strokes (or, better said, the same allowance of energy to expend in creating the set of knives), we would have drastically different results regardless of identical labor effort (time+energy) expended.
The layman would produce a set of unusable knives and the raw bar stock would need to be melted back down and reforge into raw bar stock so that it could be forged. (As an aside, forge work starts with raw material already pre-shaped into a general form to make it easier to work. Raw stock to forge knives starts as bars, not ingots or lumps or raw iron/steel). So, the layman’s labor is actually a liability, not an asset — It costs time & energy to remake raw bar stock from failed forge work.
The apprentice would produce a set of knives that would be usable, but inconsistent and again, much of that work would need to be turned back into raw bar stock and reforged. While not a total liability, apprentice work would be lucky to break even.
The journeyman would produce consistent quality knives.
The master would produce something of superior quality.
In light of the above, it’s obvious that it is the knowledge & education is the key determining factor to the value of the things produced by the labor.
In Closing
This proposal is superior to both Modern Money Theory (MMT) (which, in essence, proposes creating massive liabilities (debt) at the Treasury, not money), and crypto currency (which proposes totally abandoning the Treasury, the banks and even the Dollar… and giving money creation powers to people like Mark Zuckerberg or citizens of China and other foreign nations who run unregulated extremely experimental crypto currency organizations), both of which have been talked to death.
At this time, with the various proposals of how to provide viable alternatives to the central banking system and solve problems caused by the economic pandemic, this is the only viable proposal to create asset backed non-inflationary money directly at the Treasury.
It’s time for this proposal to become a part of the National Conversation and for people to help make the Congressional Order 101 happen by signing the Order and sharing this site with your social networks.
If you hold a High School Diploma or even better, if you hold a college degree, we’d also love to read any thoughtful comments or criticisms you may have.
Congressional Order 101 