Silvio Gesell - The NATURAL ECONOMIC ORDER
upon which the expectation had been founded. For it is clear that if everybody believes in the advent of higher prices, everybody possessing a money reserve will buy, and when all money reserves are employed for purchases, prices must rise. This case supplies proof of the doctrine that he who believeth shall be saved. The reverse was of course true when there was a general belief in a fall of prices. When a merchant believed that his fellow merchants believed that prices would fall, he tried to dispose of his stock of goods; on the one hand by forcing their sale, if need be through a reduction of prices. and on the other hand by delaying his orders until a more propitious moment. But as his fellow believers acted in the same manner this again was the sole reason for bringing about the thing they feared. Their belief had made fools of them. For under the gold standard everything happened that people believed. Belief reigned supreme. The belief in the coming of higher or lower prices was quite sufficient to make this belief a reality. Beliefs, moods, weather reports determined whether money was or was not offered in exchange for goods, whether the workers played football or worked night-shifts and overtime. The offer of the whole monetary reserves in exchange for goods depended on belief! Free-Money has changed all this. Money does not now wait to inquire about the beliefs or moods of its possessor. It commands, it places orders of its own accord. But just because belief has been eliminated from commerce because faith, hope and love of profit no longer influence the circulation of money, demand is regularised. Mercantile hopes and fears are now simply personal matters without any effect on the market. Labour and the demand for goods are no longer dragged at the heels of an arbitrary power, money; they are no longer subject to the will of the possessors of money, for money is now demand itself. It used to be considered a matter of course that the worker should go out to look for money, that is, work. Only exceptionally did money go out to look for work. Money compelled goods, work, to come to it. No protest was raised against this breach of the principle of equal rights; everyone tolerated the privilege of money - probably because the privilege was supposed to be indissolubly bound up with the monetary system. The worker and the possessor of goods incurred a heavy, daily increasing loss through postponement of the sale, whereas money produced interest for the potential buyer. So it was natural and inevitable that if buyers stayed at home sellers set out to find them and to urge them personally to buy. This view is now no longer a matter of course. For the possessor of money feels the money burning in his pocket and is compelled to exchange it, just as the worker is compelled by the perishable nature of his power of work (which cannot be stored) to find a purchaser for it as speedily as may be. So the possessor of money no longer waits patiently for the possessor of goods (worker) to come and find him. He rises earlier, looks about him, and goes to meet the goods half-way. But when two are searching for one another, they will meet sooner and more surely than when only one is on the look-out. The animal kingdom would be in a sorry plight if the females tried to hide from the males. How would the toad in the pond find his mate if she did not crawl out of the mud at his call ? Formerly the possessor of money gained by hiding from the possessor of goods; for the length of the quest made the latter more amenable. In his dressing-gown and bedroom slippers, so as to make it appear that the worker or seller of goods had disturbed him in his slumber. That is how the buyer met the seller! So money now under all circumstances goes out to seek the commodities. Money has suddenly become hungry. Its hunger-cure has made it nimble and sharpened its hunting instinct. It does not, indeed, run after the goods, for the goods do not slink out of sight; they cannot do so. The two meet half-way. But if money finds no goods to buy, it does not wait until chance throws what it wants at its feet; instead of that it tracks the article to its source, which is labour. Thus Free-Money has replaced the official insurance by an automatic insurance against unemployment. Free-Money has become an automatic labour bureau, and I and my 100,000 officials have been turned out on the street. By the irony of fate, the only unemployed in the realm are now the officials of the unemployment insurance office !
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