Indianapolis, Indiana -- State Senator Greg Walker of District 41, (R-Columbus), has officially filed a Bill that would allow Indiana to offer its citizens a choice of Gold (and Silver) coin or the Electronic equivalent in payable and receivable transactions with the state. This bold bill will finally bring Indiana back into conformance with the Constitution for the United States of America which states 'No state shall...make anything but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts...' Article 1, Section 10."
I'm not sure if a return to gold and silver currency is ultimately the way to go, but some form of verifiable honest currency IS needed. Gold and Silver certificates - which this ultimately is - can lead to issues with money supply, as I understand it. But then, this is where competing currencies and computers come in.
Ultimately, paper and electronic currencies are simply convenient symbols for trade; theoretically and properly bearing a one to one reference to something that has a stable, agreed upon value. That might be achieved by a "shopping basket"; a proportion of commodities that might vary in value according to supply and demand, but which could be bundled to achieve a stable target value.
I could easily be accused of "oversimplifying" the issue, but it's been the complexity and lack of transparency that has made it possible to exploit and pervert the world economy. The need for a simple, transparent and individually verifiable means of trade is of paramount importance.
Then again, it might be appropriate to make a philosophical shift; there is a commodity that IS fairly stable and is something that would be useful to value directly - labor. A unit of currency that values one person hour at minimum wage would be a useful economic indicator and might well address the problem of money supply - at least in an economy with a variety of currencies in circulation, smoothed by transparent electronic translations.
I'm no economist and no expert on money - but it occurs to me that is exactly the problem. We should not have to be experts to know if something we hold in our hands and rely upon to transfer value is in fact an honest measure and faithful representation. "Trust me, I'm an expert" is sounding just a little hollow these days. The test for Fairy Gold was to touch it to an anvil; that's what we need; A great big Acme Anvil dropped rudely into the money supply.
Then we can figure out what's real and what's not, and go from there.
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