Producer Credits Genesis and Philosophy

Pictured above is the world's oldest known paycheck. Estimated to be about 5,000 years old, it was payable in beer.

Thousands of these clay Producer Credits have reportedly been found in ancient Sumerian ruins indicating that, despite the limitations of sharp stick and clay technology, the Sumerians had a working Producer Credit system.

Some believe that the genesis was as follows - rats and mice love stored grain. Few could afford to build a secure granary for their individual harvest.

The temple priests built a communal secure grain storage facility and the farmers stored their grain in it collectively. Each depositor went home with receipts for their deposit that could be spent as money for a variety of goods and services. The dysfunction arose because of the seasonal cycle and the reliance on one commodity as "money".  At harvest time there was a flood of grain money, but as the receipts got redeemed and the grain eaten, the money supply shrank with the grain pile.

Realizing that the grain could simply be the commonly understood pricing unit for other things, and that 'money' could also be a promise of goods and services not yet produced, the problem was solved by creating promises for goods and services that were needed and produced the year round.

Freedom requires sharing Risk and taking Responsibility

As for the philosophy, we all want things produced for us but we want the producer to take all the risks.
In the case of farmers, this sense of entitlement on the part of the customers becomes a bit more obviously unfair.

Producer Credits change wages into a risk investment in owning actual production and dependent onto it selling in the marketplace.
As such, it aligns the employees' self-interest more closely with that of the shareholders.

Ultimately, this proposal arose out of first principles thinking.

But identical thinking was apparently put into practice, with primitive means, on a large scale 5,000 years ago.

In medieval times it was the solution for shortages of coins.

See "the Essence of Money" 7:36

And in the 1940's it was the passionate pursuit of a preacher of financial libertarianism - E.C. Riegel.

 Money Power In You

E.C Riegel, Private Enterprise Money, 1944

https://www.community-exchange.org/docs/Riegel/private_enterprise_money.pdf

"There is a treasure buried in your consciousness. If you will dig it up from the debris of superstition and fear that covers it you will gain a freedom and self-mastery that will lift your life to a higher plane. This is the money power in you.

The power to create money with which to purchase wealth, health and happiness actually lies dormant within you. You have thought of the money power as something remote from you and beyond your grasp. You have dreamed of the good you could and would do if you had money power. You have blamed others for not accomplishing this good. You have blamed them for evil economic and political conditions; for unemployment, for poverty, for crime, for war.

It is quite logical to blame these maladies upon the malfunction of the money power, but you have not suspected that the money power resides in you and because of your failure to exert it the world is afflicted with miseries. You have the power; you have the responsibility. The power and responsibility to banish poverty, unemployment, insecurity, misery and war rests entirely with you.

You, in cooperation with other intelligent persons, can drive economic and political evils further and further from the area of your life and ultimately they may be driven from the face of the earth. You can do this by the money power in you, expressed first in your own prosperity and happiness, and radiating to others. You can do it and you must do it. There is no power outside of you that can bring these blessings to you. |

Petitioning the Government is like writing to Santa Claus. You need no laws — there is a law, a natural law that governs your money power. You need no government aid. You need only cooperation with and from persons who, like you, have resolved to exert the money power inherent in us all. This power in each of us needs only the recognition and respect of our fellows to spring forth and exert its blessings.

We need not petition Congress and we need not waste time to denounce bankers, for they can neither help nor hinder our natural right to extend credit to each other, and this is the perfect basis for a money system."