NEW MONEY.

Waikato Times, Volume 119, Issue 19816, 21 February 1936, Page 9

NEW MONEY.

(To the Editor.) Sir, —In common with other currency reformers, Mr Hunter uses language in such an extraordinary manner that it is impossible to know what he really means, and quite evident that he has only a hazy idea himself. I shall explain what I mean at a little length. He says: “The community must then be considered the real creator of this new money (.bank advances), and any interest charged is the property of the Government or the community.” This reads well, but upon analysis Is meaningless. It would apply only if the whole property in the country were vested in the State, which might then claim the interest, although it had not given the sefvice The proposition claims that one agency does the work, and an outsider takes the reward. This might appear just to currency reformers, but is flatly contrary to the precepts of all ethical codes. The trouble arises from ambiguity and looseness in the use of the term “community,” and I am afraid that Mr Hunter himself cannot, give us a clear and adequate explanation of what he means by it, hence the fallacy and confusion of his reasoning. If I have £IOOO in my cashbox it is my absolute property. According to Mr Hunter, if I put in on fixed deposit in the bank it ceases to be my property, and belongs to the community. If so, on the expiration of the term the community should draw the money; whereas I do, and no one objects. How on earth, then, can that £IOOO, and any advances the bank has made on the strength of it, be said to be the property of the community? On the other hand, if I get £IOOO overdraft from the bank, whose money do I borrow, the bank’s or the community’s—that is, Tom, Dick and Harry’s? Who performed the service of providing me with the loan —Tom, Dick and Harry, or the bank manager who put it through? And as I pay for the convenience of the loan, who is entitled to the money —the bank, or Tom, Dick and Harry? It seems a bit of a muddle, does it not? But people who fail to define their terras fall into that sort of trouble. The plain fact of the matter,staring everyone in t.he face, is that the currency reformers fail to differentiate between the actions of individuals who, together with thousands of other individuals, form that mass of individuals called in a general way “the community,” and the action of “the community” as an organised whole; what a lawyer would call a “corpus.” it is the logical fallacy of reasoning from an assumed “general” which is in reality a “particular,” taking what is done independently by individual members of the mass as being done collectively by the mass in its corporate capacity. The process is so transparently illogical that one cannot call it reasoning. I have quite a little basketful of nuts for Mr Hunter to crack, but this one will do for the present.—l am, etc., A. WARBURTON. Ngaruawahia, February 19.