Lietaer: Taxes versus contributions

The irony of the whole thing, in today's societies, governments are now, having saved the banking system, at a huge expense, are now being squeezed to reduce everything else. Because they have now increased indebtedness dramatically. In some countries it's doubled. Thinking about this, it is government that imposes that only bank debt money can be used to pay taxes. That is the mechanism by which the monopoly is enforced. And government needs to either raise the taxes or borrow, just as you and me, and has given the monopoly of the creation of the money to the banking system. Well would it not make sense that the government issues a currency itself for certain functions and requires that that currency be paid in part by making contributions? Let's make a distinction between taxes and contributions. Taxes are in national money, or actually in bank debt money, to be precise, and the other one would be in another currency, a currency that the government chooses for its priorities. It could be a currency for learning, it could be a currency for environmental restoration, it could be a currency for whatever the priorities that it decides. And my proposal would be, well, create an E-Bay market, an open market, where I have, if everybody needs to contribute ten hours, say, over that currency, well, we create an E-Bay, I am a guy who's too busy and not interesting in these things, you are a good person, you have done fifty of those hours, well, you sell them to me, and I pay you in euros. I need to pay ten hours, because that's the requirement. It would be a completely different society, immediately, where government can actually, a democratic government, hopefully, we're not talking about creating a dictatorship here, it should be a democratic government, that people could decide what it is they want to contribute to.