The Paying Profession

The payer organization is created/founded by an action of the POM government. However, the payer organization is not a part of that government. The payers do not take orders from anyone concerning how much and whom they pay. The payers do not perform any of the functions of government. Unless the payer organization is independent of government the system does not constitute the new money. This aspect is absolutely essential to the definition of what constitutes the new money. If the payers are under the control of any other organization or individual who is not themselves a payer then the payers are not a third party but only a tool of a set of producers (in this case the government officials).

This independence of the payer organization from the government that creates it would be impossible in a POM economy. The government would be paying for the capital goods and services the payers used. The government would be feeding, clothing, and sheltering the payers either directly or indirectly by force of law. Once the new money begins, the payers are no longer dependent on the government officials. There is no law that they be fed, given clothes, or given housing. These things they can pay for so the producers of such things willingly will provide them. Since welfare will no longer be a function of the government officials the payers will not be dependent upon them.

How can we be sure the payers would do a good job? Aren't they going to become despots? Why should they pay fairly? How can they pay fairly? These and other such questions naturally come to mind when one is accustomed to a physical object money economy because that is what would happen if a small number of people had control of our present kind of money. Perhaps we can arrange things differently with our improved money.

First we must keep the payers from paying themselves or each other. They must not be able to reward themselves. Since the improved money is controllable we can make sure that payers cannot have any money at all, ever, for the rest of their lives. Nor may they have anything that money will buy. Since the payers need to be consumers to live, they will have to receive the necessities of life without having to pay money for them. Since we do not want people becoming payers just to get the necessities of life free, we will need to provide the necessities free to everyone in the society (nation, economy, or whatever geo-political unit you like). This should be no problem for any industrial nation.

In order to make all segments of the society feel that the payers are not biased against them, the paying profession must accept anyone who volunteers for that occupation (given that they are functional adults). Also, the society cannot draft people to be payers. An unwilling payer would be unlikely to do a good job and would be easy to tempt with a bribe.

As mentioned above, everyone gets the necessities of life (at least food, clothing, shelter, medical care, and education) free. Money is not required to get those things. So what can money buy? Money can buy only luxuries. It is not for capital goods or necessities, just luxuries.

What is a luxury or a necessity for that matter?

How does one distinguish between necessities and luxuries? The society must decide which goods and services are to be considered necessities. So long as all the things which are necessary to keep people alive are designated as necessities and so long as a lot of things people want are designated as luxuries, the money should work fine. Just how that decision is made is not important. The legislature, the church, a "blue-ribbon panel," or the public health service could make such a decision. The decision must apply throughout the society uniformly though.

Capital goods.

Capital goods (those goods and services which are employed in production) are not paid for with the improved money either. People cannot consume capital goods a hammer or a warehouse. But people can own capital goods. People can use their capital goods to produce things and that may get them paid. With physical object money people want capital goods in order to use them to get money. They do not desire possession of capital goods as an end in itself.

Payer crime.

If the payers are to make honest, unbiased, ethical (moral) judgments, the general public must have direct, immediate, inescapable power over them. Since the payers have no luxuries, they cannot escape living among the general public. Since they have voluntarily given up luxuries, they are the kind of people who value the social rewards of being a payer very highly. These social rewards come to payers only if they are doing a good job and are seen to be paying fairly. Why else would the general public approve of them? If the general public disapproves, the payers cannot escape them.

If the payers do their job poorly, producers will not be motivated to do those things which need to be done. That will be very noticeable to consumers. If payers do their jobs well, producers will be motivated to produce as much as they can with the lowest "cost" to society. This will also be obvious to consumers. (Producers will be paid for the *net* benefit they provide to others. That is, the harm they do, the cost to their society, will be subtracted from the good they do. These costs, such as using up valuable resources, will reduce producers' rewards for the good they do.) If people do not like the way things are going in their society they know just whom to blame, the payers. If things are going well, the payers must be doing well.

Since payers are not allowed to have any luxuries at all, any payer observed consuming a luxury must be in violation of the rules. Therefore, it is very easy to see if a payer has accepted a bribe and most bribes would "stick out like a sore thumb" if accepted. Thus, all large bribes and most small bribes of luxuries would not tempt a payer. A small bribe is not much temptation.

Payers can also be bribed by friendship, sex, family ties, religion (salvation), and other social rewards. But these are all self limiting. That is, there will be few people for each payer who might be able to bribe them and those people would be known to have influence with the payer and thus the payer would refuse to pay them to avoid the appearance of bias. Even if a few succeed in bribing a payer, the frequency of the crime would be very limited because so few would have an opportunity to commit such a crime. Also, the payer would not be able to give much in return for the bribe because a large payment would be noticeable and the benefit for such a large payment would also be very noticeable. "What did that rich guy do to earn so much money???" people would ask. Both the payer and the briber would have their identity attached to the payment. The guilt of each would be obvious.

Therefore, even though the payers are people and thus some will go astray, the incidence of corruption will be very limited and thus trivial. Also, it will be obvious if the payers are doing a good job or a bad job. Everyone can reward or punish some payers since they live among the general public.

Who would the payers be?

Volunteers for the paying profession will not come at random from the general population. Persons who have "retired" from the work force are the people I would expect to comprise the bulk of the payers. Older people are more likely to value social rewards over luxuries. Older people now often suffer from the feeling that they are ignored and unimportant. Producers will pay attention to payers. Payers will be instrumental in making things go well in the economy. People will respect payers. After all, every payer has sacrificed luxuries to hold their position. I believe that the rewards of being a payer will attract exactly the kind of person that will make a good payer.

The payer as despot.

How do dictators exercise their power? They use the army, the police, the courts, prisons, and camps. In every case, they have to pay the people in the army, the police and the courts. If they could not pay them, why would these organizations obey the dictator? How could the dictator get the people who run prisons and camps to hold people if the dictator did not pay them to do so? Without control of money, no dictator can rule.

The payers do have control of the money. They can pay the police, the army, and the courts. They can pay people to run prisons and camps. But there are hundreds of thousands of soldiers and police and court workers and many thousands more people work in prisons and camps. How could one payer or a small group of payers pay all of them? It would take many thousands of payers to pay so many persons. Those thousands of payers are living among the people. What rewards could those payers get to make up for the punishment they would suffer from the oppressed people among whom they live? How could a small group of payers force all those other payers to do their will? Especially when those other payers are getting their rewards from the very people that would be oppressed?

No dictator could oppress a society in which the general public controls the money. The improved money would make despotism impossible.

What about a single power-mad payer? Would a payer be able to force people to do things? No. The payers only have control of money rewards. They have no control of punishments. They cannot give out "negative" money. They cannot take back what they have given. They cannot collect money. Would you be threatened by one person saying "If you don't do that I will not pay you" if you knew there were millions of other payers who could pay you?

How can the payers coordinate and control an entire economy well?

They cannot coordinate and control the economy. They will not try. That is not their job. They hove no authority to give orders. They just wait and see the consequences of producers' work and reward where appropriate. If the producers cooperate and coordinate their efforts they will be much more productive and everybody benefits. The consumers have more and better goods and services produced at less cost to the society. The producers get more luxury goods and services. The payers get a lot of rewards from the happy people they live among.

How can the payers know just how much to pay?

They cannot in most cases. The best they can do is to pay what seems to be a good estimate to a reasonable person. The producers they are paying cannot know just how much should have been paid either. But then the payers do not have to be exactly right so long as they pay enough to get the work done. Of course they will make errors. They are only human. With physical object money we know that the people who pay are trying to be unfair in most if not all cases. They are trying to get as much work as possible for as little money as possible. At least the payers are *trying* to be fair. Therefore we can be confident that they will pay a lot more fairly than the people who pay now (which is almost everyone). Is it fair that drug dealers, professional gamblers, and pimps get so much money now? Is it fair that some managers who are totally incompetent get paid more than their subordinates who are doing the work that their managers get paid for?

Payer organization.

The payers will have an organization of their own to train new payers and coordinate the payments of all the payers. The payers will specialize according to the occupation of the producers they pay. A payer will have to understand the work being done to pay fairly for it.

As luxury goods and services are produced the payers can pay enough money to buy those goods and services. That way the things for sale and the money to buy them stay in balance. The payers must collect the information necessary to determine the value of the luxuries for sale in order to calculate how much money they have for paying. They must also collect information about how much benefit is being done. Naturally they can pay for help in doing both these things but it is their responsibility to make the judgment concerning benefit since much of the benefit is subjective.

These activities are best done by bureaucracies. If there were a better way to organize a large number of people to accomplish a complicated task than a bureaucracy then armies would use it. All armies are bureaucracies and have been for thousands of years. The European armies of the dark ages were only a little bureaucratic. They were uncoordinated and disorganized. They lived off the land, stealing their food or they starved to death. In battle they were little better than a mob. When they fought the more bureaucratic armies of Mongols from the East they were slaughtered.

Thus I believe that the payers will use a well run bureaucracy to coordinate their paying. Only in that way can they be confident that everyone that needs to be paid is getting paid.