Ancient Lifehour Currencies
Sometimes, it doesn't hurt to go to church. Sitting in a pew reviewing the Bible, I discovered a synopsis on ancient "Money's, Weights and Measures". In reading it (below in the box), note the theme of a coin being based on the average daily wages of the average laborer (which is highlighted in red.). This currency reflected current worktime, i.e., symbols of time equal substance of time.
| The Hebrews probably first used coins in the Persian period (500-350
B.C.). However, minting began around 700 B.C. in other nations. Prior to
this, precious metals were weighed, not counted as money ....
It is helpful to relate biblical moneys to current values. But we cannot make exact equivalents. The fluctuating value of money's purchasing power is difficult to determine in our own day. It is even harder to evaluate currencies used two to three throusand years ago. Therefore, it is best to choose a value meaningful over time, such as a common laborer's daily wage. One day's wage corresponds to the ancient Jewish system (a silver shekel is four days' wages) as well as to the Greek and Roman systems (the drachma and the denarius were each coins representing a day's wage). New Revised Standard Version Bible (1989, Thomas Nelson, Nashville, Tennessee). [With timistic analysis, one can quickly assign lifehour values to these ancient currencies. Assuming an ancient 8-daily hours to buy necessities, the lifehour value would be three (24x8). A 12-hour workday would be worth 1.5 lifehours (12/8).
|
Instead of shekels, drachma and denarius, they could have been called lifedays with subdivisions called lifehours. This synopsis of biblical currencies buttresses the call for a currency based on problem-solving time that transcends the boundaries of nations and centuries--the lifehour, that is, the average hourly time-savings or creation by an average worker or laborer.
In Japan, the basic unit of commerical worth was the koku which was the value of the rice to keep a person alive for one year, that is, five bushels of rice. This works out to almost one pint of rice a day since there are 320 pints in five bushels. For determining the lifehour value of an economy, farmer who produced twice as much in a day as the average rice farmer had a lifehour value double the average worker.
| Habitual politicians and economic monetarists have increasing divorced
the symbols from substance. De facto capitalism -per-capita became
capitalism-for-a-fewer-few as productive use of one's capita(head)
became owned by other, less productive, less worthy persons. Wealth is acquired
without worth as legal thievery becomes the norm. (A 2024 US campaign issue
is members of the US Congress not merely buying stocks based on inside
information but on determining the inside information.)
The biggest bank robbery in history is the 401k. Workers' retirements are stolen by corporate insiders who print trillions of dollars in stock options that workers are forced to buy. Stock options are a form of counterfeiting money. IPO means Insiders :Phooling Outsiders. Stock options are the death certificates of America as corporate insiders focus on short-term Wall Street gains instead of long-term Main Street survival. MBA means Masters of Bankrupting America. If you like this corruption, keep volting for habitual politicians. Sports-obsessed workers around the world deserve their muddled-class existential meltdown in buying power and in climate hell, e.g., FIFA or Fires. Rising inflation is the Cost of Igknowance. As showned historically and currently, unstopped inflation is the economic cauldron of civil war. Wars tend to re-set capitalism -for-a-fewer-few back to capitalism-per-capita as economic systems of enslavement are gone with the wind. |
Where does God stand on human compensation? Would Jesus support legal laws that let a fewer few get increasingly overpaid that takes the daily bread produced by the sweat of workers' brow? Jesus' answer was seen in his chasing the money changers out of the Temple.
It is the same question of whether the Almighty supports an economic system that has a few masters and many slaves. In the eyes of God, surely, there is little or no difference between stealing another person's time by steel chains or stealing income. He did say, "Thou shall not steal." Would God have voted for the Paris Hilton tax-cuts for the rich by the Bush family? No. If we are going to bring God into politics, we need to do it fully and honestly, not pick-and-chose.
What do the rich say, then and now, when confronted with their being hypocrites in violating the tenets of their God? "I need another god."
Readings:
Currency: Index
Currency: Symbols or Substance (170 pages)
Who Owns Timism: Why we need and can have a currency of, by, and for the people.