Just wait until the really good copiers come out. Soon there will be no currency. It's a biblical prophecy and it's real close.

Future Shop has a better warranty record for their laptops than some doofus at a gas station near there. Got that?

So does dark skinned mean of African decent or Non White or just tanned. I'm not racist,I just find these terms confusing. I would guess being blond would mean tanned.

I think it's the paper that's hard to duplicate ~ the copiers are already pretty good. It seems as if what's happening in the affairs of money fits Biblical prophecy fairly accurately. Undetected counterfeit currency would really have very little deleterious effect on any modern economy ~ might even improve it. So long as it went undetected.

There was quite a big stir several decades ago when the English outfit, Waterlow's, that did all the printing of banknotes for the Bank of Portugal, on the official banknote paper, were somehow conned into duplicating an order they'd already filled.

The counterfeiters somehow intercepted the order, and merrily spent the money into circulation in Portugal, and nobody was the wiser. Until one day some sharp eyed bank teller happened to get two Bank notes with the same serial number, and noticed that. Then all Hell broke loose!

The Bank of Portugal recalled all its banknotes, not that anyone could tell the good ones from the phoney ones, and issued new ones, and there was a big lawsuit launched against Waterlow's, not that they were really at fault.

The crazy thing about it all was that the Portugese banknotes were no more representative of anything except a nebulous "promise to pay". No more than anyone else's banknotes are ~ the idea that they were exchangeable for gold long having passed into ancient history.

So if we could make our own money and have it be legal tender, we would be, in effect, creating jobs. If I make myself $1000.00 dollars today and go and buy something I otherwise wouldn't be able to afford, I have bought something that someone has to make, if things people make are able to be bought easier, more have to be made, ergo, more people are needed to make them, ergo, those people make more money, which in turn allows them to buy things more often that someone else has made, which causes them to have to make more things which makes more money, etc, etc, etc....so whats the problem?

Just as an aside. It is legal to make your own money (not copying established currency), the problem is finding someone who will recognize it as legal tender and exchange it for goods. Small communities across Canada have and are doing this. As long as enough businesses or people are willing to accept those notes as promises to deliver goods or services it works fine. And the huge benefit is it isn't taxed to death.

So long as the capacity to produce always exceeds the necessity or desire to consume, there really is no problem. We would, initially at least, and so long as any actual consumer demand remained unsatiated, be "creating jobs".

The only possible problem would occur if we "made" more money, in total, than there were goods and services for sale, in total. Then we'd get inflation.

The price of existing goods and services would rise, and keep rising, until they'd absorbed all the money. And if we had unlimited access to keep creating our own "money" with no mechanism to cancel what we'd created as it was spent, our money system would soon cease to function.

Currently, we DO have a mechanism to cancel what has been created, not by us, but by the banking system (supposedly on OUR behalf). Only it doesn't work as well as it should. Because it's NOT currently fully related to the actual realities of Production and existing real demand for Consumption.

So this is pretty much what happens anyways, since all the goods we make for export, and all the goods that could be described as 'capital goods' (things to make things with), and other things we make, like military hardware, public works, and government 'stimulus spending' ~ goods which don't come within the buying range of the general public, as do 'consumer goods' ~ all distribute money that is taken back in the price of the goods and services that DO come within the buying range of the general public. Raising them.

This would not be difficult to correct. But overcoming the resistance to ever making an attempt to even examine it sometimes seems as impossible as building a house on the surface of the sun!

That's right, acrolympics. It is solely its "acceptance" that makes 'money' money. No matter what it's made of.

What those communities that engage in local currency creation are really doing doesn't touch the crux of the problem, however. They are trying to use money as a "medium of exchange", which is fine, so far as it goes.

Only modern money is no longer primarily a "medium of exchange" anymore. Not in its larger sense. For too many people no longer have anything to "exchange". Their "labour" is no longer required in any real sense in any process of production. This becomes ever the more so with each advance in 'productivity'.

Our modern money, to be fully fungible (universally acceptable for anything outside of the local community that created it), is really "effective demand". It is a 'ticket system', not at all unlike the specific tickets issued for various things with which we're all familiar.

Properly, it should come into being at the same rate 'production' does, and go out of existence at the same rate that 'production' becomes 'consumption'.

Not worthwhile enuff to counterfeit Canadian Tire money yet?

I think Canadian Tire's got their own chartered bank now, Harbinger. So they can counterfeit the real stuff.