Telematic currency and market strategy (mtemuk.pdf). - Centre d ...

After this, the balance present in every barter because of the equivalence of the exchange values of the
exchanged goods will only be reached in the global market, because the various elemental money changes in
which every barter has been dissociated are not necessarily balanced in their turn.
To conclude and in short, we say that a money instrument is simply «an acceptance of a debt, exactly
documented and inter-compensable through a system of personal current accounts, within the whole free
market of all the elemental free money changes». In this essay we will talk both of money instruments and of
money documents, depending on whether we want to put in evidence its character of technical instrument -
an accounting medium which allows the realization of a new kind of mercantile change- or to put in evidence
its character of a document which exactly registers every mercantile elemental exchange.
It is clear that the elemental money change is much more nimble and allows a greater dynamism than the
global money barter. In fact, from now on there is nothing new to be invented as far as the money system is
concerned, since all the fundamental elements are present. The money instrument we have described is
flexible enough to be adapted to any situation, whichever its mercantile complexity. It is only necessary to
update it, depending from the mercantile realities and the present technological possibilities.
7. Synthesis on the elements of the money systems.
As a final synthesis we can say that the money systems are complex realities where we will distinguish the
following elements:
1. Real people, market agents exchanging real goods within a given market. Without this market it
makes no sense to talk about money systems.
2. Money units which work as measure units; radically conventional-abstract and invented to meet the
need to establish exactly the exchange value of each and all the real goods exchanged in a given
market.
3. Mercantile values (prices, salaries and money) which are mixed items, concrete-abstract, resulting
from comparison between real goods and abstract money units.
4. The previous three elements are enough for an underdeveloped market; however, in societies with a
greater mercantile dynamism a new element appears: money instruments.
These are an invention of a purely instrumental-auxiliary character to make a new sort of transaction easier
and at the same time to record exactly each of the operations effected.
8. Nature of the money systems.
The fundamental conclusion derived from the above is that the money systems are of an exclusively
instrumental nature, conventional and abstract.
In any market the basic element, the immediate subject of all the utilitarian interests, is constituted by the real
goods. They have an intrinsic value which makes them desirable. They are considered as first realities on any
trade utilitarianism.
A money system, on the contrary, is an artificial construction which is placed over these first concrete
realities, with the only instrumental scope of controlling them more easily and effectively.
The real goods and the real people who exchange them are the basis of the existence of the money system:
we therefore will consider it a second reality derived from the first one. The second and derived money reality
has no intrinsic value, only a purely instrumental value, based on its abstract structure of the metric system.
If historically some forms of money instruments have been given a very concrete intrinsic value -we are
talking about coins or any other form of merchandise currency- it does not mean that their being intrinsic is
the defining and essential quality of money systems, on the contrary, the essentiality and usefulness of money
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