Lawrence Goodwyn and William Greider (1989), "Democratic Money: A Populist Perspective". remarks presented on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Populist Sub-Treasury Plan for financial reform, Dec. 9, 1989, St. Louis, Missouri.

Most people at the very top of our government -- presidents, their economic couselors, the Congress--are utterly innocent of how this system works. As a reporter I've seen that again and again. The closer you get to the inner room, the more you see human confusion, error, misguided intentions. They're as fallible as the rest of us.

At most three dozen members of the House and Senate genuinely understand monetary policy. The system is designed that way. Constituents will come to their representative's office and say, "The Fed is closing our plants, it's crushing our farmers," and he'll say, "That's terrible, I'm with you." Then he'll take to the floor of the House and denounce the Federal Reserve in the most flamboyant language. Well, the Fed understands that part of its role in the system is to be the public scapegoat occasionally for doing things politicans would get un-elected if they did.

Most members of Congress are quite unconscious of how they play out these charades. As soon as the Fed changes course and a recession begins to subside, the Congress falls silent and nothing has been changed. They haven't reformed the Fed, they haven't democratized it, they haven't pursued any of the questions their constituents wanted pursued. Until the next recession when they make the same speech again.

I don't think our political leaders are going to see their way out, frankly, by reading my books, or Larry's, or by listening to our speeches. The only way you can educate them is to begin humbly in places like this by convincing average people that they're perfectly capable of taking this stuff on if they trust their own common sense and values and have the guts to assert them. If enough people begin to do that, you'll then have a voice that can speak to the system with the logic of truth.

http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2014/05/08/digital-economies-markets-money-and-democratic-politics-revisited/

My close study of the TF2 economy revealed a more complex picture; one in which barter still prevails even though the volume of trading is skyrocketing and the sophistication of the participants’ economic behaviour is progressing in leaps and bounds. We found that some items begin to evolve as currencies but then, all of a sudden, another competing item takes over. Moreover, we discovered that there are ‘islands’ within the community within which some item has become the island’s currency but has failed to acquire a universal monetary role.

[..]

If this community of switched-on, keen, perfectly well informed traders can still leave room for considerable, and variable, arbitrage, the efficient markets’ hypothesis, (according to which there is no room for systematic profits from buying and selling) is plainly false. This we have always known intuitively. It is ever so nice, however, to see it in full Technicolor!

[..]

video game and POW economies, differed substantially from a capitalist economy. What was the difference? The lack of a labour market and the lack of a money market. The two markets that give really-existing capitalism its character and which make macroeconomics so different to microeconomics.

[..]

democratising and de-politicising money will not be one of Bitcoin’s contibutions to humanity, I am afraid.

[..]

• The Security Problem is that a hacker can hack into your computer and disappear with your BITCOINs. And if you entrust your BITCOINs to an unregulated BITCOIN bank, it is the banker that may run away with your BITCOINs or be hacked himself – the equivalent of a bank robbery. The Mt Gox experience.
• The Economic Problem is entirely separate. Whereas the Security Problem may wreck BITCOIN, if BITCOIN is not wrecked and grows into being macro-economically significant, it is BITCOIN that will wreck the economy. Why? Because it is designed to mimic the Gold Standard – the monetary system that caused one depression after the other, from the 19th Century until 1929, and which was replaced because capitalism cannot breathe under an exogenous quantity of money.

[..]

One may retort that perhaps it would be a godsend to re-configure market economies so that they are debt-free. But let me remind you that debt is to capitalism that which Hell is to Christianity: seriously unpleasant but absolutely necessary.

Capitalism unleashed incredible productive powers by reversing the three stages of economic activity. Under feudalism, the three stages came in the sequence of production, distribution, financialisation. Peasants produced agricultural commodities – that’s production, then the Sheriff would come in to claim the Lord’s share – that’s distribution; finally, the Lord would sell his surplus food in local markets for money part of which would be lent out – that was financialisation.

This sequence was turned on its head by capitalism: First came debt, or financialisation, as the entrepreneur borrowed money to hire the means of production from landlords, labourers and suppliers. Second came distribution, as the entrepreneur would hand over these borrowed funds to the landlord, as rent, to the workers, as wages, and to the suppliers, as returns to their capital. Production would now be the final stage, with the resulting commodities being sold in markets and the entrepreneur, if he was lucky, keeping the residual, or profit.

The reason why capitalism multiplied productivity by a huge factor, thus creating incredible wealth (but, paradoxically, also unprecedented poverty) is because of this reversal of the sequence, placing finance, or debt, at the top of the queue. It was as if the entrepreneur put her hand through the timeline, grabbing some value that was not yet produced from the future, bringing it to the present, putting it to good use in the production process so that goods could emerge that would then be sold so as to return to the future the value taken away from it – with interest!

Debt, ladies and gentlemen, is of the essence for really existing capitalism. While too much debt, like too much of anything, can be a terrible thing, it is the case that No debt, No capitalism! This is why the fantasy of a future with stateless money, like Bitcoin or some variant of it, is dangerous: its in-built deflationary tendency makes debt unsustainable.

[..]

Bitcoin’s technology offers us opportunities for creating new instruments that are supportive of existing monetary policy. Indeed of democratising state money without replacing it.

it is arguable that the Founding Fathers invented the idea of the American People, and of their ‘sovereignty’, as a means of instituting a stable government over which the People would have no direct control. Though representatives were to be elected, the Federalists were particularly wary of a ruling Demos. The multitude was to stay out of political deliberation and be contented that they are represented in Congress by their social superiors. Who were these to be? Unlike Plato who thought that the ideal Republic ought to be run by the philosophers, the Federalists had another category in mind: The merchants. Today, it would be the corporations.

Seen from this perspective, is it not the case that voter-apathy and oligarchy were designed into our liberal democracies at their inception? I think that this question is pertinent when we discuss the impact of the Internet on democratic institutions for a simple reason: If democracy is floundering by accident, and due to the transactions costs involved in participating, then the Internet could solve the problem, at least potentially. But if, in sharp contrast, apathy is built into our democracies then perhaps a technical fix will not do.

[..]

But for people-rule to make a comeback, for the Demos to be empowered, we need much, much more than technology. To materialise, e’democracy must help breach the two-century old divide between political and economic power. Alas, this would mean the re-distribution of direct political control of the production and distribution process.

Is something like this possible? Yes. And no. No, because as long as corporate power remains high and largely disconnected from the sphere of democratic politics, no Twitter or Facebook campaign will do it. And yes because Internet technologies are quietly eating away at the foundations of corporate power, making e’democracry less and less of an impossible dream.

In short, the combination of: (A) the increasing input of customers in the production of the digital universe that is the main product, (B) the near-zero marginal costs, and (C) the gradual removal of the borderline dividing developer and consumer, combine to annul the raison d’ etre of the traditional corporate structure.

You may, understandably, put it to me that, while this may all be true regarding video games, it is not pertinent in all the other industries producing analogue, material products. True. But throw a sophisticated 3-D printer in the mix and, suddenly, the picture changes. Like Kodak and photolabs disappeared from our lives, so may the oligarchic corporations.

[..]

In this world, what will the role of Ford or Toyota be? Assuming that the problems of crash testing, seeking approval etc. can be resolved communally, future corporations will lack their oligarchic hierarchical power structures courtesy of the loss of the economies of scale that now keep them in business as behemoths.

Maybe I am running ahead of the times. But it is not inconceivable that multi-player video games, 3D printers and flat management structures may hold the key to a mass social transformation which will allow for the wholesale reintegration of the economic sphere into political society.

Perhaps then, once corporate power is depleted and replaced by decentralised command over value and production, the Internet will be in a position to empower the Demos so that actual Demo-cracy may become feasible.