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TAX & SALT
מעשר
The salt monopolies established at the turn of the
millennium, such as the Gabelle [fr]/gabellum [latin]/quabala
[ English =receipt] [arabic]/gavia [hebrew]
were the basis for a 'relatively' ordered but still
authoritarian Medieval history. They were
administered by the monks, and their Royal siblings. The
customs and salt tax collecting points, 'limes' delineating the local inland
salt monopoly or alternatively the through trade became the future frontier lines of
today's 'sovereign' states. It also led to the
misunderstanding that a government monopoly in certain
public sectors must be efficient and for 'our own' good.
The
monopoly ensured that the population was bound to contribute
to the community wellbeing willingly. Provided
that the demand was not in the extreme and that citizens
could discern improvement and service for all, any
available valued asset or proportion of such assets were
Mankind can live without gold...but not without
Salt -[CASSIODORUS]
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ESSAY - SALT and the
evolution of MONEY
ESSAY - SALT and the community loss of civil liberty
ESSAY
- SALT and the evolution of MONOPOLY
[
המלח והתפתחות המונופול ]
SALT and the evolution of TAX
The salt monopolies and their
enforcement were the cruelest but perhaps the most practical of instruments
for consolidating and wielding power until the Industrial
Revolution produced cheap salt. The inventive use of modern burning fuels suddenly allowed the
efficient mass production of salt for everyone . The
remnants of these authoritarian regimes are still with us, because
anti-trust law is not yet fully recognized by most except the West's form of
democracy. Even in some of the most advanced capitalist and democratic
regimes this legislation is not fully understood.
An important component of
wielding the power of the salt monopolies was the forced collection of
valued contributions to an authority. An authority was established the
moment a community needed to organize community services. Possibly the
first relevant and important community service was the preservation /
salting of meat proteins for extended periods. In the case of the temples it
was a portion of the meat [(Hebrew:
קָרְבָּן "sacrifice"; plural: korbanot or qorbanoth
קָרְבֳּנוֹת), in
Judaism
which was processed by sacrifice.
In the Temple in Jerusalem it was called a MA'ASAR
מעשר
(Tithe) or Pe'ah (Hebrew:
פֵּאָor
- a poor man's tithe] ie: approx. a tenth of the perceived value or portion.
In the case of the Temple operation The Tithe gave the Temple workers their
living income and later developed into a tax and gave the Temple a
status of an authority .
Prior to the establishment of
money the contribution could have been of anything with a mutually agreed
value Later as the services provided by the Temple regime became
more varied and included protection of the monopoly and bye products of the
sacrifice processing, it was necessary to make widely available a more universal means of
exchange which developed into money, eg Cowry shells, and gold. In
extreme cases of famine even slavery became a means of exchange.
In order to impress
confidence and perhaps to give a type of branding to these important
services the exclusivity of Cowry shells or gold
and coins were no longer enough. In order to represent and
give value to a growing community Hall-marked and self-stamped coinage and self-printed
paper money given to citizens as tax receipts, gave the economy its own
additional means of exchange without limit. Today printing a personal
cheque might be considered to be printing money.
Heller money printed in the City of HALLE [hal
-
αλάτι
- alati = Greek salt]
The term heller (Czech:
haléř,
Slovak: halier) was also
used for a coin valued at 1/100 of
koruna in
the
Czech Republic (Czech
koruna) and
Slovakia
(Slovak
koruna),
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SALT as MONEY
Aristotle believed that primitive barter trading of
standardized commodities 'hall-marked" by an authority for correct weight and
quality, represented the first use of "money". He says......."as the the
necessaries of nature were not all easily ,portable, people agreed for the purposes of
barter, mutually to give and receive some article which.....was practically easy to handle
in the business of life.....The trading of
standardized pieces of salt, and metal have
all the the aspects of dealing in what we call today....money.
__________________________________________________
Minor Unit of Salt-bar Money [Pitt Rivers Museum, South Parks Road
Oxford.]
The Museum has many fine examples of local currencies from around the world—shell
money, feather money, stone money, salt money
__________________________________________________
For instance bread-like
moles of salt each weighing about 5 kg still circulate in Ethiopia as a means of payment
The Horn of Africa is
presently considered to be one of the poorest
parts of Africa and salt
"Amoles" were only until recently still used as means of exchange
An old Persian word for the shekel was a [pathuka]--a 'ram'" (Dandamaev and Lukonin) It also meant five fingers [or worth a handful of salt?]
possibly the handful of salt was the amount required to de-hydrate
by osmosis the meat of one ram and render it "kosher"
Ethiopian airlines advertisement
Pliny following Aristotle's ideas, interprets the use of
salt as a means of payment ..."in Rome...the soldier's pay was originally salt and
the word salary derives from it..." Plinius Naturalis Historia. XXXI -
[ Pliny
may well have interpreted this payment wrongly. To judge from the missions and the
locations to which the Roman army was dispatched, it would seem that protecting the
salt sources and ensuring the 'via salarium' was the true military objective
- The first "legions" aka : LEGIO : "levying" for
the monarchy, were not paid since the collection of salt from
those sources which was clearly the ultimate value itself, was the
Military
business and responsibility. It was necessary for their economic
viability as a domesticated entity. The minting of money and its
perceived representative value has always depended upon the health of the economy and on the effectiveness of the
regime's governance. Failing these the mint could only rely on
an intrinsic mint value - eg salt. Thus Rome may not have "fallen"
into decadent bankruptcy but
only moved to a location where this basic value was available -
the eastern end of the Mediterranean where Jerusalem's Dead Sea
salt and the Tuz Golu salt lake in Cappadocia gave apparent
valuation to the economy.
].
The 2008 MONEY CRISIS and our complete
misconception of moneyTax collection or the return of debt
as an added burden to the perceived value of an economy can reduce the
availability of money as a currency. Any regime seeking
market influence for example, within the Eurozone in the case of
Germany, can force others to bow to conditions. However since it is not
the availability of money which determines the value of an economy [Greece
et al] any form of debt should be fluid and extendable in
terms of its return. It has already been spent and prices have
already been recalculated.
Money is not a commodity. Salt
was a commodity and it's value was governed by it's availability - When
extremely difficult to obtain salt was available in exchange for human
bondage and the means of exchange was a slave and slavery.
MONOPOLY - Israel
THE NINE PRINCIPALS OF MONEY
MONEY represents VALUE [ money should
be specifically used as a means of measurement and not as a commodity ]
MONEY should only be printed or minted
in an amount
to reflect work and its value produced, and work in
progress over a designated period or when needed to replace
existing assets' representations of value.
MONEY
ought only to be spent at a relative rate equal to actual
services and work in progress or the changing of ownership of
assets
MONEY authorized as tax
reflects and holds steady the perceived value of the
community economy and the stability of regime
MONEY fulfils its representative value
when it is spent on an article or service of value to society and
which improves the living standard.
MONEY represents little
or no value when those 'who know not' how to spend it,
do not improve their quality of life.
MONEY represents negative book value when wrongly
or badly spent [inflation]
MONEY represents increased value when spending it
improves 'life' on this earth [deflation]
MONEY which is borrowed representing accompanying collateral should not be charged with
interest unless it is earning that interest as a profit
reflecting the added value of goods, services and work in progress
ESSAY - SALT and the evolution of
MONEY
[המלח
והתפתחות המונופול]
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Means of payment or "primitive money" is not yet
money in the sense of G.F.Knapp's "State theory" of money, however by
introducing the "tally" system - "tessera" or "talea" in
Latin, "kerbholz" [notched wood] in German, "Teomim" in Hebrew,
"symbolon" in Greek, Chih-chi" in Chinese ....the essential element in the
evolvement of money currency became possible, ..eg: the deposits of stored valued goods
[salt] were represented by the tally, which then itself became a means of payment.
The tally was treated as currency. Metal coinage and
and paper money both became mass produced tallies, cheap to make but also easy to imitate,
and so eventually limited to "smaller money" and used to pay individual tax. . A
further refinement - the records of the tally's existence, became tangible and
transferable, and so on, until even work and services could be "notched up" as
transferable value. Thus paper 'value' began to replace the wooden tally system. It was
the State's "charter" which gave such transactions their value and credibility,
and state monopolies on valuable goods, which ensured intrinsic value. For example, in
China in 1329 AD, all tax was paid in paper money, 82% of which came from
the salt monopoly.
The
Tally was conventionally, a willow stick up to eight feet long and notched to indicate the
sums loaned to government, receipts and advances were normally only in very large amounts
in millions of pounds. On repayment the split halves were matched together. Tallies were
abolished only in 1826. The burning of these old tallies caused [by chance] the
destruction of the Houses of Parliament in 1834
MONOPOLISING the salt supply allowed
control of the meaning and the value which money represented As
recently as 1930 this was demonstrated by Ghandi in India. In
particular the French Revolution also demonstrated how vicious this control
could hurt inhabitants.
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