Bernard Lietaer, scholar, father of the euro, former European Central Banker, former currency trader of the year (Business Week 1992) and current advocate of complementary currencies, etc., tells us that every dollar in circulation reflects a dollar of debt. Without debt, our dominant currency collapses. Literally. It is our collective reference point. Debt enables money to be created. Debt enables money to be reliable.
How do we get debt? People want money. Banks have money. Banks give people money-but only when they believe they will be repaid. Banks only believe they will be repaid when they have adequate security.
How have they been adequately secured? Real estate. How do they secure real estate? Survey stakes.
Here is where it gets fun.
Ever see real property legal descriptions? Probably-but you may not remember. And the underlying law? Whew. Anyway, we get these with survey stakes. Curious? Try keywording "stakes and plats" for more. Boring!? Absolutely. Yet, like Clark Kent, these innocuous legal constructs pack mighty wallops.
They look like run-on sentences, just gobbledygook. Originally filling volumes of the biggest, dustiest, dreariest books imaginable, your county clerk and recorder's office has most likely upgraded them to microfiche, maybe even computers.
Yet, legal descriptions rock. So do survey stakes. Why? They enable the legal descriptions that enable certainty. They enable land ownership with certainty. Thus defined are property rights and responsibilities, enabling these as social cornerstones. They enable money as we know it, warts and all.
Legal descriptions proclaim exact locations to the world with decimal point accuracy. Employing degrees and distances from points certain, they conceptually envelop blocks of land. As land transfers, descriptions follow titles but the land never moves. When combined with valid, market-sensitive appraisals, legal descriptions engender solid, reliable sources of confidence. This enables standards. Standards enable value.
And enable they do. Whether financing new purchases or serving as simple security for new loans, land provides ideal security. First, it does not move. Second, it is not vulnerable to theft. Third, the comparatively straightforward legal foreclosure process assures confidence. With these, lenders have genuine security in something inherently valuable that they easily can find and claim as theirs, all in due time and in due process. Now, the lender is secure. It knows its exact rights and the precise consequences of the borrower's failure to keep promises of repayment.
How do we know it is exactly thus? Survey stakes.