TEA or Titanic?

Enron, terrorism, world wars, poverty, pollution, ignorance, monopolization and other symptoms of "our" dysfunctional political-economics are just the tip of the iceberg.

The global financial casino is the iceberg. Whoever crashes into the iceberg sinks. Whoever builds a good life raft might survive and prosper.

Time-Energy Accounting (TEA) is a sturdy life raft for everyone's benefit.

Time + Energy = Wealth.

"I sincerely believe... that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale."
- Thomas Jefferson

The function of the Time-Energy Accounting (TEA) system, 100% backed by HUMAN TIME and RENEWABLE ENERGY, is to:

1. Administer a lawful citizens' currency.
2. Strengthen the liberties and responsibilities of individual citizens and local communities.
3. Minimize the centralization of power.
4. Balance competition and cooperation in the marketplace.
5. Minimize public and private bureaucracy.
6. Maximize efficient and equitable utilization of natural resources.
7. Eliminate the need for personal income tax.
8. Minimize the need for any taxation.
9. Minimize corporate-government racketeering.
10. Stabilize the money supply and price level.
11. Restore full-reserve banking.
12. Remove the primary cause of economic inflation, deflation, recessions, depressions, warfare and waste of resources.
13. Enhance life, liberty, tranquility and democracy for all.

The Time-Energy Accounting (TEA) network issues:

1. Citizens dividends backed by human lifetime ($1 = one hour = $730 per month) plus

2. Energy dividends backed by harvested renewable energy ($1 = one kilowatt-hour).

Who can reasonably deny that our lifetime is our most valuable asset?

Who can reasonably deny that benign renewable energy is the foundation of a sustainable civilization?

Renewable energy investments produce real dividends in the universal metric of kilowatt-hours (kWh) measured by ordinary energy meters.

Human lifetime is itself a natural dividend in the universal metric of hours measured by ordinary clocks (unless you endorse slavery).

Producers of renewable energy are free to sell their energy on a fair marketplace at competitive prices (ie: below $0.10/kWh) to consumers.

Because the harvesting of renewable energy is rewarded with TEA dollars, savings/investments are channeled to productive and sustainable infrastructure rather than paper money, precious metals, weapons, oil, uranium or other "barren" (non-renewable) commodities.

TEA dollars are valid for four (4) years from the month of issuance, then "self-redeem" or "self-extinguish" like expiring coupons. This stable monthly demurrage (deflation) rate of approximately two percent (2.083%) encourages participants to invest in productive infrastructure. The sooner participants circulate or invest TEA dollars, the more value their dollars have, since TEA dollars represent time-energy value for only four years.

Participants are issued citizens dividends once they are sixteen (16) or over so that parents will not be encouraged to over-populate for money. Citizens may vote in treasury elections once they are sixteen or over.

Nuclear power, new large-scale hydropower and open-loop geothermal power are not benign, sustainable or cost-effective. Windpower, solar-thermal, solar-electric, organic biofuels, closed-loop geothermal and micro-hydropower are sustainable and cost-effective.

Among other things, renewable energy can desalinate our oceans to produce abundant fresh water and eliminating another cause of warfare and environmental decay.

The issuing of TEA dollars is performed by elected local treasurers and their staff. Confederated / cooperative local treasuries co-audit each other on a randomly selected basis every three months (quarterly).

TEA dollars are lawful and negotiable currency. TEA dollars are not so-called "legal tender" concocted by "our" corporate government.

TEA dollars - paper or electronic - bear the following information:

1. Time-energy value represented.
2. Serial number.
3. Month and year of issue.
4. Month and year of expiration.
5. County or municipality where issued.
6. State where issued.
7. Signature of the local treasurer.

TEA Certificates are inherently more valuable and more difficult to counterfeit than Federal Reserve Notes, European Central Bank Euros and other unbacked fiat currencies. TEA Certificates are redesigned every four years and bear both universal and local design elements.

Our life - our time - is greater in value than any material commodity. Nobody has the right to presume that one person's lifetime is more valuable than another's. Doing so assumes the legitimacy of slavery. Time dollars represent the lifetime of all citizens and provide equal rights to all.

The average citizen in a healthy society can be expected to have a lifetime of approximately one hundred (100) years.

Valuing one dollar ($1) to one hour of every citizen's lifetime provides a stable and equitable trust fund of $876,000 per citizen:

$1 x 24 hours x 365 days x 100 years = $876,000.

Each citizen's trust fund of $876,000 represents his or her natural inheritance of lifetime.

When junior citizens become adult citizens at sixteen (16) years of age, such citizens are free to collect time-backed citizens dividends every month:

$876,000 / 100 years = $8,760 per year.
$8,760 / 12 months = $730 per month.

Each and every adult citizen receives time-backed citizens dividends of seven hundred and thirty dollars per month ($730/month) issued by elected local treasuries.

Energy is the most essential commodity for the functioning of civilization. All of our lives depend on energy. All forms of energy on Earth are derived from the Sun.

Renewable energy (eg: micro-hydropower, organic biofuels, solar-electric, solar-thermal, windpower) is abundant and decentralized energy available from the Sun's present energy flow.

Non-renewable energy (eg: fossil fuels, uranium) is scarce and concentrated energy stored from the Sun's past energy flow.

In less than one week, the Earth receives more solar energy than all fossil-fuel and uranium reserves combined.

Energy dollars - backed by benign renewable energy - represent the most valuable commodity civilization requires to survive and prosper.

Valuing one dollar ($1) per kilowatt-hour (kWh) of harvested renewable energy provides the foundation for a prosperous, peaceful, efficient and sustainable economy.

The TEA system's local treasuries maintain records of their resident population and the renewable energy harvesting within their locality and issue currency proportionately.

To ensure that all the TEA system's local branches are maintaining accurate records, all treasuries are co-audited by other treasuries every quarter.

To ensure no conflict of interests are established among local treasuries, the quarterly audits are performed by the treasuries of other localities selected each quarter on a random basis by elected representatives.

The random selection of rotating local treasury auditors is conducted by manually counted paper ballots by the elected state, district, provincial and territorial representatives.

State, district, provincial and territorial representatives also assist local treasuries in maintaining accurate and uniform records, and maintaining consistent universal design elements of TEA Certificates.

Local treasurers and district representatives are elected every four years by manually counted paper ballot. No electronic or mechanical vote tabulation is permitted.

Counterfeiting of TEA dollars - paper or electronic - is enforced by local treasuries in coordination with all state, district, provincial and territorial representatives.

Indicted counterfeiters are tried by jurors in courts selected by the elected representatives.

The sentence of a first-time convicted counterfeiter is the ten-year suspension of all such convict's citizens dividends and energy dividends.

The sentence of a second-time convicted counterfeiter is the lifelong suspension of all such convict's citizens dividends and energy dividends.

The sentence of a third-time convicted counterfeiter is the lifelong exile to an uninhabited iceberg in the Arctic Zone.

"Those who govern, having much business on their hands, do not generally like to take the trouble of considering and carrying into execution new projects. The best public measures are therefore seldom adopted from previous wisdom, but forced by the occasion."
- Ben Franklin

arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)