Money creates power. So those that seek to exercise power have sought to control the production and management of what can be used as money and/or what they define to be money. Over thousands of year, rulers, dictators, churches, popes, sovereigns and bankers have involved themselves in the control of money. History records many alliances between the self-interests of bankers, rulers and religions. While the development and spread of democracy has reversed historical practices in exercising power, the development of decentralised banking controlled by the people for the people has yet to be re-introduced. The democratisation of global communications through the internet with cell phones transacting e-money provides a technology for democratising economic power in a way democracy has for political power.
The above is an extract from the working paper of Dr Shann Turnbull on "Electronic Money: Its Economic, Social, Political, and Environmental Impact" for the International Sociological Association research into "Modernity 2.0: Emerging Social Media Technologies and Their Impacts", which is accessible here.
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