The Paper Aristocracy, From William 111 to the Present Day. William Cobbett against Gold!

Roger Lewis I started reading the comments on You Tube Ruby.
62000 views and the comments are sadly run through with cynicism and pessimism.
The present system does not work, can the present system be redeemed?
The point the video makes which Is, one I think that escapes many peoples first intuition is that Debt and Money are but an idea. It is also an idea which has lots of Variable expressions and functions. Measuring by Monetary measures is a slippery concept placed upon the imaginary concept at the root of the question.
How do we resolve the question? all systems of political economy are idealistic constructs which are either, sold to the populace or imposed upon them. At the root again of this question is what are the choices and who is making them. This question is postulated by James Harrington in his Book the Commonwealth of Oceana from 1656 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Commonwealth_of_Oceana.
In Our own country, the Debate goes back to William the third and the establishment of the monopoly of the Bank of England.
I have been very deeply engrossed in the Pamphlets surrounding the issues raised by the Dissidents in the English Civil War and the later Luddite rebellion and what is called the last revolution in England the Pentrich Uprising.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentrich_rising
I was offended by this statement in Wikipedia.
“” They were lightly armed with pikes, scythes and a few guns, which had been hidden in a quarry in Wingfield Park, and had a set of rather unfocused revolutionary demands, including the wiping out of the National Debt.[1]”
It is true they were lightly armed but it is not true that their grievances were “Unfocused, revolutionary demands”

The Bumper sticker of their demands was the End of the “National Debt and a Larger Loaf of Bread”.

The defendants own Solicitor ( Mr Cross) mentions two pamphlets in his address to the jury both by William Cobbett. pp. 198-199 
https://archive.org/stream/trialsjeremiahb00ludlgoog… 
Cobbets writing on Paper Money are extensive and This paper on Gold. Is a comprehensive discourse by him on his own thesis.
https://archive.org/details/cobbettspaperaga00cobbrich

Cobbett was a friend of Thomas Paine and fellow exile from persecution by the state.
http://oll.libertyfund.org/quotes/538

For the earlier Struggles of the Civil war and the un met demands of the ordinary people A World Turned upside down by Christoper Mills is well worth reading, This essay of his sets out the Framework of the larger book.
https://www.marxists.org/…/english-revolution/index.htm

Two more recent statements on Money and Banking from Quiggley and Shubik.

”The monetary and financial system of an economy are part of the socio-politico-economic control mechanism used by every state to connect the economy with the polity and society. This neural network provides the administrative means to collect taxes, direct investment, provide public goods, trade. The money measures provide a crude but serviceable basis for the accounting system which in turn, along with the codification of commercial law and financial regulation are the basis for economic evaluation and the measurement of trust and fiduciary responsibility among the economic agents. A central feature of a control mechanism is that it is designed to influence process. Dynamics is its natural domain. Equilibrium is not the prime concern, the ability to control the direction of motion is what counts.

Money and financial institutions provide the command and control system of a modern society. The study of the mechanism, how they are formed, how they are controlled and manipulated and how their influence is measured in terms of social, political, and economic purpose pose questions, not in pure economics, not even in a narrow political economy, but in the broad compass of a political economy set in the context of society. ”
Martin Shubik

Money and Goods Are Different

”Thus, clearly, money and goods are not the same thing but are, on the contrary,
exactly opposite things. Most confusion in economic thinking arises from a failure to
recognize this fact. Goods are wealth which you have, while money is a claim on wealth which you do not have. Thus goods are an asset; money is a debt. If goods are wealth; money is not wealth, or negative wealth, or even anti-wealth. They always behave in opposite ways, just as they usually move in opposite directions. If the value of one goes up, the value of the other goes down, and in the same proportion.”
Quigley Tragedy and hope.
http://letthemconfectsweeterlies.blogspot.se/…/usury…

My main criticism of Peter Josephs Analysis of History is that it is from an American Perspective and hence is infused with American Cultural common places. The Americans have their own particular view of the English revolution and the Enlightenment philosophy that arose from it and a different view of Puritanism, particularly Calvinism. 
The roots of these questions go back to pre-history, the zeitgeist movies do a good job of examining those questions. Meanwhile, we still have a mountain to climb looking at causes and not scapegoats, this is the same problem which Cobbett grapples with , for the powerful the victims are always to blame.