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Relative Theory of Money

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The Relative Theory of Money (French: Théorie Relative de la Monnaie, TRM) is a monetary theory by Stéphane Laborde, first published in 2010 with a preface by economist Yoland Bresson. It asks a single question: what should money be if no individual, present or future, is privileged over any other in its creation? Borrowing the method of Einstein’s relativity, it treats an economy as a spacetime frame and derives money from a principle of symmetry rather than from authority or debt. Its practical conclusion is the Universal Dividend: a money co-created in equal relative shares by every member of the economic zone. The theory is the foundation of the Ğ1 (“June”) libre currency.

Key Concepts

The TRM starts from the observation that economics, like any science, needs a defined reference frame and unit of measure before anything can be studied rigorously.

  • The economic zone as a spacetime frame. A monetary zone is a sovereign space together with its citizens, present and future. It is a discrete spacetime in continual creation and destruction, where each point is an individual with a limited lifespan. The average lifespan of the zone is written ev (espérance de vie).
  • The individual as the only common reference. No zone can be defined without individuals, so the individual is the single common and fundamental value of any valid economic frame. Crucially, every individual has a unique and personal view of the value of any thing, and no one can impose their valuation on others.
  • Relativity as a symmetry principle. Applying relativity to money means demanding symmetry: the laws of money creation must take the same form for every observer (every individual) regardless of their position in space and time. This is the heart of the theory.

A recurring analogy frames the whole work: money plays the role that the speed of light plays in relativistic physics. Light is not an object like the others; its value is invariant across all reference frames, and it is precisely because observers agree on that invariant that they can deduce the relativity of every other measure. Money is the common, universal measure on which the members of a zone agree, so that all other values can be compared relative to it.

The Four Economic Freedoms

The axiomatic core of the TRM states three fundamental economic freedoms, each understood as non-nuisance rather than license:

  1. Freedom of access to resources. Every citizen is free to access resources. This is bounded by the Lockean proviso: when someone appropriates an object, enough and as good must remain in common for others (one may not seize the only water source in a desert).
  2. Freedom of production. Every citizen is free to produce value.
  3. Freedom of exchange “in the money.” Every citizen is free to exchange with others in the common money.

To these the TRM adds a prerequisite, giving the four freedoms of a free monetary system: freedom of democratic modification of the monetary code, alongside access to resources, production of value, and exchange in the money. Laborde draws an explicit parallel with the four software freedoms of the Free Software Foundation: just as proprietary software hides its code, a money whose rules cannot be modified democratically (the example given is the euro and the Basel accords) deprives its users of fundamental freedoms. Gold fails the third freedom, since it is not universally accessible within a zone and forces a return to barter where it is absent.

The Problem with Debt Money

The TRM argues that money created as debt by a privileged issuer is structurally unjust on three counts:

  • Spatial symmetry is broken. Granting an exclusive privilege to issue money creates an asymmetry between the issuer and every other economic actor co-existing in the same period.
  • Temporal symmetry is broken. Debt money does not let the individuals of every generation participate equally in monetary creation across time.
  • Enslavement through the missing interest. When money is lent at interest but the interest itself is never created, the system mathematically forces a chase for money that does not exist, subordinating debtors to creditors.

A money with hidden, non-democratic code produces a value field shaped like a self-reproducing, unstable pyramid. A free monetary system, by contrast, produces a value field shaped like a sphere expanding in spacetime, compatible with the renewal of generations.

The Universal Dividend

The only money creation that respects both spatial and temporal symmetry is one in which each member emits an equal relative share of the money mass: the Universal Dividend (Dividende Universel, DU). Rather than a fixed sum, the DU is a relative proportion c of the existing money mass, distributed equally to every present member and renewed for every member to come.

The growth factor c is bound to the average life expectancy ev. The center of temporal symmetry sits at ev/2 rather than at ev, which sets the relative growth rate of the money supply (for a life expectancy around 80 years this lands near 10% per year). The defining property, summarised on the book’s back cover, is that the DU never decreases in nominal quantity and always remains at least a relative proportion c of the money mass. The version number itself, 2.718, is a nod to Euler’s number e, reflecting the exponential character of a symmetric, relatively growing money.

Ğ1 and Libre Currency

The TRM is implemented by Ğ1 (pronounced “June”), a libre cryptocurrency launched in 2017 and run on the Duniter blockchain software. In Ğ1, every certified human member receives the Universal Dividend daily, with the parameters chosen to follow the theory’s life-expectancy relation. The surrounding “monnaie libre” (free money) movement uses a web-of-trust certification model so that each account corresponds to one living human, preserving the one-individual-one-share symmetry at the heart of the theory.

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