It's All About The Money

[Profpat]

Indebtedness.

Which came first? Money or indebtedness? Does one neccessitate the other? Is either neccessary?

Having been raised with the principle of sweat equity and personal saving before major purchase, one area of reform should be an end to unsecured credit. Spending today and re-paying with interest tomorrow, steals the joy of potential from the future, unless you are fond of an albatross around your neck.

Easy credit has been too great a temptation for many people (and Nations) to maintain a balanced ledger.

Regards,

Labelwench

Hi Labelwench;

I agree with what you are saying, easy credit is a temptation.

Money is debt. It's the government's IOU. 50 -100 years ago they would give you gold and/or silver for those greenbacks ( secured ), now you can use them to buy goods and services ( unsecured ).

However it's through debt that we are able to grow as a society with the infrastructure necessary to provide a good and healthy life.
Both the benefit and the debt are increasing.

Best,

Pat

[labelwench]

However it's through debt that we are able to grow as a society with the infrastructure necessary to provide a good and healthy life.
Both the benefit and the debt are increasing.

While people are responsible for their choices in personal debt, we live in a world of inflated prices and disparate pay scales that leave some with no recourse but to accept debt in order to provide for themselves and family.

The national debt is a yoke placed on it's citizens by their government, democratically elected by a generally apathetic voter turn-out. (Statistics)

The benefits may well be increasing, but access to them is not universal.

Personally, I am blessed to have access to all that I need, and I have worked hard to acheive my goals. My pleasure is much diminished by the knowledge that many others will not even have an opportunity to prosper, because the game today, is more competitive and the stakes and costs, likewise higher.

updated 5:23 p.m. PT, Thurs., July 16, 2009
DES MOINES, Iowa - With the federal deficit topping a record $1 trillion and rapidly on its way to nearly doubling by this fall, the government desperately needs to squeeze out every tax dollar it can find. That could translate into more audits or at least a letter from the IRS politely asking you to refigure your taxes.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31951548...consumer_news/

[SB_UK]

With our economic system we attempt to truly feed the world.

I think that's what the banking enclave people in Monaco and Switzerland shout out (by way of their own justification) from helicopters as they fly past in their jet planes on their way home to their rocket launchers to cause a little more civil unrest in some poor part of the World -
- just bought into munitions
festering
dumps are they.

Note the fat cats who wheel out their lowliest member of staff when their company looks as though it's about to go down the pan -
- and then demand $48 trillion from the World bank to protect his job.

And all this after investing in multi-million dollar puppy dog eye cosmetic surgery to ensure their 'play' greatest likelihood of success.

What the World Bank Governmental Official (who's either in your pocket or about to be duped)
does or doesn't realise (respectively)
is that either ways that lil' guy is up for extermination -
- wouldn't want a living, breathing trace of one's own corporate corruption -
best to eliminate
- your rival corporate entity might be able to secure and use him against you.

Will you just stop and think of the stock holders; they'll revolt if 'theyz don't getz their money.

People'z our problem; People and their environmentally unsupportable drive for ((gimme' gimme' gimme') all ya')money.

And your rival corporate entity (which you'll own one day)

Microsoft buys Apple

- where your rival corporate entity is the only other who can afford legal action.

The lawyer smiles benignly down from Heaven -
- he 'don't' care either which way -
because every either which way
- he win$.

~*~

Current economic systems are flawed in that rich implies poor and the rich get richer.

The system appeals to our animal origins -
- our animal origins in which forming 'physical' hierarchical structures was our thing.
The speciation of man though resulted in us shifting away from the physical (Kings, landowners, soldiers and serfs) and onto the logical hierarchical abstraction layer (mind).

The physical abstraction level is concerned with optimization of the individual for species benefit (optimization of the genome).
The mental abstraction level (as higher emergent structure) is formed from a structure constructed from the various human minds (in our species) -
formed into one.

There is only the collective mind -
- our individual voices (as expressions of our individual minds) are simply varying shades of expression of this one mind's single voice.

Following a path which supports physical hierarchy results in an actual incapacity to follow the path which supports formation of a logical hierarchy.
They're not consistent; worse still - they confound.

Our lives consist of a battle between our animal instincts -
and our mind (under development) -
one suggesting that we make as much money as possible (for happiness)
and the other that we develop our mind as far as is possible (as drive)
(~btw~ where there's an endpoint to this process
cf vedanta - the end of knowledge)
--- and ---
... ... ... where the mind is correct.

~*~

If we want to stand a chance of doing the right thing by each other (within community) -
we're going to need to find a system which prevents 'being rich implies poor'
and which
'prevents the rich from gettin' richer'
just by virtue of bein' rich .... ...
- and in which the mind is allowed (assisted) to be correct since
they're (these t->w<-o approaches) not consistent with one another; worse still - they absolutely do confound.

And that system'd be -

hmmm ... ... ...

I really really really don't know.

1. One fixed wage to all in a one~world currency
2. Ban debt (enforcing - living within our means)
3. All banking transactions are open
   - with only one~world electronic currency transactions being permitted
4. One~world ownership of all physical property (houses,raw materials ~etc~)

hey!
- where'd that come from then?

(a stirling plan or wot, wot Arbuthnot ?)

[SB_UK]

$wi$$ and MoneyMoneyMoneyocan obscene levels of wealth will collapse if we prevent fraud.

All banking transactions are open
- with only one~world electronic currency transactions being permitted

is all we need.

Pretty pictures ugly.

#8 of 14 pictures Zug provides the registered office for thousands of companies including mining giant Xstrata

... ... ... the trees, the trees, the Truffula trees.

[SB_UK]

The current economic system succeeded in globalization (succeeded in generating onexworld
- by mobilizing greed)

- the only mechanism which could work, whilst we were driven by animal concerns.

Upon understanding the flaw within man which resulted in our need to bring together the world by mobilizing greed

- we find ourselves freed from the desires which have governed our every waking action

- freed from these repressive desires
- we reach around for (and find) a better alternative, Arbuthnot.

~*~

Money's dull and is only retained because of the strangle hold it exerts on people
- life without money is currently (at least in urban centres within the Western world)
impossible.

One fixed wage guaranteed to all people from birth to death; human nature is to strive towards 'fun'
- where 'fun'

neural stimulation

is a collective
- human collective
- a shared pursuit.

Impossible to have fun whilst alone in a box (regardless of whether the box is bobbin' about on The Beach in Thailand someplace)

->- to ->- ADDF::Stabile

Can we return to (the nature of human attraction for) fun sometime?

I don't like fun.

[timeparticle]

Hi, Lw.
I recommend watching the 47 minute movie on You Tube called Money as Debt.... 2007 production.

It runs through the history of money very well. It says that basic economics shows that the great majority of money is created from banks, not the Federal Reserve( in the US), from debt. The more debt it can create, the more money it can create.

Over time, it explains, the debt becomes so large, that it becomes impossible to repay. The financial entities, then, must create an economic shift so that the debt becomes more manageable. Who pays for the shift, and repays the institutions? We do...

There will be a great change in our systems on this planet. This is part of the TOE. The science of economics is also affected by the new theories of other sciences....

[Profpat]

"..Who pays for the shift, and repays the institutions? We do..."

We the people have to, banks and the government and other organizations are just a collection of people. The reality is people and earth, the rest, ( governments, economic systems, banks, corporations ) are conceptual.

With the Earth, we need to do what the Bible tells us to do, that is replenish it.

With people, we can aid in their pursuit of happiness, however THEY perceive it.

The reality is that the system was able to provide real homes and vacations and education and the best of food from around the world and TV's and computers and entertainment and medical attention. And the system and real resources are capable of doing this around the world, and will do it, if you keep the faith.

Best,

Pat

[SteveA]

Hi Labelwench;

I agree with what you are saying, easy credit is a temptation.

Money is debt. It's the government's IOU. 50 -100 years ago they would give you gold and/or silver for those greenbacks ( secured ), now you can use them to buy goods and services ( unsecured ).

However it's through debt that we are able to grow as a society with the infrastructure necessary to provide a good and healthy life.
Both the benefit and the debt are increasing.

Best,

Pat

I agree with your comments here, except that I'm skeptical of the benefits of "fiat" currencies.

There is inherently no accountability in the system as resources can be consumed without any need for replacement - it's a system not far from slavery, but it's a slavery in terms of percentages instead of flat out claiming ownership of everyone.

At least when we used more tangibly valuable forms of trade between people in both directions (gold doesn't have as much "intrinsic value", in my opinion, as people place on it, but it's still better than paper, though barter could work to some extent, but really it's just about allowing competing currencies - you simply remove the threats or harm or harm to people who don't want to accept dollars - freedom of association and the inherent exchanges of value these represent).

Currently, there's nothing limiting virtual currency from being produced in any quantity to fund any number of potentially destructive social actions (I think wars are a great example - inflation tends to rise dramatically during wars as you have fiat currency created to "enlist volunteers" to go fight each other). At least when we used gold, if you wanted to fund it via gold and you ran out, you had to either offer something of actual value in exchange or you had to steal it face to face instead of running a printing press or altering some numbers in a bank account. There was also much less central control over the economy (which I see as generally destructive) when transactions were much more private using various forms of currency.

Consider that when the money supply is expanded, how are those IOUs distributed? I've personally not seen the federal reserve hand me an inflation check and also there's really nothing (except short term economic disorientation for many) that inflation or deflation changes - we could multiply the numbers on bank accounts and montary notes and debts in terms of dollars and nothing changes - Big Macs become $25 each, but you earn 10 times as much etc.

So "expanding" the currency doesn't alter anything directly, but what actually happens is that these newly produced dollars dilute the value of existing dollars as you have those new resources traded for products in the market that now become unavailable to others.

Anyway, history appears to show many problems (oftentimes resulting in wars) that arose from tolerating central forms of economic (and social) control and in the U.S. at least, it began just before the Great Depression (we have the "Gold Standard", which was the first standard paper dollar) and the Civil War (only a part of the war was over slavery, much of the rest was over economic centralization in Washington D.C. and causing economic problems in the south) and WWII (one again largely motivated by economic problems seen as externally imposed upon the society by global financial institutions) were largely motivated by the growth of large scale economic manipulation.

In itself, I don't think there are inherently problems with a monopoly that arises simply because so many people desire to utilize some institution, but in many countries there is not much of an option available as to what currencies the local government accepts - they try to assure people "accept" via threats of police actions and they generally don't want foreign currencies to compete and dilute the value of local currency.

It's really not much different than slavery, if you can force someone to accept a 'token' in "exchange" for something they don't desire to give up, then this is similar to a theif who leaves IOUs behind, but this system survives longer because it's economically more efficient than slavery as it still uses free markets to an extent (but that's only a slight consolation prize).

[labelwench]

Good comments, all.

Personally, I lean toward "sweat equity", be it from flexed muscle or furrowed brow.

Tangible result is my measure, and I count ideas, songs and poems as the product of work, albeit harder to define on the scale. (Thinking of the wisdom of the ages, preserved in cliche, koan, rhyme and song.)

Good old real estate, preferably arable, rates at the top of my scale.

Hearth and a home,
a place to call your own,
a little garden grown,
unencumbered by a loan.

Crystal water and pure air,
work and play in equal share,
friends and neighbors who care,
My paradise, free and fair.

Regards,

Labelwench

[SB_UK]

The videos explains the problem nicely -
- as I write I can hear

banking as a 'not for profit endeavour'
- sounds right

Banking (financial services) do not represent a valid mechanism for making money.

TP -
thanks for that -
I now understand why Britain and America have such large debts -

- such large National debts as an absolute pre-requisite (based around the mechanism which the banking system uses to function)
- to drive growth.

The current system is simply the very definition of unsustainability -
even worse than 'Monopoly' money
- because at least Monopoly money supply ceases when we run out of trees.