Thread: Doesn't it seem like the American people work for the banks?

Originally Posted by Dannon Oneironaut

Hunter Gatherer societies most people work about 8 hours a week, if living with a tribe. When alone of course you have to work more. Work is inevitable until we let the technology do the work for us and we share in the fruits. It isn't just Americans who suffer in this apocalyptic bank run world, in fact the reason the rest of the world has it so bad compared to Americans is because of the banks in the first place. Being a happy well fed slave is better than being a starving one, but still slavery is bad and freedom is our right. We work for the banks, we don't work for ourselves and our families and communities. We work 40 hours a week and for a low wage. We are in debt. We cannot escape. This is slavery. Even our country's constitution is invalid if it contradicts the international banks and global trade. Our national forests don't belong to us. If the bank decides that we need to cut down the last of our forests to sell the timber to Japan to make a profit for the banks we have to do it.

So what's the personal/community solution?

Become more community oriented. Develop a support structure that allows as many members to disengage from the wage system as much as they possibly can. If you must work to pay for rent, live in a house with 5 people and work only part time just enough to pay the rent and then grow your own food, share food make your own clothing, do other things to help each other not need money. Move in with your parents and offer to start a vegetable garden, clean the house, mend clothing, fix furniture, etc. in exchange for not working or paying rent. Or, if you are well situated, offer the opportunity for someone else to do this at your house.

Immediately, you can take your money out of the bank and put it in a local credit union. Stop spending money at big national/international stores and only shop at businesses owned within your local community. Develop a 'localvore' diet and only buy food that comes from within 100 miles of your home. Get to know your neighbors and find out if there are any community building events or clubs in your area. See how you can help out the people that live right around you.

Originally Posted by Xaqaria

This is why I feel like you are engaging in an argument for the sake of arguing without knowing what you are talking about. The definition of a fiat currency is one that is not backed by any commodity. Your entire argument seems like it is based on this false assumption of somehow having a fiat currency that is also a form of representative money.

Fiat money is merely paper money that is used to indicate denominations of value. The government can declare it legal tender ( and usually does because it is easy to inflate/counterfeit ) but you seem to be stuck in this mentality that only Federal Reserve notes are fiat money or "currency." This is simply untrue. Bank notes and bonds can be give the title of "fiat money." They are receipt slips that indicate the amount of funds you have within your account and they were used in the 19th century.

Originally Posted by Xaqaria

Your underlining of the 'point that I missed' doesn't make any sense; you underlined essentially the whole example. Smith gives 1 coin away leaving himself with 899 coins, and so there is no inflation. If he had been using a fiat currency he would have 'printed' one coin and still had 900 left, meaning he would have caused inflation. I really don't see why this is so hard for you to understand. If you can find something in the article that explains why this isn't true, please just point it out to me instead of sending me on a wild goose chase through multiple articles.

I reposted the example in order for you to reread it which apparently you didn't or you continue to not understand what you are reading. There is no "printing" of one coin in the example. The borrower supplies his labor or some service at the cost of one coin which is incurred by the lender, therefore the borrower no longer needs to "create" that one coin in order to pay back the loan thereby proving that a monetary system can go through applications without having to "inflate" it.

Originally Posted by Xaqaria

The size of the money supply is the measurement by which inflation is judged, which is what we are actually discussing here, remember?

Yes but then you went on this tangent about how certain money naturally creates inflation.

Originally Posted by Xaqaria

Either way, the fed can essentially pull money back in by raising interest rates which is a deflationary pressure. Banks will keep smaller money amounts in reserve and circulation because their profit margins can only afford a certain level of interest payment, and therefore they will have less money to loan out, which would lower the money supply (which can only happen if there is a negative flow of money so he effectively would have controlled the flow).

Money "out of circulation" is not "out of supply." It still affects the purchasing power of all the other bills.

Originally Posted by Xaqaria

The building is irrelevant and is not the "federal reserve". The federal reserve is a collection of laws, charters, mandates and policies that very much 'tell Bernanke what to do'. Without them, he would be without motivation and completely powerless to boot.

So you think pieces of paper give Bernanke power and "motivation"?

Originally Posted by Xaqaria

Edit: as a side note; I don't understand what you mean by being "jeered" into reading the articles I posted. Can you explain?

You're comments are so bizarre that I don't think you actually read the articles that I link to yet try to make comments on what I said. The articles I present give a background as to where my argument is coming from so it is no wonder that you are saying stupid things like "Are you a bot?" and "you don't know what you are talking about." I then have to make retorts to your brain farts thereby compelling you in some manner to actually read what I linked. That is what I mean by being "jeered."

Fiat Money

any money declared by a government to be legal tender.
state-issued money which is neither legally convertible to any other thing, nor fixed in value in terms of any objective standard.[5]
money without intrinsic value.

Where fiat money is used as currency, the term fiat currency is used

This is enough. None of your bullet point responses to my post had much of anything to do with what we are discussing. Please learn the basics of economics before continuing the discussion. I'm done with this run around.

its simple folks. well not exactly simple, but not as complex as the powers that be would have you believe. we simple print our own money backed by gold and dont worry about interest since we would have no debt. of course we would have to be responsible because too much printing would cause inflation (duh, i cant believe i have to explain this crap to you infantile morons). the only thing our current system creates is globalism, which isnt necessarily bad unless its being guided and control by a select few weirdo cultists. like washington said, "commerce with all nations, allegiance to none." or something like that. oh by the way, everything happening in american gov had protections put into place by the founders to protect us from where we have come and where we are headed. its called the constitution and it is far from antiquated. learn a thing or two about washington and the founders and you will be that much closer to saving yourselves. COMMENCE HATESPEECH

Originally Posted by Xaqaria

Fiat Money


This is enough. None of your bullet point responses to my post had much of anything to do with what we are discussing. Please learn the basics of economics before continuing the discussion. I'm done with this run around.

Thank you for completely dodging all of my points. I was getting tired of this ridiculous "discussion," if it can be called that, and now because of your inane response I don't have to waste 10 minutes of my life responding to comments that show your moronic inability to work out a proper argument.

Originally Posted by Majestic

I was reading this on yahoo answers, I thought it was interesting and never knew how the nations money system really worked.



I went to open a savings account with a bank today, and i just noticed something...their always trying to get you to sign up for loans and credit cards. They need to so you can spend THEIR ( the banks ) money and pay it back PLUS more.

I told myself I will never use a credit card. Almost seems like slavery. Your basically working for the banks. I'd seriously rather live poor and broke than working my ass off to get a check and none of the money is mine. Working your whole life to pay off debt.

Whoever owns the Federal Reserve Bank is a filthy rich summa b***h.

How deep down the Rabbit Hole do you want to go, mi amigo?

So.....whats it going to take for us to actually get off the chair, go outside, be brave, and demand an end to fiat money?

Or are we honestly going to wait for our politicians to make the change, which we all know will never happen? And since we know that aint never happening, what are we waiting for?

Originally Posted by Xei

You could always, like... leave.

Originally Posted by Majestic

I was reading this on yahoo answers, I thought it was interesting and never knew how the nations money system really worked.



I went to open a savings account with a bank today, and i just noticed something...their always trying to get you to sign up for loans and credit cards. They need to so you can spend THEIR ( the banks ) money and pay it back PLUS more.

I told myself I will never use a credit card. Almost seems like slavery. Your basically working for the banks. I'd seriously rather live poor and broke than working my ass off to get a check and none of the money is mine. Working your whole life to pay off debt.

Whoever owns the Federal Reserve Bank is a filthy rich summa b***h.

Originally Posted by juroara

So.....whats it going to take for us to actually get off the chair, go outside, be brave, and demand an end to fiat money?

Or are we honestly going to wait for our politicians to make the change, which we all know will never happen? And since we know that aint never happening, what are we waiting for?

I don't think it has to do with cowardice. I think the problem is ignorance. Massive, widespread, willful ignorance combined with learned helplessness.

Originally Posted by WakingNomad

I don't think it has to do with cowardice. I think the problem is ignorance. Massive, widespread, willful ignorance combined with learned helplessness.

Maybe we need an easy to understand for dumb americans (like me!) why fiat money is a problem list. An easy to understand what the Fed. Res. is, what it does, and why its totally messed up. An easy to understand list on how debt is created and how its never going to be paid back under the system it was created under. An easy to understand list on how different the world will be when there's no need for inflation, interest rates or even debt!!!



**************************
Maybe someone here can make that list!

And only then can we talk about potential alternatives to fiat money. It's really hard to talk about though, because it requires our lifestyle to change.

When I told my friend that money should be backed by something real, the first thing that popped in her mind was "Gold?". That's the picture the media has given us. Gold or fiat money! Both sound retarded if you ask me. Back money by gold and were just gonna rip apart rain forests to find the last of it.

Gold vs fiat money is false dichotomy.

We do need money to be backed by something real, but that something real needs to be natural resources that actually directly relates to the wealth of a nation (and people can be included in that list). All of our wealth, whether its a fancy house, a car, an ipod, it all comes from nature, every bit. Natural resources = wealth.

The modern lifestyle is unsustainable, and its allowed to be unsustainable because of fiat money. Fiat money is backed by nothing because it makes the assumption that natural resources will never run out. Unfortunately for our daydream, that just isn't true. We have only one earth. So fiat money is directly related to the environmental problem, because the cost of the environment isn't apart of the equation.

Water is going to decide the fate of cities and nations in the near future. Lakes and rivers are drying up and what lakes and rivers we have are being polluted. Cities and nations are going to bid over water. Our imaginary fiat money can't magically continue to buy water that doesn't exist. What then? If we stay on this monetary system, futurists predict a massive exodus on a global scale. When the water becomes too expensive to afford, entire cities will be vacated. Water will determine the wealth of a place whether or not we like it to.

If we imagine that our monetary system was backed by natural resources, then being green and eco-friendly wouldn't be some little pet project just to make the weird people shut up. It would be a top priority across the board! When water equals dollars, were not gonna tolerate anyone anywhere polluting our waters. Were not gonna tolerate extreme wasteful uses of water, etc.

But this also means the American dream of owning your very own chlorinated pool has to go with the way of the dinosaurs.

The system we have now asks us to be good samaritans and choose to be eco-friendly at our monetary expense. Have you ever noticed how much more expensive organic food is to conventional food? Because of my bills, I'm actually having a hard time choosing healthy food. Consuming my daily fruits and veggies is costing three times as much as junk food.

Why is organic food more expensive? I have no bloody idea. Trace the actual costs of production and producing healthy organic food is DIRT cheap. Conventionally grown foods on the other hand have to buy a whole slew of chemicals, bees drop dead, more money is spent cleaning the mess of the chemicals and purchasing more bees, and then whole process repeats. Its an expensive way of producing food!

Invisible costs become visible. Prices will drastically change, making the choice to be eco-friendly sound economics.

I'm no expert. I'm not sure exactly how it all works. I just know that natural resources has to be a part of the fundamental equation again. I think it would be a win win situation, and that the more we know the easier it'll be to make this great transition.

Originally Posted by juroara

Maybe we need an easy to understand for dumb americans (like me!) why fiat money is a problem list. An easy to understand what the Fed. Res. is, what it does, and why its totally messed up. An easy to understand list on how debt is created and how its never going to be paid back under the system it was created under. An easy to understand list on how different the world will be when there's no need for inflation, interest rates or even debt!!!

Zeitgeist. The new one is better than the old ones.

Originally Posted by Laughing Man

Thank you for completely dodging all of my points. I was getting tired of this ridiculous "discussion," if it can be called that, and now because of your inane response I don't have to waste 10 minutes of my life responding to comments that show your moronic inability to work out a proper argument.

Oh gawd. You had to come back with ad hominim attacks after I left that perfect opportunity to fade away and hold on to some pride. Okay, lets do this thing then.

Originally Posted by Laughing Man

Fiat money is merely paper money that is used to indicate denominations of value. The government can declare it legal tender ( and usually does because it is easy to inflate/counterfeit ) but you seem to be stuck in this mentality that only Federal Reserve notes are fiat money or "currency." This is simply untrue. Bank notes and bonds can be give the title of "fiat money." They are receipt slips that indicate the amount of funds you have within your account and they were used in the 19th century.

What is your point? You repeated bits out of the wikipedia article. I am aware that anything that fits the definition of "no intrinsic value" and "declared legal tender by the government" is fiat currency and not just federal reserve notes. Please explain to me how something defined as "state-issued money which is neither legally convertible to any other thing, nor fixed in value in terms of any objective standard." could be (bolded)

Originally Posted by Laughing Man

Fiat money is possible, if you tied it to a commodity and don't engage in fractional reserve banking.

Originally Posted by Laughing Man

I reposted the example in order for you to reread it which apparently you didn't or you continue to not understand what you are reading. There is no "printing" of one coin in the example. The borrower supplies his labor or some service at the cost of one coin which is incurred by the lender, therefore the borrower no longer needs to "create" that one coin in order to pay back the loan thereby proving that a monetary system can go through applications without having to "inflate" it.

I understand that in the example there is no printing of money. That is because the example does not apply to fiat currency but only to representative currencies or direct money currencies( like gold coins ). In the real world (which is what we are discussing) THERE IS NO STATIC MONEY SUPPLY TO GIVE OUT. Fiat 'money' (under fractional reserve) comes into existence when it is lent or printed. I am trying to explain to you how the example does not apply to a fiat currency (the real world) with a counter example. Do you understand that?

Originally Posted by Laughing Man

Yes but then you went on this tangent about how certain money naturally creates inflation.

Laughing Man. This is not a tangent. This is what we were originally discussing when you took issue with the fact that fiat currencies naturally create inflation. Wake up to the discussion at hand.

Originally Posted by Laughing Man

Money "out of circulation" is not "out of supply." It still affects the purchasing power of all the other bills.

When a loan is paid to a bank, it does not become "out of circulation". It ceases to exist. The money for the loan only existed because it was backed by the obligation to pay it (the debt). This is how fractional lending works and how our money is created (and destroyed). Therefore, if the federal reserve raises interest rates, banks continue to take loan payments but do not loan out as much money and so the total supply of money goes down (deflation).

Originally Posted by Laughing Man

So you think pieces of paper give Bernanke power and "motivation"?

Not a piece of paper; laws, charters, policies, and mandates. None of which can be equated to the paper (or hard drives) they are written on.

Originally Posted by Laughing Man

You're comments are so bizarre that I don't think you actually read the articles that I link to yet try to make comments on what I said. The articles I present give a background as to where my argument is coming from so it is no wonder that you are saying stupid things like "Are you a bot?" and "you don't know what you are talking about." I then have to make retorts to your brain farts thereby compelling you in some manner to actually read what I linked. That is what I mean by being "jeered."

Don't kid yourself. You aren't retorting anything I say. You are trying to attack me personally to make up for the fact that you apparently don't have a clue what we are even discussing, let alone anything meaningful about the topic. Stating that you do not know what you are talking about is not "jeering"; it is the truth as I see it and you have yet to prove it wrong.

Originally Posted by tommo

Zeitgeist. The new one is better than the old ones.

I told my friends and family about it when it came out. I've offered to sit down with them and keep them company since they didn't want to watch a long documentary alone. I've told them they can watch it in small doses. When they have time. But they all give me the same excuse "maybe later".

Apathy, apathy apathy.

I want something condensed and in your face. Something no longer than five minutes that people can't deny anymore. Maybe even five minutes is too long. You got like thirty seconds to wake them up and get their attention. Something like thirty seconds to scream and shout: The Federal Reserve creates artificial debt that can never be payed off. The global economy owes money to imaginary institutions. Reset the global debt to zero and end fiat money.

Originally Posted by tommo

But as I said. I don't see much difference (on a personal level) between working all year to have enough money to buy food or going out and hunting/finding/growing your own food. Elders never had to keep working until they were 60+ to survive. The fittest people went out and hunted.
But anyway, take your pick, it's either mental or physical anguish. Unless you figure everything out and overcome your automatic reactions to things.
Both have their downsides basically.
If you count being bound by the laws of physics/nature slavery, you will never be free. Technically that is correct, but you might go crazy if you think about it too much.

I think about this a lot. Most of my life I've been told that the old fashioned way of living was full of suffering, so why should we want to go back to it? Instead I've been told that the modern lifestyle is the best lifestyle. No its not!

Growing up I've found all sorts of ideas why growing our own food is a life of suffering, and why we abandoned that lifestyle.

It started with the royalty. The servants were to do everything for the royalty, including doing their share of gardening. Servants really did toil in the fields. Not becuase that's how hard it is to grow your own food, but because they were toiling for the rich.

We've been told stories of servants and American slaves working in the fields from dawn to dusk. And then you have us, modern people who are dumb and think it actually takes 12 hours of toiling in the sun to grow your own food. What are you gonna do for 12 hours in field? Read Shakespeare to your tomatoes?

Do you know how time consuming growing your own food actually is? Do you know how NOT time consuming it is? You spend more hours at a modern job working to afford a fruit or a vegetable then you spend hours "toiling" in the field.

Agriculture is the oldest science. We've been perfecting it since we first observed a seed become a plant. It is the most time efficient production you can ever get into. You will never get so much for doing so little like you do out of gardening.

The most labor comes in conditioning the soil. That part is labor, unless you buy vehicles to do it for you. But even if you condition the soil by hand, you only have to do that once for your growing season or for your trees! Thats like one day in your entire growing season that you're really going to break a sweat. The rest of the time, you just water, fertilize. Sit. Wait. Play stare at the ground. Water. Fertilize. Sit. Wait. Stare at the ground.

Sure now and then you actually gotta do something, lake laydown straw, wow that's so hard.

But the point I'm making we have this idea that growing your own food is torture, its suffering, its toiling, its hard work. No its not!!! 95% of the hard work is prepping your kitchen garden. After that, you get to be lazy, and eat your lazy reward.

I would take the kitchen garden over having to work all day long at a meaningless job. At least in the garden I'm free. I don't have to answer to a boss. I don't have to answer to customers. I can be myself. I can listen to whatever music I want. I can rest when I want to if I get tired. I don't have to ask permission to use the rest room.

At the same time, I'm not gardening right now. Because I don't own property. I'm in a catch 22 like so many working in americans. I live paycheck to paycheck, and I'm in debt because I took out loans which I'm starting to regret ever doing that. Just missing one day of work can be the difference between buying enough healthy food, or seeing an eviction notice on my door.

Most Americans are living outside of their means, thus the debt. I am no exception. I need my car to go to work so I can pay my bills, and I don't even own the car, the bank does and they bill me. Funny world huh!

And I think part of the reason why so many people are in this catch 22, is because we've been lied to and told that this catch 22 is better than the alternative. How else can you get people to willfully sign up to be in over $200,000 of debt for decades except that they think, this is a good deal?

Originally Posted by juroara

I told my friends and family about it when it came out. I've offered to sit down with them and keep them company since they didn't want to watch a long documentary alone. I've told them they can watch it in small doses. When they have time. But they all give me the same excuse "maybe later".

Apathy, apathy apathy.

I want something condensed and in your face. Something no longer than five minutes that people can't deny anymore. Maybe even five minutes is too long. You got like thirty seconds to wake them up and get their attention. Something like thirty seconds to scream and shout: The Federal Reserve creates artificial debt that can never be payed off. The global economy owes money to imaginary institutions. Reset the global debt to zero and end fiat money.

Any last words for the public?

I probably said too many already.

Here in Southern Oregon there is a lot of permaculture going on. Do you guys know what permaculture is? We don't have to plow the fields, the worms do that for us. Growing our food is about as hard as a hobby is. It is not work. In the spring we sprout seeds and plant them in little trays and set them in the green house. When the frosts have ended we plant them in the fields. Then just add water. We collect all of our plant material and scraps and create compost. This is an automatic process. It turns to dirt by itself. We just got to keep a lid on it so it don't get too wet. The chickens feed themselves and they fertilize the fields. We just sit back and make music and art and eat. We hardly work. We are not in debt. We sell the produce at the farmers' markets and make money.

But the money is no good. We don't buy food with it. I think that realistically American currency will lose all value in a matter of time. People still use gold and silver, it just isn't a currency anymore, but it does have actual value. After our currency loses value people will still accept gold and silver. It isn't the ideal, as Juroara pointed out, but if you want to consider what you can do to protect yourself and the ones you love it is a good option to invest in gold and silver when you have some extra cash and bury it out in the woods. I may even take out a loan from the bank and spend it all on Gold and silver and pay the loan back in a year and have a bunch left over. Gold just reached a new all-time high. I remember when marijuana cost more than gold.

I just got back from a backpacking trip in the Siskiyou and Cascade Mountains. I had to work hard in order to survive. I brought a little freeze-dried food, but not enough to live on. I spent most of my days gathering plants to add to my soup (cat-tails, yum! Jerusalem artichokes, yum!). I spent a long time hunting before I killed a rabbit with my atlatl. Then I spent a day tanning the rabbit skin. But my point is that from waking to sleeping I was working, even when I was only hiking. One night I had to keep chasing off a bear. He kept me up all night. With a community, there is less and less labor. It is like magic! When people work together, we are free, when we are fending for ourselves, we are overworked.

Originally Posted by Dannon Oneironaut

Here in Southern Oregon there is a lot of permaculture going on. Do you guys know what permaculture is? We don't have to plow the fields, the worms do that for us. Growing our food is about as hard as a hobby is. It is not work. In the spring we sprout seeds and plant them in little trays and set them in the green house. When the frosts have ended we plant them in the fields. Then just add water. We collect all of our plant material and scraps and create compost. This is an automatic process. It turns to dirt by itself. We just got to keep a lid on it so it don't get too wet. The chickens feed themselves and they fertilize the fields. We just sit back and make music and art and eat. We hardly work. We are not in debt. We sell the produce at the farmers' markets and make money.

But the money is no good. We don't buy food with it. I think that realistically American currency will lose all value in a matter of time. People still use gold and silver, it just isn't a currency anymore, but it does have actual value. After our currency loses value people will still accept gold and silver. It isn't the ideal, as Juroara pointed out, but if you want to consider what you can do to protect yourself and the ones you love it is a good option to invest in gold and silver when you have some extra cash and bury it out in the woods. I may even take out a loan from the bank and spend it all on Gold and silver and pay the loan back in a year and have a bunch left over. Gold just reached a new all-time high. I remember when marijuana cost more than gold.

I just got back from a backpacking trip in the Siskiyou and Cascade Mountains. I had to work hard in order to survive. I brought a little freeze-dried food, but not enough to live on. I spent most of my days gathering plants to add to my soup (cat-tails, yum! Jerusalem artichokes, yum!). I spent a long time hunting before I killed a rabbit with my atlatl. Then I spent a day tanning the rabbit skin. But my point is that from waking to sleeping I was working, even when I was only hiking. One night I had to keep chasing off a bear. He kept me up all night. With a community, there is less and less labor. It is like magic! When people work together, we are free, when we are fending for ourselves, we are overworked.

I love you.

Originally Posted by WakingNomad

Any last words for the public?

I probably said too many already.

So, I finally got around seeing Capitalism A Love Story. I knew it was bad, but dead peasants? Wow. I think for my birthday I wanna make end fiat money signs. Or what would be a better phrase?

Originally Posted by juroara

So, I finally got around seeing Capitalism A Love Story. I knew it was bad, but dead peasants? Wow. I think for my birthday I wanna make end fiat money signs. Or what would be a better phrase?

AUDIT THE FED
or
END THE FED

A better sign would be "www.whatis-theplan.org"

Fuck I just made a whole post and internet went out. Basically, I agree with you Juroara lol

Originally Posted by Xaqaria

A better sign would be "www.whatis-theplan.org"

Nice video on the side +1
Wait.... WTF!? You can't register on the forums if you're using a proxy....
Seriously? It's called.... ANONYMOUS!

Originally Posted by Xaqaria

A better sign would be "What Is The Plan"

Yay! Just what I wanted, a revolution! How did you know?

July 30th!!! That sounds like fun! Will you guys join too?

There's also freedomainradio.com

Originally Posted by juroara

Will you guys join too?

If they allow people with proxies to register on their forum, yes.