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

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

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No economic slavery is capitalism.
Everyone in America must submit to labor in order to pay back the federal reserve bank.Taxes If you don't, the police come and put you in a small cage. The government borrows every dollar in circulation at interest from the Federal Reserve Bank. A private corporation. They have set up system that keep the USA in perpetual debt. Economic slavery. In a capitalist society if you do not submit to labor you will die. You will starve or freeze to death and be homeless and never get treatment if you are sick. In a socialist society these things are guaranteed to everyone regardless of any circumstances. Allot more like freedom.
Perpetual debt is economic slavery. Heres how corrupt the system is.
Lets say there is no money at all and the USA is just starting out. The government wants to build some hospitals so they borrow 1 billion from the federal reserve bank for the first time. The government now has 1 billion to circulate into the system to ensure the hospitals are built. The FED wants the government to pay back the 1 billion loan PLUS one hundred thousand to cover the interest. If there is no more than 1 billion dollars in the system, where does the 100 thousand come from to pay the interest? It doesn't exists. The government must go back to the FED and borrow more money. This is perpetual debt. It is virtually impossible to ever pay off the national debt. Savvy? This is called economic slavery ad is the whole point of Capitalism. The trick has been to keep this information from the public. Since the FED owns the media you will always be told a different story.

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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.

Well debt IS the new slavery. That's pretty obvious.

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"Some people think that the Federal Reserve Banks are United States Government institutions. They are private monopolies which prey upon the people of these United States for the benefit of themselves and their foreign customers; foreign and domestic speculators and swindlers; and rich and predatory money lenders."

– The Honorable Louis McFadden, Chairman of the House Banking and Currency Committee in the 1930s

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Chart 1 reveals the linear connection between the Rothschilds and the Bank of England, and the London banking houses which ultimately control the Federal Reserve Banks through their stockholdings of bank stock and their subsidiary firms in New York. The two principal Rothschild representatives in New York, J. P. Morgan Co., and Kuhn,Loeb & Co. were the firms which set up the Jekyll Island Conference at which the Federal Reserve Act was drafted, who directed the subsequent successful campaign to have the plan enacted into law by Congress, and who purchased the controlling amounts of stock in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in 1914. These firms had their principal officers appointed to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors and the Federal Advisory Council in 1914. In 1914 a few families (blood or business related) owning controlling stock in existing banks (such as in New York City) caused those banks to purchase controlling shares in the Federal Reserve regional banks. Examination of the charts and text in the House Banking Committee Staff Report of August, 1976 and the current stockholders list of the 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks show this same family control.

http://i51.tinypic.com/24cf8co.jpg

For what it's worth, credit cards aren't bad tools. The key word being tool. Use them to build credit, and nothing more. You can buy a hammer to build a house or to crush in your neighbors skull after you find him sleeping with your wife. Choice is yours.

Moral of the story: Federal Reserve is bad, mkay? I dunno why the hell the author decided to throw capitalism into the equation though.

"You (International Bankers) are a den of vipers and thieves. I intend to rout you out, and by the Eternal God, I will rout you out. If the American people only understood the rank injustice of our money and banking system, there would be a revolution before morning." - Andrew Jackson

"These International Bankers and Rockefeller Standard Oil interests control the majority of newspapers and the columns of these papers to club into submission or drive out of public office officials who refuse to do the bidding of the powerful corrupt cliques which compose the invisible government." - Theodore Roosevelt

You could always, like... leave.

We don't really work for them, but they control us. Our economy has gotten so top heavy, we have to get loans for everything, and they control how the loans work. The government regulates it, but the banks own half of the senate seats. The only way to break the hold of the banks is to let the economy completely collapse, or to boot them out of congress, but nobody wants the first, and the republicans wont let the latter happen.

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Originally Posted by ninja9578

We don't really work for them, but they control us. Our economy has gotten so top heavy, we have to get loans for everything, and they control how the loans work. The government regulates it, but the banks own half of the senate seats. The only way to break the hold of the banks is to let the economy completely collapse, or to boot them out of congress, but nobody wants the first, and the republicans wont let the latter happen.

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Why do you think it'd be good if the American economy collapsed?

Why do you think he thinks it'd be good?

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Originally Posted by ninja9578

We don't really work for them, but they control us. Our economy has gotten so top heavy, we have to get loans for everything, and they control how the loans work. The government regulates it, but the banks own half of the senate seats. The only way to break the hold of the banks is to let the economy completely collapse, or to boot them out of congress, but nobody wants the first, and the republicans wont let the latter happen.

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Originally Posted by Jeff777

Why do you think it'd be good if the American economy collapsed?

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Where did you get that idea?
nobody = {} <- empty set

Thats why its my goal to be debt free, seriously! I'm not gonna wait for people to wake up and realize that we are modern in debt slaves to an imaginary institution. Im also happy knowing that when I pay off my debts, the banks lose! If we all paid off our debts, the economy would crash.

Im not saying the economy should crash, but the system it runs itself by should!

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Originally Posted by juroara

Thats why its my goal to be debt free, seriously! I'm not gonna wait for people to wake up and realize that we are modern in debt slaves to an imaginary institution. Im also happy knowing that when I pay off my debts, the banks lose! If we all paid off our debts, the economy would crash.

Im not saying the economy should crash, but the system it runs itself by should!

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I myself plan to borrow a million dollars and bail to Russia or something hehe

Just want to point out that this is because of usury(or maybe even just borrowing money) not capitalism. And also that the democrats are equally responsible ninja.

If we were socialist rather than capitalist there would just be more debt and we'd have to work even harder. Capitalsim vs socialism is a false dichotomy.

Anyone wanna help bomb the federal reserve? We can hit monsanto while we're at it.

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Originally Posted by ninja9578

Where did you get that idea?
nobody = {} <- empty set

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My apologies. I misread (or didn't finish reading) your post. -puts US gov. report an economic terrorist hotline phone number away- :P

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Originally Posted by stonedape

Anyone wanna help bomb the federal reserve? We can hit monsanto while we're at it.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4gphpOflUU#t=0m50s

I think there should be a new type of economy, one that doesn't buttf**k the american people.

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Thats why its my goal to be debt free, seriously! I'm not gonna wait for people to wake up and realize that we are modern in debt slaves to an imaginary institution. Im also happy knowing that when I pay off my debts, the banks lose! If we all paid off our debts, the economy would crash.

Im not saying the economy should crash, but the system it runs itself by shoul

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This reminds me of Fight CLub and Tyler bombing the credit card company buildings. "If you erase the debt record, we all go back to zero. It'll create total chaos."

What would be the best type of economy.

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Originally Posted by Majestic

What would be the best type of economy.

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Communism.

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom its properly belongs."

Thomas Jefferson

I like TJ. He's my kind of guy.

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Originally Posted by Invader

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom its properly belongs."

Thomas Jefferson

I like TJ. He's my kind of guy.

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I love when people make such accurate predictions. People that do this are incredibly smart. It's like when I read 1984 a few months ago, I was sitting there going "holy fuck.... holy fuck.... HOLY FUCK!" lol Just everything he said has happened or is happening. Crazy.

Isn't this economic slavery just like The Matrix? The matrix is the world pulled over your eyes to keep you from seeing that you are a slave. The media, the media, the media, T.V., etc.... Our culture is created and adjusted by the media. IT is to keep us from realizing that we are being used as slaves to feed the ultra-rich ones who control the illusory economy. Just like we are being used to generate electricity for the machines in the Matrix. We think that we are free because there is no curfew and we can go out to the nightclub on the weekend and spend out money we earned at work and blow off a little steam and get drunk and dance and laugh and try to get laid. But this is not freedom. We work for the banks. Not just Americans, but practically everybody on the planet. That is why the banks got bailed out! The government borrows trillions of dollars (which we citizens are responsible for paying back with interest) from the federal reserve (who prints it out of nothing) to give to the banks to loan to us which we are supposed to pay back with interest. We have to work to pay back the loan to the banks, AND we have to pay taxes to pay back the loan AGAIN to the federal reserve. This is only good for the economy in that it makes us more enslaved to the banks. If the citizens were given that money each one of us Americans would be rich and we would spend our money on things because we would have money to spend. That would have been better for the economy and for us, but not for the banks. The banks got TRILLIONS of dollars for free, or for messing up on everything. And then the CEOs and their wives buy more fancy houses and yachts and fancy vacations!!! Can you believe it?!!! The richest people in the world, who exploit the most people with the least conscience, get TRILLIONS of American dollars as a free gift, because they manipulated us. If that doesn't make you mad then you don't understand it yet. This is the Matrix. Where is Zion?

I can't stand slavery. I hate being a slave. That is why I refuse to be a slave. That is why I am condemned to wander, only having under the table jobs and working for myself and not having a bank account and buying silver coins with my paper cash. That is why I am technically homeless and don't pay rent. Good thing that I am part of a network. But I am poor. I want freedom and reality.

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Originally Posted by Dannon Oneironaut

If that doesn't make you mad then you don't understand it yet. This is the Matrix. Where is Zion?

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It doesn't make me mad. Even though I understand it. I really find it quite funny most of the time.

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Originally Posted by Dannon Oneironaut

I can't stand slavery. I hate being a slave. That is why I refuse to be a slave. That is why I am condemned to wander, only having under the table jobs and working for myself and not having a bank account and buying silver coins with my paper cash. That is why I am technically homeless and don't pay rent. Good thing that I am part of a network. But I am poor. I want freedom and reality.

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It doesn't matter. Being poor means nothing, because money is worth nothing.

I would like to take part in all this stuff (basically technology/science/art aspects) but our money system makes it all seem not very worthwhile.

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Originally Posted by tommo

I love when people make such accurate predictions. People that do this are incredibly smart. It's like when I read 1984 a few months ago, I was sitting there going "holy fuck.... holy fuck.... HOLY FUCK!" lol Just everything he said has happened or is happening. Crazy.

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To be honest, although it's one of my favourite books, I don't think the current times are that similar to 1984. Technology seems to have liberated us, not enslaved us.

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Originally Posted by Xei

To be honest, although it's one of my favourite books, I don't think the current times are that similar to 1984. Technology seems to have liberated us, not enslaved us.

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liberated us from what? lazyness, fear, selfishness and consumerism??? oh wait..

I'm not quite sure what technology has to do with fear, Majestic. .-.

In any case, Xei is referring to the fact that technology makes it possible for us to keep a closer watch on the government whereas in 1984, it was the other way around. The government can hardly get away with jackshit without someone finding out and then leaking it to the internet where it'll spread like wildfire through sites like WikiLeaks as well as social networking sites.

When it comes to social engineering though, I'd say 1984 was spot on.

Wasn't there something big that got leaked onto wikileaks and they had to take it off? I forgot what it was though

Technology makes us/provides us with the potential to be more productive, less ignorant, and more connected with other people. However many people do just use it for facebook and directions.

But in general I agree Xei, while I love that book and I feel there's definitely some reality to it, I feel like it's for different reasons than technology. Mainly nationalism and bad schools, as well as consumerism and banks/inflation. I think Fahrenheit 451 is a little closer to what our situation is, but I haven't read either of those in a while.

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Originally Posted by tommo

It doesn't make me mad. Even though I understand it. I really find it quite funny most of the time.

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Really? You find this kind of injustice on a mass scale funny? You find people being manipulated funny?

I try not to get angry about it anymore. It has to happen. Some kind of expression of the violent/aggressive nature of our culture has to be made. So that people can see it and understand it. People are asleep, they need something shocking to jar them out of it. My hopes are that this will eventually lead to some kind of lasting change, though it seems hundreds of years off still to me, I doubt I'll see it.

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It doesn't matter. Being poor means nothing, because money is worth nothing.

I would like to take part in all this stuff (basically technology/science/art aspects) but our money system makes it all seem not very worthwhile.

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Being poor means you can't eat. Being poor means you can't move, travel, live where and how you like. In a capitalistic system money is the way we trade. It's a sensible system. What do you suggest instead, bartering, communal ownership of all things? Neither of those systems work and I don't know of any other alternatives.

While the current system doesn't work it's not because of money, it's because money has no basis so the federal reserve can create more and more inflation. Other problems stem from our culture which really just doesn't give a fuck about people most of the time, it's all about yourself, and even then it's not about your true self but about your inflated ego which is created entirely by conditioning from this violent culture.

It isn't the money system that makes things worthless but our culture. Our culture of superficiality. Our culture full of people so concerned with the bottom line that they can't really see things as they are. People doing things just to win, to have, to gain, and with no care for the act itself. This makes people unconscious to their own lives, completely disconnected from reality which allows for the rich, those with power to take advantage of them. The solution is to become aware of this system and to spread the word, but not to get angry or spiteful and want to kill these people, just to expose them. To show the truth of what is. But I think it's most important to completely remove yourself from this system in every way that you can and to live as vigorously as you can, live and enjoy your life.

Re-reading this thread really makes me slightly worried about how much the US is in debt.. And to whom.

Only slightly?

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Originally Posted by Xei

To be honest, although it's one of my favourite books, I don't think the current times are that similar to 1984. Technology seems to have liberated us, not enslaved us.

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Yeah I wasn't so much talking about technology. Although it is obviously used as a spy tool as well, mostly planes, CCTV etc. And the fact that most people seem to think that CCTV is actually a good thing scares me.
And he says in the book various things which just shocked me as to how accurate he was.
Such as people trading freedom for security. Large differences between rich and poor.
That stuff about "Always been at war with X country". While not to that extreme, a similar thing happened with Saddam.
There's also 5 companies (maybe soon to be three) that control almost all of the world's media. So there's no way we're getting all the news, or even the most relevant or noteworthy things.

There's many examples but I can't remember the exact words.

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Originally Posted by stonedape

Really? You find this kind of injustice on a mass scale funny? You find people being manipulated funny?

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Yes, I do. Because it is literally them enslaving themselves. They are allowing this to happen.
Don't get me wrong, I think it's fucked up. But at some point you should just chuckle to yourself about it.
All that has to happen for their reign of terror and "power" to end, is that everybody decides to not take part in their designated system lol

Instead they are deciding to take part in it to survive, even though it's unnecessary. Thereby perpetuating the illusion.

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Originally Posted by stonedape

Being poor means you can't eat. Being poor means you can't move, travel, live where and how you like.

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You can almost certainly eat. Plants don't have a monetary value. Animals don't have a monetary value. Do you have two legs? You can travel.

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Originally Posted by stonedape

In a capitalistic system money is the way we trade. It's a sensible system. What do you suggest instead, bartering, communal ownership of all things? Neither of those systems work and I don't know of any other alternatives.

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I've suggested the Venus project a few times. Or at least something similar to it.
In my opinion it's either that or two other things.
Those two other options are:

- Any system you want. Some people will decide not to take part in it, some will. Just like what happens now.
- A system where we limit the population (good in any system really) and we all live off our own designated plot of land.

[QUOTE=stonedape;1678348]While the current system doesn't work it's not because of money, it's because money has no basis so the federal reserve can create more and more inflation. Other problems stem from our culture which really just doesn't give a fuck about people most of the time, it's all about yourself, and even then it's not about your true self but about your inflated ego which is created entirely by conditioning from this violent culture.[QUOTE=stonedape;1678348]
It's both. Money sort of perpetuates this more than other forms of trade or systems that don't have trade as the core principle.

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Originally Posted by stonedape

In a capitalistic system money is the way we trade. It's a sensible system. What do you suggest instead, bartering, communal ownership of all things? Neither of those systems work and I don't know of any other alternatives.

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Bartering works for small populations such as tribes. The side-effect is that they'll never be able to advance and will be trapped in relative poverty. Communal ownership has its own host of problems, so I agree that it won't work.

What is sad is that we have been living under this system (in the USA) since 1913 and are only now beginning to wake up to it's realities. What is good is that we are now starting to wake up to it's realities. The only possible outcome of such an awakening is revolution.

For those arguing the money issue; Using a medium of exchange (currency) is not the problem; the interest is the problem. We are fully able to have an effective currency that does not incur interest.

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Originally Posted by Xaqaria

What is sad is that we have been living under this system (in the USA) since 1913 and are only now beginning to wake up to it's realities. What is good is that we are now starting to wake up to it's realities. The only possible outcome of such an awakening is revolution.

For those arguing the money issue; Using a medium of exchange (currency) is not the problem; the interest is the problem. We are fully able to have an effective currency that does not incur interest.

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Hmmmm. I wouldn't say that. In a monetary system, someone is always trying to get more.

Although I suppose if there were no banks for instance, just computer systems set up by the government that did all the transactions automatically, removing the need for any banks (seriously, why do we even need them now?).

All this inflation stuff is ridiculous too. I admit I don't fully understand it all, but I know enough to know that it is all an illusion.

Could you explain a little more why you think money would be okay if there were no interest?

Artificial inflation is like magic for governments. Why raise taxes when you could just print more fiat, literally sucking the value out of saver's accounts and into the hands of the politicians.

In the U.S. before 1913 the United States had its own currency issued by congress that did not incur interest. Basically the reason why inflation exists is because the bank requires that the government pay back all the money that is "borrowed" from them (actually it is created at the time of borrowing) plus interest. The money to pay the interest does not exist until the government borrows more money to pay it, which also accrues interest. The only way to pay off the interest is to borrow more money which creates more interest.

If however, we used a currency that was based on real money (something of value) and it was not borrowed from a private bank then there would be no interest, and the amount of money in circulation would be a reflection of real assets held by the country. Inflation or deflation would only be tied to the value of those assets and not attached to an ever increasing scale of interest payment on money to pay for interest.

A currency in itself is just a medium of exchange. A money backed currency is literally no different from bartering, except that it is faster and easier to establish a consensus of value. Say that you live in a culture that values wheat to the extent that the value of wheat is well established and relatively stable. You can trade wheat for other goods and you would be bartering. You can also store wheat and give people "wheat certificates" in exchange for goods and then they could exchange those certificates for your stored wheat whenever they had a need for it, or they could give the certificate to someone else in exchange for some other product and the other person would be able to redeem it for wheat. In this example, the wheat would be the money (object of value) and the certificate would be the currency. The value of the certificate would only change if the relative value of the wheat changed. Gold is usually used because its value is relatively stable, and new gold is mined at a fairly regular rate which increases the money supply in a predictable stable fashion.

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Originally Posted by Xaqaria

In the U.S. before 1913 the United States had its own currency issued by congress that did not incur interest. Basically the reason why inflation exists is because the bank requires that the government pay back all the money that is "borrowed" from them (actually it is created at the time of borrowing) plus interest. The money to pay the interest does not exist until the government borrows more money to pay it, which also accrues interest. The only way to pay off the interest is to borrow more money which creates more interest.

If however, we used a currency that was based on real money (something of value) and it was not borrowed from a private bank then there would be no interest, and the amount of money in circulation would be a reflection of real assets held by the country. Inflation or deflation would only be tied to the value of those assets and not attached to an ever increasing scale of interest payment on money to pay for interest.

A currency in itself is just a medium of exchange. A money backed currency is literally no different from bartering, except that it is faster and easier to establish a consensus of value. Say that you live in a culture that values wheat to the extent that the value of wheat is well established and relatively stable. You can trade wheat for other goods and you would be bartering. You can also store wheat and give people "wheat certificates" in exchange for goods and then they could exchange those certificates for your stored wheat whenever they had a need for it, or they could give the certificate to someone else in exchange for some other product and the other person would be able to redeem it for wheat. In this example, the wheat would be the money (object of value) and the certificate would be the currency. The value of the certificate would only change if the relative value of the wheat changed. Gold is usually used because its value is relatively stable, and new gold is mined at a fairly regular rate which increases the money supply in a predictable stable fashion.

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And what's to stop people from stockpiling gold to increase the value of money.
They already do this, but with your idea it would not only increase the gold value but also the money value.

Doesn't seem very good.

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Originally Posted by tommo

Yes, I do. Because it is literally them enslaving themselves. They are allowing this to happen.
Don't get me wrong, I think it's fucked up. But at some point you should just chuckle to yourself about it.
All that has to happen for their reign of terror and "power" to end, is that everybody decides to not take part in their designated system lol

Instead they are deciding to take part in it to survive, even though it's unnecessary. Thereby perpetuating the illusion.

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Yeah well since that probably isn't going to happen any time soon I don't really see how it's funny. Society is killing itself, this is something serious, I don't see the humor in it. People(millions of them) die over this shit. It isn't funny. Is heroin addiction funny?

People aren't allowing this to happen, they have no clue that it's even going on. Now I agree that it's partially their fault, they have a responsibility to learn about the world around them but still.

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You can almost certainly eat. Plants don't have a monetary value. Animals don't have a monetary value. Do you have two legs? You can travel.

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Fine, you can, but you can't do it as easily, you have to work extremely hard to do it. You could remove yourself from society and become a hermit. But this is basically giving up on society and people. Do you really think it's preferable to be a bum or live out in the woods by yourself?

I don't think you can really make a good argument for it being good to be poor.

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I've suggested the Venus project a few times. Or at least something similar to it.
In my opinion it's either that or two other things.
Those two other options are:

- Any system you want. Some people will decide not to take part in it, some will. Just like what happens now.
- A system where we limit the population (good in any system really) and we all live off our own designated plot of land.

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How are these two options different from capitalism? Who designates who get's what plot of land? Who decides how we limit the population? That sounds much worse than what we have now to me.

The venus project just flat out can't work because there will always be scarcity. It's a good idea in terms of food and energy, but we will always need some system for trading goods(and we're still along way away from doing this with food or energy, and with food at least we are moving in the wrong direction). Not everything can be reproduced. What of art, or a finely crafted guitar. People aren't just going to give them away and it takes a master to make them, but many many people want them. Scarcity.

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It's both. Money sort of perpetuates this more than other forms of trade or systems that don't have trade as the core principle.

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Money doesn't do anything other than allow people more options. I don't see how this is bad. What system of living could possibly function in modern society that didn't involve trade? And how do you trade easily without money. It's people who perpetuate greed, who take advantage of the poor. It's not money. Money is just a unit of trade and you are never going to end trade, it's a fundamental part of humanity. Even in tribal settings there is trade. You have a pipe and want a blanket, I have a blanket and want a pipe. So we trade. There's nothing wrong or malevolent about this at all, it's very positive in fact.

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Originally Posted by stonedape

Yeah well since that probably isn't going to happen any time soon I don't really see how it's funny. Society is killing itself, this is something serious, I don't see the humor in it. People(millions of them) die over this shit. It isn't funny. Is heroin addiction funny?

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It's simply because there is just this extremely microscopically thin veil of control over everyone. At any second they could ruin this entire system.
Instead, even when they learn about how it works (usually when they get fucked over by it) they still persist in the illusion. You mentioned "bums".

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Originally Posted by stonedape

Fine, you can, but you can't do it as easily, you have to work extremely hard to do it. You could remove yourself from society and become a hermit. But this is basically giving up on society and people. Do you really think it's preferable to be a bum or live out in the woods by yourself?

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I really think both are equal at this point. Society was supposed to be better. But....:hrm:
I don't see much difference between having to work hard for your food, or having to work hard to get money to buy food.
One stresses your body, the other stresses your mind. In most cases anyway, unless you're one of the lucky ones who really enjoys some particular job and has the prerequisites to acquire that job.

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Originally Posted by stonedape

I don't think you can really make a good argument for it being good to be poor.

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But the thing is, you aren't poor. Someone is poor if they can't get a good paying job and continue to live in this society. Feeding off others.
If one decides to leave and go live in the forest, they are no longer poor. They have as much as anyone else. They have the entire world as theirs.

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Originally Posted by stonedape

How are these two options different from capitalism? Who designates who get's what plot of land? Who decides how we limit the population? That sounds much worse than what we have now to me.

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In Borneo, this is how it is done for land. No one fights over it. You go to this guy and say "Can I have that area of land there?" The guy says yes or no depending on circumstances and whether someone else owns it already. If they do, you just choose another spot.
Science would decide how limit the population. I think the current number is 2 kids for every couple, if we want to maintain our population level.

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Originally Posted by stonedape

Not everything can be reproduced. What of art, or a finely crafted guitar. People aren't just going to give them away and it takes a master to make them, but many many people want them. Scarcity.

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Yes. That is the only problem with it that I have come across so far. I've been thinking about it on and off for a while.
When you think about it, only one person gets the piece of art now. And it's usually just some rich bastard who wants to make money. So it's no different.
I suppose the artist would just choose who he wants to give it to. Or maybe trade for another piece of craft. And if it is a much sought after piece of art, it can go in a gallery.

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Originally Posted by Jeff777

"These International Bankers and Rockefeller Standard Oil interests control the majority of newspapers and the columns of these papers to club into submission or drive out of public office officials who refuse to do the bidding of the powerful corrupt cliques which compose the invisible government." - Theodore Roosevelt

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Quoting Theodore Roosevelt who was in the pocket of J.P. Morgan isn't instilling confidence in me.

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Originally Posted by Xaqaria

For those arguing the money issue; Using a medium of exchange (currency) is not the problem; the interest is the problem. We are fully able to have an effective currency that does not incur interest.

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Interest is just the result of the supply and demand of money. As long as you have money you will have people to supply it and demand it therefore causing natural interest rates.

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Originally Posted by tommo

It's simply because there is just this extremely microscopically thin veil of control over everyone. At any second they could ruin this entire system.
Instead, even when they learn about how it works (usually when they get fucked over by it) they still persist in the illusion. You mentioned "bums".

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We live in a deterministic universe, we are not at a point where we could change the system because most people are still unaware of it and many people want a system. They want safety(which is sort of an unrealistic desire, at least in the way that they want it) and the people who run the government promise this. These people(who run the gov) are basically owned by banks and large corporations.

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I really think both are equal at this point. Society was supposed to be better. But....:hrm:
I don't see much difference between having to work hard for your food, or having to work hard to get money to buy food.
One stresses your body, the other stresses your mind. In most cases anyway, unless you're one of the lucky ones who really enjoys some particular job and has the prerequisites to acquire that job.

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How are they equal, they are completely different? Maybe to you, subjectively, you think you could enjoy living either way equally, but they are by no means equal.

It's completely different if you have to forage and hunt vs buying something. It's so much easier to work for a few hours then go to the grocery store. I worked for about 4 hours doing landscaping and bought enough food to last me the whole weekend.

Both ways of living require the use of mind and body. If you are stressing over it it's because you're doing it wrong or you picked some excessively hard work like being a doctor. Work is easy and can be enjoyable. I teach guitar lessons and do odd jobs, and I generally enjoy whatever I'm doing. I can't say I've ever really gotten mentally stressed from work even when I had an office job(actually that was the easiest job in the entire world and I wish I could get it back, ten dollars an hour to basically do jack shit).

Having a good job has nothing to do with luck. Find something you enjoy and find a way to make money doing it. For me it's teaching and playing music. Now I haven't found a way to be self sufficent doing this yet but I'm working on it, and I think I'll be able to in about a year or two. All it takes are planning and a little hard work.

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But the thing is, you aren't poor. Someone is poor if they can't get a good paying job and continue to live in this society. Feeding off others.
If one decides to leave and go live in the forest, they are no longer poor. They have as much as anyone else. They have the entire world as theirs.

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I kind of see what you're saying, but it's not completely true. Someone with money and knowledge, like Bear Grills, can go live in the woods much more comfortably than I could if I was to just go live in the woods. And they don't have the entire world as theirs. If they try to take my guitar, Imma have to bust a cap. They also have no more access to the natural world, to the woods(I know everything is technically part of the natural world, but you know what I'm trying to say) than I do, so what have they really gained? All they done is found a way to live without paying rent or bills, and they've sacrificed certain comforts and resources for this. You really don't have to go live in the woods to drop of the grid, there are much more practical ways of doing it where you don't have to sacrifice things like the internet, which I find to be an extremely useful resource, one worth the costs.

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In Borneo, this is how it is done for land. No one fights over it. You go to this guy and say "Can I have that area of land there?" The guy says yes or no depending on circumstances and whether someone else owns it already. If they do, you just choose another spot.
Science would decide how limit the population. I think the current number is 2 kids for every couple, if we want to maintain our population level.

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Well the land part makes sense. If no one is using land it should be available for others to make use of, but that has nothing to do with capitalism, and since people want things other than land and food we still need to trade.

But about population control, what happens if if someone has more than 2 kids? And what about people who sleep around and have all sorts of babies momma's? How do you know who has how many kids? And science can't decide how we do it, it can just set a number. People have to do the actual controlling, and if they aren't controlling themselves I'm generally against it because it's impractical and ineffective.

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Yes. That is the only problem with it that I have come across so far. I've been thinking about it on and off for a while.
When you think about it, only one person gets the piece of art now. And it's usually just some rich bastard who wants to make money. So it's no different.
I suppose the artist would just choose who he wants to give it to. Or maybe trade for another piece of craft. And if it is a much sought after piece of art, it can go in a gallery.

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What about the guitar example? Luthiers don't just give shit away. It takes a long time and a lot of work, high quality wood and materials. There are plenty of other things like this too. Nice cars, nice houses.

This is a pretty major problem, it concerns just about anything of real value, or maybe high value, it's a vague concept I'm not quite sure how to convey. But people want things, special things, nice things, and you can't just make an infinite amount of them so there will always be scarcity. Therefore the venus project can't really take care of things other than food, energy and water. It could also provide housing and education for the poor, which would be great, but it could never replace capitalism or end trade. People will always trade so there will always be a demand for currency of some kind.

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Originally Posted by Laughing Man

Quoting Theodore Roosevelt who was in the pocket of J.P. Morgan isn't instilling confidence in me.

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Please supply proof. Wild-eyed conspiracy theories won't suffice.

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Originally Posted by stonedape

How are they equal, they are completely different? Maybe to you, subjectively, you think you could enjoy living either way equally, but they are by no means equal.

It's completely different if you have to forage and hunt vs buying something. It's so much easier to work for a few hours then go to the grocery store. I worked for about 4 hours doing landscaping and bought enough food to last me the whole weekend.

Both ways of living require the use of mind and body. If you are stressing over it it's because you're doing it wrong or you picked some excessively hard work like being a doctor. Work is easy and can be enjoyable. I teach guitar lessons and do odd jobs, and I generally enjoy whatever I'm doing. I can't say I've ever really gotten mentally stressed from work even when I had an office job(actually that was the easiest job in the entire world and I wish I could get it back, ten dollars an hour to basically do jack shit).

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I mean the are similar because both have their downsides. I was just giving one example.
Many many people get stressed at their jobs. So much so that it is all they seem to talk about.

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Originally Posted by stonedape

Having a good job has nothing to do with luck. Find something you enjoy and find a way to make money doing it. For me it's teaching and playing music. Now I haven't found a way to be self sufficent doing this yet but I'm working on it, and I think I'll be able to in about a year or two. All it takes are planning and a little hard work.

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For many people it is luck. Luck that they happen to like a certain thing. This is what I meant. Not luck in finding a job.
For example, there is not a lot I find appealing in the way of jobs in this culture. At least not something I'd like to do for a prolonged period of time. Some people are lucky coz they're just like "I want to be a teacher" or something and they are happy doing it.
Personally I have always done one thing constantly for a few years, I get bored and move on. I'm pretty sure quite a few people are like this.

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Originally Posted by stonedape

I kind of see what you're saying, but it's not completely true. Someone with money and knowledge, like Bear Grills, can go live in the woods much more comfortably than I could if I was to just go live in the woods. And they don't have the entire world as theirs. If they try to take my guitar, Imma have to bust a cap. They also have no more access to the natural world, to the woods(I know everything is technically part of the natural world, but you know what I'm trying to say) than I do, so what have they really gained? All they done is found a way to live without paying rent or bills, and they've sacrificed certain comforts and resources for this. You really don't have to go live in the woods to drop of the grid, there are much more practical ways of doing it where you don't have to sacrifice things like the internet, which I find to be an extremely useful resource, one worth the costs.

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It's not completely true, no. Some people decide to call something theirs. So you probably shouldn't take it. But I mean they don't have to buy land, all the land that isn't owned is theirs to live on. They don't have to buy food, all the seeds and fruits and animals that live are theirs to eat (as long as someone isn't growing it on the land they claim to own). I don't want to get too philosophical about people not actually owning anything.
They have gained not being part of a fucked up system. Not having to work jobs they don't like.
For you there are ways to drop off the grid while staying in society to reap it's comforts. For some, there aren't any ways which will make them happy.

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Originally Posted by stonedape

Well the land part makes sense. If no one is using land it should be available for others to make use of, but that has nothing to do with capitalism, and since people want things other than land and food we still need to trade.

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Cool.

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Originally Posted by stonedape

But about population control, what happens if if someone has more than 2 kids? And what about people who sleep around and have all sorts of babies momma's? How do you know who has how many kids? And science can't decide how we do it, it can just set a number. People have to do the actual controlling, and if they aren't controlling themselves I'm generally against it because it's impractical and ineffective.

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Well, the best way would be education. It's already a fact that educated people have less kids. Whether that's due to being educated about the current state of civilisation or due to having jobs, I'm not sure. But education about the fact that having too many kids will lead to overpopulation and eventually Soylent Green type scenario if it goes far enough, will deter people from having too many kids. I know this sounds like a scare tactic or something. But it should most importantly just be education and presentation of facts and predictions. Letting people make their own decisions.

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Originally Posted by stonedape

What about the guitar example? Luthiers don't just give shit away. It takes a long time and a lot of work, high quality wood and materials. There are plenty of other things like this too. Nice cars, nice houses.

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You're right, they don't. Because they need to make money!
If they really enjoy doing it, they will do it anyway. Whom they give it away to is up to them. As I said, some people already get these nice things over other people simply because they have more money. No system can cater for everyone. But that's part of what makes these things so highly prized. Not everyone can have them.

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Originally Posted by tommo

I mean the are similar because both have their downsides. I was just giving one example.
Many many people get stressed at their jobs. So much so that it is all they seem to talk about.

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People get stressed at their jobs because they don't know how to deal with the situation. In some cases people have shitty jobs, they get hassled or yelled at, but even then, if you are getting stressed it's your own fault.

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For many people it is luck. Luck that they happen to like a certain thing. This is what I meant. Not luck in finding a job.
For example, there is not a lot I find appealing in the way of jobs in this culture. At least not something I'd like to do for a prolonged period of time. Some people are lucky coz they're just like "I want to be a teacher" or something and they are happy doing it.
Personally I have always done one thing constantly for a few years, I get bored and move on. I'm pretty sure quite a few people are like this.

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If you're getting bored, you're just not doing it right. There's plenty of things that aren't boring. You just have to open your eyes and your mind. Become a researcher, be an artist, a musician, write books, start a restaurant, start a head shop, learn to fly planes, I mean there's thousands of things you can do, and most of them aren't boring.

People are like this, but they are like this because they aren't passionate about what they're doing, they're detached, thinking about things they'd rather be doing. Find something you can pour yourself into and you won't get bored.

Everyone likes things, just be creative and find a way to make money with something.

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It's not completely true, no. Some people decide to call something theirs. So you probably shouldn't take it. But I mean they don't have to buy land, all the land that isn't owned is theirs to live on. They don't have to buy food, all the seeds and fruits and animals that live are theirs to eat (as long as someone isn't growing it on the land they claim to own). I don't want to get too philosophical about people not actually owning anything.
They have gained not being part of a fucked up system. Not having to work jobs they don't like.
For you there are ways to drop off the grid while staying in society to reap it's comforts. For some, there aren't any ways which will make them happy.

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Bah, that's just laziness and closed mindedness. If you get creative there are plenty of ways to make money. Make stuff, do stuff, sell stuff, whatever. And really, it doesn't have to be something that's as great as playing music. If you can't find something that interests you in society you really aren't trying very hard. Do you know any people who have chosen to leave society and forage and hunt for food? There's a reason people don't and it's because it's much easier not to and you can't pursue any hobbies or interests in the wild.

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Well, the best way would be education. It's already a fact that educated people have less kids. Whether that's due to being educated about the current state of civilisation or due to having jobs, I'm not sure. But education about the fact that having too many kids will lead to overpopulation and eventually Soylent Green type scenario if it goes far enough, will deter people from having too many kids. I know this sounds like a scare tactic or something. But it should most importantly just be education and presentation of facts and predictions. Letting people make their own decisions.

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Yeah, but that's not really population control, that's just educating people about the consequences of their actions. Population control is like infanticide, stuff like that.

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You're right, they don't. Because they need to make money!
If they really enjoy doing it, they will do it anyway. Whom they give it away to is up to them. As I said, some people already get these nice things over other people simply because they have more money. No system can cater for everyone. But that's part of what makes these things so highly prized. Not everyone can have them.

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If they were just doing it for fun they wouldn't make as high quality of instruments. Competition is good in some areas.

People aren't just gonna make nice houses because they like making them. That's a ridiculous amount of labor to just be nice to someone and give it away. And if someone wants something, there should be a way for them to get that thing.

A relevant video I Laughing man posted in another thread.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFbHw7VsNlI

Hunter-gatherers had to labor every single day to kill an animal or gather plants to eat, and saving up for the winter to survive, like most animals in the wild still do. Does that count as slavery? Is having to work to live really such an atrocity? Seems like unavoidable common sense to me. Sure, in this thread there's a lot of hyping up and sensationalizing how horrible Americans have it in this apocalyptic bank run world, yet Americans live like kings compared to most of the rest of the world- even poor Americans. First world whining?

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Originally Posted by stonedape

People get stressed at their jobs because they don't know how to deal with the situation. In some cases people have shitty jobs, they get hassled or yelled at, but even then, if you are getting stressed it's your own fault.

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So it's people's fault for not being born with the reasoning to realise that their job is not that bad and is not everything there is and there's no reason to get stressed about it? If you ignore the fact that they need it to live.

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Originally Posted by stonedape

If you're getting bored, you're just not doing it right. There's plenty of things that aren't boring. You just have to open your eyes and your mind. Become a researcher, be an artist, a musician, write books, start a restaurant, start a head shop, learn to fly planes, I mean there's thousands of things you can do, and most of them aren't boring.

People are like this, but they are like this because they aren't passionate about what they're doing, they're detached, thinking about things they'd rather be doing. Find something you can pour yourself into and you won't get bored.

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One of the most amazing things I will never get bored of is looking at nature. Walking around in the bush/forest/beach whatever. I actually feel completely ecstatic and in awe.
The natural thing to do would be to go live somewhere like that. Even if that is just on a farm or something.

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Originally Posted by stonedape

Bah, that's just laziness and closed mindedness. If you get creative there are plenty of ways to make money. Make stuff, do stuff, sell stuff, whatever. And really, it doesn't have to be something that's as great as playing music. If you can't find something that interests you in society you really aren't trying very hard. Do you know any people who have chosen to leave society and forage and hunt for food? There's a reason people don't and it's because it's much easier not to and you can't pursue any hobbies or interests in the wild.

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If your interests are the wild then going in to the wild is pursuing your interests in itself lol

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Originally Posted by stonedape

Yeah, but that's not really population control, that's just educating people about the consequences of their actions. Population control is like infanticide, stuff like that.

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Um. Maybe that's your preconceived notion of it. Teaching people about the consequences of having too many children is just a way to control the population size.
A smarter way than just deciding to tell people not to and killing any extra people.

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Originally Posted by stonedape

If they were just doing it for fun they wouldn't make as high quality of instruments. Competition is good in some areas.

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Classic business fallacy. I was just reading a study the other day which proves this wrong. And it's been known for quite a while. If anything, it makes them produce lower quality products because they want to get through them as quick as possible to make more money. Which is what you get generally with mass production.
This is exactly what causes people to have a narrow point of view and to become stressed out of their mind because all they see is this one thing and they think that it is everything. When it's not.

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Originally Posted by stonedape

People aren't just gonna make nice houses because they like making them. That's a ridiculous amount of labor to just be nice to someone and give it away. And if someone wants something, there should be a way for them to get that thing.

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Again. Same fallacy. So everyone just build houses for the money?
There's lots of people who build houses for themselves, or for other people who can't afford it. They do it because they enjoy it.
If you won't do something without monetary return, well then you don't really like it that much.
The labor isn't that bad when you actually enjoy watching your ideas become reality.

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Originally Posted by stonedape

A relevant video I Laughing man posted in another thread.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFbHw7VsNlI

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Irrelevant video is irrelevant.
He's talking about if everyone became hunter-gatherers and had to make all their own stuff.
I never suggested that. I said if someone doesn't like what society has to offer, but they do like the idea of living in the forest or something, they should do it.
And anyway, this population would not survive a transition to hunter gatherers en masse.
So it's even more irrelevant because it couldn't happen.

If, however, we just wiped out trade. We would be fine. People can still specialise. Because people would still enjoy farming and people would still enjoy building power stations etc. etc.

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Originally Posted by DeeryTheDeer

Hunter-gatherers had to labor every single day to kill an animal or gather plants to eat, and saving up for the winter to survive, like most animals in the wild still do. Does that count as slavery? Is having to work to live really such an atrocity? Seems like unavoidable common sense to me. Sure, in this thread there's a lot of hyping up and sensationalizing how horrible Americans have it in this apocalyptic bank run world, yet Americans live like kings compared to most of the rest of the world- even poor Americans. First world whining?

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And look at what's happening to the rest of the world to allow the American's (every developed country, not just Americans). The Amazon rainforest is a perfect example.
The only reason other countries are so fucking "poor" is BECAUSE of our system. Hunter-gatherer's were not poor. Unless they lived in a bad region, but they would have died out.

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.

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Originally Posted by tommo

So it's people's fault for not being born with the reasoning to realise that their job is not that bad and is not everything there is and there's no reason to get stressed about it? If you ignore the fact that they need it to live.

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I don't care who's fault things are, but if you are in a situation you don't like it's your responsibility to change it.

Most people get stressed out at their job because they take life far too seriously, or more specifically because they take their inner dialogue about life too seriously. If you really merge with what you are doing you won't get stressed about it. Even if you don't like your job you can merge with it. I hate cutting the grass, I think it's extremely stupid for a number of reasons. But when I have to do it, I do it with my whole being, and I don't get stressed anymore.

As you've pointed out, they don't need it, they can find other means of living, I'm just suggesting that you're advice is far too drastic and no one would really even do that. There are certainly other means of making a living and if you don't take advantage of that you have no one to blame but yourself.

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One of the most amazing things I will never get bored of is looking at nature. Walking around in the bush/forest/beach whatever. I actually feel completely ecstatic and in awe.
The natural thing to do would be to go live somewhere like that. Even if that is just on a farm or something.

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So get a job as a park ranger, or a naturalist. Or be a farmer. I've considered doing those things myself but I like music more.

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If your interests are the wild then going in to the wild is pursuing your interests in itself lol

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True, but you have to admit that you have to give up on cultural interests to live in the wild. Technically I could bring my guitar, but I'd have no one to play with. Most people like something about our society and culture even if they have major problems with them.

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Um. Maybe that's your preconceived notion of it. Teaching people about the consequences of having too many children is just a way to control the population size.
A smarter way than just deciding to tell people not to and killing any extra people.

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But it's not control, it's not governance, it's just education. It's not controlling. But this is just semantics, it doesn't really matter.

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Classic business fallacy. I was just reading a study the other day which proves this wrong. And it's been known for quite a while. If anything, it makes them produce lower quality products because they want to get through them as quick as possible to make more money. Which is what you get generally with mass production.
This is exactly what causes people to have a narrow point of view and to become stressed out of their mind because all they see is this one thing and they think that it is everything. When it's not.

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That's not what luthiers do though. I guess some of them do, but I wouldn't really call them luthiers. Luthiers spend a lot of time and effort trying to make the best product that they can. They already do this, that's why they charge $5000 for a guitar(and those are the cheap ones).

This is only wrong in terms of things being mass produced, I'm talking about high quality instruments and other things which aren't mass produced. Things which are crafted.

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Again. Same fallacy. So everyone just build houses for the money?
There's lots of people who build houses for themselves, or for other people who can't afford it. They do it because they enjoy it.
If you won't do something without monetary return, well then you don't really like it that much.
The labor isn't that bad when you actually enjoy watching your ideas become reality.

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So you really think people will just build houses because it's fun? Because it ain't. Who's gonna work at landfills or clean porta-johns or scrape dead animals off the road. There are some jobs that just suck that have to be done.

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Irrelevant video is irrelevant.
He's talking about if everyone became hunter-gatherers and had to make all their own stuff.
I never suggested that. I said if someone doesn't like what society has to offer, but they do like the idea of living in the forest or something, they should do it.
And anyway, this population would not survive a transition to hunter gatherers en masse.
So it's even more irrelevant because it couldn't happen.

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It's relevent because it explains how we cannot specialize without trade. People are never going to just make things and give them away to complete strangers. That's a completely absurd notion.

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If, however, we just wiped out trade. We would be fine. People can still specialise. Because people would still enjoy farming and people would still enjoy building power stations etc. etc.

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But then you're assuming that there's gonna be someone who wants to just build a power station when we need power. Or someone who likes cleaning shitters when they get too full.

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And look at what's happening to the rest of the world to allow the American's (every developed country, not just Americans). The Amazon rainforest is a perfect example.
The only reason other countries are so fucking "poor" is BECAUSE of our system. Hunter-gatherer's were not poor. Unless they lived in a bad region, but they would have died out.

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By our standards they are. They don't have a computer, they don't have expensive houses. They don't have the means to drive 2000 miles across the country just for fun if they wanted to. We do, we live in luxury compared to them.

It's quite true that americans do all kinds of fucked up shit for money, but they do this because they are greedy, not because we use currency. People have been using currency for a long time before there was america. It's very possible to have currency and not have people acting this way. One big step is having a currency that has a basis, is not fiat.

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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.

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There's a really big difference, just in the amount of effort you have to put int. Go live as a hunter gatherer for a week and you'll see what I mean. It's much more difficult than living in society, that's why people don't do it.

And if you don't like thinking, get a job doing physical labor, construction or something. It's less work than being a hunter gatherer, and you still get to sleep in a bed.

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Originally Posted by stonedape

As you've pointed out, they don't need it, they can find other means of living, I'm just suggesting that you're advice is far too drastic and no one would really even do that. There are certainly other means of making a living and if you don't take advantage of that you have no one to blame but yourself.

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Not everyone can do something they like. As you said down there VVVV, someone has to clean the shitter. Even though nobody actually does that anymore, but that's besides the point.

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Originally Posted by stonedape

So get a job as a park ranger, or a naturalist. Or be a farmer. I've considered doing those things myself but I like music more.

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I've considered it. And I might. I'm not here to discuss what I want to do though.

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Originally Posted by stonedape

True, but you have to admit that you have to give up on cultural interests to live in the wild. Technically I could bring my guitar, but I'd have no one to play with. Most people like something about our society and culture even if they have major problems with them.

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Me too. I wouldn't like leaving piano behind. And that's one of a small number of reasons I would decide to stay here. There's good things and bad things, as I said.

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Originally Posted by stonedape

That's not what luthiers do though. I guess some of them do, but I wouldn't really call them luthiers. Luthiers spend a lot of time and effort trying to make the best product that they can. They already do this, that's why they charge $5000 for a guitar(and those are the cheap ones).

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Yes but by your rationale they wouldn't do it if they didn't get paid (and they didn't need money because it wasn't used). Or they would do a worse job or something.

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Originally Posted by stonedape

This is only wrong in terms of things being mass produced, I'm talking about high quality instruments and other things which aren't mass produced. Things which are crafted.

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Yes and I'm saying that you only get a worse product when things are mass produced and made for maximum monetary gain.

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Originally Posted by stonedape

So you really think people will just build houses because it's fun? Because it ain't.

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To you, it ain't. Many people would love building houses. Same way people love building cars or planes or whatever else. Even though it's hard work. And since the people doing it enjoy it (since there's no monetary incentive) you would get a better product in the end.

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Originally Posted by stonedape

Who's gonna work at landfills or clean porta-johns or scrape dead animals off the road. There are some jobs that just suck that have to be done.

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Unnecessary jobs. Robots can do it. The only reason we don't have them doing these sorts of things now is because people need jobs. Because they need money.

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Originally Posted by stonedape

It's relevent because it explains how we cannot specialize without trade. People are never going to just make things and give them away to complete strangers. That's a completely absurd notion.

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Why? I would be completely fine with making a sculpture or something and someone comes along and says "oh man that's fantastic, can I have it?" It would make me happy and I would give it to them.
I don't know why you think it's absurd. If you really like something, you will just enjoy doing it. Enjoy the act of doing whatever it is.
As I said, in that video, he explains how we cannot specialise without trade IN A SYSTEM WHERE WE NEED TO HUNT AND GATHER. Not in a system where people will farm and automated hydroponic systems would grow crops etc. Then you have time. The only reason he says it won't work is because he's thinking of cavemen days when you had to spend all your time getting food.

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Originally Posted by stonedape

But then you're assuming that there's gonna be someone who wants to just build a power station when we need power.

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Why wouldn't there be? Not everyone does it for the money!

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Originally Posted by stonedape

By our standards they are. They don't have a computer, they don't have expensive houses. They don't have the means to drive 2000 miles across the country just for fun if they wanted to. We do, we live in luxury compared to them.

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In your opinion. Maybe they liked being farmers and just living a laid back life.
Or hunter-gatherers. It is a simple life but no doubt some enjoy it.

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Originally Posted by stonedape

It's quite true that americans do all kinds of fucked up shit for money, but they do this because they are greedy, not because we use currency. People have been using currency for a long time before there was america. It's very possible to have currency and not have people acting this way. One big step is having a currency that has a basis, is not fiat.

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I already addressed this too. What is to stop people withholding gold or diamonds or whatever you want to base money's value on to drive up the worth of it?

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Originally Posted by stonedape

There's a really big difference, just in the amount of effort you have to put int. Go live as a hunter gatherer for a week and you'll see what I mean. It's much more difficult than living in society, that's why people don't do it.

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Many people do it. Just ask Dannon for example.
Plus, hunter-gatherer doesn't mean not living in a society. There are societies which live like that now.

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Originally Posted by stonedape

And if you don't like thinking, get a job doing physical labor, construction or something. It's less work than being a hunter gatherer, and you still get to sleep in a bed.

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Unnecessary as hominem.

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Originally Posted by tommo

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.

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I meant what I said as a way of saying "if the laws of physics and nature are NOT slavery (which they aren't to me), then neither is capitalism, because they're similar, yet living in our society is easier than hunting and gathering". As stonedape said, there's a reason why we don't live that way anymore. It's freedom in one way, but no situation is perfect.

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Originally Posted by DeeryTheDeer

I meant what I said as a way of saying "if the laws of physics and nature are NOT slavery (which they aren't to me), then neither is capitalism, because they're similar, yet living in our society is easier than hunting and gathering". As stonedape said, there's a reason why we don't live that way anymore. It's freedom in one way, but no situation is perfect.

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And it also could still be a much better situation without us not being capitalistic. There are so many practical ways we know how to improve society. I don't think anyone has yet come up with even a theoretical alternative that is possible at the moment. We still have scarcity, even for things that we could do venus project style like food, water, and energy.

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Originally Posted by tommo

Not everyone can do something they like. As you said down there VVVV, someone has to clean the shitter. Even though nobody actually does that anymore, but that's besides the point.

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very true, and not everyone has to do something they like in order to be happy with their life. Some people are alright with doing things they don't like in order to do other things they do.

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Yes but by your rationale they wouldn't do it if they didn't get paid (and they didn't need money because it wasn't used). Or they would do a worse job or something.

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Not at all. They just wouldn't make as many, nor would some try as hard to make a better product than their competitor.

I should have pointed this out before, but the idea that competition can make for better products is clearly not a fallacy(there are plenty of examples of competition improving products). The idea that it always does is. Sometimes it's better to have no competition, sometimes it isn't. It depends on the context.

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Yes and I'm saying that you only get a worse product when things are mass produced and made for maximum monetary gain.

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Which isn't always the case, nor is this because of capitalism or trade. This is because of greed and ignorance.

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To you, it ain't. Many people would love building houses. Same way people love building cars or planes or whatever else. Even though it's hard work. And since the people doing it enjoy it (since there's no monetary incentive) you would get a better product in the end.

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I really don't think this is the case with everything. Some people enjoy building houses, but not enough people to build houses for everyone. Same with cars. And when people do it out of enjoyment they tend to take their time.

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Unnecessary jobs. Robots can do it. The only reason we don't have them doing these sorts of things now is because people need jobs. Because they need money.

Why? I would be completely fine with making a sculpture or something and someone comes along and says "oh man that's fantastic, can I have it?" It would make me happy and I would give it to them.
I don't know why you think it's absurd. If you really like something, you will just enjoy doing it. Enjoy the act of doing whatever it is.
As I said, in that video, he explains how we cannot specialise without trade IN A SYSTEM WHERE WE NEED TO HUNT AND GATHER. Not in a system where people will farm and automated hydroponic systems would grow crops etc. Then you have time. The only reason he says it won't work is because he's thinking of cavemen days when you had to spend all your time getting food.

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I'll address this later, I'm about to leave for a meditation retreat.

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Why wouldn't there be? Not everyone does it for the money!

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Because not that many people will want to do specific things like that. I don't have any statistics but very few people build power plants and skyscrapers for fun. It's hard work.

People do things like this because individuals needs these things. IIndividuals in turn give these people something for what they do. Everybody is happy as long as it's a fair trade. The problem isn't money but people being ripped off.

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In your opinion. Maybe they liked being farmers and just living a laid back life.
Or hunter-gatherers. It is a simple life but no doubt some enjoy it.

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Well I suppose, I guess you're right, people who don't have things have just as much as people who do have things.

They can certainly enjoy it, but that doesn't make them wealthy.

Very few people can live like that, that;s why they don't.

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I already addressed this too. What is to stop people withholding gold or diamonds or whatever you want to base money's value on to drive up the worth of it?

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One possibility is opposing currencies. Someone does this with gold so people start using silver. Another way would be through government regulation. I'll write up a better answer in about a week, I have to go now.

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Many people do it. Just ask Dannon for example.
Plus, hunter-gatherer doesn't mean not living in a society. There are societies which live like that now.

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Pretty sure dannon said he works odd jobs and lives on couches. Not exactly the same thing. And yeah people can do that, but it's a much harder life.

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Originally Posted by Jeff777

Please supply proof. Wild-eyed conspiracy theories won't suffice.

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Gabriel Kolko's Railroads & Regulations: 1877-1916 and Triumph of Conservatism: A Reinterpretation of American History, 1900-1916
Murray Rothbard's A History of Money and Banking in the United States: The Colonial Era to World War II

Roosevelt placed Morgan business-men in his administration and used the Bureau of Corporations to shield Morgan interests while attacking Rockefeller business interests. Rockefeller was the competitor of J.P. Morgan in case you didn't know. Rockefeller was actually against the formation of this bureau and tried to get it killed in Congress.

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Originally Posted by tommo

If, however, we just wiped out trade. We would be fine. People can still specialise. Because people would still enjoy farming and people would still enjoy building power stations etc. etc.

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You missed the point of the video. You can't have specialization unless you have trade. If there wasn't trade how would people who like building power stations live? Eat their power stations? The whole premise of the division of labor is the ability to trade goods by use of a medium of exchange.

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Originally Posted by Laughing Man

You missed the point of the video. You can't have specialization unless you have trade. If there wasn't trade how would people who like building power stations live? Eat their power stations? The whole premise of the division of labor is the ability to trade goods by use of a medium of exchange.

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Just letting you know I'm not going to argue with you. I'll just wait til stonedape gets back if we wants to continue this discussion when he's all zenned out.

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Originally Posted by Laughing Man

Interest is just the result of the supply and demand of money. As long as you have money you will have people to supply it and demand it therefore causing natural interest rates.

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There is a difference between supplying money and creating it. Charging interest on the creation of money is what causes systemic inflation.

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Originally Posted by Xaqaria

There is a difference between supplying money and creating it. Charging interest on the creation of money is what causes systemic inflation.

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What causes inflation is the addition of money to the already existing pool. It's not interest.

When the Federal Reserve asks the treasury to create 8 trillion new dollars when we already a trillion dollars floating around, you are diluting the purchasing power of the dollar there by causing prices to rise. It's basically supply/demand logic. The more supply you have, the lesser the value of each.

I understand that, Laughing Man. The point that you are missing is that if interest is charged on the creation of money, then the only way to get money to pay for the interest is to further dilute the currency by creating more money. This is built in systemic inflation, and it is what has caused the dollar to lose 96% of its value over the last 98 years.

LOSE****!!!!

f

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Originally Posted by Xaqaria

I understand that, Laughing Man. The point that you are missing is that if interest is charged on the creation of money, then the only way to get money to pay for the interest is to further dilute the currency by creating more money. This is built in systemic inflation, and it is what has caused the dollar to lose 96% of its value over the last 98 years.

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What Does "Debt-Based" Money Imply for Interest Payments? - Robert P. Murphy - Mises Daily
The system you are propounding (Money as debt) isn't sound.

Are you a bot? I sometimes get the feeling that you just post to disagree without actually reading what the other person is saying; I'm not "propounding" anything. I am saying it isn't sound or sustainable. You are arguing against me by repeating my own position.

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Originally Posted by Xaqaria

Are you a bot? I sometimes get the feeling that you just post to disagree without actually reading what the other person is saying; I'm not "propounding" anything. I am saying it isn't sound or sustainable. You are arguing against me by repeating my own position.

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No, you are trying to propound that inflation is the result of interest because the creation of money causes debt. That is the "Money=Debt" theory whether you know it or not, that is basically what you are saying.

If money had a static supply, it was always at let us say 1 billion dollars, there would still be interest in the supply and demand of money. People would still be charged interest if they borrowed money from another individual even if there was a static supply.

Interest is affect by inflation but it is not the result of it.

Laughing Man, you are either being dense or a troll. Which is it?

Please go back over my posts and read them carefully because I will not continue to repeat myself. Do you even know the difference between money and currency? Money is not debt. A fiat currency is debt, however. Dollars are not money, they are currency. You aren't even arguing the same points as I am discussing.

If someone is charging interest on the creation of a currency, that currency can not be static. If the person in your situation lends out the whole billion dollars, how are they ever going to get that billion dollars back plus interest? The "plus interest" does not exist. Please do not respond without thinking things through. If you continue to disagree with me just for the sake of disagreeing without even addressing anything that I'm saying I'm just going to assume you are a troll.

If you can't answer the bold question, then do not respond.

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Originally Posted by Xaqaria

Please go back over my posts and read them carefully because I will not continue to repeat myself. Do you even know the difference between money and currency? Money is not debt. A fiat currency is debt, however. Dollars are not money, they are currency. You aren't even arguing the same points as I am discussing.

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Money is currency. It is a medium of exchange. If you think they are different the please provide an example of the difference between money and currency. Until you make such a distinction, I will continue to believe that currency is just another name for money and therefore when you say "fiat currency is debt," you are saying to me "money is debt." You are just using a different name but the theory behind it is the same.

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Originally Posted by Xaqaria

If someone is charging interest on the creation of a currency, that currency can not be static. If the person in your situation lends out the whole billion dollars, how are they ever going to get that billion dollars back plus interest? The "plus interest" does not exist. Please do not respond without thinking things through. If you continue to disagree with me just for the sake of disagreeing without even addressing anything that I'm saying I'm just going to assume you are a troll.

If you can't answer the bold question, then do not respond.

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You seem to think that an economy is just full of one way transactions. That lenders are self-sufficient and they themselves near trade money for goods and services. Let us postulate the ridiculous assumption that one person controls all the money supply and lends out 1 billion dollars with a certain amount of interest. Your assumption is one sided because you believe the person who borrows the money can apparently never sell their goods/services back to the lender. Realize that time is a factor in economics. Trade between the borrow and lender can still transpire during this lending period in which money can flow back to the lender then back to the borrow etc. etc. Of course if you had read the article I had presented to you before hand then you would of understood this point and your line of questioning would of been halted. Alas just another example of me being too favorable to those who raise arguments against my points. If I speak ahead of you then I'm not "getting it" and I'm a troll but if I react to your comments point by point you don't bother to read my reactions and then I'm a troll.
Go through the article and your points will be cleared up in a less sardonic manner then I am presenting. Some people just have better patience then I do.

Money is stored value. A currency is something that represents stored value. In terms of a fiat currency, the "money" is essentially faith in the issuers credit. The currency is the liability attached to that credit, otherwise known as debt.

a few links for you, they aren't great but at the very least they will show you that I am not the inventor of the money/currency dichotomy.
Money vs. Currency
Money vs. Currency

What you label as the "ridiculous assumption that one person controls all the money supply" is in fact essentially the way the world works. As far as domestic trade is concerned (and many other solely dollar denominated forms of trade like petroldollar trade); one person does in fact control the money supply. If you want to be nitpicky its really up to the decisions of a handful of people but for practical purposes we can say that the supply of U.S. Dollars is solely controlled by the acting chairman of the federal reserve bank, currently represented by Ben Bernanke.

You are right, I did not read the article you posted before. Now that I have, I can tell you why its points are irrelevant.

The article assumes that the lender is a real person, with real needs for goods and services. This is not the case. The "federal reserve" is not an entity that needs to eat or have its fence painted. Sure there is a building and I'm sure they have a cafeteria, but it is the people who work for the federal reserve that require the services involved with being physical beings, not the bank itself.

Whats more, it starts off talking about a fiat currency that creates money out of nothing through banking transactions but then uses an example of a tangible asset based currency to explain it's point. This is a fallacious argument. The example uses a situation in which originally there is 1000 units, 100 units are lent and 900 units are kept. 1 unit is spent (or given in exchange for service), and 899 units are left.

In our situation, once the 1 unit is given, there is still 900 left (or really nothing since there is no value base so no "money" exists until it is given out). Thus the real money supply is inflated to 1001 units through this act.

Even if we were to assume that somehow despite these other reasons the example is sound, we would have to assume that the federal reserve alone requires billions of dollars of goods and services every year, let alone all of the member banks and non-member banks who are participating in the fractional reserve system. This is of course ludicrous. There is simply not nearly enough things that the banks need to account for the total interest owed, so there couldn't possibly ever be enough 'extra' (meaning simply given out by the banks with no interest liability) money in existence to pay back every loan.

The real reason why this system seems to work, and why you can have the appearance of being right is that the federal reserve is not the only one doing this, and through complex international trade it is possible to swap debts and credits back and forth in such a way that everyone owes everyone else everything which gives the appearance that everyone has everything owed to them. This is the "value" of fractional reserve.

Edit: WOW

I just thought of the best example to explain the whole situation and I exclaim because its a true story about me and my best friend in highschool and it occured to me suddenly like a strange lesson from my past self.

So the two of us used to make silly bets with each other, that one or the other of us wouldn't do something or that we couldn't, and the principal for the bet was always stated as "all the marbles"; as in, "I'll give you all the marbles if you can bounce the ball off the wall so that it rides down the other wall and lands in the hole in one shot." (minigolf)

At various times one or the other may actually do the thing and feel triumphant because they "won all the marbles". This went back and forth over varying degrees of ridiculous bets, and neither of us actually had to exchange the marbles because at any time of victory it was implicit that the winner still owed all the marbles from last time. This of course hid the fact that the marbles never existed in the first place and were just some sort of weird euphemism for nothing in particular, or invented value existing only in the context of that particular two person monetary system.

I had a couple more thoughts on this; (and I wanted to break it into two posts so I wouldn't look like such a long winded blow hard)

The example of all the marbles is a good illustration because it directly points out the difference between currency and money. The money is the value, but the marbles themselves do not represent the underlying or implicit value since even if one could procure "all the marbles" that wouldn't necessarily be what is actually desired (what good would it be to have a shit load of marbles?) The value is actually just the triumphant feeling of winning.

In a tangible asset backed world, this is like a huge populist reset button. Basically the supplier of money certificates keeps a hoard of the asset in stockpile and thus controls the power of the value. The populace, however, holds a collective ticket to usurp that power at any moment of majority consensus; if everyone decides to claim their tangible asset for their tickets, the supplier loses all of their power.

In a fiat currency, the value is merely faith in the asset holder, and the asset is the value. The asset holder in this situation is the government, and the asset is our faith in the government. Faith is on a serious decline and if it goes, it goes "poof" into thin air when it becomes junk. It doesn't sit around and wait to become valuable again. Aluminum cans will still be picked out of the trash can long after they've been thrown away, but what can you do with a dollar bill? My best guess for highest value would be insulation or puffy coat stuffing but that still is going to be like pennies to the bushel. More importantly it can't 'instantaneously' be transferred to the populace either. A lack of faith in the government doesn't immediately translate into faith in the populace even for members of the populace.

TL;DR It all comes down to our values.

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Originally Posted by tommo

To you, it ain't. Many people would love building houses. Same way people love building cars or planes or whatever else. Even though it's hard work. And since the people doing it enjoy it (since there's no monetary incentive) you would get a better product in the end.

Unnecessary jobs. Robots can do it. The only reason we don't have them doing these sorts of things now is because people need jobs. Because they need money.

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I may have already addressed some of these points.

Another problem with this is that people will only work when they feel like it. This will cause things to be sort of haphazard. The guy who runs the place that does x is sick so the place doesn't open today, which causes a chain of more problems.

Also these people don't do it for the money. THey do it as a means of surviving. They do this to get money so they can eat and buy things that they want. Your being fallacious in saying that these people do it for the money, implying that they love money or something. Money just facilitates trade. Trade is a voluntary act between individuals. There is nothing wrong or bad about it. The only bad(immoral maybe) part is where we have these huge corporations that take advantage of weak minded people. They convince people that they have no choice, but the act is always voluntary, as you've said you can always go live in the woods, and as I've said there are many simpler and much more practical solutions. This is still immoral, or but it is the people who are acting immorally not inanimate objects.

I really don't think there are many people who enjoy working at fed-ex, or working as janitors, or night security, the list goes on. The fact of the matter is that we don't have technology to do these things right now. If you and other people want to work to make a society that functions this way then y'all should do it, it would be great if no one had to work if they didn't want to, I don't think anyone would disagree. But this is impossible at the moment. So is my ideal, anarcho-capitalism, but anarcho-capitalism is closer to being possible(this is my opinion, and could be an entire thread so I'd rather not argue wich is more possible because it doesn't really matter).

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Why? I would be completely fine with making a sculpture or something and someone comes along and says "oh man that's fantastic, can I have it?" It would make me happy and I would give it to them.
I don't know why you think it's absurd. If you really like something, you will just enjoy doing it. Enjoy the act of doing whatever it is.
As I said, in that video, he explains how we cannot specialise without trade IN A SYSTEM WHERE WE NEED TO HUNT AND GATHER. Not in a system where people will farm and automated hydroponic systems would grow crops etc. Then you have time. The only reason he says it won't work is because he's thinking of cavemen days when you had to spend all your time getting food.

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Um, don't we still have to spend a large chunk of our time doing something to sustain us, finding food in essence? We do, we don't have huge farms run by robots, and if we did that food would suck. It would be run by fucking high evil of all evils, monsanto, and it would be "unnatural", it would lack variety and the natural chaos, it would be weak(I'm doing a shitty job of explaining my problems with this kind of food but it doesn't matter because.....). But either way we can't do it right now, we don't have the means to. And if we do, the people who believe in this idea should get to it, saving the world requires action. You aren't going to convince anyone that this is going to work just talking about it, do it. Results will show them.

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I already addressed this too. What is to stop people withholding gold or diamonds or whatever you want to base money's value on to drive up the worth of it?

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Hopefully it's effects on society and the economy. But we don't need something that will ensure that currencies value is static. We just need something that will facilitate trade. And if it no longer does that we need to be able to let it go and use something else. And like xaq pointed out the rate at which gold is mined is fairly consistent, there's influx at a steady rate.

Honestly I'm not an expert in economics, maaybe Laughing Man or someone could better answer this point.

But regardless, this still does not show that capitalism is the problem. Capitalism is just trade. It's voluntary trade between individuals. Even within your system this would occur and you have no right to tell people that they cannot trade. As capitalism is a voluntary act it makes no sense to get rid of it.

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Originally Posted by stonedape

Do you know any people who have chosen to leave society and forage and hunt for food?

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I know hundreds of people and know of hundreds more. There are whole hunter-gatherer societies living in the national forests of America right now. There are tribes who set up villages up and down the Pacific Crest Trail and have a trading system in place. On the East Coast on the Appalachian Trail some are being set up modeled after the Pacific Crest trail tribes. There are plenty of hobbies to pursue such as bow making, canoe building, basketry, art, hide-tanning, trading, etc.

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Originally Posted by DeeryTheDeer

Hunter-gatherers had to labor every single day to kill an animal or gather plants to eat, and saving up for the winter to survive, like most animals in the wild still do. Does that count as slavery? Is having to work to live really such an atrocity? Seems like unavoidable common sense to me. Sure, in this thread there's a lot of hyping up and sensationalizing how horrible Americans have it in this apocalyptic bank run world, yet Americans live like kings compared to most of the rest of the world- even poor Americans. First world whining?

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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.

Not only do we work 40 hours per week; 50 years ago it was possible for one person to work 40 hours/week and support an entire family unit on that work. Now two people have to work 40 hours to accomplish the same thing. Technology has advanced but the amount of work required to survive has doubled (or more).

Exactly, and the increased "wealth" and "comfort" in some areas just leads to massive decreases in both in other areas.

stonedape, I didn't say people wouldn't be allowed to trade. Of course they can, coz that's the only way you could give rare items away.

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Originally Posted by ninja9578

We don't really work for them, but they control us. Our economy has gotten so top heavy, we have to get loans for everything, and they control how the loans work. The government regulates it, but the banks own half of the senate seats. The only way to break the hold of the banks is to let the economy completely collapse, or to boot them out of congress, but nobody wants the first, and the republicans wont let the latter happen.

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http://paranoidnews.org/wp-content/u...et-Button1.jpg

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Originally Posted by Xaqaria

Money is stored value. A currency is something that represents stored value. In terms of a fiat currency, the "money" is essentially faith in the issuers credit. The currency is the liability attached to that credit, otherwise known as debt.

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I've read both your articles (without having to actually be jeered into them, honestly who is the the troll?) and I find two fundamental flaws (one with each argument) that prevent a sound outcome. In the first artcle, money is supposedly a representation of "human labor." This is incorrect because the labor theory of value is false. Money is a medium of exchange that can only arise through a commodity backing. You can't have money that is not back by commodities for an extended period of time. The U.S. dollar was once backed by gold. A dollar represented X ounces worth of gold. It was taken off the "gold standard" over the course of the 20th century and that is when things started to get hairy with the value of the dollar. This is not to say dollar devaluation is only a 20th century phenomena. Since this article's main thesis is that "unreal" money is the basis of "real" currency and the writer doesn't have any concept of what money is in an economic sense, then I don't find much value in the rest of the article. On the second article, the writer is confusing currency and money and in a realistic market (one where money is actually backed by a commodity) his/her definition of money and currency would be the same thing. He/she thinks currency is useless by itself, it is merely used as a medium of exchange. True enough if you have a market in which there is no commodity backed money. This type of market is unsustainable though directly because a medium becomes useless onto itself when it does not have value backing it. Right now the U.S. dollar has a pseudo backing of the dollar through government gurantee and people think there is value to this but that bubble is slowly reaching critical mass. Fiat money is possible, if you tie it to a commodity and don't engage in fractional reserve banking. I don't really understand why he thinks livestock and other commodities are "currency" and why gold & silver are "money." There is something unsound there which is the problem I have with the article.

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Originally Posted by Xaqaria

What you label as the "ridiculous assumption that one person controls all the money supply" is in fact essentially the way the world works. As far as domestic trade is concerned (and many other solely dollar denominated forms of trade like petroldollar trade); one person does in fact control the money supply. If you want to be nitpicky its really up to the decisions of a handful of people but for practical purposes we can say that the supply of U.S. Dollars is solely controlled by the acting chairman of the federal reserve bank, currently represented by Ben Bernanke.

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They control the size of the money supply, they don't actually control its direction or flow. Bernanke can't come up to you on the street and say "Give me all my money back."

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Originally Posted by Xaqaria

You are right, I did not read the article you posted before. Now that I have, I can tell you why its points are irrelevant.

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Again, who is the troll?

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Originally Posted by Xaqaria

The article assumes that the lender is a real person, with real needs for goods and services. This is not the case. The "federal reserve" is not an entity that needs to eat or have its fence painted. Sure there is a building and I'm sure they have a cafeteria, but it is the people who work for the federal reserve that require the services involved with being physical beings, not the bank itself.

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Yes it does assume that the lender is a real person because economics deals with realism. Do you think that the Federal Reserve (the building) is actually alive and tells Bernanke what to do? Firstly, people don't get loans from the Federal Reserve, the Federal Reserve is the bank of banks. The bank itself that people get loans from have to pay salaries and overhead costs such as energy, sanitation, permits, taxes etc. (I'm still against taxes and permits but I feel the need to point them out because they are payments) so my point still stands, or well Dr. Murphy's point stands.

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Originally Posted by Xaqaria

Whats more, it starts off talking about a fiat currency that creates money out of nothing through banking transactions but then uses an example of a tangible asset based currency to explain it's point. This is a fallacious argument. The example uses a situation in which originally there is 1000 units, 100 units are lent and 900 units are kept. 1 unit is spent (or given in exchange for service), and 899 units are left.

In our situation, once the 1 unit is given, there is still 900 left (or really nothing since there is no value base so no "money" exists until it is given out). Thus the real money supply is inflated to 1001 units through this act.

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It's a simplified hypothetical situation in order to present real-world application. If you have issue with the fiat portion, there is actually a link in the article which goes to his previous article which he explains how he arrived at that conclusion. It's actually in the first sentence.

Here is the example again, I will underline the point you are missing:

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Originally Posted by Robert Murphy

To see how this relates to our current discussion, let's consider a much simpler example. Suppose there are two neighbors living in a community that uses actual gold coins as its money. Mr. Smith starts out with 1,000 gold coins, while his neighbor Mr. Brown starts out with none.

Brown asks Smith if he can borrow 100 gold coins for a month. Smith agrees, but insists on a 12.7 percent APR, which works out to 1 percent interest charged monthly. So on day one of this deal, Smith has 900 gold coins while Brown has 100.

At the end of the month, after whatever buying and selling he has done with the rest of the community, Brown has accumulated 100 gold coins in his possession. He pays that back to Smith. Ah, but Brown is still short 1 gold coin. So he offers to cut Smith's lawn and paint his fence (with materials provided by Smith). In return for this labor, Smith pays Brown 1 gold coin, which Brown then uses to pay off his interest.

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Originally Posted by Xaqaria

This is of course ludicrous. There is simply not nearly enough things that the banks need to account for the total interest owed, so there couldn't possibly ever be enough 'extra' (meaning simply given out by the banks with no interest liability) money in existence to pay back every loan.

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Well money is not loaned out at zero interest. You are right though, if everyone tried to pay back their debt all at the same time there wouldn't be enough money but markets never achieve perfect equilibrium.

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

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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.

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.

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They control the size of the money supply, they don't actually control its direction or flow. Bernanke can't come up to you on the street and say "Give me all my money back."

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

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Do you think that the Federal Reserve (the building) is actually alive and tells Bernanke what to do?

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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.

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

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Originally Posted by tommo

Exactly, and the increased "wealth" and "comfort" in some areas just leads to massive decreases in both in other areas.

stonedape, I didn't say people wouldn't be allowed to trade. Of course they can, coz that's the only way you could give rare items away.

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Then how is this an alternative to capitalism? It's just an effective method of socialism that we don't have means to do.

While there are plenty of problems with the current system, if you work creatively and intelligently you can live very comfortably without giving up living in modern society. I think the best way to do it is self employment, but even without doing that you can find good work that is both fullfilling and pays well enough to sustain yourself. And while I don't know this, I think the reason why 2 people need to work 40 hour a week job is in part because we have come to hold higher standards of living, computers, cell phones, big screen tvs, all lavish luxaries compared to what people had 50 years ago.

I'm not saying that the bankers aren't evil bastards or that our culture is wonderful and perfect, but its so diverse and chaotic it's easy to find a way if you really try and if you really focus. Maybe not easy, very doable, and you don't have to stress yourself out in order to do it. Though I guess I have no room to talk, I live with my parents, but I make some money teaching guitar lessons and playing music, I think if I picked up more students I could support myself and even a child if I had one(having more than one child in this society seems irresponsible though so I wouldn't have more than that).

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Originally Posted by stonedape

Then how is this an alternative to capitalism? It's just an effective method of socialism that we don't have means to do.

While there are plenty of problems with the current system, if you work creatively and intelligently you can live very comfortably without giving up living in modern society. I think the best way to do it is self employment, but even without doing that you can find good work that is both fullfilling and pays well enough to sustain yourself. And while I don't know this, I think the reason why 2 people need to work 40 hour a week job is in part because we have come to hold higher standards of living, computers, cell phones, big screen tvs, all lavish luxaries compared to what people had 50 years ago.

I'm not saying that the bankers aren't evil bastards or that our culture is wonderful and perfect, but its so diverse and chaotic it's easy to find a way if you really try and if you really focus. Maybe not easy, very doable, and you don't have to stress yourself out in order to do it. Though I guess I have no room to talk, I live with my parents, but I make some money teaching guitar lessons and playing music, I think if I picked up more students I could support myself and even a child if I had one(having more than one child in this society seems irresponsible though so I wouldn't have more than that).

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We're probably pretty much in agreement really.

I just think that this type of society causes more harm than good and humans need a little pushing to stop being selfish.

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Originally Posted by tommo

We're probably pretty much in agreement really.

I just think that this type of society causes more harm than good and humans need a little pushing to stop being selfish.

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Probably, I agree with that, I just think the cause lies in human relationships and beliefs not in inanimate objects. The problem is in our heads.

Yeah I agree. The only way to fix all our problems is to fix our mental oddities.
But I think some things we use in life/some ways we live our life just make it more likely for these ways of thinking to occur.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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

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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).

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

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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.

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

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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?

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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Originally Posted by Xei

You could always, like... leave.

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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.

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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?

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

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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.

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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.

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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!!!

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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)

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Originally Posted by Laughing Man

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

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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.

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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?

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Originally Posted by Laughing Man

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

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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.

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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.

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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).

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Originally Posted by Laughing Man

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

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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.

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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."

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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.

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Originally Posted by tommo

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

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:crying: 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.

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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.

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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?

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Originally Posted by juroara

:crying: 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.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRJOduaSWVw

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.

Quote:

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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.

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I love you.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by WakingNomad

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRJOduaSWVw

Any last words for the public?

I probably said too many already.

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:shock:



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?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by juroara

:shock:



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?

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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

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Xaqaria

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

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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!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Xaqaria

A better sign would be "What Is The Plan"

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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

Quote:

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Originally Posted by juroara

Will you guys join too?

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

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Xaqaria

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.

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Don't call me a bot and a troll then play the victim card.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Xaqaria

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)

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You stated that fiat currency cannot be backed by anything yet bank notes are fiat and they are backed by gold that was held within bank accounts. Therefore you can have a fiat currency that IS backed by a commodity. If you are confused just go back to the quote I used to respond to about this topic. The dollar was once back by gold but it is no longer. Legal tender laws have been in place for decades even before the U.S. dollar went off the "gold standard" (if it can even be called such). So you have a dilemma. You stated:

"The definition of a fiat currency is one that is not backed by any commodity. "

The dollar was back by gold.
The dollar is legal tender and has been for some time.
The dollar is fiat currency.

Therefore, your definition sucks.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Xaqaria

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?

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The fact that money is created by printing and lent out by the Federal Reserve is not a criticism against the idea that fiat money does not necessitate an ever increasing supply (inflation). The inflation experienced by the Federal Reserve on the U.S. money supply is not a natural inclination, it is an artificial influence. The point of my argument was that contra as to your thinking, fiat money is not naturally inflating. It can be static.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Xaqaria

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).

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When money is repaid on a loan then that money is presented back out into the populace as another loan as long as the loaning bank meets Federal Reserve reserve limited which usually are around 10%. Meaning that every bank has to withhold that amount of funds within their vaults. All other funds are presented back out in the market place and multiple titles are given concerning loans and savings. My account balance may say I have 100 dollars in my bank account but the bank doesn't necessarily have that 100 dollars in their holdings. That is how fractional reserve banking works.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Xaqaria

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.

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And what use are laws if people don't follow them? Bernanke holds power because and is motivated by his ideas. Laws and mandates don't mean anything if people don't latch onto the ideas. It is the same with governments. The ruled always outnumber the rulers so they must justify their rule in order to gain widespread acceptance. This whole little aside happened because you said the example in the article isn't "the real world."

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Laughing Man

Don't call me a bot and a troll then play the victim card.

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I was honestly accusing you of trolling, and not just trying to insult you.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Laughing Man

You stated that fiat currency cannot be backed by anything yet bank notes are fiat and they are backed by gold that was held within bank accounts. Therefore you can have a fiat currency that IS backed by a commodity. If you are confused just go back to the quote I used to respond to about this topic. The dollar was once back by gold but it is no longer. Legal tender laws have been in place for decades even before the U.S. dollar went off the "gold standard" (if it can even be called such). So you have a dilemma. You stated:
"The definition of a fiat currency is one that is not backed by any commodity. "
The dollar was back by gold.
The dollar is legal tender and has been for some time.
The dollar is fiat currency.
Therefore, your definition sucks.

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Under a gold standard, a bank note is not fiat currency, it is a representative currency.

What Was The Gold Standard?
A look at what the gold standard was and how it differs from the fiat system


Gold standard - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Richard Nixon to end the direct convertibility of the dollar to gold on August ... at which time nearly all nations had switched to full fiat money.

My Definition doesn't suck. It is the actual definition of a fiat currency.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Laughing Man

The fact that money is created by printing and lent out by the Federal Reserve is not a criticism against the idea that fiat money does not necessitate an ever increasing supply (inflation). The inflation experienced by the Federal Reserve on the U.S. money supply is not a natural inclination, it is an artificial influence. The point of my argument was that contra as to your thinking, fiat money is not naturally inflating. It can be static.

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About all there is left to say is, no it can't. Reread my posts and read some of the information that I have supplied to you in order to understand why this is true.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Laughing Man

When money is repaid on a loan then that money is presented back out into the populace as another loan as long as the loaning bank meets Federal Reserve reserve limited which usually are around 10%. Meaning that every bank has to withhold that amount of funds within their vaults. All other funds are presented back out in the market place and multiple titles are given concerning loans and savings. My account balance may say I have 100 dollars in my bank account but the bank doesn't necessarily have that 100 dollars in their holdings. That is how fractional reserve banking works.

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What is your point? The bank's money also comes from a loan, which they in turn have to repay. If the interest rates are higher, then more of their capital goes to paying interest rates on the loans that they have and they are able to take out less in new loans which lowers the amount of capital that they have to loan against out to the the public, thus lowering the money supply.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Laughing Man

And what use are laws if people don't follow them? Bernanke holds power because and is motivated by his ideas. Laws and mandates don't mean anything if people don't latch onto the ideas. It is the same with governments. The ruled always outnumber the rulers so they must justify their rule in order to gain widespread acceptance. This whole little aside happened because you said the example in the article isn't "the real world."

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I don't know, what use are laws if people don't follow them? Again, what's your point? What are laws if people don't enforce them? Nothing. In the real world (as of now) though, people do enforce and follow laws. Those two facts are what motivate and allow Ben Bernanke and the other board members of the federal reserve to act. (Hence the name, Federal Reserve Act;))

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Xaqaria

Under a gold standard, a bank note is not fiat currency, it is a representative currency.

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This is ridiculous. Bank notes meet all the criteria of what you label "fiat currency" except for one which is legal tender laws related which only came after the civil war period and which was never fully resolved until the mid 20th century. So because it's not legal tender then it isn't fiat? Preposterous. You're just looking for a new angle to move away from the main point of this conversation. You are also trying to skirt out of calling the dollar fiat currency while it was back by commodity. So what is your conviction? That the dollar wasn't fiat currency until it came off the international standard in the 70's?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Xaqaria

About all there is left to say is, no it can't. Reread my posts and read some of the information that I have supplied to you in order to understand why this is true.

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I have shown you through a hypothetical example that it can. Whether people follow the example "in the real world" does not show its validity or invalidity. A static pool of money can exist without inflation.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Xaqaria

What is your point? The bank's money also comes from a loan, which they in turn have to repay. If the interest rates are higher, then more of their capital goes to paying interest rates on the loans that they have and they are able to take out less in new loans which lowers the amount of capital that they have to loan against out to the the public, thus lowering the money supply.

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Paying off debts doesn't "lower the money supply." If I were to pay off my student loans now then that doesn't mean that money ceases to exist. Its just transferred from one party to another.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Xaqaria

I don't know, what use are laws if people don't follow them? Again, what's your point? What are laws if people don't enforce them? Nothing. In the real world (as of now) though, people do enforce and follow laws. Those two facts are what motivate and allow Ben Bernanke and the other board members of the federal reserve to act. (Hence the name, Federal Reserve Act;))

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Again, this whole segway started because you said the example in the article I linked wasn't "the real world" because it assumed that a lender was a real person. You said that the Federal Reserve wasn't a real person, which is a true fact, but the Federal Reserve, the institution, is not a lender. The "real" lenders are the board therefore they are real people. This is actually assuming that the Federal Reserve is what loans people money which it doesn't. It loans money to banks and banks themselves loan it to people for things like mortgages or loans.

Laughing Man, just read the sources that I handed to you. I honestly don't know why you are continuing this argument; everything you say has already been refuted by me and the sources that I listed; I even quoted the bits that directly contradict you nearly word for word. I know your self image has you thinking that you know what you are talking about but you really don't. Again, just read the sources. They explain in plain language the difference between fiat money and representative money, they outline exactly when the U.S. and most of the rest of the world switched from representative gold and silver notes to fiat currency, and I'm sure somewhere in there fractional lending is explained as well (if not, I would be more than happy to explain it to you again as well as cite as many sources as you need to understand it.)

I really let this go on for far too long. We are both wasting our time here. Do some reading and learn something instead of just trying to "win" an internet argument. No matter how many rhetorical shenanigans you try to pull, you still won't convince anyone that you are right when you are clearly and obviously wrong. Just accept that (its okay to be wrong) and learn from the experience.

I hereby declare "you're clearly wrong, just accept it!" the greatest cop-out ever.

beware of energy vamps

Quote:

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Originally Posted by BLUELINE976

I hereby declare "you're clearly wrong, just accept it!" the greatest cop-out ever.

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You can read over the posts and decide for yourself what is right. When someone is arguing against the definition of a word that has been proved through a variety of sources, there is not much else to say.

Unless of course, you like to add something of substance to the conversation.