exosculate
a stagger with a beat
What a load of tripe is being written on this thread.
Banking and Conspiracies
- Thread starter phildwyer
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Fez909 said:
As it happens fez i am an example of this! All i knew was debt in britain, then i left, and voila i no longer had debt, and in fact spent as i saw fit, and found money left at the end of each month. But i didn't go mad, but i did think what a massive difference in mindset i could afford...
But hang on a minute: presumably inflation will occur coz folk have more money to spend, so the sellers get an attack of greed and up their prices simply coz people can afford to pay more.
So perhaps inflation is down to greed...
slaar said:
To my layman's thinking debt is negative money to the person who borrowed it, and positive money to the lender. I am viewing life through the people, not the profiteers, and therefore to me debt is negative money.
I shall read that, thank you. I definitely concur that inflation is complex, and it's my understanding that politics has a lot to play, and so does basic human greed, and so does taxation (hency my on-topic question about why dope has not been subject to inflation in my adult life).
I talked about a doubling of money in britain, not zimbabwe, a completely different context. I've seen the shops in britain brimming full with stuff. If everyone suddenly bought double i'd say there'd be absolutely loads of stuff left to buy. Supplies would nowhere near run out.
Backatcha Bandit
is not taking your calls
phildwyer said:
It's hardly surprising that it looks 'natural' if it permeates the fabric of everything you've ever known.
I'd venture that one cannot begin to be aware of the possibility that an alternative even exists - or that there even is anything for there to be an alternative to.
If you grow up immersed in 'capitalist' culture and values, where everything has it's 'price', practise the dark arts well and it *works* for you, it's inevitable that you'll suffer some sort of metaphysical blindness that would perhaps be analogous to a fish's awareness of 'water'.
Indeed, to many people, this stuff is so far off the radar as to appear insane. I was lucky enough to live for a while in a place where they quite literally do not have their own currency. It's a place where the very first person in the whole country to ever accept any sort of monetary payment for work is still (just!) in living memory.
To be honest, I spent 9 months trying to fix things before I realised they weren't broken. 9 months of *does not compute* and headfuck before I finally got to grips with the fact that there even was 'a way of thinking', let alone what the differences were between mine and theirs, or who's was most appropriate for the environment. 9 months of wondering why people looked at me like I was mad, before I realised that to them, I was.
I think that for all people have 'internalised capitalist assumptions', there remains an instinctive awareness of it's fundamentally 'evil' nature. Without the intellectual tools to conceptualise an alternative 'economy' or system, we're stuck with the fait accompli.
Backatcha Bandit said:
It's 'evil' coz often people get stuck in a never-ending trap of loans and increased debt, all because the interest payments become too much of a burden. Under debt, one cannot be free, perhaps the fundamental yearning of human beings.
I too agree one needs to see alternative systems in place and how they operate. But that would open people's eyes up to the inequities of their own system, and hence the likes of US doing their best to stuff cuba up for example, never mind the rest of their inteference around the globe.
Debt kills creativity, freedom, choice, independence, and confidence. Perfect for those in power in ostensibly free countries where people ostensibly have freedom of speech, freedom of choice, and so on.
Isn't it that in communism folk can see the injustice and bullshit actions of their leaders, while in capitalism folk cannot see it clearly? That they are in some way aware something's wrong, but can't quite see what it is?
A Dashing Blade
Takes horses to water but can't make donkeys drink
Jazzz said:
Bangs head against wall!
The money is created when the Central bank ISSUES the bond (central banks don't, as a rule, particapate in either the primary or the secondary corporate bond markets).
Deep breath, a bond is simply an IOU, nothing more, nothing less.
ie "Lend me 100m mate! I'll pay you back in 10 years and give you 5% a year for your trouble". Add a bit of tehnical jargon to bullsh*t the client and, genuinely, that is all there is to it.
To "print money", the BoE, Fed, ECB etc issue bonds rather than print actual £, $'s or Yen.
As an example of the sizes we're talking about here, a very recent French Government bond matures in 2040 and has a "face value" (incorrect technical term but I'm keeping it simple here) of 4,000,000,000,000 EUR.
Non Central Govt banks however, also "create" money by fractional lending.
No fela, it's not greed, unless you count greed as anything a human does that is in their own interest. If there's more money about with a certain amount of goods in the shops (and however much there is in the shops, there's a lot of people out there, if you remember the occasional panic shop in the UK when everyone goes out and buys something, goods run out pretty quickly), people will offer more to outbid the next person, as everyone has more money. Result, prices go up. So what should a shopkeeper do, accept the lower offer? Come on.fela fan said:
You know Robert Mugabe blames shopkeepers for inflation as well when his government is at fault; it's not a good style.
slaar said:
Mate, that mugabe is one of the top three or four nastiest individuals running a country in this day and age. I can only come up with burma, saudi, n korea to rival him, and i'm not even sure they can stoop as low as he.
No thread yet on the total violence visited upon the opposition leader. I don't really do breaking news threads. But what i'm saying for this thread is that if my dope question is spam, bringing this cruel wanker into it is spam too!
And i'm almost inclined to agree on the greed question. But it would be context-dependent. As for shops running out, yes for food. But i was actually thinking about all the typical consumer products, for example electronics and computers, the stuff one buys when one has the notes to waste....
slaar said:
But on second thoughts, re the bigger offers put forward by those with more money. In the UK there is gazumping on houses. In australia there is a law against this. Now, in the UK, a person asks for a certain price, and accepts an offer of this. Then a new offer comes in higher than the original. Person accepts or doesn't? Honour or greed??! Money or ethics?
I think this pertinent to the thread. Money as the default in society leads to avarice and the wrong kind of selfishness, and unhealthy competition, and so on.
The king of thailand bangs on about a sufficiency economy. I tend to agree with it on the whole, most definitely over the system in the UK that i see as rampant capitalism, which to me is against equal rights and respect, justice, and freedom for all. Why should a tiny few have so much, and a huge amount have fuck all?? It simply is anti-human.
And i'm guessing that the few get all this money due to interest on loans...
That's a bad example. It's only gazumping because you're breaking an oral contract; if somebody comes in with one offer, you wait, somebody comes with a higher offer then you accept that one, it's not gazumping.fela fan said:
And who in the UK has "fuck all"? You live in Thailand so you've seen some quite poor people. Relative deprivation isn't fun, but let's not kid ourselves that there are people in the UK who have living standards like, for example, rural African villagers.
Your point about money being a corrupting influence is well taken, but it's not as closely related to discussions of inflation I don't think.
Fruitloop said:
Come again mate!! You cannot relegate it to such unimportance.
If i had enough i'd never ever work again.
If i had loads and was a bastard, i could do serious damage to other humans through misuse of power.
And then there's the difficult concept to argue against that money is the cause of all evil.
But in a way i do understand what you say: money, like power, is inert, benign, until an agent (human) comes along and does something with it...
A Dashing Blade
Takes horses to water but can't make donkeys drink
fela fan said:
That scenario could easily happen in a barter economy as well though ie a guy comes in with a higher offer of 4 sheep for my cow.
slaar said:
I was gazumped, six years ago. Made an offer, had it accepted, got to the lawyer stage, then after spending money on the business of buying the flat, was told that the owner was now accepting a higher bid. After an agreement, which incidentally was in writing, not orally. Me fucked, owner greedy, no ethics. Up to him. But i'm only making a point, not complaining.
Who in the UK has fuck all?? What about big issue sellers for a start? And straightforward beggars on the street? What do they have apart from what sympathetic members of the public give them? And then there's those that actually have housing, but no jobs. They have enough food clothing and shelter, but there it stops. In thailand they all have that too. Not so africa, but you can't suddenly add that as an example when i'm just comparing UK and thailand!
I live in chiang mai in northern thailand mate. I see more begging and street people in brighton than here. Their living standards are worse than the bottom sector of chiang mai. I'd guess due to a more socialist society over here compared to the rampant capitalist society in britain.
fela fan said:
Well yeah, but that wasn't quite my point. Money is representative of a social relationship, and social relationships are incredibly influential as you rightly point out. I just think in an economic sense it's worth bearing in mind that however much you shuffle money about, it doesn't in itself give you any more actual stuff to allocate. If you want more stuff then someone, somewhere, has to actually make it.
Just to add slaar, when i went back last year to england with my (chiang mai) girlfriend, she was shocked to see the big issue sellers and other beggars on the street. To her the UK was a rich wealthy nation. She also happened to wake one up and give him a couple of quid (my money actually!!!) and the lovely lad was well impressed and shocked at this kindness.
I have to say i learnt something here. But perhaps half my point is that i was brought up in an inherently capitalist society, whereas she was brought up in one that places importance on looking after all, by the people, not by the state...
I have to say i learnt something here. But perhaps half my point is that i was brought up in an inherently capitalist society, whereas she was brought up in one that places importance on looking after all, by the people, not by the state...
A Dashing Blade said:
Hey mate, do we really want this theory stuff?! Sheeps and cows are not UK currency!!
I'm talking money vs ethics, ie human values. When money comes first, humans are going against their nature. And capitalism has done a good job of burying matters of the heart, and reducing our lives to matters of the mind, and competition, and business, and dog eating dog.
And war.
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