Well, you’ve made my point. If the alternative to using a bank is poverty, then using the bank is a benefit.
It’s okay not to be a fan of the fractional reserve system, but it’s not okay, for instance, to be against it and still claim compassion for your fellow humans. That’s because it’s a small but significant part of an economic system that has brought unprecedented wealth to an unprecedented percentage of the population. And I don’t mean just “rich people”. I mean everyone. Life is much easier than it was even a hundred years ago for most people in the West, and not just in the West, because of the capitalist system that banking is a part of.
Easilly I buy in shops. But if I don’t want credit then life is just more physical not harder.
It’s not the biggest, the biggest is a crumbling education system. Universities second to America only, schools marginally better than the US. That really is nothing to write home about.
I don’t want things to be free, I want them to be at least approaching a fair contract that suits at least some of my concerns.
Put it this way I wouldn’t want to go back to monthly charges, at the same time I don’t want to be subsidising wealthy people through circumstance.
Speaking of straw men. If the alternative of shooting yourself in the head is shooting yourself in the stomach. How about having an offshore bank account? How about moving to Crete? How about dumping all your money in a big vault? I said we have no alternative to banks if you are unemployed, but if you are wealthy obviously you can pretty much dictate your terms to them and they will suck your ass like leeches.
So having to choose between poverty and the banks makes it a good system? By your logic, the North Korean military is a great institution and a gift to North Koreans. Look, in North Korea if you are not part of the military, you starve to death. It is obviously such a great benefit for those people that by God, without it they starve! I am sure if it weren’t for Kim Jong Il, and the Korean military those North Koreans would all starve to death and die! So thank God for the North Korean military! We need one of those here. Why, if we had the North Korean army here, all those idiots who refuse to use the banks could just join the North Korean military and no longer live in poverty.
Sure it does. Let me spell out the connection for you. In North Korea, you can either join the military or you can live in poverty. Here in the United States, you can either join a bank, or you can live in poverty. You can still choose not to join the military in North Korea, just like you can still choose not to join the banks here in the United States. If you want to use money here in the united states, you have to become part of the banking system since the banks own and control all of the currency. If you want to eat in North Korea, you have to become part of the military since the military owns and controls all of the food supply. You can live without food, just like you can live without using money. But neither is a very good option, and you are not going to live a very good life in either case. You may see this as freedom of choice, but it is really just freedom of predetermined choice already made for you. It is much like the bipartisan political system. You can decide to choose horse shit, or donkey vomit, which one would you like to freely choose? Hurry up, pick one! Don’t you want to exercise your right to vote?
Oh, and every system is good for somebody Faust. I always tell people that there is no such thing as a bad law. Every piece of legislation made is good for someone. It may not be good for me, or good for you, but it was good for somebody. Why else would it be passed or even devised in the first place? It is the same thing with economic systems. Every economic system devised was good for somebody. Maybe we should make a system where all the money people keep goes to me so I can buy the things I need at your expense. Hey, it’s not all about you Faust, so you ought to join my system.
Laws are usually ethical utilitarianism, but they sometimes benefit the few wealthy at the expense of the poorer many. This is generally when the working class or the middle class in the US get pissed off. This is why broadly there are conservatives and liberals in both countries, a balancing act, we’ve been wildly going between the two for so long that we got dizzy. What is needed is obviously a compromise to keep both the elitocracy and the proletariat in harmony. Extremes in politics nearly always fail because the needs of the many in a democracy outweigh the needs of the few or the loaded.
Libertarianism is a hollow dream of Utopia that can only come about from the collapse of government, usually by war where it has existed for any time, ie Spain and France. Communism and libertarianism on both extremes seem to be in practice redundant systems. Atlas won’t shrug at worthless ideas or ideals they need to work in practice.
Libertarianism, can, has, still does, and always will work. It is the most successful political system in the world. You are confusing it with anarchy. It is really minarchy, which means keeping government minimal. There does have to be a balance of order, but the bigger the government gets, the more the criminals will turn to the government as a tool with which to perpetrate their crimes. Criminals have no interest in a minimal government. They will instead perpetrate their crimes on the streets instead of in office which is a lot better for the rest of us, and a lot worse for them since they get caught and are no longer immune to prosecution. So all you criminals out there, ought to be calling up your senators and representatives right now telling them you want more government. It is great for you, and I don’t deny that. But the rest of us would like to see you punished for your crimes, so we are going to make sure you never have the ability to dictate our lives.
You know, during the baroque period, western governments were only about 3% of the GDP. Now they are more like 70% of GDP, and people are much more miserable then they were before the late 1700’s, and we are working on our third global depression. But let me tell you, this world government will not be sustainable. People like me will opt out on an individual level. I am learning how to operate without the banks, and only operate in trade rather then commerce. I will teach as many people as I can to do the same thing. The bankers’ days are numbered. Their new world order will fail.
Minarchy show me the money? Smaller input may lead to more freedom but not everyone is responsible enough to use it constructively, if that were so then socialism or anarchy would also work by extension. Anarchy or minarchy assumes human nature is a constant amongst a diverse group just as communism does. The only constant is that human nature has made us diverse in order to make us stronger as a whole, provided the overall mix is consistent with the most possible gain or the best utility overall. Democracy makes this possible but only by limiting the damage any one governance system can do as effectively as possible.
In a valid social structure the only constant is the ability to change given time, the faster it happens to provide the most benefit the better. Of course this is a process that needs wisdom not equality or infamous inequality but we learn so slowly it’s sometimes a wonder we ever evolved mentally at all.
False history gets made all day, any day, the truth of the new is never on the news.
Adrienne Rich
The charm of history and its enigmatic lesson consist in the fact that, from age to age, nothing changes and yet everything is completely different.
Aldous Huxley
HISTORY, n. An account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools.
Ambrose Bierce
We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.
George Bernard Shaw
Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
George Santayana
What experience and history teach is this – that people and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles.
I also ought to mention that I do not want democracy either. The people whom I am trying to oust make their living manipulating crowds. I don’t want their servants tyrannizing me either. Nor do I want to fall victim to voting fraud. I want a constitutional republic with guaranteed inalienable rights which can never be revoked no matter who votes or steals election otherwise. I don’t think a lot of people realize the gravity behind the phrase “inalienable rights”. These are rights that you cannot give up even if you want to. If the courts were not so corrupt in America, that is how it would really work. There would be no accidental waiving of rights because you didn’t ask for them.
Not so about minarchy. It assumes nothing except that certain rights are inalienable and bestowed upon us by a higher power. In a minarchy, government officials would have little or no power. They would just be public servants, and using their power in any manner other then to serve the public would be highly illegal.
It is obvious that you are one of those “the corporations are the root evil” guys. I agree they are evil, but it is because of the fact that we are practicing totalitarian debt based trade rather then free market commodity trading. Real wealth is gold, silver, metals, wood, wheat, beans, corn, milk, and honey, not worthless fiat paper IOU’s. Corporations as they are today are entirely created by a debt based monetary system in order to acquire the most debt based money which has a negative value as possible. Organizations seeking negative value have a negative impact. In a truly free commodity based market it would be impossible for corporations and banks to exist as they do in their current forms. I used to think almost exactly like you do, where I thought there was a problem with the system which needed additional regulation. Then I realized that the problem was with money itself, not the system in which it is traded. It is money that is dishonest and oppressive. Any organization which would seek that which is dishonest and oppressive will then become themselves dishonest and oppressive. In fact, if you follow history, the more honest the currency, the more prosperous the nation which issues it is. Rhodes during the 3rd century BC had the most strict monetary policy ever made. As a result, their coins were considered much more valuable then most other nations who practiced coin clipping and plating. This resulted in a wealth of prosperity as peoples from all over the world flocked to Rhodes where they were assured fair trade for their commodities. Likewise, the reason for the American dollar being the world’s reserve currency for so long was because it was the only widely traded currency that was backed by gold. So it was the only currency that was immune to corruption by its government. But the government seeing the opportunity for cheating people, decided to go off the gold standard and use the printing presses to pay for a purposefully implemented massive trade deficit. Before the gold standard was lost, America used to export real commodities. Now all we export is worthless paper promises. As a result, our entire economy is about to collapse.
People have just been conditioned to freely accept a dishonest monetary system. But the truth is, the monetary system should be the most guarded treasure of any civilization. Corruption of monetary policy always has, and always will result in the total corruption and consequential collapse of the civilization. Crime never pays. There is truth in that old adage.
I don’t think we disagree in principle only on the means to achieve our principles. Mine is utilitarian and not based on a duty to the state above and beyond what the state can do for the public. In that sense we are disagreeing only on governmental form, economics, well we both hate those imposters just the same.
For me of course:
“Democracy is the worst system except all those other that have been tried”
Winston Churchill.
Thus if those tried are not cut down to size by Occam’s razor at least and the practical good at best and by wise policy then they are doomed to do worse than democracy.
By the way, change can be good or bad. They try and divide and conquer people by drawing lines between progress and the status quo. The truth is somewhere in between. Some things need to change, some need to stay the same. If you devote your entire being to adapting to change, then you have no stability at all. There is a merit to tried and true methodologies. That which is tried and proven to work should be kept until it no longer works after which it should be changed. Yes, the nature of the universe is dynamic. But just because something is always moving does not mean it is always changing. Some things change, others stay the same. We should not avoid change, nor should we blindly embrace it. We should make a rational decision in either case. Obama offered “change” to America. Everybody wanted change, but the change he had in mind is different then what they had in mind. Now they are figuring that out the hard way. Breathing has been a part of human behavior since humanity’s inception. Should we change that now, or stick with what works?
Should we change yes, but by how much? And by what means?
Otherwise we’re just arguing semantics, we both agree change is coming, but by whom and by how much? This is an issue of philosophy in politics, an issue that we can’t resolve without pragmatism.
Democracy is worse then a constitutional republic with guaranteed inalienable rights. So Mr. Churchill has something up with which he did not put (into words). He was a Fabian socialist. That’s why he likes democracy. He and Aldous Huxley were planning a brave new world together. But it wasn’t brave enough for the communists or the nazis hence the conflicts.
Good point but The Republic is as much a dream as it was in a galaxy far far away or in Plato’s time, as it is in the UK it is not as yet viable. A parliamentary democracy works better in a small country than separating each tiny county into a government system. These truths are subject to circumstance. I’d get rid of the queen in a heartbeat but not her money and not the diplomacy that comes with her position even if she has absolutely no power. At least there is a level above the government in the parliament that answers to the queen through lords, and leaders that are not at the beck and call of the government, called the privy council.
Sometimes tradition can be a curse, but when it is something that works then only discard the faulty traditions, the monarchy is all but discarded, it is financed by the government, who keeps its property and wealth and thus the interest. And the privy council may have church members on it but they are lackeys of a state. Luckily too since the civil war it also is the parliaments army not the royal army, because all power rests not just in a government but that which keeps that government in power be it the people or the army against royalist nonsense.
So thank God for the North Korean military! We need one of those here. Why, if we had the North Korean army here, all those idiots who refuse to use the banks could just join the North Korean military and no longer live in poverty.
