Ronald wrote: As for money being good or bad, I think inherently it's neither, but it is a dangerous thing to handle. And I seem to remember that the bible (as well as the Koran) is quite clear in its damnation of interest, which I also believe to be the root of most, if not all, our current economic problems.
I admit there is little love lost between me and banks or credit card companies. They are pretty durn soulless. For instance, their handing out credit cards like candy to poor populations in the third world (and the first and second), indebting those people for life, is evil.
But on the other hand, if charging interest was made illegal, it would only drive money lending underground, with all the wonderful benefits that would entail!
After all, there will always be bad debts, so why would anybody want to ever lend money to anybody (except family or friends) if there was no interest?
And while I think that in an ideal world nobody would ever have to borrow, I also think that world is not exactly right around the corner. Not this century, methinks.
59 comments:
money IS the root of ALL evil according to scripture.
Actually it talks about the *love* of money, look it up.
Sure, at a modest five percent interest. Per week, of course.
I am almost finished paying off my credit card. I can't wait to cut it up. I intend to pay cash. I don't care how old fashioned I seem. I'm going to build up an emergency fund of cash, so that I never have to rely on credit for "what if's". Money is not evil, but the grasping mind makes it so. Money is a form of exchange that can do much good.
So can a smile. This Christmas I'm writing my family, Please this year do not send me a gift. I know you love me. I am not buying gifts this year, either, I have made a plan to get out of debt, and I am almost there. NO more credit cards. No more buying on credit. No more using debt as a tool to get into more debt. Money is not evil, only the mind that sees power outside itself, outside consciousness of love.
Very wise, darling.
"I seem to remember that the bible (as well as the Koran) is quite clear in its damnation of interest"
Excuse me Ron, but I seem to remember myself that they both actually condemn usury. Not exactly the same thing.
Of course, those most careful to follow the Scriptures prefer to prohibit all interest, to be on God's safe side.
Like most things, money is neither good or evil intrinsically. It always comes down to what we do with it, like science. Nuclear energy can make bombs, or power a country.
Another very interesting example is poisons. Cocaine? At smaller doses, useful (and used) in nasal surgery, extremely efficient to reduce bleeding there. Digitalin? A heart medication. Colchicin? the best (sometimes only) treatment for many diseases, like familial polyseritis syndrome [think of it as a recurrent appendicitis even without an appendix]. Morphin speaks for itself : delicate to use, but irreplaceable. Anti-cancer drugs are essentially carefully used poisons, that harm the tumor more than the normal body. Even WATER can be fatal without drowning. In one mental illness (dipsomania), people drink a LOT without need. Well, beyond 18 liters per day (some will drink up to 30, no kidding!), the kidneys just can't eliminate it all. It causes a dilution of the body's fluids, potentially fatal, called "water poisoning".
Even a small dose of vice or idiocy can be perfectly okay. Alcohol, smoking (even though I hate it), cussing, dope, food... just be reasonable. And you'll have an... INTERESTING life. ;-)
Voice of reason, welcome.
How about Peanut M&Ms? I eat about 3500 a day, is that excessive?
(Joke, folks.)
By the way, Eolake. Nice shirt, man. How much did it cost? ;-)
Thanks, dude. It was a hunnert bucks.
I wanted the one with "100" on it, but it was ten thousand dollars.
I wonder how much it cost to make...
Surely only like nine thousand, nine hundred, and eighty bucks. They have to make a decent profit after all.
Nuclear energy can make bombs, or power a country.
Both with the legacy of nuclear waste to take care of for thousands of generations to come - the former spread all over the landscape, the latter in specific places but both a loan we take out and have our children in the x-th generation pay for. How fitting to the topic at hand.
Excuse me Ron, but I seem to remember myself that they both actually condemn usury. Not exactly the same thing.
I'm not utterly bible-proof but I seem to remember that it was generally about money-lenders without much differentiation about the actual amount of interest they charged.
why would anybody want to ever lend money to anybody (except family or friends) if there was no interest?
The idea is that money is a non-perishable good which is pretty unique, so having money you are better off than having anything else (leaving the crazy real estate markets, which are driven by interest, out of the picture).
If money would be made to deteriorate, i.e. become less over time, then lending it would become a good option because you would get back as much as you had before while if kept, it would have become less. (Of course you can achieve the same effect by taxing and capital someone has - if you know about it, that is.)
In the end money only benefits society as a whole if it's being spent, not if it's hoarded.
One might argue that charging interest on non-perishable money does the same thing but it only is the same in isolation, not if you see it in context with the rest of the market, i.e. perishable goods, because it makes the gap become bigger.
Not sure if I make any sense - I am not very good at explaining the concept, but are you aware that on average about 50% of what you pay for about anything is due to interest of some sort somewhere in the "value-creation chain"?
As for the lending scene going underground, with really deteriorating money it wouldn't really help much because the very fact that keeping it around makes it lose value would make owners very keen to get rid of it (i.e. have other people be responsible for the problem) one way or the other.
Laurie,
Obviously you don't believe in God's scripures. The "love" of MONEY IS THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL. Even The Lord Jesus said to one of the people that the master gave a certain amount of money to keep for him while he was away.
Two of the three servants MADE MONEY on the cash they were entrusted with, one of them DID NOTHING with it and had the same amount when the master returned. He was a fool because he didn't even put it in a bank to draw interest! He buried it instead!
So basically the Lord Jesus said he was an unwise servant. As far as credit cards go, they are either a blessing or a curse (depending upon who can control their spending habits.) In my case a simple credit card help me PURCHASE a HOME! (Timely payments made my credit score rise which in turn gave me an opportunity to use this blessing to PURCHASE A HOME instead of throwing away money on rent.) Before you foolishly cut up your card (unless you're a spend demon out of control) hold off on the scissors approach.
Use it just don't abuse it sister.
I have a couple of credit cards, but I don't use them for credit, I use them for payment, they are irreplacable for buying things online.
The first credit card I ever got I got only because I wanted to buy books from Amazon.
Where'd you get the little picture of the dollar shirt? I used to know how to fold that, but I've forgotten and I can't seem to Google it effectively ...
Yes, Google is TOO a verb. I saw a Pontiac ad in which Google had clearly paid for product placement, the man reading the script actually said "google Pontiac and find out about more offers" and the screen showed an image of a computer screen with the Google home page on it. So indeed, Google didn't object TOO strenuously to their trademarked name being used as a verb ... as long as it got them on national TV in a Pontiac ad ....
google "Money" in their image search.
http://members.cox.net/crandall11/money/shirt/
Once upon a time, there was a princess, who suffered from a terrible and mysterious curse. Everything she touched melted on contact. Everything. Even things that you wouldn't imagine could melt, like wood, paper, stone, metal, bread... you name it. She had to be mouth-fed by maids, of course. Like king Midas with his golden touch.
So the King, father of the princess, asked for his wizard's advice. The wizard did some research, in the Library of Congress, over the internet, on Wikipedia, etc. and his answer came : "Sire, your daughter will be cured if only she can take in his hand ONE THING that doesn't melt. It would forever break the cycle. But I know not what that thing could be."
The King thought, and decided to go with tradition : he announced that the man who could cure his daughter would be granted her (now safe!) hand in marriage. A date for a contest was set, and the daring men appeared.
The first one came forward, with a strange metal bar, announcing : "This is iridium, a rare metal, but the hardest one known on Earth!" Alas, when the Princess touched it, it melted like quicksilver.
Another man came forward, holding a diamond : "Nothing is more durable than diamonds. They are forever!" But when the Princess touched it, the diamond melted like a piece of ice. So much for the engagement ring!
A new man approached the Pricess... empty-handed! He whispered to her : "Your Highness, please close your fist, reach inside my pocket, and touch what's at the end." The Princess obeyed. Her eyes grew wide. She exclaimed, happier and happier : "It's solid. It's hard! I can touch it, feel it! It's not melting at all!!!"
Great cheers of joys arose, and orders were given to prepare for the marriage immediately.
The wizard approached the soon-to-be prince, and said quietly : "Congratulations on your success, my young friend. Say, would you mind sharing your secret with an old man? How exactly did you manage this very brave and manly feat?"
The fiancé reached in his pocket, and handed the wizard a handful of brightly coloured round candy, each bearing the letter "M".
"Here, have a taste of these. They melt in the mouth, BUT NOT IN THE HAND."
Huh? What? What else did you expect, you buncha' peverts?
Oh, I wish I could handle money like M&M's. So it wouldn't seem to melt in my hands...
My goodness, what a story.
What I'm wondering is how did the Princess stay above ground? The ground should have melted under her, including shoes and anything they tried to insulate her with. She would have been always floating in a pool of whatever was under her.
(If most minerals were not heavier than bodies, she would have melted her way down to the core of the Earth.)
"the legacy of nuclear waste"
Okay Ron, I'll give it to you : I was a bit hasty about choosing my examples. [Even "magical me" is far from perfect. -- Gilderoy Lockhart]
Still, I believe controlled nuclear FUSION, when mastered, will give practically no other waste than helium and residual heat. (By the way, the "thermic pollution" caused by nuclear plants is far from insignificant, when they heat up rivers with their water.)
Here's a much more defendable application of nuclear technology : Medicine. Radio-element diagnosis is pricelessly useful, and very carefully controlled. Nowadays, you can have a radioactive Iodine thyroid scintigraphy exposing you to no more radiation than a classic X-ray. So, basically, it's virtually harmless.
Less innocuous, but still vital, is radio-therapy. Best remedy for many cancers. It does have potential side effects, like all treatments, but these are always far smaller (in competent hands) than a "crab" taking its course. I've lost count of how many times I've worn the leaded apron to avoid professional exposure. Which is basically no different than wearing a helmet on a construction site.
"I'm not utterly bible-proof"...
I've done some research :
*[Quran, "Al-Imran", 3 : 130] "Do not practise usury by wildly multiplying your capital."
*[Quran, "Ar-Rum", 30 : 39] "All that you give at usury to increase your wealth at the expense of another's shall not increase it before Allah. But what you give as Zakat (Charity), seeking to please Allah, those shall see their rewards multiplied."
*The Bible prohibits taking ANY interest from a fellow jew, while permitting money-lending (sometimes even commanding it toward the poor). But, it permits all when dealing with non-jews. [Deuteronomy 23 : 20-21] Including, implicitly, usury! [Exodus 22 : 24]
Of course, the Bible had different standards from today. Slavery was perfectly okay ; while being gay, swearing the Name, or wearing the wrong fabric, would get you executed. And, circumcision was mandatory for all of a Jew's servants, even those from another religion. Ouch.
"If money would be made to deteriorate, i.e. become less over time"
What, you mean you've never heard of inflation? :-/
"In the end money only benefits society as a whole if it's being spent, not if it's hoarded."
Which is precisely why competent shop-keepers drop the prices on long-unsold items : a sleeping capital brings zero profit! The idea is, if it won't sell, better lose a bit on the original price tag, and get part of your money back to buy some dynamic merchandize. "Make your money work." Perhaps this is why Lebanese economy is doing so poorly : many traders do the exact opposite, clinging to the benefit they just WANT to make over every item. Sometimes for more than a decade!
"Are you aware that on average about 50% of what you pay for about anything is due to interest of some sort somewhere in the "value-creation chain"?"
And it makes sense : people who work at providing goods have to make a living of it. Provided they're reasonable about it, of course.
I like Anonymous' mention of the master entrusting his servants money. This tends do teach us that wasting a valuable potential is a sin. Basically, money is a tool, that MAY wear off when used. And then, it may also not, if you use it well. Although I don't like the idea of credit, it clearly has some great usefulness, again if you use it well. The trouble is, some people aren't handy with that economic tool, and some have an interest in making you misuse it so THEY'll gain something of it (usury in disguise). Purchasing a home is a good use of the tool.
"I have a couple of credit cards, but I don't use them for credit, I use them for payment"
Well, this too IS very convenient. Provided the virtuality of the process doesn't make you lose track of your expenses. It almost happened to me.
"What I'm wondering is how did the Princess stay above ground?"
Because the curse only affected her hands. The palms. This is why she could put her fist in a pocket.
Ah, that was not relayed. Or very logical, I must say. :)
"Provided the virtuality of the process doesn't make you lose track of your expenses."
I have to admit, it does.
But I'm still living nicely within my means, so I can live with that.
And it is not different from when I use cash, I don't keep track of that either.
On money
I have often argued that the way we use money now has almost completely abstracted it from the means of production -- because paper money is two abstracted steps from production, because it is a representation of something humans consider inherently valuable -- gold. Even gold is one step of abstraction, since you can't eat it, plant it, use it to build a house, or drink it.
So start with a basic human transatction: I trade my work of planting, watering, weeding, etc, for the zucchini that results, which in turn provides me with the nutrition necessary to continue to live. Of course civilization means that we all don't have to raise our own zucchinis, so I can trade my skill as a writer, for instance, for the farmer's zucchini. I am still trading my own labor for my own sustenance.
Now money is a very convenient representation of my labor, so that I don't have to trade my labor for a zucchini in my home-town, but I can travel to New Orleans and trade the labor I did in San Francisco for gumbo instead of zucchini.
However, what bothers me is the further abstraction created by storing money in banks through electronic records. Now, my labor is represented by ones and zeros in my employer's database and my bank's database. While this makes it even more convenient for me to transfer the value of my labor to my own treasury, in effect the "value" of my labor can no longer be calculated by how well it sustains me. Because I am not trading my labor for a zucchini, the "value" of my labor is entirely dependent upon how well I can convince my employer that my labor is valuable.
Perhaps this is characteristic of the way civilized humans trade value. However, when I consider people who have seemingly succeeded in convincing their employers that their labor is successful, such as George W. Bush, I wonder why it is that my labor is considered so much less valuable than his labor. In fact, I suspect that instead of converting his "labor" into value that provides himself and others with sustenance, he has instead figured out how to manipulate the ones and zeros, either directly or indirectly.
In effect, what I am saying is that money is no longer connected to labor, but has become much more like an international game of monopoly, except that to play this game, you have to have the kind of human currency that has traditionally trumped hard work and virtue -- being related to the people who control the biggest weapons.
A depressing view, I admit. But it comforts me when I feel powerless, when at the end of a long day of labor, I am tired and I feel I have done so little to improve the lives of other people.
Futures
are a derivative of
Stocks
which are a derivative of
Animals or plants that can be consumed (or some other commodity)
Paper Money
is a derivative of
Precious materials (gold, etc.)
which is a derivative of
Perceived Value of Exchange.
Etc. It's all steps in a chain.
Here's a good one. It takes time to get money. Time therefore (as they say) is money. It also takes money to get women. Women therefore (as they say) cost money. Also, it takes time to get women. Women therefore (as they say) cost time. I desire women. And, one other thing, the desire for money (as they say) is the root of all evil.
T = M
W = M x T
dM = square-root(E)
Therefore, by simple algebra,
W = M x T but T = M so
W = M^squared
and since
dM = square-root(E)
therefore
W = d[square-root(E)]^squared
which means
W = d[absolute-value(E)]
Women are the desire for the absolute-value of Evil.
Sometimes, people stop at this point in the proof, declaring "women are evil." The neat thing about this proof is that it also demonstrates that women are the opposite of evil, thanks to the absolute-value function! But it also demonstrates, that the INTEGRATION OF DESIRE FOR WOMEN IS IN ITSELF ABSOLUTELY EVIL.
Have fun figuring that out ...
Anon,
There have always been snake oil salesmen. If some are richer now, it is just a natural result of the great effectiveness of the monetary system.
Eolake,
Somehow, I have the feeling that if you become a gambler, you'd soon lose your shirt. ;-)
Doubtlessly.
Still, I believe controlled nuclear FUSION, when mastered, will give practically no other waste than helium and residual heat.
I guess that depends on how you define "practically" - the fusion process still produces lots of radiation and it's not quite clear yet how (much) that's going to affect the reactor materials themselves with regards to aging and becoming radioactive.
Sure, much less dump than with fission, but Lockhart's wisdom still applies... ;-)
Besides that we're far from there yet, that the needed Tritium needs to be bred from Lithium via conventional fission and that in my mind "renewable" anything is still preferable to super-complex and -expensive technology.
As for your medical examples, they would certainly warrant a separate discussion but I'm not saying that radioactivity doesn't have its constructive uses, just like poisons. Just that neither weapons nor power plants are amongst them.
Thanks for your research on usury/interest in the religious books - very interesting, I find.
What, you mean you've never heard of inflation? :-/
Not sure if you're just teasing me but I'll take the bait... ;-)
Inflation is caused by interest. It doesn't reduce the amount of money you have but only increases the prices of everything. Big difference, but I kind of believe you were teasing me....
Which is precisely why competent shop-keepers drop the prices on long-unsold items : a sleeping capital brings zero profit!
Shop-keepers can only do so much to compel people to spend their money. If someone simply rather wants to hoard than to spend they will not be moved by low prices. But they might well be by the prospect of losing their money by not moving it.
"Are you aware that on average about 50% of what you pay for about anything is due to interest of some sort somewhere in the "value-creation chain"?"
And it makes sense : people who work at providing goods have to make a living of it.
Not it doesn't - I wasn't talking about profit margins but about interest. The shop-keeper has to charge you more because he has to serve his loans for buying merchandise. The rent he pays is so high because the landlord took out a credit to buy the place and has to serve that. The price the carpet dealer pays contains the cost for a loan the producers took out to buy raw materials and machinery.
And so on - you get the idea - another way of compounding interest.
What I'm talking about is not the value-creator's profit, it's the banks'. And that prices overall would be about half of what they are without that.
[some people] have an interest in making you misuse it so THEY'll gain something of it (usury in disguise).
That's the name of the game, and basically where most of the productive force is being used up in our society.
Purchasing a home is a good use of the tool.
From a purely economical perspective it's one of the most irrational uses of money of them all, but because it gives people a (false) sense of security it's the single foremost means to lure them into that spiral of interest and debt.
Many people still seem to believe that the coins and notes in circulation just represent the value of some gold stored somewhere, and that banks only work with the money people and organisations deposit with them. When the actual money we use in fact represents a totally virtual value without any direct relation to some "real" value (like gold) anywhere, and banks give out up to 20 times the amount they actually "have" as deposits.
It's all a mind-game, and the majority is on the losing side because they don't understand the rules (which are not made to give them much of a chance).
There have always been snake oil salesmen. If some are richer now, it is just a natural result of the great effectiveness of the monetary system.
Effectiveness for them, at the cost of everyone else. The monetary system is super-efficient, just not towards supporting a just and equitable society. (Um, make that "economy" - bad enough.) One of the main causes for that is the way interest is being handled - there's a reason why the religions set up rules for it.
Just my, say, 1c (cheap 'cause it's all been paid for in cash!).
"Purchasing a home is a good use of the tool. From a purely economical perspective it's one of the most irrational uses of money of them all"
Why?
"...banks give out up to 20 times the amount they actually "have" as deposits."
I agree this should be criminal. And I've heard it was, once.
I am very happy to be debt-free, not even a mortgage.
Once I had big loans, and what helped me was following the advice of "The Trick to Money is Having Some", and *not* pay their interest, but default on the loans and work to make my economy healthy, and then a few years later offer to pay the original amount back all at once, which they happily took. (I could easily have gotten away with never paying them off at all, but it felt good to do it.)
Ronald, I never heard this "eliminate all interest" idea before, where is it from?
I'm going to have to quibble. Inflation is not caused by interest alone. Overall economy-wide increases in prices (inflation) have taken place historically in a variety of circumstances that bore no inflation in the supply chain or anywhere else.
For example, during the 14th and 15th centuries in Europe, the Black Plague reduced the labor force but failed to change the minds of the participants in European culture about who should be doing the labor. So, what you had was too few peasants to go 'round, to fill the needed role at manors and the like. Consequently, the price of harvesting wheat went up because peasants could demand more (and did; and left their lame little village to walk to the more interesting market town or city, because they could afford it). Price of wheat goes up, price of bread goes up, price of food goes up, price of ... everything goes up. Inflation.
Meanwhile, everyone is walking into the cities, where the plague is, increasing their likelihood of getting the disease. More people in the cities, more deaths, less labor force, more mobile members of the labor force, all the peasants walk to the cities, more people in the cities ...
But in this system there was very little "usury" or interest-gouging. Sure, some Jewish members of society were allowed to demand interest from their upper-class patrons, but those interest-bearing interactions were taking place almost entirely abstracted from the labor supply in the wheat fields and from the deaths due to the plague.
Interest wasn't the culprit, dwindling labor force was.
Inflation was a real shock to the world view of the average European in 1400. Waddayamean economic reality is not fixed and static? Waddayamean today's price of ham is not tomorrow's? This threatened to upset the whole world order. In fact, eventually it did. Familiar fixities, such as social rank and status, who plows and who reads, when you ought to really listen to a priest and when you can tell him to shut the F up, and the like, all could be questioned. Thanks to a virus ...
Well, not only a virus. But anyway, you get the point. Finding a single economic bug-a-boo -- inflation, the gold standard, the Pope and his conspiracy with Osama bin Laden, junk bonds -- misses the picture. An economy is a huge set of inter-related factors, thousands or millions of players. Most of the human individuals involved have assumptions, and understandings, and misunderstandings, and are going to act in some predictable ways and some unpredictable ways. To flip a switch and change only one aspect of that economy at exactly one moment -- eliminating interest, for example -- leads to a minor change in one player, that might or might not have a major ripple effect, and even then, the effect might or might not be a predictable one.
It makes more sense, instead, to address a set of assumptions and start to culturally shift them. Rather than just denouncing interest, I'd recommend we all learn to distrust the whole concept of living beyond your means and debt-financing your life or your country's economy. There's a huge difference between that, and outlawing interest. One is simply a legalistic technical solution -- click, it's all better. Another is a cultural shift, winning the hearts and minds. The latter takes longer, but it actually works.
"it is not different from when I use cash, I don't keep track of that either."
Well, watching the cash diminish in your wallet certainly helps you, at least subconsciously. "Wow! I've already spent a lot of my money, and there's not much left. Better be careful."
The numbers with a credit card don't make the same visual impression, because you don't have your bank account before your eyes every time you use it.
I think sticking to cash is an excellent way to limit unreasonable expenses. Provided you don't get robbed, of course. But then, nowadays they can take your plastic and force the code out of you. At least, one can't take more cash than what you carry with you at that moment!
"when I consider people who have seemingly succeeded in convincing their employers that their labor is successful, such as George W. Bush, I wonder why it is that my labor is considered so much less valuable than his labor."
Well, d'uh! Because you'll never be as good a demolitions expert as Professor Bush, that's why! How long would it take YOU to wreck a whole country?
"money is no longer connected to labor, but has become much more like an international game of monopoly"
I suck at Monopoly. I just don't have the ruthless killer instinct required to win. I still can't believe I'm quite good at Grand Theft Auto. Perhaps because none of the victims are real? But I STILL swerve to avoid the pedestrians. I can't help it...
"Have fun figuring that out ..."
Nice try, Final, but I'm too old to fall for THIS little trick.
Here's the flaw in your seemingly perfect calculations : the absolute value of a number is minus that number if it's negative. And Evil IS, by definition, negative! Does this mean that Women are absolute GOOD? Nope.
Because the correct solution to your equation is, as you mention, W = plus or minus d[absolute-value(E)]
In conclusion, it would be erroneous to say that Women are either the desire for absolute Evil or for absolute Good. Since they can be both, and one cannot determine which exactly (perhaps both at once!), this necessarily implies that desiring Women is absolutely confusing.
Which probably explains a lot about you, aptly-named Final Identity...
Thank you. Class dismissed.
"There have always been snake oil salesmen."
Although is tastes absolutely vile (and that's certain), I still prefer to trust cod liver oil. Its Vitamin D content makes it officially therapeutic.
But nobody would try to make a living by going town-to-town and selling (yuck!) cod liver oil.
"I'd recommend we all learn to distrust the whole concept of living beyond your means and debt-financing your life or your country's economy."
Sounds wonderful to me. But apparently it would hurt growth in the short range, so try and find support for it!
Like President Bartlett (The West Wing) said: "sure, we want people to save up, but we want them to do it when the other guy is president."
"What, you mean you've never heard of inflation? :-/
Not sure if you're just teasing me but I'll take the bait... ;-)"
Hook, line and sinker. The tease was that with inflation (defined indeed as increase of the prices), you'll hear many ordinary people complaining that "money isn't worth as much as it used to". Which is a way of perceiving it! :-)
"Not it doesn't - I wasn't talking about profit margins but about interest."
I yield, sire. This interest matter is perfectly understandable (practically), but makes no sense. Except if you're the one pocketing the interests, of course!
Like most people (I guess), I'm pretty ignorant of the subtleties of today's capitalist System. And like most people, I believe those who aren't ignorant are essentially the ones getting filthy rich on everybody else's backs with little to no effort from their behalf. The banks and affiliates.
I might be dead wrong, of course, along with the vast majority. Who knows? But in any case, the importance of that very negative impression shouldn't be underestimated. This is how revolutions are started. This is how people like Hugo Chavez get elected. (That guy worries me.) Or Evo Morales. (Less scary, but marks the death of the old system.)
"prices overall would be about half of what they are without that."
Growing up in a very special place, war-time Lebanon, it is only rather recently that I found out how utterly crazy debt and loans have become in the West. As Laurie said, "the power is in my hands, if I want". We just have to consume sensibly for that madness to crumble. But in order to become sensible, we should turn off the TV, apparently bound on nursing stupidity in the general population. I know, I'm REALLY stretching my luck by spreading such seditious theories. Some day, the guys in black will come knocking at my door, saying Mr J. Edgar Hoover or Sen. McCarthy want a few words with me. ;-)
"Purchasing a home"...
If you are wise about it, you'll end up under a roof without getting dragged into the spiral. According to a brother of mine, whose sense I have great faith in. Only one credit, very reasonable, and for something truly useful. You DO agree, Ronald, that living under a roof is useful, don't you? Paying back a credit lower than the rent you'd have does sound, well... sound indeed!
"the actual money we use in fact represents a totally virtual value without any direct relation to some "real" value"
Spare hour breath, buddy, you're preaching to the converted! ;-)
"One of the main causes for that is the way interest is being handled - there's a reason why the religions set up rules for it."
I'm well aware of the "slavery by debt" system in some countries, based on arbitrarily imposed usury. (For those who don't know about it, once you get lent the original amount to work in the system, say like the value of the tools you're "lended", it is designed so you'll never manage to keep up with the interest you owe the "boss".)
I'm afraid the rules set up by the religions don't stand a chance. "They're SO five minutes ago!" (And even five centuries -give or take a millenium-.) Regarding most aspects of modernity gone wild, old texts can't keep up. Look at Saudi Arabia : a microscopic un-elected monarchy elite holding all the money in spite of a nation built on Charia, and a vast majority that isn't even educated enough to one day handle the wealth if they ended up with it.
I'll stop there. Too much to say along THAT road. (And I'm short on gas, the sheikh has closed the tap.)
Final Identity,
Dang, man, this is one interesting exposé!
Looks like I'm in the right place if I wanted to pick up some culture and meet interesting people. :-)
"Waddayamean economic reality is not fixed and static?"
"Well, young whippersnapper, in MY days, the good old times, it WAS fixed and static. What's becoming of this world, I ask ya? Chances are, it's so messed up it'll come to an end on New Year's Eve of 1500, as some say..."
"Thanks to a virus ..."
Well, actually, this is one small point where you have it wrong. The Black Plague was caused by a bacteria, Yersinia pestis, germ of the bubonic plague, which gave a more virulent form of air-borne pneumonitis. A gram-negative rod, if memory serves me right.
But the fact that you're no infectious diseases specialist doesn't undermine the least bit you analysis of an epidemic's socio-economical effect. Unless you sell rat traps... (The Plague was initially spread by the infected rats and their fleas. "Yuck" indeed!)
"Finding a single economic bug-a-boo -- inflation, the gold standard, the Pope and his conspiracy with Osama bin Laden, junk bonds -- misses the picture."
The Pope? I thought Benedict XVI conspired with the nazis to gain a world monopole over the sale of pictures. Holy icons, to be precise.
I once heard a French satirist propose we adopted the crap standard. Because nowadays, there's much more crap than gold in the world. "Then we could use the gold to plate the statues of Joan of Ark!"
"An economy is a huge set of inter-related factors, thousands or millions of players."
And a few too many cheaters... ):-P
"To flip a switch and change only one aspect of that economy at exactly one moment --"
This sounds just like the plot of a James Bond movie. Goldfinger's conspiracy, maybe? ;-)
"I'd recommend we all learn to distrust the whole concept of living beyond your means and debt-financing your life or your country's economy."
Final, I sure hope you're currently under the witness protection program of something of the like, because you are really taking risks with your safety saying things like that. Openly, on the internet... you sure have some "equipment in your briefs", man!
New Orleans (my home town) does have a gold-plated statue of Jeanne d'Arc.
I defer to the bacterium. Otherwise, you all missed my point. It is painfully obvious that women are inflationary -- thing swell in their presence.
Wow, now this is growing into *some* discussion - nearly doubled in length since I last looked, with heaps of good arguments - even though Eolake didn't mention Euthanasia at all.... ;-)
Laurie:
I am almost finished paying off my credit card. I can't wait to cut it up. I intend to pay cash. I don't care how old fashioned I seem.
Congratulations!
I also use cash whenever I can and I know how difficult it can be to get rid of even a moderate amount of debt. I use my credit card only for online purchases and the like, and then immediately balance it with a deposit. It's just a good and sane habit to only buy stuff if you can afford them, i.e. have the money to pay for them.
(Also I like to assert my privacy and thus prefer not to tell my bank what I buy, when, where, from whom, for what price, and so on. If I use my debit card I always make a cash withdrawal first and then pay the bill in cash rather than making it one transaction directly from the card. Call me paranoid but I know a thing or two about data-mining.)
Good on you, keep going!
Pascal:
I only just noticed that you were pulling our legs on this one:
Even WATER can be fatal without drowning.
So you're saying drowning helps against WATER? Now what is this WATER and how can drowning be better than it?
(Oh well, I could go on about a "LOT" - wasn't that, or maybe it still is, the official Polish airline? - but I won't...) <;->
Eolake:
"Purchasing a home is a good use of the tool. From a purely economical perspective it's one of the most irrational uses of money of them all"
Why?
What is your expectation when buying a home, what do you really get, and what does it cost you?
The first one is hard to answer - for most people it is some sense of security, the feeling that they have their own place, a sense of belonging, whatever - a *home*. Now this is hard to capture in objective terms, but what you are in fact buying is some sort of dwelling, most likely a house or unit, potentially with some land.
What else does it get you? Well you don't have to pay rent, so there's savings potential. Of course, on the other hand, you've got council fees, repairs and maintenance. You've got liability for it complying with all regulations, keep the footpath clear and ice-free, keeping your trees pruned and your fence or anything else bordering public land or other properties in good order, where applicable. If you are not the sole owner of the property you need to reach agreement about everything and anything to be done with everyone else, or, if the majority votes for a new coat of paint or similar, shut up and pay up. (Indeed a friend of mine with a lot of experience in these matters said he'd never buy a unit again - either he owns the whole house or he rents.)
So do you get security? I guess it depends - once you've paid off your loan, it's yours so in principle you could stay there forever without spending much money. In practice, I've seen with everyone I know who've had a house for that long (in most cases it takes people 30 years or more to pay off their loan) that maintenance and repairs eat quite a bit of money.
For old people it can be a burden to look after everything - either physically, if they do it themselves, or financially, if they have it done. Often, they also find what was meant as a family home too large for just themselves. More often than not, the family of the children (if any) also doesn't want to move in for one reason or another.
Of course there's the argument that it will have increased in value. Often it has, but only if you compare it with the nominal price. If you calculate what you effectively paid for the loan, plus maintenance, repairs and improvements, you might be surprised what it adds up to.
Also, servicing a loan over 30 years or more means that you basically have to stay where you are, watch out that you don't lose your job (or even change careers - can't do that, it's just too risky and you won't earn as much at the start), have most of your income tied up for servicing the loan. When interest rates rise you are in a tight spot and most often forced to cut back on expenses. In case of any "unexpected" (but overall statistically quite probable) events you *may* end up having your house sold by the bank. After all that's the owner until you've paid the very last cent you owe on the loan.
So in short, what you pay is with everything you have - your work-force, your flexibility in every respect, your family life - everything needs to be subordinated to this singular goal for usually 30 years and I believe that it's the reason for quite a few marriage failures. If you persist, it's yours.
What you could have done with the same amount of money and dedication invested in pursuing another goal, like buying rental property or building another business while just renting a place to live might be an interesting question to ponder. Have a look at "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" by Robert T. Kyosaki. I don't agree with everything he says - in fact I disagree with quite a few of his statements - but he makes some good points. His main thrust is that there are assets and liabilities. Your own home is a liability because it costs money but doesn't earn any.
Now if you are in the lucky situation that you can just go and pay cash (or write a cheque) to buy your home, or have it paid off in just a few years, the calculation looks much different for you but that doesn't change a thing about the fact that it doesn't make economic sense - the difference is just that you can afford it.
"...banks give out up to 20 times the amount they actually "have" as deposits."
I agree this should be criminal. And I've heard it was, once.
This is how banks function, criminalising it would mean abolishing banks.
Once I had big loans, and what helped me was following the advice of "The Trick to Money is Having Some", and *not* pay their interest, but default on the loans and work to make my economy healthy, and then a few years later offer to pay the original amount back all at once, which they happily took. (I could easily have gotten away with never paying them off at all, but it felt good to do it.)
Now this sounds interesting to me - how can you get away with not serving a loan, other than living below the poverty threshold and not having anything that could be impounded?
Ronald, I never heard this "eliminate all interest" idea before, where is it from?
I used to have a quite comprehensive bookmark collection regarding this topic but it seems most of that has gone to the big bit-bucket in the sky. Oh the digital age...
Anyway, I think the dispute about interest is as old as money itself.
Here's a quote from Aristotle:
"Money was established for exchange, but interest causes it to be reproduced by itself. Therefore this way of earning money is greatly in conflict with the natural law."
The same page has more, for example from Pope Alexander III: "Every legislation which allows interest is null and void.", and "Pope Clemens IX. stamped coins saying 'noli thesaurare' on it, which means 'you must not accumulate'. Pope Boniface VIII stated this even more drastically: 'Anyone who keeps money at home without circulating it, will be excommunicated.'"
It seems not to have worked, even though excommunication was probably one of the worst things that could be inflicted on someone back then.
In fact, one claim is that the problems with interest mainly arise because the same medium that was originally invented to enable exchange, was then also used for saving and thus removed from circulation. Here's an interesting simplified explanation and illustration of how both removing money from circulation and charging interest affect the overall economy:
http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~roehrigw/creutz/geldsyndrom/english/chap3.html
In spite of this model being extremely simplified it does describe the main mechanisms, so imagine what state our financial affairs are in when overall 50% of every transaction is interest!
If you realise that the only way for the central banks to counteract this mechanism of money being withdrawn from circulation or diverted into interest is the printing of more money then it becomes clear how interest causes inflation and how the whole system becomes volatile.
As a matter of fact, if you do the numbers you will find that the resulting system is unstable and bound to collapse, but probably not before we see the current developments in economy and employment markets escalate quite a bit further. It's not ideological but purely a logical conclusion that interest continuously and consistently redistributes from the have-nots to the owners of capital, with every single transaction that's made. I understand that some people do have issues with the fact that this is just happening all the time as a result of how our monetary system works. Not least because it's just not sustainable.
The main thrust in most approaches to address these issues is to create some sort of reward, or pressure, to keep the money circulating rather than being hoarded, with the assumption that if that's tuned right then interest rates, and subsequently inflation, will automatically regulate themselves to end up being close to 0.
By the way, you don't have to look far to find such systems in use right now and here - just look at frequent flyer points, for example. You earn them, you can spend them, in some cases in the same way as "real" money, but they lose value, either gradually or by just being forfeited if unused after a certain time, or if you don't add new ones, or whatever these companies come up with, but they do not just sit there forever, and they definitely don't attract interest because they are meant to be used. And that's even though the supply is not limited at all but can be made as needed.
However, it seems that depreciating currency seems to have been used already at pharaonic times, and possibly even before:
http://www.transaction.net/money/cc/cc04.html
At the beginning of the 20th century a guy called Simon Gesell developed a system for an interest- and inflation-free currency based on depreciating money, which was apparently published in 1916. (Some of this seems to go back to another guy, Sir James Denham Steuart, 1713-1780, who I don't know much about but whose ideas seem to have had some impact on later economists, including Adam Smith)
In the early 1930s Gesell's ideas were taken up and put to the test by a couple of communities, namely the Austrian town Wörgl where it seems to have worked beautifully. When it started to spread, the central bank exercised their monopoly and prohibited the practice (after which the previously low unemployment rates immediately started soaring again):
http://www.newciv.org/nl/newslog.php/_v105/__show_article/_a000105-000002.htm
Here's a publication from 1933 about similar experiments in the US, by Irving Fisher:
http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~roehrigw/fisher/
John Maynard Keynes later discussed Gesell's ideas in his work "General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money", classifying them as sensible and plausible.
Here's a story from Gesell's book illustrating how static money doesn't just work as an exchange medium but changes the whole dynamics of the system, and basically creates the phenomenon called interest.
Here's a free book on the topic:
http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~roehrigw/kennedy/english/
and here are some interesting quotes from some eminent people - just above the "Summary" and below the nice pink box:
http://www.abelard.org/inflation.htm#summary
final identity:
I'm going to have to quibble. Inflation is not caused by interest alone. Overall economy-wide increases in prices (inflation) have taken place historically in a variety of circumstances that bore no inflation in the supply chain or anywhere else.
As we are quibbling, economy-wide increases in price are price-increases, not necessarily caused by inflation, a symptom of which they can be, though.
But I take your point - usually inflation is caused by increasing the amount of money that circulates but it can also be caused by keeping that amount constant while decreasing the overall amount of goods and services available.
However I wonder if, in that situation, depreciating money could still have been useful because potentially it could have lead to a slow reduction in the amount of money in circulation, consequently driving down the prices.
Finding a single economic bug-a-boo -- inflation, the gold standard, the Pope and his conspiracy with Osama bin Laden, junk bonds -- misses the picture.
Um, well, I'm not talking about a bug-a-boo but about the very substance of the system if I may say so.
Of course it's a problem that there are too many bug-a-boos in the system, so either we go after them all, one by one, or we come up with a new, different, better system. It'd be nice if that would just close all the loop-holes and make all the messing and tweaking impossible or unprofitable but unfortunately new systems tend to come with new sets of loop-holes and problems.
Or we find out what the main parameters are that can reliably be tweaked to change the overall behaviour of the system to get closer to being stable. Inflation is just a symptom, as are junk bonds. The gold standard is something to think about, IMHO, and conspiracies are what happens to a flawed system, exploiting the weaknesses which need addressing. What are the underlying causes and what are the main parameters which can be centrally set and are hard or impossible to counteract through abusing the system? Every system has some, the tough job is to identify them.
It makes more sense, instead, to address a set of assumptions and start to culturally shift them.
I'd say we could well do both, rather than one at the exclusion of the other. The problem with only working on people's assumptions is that you will only ever reach the law-abiding, TV-watching, news-reading and -believing citicen while the people who run the shop and (ab)use the system will not buy in but take advantage of whatever situation results from that, so it's a good start but not sufficient on and by itself without supporting measures.
To flip a switch and change only one aspect of that economy at exactly one moment -- eliminating interest, for example -- leads to a minor change in one player, that might or might not have a major ripple effect, and even then, the effect might or might not be a predictable one.
I'd say careful analysis like outlined above would go a long way. You can assume that the characters who abuse the system know quite well how it works, as do the people running it. The problem is that changing only one aspect of the system is what's done all the time. Obviously it's not efficient enough so we should think about better ways for achieving a stable system. Shifting assumptions is certainly necessary but there will always be people who don't care and abuse the system, if they can.
I'd recommend we all learn to distrust the whole concept of living beyond your means and debt-financing your life or your country's economy.
I'm totally with you on this one and I actually do distrust that concept.
What I find interesting is that a reduction in interest rates would help to create that effect because hoarding, and thus lending, money becomes less interesting.
There's a huge difference between that, and outlawing interest.
I don't think you can outlaw interest and police that, but if you find a way to effectively eliminate it by other means, i.e. tweak the parameters such that interest adjusts itself around zero as has been shown to be possible by means of depreciating money, that will work towards that goal.
Another is a cultural shift, winning the hearts and minds. The latter takes longer, but it actually works.
Good luck.
As I see it, winning hearts nowadays works best with a big advertising budget, and you can't beat the banks at that one. In particular as people just *love* instant gratification - buy now, pay later. Looks like an up-hill battle to me, in a system where the rules are skewed against you - I mean we should surely keep going for it but I don't think that should stop us from trying to fix a flawed and broken system.
Pascal:
The tease was that with inflation (defined indeed as increase of the prices), you'll hear many ordinary people complaining that "money isn't worth as much as it used to". Which is a way of perceiving it! :-)
And it's true!
I find the story of Wörgl quite fascinating, in particular the fact that most of the effects predicted to happen, like immediate inflation, didn't; that all businesses (excluding the post office and railway) accepted it, that employment took off, and so on - the local economy bloomed, and that in the middle of a world-wide depression!
This is how people like Hugo Chavez get elected.
This is also why people like him tend to get assassinated.
(That guy worries me.)
Why does he worry you? I think we should rather be worried that our "friends" from industry and media work tirelessly to get him buried rather today than tomorrow...
We just have to consume sensibly for that madness to crumble.
We can certainly influence the system by the choices we make in our everyday life, but the sad fact is that since it's kind of virulent it's impossible not to be part of it as long as we use money at all. When you buy a bus ticket, you pay interest to the banks. When you buy milk, you pay interest, and so on - it's part of every single monetary exchange. We'd have a very long way to go to significantly change that. I mean a really very bloody extremely long way, as a society.
Which reminds me of that fascinating signature I saw some while ago, with a quote saying something like "we need to make a choice if we want to live in an economy, or in a society". Unfortunately I don't know who came up with that but I think it's very apt.
But in order to become sensible, we should turn off the TV, apparently bound on nursing stupidity in the general population.
I did that about 12 years ago and never looked back. Highly recommended.
"Purchasing a home"...
If you are wise about it, you'll end up under a roof without getting dragged into the spiral. According to a brother of mine, whose sense I have great faith in. Only one credit, very reasonable, and for something truly useful. You DO agree, Ronald, that living under a roof is useful, don't you? Paying back a credit lower than the rent you'd have does sound, well... sound indeed!
Well if in your country you can still get it for that price then it might make sense, but I'd be doing the numbers very thoroughly before committing to it. And check what the contract says about the case that your house gets knocked down by "force majeure" - most probably you'd still have to pay till the end of the contract, on top of the rent (for your tent?). I'm sure that would never happen around where you live (right?) but it would surely change the equation quite a bit, or no?
Forgot the link to the Story:
http://www.systemfehler.de/en/neo/part5/1.htm
"I defer to the bacterium. Otherwise, you all missed my point."
I mostly feel fortunate that your point missed me. Be careful, will ya? These sharp things could take someone's eye out!
"Also I like to assert my privacy"
Yeah. And I'm very concerned about the privacy of my card's data online, so I think I'll never use it! I hear there are some innovative alternatives, like single-payment throw-away cards, that are therefore perfectly safe.
Anybody ELSE been receiving these weird spams asking you to connect to some page and type in you card number and code? :-P
"If I use my debit card I always make a cash withdrawal first and then pay the bill in cash"
I've tried that. It's extremely pleasant, and mentally comforting.
And that was even before I watched "Enemy of the State". (I love Will Smith.)
"So you're saying drowning helps against WATER?"
Haven't you ever heard of fighting fire with fire, Ronald? Don't they teach you ANYTHING in school?
Or at the very least, you could've learned it from Presdt Bush. His explanations on how declaring a war will ensure peace were very convincing. (Just like fucking to preserve virginity...)
I could go on about a "LOT"
It means "Laughing Out Tirelessly", if my knowledge of chatting acronyms is correct.
And ROWL means "I'm making a dog-like growling sound to threaten you".
"I've seen with everyone I know who've had a house for that long that maintenance and repairs eat quite a bit of money."
Well, speaking from Lebanon, I think houses in the U.S.A. are anything but sturdy. My father is a civilian engineer. We've had our own house built under strict criteria and direct supervision. Not only is it concrete and stone, but it is storm-proof, and anti-sismic. Nobody in this country would live in a house whose outer walls could easily be penetrated by a bullet! Or its inside doors be shattered within seconds by an intruder wielding a kitchen knife. (Do I watch too many movies? Maybe.)
"In case of any "unexpected" (but overall statistically quite probable) events you *may* end up having your house sold by the bank."
If they take back "their" house, do they give you back "your" money that you already paid?
Just being rhetorical here.
We took our time to build. (In fact, it's not entirely finished yet.) Because every step of the way we only paid in cash, when we had the money to go on.
"This is how banks function, criminalising it would mean abolishing banks."
And that would be a problem BECAUSE...? ):-P
Okay, I'm just being blindly anti-capitalistic here, but I'm sure I have supporters out there. It seems sometimes that the only way to end blatant injustice would be by suppressing its means : banks, money, the stock market, politicians, religion...
"Here's a quote from Aristotle"
Hey, you've met my friend Ari too? :-)
How's he doing these days?
"unfortunately new systems tend to come with new sets of loop-holes and problems."
Like I said. Anyway, even with a perfect system, if it is handled by imperfect people, they'll create loopholes, be it only by cheating. Like when Communism created the Political Police to keep the people silent. Or in Lebanon, where even when a much-needed equitable law is finally passed, people don't rejoice : they know from experience that if a good law is voted, it still won't be applied!
I see a very relevant symbolism in the beginning of Superman's story : Krypton's civilization was 10.000 years old, and very advanced, almost a utopia. But still, the people in charge just weren't sensible enough to preserve it from its avoidable annihilation...
"It makes more sense, instead, to address a set of assumptions and start to culturally shift them.
I'd say we could well do both"
Ronald, clearly your expertise in economics makes you immune to any critics coming from somebody as ignorant as me in that field. But I'd like to ask : what do you mean by "we"? You seem to understand a lot, but are you in any position to contribute to change? Like, are you a personnal acquaintance of Alan Greenspan, or something of the sort?
Because, it's one thing to say "we could", but quite another to say "we can, so let's".
Granted, this is only a discussion, not an actual conspiracy to overthrow the Golden Bull. But one can dream, right?
"You can assume that the characters who abuse the system know quite well how it works, as do the people running it."
Well, d'uh! They should know their own creation well, right? :-(
"As I see it, winning hearts nowadays works best with a big advertising budget, and you can't beat the banks at that one."
Correction : the banks aim at winning the wallets.
"In particular as people just *love* instant gratification - buy now, pay later."
I think you've just put your finger on it, Ron. Now, go wash your hands, yuck!
Indeed, if there were less greatly irresponsible and immature people ready to live like that, maybe there wouldn't be a sucker born every minute. They should teach common sense in schools.
But those deciding on school programs will never want such a thing to happen. Then, they wouldn't get re-elected so easily! Ain't nothing worse than a thinking voter.
"Hugo Chavez (That guy worries me.)
Why does he worry you?"
Because, although he seems to manage his country's inside affairs rather well, he's acting on the international scene based on pure demagogy, supporting any and all of his enemy's enemies, even if they are abominable scoundrels. He's only trying to balance one excess via another opposing one. He feels like the kind of guy who would grant political asylum to Bin Laden just to spite Bush.
Returning to a "mutual enemies" bipolarization of the world, like in the days of the Cold War, is the recipe for a new disaster, at best freezing the world in the crispation of this "cold war" and halting all significant progress for decades. The solution lies in promoting sense and sincerity. Reaching out with a firm but open hand, not shaking a closed fist. If France (who knows better) had adopted the same constant confrontational attitude as Chavez in the wake of the Iraq war crisis, world diplomacy would be dead by now. And perhaps the U.N. as well. Chavez is the kind of guy, I feel, that would fight murder with the death penalty... not caring how many wrongly convicted innocents get executed along the way.
Besides, I'm getting good at discerning the soul in the mirror of the face. I look at Hugo Chavez, and I don't trust him one bit, period. My intuitions, when I have some, have proved very reliable. After Haffez Assad's death, I soon had his son figured out. One look in his eyes was all it took. I knew in advance that Bush would get elected, and then re-elected; I always guess the winner of the U.S. presidential election right. (Somehow, the candidate I like the least always wins. Always.)
Lula might be implicated (presumably) in some affairs, but I see him as a person who means well. Chavez only seeks power. He's bad news. You'll see. :-(
Just for the record : today is October 4th, 2006. And I, Pascal, am hereby foreseeing that the global warming is already too far ahead to ever stop. In a short time, we're all going to pay the price dearly. It's already too late to turn back. At best, we could hit the brakes and slow things down a bit, but even this needs too much political wisdom to happen.
Even if Gov. Schwarzenegger very pleasantly surprised me with his stand on CO2. (No, I had no intuition about THAT. I can't command them, and I hadn't focused on Arnie for months. But his election was dead certain too, of course. He's likely to get re-elected if he runs again.)
"I think we should rather be worried that our "friends" from industry and media work tirelessly to get him buried rather today than tomorrow..."
They'll never succeed. No foreign media can bother somebody impervious to criticism like Hugo Chavez. Or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad...
Incidentally, my "feeling" is quite worried that Mad-Inejad will get the Bomb before anybody acts seriously. Why? Because, the U.S. are just getting on the nerves of Russia and China, who therefore back Iran. And none of them realize they're not playing with fire, they're playing with an armed grenade. Maybe with President Hillary Clinton things will change? If it's not too late by then...
Sorry, I know I'm straying again. But we ARE trying to virtually dissect the world here, so I might as well lend you my scanner. Free of charge!
"we should turn off the TV
I did that about 12 years ago and never looked back."
There are, of course, some select few worthy programs on TV. I have more than 1.400 satellite channels, but I amaze myself at how little I bother to watch any TV. My father hasn't accused me of being a TV addict for years now.
"Well if in your country you can still get it for that price then it might make sense, but I'd be doing the numbers very thoroughly before committing to it."
Actually, my brother lives in Texas. And he's good with numbers.
I don't know anybody in Lebanon dumb enough to take a loan for a house. In case you haven't heard, we're still very slightly at war with Israel...
"Have a look at "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" by Robert T. Kyosaki. I don't agree with everything he says - in fact I disagree with quite a few of his statements"
I imagine so, Ronald!
I was just thinking about it, because the basis of his books is that the thing to strive for is to get to live on your capital, meaning interest, so you don't have to work. Well, stock or other investments might do it too.
"...banks give out up to 20 times the amount they actually "have" as deposits."
I agree this should be criminal. And I've heard it was, once.
This is how banks function, criminalising it would mean abolishing banks.
Once they functioned without it. And if they can't, they don't deserve to exist. *I* can't loan out money for interest if I don't have the money, why should a bank be able to?
"This is how banks function, criminalising it would mean abolishing banks."
And that would be a problem BECAUSE...? ):-P
... the banks not liking it?
Possibly the only problem, but a big one - don't underestimate their power...
what do you mean by "we"?
"We", the people!
Or in this case maybe "we", the participants in this discussion holding different points of view.
Oh well, I was probably just trying to stay away from impersonal and theoretical language, like "it could be done" or "what would need to be done is".
Also in oder to effect change one needs to take ownership of the problem. If nobody else feels included in my "we" then just read it as pluralis majestatis.
You seem to understand a lot, but are you in any position to contribute to change?
I sure am - I'm not dead, am I? I can think, speak and listen, read and write - how else is change created? If we ("we"? anyone! Let's say "I") want change to occur I can either bide my time and wait until someone implements it, or try to influence what's going on. Everyone can make a contribution - a single person usually doesn't change much, if anything, but even big movements and decisions need to start somewhere. If everyone defers responsibility it's quite predictable what's going to happen: whatever serves those in a position to change things. The capability to change things arises from the constant pushing of boundaries (circles of influence vs. reference, anybody?).
Well I'm being a bit idealistic here but still I think it helps to think in terms of what oneself would like to change about the world and then act consistent with that belief - think globally, act locally!
Like, are you a personnal acquaintance of Alan Greenspan, or something of the sort?
LOL! No, and I guess if I would be I'd not be saying things like that. So should we rather leave things up to people like him?
Because, it's one thing to say "we could", but quite another to say "we can, so let's".
Which is what Greenspan & Co might say if they believed in it - is that what you mean? Maybe I should rather say "it should be done" but that, again, is shirking responsibility - just because I lack the actual power to make any changes to the system itself doesn't mean (to me, at any rate) that I shouldn't think of me as owning the problem (not alone, but still).
Or do you think I'm not going far enough with just that?
Granted, this is only a discussion, not an actual conspiracy to overthrow the Golden Bull.
That's right - in my mind conspiracies are the wrong way to go - things should be out in the open. Unfortunately far too much of government business happens in secrecy behind closed doors and without oversight or accountability of any sort so the stake-holders ("we", the people) have no way of telling if it's genuine business or a conspiracy. One wonders why government circles are so paranoid about conspiracies, and if more openness on their side mightn't help to address this concern... um, looks like I'm disgressing...
But one can dream, right?
Absolutely, and in my mind one should.
So should we be more assertive with our dreams?
Well, d'uh! They should know their own creation well, right? :-(
Exactly!
"As I see it, winning hearts nowadays works best with a big advertising budget, and you can't beat the banks at that one."
Correction : the banks aim at winning the wallets.
How do they do that? They can't get at the wallets directly, so what's the proxy they are using and how?
They should teach common sense in schools.
Common Sense (TM)? In Schools? What a dangerous idea!
Even if we wanted to do that we'd have to set up a teacher certification program first!
Ain't nothing worse than a thinking voter.
That's right. We (the other "we") are working on that problem, though - consider it fixed.
Because, although he seems to manage his country's inside affairs rather well, he's acting on the international scene based on pure demagogy, supporting any and all of his enemy's enemies, even if they are abominable scoundrels.
To be quite honest I don't really know too much about what exactly is going on there, partly because I don't watch TV and don't consume much other news media rather than just observing things in a sort of peripheral vision. And that tells me that he's making a lot of noise, and that seems to have helped him with staying in power, maybe because he is too visible a target to just take out. Too many before him who tried to quietly change things disappeared just as quietly. His making a racket about US politics, amongst other things, seems to serve him quite well.
That's not to say anything about his motivations or other qualities, but it seems that maintaining high media visibility and polarising people helps. Or maybe it's just my peripheral vision picking it up more readily...
One look in his eyes was all it took. I knew in advance that Bush would get elected, and then re-elected;
Um, are you saying that the fact that Bush is president has anything to do with Bush, the man? (Or somehow implies that he got elected?)
Just for the record : today is October 4th, 2006. And I, Pascal, am hereby foreseeing that the global warming is already too far ahead to ever stop. In a short time, we're all going to pay the price dearly.
Congratulations! I've been saying that since 20 years ago - back then I thought it would go much more quickly but it "helped" that nobody took it seriously back then, and consequently nothing was done to stop it...
They'll never succeed. No foreign media can bother somebody impervious to criticism like Hugo Chavez. Or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad...
That's not how it works, though. The media's job is just to turn public opinion in the West, specifically the US, until people feel that it is justified to "finally" take that guy down because "obviously" he's a threat to democracy/humanity/whatever.
It's amazing how systematically these things are orchestrated. He's not going to get away with his politics - his country has far too many natural assets (oil?) for that.
Because, the U.S. are just getting on the nerves of Russia and China, who therefore back Iran. And none of them realize they're not playing with fire, they're playing with an armed grenade.
Well maybe they'd react differently if they wouldn't (very reasonably) expect to have US forces right next to their own borders as soon as they give an inch?
What's that former USSR republic where the US built an airbase? It ain't that easy if the only alternative to the armed grenade is an aggressive and expansive hypocritical and war-mongering super-power armed to its teeth.
There are, of course, some select few worthy programs on TV.
There's always something, but overall that doesn't outweigh the advantage of not having that box in my personal opinion.
In case you haven't heard, we're still very slightly at war with Israel...
I'm glad you got my hint... ;-)
"Have a look at "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" by Robert T. Kyosaki. I don't agree with everything he says - in fact I disagree with quite a few of his statements"
I imagine so, Ronald!
I was just thinking about it, because the basis of his books is that the thing to strive for is to get to live on your capital, meaning interest, so you don't have to work. Well, stock or other investments might do it too.
Well that's not necessarily what I disagree with. Even though I think that the interest on savings and loans is the main systemic problem and will eventually bring the system to its knees, it's still a fact of life and something we/I have to accept as reality and work with. Meaning that even though I think it should better not exist I don't need using it to my advantage as long as it's there. It wouldn't help anyone if I didn't and that doesn't keep me from preaching for changing the system.
Even though I think that relying on interest for income in the long term is a dead-end because eventually the bubble will burst and that was that, then. (The same is true for the stock market - what do you think is going to happen when the first big wave of retirees is going to try and liquify their portfolios?)
I do think his notions of assets and liabilities are sound, though, and assets don't need to be money or stocks - it can be anything that generates money (domai seems like a good example to me - I sure wouldn't mind having something like that going for me...).
This is how banks function, criminalising it would mean abolishing banks.
Once they functioned without it.
You sure? When would that have been?
Do you have any sources?
And if they can't, they don't deserve to exist. *I* can't loan out money for interest if I don't have the money, why should a bank be able to?
Sure you can - once you've got enough people making deposits with you, and enough people accepting your cheques (or IOUs)...
"Even though I think that relying on interest for income in the long term is a dead-end because eventually the bubble will burst and that was that, then."
I doubt it. Despite a few large hiccups, the thing has been sound now for centuries.
"assets don't need to be money or stocks - it can be anything that generates money"
Good point.
"(domai seems like a good example to me - I sure wouldn't mind having something like that going for me...)."
It doesn't suck!
Of course it still involves some work, but most of it comes from built-up good will and so on. And in theory I could have somebody else run the site, if I could find somebody who had the skill and understanding.
Eolake:
"This is how banks function, criminalising it would mean abolishing banks. Once they functioned without it."
Ronald:
"You sure? When would that have been?
Do you have any sources?"
Only the thinnest, I have to admit. In the film Princess Caraboo, a banker is blackmailed with the threat to expose that his bank is doing this. Not a good source, but who would invent that?
Eolake:
"And if they can't, they don't deserve to exist. *I* can't loan out money for interest if I don't have the money, why should a bank be able to?"
Ronald:
"Sure you can - once you've got enough people making deposits with you, and enough people accepting your cheques (or IOUs)..."
Really? I'm confused. (Gawd, please be brief if you explain this, my head is hurting.)
Eolake:
Despite a few large hiccups, the thing has been sound now for centuries.
There can be no doubt that it has been around for that long, but sound? As far as I'm aware it's been crashing every 50 to 70 years, that is, if not a war, revolultion or other event necessitating a currency reform happened before...
It baffles me how people can expect any system that requires continuous exponential growth to be working for any extended amount of time - if that's not wishful thinking I don't know what is.
Just look at the deficits of about every single country - is there a single one which doesn't take up new and increasing debts every year, just to be able to serve the interest on the existing debts? Well maybe there is - Switzerland? - but it would be one big exception from the rule all others seem to be following. Just for how much longer do you think this can be maintained? And is that sound?
Only the thinnest, I have to admit. In the film Princess Caraboo, a banker is blackmailed with the threat to expose that his bank is doing this. Not a good source, but who would invent that?
Well it's called "Fractional Reserve Banking" - maybe the guy in the film did it to an extent that exceeded the limit to which it was allowed, but it has always been done.
"Sure you can - once you've got enough people making deposits with you, and enough people accepting your cheques (or IOUs)..."
Really? I'm confused.
Well if you're not a bank it will only work if you know enough people who trust you with their money, trust your IOUs (= cheques), and predominantly do business with each other. The idea is the same as above: fractional reserve banking.
Which means that you base your dealings on the assumption that at any given point in time only a certain fraction, say 5 or 10%, of your clients will ask you to hand them out all of their money in cash.
So if you've got ten people depositing 10k each with you, you'd give out cheques worth 900k to other people doing business with those deposit holders. They would bring you those cheques and you would enter the numbers in their ledgers which would bring up the nominal deposits you hold to 1M.
Now if they all asked their money back you'd be stuffed, just as the banks would be in the same situation, but as long as everyone trusts that all is well and goes about their business as usual, all should be fine. As loans get paid back you could cancel out the cheques (IOUs) and give out new ones.
Now obviously the utility of this is limited - business between your clients is all good but you'd certainly wouldn't want them to make transfers to other institutions which makes this harder to do for an individual - easier for banks because they network and have backing structures in place - but in principle that's how credit or building societies work.
And that's also how money is created - in this case you've got 1M fluctuating even though there are only 100k in deposits...
(Now if you ask for interest on your loans you could even consolidate your existing funds over time.)
(Gawd, please be brief if you explain this, my head is hurting.)
Hope that didn't hurt too badly, and pleas just call me Ronald. :-)
Here's an article explaining the same thing from a slightly different angle but much better than I just did:
http://www.prosperityuk.com/articles_and_reviews/articles/trick.php
One more remark regarding the comment that the monetary system has been around (or even sound) for centuries:
it's been changing, too, and not always for the better.
I also found some quotes (well obviously there are heaps but I just came across these) which I wanted to share with you:
“If you want to be slaves of the bankers, and pay the costs of your own slavery, then let the banks create money.”
“The modern banking system manufactures money out of nothing. The process is perhaps the most astounding piece of slight of hand that has ever been invented. Banking was conceived in iniquity and born in sin. Bankers own the earth; take it away from them, but leave them with the power to create credit, and with the stroke of a pen they will create enough money to buy it back again. … If you want to be slaves of the bankers, and pay the costs of your own slavery, then let the banks create money.”
Lord Josiah Stamp, former director of the Bank of England.
“If the American people ever allow the banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers occupied. The issuing power of money should be taken from the banks and restored to Congress and the people to whom it belongs. I sincerely believe the banking institutions having the power of money are more dangerous to liberty than standing armies.”
Thomas Jefferson, former U.S. President
There's also an interesting interview with Alan Greenspan in the same document:
http://www.consciencedupeuple.com/_d__The_nature_of_Money.doc
(Google HTML version here
To my surprise I understood your explanation, Ronald, thanks.
The missing link was that they are big enough to get their own empty checks back. I didn't see that.
And I'm beginning to see what you mean by unsound.
Problem is the number of people who can see beyond say five years is tiny, tiny, tiny.
what do you mean by "we"?
"We", the people!
Oh, of course! Sorry, I wasn't concentrating. It's just that the way I view Economics (it all seems like so much Sanskrit to me), I can't picture the man of the street founding a new system that works, and that can't be corrupted. You sound so confident -and competent- in that field that I assumed you might have come concrete project in preparation.
"Also in oder to effect change one needs to take ownership of the problem."
I'm not gonna surprise YOU by saying this is easier said than done! :-(
Still, I've learned that one should never underestimate the power of words and ideas. Some Caliphs and kings used to disguise themselves among their people to find out what they REALLY want but dare not ask for...
"If nobody else feels included in my "we" then just read it as pluralis majestatis."
Just how many of you Ronalds are there, exactly?
"You seem to understand a lot, but are you in any position to contribute to change?
I sure am - I'm not dead, am I?"
Ghost of the Internet, premiering June 6th, 2006, in 666 theaters nationwide. "Believe and be afraid."
("we"? anyone! Let's say "I")
[Collective clamour : "AYE!"]
"Like, are you a personnal acquaintance of Alan Greenspan, or something of the sort?
- Should we rather leave things up to people like him?"
According to that man I trust completely, Mr Bush Jr., a.k.a. "Honest George".
"just because I lack the actual power to make any changes to the system itself"
As I said, you seem to understand much of the problem, and knowledge is certainly the beginning of power. "So, you may carry on, my good man."
"Granted, this is only a discussion, not an actual conspiracy to overthrow the Golden Bull.
That's right - in my mind conspiracies are the wrong way to go -"
SSSSHHHH! I was only saying that in case old horn-head's agents were eavesdropping on our conversation.
So, you got the bomb? My timer's ready.
"One wonders why government circles are so paranoid about conspiracies"
Because it takes one to know one!!! ):-P
"They should teach common sense in schools.
Common Sense (TM)? In Schools? What a dangerous idea!"
See? Looks like you've got the bomb after all! ;-)
Let's get kabooming!
"Um, are you saying that the fact that Bush is president has anything to do with Bush, the man?"
It's the man that wins the election. If the program was all that mattered, there wouldn't be these much hyped Mr-Popularity-contest primaries, would there?
I was confident the best candidate for the Democrats was Wesley Clark, and that he'd win. Alas, they decided to present some strange-looking JFK wannabe instead.
"I've been saying that since 20 years ago"
Well, for the last 15 years or so, I've seen the sure signs of global warming. But what I'm saying is, now we're already shoulder-deep in it -and sinking-. It's no more a foreseeable future, we're watching it happen, big time.
"The Palace is on fire, Sire!
- Peace, please. At ease. I smell the smoke, but still don't see a fire!" -- (Sheikh Isbir, famous Persian poet.)
I'm afraid baby-seal hunting is the least of our furry friends' worries...
A very relevant hint : I've recently bought a new Earth globe. The North Pole ice cap is not represented on it. "Of course," you'll say, "it's not land". But the old one I have displayed it nevertheless. The wildcat is out of the paper bag, and foaming at the mouth! (Jinkies!)
"That's not how it works, though. The media's job is just to turn public opinion in the West, specifically the US, until people feel that it is justified to "finally" take that guy down because "obviously" he's a threat to democracy/humanity/whatever."
That won't work either. I've always said it : "Today the U.S.A. are more powerful than any other country in the world. But they're not more powerful than the whole world." And today's whole world (save for Tony Blair!) hates their guts. When a bully ceases to intimidate everybody at once, he's finished.
If they wanted to eliminate Chavez (or Ahmadinejad, to start with the priorities), it's too late. Should have done it before they SNAFUed so badly with Saddam. Better yet, instead of FUBARing with Saddam the Scarecrow. Now it's screwed for good.
Yes, 9/11 has forever changed the world as we know it. Mainly because of how some key people reacted to it! I just KNEW it was a mistake from Gore to concede victory in this stinky Florida bushiness, I mean, business!
"Russia and China [...]
Well maybe they'd react differently if they wouldn't (very reasonably) expect to have US forces right next to their own borders as soon as they give an inch?"
Who ever said that the Cold War had ended? :-P
Unless you consider what's happening in the world today to be an unofficial lukewarm war.
But you know, it made me sneer when the recent igniting spark in Lebanon made the whole world piss their pants. Lukewarm, my gluteus augustus!
"What's that former USSR republic where the US built an airbase?"
Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, or Turkmenistan. They're creepin into all of these.
But they failed to do so in Yughouristan in the Eighties. ;-P
"It ain't that easy if the only alternative to the armed grenade is an aggressive and expansive hypocritical and war-mongering super-power armed to its teeth."
Cuba missile crisis all over again... only in reverse this time! Some asses... I mean, MULE-heads never learn from their own victories.
"What do you think is going to happen when the first big wave of retirees is going to try and liquify their portfolios?"
I think they have a word for that in Asia : tsunami. Too much liquid all at once equals catastrophe with a capital Mess...
"*I* can't loan out money for interest if I don't have the money, why should a bank be able to?
- Sure you can
- Please be brief if you explain this"
Well, as they say in France, "Only the rich can borrow money." That's the whole idea, I believe. The richer you are, the easier it is for you to pay later. Often to the point of absurdity. Loans are always based on reputation, aren't they? I've read very believable stories about crooks who posed as very rich people, received huge credit, and one day vanished leaving behind a terrifying tab to the hotels and banks. [Was this brief enough?]
While we have eye-opening stories like the Enron/Andersen scandal, micro-credits (to help those who have nearly nothing take a start with a ridiculously low amount of money) are an incredible success. I don't know whether they actually bring serious profit (they seem to), but the main thing is, they're CREATING value by turning social rejects into extremely motivated workers and entrepreneurs.
"assets don't need to be money or stocks - it can be anything that generates money"
Yeah, and Eolake has been making money by photographing assets! And very nice ones, I might add. ;-)
"And in theory I could have somebody else run the site"
It's not as easy as you seem to think, selecting the weekly letter. Would you sub-contract your blog, too? ;-)
(I can hear it already : "BACK OFF FROM MY BABY, YOU MURDERER!")
"In the film Princess Caraboo, a banker is blackmailed with the threat to expose that his bank is doing this. Not a good source, but who would invent that?"
It's clearly an invention. No banker would be caught helpless against a blackmailer, and with no "competent and discrete help to resolve such problems" available! Am I being overly pessimistic?
"Also in oder to effect change one needs to take ownership of the problem."
I'm not gonna surprise YOU by saying this is easier said than done! :-(
Very easily done, Pascal. It doesn't mean that anything but your own attitude will change immediately, but to take ownership of a problem is as easy as claiming it, i.e. just taking the attitude that it is something you have a responsibility for. Most people don't.
According to that man I trust completely, Mr Bush Jr., a.k.a. "Honest George".
Trust is such a wonderful thing.
But what I'm saying is, now we're already shoulder-deep in it -and sinking-. It's no more a foreseeable future, we're watching it happen, big time.
Yes, and I think our only chance is to stop watching and start doing something about it. Stop being paralysed and start owning the problem, as if it's all of our making and it's us who need to fix it up.
(Also refer to the "Game" post...)
That won't work either.
Wait for it!
I've always said it : "Today the U.S.A. are more powerful than any other country in the world. But they're not more powerful than the whole world."
Problem is, they (meaning the current administration) don't realise that yet. They're not the first ones exhibiting that problem, and much of what they do reminds me a lot of how things went last time...
And today's whole world (save for Tony Blair!) hates their guts. When a bully ceases to intimidate everybody at once, he's finished.
That took a while to happen the last time around. Most people/countries are very slow to react for a number of reasons - they don't want to get involved, don't want to risk their good diplomatic/economic relations, don't want to stick out, don't want to change their comfortable world-view, don't want to commit to something that's going to prove unpopular *and* tedious, and will always apply the benefit of the doubt towards their allies.
One of the things Bush has said which I whole-heartedly agree with is that one of the reasons WWII could happen the way it did was that it took so long for the allies to stop Hitler. Only that he pointed his finger at Saddam when he said it while three fingers were pointing back at himself.
Also, even they don't make it look like it, with cluster-bombing whole countries at all, but the US don't necessarily need a whole army to take out the government of a country.
I just KNEW it was a mistake from Gore to concede victory in this stinky Florida bushiness, I mean, business!
Maybe it was, or maybe he just realised that he was wasting his energy fighting against the windmills of an administration that was stacked against him and would have confirmed the decision that had already been made (I just read that the administrative person who originally decided to reject the recount was just promoted, but can't remember the details.)
I agree that he should've seen this through no matter the result, just because it's bloody important.
But there we are again - after all it wasn't any of us in the situation but Al Gore, so we'll have to accept his decision.
Unless you consider what's happening in the world today to be an unofficial lukewarm war.
Not me. I don't think it's lukewarm, I don't think it's cold - I think it's full-on, and has been for some time. On all fronts - economic (money and interest, anyone?), electronic and sometimes conventional. Need to show-case these weapons, too, if you wanna sell them, right?
But you know, it made me sneer when the recent igniting spark in Lebanon made the whole world piss their pants. Lukewarm, my gluteus augustus!
Igniting? Igniting what? There are always sparks flying when you work with power tools but let's not confuse cause and effect...
I've recently bought a new Earth globe. The North Pole ice cap is not represented on it. "Of course," you'll say, "it's not land".
Doesn't count for me, but mine had a metal cap there which held the thing together - I wonder what that may signify... ;-)
But the old one I have displayed it nevertheless.
I think I would refuse to buy one which doesn't for any good reason (just thinking how good the reason was for mine...).
I think they have a word for that in Asia : tsunami.
In my opinion that's pretty close to the mark...
Yeah, and Eolake has been making money by photographing assets! And very nice ones, I might add. ;-)
LOL! Which (the photographing and publishing of them) is what makes them into assets, I guess!
BTW, so-called "intellectual property", like copyright or patents, are probably amongst the most profitable assets one can have - no matter how you think about the idea of anything intellectual being anyone's property.
Quite interesting situation, too, that more and more of these assets are concentrated in very few hands and much of the rest becoming devalued at a quick rate.
If money was the root of all evil, as too many hasty believers say... how come there was no money in the Garden of Eden, only apples?
It scares me, really, to see how much religion seems to be linked at the hip with the stifling of all logic and sense. And faith with blindness. "Don't think, don't question, just believe and let it/us guide you." No wonder cults have it so easy, using the same methods!
"It baffles me how people can expect any system that requires continuous exponential growth to be working for any extended amount of time"
Guys like you are the scourge of every pyramid schem... er, enterprise, you know that?
Guys like you are the scourge of every pyramid schem... er, enterprise, you know that?
Yes. Funny that not many people want to hear about it, not even, or particularly not, those who would be best served by jumping ship immediately. I guess people really love to have some myth to believe in - the more improbable the mightier.
As for the root of all evil, I think that's in the same place as the root of all good: within every one of us. But money certainly seems to bring it out in many people.
And as usual it's so much easier to blame the messenger, in this case to say "money causes greed" rather than "when I think of money I become greedy". Of course many religious rules are such simplifications, and in many cases it makes them more effective because the former message is much easier to convey than the second one. As in "if you don't want people to fall then don't tempt them". It works to an extent but it shouldn't become an end in itself.
"as usual it's so much easier to blame the messenger"
Money today is the messenger of coveting. I rest my case.
"this is easier said than done!
Very easily done, Pascal."
I guess maybe I expect to see everything happen right now. I forget that most of the time, it works one small step at a time.
Forgive me, it's just that after 31 years of quagmire in my country, I tend to grow impatient at times.
"That won't work either.
Wait for it!"
Should I ALSO take ownership of that problem and try to do something about it? But do what, exactly?
I'm not sure which would be the lesser of the two evils...
As we say in Lebanon : "Watermelons busting each other." ):-P
"One of the things Bush has said which I whole-heartedly agree with is that one of the reasons WWII could happen the way it did was that it took so long for the allies to stop Hitler. Only that he pointed his finger at Saddam when he said it while three fingers were pointing back at himself."
Right. Hitler should have been stopped the moment he invaded another country. But NOT the moment he was believed to be planning to invade another country!
[while three fingers were pointing back at himself.] I love that one!
"but the US don't necessarily need a whole army to take out the government of a country."
This is what infuriates me the most. There are better ways to accomplish something, these ways were applied, and they were working with Saddam. But "some people" (no need to give names) wanted the prestige of a shocking and awesome military operation. Well, we've seen the shock, and now we hear the "Ow!"
"I just KNEW it was a mistake from Gore to concede victory
I agree that he should've seen this through no matter the result, just because it's bloody important."
That's just my point! You don't go and get all polite and mundane and sporting with Attila about to ravage your city and kill thousands. Given half a chance, you smash his nuts with your mace, even if you have to ask for the Lord's forgiveness for that cowardly attack.
I remember at the end of "Sound of Music", when the nuns confess to the Mother Superior about having committed a theft. Theft of the carburators of the Nazis' cars!
"when the recent igniting spark in Lebanon made the whole world piss their pants. Lukewarm, my gluteus augustus!
Igniting? Igniting what?"
Igniting the gunpowder stash, of course. The "concerned world" almost saw World War 3 starting right there.
Needless to ask who left all that gunpowder be accumulated over the decades.
"There are always sparks flying when you work with power tools"
"Power tools", good one. ;-)
Sparks flying? Welkom' too ze Midll' Eest, my friehnd! Honestly, when there are no combats in Lebanon, people seize the opportunity to waste small fortunes on fireworks at every futile occasion. Really!
I think my fellow countrymen are so accustomed to seeing sparks flying, it's become an addiction. (Like these sea animals that adapt to pollution too well, and they'd die in clean water.) Or they've finally lost their last marbles over the decades.
Say, I once saw here a funny toy : two big rocky marbles (about an inch), and when you knock them together, it's like a reusable firecracker, with sparks and smoke and smell and everything.
They should be called "hard balls". ;-)
"I've recently bought a new Earth globe.
mine had a metal cap there which held the thing together - I wonder what that may signify... ;-)"
Well, d'uh! There has to be something plugging that hole in the ozone layer, right?
"Very easily done, Pascal."
I guess maybe I expect to see everything happen right now.
Well I wasn't saying that owning the problem solves it in an instant. Just that it's easy to take ownership of it. Which is the first step, because it changes your attitude to asking "what can I do right now" instead of theoretising about what should be done by whoever.
Should I ALSO take ownership of that problem and try to do something about it? But do what, exactly?
Well isn't it your problem to an extent? I think "trying to do something" just for the sake of it is pointless. In particular "trying". Do something or do nothing, just be aware that either has an impact, if small. I guess it's this awareness which makes the difference. As for what to do, I can't tell you but talking to people and raising awareness is important, too.
Hitler should have been stopped the moment he invaded another country. But NOT the moment he was believed to be planning to invade another country!
Which gives an interesting twist to our current example, because nobody even believed that the ear-marked villain had such plans - it was just make-believe as a pretext for, um, the invasion of another country. Now who's going to stop that invader, whose plans, and invasions of scores of other countries before are well-known?
This is what infuriates me the most. There are better ways to accomplish something, these ways were applied, and they were working with Saddam. But "some people" (no need to give names) wanted the prestige of a shocking and awesome military operation.
What I find remarkable, time after time, is how willing most people are to accept the official reasons that are given for doing about anything. They are more willing to assume that the government are utterly stupid to do what quite obviously doesn't make any sense, than that they actually aren't, but do what they are doing for completely different reasons.
I'm wondering if that's because the majority of people are just decent people with honest intentions who assume the same of their government, or because they'd otherwise have to think of themselves as stupid for believing the crap they're being told.
Well, we've seen the shock, and now we hear the "Ow!"
Yes, this slogan of "shock and awe" for the people of Iraq I actually found utterly revealing - the word "awe" originally had the same meaning as "terror", and that's what these people out to "stop the modern equivalent of Hitler to use his weapons of mass destruction" are spreading with their weapons of mass destruction.
You don't go and get all polite and mundane and sporting with Attila about to ravage your city and kill thousands. Given half a chance, you smash his nuts with your mace, even if you have to ask for the Lord's forgiveness for that cowardly attack.
I wish, but unfortunately I don't even run for president in the first place so I'm not going to throw the first stone at someone who did and then decided to withdraw.
But I'm sure there's some potential for other concerned people to make sure that this parody on democratic principles doesn't reoccur.
I remember at the end of "Sound of Music", when the nuns confess to the Mother Superior about having committed a theft. Theft of the carburators of the Nazis' cars!
Exactly - the main characters were stuck, but the nuns decided that the problem warranted their action. They could've sat on the veranda and discuss what "should be done" or how unjust the world is, but they decided to own the problem and take responsibility.
Igniting the gunpowder stash, of course. The "concerned world" almost saw World War 3 starting right there.
For me, this goes to show that they are not nearly concerned enough yet - the words "almost" and "starting" prove it...
two big rocky marbles (about an inch), and when you knock them together, it's like a reusable firecracker, with sparks and smoke and smell and everything.
They should be called "hard balls". ;-)
Sounds great - I'd love to have a set of those... ;-)
"or because they'd otherwise have to think of themselves as stupid for believing the crap they're being told."
The stubbornness of people who don't want to admit, even to themselves, that they've been very dumb, is a well proven phenomenon in psychology (cognitive dissonance). And this narcissism may be THE greatest weakness of a democratic society. This is why the bigger the lie, the easier it is to swallow. Because the bigger the stupidity, the harder it is to admit.
"these people out to stop the modern equivalent of Hitler"
Well, Hitler's tactics relied on Blitzkrieg, meaning "lightning-fast war". I see no relation whatsoever with USA today. Do you? ;-P
"But I'm sure there's some potential for other concerned people to make sure that this parody on democratic principles doesn't reoccur."
Please Vishnu that you be right! And Odin. And Zeus. And Baal-Melkart. And Oromaze. And...
"the nuns decided that the problem warranted their action"
I guess they finally solved a problem like Maria... ;-)
"I'd love to have a set of those..."
If you're serious, I think I can eventually find you a pair, given some time. You have an address to write me in the "Interview with me" thread (or by clicking my name above). What country are you in?
I once read a gag where a couple are making love, and the guy says : "I want to hear you say dirty words!"
So, the nice girl obliges, and recites :
"I knew a man from Nankin,
His balls were made of brass.
Every time they went bangin'
Lightning shot out of his ass.
So... did I make you come, darling?"
Damn! Why does this thing ask you for "your web page", if it won't take your e-mail in its place?
issar_el_aksab@yahoo.fr
Well, Hitler's tactics relied on Blitzkrieg, meaning "lightning-fast war". I see no relation whatsoever with USA today. Do you? ;-P
For Hitler it worked in Poland but not too well after that - WWII wasn't exactly a "Blitzkrieg" - probably due to his hubris in thinking that it'll all be easy. Which I believe was what the US administration thought about Iraq - remember: officially the war ended some three years ago, after just about two months.
Iraq is just not Panama, or Grenada, just as Russia or England wasn't Poland, or Austria.
Lots of parallels there, although I do get your irony. ;-)
"I'd love to have a set of those..."
If you're serious, I think I can eventually find you a pair, given some time.
Thanks Pascal, I think I was half-serious. I love playing with stuff, but I think making noises and filling the room with smoke would quickly lose its attraction and they would mostly be gathering dust.
But I appreciate your offer!
You have an address to write me in the "Interview with me" thread (or by clicking my name above). What country are you in?
I'm in Australia and I noted the address because I wanted to send you some other information I have been promised - will do as soon as I get it.
Post a Comment