View Single Post
Unread 29 Aug 2011, 14:59   #9
Tietäjä
Good Son
 
Tietäjä's Avatar
 
Join Date: May 2001
Location: Finland
Posts: 3,991
Tietäjä single handedly makes these forums a better placeTietäjä single handedly makes these forums a better placeTietäjä single handedly makes these forums a better placeTietäjä single handedly makes these forums a better placeTietäjä single handedly makes these forums a better placeTietäjä single handedly makes these forums a better placeTietäjä single handedly makes these forums a better placeTietäjä single handedly makes these forums a better placeTietäjä single handedly makes these forums a better placeTietäjä single handedly makes these forums a better placeTietäjä single handedly makes these forums a better place
Re: World Enslavement - On the fly.

Religion mentioned in an economic debate. Paging Jesus to thread #199501 to tell us about economics.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Paisley View Post
The videos are suppose to explain it in layman's terms...
However are you saying that there are inaccuracies?

No flame/troll bait intended, just interested in your perspective.
Honestly, I didn't watch them through. I looked for maybe ten minutes, and at that point it was more or less a copy of Zeitgeist. I watched both Zeitgeists.

While I fully acknowledge the weaknesses of a monetary economy (as opposed to a trade economy which was very widespread in 12,000 years before Christ), I keep coming down with the question of what's better. One bottom flaw in this line of thinking is that debt must somehow equate wealth, or that there needs to be a total amount of debt that must be capped by an arbitrary amount of 'existing wealth'. This is not so. Debt is not only against current wealth, and current productivity, but future wealth, and future productivity.

Debt enslavement is one of the things people fling around and it tends to have to do with the cycle where someone illustrates how picking up a mortgage and a bunch of consumer credit yields you a lifetime of slavery. It does not, however, spend a second of commenting just why this happens, on a macroeconomics or global level (see: Warren Buffet, Squanderville vs. Thriftville). For each Squander, there needs to be a Thrifter. On surface, yes, credit expansion is an evil monster after your mum. Claiming, however, that the amount of money created is only limited by an amount of debt is over simplifying a crucial statement: debt does not exist without a creditor. Squanderville can't squander without Thriftville thrifting.

An argument that strikes from the same credit expansion -critical side has to do with gold standard, and because gold has never crashed in value over the history of humanity it can never happen. In order for more gold or silver money, seriously? The fact that the whole argument, seems to rely on the constant yap on how gold this and gold that, is simply astounding. Gold is as worthless as your fiat money to an average consumer: in fact, it has less valuable practical applications aside from vanity goods than silver has.


It's becoming a bit messy by now, but I will summarize a little:

- Credit expansion: the argument that debt is only limited by the amount of debt issued, or some similar logical fallacy. Debt is limited by the amount of willing creditors. Creditors typically issue debt not only in 'collateral' for current wealth, but future wealth increases.

- Yes, Aristoteles said it. Money is dead, it can't have more than face value. However, Aristoteles may have ignored the temporal component of the function. Briefly: if you were a starting up farmer, it would be surely faster to lend money (with an interest) to buy 10 cows and 2 corn fields, than buy 1 corn field - maybe by retirement you'd have 5 cows and 1 and a half corn fields. Subsequently, you are borrowing towards expected future gains (you expect your gains from more cows and corn fields to be able to repay - I will return to this later). While certain aspects of the monetary system are flawed, there is a very simple rational explanation as to how higher savings sectors in the economy need to be able transfer resources to those (growing) sectors that need it. It's in the heart of our growth (along with imperialism and colonialism, which is effectively theft).

- Gold standard: everyone keeps arguing how 'back in the age of the Roman empire gold was valuable currency'. Reality check: how is gold (or insert 'arbitrarily valuable over-priced metal') any less fiat money than printed money? Because you can eat gold coins? (in fact, the cows and cornfields mentioned in the goods economy of the 12,000 BC would in fact be the only directly valuable resources. in a very gross simplification.)

- While there are liabilities in the monetary system which have to do with it's inherent tendency to overheat (a behavioral economist along the lines of Shiller and Akerlof might argue that, this is because people are on the habit of being overly optimistic about their future), this is endogenous. What is really in the argument that questions why the monetary system is built on an expectation of permanent growth is a question of human fundamentals. The expectation of permanent ("perpentual") growth is realistic if you believe this prediction to be 'most likely true'. Much of the current western societies are and have been built on vastly overshooting expectations of growth. Due to selfishness and human greed, this has resulted in perverse situations where for example in Finland pensions are not only tied to inflation but to wage indexes (what this says, is that: not only consumption level of the pension needs to remain stable, but also if the rest of the economy becomes more efficient, pensioners who are not in a position to produce any of this growth are to receive parts of it - Squanderville, anyone?).

- There seems to be little viable options. Whilst it is joyful to read and learn about the demons of the monetary system, Zeitgeist's solution to this was to proceed to introduce a resource economy. An economy where there... is no scarcity. While this obviously solves all problems and removes the need for any kind of economic activity (since there is no scarcity), it's somewhat difficult to see how this could happen. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dc3sKwwAaCU - 30 minutes onwards is just hilarious garbage).

Some retard friend of a retard ex-girlfriend once asked me what I think about capitalism. I countered it by asking what he thinks the alternatives are. He mentioned socialism. I said, that while (monetary) capitalism seems to have it's flaws, it isn't like socialism has had a great track record. We can spend our lives painting utopias on how this and that could be better on a different system, but I'm yet to see a video of someone realistically telling how that would happen in practise.

I have a really good suggestion on how to rehab western economies: cut wages by 30% - dig it off the currency. Reasonable (it has to do with "Baumol's disease")? Now, can you find me the nation that is willing to accept this. The argument about bla bla sustainability this that, does hilariously enough ignore the fact that we do not have such resources at our disposal, we have five billion people with a tenth or less of the resources an average western has; to reach a 'sustainable bla bla stable population' bit would require cutting income by a denizen.

Now you all are crying, that, because you can't steal it from the negroes anymore, you'd now actually have to earn it, and the evil bankers are doing you in the ass (not that I agree with a lot of the creative re-financing being done during in this crisis, but this is a different subject altogether). (edit. yes, this last bit is meant to acknowledge that there is a tint of 'colonization' or 'imperialism' (however, not through credit expansion, and the direction of this might be more surprising than you'd initially think - as per, Buffet's paper mentioned) in the financial system. however, it's not like this is fresh news: just that, the negroes are no longer slaves)

There is one more crucial question I'd like to present.

On the premises that an economy would be healthy if it only consumed what it produces: why are so many civilians in debt? Because someone forced the debt onto them? Or because they wanted to obtain something currently outside their means?

Last edited by Tietäjä; 29 Aug 2011 at 16:19.
Tietäjä is offline   Reply With Quote