The reason usury is wrong is not because someone said so, but because it does damage. I am one of the rare voices who says clearly what we call "interest" today is usury (the sophist arguments to the contrary do not stand).
There is something going on that is unprecedented in size, and that is the lending of fractional reserve based (asset-less) credit at usury. With no gold standard there is no rational end to how much can be lent, there is only one dollar too much and down comes the system.
So far we are at $100 trillion and nothing to show for it, except payment obligations unto the third and fourth generation.
When I say nothing to show for it, please name a single aspect of life on earth that has improved since we went off the gold standard. Wages? Health care? Law? Housing? Education? Food? Clothing? Religion? Please tell me. If you subscribe to the idea of wealth as personal accumulation, you may look at the 1% and find much satisfaction. But if your idea of wealth has the integrity of etymology, then wealth is the degree to which the widest assortment of goods and services is available to the widest group of people at prices they can afford on their own. In this correct understanding of wealth, no one has exceptional wealth, but everyone has access to more than the uber-wealthy have today. Think Henry VIIIs assortment of goodies, and anyone else today. We in the West have killed progress with capitalism.
Let me give you an example of how it works: Seattle voters reject repeatedly a 4.25 billion dollar (before overruns) tunnel. A mayor (lawyer, see Kant on why USA must fail) is elected on the platform of no tunnel, never. Within a year a bi-election is held on the topic and a result is bought and paid for, maybe $150,000. Now we have a $4.25 billion dollar two mile tunnel project. In mud, along a waterfront, and currently stopped cold at 24 feet out of two miles. No one has any idea why the boring machine will not move forward. Perhaps the God that warned sins are unto the 3rd and 4th generation has halted the destruction that would be billed to a fifth generation. Who knows? All other explanations right now are grounded in belief, not facts.
In the meantime, $4.25 billion is a lot of debt to splash around, and one one side of the ledger we have debt assigned to people who actually produce something in life, and credit to people who screw everyone else, because the laws protect them. The actual means is the capitalist lending of fractional reserve based (asset-less) credit at usury. $4.25 billion is a designated amount that productive people must divert from their hopes and dreams to a one percent. For their $4.25 billion dollars, these people get a 24 foot hole in the ground. Even if the tunnel is ever completed, like the mass transit light rail boondoggles, they cannot ever cover their costs. If we had a free market, and not capitalism, we'd have cheap and plentiful mag lev. But the problem is the 98% of the 99% who beg the abusers for ever more abuse, by demanding entitlement over freedom.
Now multiply pointless, stupid wastes of effort all over the world, and you have a false economy and debt now at the ten trillion dollar mark. No idea how much higher it can go, we only know two things:
1. At some point it will crash.
2. The longer that takes, the more horrible the results.
The other pointless waste of credit is our wars, which create huge tallies for a few. It is sort of condign punishment that the government house "unions" who did not resist the fascist adventures overseas, find their pensions spread all over the ground in the Middle East. See the Taliban for you retirement checks.
So what we have is a one percent who have a tally of asset-less backed debt, to which almost all people bow down in awe. Among that one percent is some very unhappy and fierce balance envy, where a Soros envies a Buffet who envies a Carlos for having more balance than the other. They experience a libido dominandi, where personal accumulation is how scores are kept. None of them understand survivorship bias, or at least think they are exempt.
Offer for change comes in the form of progressives' demanding $15 minimum wage, a coordinated protest marches around the USA on March 15 for a $15 minimum wage, with the rallying cry "because the rent won't wait." The solution to income inequality is to up the minimum wage so you can give it to the rich? Brilliant. Warren Buffett loves the idea of taxpayers transferring more money to the poor so he can end up with it. Buffett sure as hell has nothing to offer (insurance, candy, banking, construction etc, all subsidized industries) anyone who actually produces anything in life themselves, so he has always depended on welfare transfer payments to come out on top. His #1 holding, Geico, is the Government Employee Insurance Corporation.
So party on progressives! Keep demanding more money for your abusers so you can be miserable and poor sitting on a bus and staring into the iPhone, at nothing.
Or not. The most revolutionary act you can perform is to start a business. And a good corollary is to eschew any debt.
Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.
There is something going on that is unprecedented in size, and that is the lending of fractional reserve based (asset-less) credit at usury. With no gold standard there is no rational end to how much can be lent, there is only one dollar too much and down comes the system.
So far we are at $100 trillion and nothing to show for it, except payment obligations unto the third and fourth generation.
The $30 trillion increase from $70 trillion between mid-2007 and mid-2013 compares with a $3.86 trillion decline in the value of equities to $53.8 trillion in the same period, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.When equity values go down as debt goes up, are you getting any signals yet?
When I say nothing to show for it, please name a single aspect of life on earth that has improved since we went off the gold standard. Wages? Health care? Law? Housing? Education? Food? Clothing? Religion? Please tell me. If you subscribe to the idea of wealth as personal accumulation, you may look at the 1% and find much satisfaction. But if your idea of wealth has the integrity of etymology, then wealth is the degree to which the widest assortment of goods and services is available to the widest group of people at prices they can afford on their own. In this correct understanding of wealth, no one has exceptional wealth, but everyone has access to more than the uber-wealthy have today. Think Henry VIIIs assortment of goodies, and anyone else today. We in the West have killed progress with capitalism.
Let me give you an example of how it works: Seattle voters reject repeatedly a 4.25 billion dollar (before overruns) tunnel. A mayor (lawyer, see Kant on why USA must fail) is elected on the platform of no tunnel, never. Within a year a bi-election is held on the topic and a result is bought and paid for, maybe $150,000. Now we have a $4.25 billion dollar two mile tunnel project. In mud, along a waterfront, and currently stopped cold at 24 feet out of two miles. No one has any idea why the boring machine will not move forward. Perhaps the God that warned sins are unto the 3rd and 4th generation has halted the destruction that would be billed to a fifth generation. Who knows? All other explanations right now are grounded in belief, not facts.
In the meantime, $4.25 billion is a lot of debt to splash around, and one one side of the ledger we have debt assigned to people who actually produce something in life, and credit to people who screw everyone else, because the laws protect them. The actual means is the capitalist lending of fractional reserve based (asset-less) credit at usury. $4.25 billion is a designated amount that productive people must divert from their hopes and dreams to a one percent. For their $4.25 billion dollars, these people get a 24 foot hole in the ground. Even if the tunnel is ever completed, like the mass transit light rail boondoggles, they cannot ever cover their costs. If we had a free market, and not capitalism, we'd have cheap and plentiful mag lev. But the problem is the 98% of the 99% who beg the abusers for ever more abuse, by demanding entitlement over freedom.
Now multiply pointless, stupid wastes of effort all over the world, and you have a false economy and debt now at the ten trillion dollar mark. No idea how much higher it can go, we only know two things:
1. At some point it will crash.
2. The longer that takes, the more horrible the results.
The other pointless waste of credit is our wars, which create huge tallies for a few. It is sort of condign punishment that the government house "unions" who did not resist the fascist adventures overseas, find their pensions spread all over the ground in the Middle East. See the Taliban for you retirement checks.
So what we have is a one percent who have a tally of asset-less backed debt, to which almost all people bow down in awe. Among that one percent is some very unhappy and fierce balance envy, where a Soros envies a Buffet who envies a Carlos for having more balance than the other. They experience a libido dominandi, where personal accumulation is how scores are kept. None of them understand survivorship bias, or at least think they are exempt.
Offer for change comes in the form of progressives' demanding $15 minimum wage, a coordinated protest marches around the USA on March 15 for a $15 minimum wage, with the rallying cry "because the rent won't wait." The solution to income inequality is to up the minimum wage so you can give it to the rich? Brilliant. Warren Buffett loves the idea of taxpayers transferring more money to the poor so he can end up with it. Buffett sure as hell has nothing to offer (insurance, candy, banking, construction etc, all subsidized industries) anyone who actually produces anything in life themselves, so he has always depended on welfare transfer payments to come out on top. His #1 holding, Geico, is the Government Employee Insurance Corporation.
So party on progressives! Keep demanding more money for your abusers so you can be miserable and poor sitting on a bus and staring into the iPhone, at nothing.
Or not. The most revolutionary act you can perform is to start a business. And a good corollary is to eschew any debt.
Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.
2 comments:
"The most revolutionary act you can perform is to start a business."
I agree.
But this guy has a different view:
"Entrepreneurship leads to inequality"
http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/03/entrepreneurship-always-leads-to-inequality/
I thought entrepreneurs succeed by creating and serving customers and improving their experiences.
/Doug Hefernan/
Isenberg limits his view of "entrepreneurialism" to violence-backed crony capitalism. Free markets do not give anyone an opportunity to aggregate exceptional wealth. Therefore, it is of no interest to professors who earn $300k per year encouraging people who believe they are exceptional to engage in violence-backed crony capitalism as a good thing.
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