After attending a book reading last night, a fellow gave me a lift home. As we walked thought the streets of a hipster neighborhood, he complained bitterly of the trash and filth on the street, complaining loud enough to invite a conflict. Construction is underway all over Seattle, with a view to reaching from some 700,000 now to 2 million in what, a decade?
The author had noted we have tremendous resources going into mass transit (some 2 billion in bonds to dig a mere 26 feet of a severl mile tunnel only to be stopped cold by an unknown obstruction), and his point was why can we not fund proper health care, why are we board and dosing street psychotics for a 2 week stretch then throwing them back onto the street? (Because in states, the bad policies always win.)
Amazon, Google, multiply biotechs, Boeing, Starbucks, a University or four, our community colleges are shifting to four year gigs to sell Bachelors degrees to high-paying Chinese students, everybody is making cleaning up. Finance, Investment, Real Estate. Dot.com. Everyone is cleaning up, if you are in those fields.
The author had noted we have tremendous resources going into mass transit (some 2 billion in bonds to dig a mere 26 feet of a several mile tunnel only to be stopped cold by an unknown obstruction). And looking at a map, it is pretty clear the powers that be are rearranging the city to be a wealthy core with rings of less fortunate and a mass transit system to keep the flow moving between districts.
IN Tombstone, the counties and provinces that most embraced Maoism looked best briefly as people gorged on the "free food" in communal kitchens. Travellers were assured a free meal and place to sleep. The food came from the stores. The "wealth" was provided by simply emptying the storehouses early. Plenty of food now meant export earnings could be ramped up. The reckoning of yield on crops (yield on investment, or stock market price) skyrocketed as false economy statistics proved communism was triumphant. Starvation followed, for several years. The counties and provinces who did "best" suffered most.
Prior to 1971, that which one could invest required money (more than now.) But there was no debate as to what money was back then, gold and silver. After we went off the quasi-gold standard, banks not only learned they could lend credit, that if and when this borrowing credit short and lending credit long failed, a necessarily disastrous scam, the Feds would bail them out, every time. (And they know they will be bailed out next time too, so it goes on, right now.) So the began to lend credit, not money.
This makes for fantastic possibilities, Indian farmers who are starving, but have an iPhone! Wars that can continue for 23 years (Iraq) and no end in site. Countries with no legitimacy at all, but populations under control. Everyone a superstar, but unable to write a sentence. Amazing medical breakthroughs, and astonishing brutality. Whole industries can be built out, selling things online at no profit, selling coffee and distorting traditional businesses by access to E Z Credit, and mountains of talent to keep track of who owes what and how to avoid the taxes. Air travel cheaper than it costs, with 25% in taxes going to TSA and "security" theatre. This is all false economy, like buying a high ranking on google.
"People are getting paid, they are buying things, the economy is moving here." Here the conversation usually switches to "but look around at all the poor, the kicked-to-the-curb ill, the 99% who are not making it." I don't work that angle, since 98% of the poor are voluntarily poor. Certainly there is the 2% of street people whose distress will break your heart, but the vast majority on the street, so to speak, are there by choice. When offered picking apples or EBT card lifestyle, they took the EBT card. The 1% can ignore them, because the 1% know full well there is an EBT lifestyle, just as there is the 1% lifestyle, it too a product of the welfare/warfare state built on the false economy of lending credit.
You will be told debt is as old as money, and I would say older. In fact, the classic barter-to-money narrative, as David Graeber points out, has no instance in history. What is everywhere at all times is "vendor financing." When I was a kid my father sent me to the store fairly often to pick up "one pound ground round" and milk or whatever. The nice lady rang it up on the till, tore off the receipt, wrote "Spiers" on the receipt and put it in the drawer. Off I went, and at the end of the month, my father went around to the pharmacy, gas station, grocery store and paid out from his pay packet what he owed whom. Each of those who extended my family credit each month were businesses extended credit by their suppliers. Suppliers were extended credit by manufacturers. Extraction businesses were so fundamental they were usually backed by old money. But what you see is everyone extending each other credit, almost no money involved at any point, except at extraction and then the extinguishing of debt, when my father paid out his debt with warehouse receipts called silver certificates, now gone, but once common. There was gold and silver backing the currency. There was widespread credit extended, but asset backed and no usury (interest) charged. Man did not go from barter to money to solve the problem of double coincidence of wants conundrum: the lamb merchant gave basket maker credit and noted it on a tally. The egg merchant took lamb merchant's tally in trade for eggs and paid the basket maker. Credit, not money everywhere.
Money shows up when times are dire, and relationships are broken. No one trusts anyone else to pay, so they no longer offer credit, they demand money, gold and silver, to extinguish the debts now. Archeologists find tallies where a civilization was wiped out by natural disaster, they find stashes of gold and silver where the civilization was wiped out by social unrest. In USA today, people are stashing gold and silver.
So what is the difference between the credit system we have now and what we had?
1. Back then it was asset based. Credit was extended for groceries, against a claim of a paycheck.
2. Back then it was diffuse and limited. The lenders knew well to whom they lent, and if they judged their customer poorly, only the lender suffered, no one else.
3. Today, there is no possible way you can know from whom the credit comes, the teller or loan officer mimics friendship, but friends are impertinent and annoying.
4. Back then there was no usury, all extended credit as a loan, today there are no loans (almost) without usury. Charging and paying interest always does damage.
5. Back then it was impossible to track all of this economy, nor tax it. Now with all going through a few banks, all can be seen, and taxed. Not content with collecting more taxes due, they added on taxes payable. This advanced the progressive dream of "get big or get out."
6. We hate those we harm, noted Tacitus. The 1% know their advantage is necessarily tied up with other's disadvantage, they are getting what cannot be in a fair system. The 1% control the policies. Those policies reflect hate. Look at the representatives of the 1%, those with whom you come in closest proximity, the police officer. The more you are of the EBT culture, the more you experience the hate.
7. And we love those we help. The merchants who extended credit back in the day truly, profoundly cared about their customers. Kid sick? Take another month. And the customers appreciated the people who operated the commerce in their neighborhoods.
What net advantage do we have from google, cell phones, socialization and concentration of medicine, total financial lockdown, the severing of community, mass transit for people collected into cities to run the FIRE flipping and dot.com gigs, so we can have sales systems yet to turn a profit and travel that is charged off to someone else's tab. That tab being run is not against assets, it is against future earnings, next generations.
There is no rational limit to what you can do once you begin to lend credit at interest. Look around, this is all one option. It doesn't really matter what array the few have foisted on us, it cannot last. There is no rational limit, but once faith in the system fails, an irrational limit will be met, and down comes the system. Worse where things look best.
Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.
The author had noted we have tremendous resources going into mass transit (some 2 billion in bonds to dig a mere 26 feet of a severl mile tunnel only to be stopped cold by an unknown obstruction), and his point was why can we not fund proper health care, why are we board and dosing street psychotics for a 2 week stretch then throwing them back onto the street? (Because in states, the bad policies always win.)
Amazon, Google, multiply biotechs, Boeing, Starbucks, a University or four, our community colleges are shifting to four year gigs to sell Bachelors degrees to high-paying Chinese students, everybody is making cleaning up. Finance, Investment, Real Estate. Dot.com. Everyone is cleaning up, if you are in those fields.
The author had noted we have tremendous resources going into mass transit (some 2 billion in bonds to dig a mere 26 feet of a several mile tunnel only to be stopped cold by an unknown obstruction). And looking at a map, it is pretty clear the powers that be are rearranging the city to be a wealthy core with rings of less fortunate and a mass transit system to keep the flow moving between districts.
IN Tombstone, the counties and provinces that most embraced Maoism looked best briefly as people gorged on the "free food" in communal kitchens. Travellers were assured a free meal and place to sleep. The food came from the stores. The "wealth" was provided by simply emptying the storehouses early. Plenty of food now meant export earnings could be ramped up. The reckoning of yield on crops (yield on investment, or stock market price) skyrocketed as false economy statistics proved communism was triumphant. Starvation followed, for several years. The counties and provinces who did "best" suffered most.
Prior to 1971, that which one could invest required money (more than now.) But there was no debate as to what money was back then, gold and silver. After we went off the quasi-gold standard, banks not only learned they could lend credit, that if and when this borrowing credit short and lending credit long failed, a necessarily disastrous scam, the Feds would bail them out, every time. (And they know they will be bailed out next time too, so it goes on, right now.) So the began to lend credit, not money.
This makes for fantastic possibilities, Indian farmers who are starving, but have an iPhone! Wars that can continue for 23 years (Iraq) and no end in site. Countries with no legitimacy at all, but populations under control. Everyone a superstar, but unable to write a sentence. Amazing medical breakthroughs, and astonishing brutality. Whole industries can be built out, selling things online at no profit, selling coffee and distorting traditional businesses by access to E Z Credit, and mountains of talent to keep track of who owes what and how to avoid the taxes. Air travel cheaper than it costs, with 25% in taxes going to TSA and "security" theatre. This is all false economy, like buying a high ranking on google.
"People are getting paid, they are buying things, the economy is moving here." Here the conversation usually switches to "but look around at all the poor, the kicked-to-the-curb ill, the 99% who are not making it." I don't work that angle, since 98% of the poor are voluntarily poor. Certainly there is the 2% of street people whose distress will break your heart, but the vast majority on the street, so to speak, are there by choice. When offered picking apples or EBT card lifestyle, they took the EBT card. The 1% can ignore them, because the 1% know full well there is an EBT lifestyle, just as there is the 1% lifestyle, it too a product of the welfare/warfare state built on the false economy of lending credit.
You will be told debt is as old as money, and I would say older. In fact, the classic barter-to-money narrative, as David Graeber points out, has no instance in history. What is everywhere at all times is "vendor financing." When I was a kid my father sent me to the store fairly often to pick up "one pound ground round" and milk or whatever. The nice lady rang it up on the till, tore off the receipt, wrote "Spiers" on the receipt and put it in the drawer. Off I went, and at the end of the month, my father went around to the pharmacy, gas station, grocery store and paid out from his pay packet what he owed whom. Each of those who extended my family credit each month were businesses extended credit by their suppliers. Suppliers were extended credit by manufacturers. Extraction businesses were so fundamental they were usually backed by old money. But what you see is everyone extending each other credit, almost no money involved at any point, except at extraction and then the extinguishing of debt, when my father paid out his debt with warehouse receipts called silver certificates, now gone, but once common. There was gold and silver backing the currency. There was widespread credit extended, but asset backed and no usury (interest) charged. Man did not go from barter to money to solve the problem of double coincidence of wants conundrum: the lamb merchant gave basket maker credit and noted it on a tally. The egg merchant took lamb merchant's tally in trade for eggs and paid the basket maker. Credit, not money everywhere.
Money shows up when times are dire, and relationships are broken. No one trusts anyone else to pay, so they no longer offer credit, they demand money, gold and silver, to extinguish the debts now. Archeologists find tallies where a civilization was wiped out by natural disaster, they find stashes of gold and silver where the civilization was wiped out by social unrest. In USA today, people are stashing gold and silver.
So what is the difference between the credit system we have now and what we had?
1. Back then it was asset based. Credit was extended for groceries, against a claim of a paycheck.
2. Back then it was diffuse and limited. The lenders knew well to whom they lent, and if they judged their customer poorly, only the lender suffered, no one else.
3. Today, there is no possible way you can know from whom the credit comes, the teller or loan officer mimics friendship, but friends are impertinent and annoying.
4. Back then there was no usury, all extended credit as a loan, today there are no loans (almost) without usury. Charging and paying interest always does damage.
5. Back then it was impossible to track all of this economy, nor tax it. Now with all going through a few banks, all can be seen, and taxed. Not content with collecting more taxes due, they added on taxes payable. This advanced the progressive dream of "get big or get out."
6. We hate those we harm, noted Tacitus. The 1% know their advantage is necessarily tied up with other's disadvantage, they are getting what cannot be in a fair system. The 1% control the policies. Those policies reflect hate. Look at the representatives of the 1%, those with whom you come in closest proximity, the police officer. The more you are of the EBT culture, the more you experience the hate.
7. And we love those we help. The merchants who extended credit back in the day truly, profoundly cared about their customers. Kid sick? Take another month. And the customers appreciated the people who operated the commerce in their neighborhoods.
What net advantage do we have from google, cell phones, socialization and concentration of medicine, total financial lockdown, the severing of community, mass transit for people collected into cities to run the FIRE flipping and dot.com gigs, so we can have sales systems yet to turn a profit and travel that is charged off to someone else's tab. That tab being run is not against assets, it is against future earnings, next generations.
There is no rational limit to what you can do once you begin to lend credit at interest. Look around, this is all one option. It doesn't really matter what array the few have foisted on us, it cannot last. There is no rational limit, but once faith in the system fails, an irrational limit will be met, and down comes the system. Worse where things look best.
Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.
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