(02-20-2020, 10:15 AM)BIAD Wrote: And there's the rub. We sell our labour for promissory notes that took over from the bartering system.
One particular note equals a chicken of pig to eat, another note promises two chickens, etc.
....
Ah yes -you may say, certain finance establishments invest your money and can give you a return, but it isn't done
solely for your benefit, they reap the rewards too... by using your promissory notes!
I'm not saying the global agreement of using currency is wrong, it's just not the original reason it was devised for.
You can't eat money... especially the new polymer ones!
Exactly!
When you have money that doesn't really exist, that is backed up by nothing but thin air, then you can print as much of it as you need, out of nothing but paper (or polymer) and ink!
Of course everyone along the way who handles that money takes a cut of it, and the folks who print it from nothing and them lend that nothing out as if it were something rake in more of the nothing (which is assumed by mutual consent to be "something" when it really is not) when they collect on a debt... the debtor gives them much more of the nothing than he can afford to for the privelege of using their bit of "nothing" for a while.
Debt is based entirely on convincing someone that the nothing you gave them to hold in their hand is actually something, and that they need to give you something more for that bit of "nothing" you loaned them in addition to giving back the "nothing" that you lent. It is the fine art of getting people to pay you for thin air.
It seems to be a peculiar form of madness to me. That is why I stopped using any form of credit back in 1993, and have never looked back or missed it - I would be missing "nothing".
Of course, printing all of that "something" from "nothing" introduces an inflationary cycle, and then raking back in more than you laid out on debts exacerbates that inflationary cycle, and then people find that they no longer have enough to survive on, and agitate for higher wages, which pumps up the price of their products (in units of nothingness) to the point that folks can no longer survive on what they are making (because all the products have gotten more expensive due to the wage increases), and have to borrow more money and agitate for higher wages yet again... it is a self-feeding and never ending cycle of inflation, all based upon sheer nothingness.
Who wins in this inflationary cycle of nothingness? Who is able to convert that "nothing" into "something"? Who gets the biggest pile of "something" out of it? My Dear Old Dad always told me to "follow the money" to get to the root of all evil...
... which is why I stopped dealing with banks and bankers quite some time ago. I couldn't see any percentages in giving someone else control of MY pile of "nothing".
Donald Trump recently floated the idea of getting the US back onto the Gold Standard, so that at least SOMETHING was backing up our money. The Left lost their goddamned minds when he said that! How DARE he suggest mucking up their get-rich-quick schemes of raking in piles of "nothing" that they have convinced the sheeple are actually piles of "something"?
Sometimes, perceptions are everything. If they can convince you that this pile of paper is worth "something", then it IS worth something - but only in your mind, and the minds of whomever else they can convince. In objective reality, it's still a big empty pile of nothingness. Gold is very nearly the same - it only holds value because someone, somewhere, convinced someone else that it held value. Apart from that, it's just another cold chunk of metal that has NO intrinsic value of it's own. It's just a chunk of metal, like a billet of steel. A knife blade has more value, because it is also a chunk of metal, but one with a use, a value. The only reason gold has a value is because folks have mutually agreed to value it. It's not like you can eat it, any more than you can eat polymer money.
BUT - at least with a gold standard, "money" would have to be backed by a pile of "something" to replace that massive black hole of "nothing" that is currently backing it, so in my mind it would be a step forward, however slight...
.
Diogenes was eating bread and lentils for supper. He was seen by the philosopher Aristippus, who lived comfortably by flattering the king.
Said Aristippus, ‘If you would learn to be subservient to the king you would not have to live on lentils.’ Said Diogenes, ‘Learn to live on lentils and you will not have to be subservient to the king.’
Said Aristippus, ‘If you would learn to be subservient to the king you would not have to live on lentils.’ Said Diogenes, ‘Learn to live on lentils and you will not have to be subservient to the king.’