Stupid World

[Ocean1]

That 99% of problems would still be there if money were not, they would just be ascribed to lack of resources

Same thing.

I'm not pushing it, it ain't ready...

Like a visit to the can after a ringburner chilli: It never will be, it's based on bullshit.

[mashman]

Money retains wealth ,currency doesnt

and on that note , where is me gold ! the Jermans and I want to see our gold and we aint waiting 7 years to get it

Von Schtuck

I think more and more people are becoming aware of that and for some unknown reason they're no very happy about it.

... maybe they could have a war over it.

[mashman]

Like a visit to the can after a ringburner chilli: It never will be, it's based on bullshit.

Interesting image... denying that a system will work and declaring it bullshit (based on the wild assumption that people are lazy and need to be incentivised by money) without offering a NOW as an alternative and actually asking the people if they would be prepared to give it a go is the same as eating your chilli repeatedly and expecting that one day you'll get used to it.

[bogan]

But the resources are there because we currently pay for them. Sorry, I don't agree with you. There may well be other problems, but please feel free to list them out.

I'm not pushing it, it ain't ready... but it's out there for feedback. I see you've asked everyone if they think we need change then. Or doesn't your science work that way

Exactly, what we pay for is there, what we can't pay for is not, it's a resource shortage.

Not pushing it, This is what mstriumph picked up on, you clearly are pushing it, yet favor the wealy approach of moving goalposts rather actually putting together a reasoned argument.

It has served it's purpose and must NOW move aside for an alternative is another.

Science works with samples. You're fucking deluded if you think there's a significant portion of society willing to get rid of the financial system in favor of one you've just admitted is not ready.

[mstriumph]

..........................

Science works with samples. You're fucking deluded if you think there's a significant portion of society willing to get rid of the financial system in favor of one you've just admitted is not ready.

Unfortunately, I don't think that 'willing' comes into it;
personally I don't believe that a significant portion of society (being those at the lower end of the wealth spectrum) will ever be given a choice to change the financial system. I'm willing to debate this of course but to me it seems that the most we can do is individually withdraw from it (or negotiate - difficult to do except collectively and I'm not sure that will ever happen).

The financial system is not democratic and can't be changed democratically; it is controlled/shaped by an elite with a vested interest in not allowing liberalisation or change designed to give relief to the masses. Witness that, in 2007 in the US, the top 1% of the population apparently owned 40% of the wealth ... and again, contrast the top tax rate there now (15% company tax)with the up to 91% tax rate the wealthiest were paying in the 50s.

If there IS a way out (and I'm dubious) it would be in convincing the elite that it is not in their best interest to allow the gap between haves and have nots to go on widening at the current rate as this course will inevitably end in public unrest, chaos and 'destruction of life as they know it'. If they can be brought to see that all the majority have is their numbers and to leave them with, literally, nothing would not be in anybody's best interests?

enough from me ............ What does anyone else think?

[bogan]

Unfortunately, I don't think that 'willing' comes into it;
personally I don't believe that a significant portion of society (being those at the lower end of the wealth spectrum) will ever be given a choice to change the financial system. I'm willing to debate this of course but to me it seems that the most we can do is individually withdraw from it (or negotiate - difficult to do except collectively and I'm not sure that will ever happen).

The financial system is not democratic and can't be changed democratically; it is controlled/shaped by an elite with a vested interest in not allowing liberalisation or change designed to give relief to the masses. Witness that, in 2007 in the US, the top 1% of the population apparently owned 40% of the wealth ... and again, contrast the top tax rate there now (15% company tax)with the up to 91% tax rate the wealthiest were paying in the 50s.

If there IS a way out (and I'm dubious) it would be in convincing the elite that it is not in their best interest to allow the gap between haves and have nots to go on widening at the current rate as this course will inevitably end in public unrest, chaos and 'destruction of life as they know it'. If they can be brought to see that all the majority have is their numbers and to leave them with, literally, nothing would not be in anybody's best interests?

enough from me ............ What does anyone else think?

Yeh changing it I'm very open to, but getting rid of it is too abrupt a step for society to handle at the moment, and there's no good option to change it too.

One thing about those pop/wealth figures I find confusing/misleading, is what is the turnover, the actual use of that money etc. Like if that 1% has it in banks, the banks are then lending it back out to others so they can buy houses etc. Or if that 1% owns massive facilities employing tens of thousands of people, can we really fault them? I think a lot of people are guilty of seeing the rich as scrouge mc-duck style people with a 'swimming pool' of money which is not being put to good use at all, when it is simply not the case.

Of course the loopholes and shady back room dealing of politics to allow the rich to create self serving policy should be stopped, over-leveraged lending is too much of a crash risk, and other various incentives added towards closing the gap (ESOP tax breaks or something like that); but I reckon the financial system is a pretty solid foundation to work with.

[SPman]

Yeh changing it I'm very open to, but getting rid of it is too abrupt a step for society to handle at the moment, and there's no good option to change it too.

One thing about those pop/wealth figures I find confusing/misleading, is what is the turnover, the actual use of that money etc. Like if that 1% has it in banks, the banks are then lending it back out to others so they can buy houses etc.
For the first time in U.S. history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together .Or if that 1% owns massive facilities employing tens of thousands of people, can we really fault them? The 1% owns massive facilities, offshored in China/India/Thailand/Indonesia etc etc - where ever production is cheapest. All the jobs that used to be in manufacturing etc in "western" countries are now no longer there - all there is to replace them are "service" industries..."you want fries with that" Get a better education - in the US in 2009, there were 5500 PhD's and about 260,000 Master's grads on food stamps !I think a lot of people are guilty of seeing the rich as scrouge mc-duck style people with a 'swimming pool' of money which is not being put to good use at all, when it is simply not the case. Sorry - it simply often is the case - the amount of money stashed in offshore bank accounts is in the Trillions of dollars. Whilst there are numbers of super wealthy who do put their money to good use for society, they are in a distinct minority. In the US, the wealthiest one percent "captured 95 percent of post-financial crisis growth since 2009," Oxfam reports. The bottom 90 percent actually lost wealth.

Of course the loopholes and shady back room dealing of politics to allow the rich to create self serving policy should be stopped, over-leveraged lending is too much of a crash risk, and other various incentives added towards closing the gap (ESOP tax breaks or something like that); but I reckon the financial system is a pretty solid foundation to work with. In the US there is now what is called the "Revolving door", where bankers and industrialists are appointed to top government "advisory" boards, to set new legislation, and politicians are guaranteed jobs in business when they leave politics....... in whose favour, do you think that always turns out to be. We are seeing the same thing now in most "western" countries, where policy revolves around the demands of big business, usually to the detriment of main society as a whole ( including small business - any policies that benefit small business are usually coincidental, or tossed out as crumbs, to make small business think they are important - they aren't, in the big scheme of things) There is a name for this sort of government/business combine - it's called Fascism!

Note - Wealth isn't income. Salary is income. But investments—stocks, houses, or equity in a business—build wealth. Wealth comes from the money you don't immediately spend. Since poor people spend more of their income immediately, and rich people save/invest more of their income immediately, it's predictable that wealth inequality will be much worse than income inequality.
The current system is not a solid foundation to work from, except for those at the top of the pile. Remember - a multi millionaire does not make his money by himself - he /she is reliant on the existence of a societal base with thousands of people out there, to enable their schemes to work. Without it, they are fucked! If they act like a parasite that destroys it's host, the system is not a good system.

What is happening now, can probably be summed up as civilisational collapse, in it's mid stages. There's an interesting book on this - "A Short History Of Progress", by Ronald Wright. He chronicles the rise and fall of civilisations from around 10,000 BC, and earlier hunter/gatherer eras, and finds the same things occurring, over and over again

Wright goes on to describe a number of diverse civilizations that arose and collapsed between 4,000 and 1,000 BC – and their unfortunate tendency towards mindless habitat destruction and runaway population growth, consumption, and technological development. In each case, an identical social transformation takes place as resources become increasingly scarce. As prehistoric peoples find it harder and harder to feed themselves, inevitably a privileged elite emerges to confiscate communal lands and enslave their inhabitants. They then install a despotic tyrant who hastens ecological collapse by wasting scare resources on a spree of militarization and temple or pyramid building. This process is almost always accompanied by wholesale murder, torture, and unproductive wars.
Wright relates this typical pattern of ecological destruction and collapse to a series of “progress traps,” in which specific human inventions turn out to have extremely negative unintended consequences. Instead of fixing the underlying problem they’re meant to solve, the inventions create an even worse environmental mess. It’s a pattern so common in prehistory that it’s become enshrined in the Adam and Eve and similar creation myths...........................................

The Greeks (around 600 BC) were the first with any conscious awareness that they were destroying their own habitat. Plato writes a vivid description of the dangers of erosion and runoff from deforestation. The Athenian leader Solon tried to halt increasing ecological devastation by outlawing debt serfdom, food exports, and farming on steep slopes. Pisistratus offered grants to farmers to plant olive trees for soil reclamation.Wright makes a good case for similar environmental destruction, rather than barbarian invasion, causing Rome to collapse. By the time of Augustus, Italian land had become so degraded that Rome was forced to import most of their food from North Africa, Gaul, and other colonies.

Wright goes on to cite the experience of the Maya whose civilization collapsed as did that of Sumer and for much the same reasons. He writes, "As the crisis gathered [the crop failures], the response of the rulers was not to seek a new course... No, they dug in their heels and carried on doing what they had always done, only more so. Their solution was higher pyramids, more power to the kings, harder work for the masses, more foreign wars. In modern terms, the Maya elite became extremists, or ultra-conservatives, squeezing the last drops of profit from nature and humanity."

Seem familiar?

[Ocean1]

Interesting image... denying that a system will work and declaring it bullshit (based on the wild assumption that people are lazy and need to be incentivised by money) without offering a NOW as an alternative and actually asking the people if they would be prepared to give it a go is the same as eating your chilli repeatedly and expecting that one day you'll get used to it.

It can't be other than bullshit, that's what it's made of. Money is not an infinite resource, to start with. If it was then all of those problems you say were caused by the lack of money wouldn't be problems, would they? We'd just throw a shitload of money at them and they wouldn't be problems any more, would they?

And I haven't ever said people are or aren't lazy. What I have said is that they wouldn't be anywhere near as productive if the appropriate reward for their efforts were removed, a behaviour common to every living organism on the planet.

As for your "alternative"; it isn't, it's economic death on a stick, the end of civilisation as we know it. Luckily it hasn't a dog's show in hell of ever seeing the light of day, so it's not something anyone ever need lose any sleep over.

When you can admit that outside of the criminal element and the recipients of various hand-outs the money each person has represents the value earned by that person, and that they have the right to negotiate exchanges for whatever goods they want based on that value then you might have some chance of having a sensible conversation on matters economic, but not until.

[bogan]

Note - Wealth isn't income. Salary is income. But investments—stocks, houses, or equity in a business—build wealth. Wealth comes from the money you don't immediately spend. Since poor people spend more of their income immediately, and rich people save/invest more of their income immediately, it's predictable that wealth inequality will be much worse than income inequality.
The current system is not a solid foundation to work from, except for those at the top of the pile. Remember - a multi millionaire does not make his money by himself - he /she is reliant on the existence of a societal base with thousands of people out there, to enable their schemes to work. Without it, they are fucked! If they act like a parasite that destroys it's host, the system is not a good system.

What is happening now, can probably be summed up as civilisational collapse, in it's mid stages. There's an interesting book on this - "A Short History Of Progress", by Ronald Wright. He chronicles the rise and fall of civilisations from around 10,000 BC, and earlier hunter/gatherer eras, and finds the same things occurring, over and over again

Which again sounds more like a loophole that should be closed, incentivise/penalise things so more wealth is put back into the national economy rather than making its way overseas. Rebalance the scales on housing to make it easier to own a house.

How is that multi-millionaire destroying its host though? by providing jobs and products/infrastructure etc, thereby allowing its host enough comfort to choose to grow?

It doesn't sound like money is a common denominator in those other societal collapses though, population growth and resource scarcity seem to be the main causes. As I said many pages ago, curbing population growth is going to do a lot more for society than throwing out the financial system.

Basically, the note that 'wealth isn't income' is my point; a person can have no personal wealth but a good quality of life; in fact isn't that the underpinnings of NOW and other thingos? So why is it held up as such a downside of the financial system?

[Ocean1]

Seem familiar?

Very.

Civilisation established by group of organised individuals who plan and manage resources to best effect for everyone.

Population booms, standards of living increase, productive behaviour diminishes as the link between effort and reward grows increasingly complex.

Great unwashed deem actual work optional and decline to participate in the plan.

Resource availability crumbles due to lack of production, civilisation declines.

Specialisation no longer provides benefits, survival lifestyle returns along with it's associated living standards.

Dark ages.

Repeat at will.


Lesson: Civilisation is initiated by a very small number of extremely clever and insightful individuals. It's destroyed by those who assume they're good enough to do it without spending as much effort as the above.

[SPman]

Very.

Civilisation established by group of organised individuals who plan and manage resources to best effect for everyone.

Population booms, standards of living increase, productive behaviour diminishes as the link between effort and reward grows increasingly complex.

Great unwashed deem actual work optional and decline to participate in the plan.

Resource availability crumbles due to lack of production, civilisation declines.

Specialisation no longer provides benefits, survival lifestyle returns along with it's associated living standards.

Dark ages.

Repeat at will.


Lesson: Civilisation is initiated by a very small number of extremely clever and insightful individuals. It's destroyed by those who assume they're good enough to do it without spending as much effort as the above.

Did you actually read the post before you let your own personal viewpoint produce a version of events that fit your worldview - ie - lazy cunts who don't want to work destroy efforts of us hard working individuals - which is actually self serving non thinking bullshit!

[Ocean1]

Did you actually read the post before you let your own personal viewpoint produce a version of events that fit your worldview - ie - lazy cunts who don't want to work destroy efforts of us hard working individuals - which is actually self serving non thinking bullshit!

Of course.

Did you not consider I was satirising your post as the narrow minded opinionated drivel it is before assuming mine was based on anything remotely like my opinion?

[mstriumph]

......................

Civilisation established by group of organised individuals who plan and manage resources to best effect for everyone.

No to the first part and, sadly, never in a million years to the last part

Population booms, standards of living increase, productive behaviour diminishes as the link between effort and reward grows increasingly complex.

Yes, that happens ... but not for the reasons you've assumed

Great unwashed deem actual work optional and decline to participate in the plan.

Not necessarily? Illustration - A few years ago I was made redundant from my job due to my medium-size, local employer being taken over by a large multi-national (ANZ actually), did they want our exceptional customer service record? our outstanding reputation as a good corporate citizen? Our amazingly cost-efficient admin systems? .... no, they did not - they just wanted the customer base we had accumulated through being as good as we were.... Within 2 years they had promoted their own dross, introduced their own flabby, expensive systems and wondered why so much of their purchase had fled.

I am well-qualified, well-organised and well-motivated ... it took months for me to find another job; some of my former colleagues who were equally equipped but older (ie over 40) were still looking after 12 months ... some of them gave up in despair. I don't have the stats but I find SPman's statement that " in the US in 2009, there were 5500 PhD's and about 260,000 Master's grads on food stamps" perfectly believable because I see it getting that way here.

To assume that all people who aren't participating in the workforce are doing so by choice is misguided and misleading... to start calling them names is reprehensible and unkind.

Resource availability crumbles due to lack of production, civilisation declines.

A decline in income for the elite, perhaps (although your progression seems a bit simplistic - no offence intended), but hardly the death of civilisation

Specialisation no longer provides benefits, survival lifestyle returns along with it's associated living standards.

Dark ages.

Taken in isolation, I agree with this (see my own comments a few posts back).

Lesson: Civilisation is initiated by a very small number of extremely clever and insightful individuals. It's destroyed by those who assume they're good enough to do it without spending as much effort as the above.

Bollocks (am I allowed to say that on here........................)

You've started with a false premise and, not unnaturally, given the series of simplistic, misguided assumptions you've sought to build on it, reached an inaccurate conclusion.

You won't thank me for pointing it out.

[mstriumph]

Of course.

.................. before assuming mine was based on anything remotely like my opinion?

ah - another of the 'conflict for the sake of conflict' fraternity

I mean, why on EARTH would you post opinions not remotely like your own unless you were just trolling?

Don't you realise this totally undermines the credibility of any future post you make?

I despair.

[Scuba_Steve]

Money is not an infinite resource, to start with. If it was then all of those problems you say were caused by the lack of money wouldn't be problems, would they? We'd just throw a shitload of money at them and they wouldn't be problems any more, would they?

How can something that's made out of nothing & doesn't exist in physical form be finite???
All it takes to produce more is say so, hell Zimbabwe did it for years

And I haven't ever said people are or aren't lazy. What I have said is that they wouldn't be anywhere near as productive if the appropriate reward for their efforts were removed, a behaviour common to every living organism on the planet.

Yea cept there's studies & I believe a country calling that BS... People are more productive doing things they love, admittedly some people do enjoy working for the dollar but most are more productive in positions they actually enjoy; in-fact alot working for the dollar are probably the least productive to society