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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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 Posted: Tue Feb 05, 2013 3:03 pm Post subject: |
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| Fox wrote: |
| Kuros wrote: |
Lending money for interest is defensible. If interest is reasonably close to inflation + 3% (to cover typical rate of defaulting loans), its just credit lending. The world needs credit for starting businesses and the purchase of expensive consumer products to be held for a long time (such as cars or housing). |
Housing is a perfect example of my case. Lending money to buy houses drastically drives up the prices of houses, which in turn forces the average person to borrow to ever have a chance, which in turn drives up housing prices more due to broader borrowing, which in turn eventually leads to dysfunction. Housing prices need to be aggressively driven down, not pumped up. Cars are another example of this dysfunction: automobile dealerships take out loans to purchase and stock cars, which consumers then take out loans to buy for their use. That's two points at which usury increases the effective price of a product without actually improving it; two leaks in our economy. Redistributing wealth to the poor fellow who is at risk of starving is inefficient but humane; redistributing wealth to someone because they already have a fantastic amount of wealth is ludicrous and socially destructive. |
Lending isn't the problem here. The problem are the GSEs, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The 30-year fixed mortgage would not exist in the free market, at least not without a firm 20% down payment.
Are we facing the end of the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage?
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Although the long-term fixed-rate mortgage was born with the Federal Housing Administration � the government agency established in 1934 to help stabilize the then-shaky housing market � it was taken to its greatest heights by Fannie and Freddie, the two government-chartered institutions that were created years later to keep the money flowing for home loans.
These government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) live and work in the secondary mortgage market, where they keep primary lenders flush with cash by buying their loans and packaging them into securities for sale to investors worldwide.
With their implicit government guarantee and their corresponding ability to attract cash even though they were offering a lower return than investors could earn elsewhere, the GSEs were, in effect, able to subsidize the 30-year mortgage, making it less expensive than it would have been otherwise.
That such government-backed loans are cheaper is evidenced by the difference in rates charged in the so-called jumbo sector, where mortgages in amounts above the legislated ceiling are off-limits to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. (The limit is as high as $729,750 in some markets. It is due to fall back to $625,500 on Oct. 1.) |
The GSEs spawned securitization, a financial invention of the public-private partnership of the GSEs and the Salomon Brothers meant to expand the secondary market for mortgages. You should oppose securitization, because its the first step towards a meaningful definition of usury. Today, over 95% of home mortgages are government-insured and over 85% of mortgages are securitized.
Its possible to return to a lending atmosphere where substantial down payments protect lenders from too many defaults, and where banks originated and held home loans within a local area.
Also see: the problem with the 30-year fixed mortgage. |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Tue Feb 05, 2013 3:58 pm Post subject: |
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| Its possible to return to a lending atmosphere where substantial down payments protect lenders from too many defaults, and where banks originated and held home loans within a local area. |
Is it? Your analysis of the status quo is broadly correct, but I simply see in it a logical conclusion of the usurous system under which we operate; allow for-interest lenders to get a foot in the door, and they will turn all their efforts towards pushing that door as open as can be, something at which history implies they tend to succeed. I am generally not fond of the notion of slippery slopes, but this seems to me to be a true case of a slope with some slip to it; the consequences of allowing usury are simply too remote to be easily intuited, and too hard to justly correct once fully unleashed.
If people owning homes is a good thing, then we as a society can achieve this end without paying an unearned premium to bankers, and mass-ownership of cars is probably not a good thing. Surely we can do better than interest banking. Here is an example of a non-usurous financial institution.
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The JAK Members Bank, or JAK Medlemsbank, is a cooperative, member-owned financial institution based in Sk�vde, Sweden, and based on a concept that arose in Denmark in 1931.[1][2][3] JAK is an acronym for Jord Arbete Kapital in Swedish or Land Labour Capital, the factors of production in classical economics. A membership of approximately 38,000 (as of November 2011) dictates the Bank's policies and direction. The Board of Directors is elected annually by members, who are each allowed only one share in the bank. JAK Members Bank does not charge or pay interest on its loans, a principle it shares with Islamic banking. All of the bank's activities occur outside of the capital market as its loans are financed solely by member savings. As of 2011 members had accumulated 131 million euros in savings, of which 98 million have been allocated as loans to the members.[4] Administrative and developmental costs are paid for by membership and loan fees.
JAK banking employs the "Saving Points" system: members accumulate Saving Points during saving periods and use them when applying for a loan. The concept is that one is allowed to take out a loan for oneself to the same extent as one allows other people to be granted loans, saving into one's account. For this reason (applying for a loan), earned Saving Points must be equal to spent Saving Points to ensure sustainability. If a member is borrowing more saving points than he currently possesses, he is obliged to continue accumulating so-called "aftersavings" during the repayment period. "Aftersavings" are a fixed quota of money that a member must save after one's loan was made, so he can continue to earn Saving Points. This way, at the end of the repayment period, Saving Points earned will be equal to Saving Points spent, and at that time he will be able to have back all his aftersavings. |
There are real alternatives to usury. We could be moving in this direction, and with the strengthening of credit unions we sort of are, but credit unions are still ultimately predicated upon toxic philosophy, even if it's less toxic.
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JAK operates under the following principles:
Charging interest is inimical to a stable economy
Interest causes unemployment, inflation, and environmental destruction
Interest moves money from the poor to the rich
Interest favours projects which yield high profits in the short term |
All true.
Here is a little bit more information about this institution and how it operates. |
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Titus
Joined: 19 May 2012
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| Posted: Tue Feb 05, 2013 7:08 pm Post subject: |
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| Kuros wrote: |
| Fox wrote: |
| Kuros wrote: |
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| It's just the tree of usury producing its inevitable fruit. Calling it a ponzi scheme implies there's something fraudulent or secretive about it, but there's nothing especially secretive or fraudulent about the socially-destructive impact of usury |
Can you define usury, please? Is it simply charging interest on credit, or is it something else? |
Lending money for interest. Not legal "usury," actual usury. |
Lending money for interest is defensible. If interest is reasonably close to inflation + 3% (to cover typical rate of defaulting loans), its just credit lending. The world needs credit for starting businesses and the purchase of expensive consumer products to be held for a long time (such as cars or housing). |
And lending money you don't have? Counterfitting there national currency? Why not have equity for business and not debt. That's how most business is financed anyway. Go try to get a loan for a business. Retained earnings finance business.
Usury in the modern context is the privitization of money creation. Its disgusting. |
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Titus
Joined: 19 May 2012
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| Posted: Tue Feb 05, 2013 7:22 pm Post subject: |
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| Lending isn't the problem here. The problem are the GSEs, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The 30-year fixed mortgage would not exist in the free market, at least not without a firm 20% down payment. |
The correlation between 1) change in mortgage debt and 2) change in house prices approaches 0.9.
About the rest. You assume banks lend money only if they assume they will get it back. This isn't true. Banks lend in the primary market and sell in the secondary market. The GSE's are a problem but in many nations where similar don't exist prices dramatically appreciated as well.
Usurers look at the aggregate stream of income in a society and find ways to direct as much as possible to themselves. If we diminish the amount lent for houses they find ways to bamboozle the masses of mouth-breathing, gullible peasants into other loans. Given that the bankers are counterfitting the currency - in essence - they have unlimited funds to buy governments.
Usury is the problem.
Also, lets think quantitatively here. Economies expand/contract in a "w" shape. Interest grows in a logarithmic manner (upward sloping curve). These two things existing at the same time in the same system invariably cause financial crisis, and during the crisis the real assets of the economy are transferred to the bankers for payment on delinquent loans. This is where cockroaches like the Morgans, Rothchilds, Khun, Loebs, etc get their unlimited wealth from.
This is why the ancients (our betters, who modern man has been shitting on for a few dozen generations) thought long and hard about this stuff and inserted debt jubilees into the economy etc.
The so-cred thinkers did away with all of it. Even Thomas Edison wrote of it. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Wed Feb 06, 2013 5:31 am Post subject: |
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| Titus wrote: |
Usury in the modern context is the privitization of money creation. Its disgusting. |
I agree that there's a meaningful distinction between what has happened over the last several years, you could even go back to the early 70s if you wanted, and simple non-usurious lending.
I will defend the core principle of credit, though. You say the moderns have lost their way, but the West has bankruptcy codes. Politicians simply decided not to use Chapter 11 (in the U.S.) to deal with the crises. |
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Titus
Joined: 19 May 2012
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| Posted: Sat Feb 09, 2013 7:04 pm Post subject: |
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| I will defend the core principle of credit, though. |
Why? It is unnecessary and transfers wealth up. Why would you possibly defend it?
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| Politicians simply decided not to use Chapter 11 (in the U.S.) to deal with the crises. |
Yeah, that would have done it. Hey, how about 'preventing' the crisis? |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Sat Feb 09, 2013 8:46 pm Post subject: |
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| Titus wrote: |
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| I will defend the core principle of credit, though. |
Why? It is unnecessary and transfers wealth up. Why would you possibly defend it? |
You'd see the same kind of oligopoly if the business of utilities or insurance had similar bad practices or hefty profit margins. We just need to regulate the shit out of lending, utilities, and insurance. We'll get there.
In the meantime, buying a home putting 100% down doesn't quite work either. That's China today.
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| Politicians simply decided not to use Chapter 11 (in the U.S.) to deal with the crises. |
Yeah, that would have done it. Hey, how about 'preventing' the crisis? |
I'm not sure we can prevent semi-generational crises. We can forgive debt. Bankruptcy is more biblical than stoning money lenders, anyway.
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Bankruptcy contemplates the "forgiveness" of debt. The Bible, likewise, contains debt forgiveness laws. Under U.S. law, a debtor may only receive a discharge of debts in a Chapter 7 bankruptcy once every eight years. Under Biblical law, the release of debts came at the end of seven years.
"At the end of every seven years you shall grant a release of debts. And this is the form of the release: Every creditor who has lent anything to his neighbor shall release it; he shall not require it of his neighbor or his brother, because it is called the LORD's release" (Deuteronomy 15:1-2).
The Bible refers to debt as a type of bondage: "...the borrower is a slave to the lender" (Proverbs 22:7). Thus, the debtor is a slave to the creditor. Interestingly, the Bible declares, at the end of the sixth year:
"...in the seventh year you shall let [your Hebrew slave] go free from you. And when you send him away free from you, you shall not let him go away empty-handed; but you shall supply him liberally from your flock..." (Deuteronomy 15:12-14).
Modern bankruptcy laws, like the Biblical provision above, allow debtors to keep certain property when they file bankruptcy. This gives debtors a fresh start and discourages debtors from going into debt-bondage again, after the bankruptcy is over, in order to survive.
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A guiding principle of U.S. bankruptcy law requires persons who file for bankruptcy to have "clean hands." Accordingly, a debtor may not be freed from debts involving fraud, drunk driving, and deliberate wrongdoing. Moreover, bankruptcy law does not allow the discharge of child support and alimony debts. Further, most student loans, taxes (Romans 13:1,4,7) and secured loans are not forgiven in bankruptcy. Through these restrictions, bankruptcy laws seek to balance justice and equity (Proverbs 1:3).
As with most biblical principles, there is a balance. If you can repay your debts, you must. If you cannot, then you should determine how God would have you freed from the bondage of debt. Our modern bankruptcy laws were derived from the Bible (Deuteronomy 15:1-2). Further, the Bible describes financial miracles (2 Kings 4:1-7). Ultimately, you must seek wisdom and guidance from God as to the direction He would have you choose. God promises to give such wisdom to those who ask with a trusting heart (James 1:5-7; Proverbs 3:5-6). Further, the Bible admonishes us to seek Godly counsel (Psalms 1:1; Proverbs 12:15, 11:14, 15:22). |
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Titus
Joined: 19 May 2012
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| Posted: Sat Feb 09, 2013 9:40 pm Post subject: |
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| You'd see the same kind of oligopoly if the business of utilities or insurance had similar bad practices or hefty profit margins. |
Oligopoly has to be dealt with as a separate issue from usury. The best way to deal with the reality of oligopoly is to accept that they'll exist and use them for the national interest. I could reference some incredible economic successes using state-controlled oligopolies from pre-WW2 but I'll instead point to the Crown Corps in Canada.
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| We just need to regulate the shit out of lending, utilities, and insurance. We'll get there. |
I don't think we will. Having - and I'm being literal - a license to print money means that all attempts at regulation will be prevented.
More realistically, I think they'll destroy the livelihoods of enough people (Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose) and some enterprising young men will bring the whole kit and kaboodle to its knees.
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| I'm not sure we can prevent semi-generational crises. |
We can prevent a semi-generational financial crisis by not having a "financial system".
Here's a 30 page summary of what I believe is the most reasonable way out of this: http://archive.org/stream/SocialCredit/Social_Credit
The so-creds looked at the economy as would an engineer; with flows of information, capital, labor with bottlenecks and inefficiencies and rationally described how things can be improved. You'll note it to be a great deal less religious in nature than modern economics, what with the low interest rates fix everything voodoo. They also rejected the Protestant Work Ethic (virtually all So-Creds were Catholic - Pound, Belloc, Chesterton, Douglas) and as a result also reject the general idea that an economy exists to increase consumption (raping mother earth and grinding labor into the ground) rather than an economy that exists to increase leisure and quality of life.
http://www.catholicapologetics.info/morality/money/bellusry.htm <-- good short reactionary essay on the morality and economic impact of interest (usury).
I suspect we're not on the same page. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Sun Feb 10, 2013 7:19 pm Post subject: |
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What does Fox think of the social credit philosophy? I wiki'd it and I honestly don't really understand it.
My friend majored in Western Medieval and Middle Eastern History and he's a distributist, which seems highly similar to social credit. |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Mon Feb 11, 2013 12:56 am Post subject: |
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I think this Douglas fellow is correct in a number of his basic proposals, including:
-The ever-escalating problem which results from producers in aggregate being unable to afford the totality of what they produce.
-The role usurious institutions like banks play in perpetuating such circumstances.
-The immense impact "cultural inheritance" has on productive capacity.
-The premise that economic value ought to be interpreted within the framework of its effect on human well being, such that we can label some types of production objectively wasteful.
-The problematic nature of distribution being linked to production and the way it encourages wasteful production.
None the less, he seems to think that an economy ought to be ultimately driven by consumer choice, which from my perspective undermines the last two points mentioned above. We can talk about human well being in an objective sense, I would say, but the human character includes within it elements which, while they may have aligned strongly with human well being in more primitive eras, now contradict it to some extent. Mass production of wasteful -- as in not directly aiding in human well being -- goods arose naturally in response to the problems intrinsic to our current system not merely because it (in the short term) works, but because it coincides with the human character quite nicely; it's very easy to get men to buy (to demand!) wasteful goods, and often no real effort is required at all. It seems to me that if one wants an economy which aligns with human well being (and I think that is what is being implied here: that the purpose of an economy is to provide goods and services, and that those goods and services ought to be directly conducive to human well being, rather than wasteful), that economy cannot be directed by consumer choice. Perhaps some limited degree of consumer input could be involved as a check on quality, but it cannot be the supreme consideration while the purpose of an economy is to provide non-wasteful goods and services.
Now, this is based on a pretty quick and shallow glance over the ideas in question (Titus' book is only 30 pages, but it's a pretty informationally dense 30 pages, so it's not easy to take in while distracted with other things), so maybe I'm missing something, but at the moment I feel like there's a philosophic contradiction in here. With regards to practicalities, here is his proposal from the end of the book Titus linked:
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APPENDIX - DRAFT SOCIAL CREDIT SCHEME FOR SCOTLAND
(1) Obtain from existing sources, such as company balance-sheets, land registration offices, and insurance companies, such information necessary to place a money valuation upon the whole of the capital assets of Scotland, such as land, roads, bridges, railways, canals, buildings, drainage and water schemes, minerals, semi-manufactured materials. No distinction between public and private property. Replacement values to be used where the property is in use.
Add to this the sum representing the present commercial capitalised value of the population. Such a figure exists and varies with the actuarial expectation of life and the plant capacity of the country, and is something like �10,000 for a citizen of the United States at the age of twenty-five. From the grand total thus obtained a figure representing the price value of the Scottish capital account could be obtained. Financial credit to any equivalent can be created by any agency such as a Scottish Treasury empowered by the Scottish people.
(2) As from the initiation of this scheme, the holding of any stock, share, or bond by a holding company or trustee will not be recognised. It is the intention that no shareholding in any industrial undertaking shall be other than in the form of equity shares of no par value, i.e. preference or common shares or stock. Bonded indebtedness will be recognised for purposes of compensation where held by individuals, upon a proper investigation, but where held by corporations will be subject to such terms of redemption as may seem desirable.
No transfer of real estate directly between either persons or business undertakings will be recognised. Persons or business undertakings desiring to relinquish the control of real immovable estate will do so to the Government, which will take any necessary steps to re-allot it to suitable applicants. No Government Department shall administer either directly or indirectly any business, whether agricultural, productive, or distributive, other than the administration of the financial and credit schemes, or receive payment for any services rendered to the public, other than in bulk.
THE INITIAL NATIONAL DIVIDEND
(3) For the purpose of the initial stages an arbitrary figure, such as 1per cent of the capital sum ascertained by the methods outlined in clause (1), shall be taken, and a notice published that every man, woman, and child of Scottish birth and approved length of residence, with the exception mentioned in the paragraph that follows, is to be entitled to share equally in the dividend thus obtained, which might be expected to exceed three hundred pounds per annum per family. It will be clearly understood that no interference with existing ownerships, so called, is involved in such a proceeding. The dividend to be paid monthly by a draft on the Scottish Government credit, through the Post Office and not through the banks.
Any administrative change in the organisation of the Post Office should specifically exclude transfer of the money and postal order department and the savings bank. No payments of the national dividend will be made except to individuals, and such payments will not be made where the net income of the individual for personal use, from other sources, is more than four times that receivable in respect of the national dividend. The national dividend will be tax-free in perpetuity, and will not be taken into consideration in making any returns for taxation purposes, should such be required. Except as herein specified this dividend will be inalienable.
�ASSISTED PRICE� FOR REGISTERED BUSINESSES
(4) Simultaneously with the publication of the foregoing notice a figure to be published known as the discount rate, to replace the existing bank discount rate, a suitable value of this for initial purposes being 25 per cent. It is important that the figure should not be less than 25 per cent, and it might reasonably be higher.
(5) Simultaneously, an announcement to be published that any or all business undertakings will be accepted for registration under an assisted price scheme. The conditions of such registration will be that their accounts, as at present required under the Companies Acts, should contain an additional item showing the average profit on turnover, and that their prices shall, as far as practicable, be maintained at a figure to include such average profit, where this is agreed as equitable for the type of business concerned (the suitable profit being, of course, largely dependent on the velocity of turnover). Undertakings unable to show a profit after five years� operation to be struck off the register.
HOW FREE CREDITS WOULD BE ISSUED
(6) In consideration of the foregoing, all registered businesses will be authorised to issue with sales to ultimate consumers an account on suitable paper for use as explained in the following clause.
(7) Payment for goods will be made in the ordinary way, either by cheque or currency. The purchaser will lodge his receipted account for goods bought with his bank in the same way that he now pays in cheques, and the discount percentage of the amount of such account will be recredited to the consumer�s banking account. Unregistered firms will not be supplied with the necessary bill forms for treatment in this manner, with the result that their prices will be 25 per cent, at least, higher than those of registered firms. (It is obvious that the larger the discount rate can be made, the greater will be the handicap of the non-registered firms.)
The total of the sums credited by the banks to private depositors in respect of these discounts will be reimbursed to them by a Scottish Treasury credit. The capital account will be �depreciated� by such sums, and �appreciated� by all capital development. The existing banks will be empowered to charge an equitable sum for the services thus rendered.
HOURS AND WAGES
(8) The hours of Government offices will be reduced to four hours per day. To meet the temporary congestion of work, additional staff will be employed, such staff, however, doing identical work with the existing staff in the form of a second shift, and sharing with the existing staff the chances of promotion irrespective of seniority. (The object of this is to discourage the well-known bureaucratic tendency to enhance the importance of existing staffs by employing additional numbers of persons ranking by virtue of seniority below the original officials, and, at the same time, to afford an opportunity of appointing a duplicate set of officials to check reaction without dislocation of existing routine.)
(9) Wage rates in all organised industries will be reduced by 25 per cent where such reduction does not involve a loss to the wage-earner exceeding 20 per cent of the sums received in the form of national dividend. The wage rates ruling in 1928 to be taken as the basis against which the reduction would be made.
Any trade union violating a wage agreement to render its membership liable to suspension of national dividend, and any employers� organisation committing a similar offence, to be liable to suspension of price assistance or wage reduction.
MUST ACCEPT EMPLOYMENT, OR �
For a period of five years after the initiation of this scheme, failure on the part of any individual to accept employment in whatever trade, business, or vocation he was classified in the last census, under conditions recognised as suitable to that employment (unless exempted on a medical certificate), will render such individual liable to suspension of benefit in respect of the national dividend.
(10) Taxation of specific articles or specific forms of property to be abolished. Any taxation found to be necessary to take the form either of a flat non-graduated taxation of net income or a percentage ad valorem tax upon sales, or both forms of taxation together.
NOTES
The price level of 1928 has been taken for the rough estimate of the items which, when added together, make up the Real Assets or Real Capital account of Scotland. The Financial Credit, which is equivalent to this, appears in a National Account as a contra-item. Money and Real assets are on opposite sides of the account (and should balance) not, as in a commercial account, on the same side of the account. |
On point #3, I think means-testing the national dividend is unwise. Firstly, it's a pointless administrative burden when one could simply distribute to everyone and make it up regarding high earners with slightly more progressive taxation rates. Second, it's likely to induce resentment; when everyone gets a dividend, some might scoff at it, but there's a sense of fairness. When, by contrast, some get it and some do not, you get TANF-style hysteria.
The system described in points #4 through #7 would worry me. I'm fairly comfortable, in principle, with the distribution of benefits directly to citizens: individual citizens receive benefits on too small a scale for any party to do serious damage, but the same is not necessarily true of individual enterprises. The potential benefit of defrauding this system -- either through providing carefully falsified information, or worse, through outright corruption of the officials overseeing it -- would be immense.
Point #9's provision regarding trade unions, employers, and the consequences of their violations is outright perverse. Workers, if their trade union is found to be guilty of a wage violation, would suffer on a personal level (suspension of their dividend), while if employers were found guilty, they would suffer only on a business level. Another big problem in our modern economy is the asymmetry of potential consequences between employers and employees; employers are often shielded from consequence, while employees are strongly exposed to it at a personal level. It is disheartening to see that philosophy at work here. #9-b (the part following "MUST ACCEPT EMPLOYMENT, OR �") is another example of anti-worker sentiment. Now, of course those who are able to work should be working if possible; short of some robot utopia it's the only way anything can be produced. But this kind of threat hanging over the heads of workers again favors employers: "Take our job offers, or you'll lose your dividend," means those job offers will of course end up being less lucrative.
Point #10 is seems conducive to increased economic inequality to me, which in turn seems conducive to the sort of systematic corruption that worried me regarding some of the above points.
Like I said maybe I'm missing something here. My current opinion is very provisional, but right now I see some problems both philosophically and practically with this. |
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Kimbop
Joined: 31 Mar 2008
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| Posted: Mon Feb 11, 2013 1:30 pm Post subject: |
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| GENO123 wrote: |
Please watch the whole video.
If the US gets old without young people to keep the economy the US will become like Japan . Only immigration has kept the US going and will keep the US going. |
Your premise precludes the possibility that US citizens will vote to abandon their government-mandated pyramid scheme. Unlikely, but possible.
| Fox wrote: |
| It's just the tree of usury producing its inevitable fruit. Calling it a ponzi scheme implies there's something fraudulent or secretive about it, but there's nothing especially secretive or fraudulent about the socially-destructive impact of usury; even pre-modern man was well aware of it's implications. That's what's so perverse about the status quo: everything you need to know to condemn it is completely in the open and above the table. Sure, there are individual instances of fraud here or there, but the system would be broken even without them. |
Call it a pyramid scheme then. |
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GENO123
Joined: 28 Jan 2010
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| Posted: Mon Feb 11, 2013 5:35 pm Post subject: |
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| Kimbop wrote: |
| GENO123 wrote: |
Please watch the whole video.
If the US gets old without young people to keep the economy the US will become like Japan . Only immigration has kept the US going and will keep the US going. |
Your premise precludes the possibility that US citizens will vote to abandon their government-mandated pyramid scheme. Unlikely, but possible.
| Fox wrote: |
| It's just the tree of usury producing its inevitable fruit. Calling it a ponzi scheme implies there's something fraudulent or secretive about it, but there's nothing especially secretive or fraudulent about the socially-destructive impact of usury; even pre-modern man was well aware of it's implications. That's what's so perverse about the status quo: everything you need to know to condemn it is completely in the open and above the table. Sure, there are individual instances of fraud here or there, but the system would be broken even without them. |
Call it a pyramid scheme then. |
If there are any good ideas out there I hope they get posted.
In the meantime:
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By MICHAEL SMITH, MedPage Today North American Correspondent
Feb. 11, 2013
Americans had fewer babies in 2011 than in any year before, according to an annual summary of vital statistics.
In 2011, 3,953,593 babies were born in the U.S. -- 1 percent fewer than in 2010 and 4 percent fewer than in 2009, according to Brady Hamilton, PhD, of the CDC in Atlanta, and colleagues at the agency and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore.
That number, combined with population data, yielded a crude birth rate of 12.7 per 1,000 people, the lowest rate ever reported for the nation, they reported online and in the March 2013 issue of Pediatrics. |
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/us-birth-rate-hits-historic-low/story?id=18465281 |
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bigverne
Joined: 12 May 2004
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| Posted: Mon Feb 11, 2013 8:46 pm Post subject: |
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| If there are any good ideas out there I hope they get posted |
Good ideas to deal with the problem of the economy's inherent unsustainability? Or to the 'problem' of declining fertility? |
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Titus
Joined: 19 May 2012
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| Posted: Fri Mar 01, 2013 7:33 am Post subject: |
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| Kuros wrote: |
My friend majored in Western Medieval and Middle Eastern History and he's a distributist, which seems highly similar to social credit. |
Social credit is the idea that the creation of money should be the sole responsibility of the state. It can work many different ways. I'm fond of the "citizen dividend" idea that Douglas gets around to endorsing during tours of Japan.
Generally, all distributists are so-creds, while not all so-creds are distributist. I have no opposition to distributism.
We're moving into a situation where machines do the vast majority of productive work and the gains from work will solely go to those who own the machines (hedge funds, private equity, banks, oligarchs). The way to deal with this is a citizen dividend and the way to control the oligarchs is state control of money. |
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Titus
Joined: 19 May 2012
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| Posted: Fri Mar 01, 2013 8:00 am Post subject: |
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| The 'import millions of peasants' to fix the economy is so typical of the dead West. Quantity over Quality. Near term quick fix over long term sustainability and harmony. Die, democracy, die. |
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