Post: #51

This resembles the newly minted "Skeptic" movement which seems to be skeptic about anything except the views that the elite allows them to have.

- refute religion and spirituality completely but believe in state-sponsored dogmas
- be skeptic about small lies that the government may tell you but thoroughly refuse to believe in big lies on the "scientific" basis: "Impossible that they would be able to pull this off" or "Impossible to tell such a lie to the entire world and get away with it - there would be whistle-blowers, honest people who would tell us the truth!"

The same concepts apply on all other points:

- economics: they would not be able to suppress a vastly superior economic system like interest-free economics (social credit, mutual credit, demurrage) - impossible - someone would know about it and tell us about it for sure! "The current system has no alternative" - Angela Merkel was right for sure.
- medicine: impossible that they lie about vaccines or about the "war on cancer" or about plenty of FDA approved toxic food ingredients - there is some corruption, but they are doing all they can to help you live longer and better!
- politics: impossible that they lied about terrorism being anything else than goat-herders out of some caves in Afghanistan who hate our liberty - those filthy terrorists - let's do total surveillance over you all while we invite more of those poor people from those war-torn regions into our countries
- feminism: politicians just appeased women and those cat-hoarding radical female feminists did excellent lobbying and managed to effect legal changes all around the world - never mind, that the politicians never talked about those changes in their speeches - "it just happened"
- religion: there is no God, religions only tell you lies and fairy tales, best follow our ever updated SJW-approved ethical guide-lines - we keep you updated - don't listen to those old books - even if you try to take the good and ignore the bad - it's best to ignore it all as any atheist can PROVE logically that God does not exist of course!

It all boils down to this and it is as valid as ever:

Post: #52

(01-25-2015 03:48 PM)Americas Wrote:  I don't necessarily disagree with your post. However, I do want to point out some things. For one, the role of economics is not necessarily to predict phenomenon but rather to explain it. In fact, most social sciences fall within this vein.

And while I agree that economics falls short in many respects because of its models that try to exclude as many variables as possible, economics isn't actually that concerned with 'the big picture.' Modern economics is actually probably the most narrow social science in current-day. This means that the questions that economists ask today are very narrow in scope. Take a look in any major economics journal and you will see articles that are so narrow in scope that most of them won't even be that interesting the average person. Something like "How Endogenous Growth Affects Brazilian Labour Laws from 1950-1970" is something you would expect to see in these journals.

And this is a problem that I see in a lot of arguments throughout the internet in relation to economics. A lot of people don't actually even know exactly what economics as a discipline is doing.

These are good points, Americas.

Maybe I didn't give my post enough explanation. What I was trying to say is this:

I just can't shake the feeling that much of what passes as economics is hocus-pocus smoke and mirrors. Please know I'm not saying the whole field is useless.

I know you said its job was to explain and not to predict. I get that. But my thought is that its track record as an "explainer" is rather middling.

For any given historical event, we're better off focusing on other factors: environmental, social, leadership, historical, ideological, anthropological, etc. Economics, to me, is at best a footnote to human affairs. If I were a historian, I would give it less relative weight than these other factors I mentioned.

Just my opinion. Other historical and social forces are far more powerful.

Post: #53

Economics is not a flawed science per se. Were it purely scientific, I suspect it would converge on much more accurate models.

However it is not a science. It is intimately tied to governments and their interest in convincing the public of the rightness of their actions. In this dynamic, the scientific method is a minor factor, specifically "upholding the appearance that it is being used".

This is why the government and its institutions are such large employers of economists.
http://www.kent.ac.uk/careers/economics.htm#employers

You are not going to find people in the employ of the government, who advocate the gold standard, free banking, abolishing regulation, lowering and flattening taxes etc, because these are against the government's primary interest - power.

What people need to realize is that supposed government 'benevolence', through welfare and various 'benefits' given to certain groups, is actually merely the byproduct of power-seeking under a democratic constitution.

Post: #54

(01-26-2015 01:33 AM)Phoenix Wrote:  Economics is not a flawed science per se. Were it purely scientific, I suspect it would converge on much more accurate models.

However it is not a science. It is intimately tied to governments and their interest in convincing the public of the rightness of their actions. In this dynamic, the scientific method is a minor factor, specifically "upholding the appearance that it is being used".

This is why the government and its institutions are such large employers of economists.
http://www.kent.ac.uk/careers/economics.htm#employers

You are not going to find people in the employ of the government, who advocate the gold standard, free banking, abolishing regulation, lowering and flattening taxes etc, because these are against the government's primary interest - power.

What people need to realize is that supposed government 'benevolence', through welfare and various 'benefits' given to certain groups, is actually merely the byproduct of power-seeking under a democratic constitution.

First of all apart from some hard basic calculations - most formulas are pretty much useless, since economics is a social science that is based on human behavior.

Also due to inherently superior systems like interest free money creation, social credit, mutual credit, demurrage, interest free real estate credit - then all modern economics resembles is an oncology department that knows there is a simple cure for cancer and they have it, but they refuse to use it because they would have to close the oncology department then.

In the case of economics they would have to shut down most of the power base of the richest 0,01%.

Most economists are not aware of the issues, but others like Keynes or Milton Friedman knew very much about the superior models but could not voice them publicly or their careers would be over.

Keynes visited Woergl (no other reason to visit that place for an economist but to see how powerful interest free money with demurrage can be) and Friedman talked with Bill Still before his death admitting that his movie "The Money Masters" tells the truth about the solutions. But so what? Even if you have major economists knowing about it, they are tantamount to oncologists who have the perfect cancer cure in their hands but cannot use it.

We are all trapped in the system.

Post: #55

Here in Croatia we have a new populist (I am not saying this in a bad sense) political party called "Živi zid" ("The Living Wall"), which is politically unafilliated and makes the following claims:

- it is forbidden by the Maastricht Treaty for any national central bank to fund its government directly (primary emission of money); instead, it must release new money into circulation by channeling it through commercial banks, which then lend to citizens and/or government on the secondary market
- during this process, the commercial bank multiplies this money through fractional reserve banking and then slaps an interest rate on that new money, meaning that citizens/government have to return this money to the bank with interest (which is always higher than what the commercial bank will have to pay to the central one)
- however, the money for repayment of interest has never entered the monetary system; it was created out of thin air by commercial banks; thus, all new money is not created by central banks, but by commercial banks
- given enough time, all of the money channeled through commercial banks will return to them
- that means that commercial banks are the true owners of almost all money currently in existence; all money is actually debt owed to the banks
- the logical conclusion of all this is that debts are by their nature unpayable, and serve merely as a tool through which banks seize more and more real property
- the only thing that delays the process is the issuance of new credit and debt, i.e. inflating the balloon further so that people don't notice that money is a debt and that debts are unpayable
- since the supply of money is a zero sum game, people who are currently wealthy and have no debts are just lucky ones who haven't yet been consumed by the endless and unpayable debt

As far as I can tell, all of this is true.

Živi zid wants to put an end to this by:

- giving the central bank the ability to print money and lend directly to the government
- conversion of all debts to local currency
- introducing a controlled short-term bout of inflation (printing) of local currency, with which to wipe out or reduce old debts
- introducing a 100% reserve rate to stop the banks from grabbing their share of money during this process

Again, as far as I can tell, all of those are sensible solutions.

After its completely unknown presidential candidate achieving a staggering 17% of the vote last month, Živi zid is currently being massively attacked from all sides. It is simultaneously being proclaimed to be ultra-left, ultra-right, feminist, LGBT, fascist, catholic, taliban, populist, anti-people, destructive, keynesian, neo-liberal, and so on. All of the other parties in existence (including all major media) have united against it. The whole thing is very worrying and just confirms my belief that Živi zid's ideas are right.

Post: #56

I'm not going to indulge any conspiracy theory based explanations of things. Is is a form of 'not disprovable therefore true' fallacy (things are actually only true if they are provable, lest 'true' lose it's conceptual value). A conspiracy involving the 'system' (everyone) is clearly too large, too complicated, and too information scarce (conspiracies are secret right?) to be provable, and is thus useless.

Secondly, debt is not money. They are two distinct words used to mean two different things. Debt is a promise to pay money at some point in the future. A dollar bill (money) exists bearing no liabilities. A dollar bank deposit is a debt owed to you by the bank.

I open this specific topic to debate:
- Is $1 now worth $1 in a year? That is, would the average person prefer to receive $1 now or in a years time? Assuming the answer is 'no, they want it now', does this not explain why interest exists?

Post: #57

(01-26-2015 05:23 AM)Phoenix Wrote:  I'm not going to indulge any conspiracy theory based explanations of things. Is is a form of 'not disprovable therefore true' fallacy (things are actually only true if they are provable, lest 'true' lose it's conceptual value). A conspiracy involving the 'system' (everyone) is clearly too large, too complicated, and too information scarce (conspiracies are secret right?) to be provable, and is thus useless.

Secondly, debt is not money. They are two distinct words used to mean two different things. Debt is a promise to pay money at some point in the future. A dollar bill (money) exists bearing no liabilities. A dollar bank deposit is a debt owed to you by the bank.

I open this specific topic to debate:
- Is $1 now worth $1 in a year? That is, would the average person prefer to receive $1 now or in a years time? Assuming the answer is 'no, they want it now', does this not explain why interest exists?

https://realcurrencies.wordpress.com/201...alue-hoax/

Time value of money is a hoax - it's one of their main arguments which sound plausible until you begin to unmask the whole scam that it is. This - by the way - has little to do with conspiracy - even if there were no top-down cooperation the argument would not make any sense.

Post: #58

(01-26-2015 05:33 AM)Zelcorpion Wrote:  

(01-26-2015 05:23 AM)Phoenix Wrote:  I open this specific topic to debate:
- Is $1 now worth $1 in a year? That is, would the average person prefer to receive $1 now or in a years time? Assuming the answer is 'no, they want it now', does this not explain why interest exists?

Time value of money is a hoax - it's one of their main arguments which sound plausible until you begin to unmask the whole scam that it is.

Deferring to others implies someone is not able to defend a position on their own.
You didn't answer the question so I must ask it again more comprehensively.
- If you had the choice of receiving a Ferrari now, or in one years time, what would you choose?
- If you had the choice of banging a particular hot girl now, or in one years time, what would you choose?
- If you had the choice of winning the lottery now, or in one years time, what would you choose?
Conversely:
- If you had the choice of having your car stolen now, or in one years time, what would you choose?
- If you had the choice of getting sick now, or in one years time, what would you choose?

Am I correct that the answers are 'now' and 'in one years time' respectively?

Post: #59

(01-26-2015 06:21 AM)Phoenix Wrote:  Deferring to others implies someone is not able to defend a position on their own.
You didn't answer the question so I must ask it again more comprehensively.
- If you had the choice of receiving a Ferrari now, or in one years time, what would you choose?
- If you had the choice of banging a particular hot girl now, or in one years time, what would you choose?
- If you had the choice of winning the lottery now, or in one years time, what would you choose?
Conversely:
- If you had the choice of having your car stolen now, or in one years time, what would you choose?
- If you had the choice of getting sick now, or in one years time, what would you choose?

Am I correct that the answers are 'now' and 'in one years time' respectively?

I defer to the site, because they do it better in real terms.

The problem is in the premise itself.

Money as it is stands now is created fraudulently out of thin air. Even when you had 100% gold-backing it would be fraudulent because the wealth created by them would be after centuries of usury.

So the comparisons are off:

- the Ferrari is real
- the girl you bang is real
- even the money in cash YOU PERSONALLY RECEIVE is real because you can live off it

What is unreal and fraudulent is how the money for all this is created and this is the issue here!

If you cannot question time value then you simply do not understand the entire usury debate at all.

Let me put it clearly:

If you let one group make out usury loans and FUCKING CREATE 99% of all money on that basis - plus control the volume, then that group will over time end up owning it all. And the crap is nothing new - Caesar was killed mostly because he wanted to end that practice in Rome. Centuries later their rule ended anyway as our current system will end, because with usury the 0,01% will end up owning 95% of all property and wealth making long-term survival untenable unless you control the entire world and live in a totally controlled Brave New World scenario.

I'm sorry if you cannot see that and compare it with owning Ferrari's right now versus in one year - that has nothing to do with how money is created by the system.

The only comparable thing would be:

Do you want to get a loan by a mobster who will charge you interest and kill you if you default or will you want to get a loan from the JAK Bank in Sweden or the WIR system in Switzerland which charges you a yearly fee and no interest rate on it? Again I repeat that an interest rate making up over 60% of your mortgage payments over duration is just nuts.

And even more nuts is a government which could literally create money - as in print money - print the whole entire goddamn budget and spend it without going to extremely wealthy people and borrowing it all. The currency of a country is backed by the productivity & by the military force of it's people anyway - there is no need to borrow if you don't overdo it and print too much.

Those are the two arguments and if you want an honest debate go to those anti-usury sites like realcurrencies or some-anti-austrian-economics sites. They have literally had enough debates to have some sites having their comment section closed, because THERE IS NO JUSTIFICATION FOR THAT CRAZINESS! You will literally lose any debate as it's impossible to justify usury for the majority of transactions - and fractional reserve lending should be banned too - that is just pure Mafia-style-scamming - 5 major banks as it is now can literally contract and expand money supply at will - at fucking will!

Thus I refer rather to the other more competent researchers, who put my humble knowledge to shame.

Post: #60

Loans are just 'borrowing money'. No different to borrowing a car or renting a house. The more valuable the thing you borrow, the more you pay per year. Rather than borrowing the car or renting the house, you can borrow the money and then buy those things. It's the same thing.

It's not nuts that interest payments make up 60% of some mortgage payments. That's what happens when you borrow a large amount of money for a long time. You'd have to compare the total interest versus renting the house over the same period to know if it was 'nuts'.

Regarding 'rich people will own everything by accumulating interest', you could say the same thing about equity and dividends. Should we get rid of dividends, and by extension, profits and private enterprise?

Regarding fractional reserve banking, it is not true that banks can extend as much credit as they like. Banks are competing loan intermediaries. They take loans (deposits etc) and make loans (mortgages etc). The extent of this credit expansion (aggregate indebtedness) is limited by the total money ('money' as in 'cash') available, through the "adverse clearing mechanism".

When people from different banks write cheques / transfer funds to each other, the receiving bank demands settlement from the paying bank. Bank R has no incentive to keep a deposit/cheque from Bank P, since that would effectively be giving a zero interest loan to a competitor. Bank P must settle, in cash.
The larger the outstanding deposits and loans at the bank, the larger and more frequent it's clearings with other banks are. These clearings can be quite random - no bank knows exactly how many payments its customers are going to make, to other bank customers, per day. If it cannot settle its debts with another bank, daily, in cash, it goes bankrupt. Hence a bank that runs low on cash is a bank that contracts its balance sheet, and a bank flush with cash expands its balance sheet. The average cash-to-deposit ratio at banks thus hovers around a level 'safe, but not too conservative'. With a fixed monetary base, credit is not ever expanding.

This largely mirrors the way individuals and businesses manage their finances - with cash / bank deposits acting as a buffer between accounts payable and receivable at different times. The more uncertainly and the larger the transactions, the larger the cash buffer.