HEALTH WARNING – this is a discursive article – another ramble. Nothing I have written here is new. All I want to point out is that money and its creation, and finance in general, do not come ‘after’ or outside of ideology and political tribalism – as a more level headed and technocratic alternative. Money, its creation and finance are central parts of our myths. They are tribal and partisan and lock together with other parts of our prejudices and beliefs.
Money Creation is a funny thing. It happens all the time, all around us, and has for centuries and yet no seems able to convince everyone else that they know how it actually happens who is doing it and even if it is a good idea.
It is a vexed subject, particularly now, when people are afraid that the world’s central banks are creating masses of money, while the banks themselves counter-claim that most if it is sterilized and so shouldn’t be considered money creation at all, while others claim this is all just ‘currency’ creation which isn’t what they call ‘money-good’ and will lead to a disastrous tearing apart of currency worth from real value. If these various claims and counter-claims (and others I haven’t mentioned) sound a little muddled then you’re doing well, because they are muddled.
The problem is we are not hearing different views within a single argument. What we are hearing is people who hold radically incompatible world views throwing rocks as they march past each other in a fog. It’s what happens when people think they are arguing about a concept which they all understand, when in fact they all understand the basic idea in quite different ways.
Should we be dispirited? I don’t think we should. It is confusing, and claim and counter-claim do get shrill and people do accuse each other of heinous crimes, but at least it is making us aware. Things our dear leaders would like us to simply take for granted and not think about, are now being thought about, talked about, argued about.
The Creation Myths of Money
Every religion, every ‘ism’, every arrangement of power has some sort of creation myth whose purpose is to make one particular arrangement of the world seem to be the only logical and workable one. The religions and ‘isms’ of economic power are no different.
Of course you could say, beneath the rival myths there will be evidence which will show one to be true and the other false. Why talk about them both as myths? The reason is that myths have a power to shape our thoughts and generate strong feelings often in spite of evidence. People are drawn to a ‘myth’ even in the face of evidence which undermines it, because the myth lends ‘authority’ to some set of things the person wants to believe and have others believe.
Therefore I think it is wise to understand people’s myths even if you think they are factually wrong.
1) Barter – money created by The Many.
One myth imagines that money was first created out of barter. In the beginning there was the free trade of goods and services between individuals. I have two stone axes, you have two pots, lets exchange them. Money was created when people realized that rather than only being able to exchange when you ran across the person who wanted precisely what you had, you could exchange what you had for a generic ‘token of value’. You could then re-exchange that ‘token of value’ at any time with anyone else for anything else.
The only problem is you want to be sure when you hand over your axe-head or pot, that the token you get in return really will be exchangeable. Ideally you want it to have some sort of intrinsic value of its own AND not to be something which people could easily just find or make in their shed. If it becomes easier to make the ‘tokens of value’ rather than actually make anything of ‘real value’, then you will get ‘the smartest men in the hut’ busy knocking out such tokens rather than doing anything of real productive value.
You can already see how in this myth there is a suspicion of token creators.
In this myth money is created by the productive efforts of people who actually make stuff. The need – their need, for money arises out of the ‘market’ with its distributed desire to ‘freely’ exchange goods and services. The creation of the tokens starts out and henceforth needs to be, tightly correlated to the number of goods and transactions.We’ll come back to how ‘the market’ can assess what number of tokens is the right number, later. But money is a creation of those in the market and serves them. Anyone else who uses it, for any other purpose, is parasitizing money for their own ends and needs.
Here you can see a roots of the free-market contention that tax is theft. Governments coming to the market and starting to make claims on something they didn’t create and isn’t theirs, siphoning off some of other people’s money just to pay themselves.
But before we get too deep into what flows from this particular myth, lets look at the main rival myth.
Kings and Governments – money created by The Powerful Few.
The other main myth is that money rose not from the many in the market, but was created by, and to serve the needs of, the few who held power. So the myth goes, as more complex kinds of societies arose so there were people in them who did essential but ‘non-productive’ jobs. People who commanded troops, or trained them, or carried messages, or wrote them down or added things up. Such people had nothing to barter , yet did increasingly ‘valuable’ jobs. So they were paid in tokens created for that express purpose. Those who created them were the powerful people, who had such specialized workers working for them.
Once those tokens were created you can see how, like any powerful idea or technology, they could transform things they were not invented for. Just as the Internet has transformed all sorts of things for which it was not intended: Email being one, e-commerce another. Neither was envisaged by the two men who invented packet switching, which is the technology that underpins the Internet.
In this myth money was created centrally but quickly transformed trade turning it into what we have today. Money was therefore not created by people in the market but was quickly adopted by them for their own purposes. It turned out to be something which helped with trade and so they adopted it. They could recognize a useful thing when they saw it. But it was and therefore still is a ‘service’ provided to them by a central power.
Now both of these myths feel good to those who support them and each feels dangerously counterfeit to those who do not. That is almost the nature of myth.
Is there any evidence at all?
It has been said by anthropologists that there isn’t really any evidence of this ‘golden age’ or state of monetary nature when tokens of gold or silver were created to facilitate primitive barter. And this is true. Coins are a late invention and most have the head of a king or ruler clearly stamped upon them. On the other hand it is quite possible that those primitive tokens are around but we don’t recognize them. Perhaps lumps of amber or other ‘precious’ stone or pigment acted as tokens. Certainly in history we can find groups who have adopted and used tokens amongst themselves. Once upon a time British sailors used to carry little bags of pepper corns as a readily acceptable form of ‘money’. Pepper was light, easily stored and everybody felt happy that it had a universally recognized value. So they used to use it as an unofficial currency.
Anthropologists have also, however, taken issue with the whole idea that barter was the original, ‘natural’ way human beings began to exchange. And there is certainly evidence from many cultures that when groups exchange it is not really as barter – ‘I give you this, if you give me that ‘ – but as a form of gift giving and obligation creation – ‘I give you this, so that you owe me and that obligation I have placed upon you makes me powerful and ties us together’. This is quite different from barter and coins won’t help it.
So one myth sees barter, spurring the invention of money, becoming trade, and this being the ‘natural’ state of humanity. Such an argument was put forward by Matt Ridley in his book The Origins of Virtue. Mr Ridley tried align this supposed state of Free-trade nature with Natural Selection itself arguing that through the eons of primitive barter genes for ‘free trade’ and all that he argued are part of it – honesty and a desire for fairness and trust – were selected for and are therefore in our very nature. Only corrupted by bad social arrangements where the ‘Satan’ called ‘State’ comes along and perverts the right order of things. There isn’t any actual evidence for any of this – not in biology anyway – and the shine went off his picture of the benefits of trade in its ‘natural’ free state when the bank on whose board he served – Northern Rock – was found to be bankrupt. Many, like me. felt the bankruptcy of the bank to be an apt metaphor for the bankruptcy of his ideas.
One of the problems with creation myths is that because they place such great store by who or what was first, that that ‘first’ state is then elevated to a special status of ‘natural’ or ‘as things should be’ and everything else gets relegated to some suspicious ‘fallen’ or ‘tampered with’ state. But is it really that important who or what was first? Does what we did first really indicate what is ‘natural’ let alone best? I don’t think it does. Bubonic plague is natural but it’s not good. Dying young is natural. Also not great.
It seems to me that we will never have a complete enough picture of all of the past to say definitely which myth is right. And perhaps it is not a question of one or the other. It is quite possible that both have taken place in history in different places at different times. So perhaps which was ‘first’ is not really the point.
The “We were first’ argument is more a rhetorical ploy each side has tried to use to claim advantage. People adhere to creation myths because they try to argue that what we did first is natural and natural is ‘in our genes’, or is ‘the way God intended it’ or is just better in some unspecified way. But people hang on to creation myths and continue to cite them as some sort of fact or common sense, because their chosen myth leads to the conclusions they want to get to.
Lets look again at the two myths and the opposed world views they lead to.
Opposing worlds
If money was/is created from the needs of people trading then they own it. Anyone else who uses it, is parasitizing their invention. Thus when a ruler or ruling class or state comes into existence and decides it wants some of this money how does it get it? Does it make goods and services and sell them like anyone else? Well, maybe. But does it do it fairly? Or does it use its power – the power of soldiers or ruffians, or laws giving special monopolies or granting special licenses – to put smaller competitors out of business?
Tax is necessary/Tax is theft.
Governments say we need some of this money-stuff to pay for the things we provide: Those people who train soldiers, the soldiers themselves, the people who write stuff down, deliver messages and count things. To get money they invent tax. But in the free market myth of money this is quite clearly a theft, or at the very least a muscling in.
Needless to say seen through the lens of the other myth, things look entirely different. If money was created by emperor or government then it is a service. As such it is not so unreasonable to expect some sort of payment or rent. Suddenly it looks like the traders benefiting from something provided by the state and tax becomes a neat way of paying for state services of which the provision of money is but one.
Money or Value?
Set aside ancient history. who should create it now? Both governments and ‘the market’ create money. It is banks who do most of the creating through the granting of loans. It is a fact that the vast bulk of money is created by the banks though loans , not governments through printing or QE.
It is one thing to claim the invention and the right to control the creation of money, but it is another to claim guardianship of the value that the money is transporting around. And this is one of today’s main battlegrounds because all agree there has to be some sort of correlation between the number of tokens of value and the the real actual value of goods and services.
One side would say how better to decide how much money to create than to let the ‘market’ which needs the money decide how much it needs.Why bring in a third party who will probably have their own agenda which will have nothing to do with the needs of the people in the markets and everything to do with maintaining the power of that third party – the government. Thus let the banks create the money when they extend a loan. The banks know how much is needed because we all come to them asking for it.
On the other hand who says the banks will create only the amount which helps the wider market and not create the amount which benefits them disproportionately? Banks can create loans that concentrate on inflating the worth of financial products and largely ignore the money needs of those in the rest of the market. And anyone in the industrial, especially small and medium sector can attest that this is exactly what has been going on. The bulk of the money supply of the last decades has been for the narrower financial market and those non-productive things finance likes to speculate upon – such as property. Property is not productive. But is can be lucrative if the money is there to fuel a speculative bubble around it.
So just as the free market myth can see a danger in Government creating money to benefit itself, so it is just as evident to those on the other side that the banks within the market can also create money more for their own benefit than anyone else’s.
You might think we could all see that there are valid concerns on both sides. But too often we don’t. Instead both sides of the financial and money creation argument focus on the short comings of the opposite side’s dangerous, heretical and false beliefs, while simultaneously glossing over similar problems with their own. And it’s a short step from there to convincing yourself that while your plan is an honest attempt to find a solution for all, those who take the other side of the argument do so only for ulterior and selfish reasons. Once you think that you need never listen to them at all.
In conclusion
Governments do become captured by an elite who use the power of government to advance their own interests and not for the purpose of governing. One aspect of this, particularly evident in the more imperial nations like the U.S. is that the governing elite will do things (like print and spend money) to make government more powerful at the expense of those being governed. But it is equally true that markets can also become captured by an elite who can distort their operation to enrich themselves in preference to anyone else.
It seems clear to me we now have both. And surely that is not so surprising. When a particular social arrangement runs out of steam it tends to corrupt everywhere not just in one part.
So might it not be a wise thing to take a step back from the rhetoric and sound-bites of myth and ideology and stop trying to say it was ALL the fault of the free market or it was ALL the fault of statist distortion, and instead agree that there is corruption, capture and failure on all sides. We will not solve this by either side, free-market or state, trying to blame the other entirely and saying, since ‘they’ are the problem, then the answer is to give ‘us’ all the power. And we will certainly not solve our problems if we cannot or will not take seriously the worries that the other side sees in our prefered plan.
“You can already see how in this myth there is a suspicion of token creators.”
“Token of value”?? This is an oxymoronic term. How can something be a ‘token’ whilst simultaneously being agreed as ‘of value’ by both parties in a transaction?
And any transaction in the marketplace requires two parties. Additionally, there are any number of third parties who offer other desired goods. My question is: how can a ‘money’ be “created” if it is the result of agreement by market participants? None of them would have accepted it if I proferred say, tree leaves in exchange for goods but, if they had, would our use of tree leaves be the result of “money creation”?
More like simple agreement…money too is a free market phenomenon.
Doesn’t real “money creation” require a unilaterallyacting, imposing or issuing authority? If you, I and many others agree that some commodity is of recognised value and thus should serve as ‘money’, is that ‘created’?
“Creating” money is the very antithesis of a free market…
Hello Kreditanstalt,
I’m not sure I understand your questions? But here goes.
A piece of fiat paper, a bank note or an IOU is, in my parlance at least, a token. I call it a token in order to distinguish it from those things which I think can be said to have intrinsic value in the way a peice of bread does. The value of the bread is intrinsic to itself. I can use it directly. Whereas a token is only the promise that I can exchange it fro something that has intrinsic value.
Maybe you don’t like this way of thinking or maybe I’m just wrong.
As for money creation I suppose there are two levels I should have disentngled – creation in the sense of invention/agreeing, and the lesser level of creating more examples of the agreed/invented token.
As you say it requires and an agreement between users for any token to be accepted as money. That agreement can be a simple agreement between two participants in a market. An example of this is the Hawalah system. A non government system for moving wealth using no more than a chit of paper or even just a verbal password.
It is a traditional system, still used but today seen as a form of money laundering and tax evasion by most governments.
But money can also be created and issued by a governemtn or ruler. People still have to ‘agree’ to use it but if a ruler specifies tat money as teh only means of paying monies owed in that rulers teritory and particuarly if it is the only means accepted by the ruler for paying taxes to the ruler, then this incentive ‘helps’ people accept. In return the ruler ‘should’ undertake to guarentee the value of the currency is not debased.
It is this promise being broken which angers those forced to use and be paid in a currency. But then again we have all seen that market participants like banks, who have the power to create money, can devalue their currency as easily as any government.
The bank debt crisis IS because banks devalued the currency – debt backed securities – they had created and were busy issuing with less and less underlying collateral.
So when you say money creation is the antithesis of the free market I either don’t understand or if I have understood then I disagree. Banks do create money in both senses. They created their own currency and created so much of it that they debased it.
Again you may not like my way of thinking.
David, if I might make an observation here. You say “intrinsic value in the way a peice of bread does. The value of the bread is intrinsic to itself. I can use it directly” – actually you cannot use it directly. You can eat it. After that, it is gone. Your money and the bread. The issue here is did you enjoy eating it, was it worth that money – and quite as importantly, can you enjoy your life the more for having enjoyed eating it?
The issue of buying an experience is something that has become terribly unclear – the bread and circusses argument of the Romans was but the start of all this. That people were happy to accept the entertainment offered to them meant that they didn’t have to do it for themselves.
The danger here is that they open themselves to being abused without their knowing it. The answer is to have a balancing strength to counter this insidious force.
Hello Gemma,
Perhaps I have sown confusion. All I meant was to distinguish between something whose ‘value’ to me is immediate and contained in itself. So for bread its value is that I can eat it. I need to eat. Money, to my mind does not have this quality because I cannot do anything essential for my continued existence with it – such as eat it, drink it or wear it to keep me warm. Its value is that I can exchange it for something else that does do one of the above.
That’s all I meant.
I think I see what you are getting at but I will need to think about it more. Its a direction of thought I have not really considered.
We all create liabilities with each other all the time.
Every time I do you a favour I create an obligation. Every time I give a gift I create an obligation.
We are a social species and we operate by incurring and creating liabilities between each other. That how we survive. That’s how we trade.
That then eventually crystallizes into a mechanism to record those obligations formally, enforce them formally and eventually transfer them between ourselves.
And ultimately you end up with a fiat system where the formal obligations circulate endlessly between us.
When I ask for bread from you I incur an obligation to you. Usually I can give you an obligation from the central bank in return for you extinguishing my obligation to you and you’re happy with that because you know you can use it to extinguish obligations elsewhere that you incur.
But you don’t just have to accept obligations from the central bank. Any acceptable obligation token can be used to extinguish the liability brought about by the bread transaction.
Anybody can create money. The trick is getting others to accept it.
I agree up to a point. Except I think we do also do things without intending there be a liability or obligation created.
We can and do also sometimes chose to do things for another person quite unconditionally and without calulation.
Neil,
you say “Every time I give a gift I create an obligation” – if this is the kind of gift you give, then it is not a gift but credit.
A gift is given freely and demands no obligation.
That in Anglo-Saxon society people feel guilty about receiving gifts is neither here nor there. That is their own shortcoming – and is less prominent in Europe for a number of reasons. Give an Englishman a twenty pound note and see how quickly he becomes embarrassed. I tried this on a Dutchman and he pocketed my twenty euro note with little demur. In other words do not confuse guilt and obligation.
Gift giving counters the “stones into bread” aspect of money. That is to say, I make a pot and sell it to you – I may then use that money to buy something to eat.
What we forget here is that pots are not essential to our existence. Eating is. Seen in this light, money and gifts throw very different shadows.
Are you at all familiar with this book? (Two very interesting interviews about the book can be found here and here). To quote a bit from the book, which references work done by, e.g., Michael Hudson and Geoffrey Ingham (and I apologize beforehand for quoting somewhat extensively):
And for another part of the answer to your question how realistic ‘elite’ theories of the creation of specific denominations is, consider the following point:
The point, I’d say, is that governments were generally the ones who tried to impose/force the use of specific currencies on a population (as well as the whole practice of accepting quantified obligations), often for the purpose of maintaining armies, whereas members of the population frequently created their own ‘moneys’, or systems of debt denomination, which could but need not piggyback on existing systems of debt denomination. (One example of money creation by members of the public is the pub owner who allows visitors to put stuff on tab; a non-quantified example is the case of someone doing you a favor and asking for a favor in return later on down the road.)
Hello Foppe,
Yes I am aware of it. Like I said, nothing in what I wrote was new. I have not read it but ama ware of what it argues and have read some of the anthropological material he uses. For my sins I studied some anthroplogy at university.
In this talk Noam Chomsky examines something of the purpose of the original or Origination of the American Constitution, a study of the Federalist papers and a good dose of Thomas Paine should lead one to an appreciation of the various interests that were considered back in 1777.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeTbDdl7XiE
Going back further to Magna Carta and considering its purposes I was reminded the other day of the Charter of the forests, this was an interesting realisation which Michael Portillo examined in his series History we forgot to remember. The Charter of the forests was much more important to the mass of common men than Magna Carta.
Consider then again the Concepts of Primitive Accumulation and its modern analogue coercive aggregation. And the questions of Value in USE and Value in Exchange and further into the Labour Theory of Value.
The myths , fetishisms and the reification all lead to the necessary and efficient bamboozlement of those who do the work by those who would rule them our propensity to buy into the myths are I think tied up in our EGO´s, always remembering that Ego is our outward expression of how we would wish to be seen by others.
Put simply just from my own experience I believed in democracy until I realised that I had now become superfluous to its purpose in driving through the agenda of those for who a sort of democracy exists ( Chomsky calls it Polyarchy). That is not to say I ever counted what was important was that I thought I did and that view is what the myths encourage.When we believe in the myths we are afforded the roles of Trustees very much like in any prison population where there are Trustees and Snitches or indeed the Uncle Toms of Slavery.
The Money myth , the myth of prudence, savings, the Protestant work ethic and catholic guilt the semiotic manipulations that lead us to hark back to a golden age of democracy that never existed. The unquestioned assumptions such as that Capitalism would be fine if the money were clean.
Consider Ruskins signs attached to wealth( http://letthemconfectsweeterlies.blogspot.se/2012/09/a-visit-to-web-site-for-william.html) Balkanization , demotion to 3rd world status for the large part of 1st world populations. In the new premier league of shiny Globalization make no mistake were all headed for the Nigerian Credit card system, the food stamps credit card system. We are not witnessing the end of democracy just the admission that it never existed and that what we once thought of as our money has in fact only been a stealthy form of Scrip.
http://letthemconfectsweeterlies.blogspot.se/2013/06/democracy-and-state.html
Well said, Roger.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=we7146EvS8s
Hey Mr Politician, ya know they payin me scrip
Been working a life time you given me Zip
Even in Debt I can’t make ends meet
It’s Crowded in the gutter and Mean on the street.
I think it is important to be truthful and acknowledge that money can come about in various ways. What matters is that we have a system that gives us the economy we want. Above all it is vital to understand that people really need to sell stuff as much as they need to buy stuff. Credit money comes about because it is better to sell excess production on credit than to fail to sell it. Hut tax token money shows that state issued money can be purely driven by tax demands BUT that does not mean that today all of the backing for the money we have is as chartalist tax tokens.
JPKoning has great examples of weird money on his blog. He describes usage of paper Iraqi Swiss Dinars and Somali Schillings that have no government monetary authority behind them. http://jpkoning.blogspot.co.uk/2013_05_01_archive.html They are purely driven by convention. Someone will acept them as payment in the hope that the next person will acept them from them. I guess gold is in reality no more than that. Gold only gets a small part of its exchange value on the basis of it being a commodity. Almost all of the value is for the same reason as Somali Schillings have value.
He also has a fantastic post about use of private credit bills of exchange as money. http://jpkoning.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/ripple-or-bills-of-exchange-20.html
Golem,
You should have clearly marked this as “can of worms” that nobody wishes us to discuss. We don’t know how it came about and most people even disagree as to what it is or should be. Is it a medium of exchange or a store of wealth? is it supposed to be both?
The assets of the elites are rarely measured in money. How much actual money is in the derivative pool of trillions? That is a whole tranche of assets that are money but not as we know it. the ownership of debt is also money but not as we know it. Unless of course things suddenly go mammaries up and then suddenly it is ours in the form of sovereign debt and liabilities.
Money is the currency we use and the fact that nations had to bail out banks prove this. Money is a utility and should be treated as such. A better question to ask is what is money for?
bill40
Quite simply:
“Money is the nothing you get in return for giving something, before you can buy anything” – Frederick Soddy
I’d run with the idea that money comes from a promise to provide labour, not goods directly – so a traded obligation. Something can still be done for someone obligation free, but even here are a lot of hidden social norms – a favour for a favour, and implicit requirements for sharing and fairness.
Feudal and ancient societies were full of these obligations – often imposed under force and threat of violence. Homage, fielty and in war a share of the winnings or booty. Translating the obligation into a physical form (eg grain, goods, plunder) is a natural extension – take the product rather than the labour. Such as translating obligations into small tradeable things of value (eg cigarettes in POW camps)
However, the king in particular has a problem. A complex supply chain of goods and obligations (eg wheat stores like tithe barns) could work, but it quickly becomes cumbersome and allocation and reallocation are difficult. In addition the king needs to keep account – to know when an obligation is due and when the obligation has been fulfilled. So say he decides to take obligations in precious metals, but then he needs to be sure of quality (Archimedes). And the king in meeting his obligations to his army, can pay in precious metals, but the solidiers need to know they each have their share. Putting the kings stamp to guarantee the coin is an obvious step. The king in effect authorises ‘money’ and that money can be used to both pay taxes and by the king to pay subjects, but it remains at it’s heart a standardised measure of obligations.
Even if money didn’t exist, the obligations would still arise and to make them tradeable something like money would need to be used (eg local token systems like Lotts, or voucher systems). Anything which has a rarity value and that is easily accounted can be used as a token. The legitimisation of the token by the king is just a quality stamp. It feels like the king creates money, only because of our (enforced) obligations to the king. Other tokens can be used to exchange obligations if parties agree (eg bitcoins, gold, stamps, shares in the South Sea Bubble company) away from the king’s enforcers.
Tax is the name we give to the obligation to the king, but the king could be the sovereign people democratically deciding on the interests of the people – so obliged by the people to do something, and so obliging the people to pay for it (provide labour). It exists independently of where you believe money is created. What the obligation should be, what is fair and what is an appropriate share of that obligation is open to discussion.
This is a good article. I especially like the angle that what is happening now is probably more important than the impenetrable origins of this mysterious and powerful phenomenon.
And sorry in advance; this is a very, very long comment.
I think money is the gatekeeper of the rot that is capitalism, and perhaps, deeper than that, what we think of as civilizational progress itself, what Charles Eisenstein calls The Ascent of Humanity, so it warrants close attention. I’ve come to agree with the “money is a creature of the state” position, but this requires having a quite tight definition of money, such that exchanging some group-agreed item in something resembling barter does not make that item money proper, but a sort of pseudo-money, a quasi-money, which looks money-like to our modern eyes. Perhaps that’s academic, but I like to think it’s a constructive distinction, because it prevents unhelpful mission-creep and helps us see what’s been going on these last 5 millennia or so.
David Graeber’s tracing of the origins of money along several different strands of development is the best I’ve read. Mix wergild with slavery with the early state with armies with taxation with markets and you end up with money as an exquisite tool of control for the state, as well as engine of civilizational progress. We see this mighty power, I believe, in the global domination of the nation state, the corporation and modern global markets. As such, I think the infamous State vs. Market battle is a Punch and Judy show, though also a ‘real’ one (that’s another topic). State and Market are joined at the money system via banks and all that Wizard of Oz chicanery. There’s no separating them, no matter how fervently libertarians and others might wish otherwise.
Regardless of money’s ‘true’ origins, it commoditizes everything, even itself. This is an important point. Even though, as Soddy rightly argues, money is a nothing (imagine escaping with all the earth’s money and precious metals to the moon – how rich would you be?), even though it can be ‘created out of thin air’ – theoretically at will by government – while money is money it necessarily has commodity value, and thus market becomes powerful too. Once money exists and functions, it is required while there are scarce goods and services to be bought and sold by societies that need them to live and enjoy life. It is equally true that money requires scarcity to exist, and thus must make scarce everything it touches/commoditizes. For a whole host of reasons it also requires or tends to push economic growth, such that Perpetual Economic Growth is an “imperative”, regardless of the fact that it is impossible. It is no coincidence that states and corporations also need to grow forever. Like I say, State and Market are joined at the money system.
So money commoditizes everything it touches, like King Midas turning everything he touched into gold. It also appears to measure value, but even in failing to do so (via the far-from-scientific price system) is extremely effective in shaping how government and people behave. If it makes no financial sense to do a thing, it is unlikely that thing will get done. This simple equation steers society. On Naked Capitalism last week, some wag wrote something like, “A long time ago money started talking. We haven’t been able to shut it up since.” That sums it up nicely. Money is a nothing of enormous power that can bewitch and tightly shepherd billions of people. If the market reacts positively to something it must be good, if it reacts negatively it must be bad, and we must obey the market. Money has become our endlessly opinionated new god, one that must grow and grow and grow to take over every aspect of our lives, just as the state seems to want to do.
One of the matters it holds sway over is how we culturally understand terms like wealth and productivity. Something vital like sleep is not productive, while something destructive, like fracking is. Productive (which is good) is that which produces something for sale. Non-productive (which is bad), is any activity which does not. Because of money and regardless of its origins, we are at the mercy of the market’s greed- and growth-based visceral instinct on what is good and what is bad. We all know that human life is far more nuanced than the market can possible understand or represent, and yet trying to imagine a society not run by money is far from easy. Can we demote money? I sure hope so, but believe that would necessarily demote the state as well. Neither half of the State-Market behemoth remotely wants this, and yet I strongly suspect that history is pushing us in precisely that direction. Money is all about control, as is the state, as is civilization, but time is running out for money. The question is whether or not this means time is running out for civilization too.
Two things are becoming increasingly evident and both are slowly eroding money’s utility (in its current form). One is the end of economic growth, the other is increasing technical sophistication, or technological unemployment. Because of the work ethic (remember that money strongly influences our sense of wealth and productivity), valuable work is that work the market says is valuable. Because consumerism (money’s wet dream) and perpetual growth do not deliver happy and healthy societies and are unsustainable to boot, and because we are technically capable of producing what humanity needs to live decent lives largely without human labour, money’s utility is under pressure. As fewer and fewer people can find a job, so fewer and fewer people have purchasing power. As the world runs out of ‘idle’ resources with which to fuel perpetual growth, so debts mount without being able to foster and provoke the main street economic growth that ultimately backs modern money (market-driven commodity price rises notwithstanding). And I suspect too that we are slowly growing tired of consumerism, though this element is impossible to prove, especially with China and India wanting to join the consumerist party.
How should we react to the end of growth and the ‘onslaught’ of technological unemployment? If we go for 100% employment, we implicitly agree with money that work that causes money to change hands is more valuable than work that does not and thus continue to allow money to be our master. Further, if we go the 100% employment route, are we not betting the farm on growth being reignited? Can the planet afford that? And is there enough meaningful economic work out there for everyone, or would most people be employed to do anything at all, just so as to have a job?
I think a guaranteed income made financially viable by a (necessarily) very different money system, alongside some process which shrinks the state and consumerism and market etc. as smoothly as possible, is the safest way forward, though also the path we’re the least likely to tread. Money so has us in its grip, we simply cannot imagine, at the cultural level, a sufficiently different system. And besides, the Money Power wants to keep itself alive and kicking, which makes deep change very unlikely. Sadly, in its death-throws, the things it is kicking are you and me, and the ecosystems which are its, and our, real sources of life and wealth.
Can’t resist squeezing my comment in between Toby, ( I am a big fan of Toby’s Blog), personally it has lit up more lights for me on ways of thinking outside of the defined establishment boxes. And Mikes Post which for me has the overtones of the same old stuff locked into the same Religious Economic debate the schisms of Economics theology are of no interest to me their Money, Their World and their selling out of the rest of humanity has left me atheistic with respect to that dismal science. We do not need a New Politics and a New Economics we need a new ecology where the interests of all are embraced not insulted with,´´They will never get their head around it anyway´´
And the campaign for practical reform, to get this society you wish to see is where exactly? And not just some esoteric waffle about some end result that magically appears, actual coherent steps getting from here to there that either utilise the present political structures, or engage the majority public.
Until you can produce something, wafflers & drivelers like yourself & Toby have precisely nothing to offer anybody.
Try this.
You are Prime Minister having just won a snap election in the UK yesterday. What are you going to enact in the first parliament & why?
(Hint: your vague waffling above, however worthy the principles espoused, give not the slightest clue.)
Mike,
we all know you are passionate about what you genuinely have decided is the best answer. But I don’t think you will attract people to your way of thinking by being as agressive as you are.
If you look back over many of your comments they follow a pattern which is to a) tell people they have got it all wrong and really don’t understand b) are wasting their time and everyone else’s by even looking at other ideas, c) they must immediately stop looking at other ideas – you have already looked and can tell them they are rubbish d) There is neither the need nor the time for them to stop to consider things for themselvs, and e) Not to worry, you have already found the answer and what they should do is go immediately to what you already know is the answer, learn it and join the saved.
If people don’t agree with you or offer other thoughts you immediately become aggressive and insulting and suggest they must be all right jack and not care about other people- as in your attack on Hawkeye.
Mike, maybe people want to find out for themsleves and think for themselves and discuss things themselves without you constantly telling them how wrong they are.
I want people to look at different ideas, think for themselves and discuss their ideas with other people. You seem to want them to look only at the idea you have already decided for them, is best for them.
If our slow witted wrongness so offends you – don’t wind yourself up by coming here.
.
Mike the focus of the solution should be from the bottom up where the needs and wants of the ordinary folk, which is most of us are addressed. Not some vision for them of what will work best to make them useful to those who decide what is best for them.
It is difficult to envision a system out side of the current paradigm. That sort of thought is considered taboo and illicits strong reactions as your own strong feelings , for me at least, confirm.
Evangelism is particularly un healthy to problem solving and it is very difficult for the evangelical to ever face up to their having been mistaken.
With respect to what the framework should be for establishing a new list of objectives and the tools which would be available for groupings in society to choose from to address their own concerns needs and wants that is all to be discussed. The highly centralised top down globalisation model clearly does not work it is well designed for performing the task it performs ( Not what is printed on the tin of course) and is not suitable for modification to a system that addresses the interests of most people.
To take the General to the specific in an internet blog is actually asking to much both of the writer and the reader there are also rather too many fields of interest to consider properly.
In short Mike my view is the Super Tanker that is Monopoly State Capitalist Globalism needs to be sent to the breakers yard and a New Fleet of Little ships and boats should be allowed to flourish in their own home waters informed by their own specialised knowledge of their own needs and wants and not those of the State and of The Global corporations. Its not a big idea and its not difficult to set out on paper but will involve trusting that our fellows are neither idiots or enemies and treating them with respect.
Liberation Economics, Anyone.?
No pedagogy which is truly liberating can remain distant from the oppressed by treating them as unfortunates and by presenting for their emulation models from among the oppressors. The oppressed must be their own example in the struggle for their redemption (Freire, 1970, p. 54).[7]
Likewise, the oppressors must also be willing to rethink their way of life and to examine their own role in the oppression if true liberation is to occur; “those who authentically commit themselves to the people must re-examine themselves constantly” (Freire, 1970, p. 60).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paulo_Freire
Roger
I’ll take your poetic vision over Mike’s dictats every time.
I’m sure that MMT has lots to offer, but so has Freire, Ruskin etc.
P.S. Your restraint in not rising to the bait is admirable.
Randall Wray’s Levy Institute paper on the origins of money is a good read & reasonably concise & accessible. (You will notice it draws on Graeber & others.)
http://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/wp_717.pdf
I’m sorry Golem, I haven’t actually waded thru’ your piece here. The first few sentences & a quick glance persuaded me that it’s a related piece to your previous on ‘Positive Money’.
I may as well make my point here concerning both. And that is that you are missing the point as much as the otherwise well intentioned folk at PM are.
The simple notion that adopting some sort of ‘full reserve’ banking system will suddenly stop all the financial sector scammers in their tracks is absurd & a distraction from addressing the equally, if not more important issues facing society.
Sure, banks create new credit out of thin air, but most of what they use is existing financial assets. It is far from clear – and there is no way of accurately predicting – what the macro effects of PM’s proposals would be.
But what we know +is+ far more important is the purpose for which lending is made in the economy. Regardless of how credit is made available, this requires regulation & vigilance to ensure productive, as opposed to speculative pyramid use of credit.
With whatever system of money/credit creation, there is no way round the requirement for oversight at the macro level.
So, this whole focus on money creation by PM and others is a stupidly distracting mess. One which the public at large will +never+ get their heads around anyway. It’s a complete waste of time in my opinion.
What we should be doing is getting back to a banking model & state of regulation that will be needed in any system. Things like junking the ‘originate to distribute’ model, proprietary trading & 95% of all the derivative trading crap that is purely extractive of the real economy. All of which is quite easy to do.
Then we need to address the massive problems in the real economy. Mass unemployment, underutilisation of resources & productive capacity. Increasing inequality & capture of democratic process.
And at the same counter what amounts to a 4+ decade capture of economics ‘thinking’ that in essence simply seeks to deny the very existence of ‘macro’ economics, as a distinct & separate discipline from ‘micro’, in order to deny any role much in the economy for governments. Most especially the essential counter-cyclical role arising from the no-brainer, but now denied, principles such as the ‘paradox of thrift’ or ‘fallacy of composition’.
Yes, it really does boil down to this. Neo-liberal economics of the last 4 decades, following things like Samuelson’s 180 degree distorted neo-classical assimilation of Keynes’ application of fundamental macro principles, is all about denying the principles that were unequivocally proven by events in the 20s & 30s. Those events were the disaster of un-payable reparations demanded on post WWI Germany & the wanton destruction by ‘austerity’ policies that created the Great Depression from a financial crisis.
Denial of macro economics is the prerequisite for denying a role for government which does not simply equate it to a business like like any other & a ‘cost’ to society.
As bill40 commented in the previous article, I favour MMT because it cuts thru’ all the crap to the essential issues.
The first of those is to have everybody realise how the present fiat money & banking system actually operates. And then to deduce correctly what the macro economic options are that flow from that. This is the purely descriptive part of MMT which just explains how things work.
The second part is prescriptive, to address the waste of underutilisation of resources & mass unemployment (& attendant social destruction). It requires that the government sector make an overall counter-cyclical contribution to the economy, in exact relation to that which the private sector is unable to provide. No more, no less. Within that, it makes no ‘distributive’ prescriptions whatsoever, beyond the Job Guarantee at an appropriate minimum wage, for the purpose of creating an optimal income ‘floor’ as an essential macro counter cyclical measure.
Beyond this essential counter-cyclical role, which, with the Job Guarantee & some simple rules for determining net spending to maintain inflation within an agreed limit, can be virtually automatic, government can get on with its proper role.
That proper role is re-distributive in some shape or form & for various social or environmental reasons. This is what democracy is about – or should be. Acting in the interests of the majority, which may, but most often will not be, coincident with the interests of those who wield similar levels of power via their ownership of wealth or capital.
There is no need whatever for the macro economics that both optimises our use of human and other resources, and at the same time ensures a minimum standard & dignity of life for all, to be confused or muddied with the re-distributive business of democratic politics.
MMT shows how society can operate this way.
Positive Money accepts the same principles of ‘functional finance’ & role for government, but leaves all that in the small print & offers no Job Guarantee or means of limiting inequality. And it is far from clear whether it can actually achieve any less gouging by the financial sector and it consequent economic instabilities.
Not quite as bad as rearranging the deckchairs while the ship sinks, but not a lot better than arguing how many life jackets we might attach to them for when the inevitable happens.
Gosh Mike I sure wouldn’t want you to have to ‘wade thru’ anything.
Mike
If you did happen to read Golem’s article you would understand the key point was about avoiding confrontational stances such as “my worldview is better than yours”, and therefore suggesting a more pluralistic approach.
It is actually closer in topic and spirit to the post a few months back on “the art of listening”.
Hawkeye,
How would you feel about writing something on Snoddy. Doesn’t have to be definitive or heavyweight. But an intro, something extolling his virtues and ideas and why you think he has been pushed into the dark?
Just a thought for you.
Oh I see Hawkeye, opinions on what might better address the problems of the real economy, y’know, mass unemployment & all that, are too contentious for you?
And clearly you can’t be arsed to address the points I’ve made above concerning the Positive Money campaign & why it’s missing the mark.
Guess things are ok in your world eh? Nothing urgent going on? No lost generations in your family then? Adequate access to health services?
Mike,
In one sentence you write:
“So, this whole focus on money creation by PM and others is a stupidly distracting mess. One which the public at large will +never+ get their heads around anyway. It’s a complete waste of time in my opinion.”
Then, later you write:
“I favour MMT because it cuts thru’ all the crap to the essential issues.The first of those is to have everybody realise how the present fiat money & banking system actually operates. And then to deduce correctly what the macro economic options are that flow from that. This is the purely descriptive part of MMT which just explains how things work.”
It would appear then that PM’s main thrust IS equivalent to the descriptive part of MMT, in aiming to describe and educate people as to how the current system works? So why are PM’s efforts “stupid” and “a waste of time”, whereas MMT aims to help “everybody realise how the present fiat money & banking system actually operates” is to be applauded? Surely they are both aiming to achieve the same thing?
Also, how do you know that PM’s proposals are not aimed at tackling fraud, corruption, inequality and full employment? You appear to be asserting criticisms without evidence. The burden of proof rests with you on this point, not with me.
As for my personal and private life, it is fairly comfortable for the most part, thanks for asking. But this doesn’t make me naïve, lazy or callous. I am deeply concerned about the course of events our country is taking, and the impact this will have on my children and their generation as a whole. I have written much that is severely critical of banking practices and the economics profession. In 2010 I made a submission to the Vickers Commission (ICB) regarding the flaws with “Originate to distribute” banking, which you can read here:
http://forensicstatistician.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/icb-submission-nov-2010.pdf
Perhaps some stances / advocates / people’s views etc. are in fact far more in alignment than one might first suspect, so attacking them personally & aggressively just creates unnecessary & unhelpful antagonism.
That was the thrust of Golem’s post, and it would be a shame if that message were to get lost.
I think that we need more.. naïve people these days.
A while ago, I came across an (isolated) Marx quote to the extent that the bourgeoisie was a way of living in the world (I totally agree..), a way of seeing the world, and Marx concluded that our eyes had been opened, and that we were “lucid”.
To me, that word, which has a lot to do with transparency, means a cultural loss of… innocence and belief, in any form.
But belief is also the capacity to believe.. your neighbor when he tells you something, and it has a lot to do with trust.
If you have to have columns of numbers to.. ahem.. PROVE something, where does the belief buck stop ?
When will you be convinced, and what will convince you ?
And what/who will you TRUST ?
No trust… no money. Dixit me. Call this an intuition.
As far as being lazy is concerned, I am going to relate an incident that happened six years ago to me, that I have probably trotted out here before.
In a Washington D.C. youth hostel where I watched immigrant Latinos wash dishes with constantly running clean water, I told the director that the waste involved was mind boggling.
I also told him that it was possible to make do with less… water.
Less water means a little more elbow grease. And he was shocked. Because, nice employer that he was, he couldn’t ask his employees to use.. elbow grease. That would be demeaning, right ?
It is insignificant to tax particular individuals with being lazy in a decadent culture. Because we are all.. lazy, compared to even our parents and grand parents. By definition. Because the machines have made us lazy, and radically transformed our ideas about what DIGNIFIED work is. In our daily lives, which is the place where we live, they have weakened us physically even, not to say what they have transformed in our psyches.
As far as being callous is concerned… do you realize just how much evil you can actively bring into this world through the desire to do your neighbor good IN HIS PLACE AND IN HIS STEAD ?
One of our most famous proverbs says “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”. Truer words were never spoken. We should… pause a little and reflect on this more often before taking off at breaknet speed again in our passion to do good.
Toby and I share (I believe..) the idea that the first place to start transforming this world is in our daily lives.
Every.. gesture, and act has an idea behind it, even if we don’t see the ideas. (And when we don’t see the ideas, be assured that others do see the ideas. We are not in the best place to see ourselves and what we do.)
One last word on the “stupid” word.
It is interesting. Because it tells us a lot about ourselves.
NOBODY wants to feel stupid. Feeling stupid is not good for our self esteem (feeling naïve too…).
But, but, but… can we know everything in the complex world we live in ? Can we even.. LEARN everything in this world ?
Are our lives one straight line from beginning to finish where we keep cramming the knowledge in, in order to become intelligent, educated, cultivated, whatever, to avoid feeling.. stupid ?
We have… a lot of faith (yep, I said faith…) in the perfectability of the human animal, I say.
I am not sure that that faith is particularly well placed…
Not sure he ‘waded’ through it dude 😛
Despite the haughty tone you’ve actually produced (IMO) your best summation yet of MMT there Mike.
I’ve long applauded Positive Money’s efforts at educating people as to how the current money system works but I’ve never been sure about them presenting their proposals as ‘a simple solution to the debt crisis’.
I guess Golem’s post does, to an extent, back up the idea that the mechanism of money creation is almost irrelevant. After all, if there are irreconcilable differences of opinion over how it came to be, what it is and how it works, how will we ever achieve a consensus on how to reform it?
The real problem seems to me to be the failure of democracy to resist the forces that have grown powerful under the current system. We need a reinvigorated democracy that produces governments that can e.g. put fraudsters in prison no matter how ‘systemically important’ we’re told they are, prevent people starving or freezing to death in their homes, prevent inequality from ripping societies apart and ending up in violent confrontation, decide not to go to war at the behest of the US or powerful private interests, take measures to halt runaway global warming and replace dependency on fossil fuels etc etc
A state with a truly democratically elected and accountable government would, it seems to me, always have the tools at its disposal for achieving all of the above no matter which system of money creation it was operating in.
Isn’t money system reform putting the cart before the horse?
Positive Money have just launched a ‘QE for Jobs’ campaign though which seems a lot more realisable than their ultimate objective.
@ Jamie-Griff: “…the idea that the mechanism of money creation is almost irrelevant…”
It would be if it were not for the coercion enforcing one particular variety of money.
A true free market would be characterized by competing currencies.
“The real problem seems to me to be the failure of democracy …”
Indeed. But we never had democracy. What we have in the West is electoral politics. This is an entirely different animal. Broken down into arithmetical equations, Electoral Politics must inherently and necessarily result in the concentration of power.
This is not to say that Democracy in the original Greek version would be more efficient or more desirable. But we must be aware that electoral politics results in the concentration of power and that is what we have to deal with today.
Hi Guido,
I don’t really believe in the idea of free markets. Certainly not when it comes to money which, as Karl Polanyi points out in The Great Transfromation is, along with labour and land, a ‘fictitious commodity’.
I think you’re right about coercion enforcing one particular type of money though. And about electoral politics. I suppose ‘democracy’ is a rather vague, wooly term – I’m in need of a better one to describe what I’m after. A condition where people are actually represented at governmental level, not one where politicians simply pay lip service to the wishes of the electorate while carrying out the wishes of the interests which have captured them.
Electoral politics does result in the concentration of power but surely there are ways to ensure that that power is used in the service of the majority and not an elite few?
“…surely there are ways to ensure that that power is used in the service of the majority and not an elite few?”
Only if you change the system to one that has the firm mandate to impoverish and imprison those in positions of power that don’t act in service of the majority. And you’ll never get that, because the people who are in such positions of authority/power/wealth don’t want a system that creates a level playing field for all. They’d have to work for a living, same as everyone else – and what’s the point of being rich and powerful if you have to get up for work every morning?
The fact that they’d be getting paid substantially more than the average guy for their labours is beside the point for most of them. The true measure of wealth, from the position of the wealthy, is that all the mundane tasks of their everyday life are done by someone else. At heart, it stems from both innate laziness (and for those ‘inheritors of wealth’ brought up in a house full of servants and sycophants, what other attitude could you grow up with?) and the smug knowledge that you’re ‘special’ and therefore don’t have to subject yourself to the indignities of learning how to cook, clean or – Heaven forefend! – use the dishwasher!
Unless she’s young, pretty and intimidated enough by your ‘special-ness’ that she’ll keep her gob shut! Funny how predatory sexual behaviour often accompanies the drive to earn (I use the term loosely!) pots of money, ain’t it?
There is nothing intrinsically wrong with money used as a means of exchange or payment for services rendered – it is the distorted applications which create mythological values that, through time and insidious licence, corrupts both its self and the society it is supposed to serve.
David, there are several aspects which I would like to consider here.
The first is arrow-heads and pots. An arrow-head or a pot would be stone or clay but for man’s ingenuity and dexterity. These things are created, and this is the essence of humanity. Money creation is a step further – but this is but one aspect of money.
It needs to be recognized that there is a clear difference between credit and debit. These first became entangled in 15th century Florence and the result was the concept behind double-entry book-keeping. You have your outgoings on one side and the other your incomings.
Money creation relies on this principle, and to my mind is an abuse of this powerful tool. The one side is a contract with the central bank on which you pay interest and the other you can lend out and hopefully make a profit. With automated programs and electronic PDF signatures, it’s easy to see how to make a profit.
You implement a program that forms contracts on one side and issues credit on the other. This recipient is another computer algorithm. The chaos of derivatives is one result. With trillions of them, is there any hope to unwind them? This kind of thing is lunacy demonstrated in a very real way. It all makes sense until it all goes wrong. Not for nothing is the devil in the detail.
As to value, that is something perceived by individuals. I could go on, only this is a comment and it’s already too long. Let me just say that it is part of the interplay between the forces of credit and debit – which are antagonistic but not opposing.
Hello Gemma,
I had not thought about credit and debit as two quite different things. Of course they are but I have always thought of their opposition, I suppose, to be like matter and anti-matter or light and shade. One, the necessary balance to the other. But I would like to hear more of your thoughts on them if you have the time and the inclination.
You probably know that double entry book keeping was used first, I think, by Venetian merchants in the 1400s. The person now widely refered to as ‘the father of accounting’ (what an epithet!) was Luca Paccioli. He wrote one of, if not the first defintive treatise on accounting, the ‘Summa de Arithmetica’, which was published in Venice in1494.
I think it is interesting, given what you raise, that double entry book keeping was codified at the same time and same place as what historians call the invention of the modern sense of self. The Renaissance in Italy.
Luca was friend and student to Piero della Francesca who was one of those who ‘invented’ the modern self. Piero’s contribution was to help invent perspective in painting. He wrote the definitive treatise on it. And, most importantly, his painting are perhaps the very first to portray people caught in moments of personal revelation.
Sorry to digress but this is a favourite topic of mine.
Thankyou for your response, David. Both informative and enjoyable.
Don’t worry about the digressions – they reveal more about the real nature of money than is generally realized.
In response to the issue of bread, above, it is pertinent. We spend no small amount of money on boxes that surround our food – which we throw away immediately. That can be as much as 80% of the purchase price and you put your money in the bin. Use all the arguments you like about efficiency, travel and keeping qualities – it does not counter the fact that few people would throw their money in the bin! Yet how many people realize what they are doing, as it’s so habitual to buy food in boxes. After all, how else do you buy pizzas?? Maybe the Roman street sellers could tell us?
As a further aside – do you know anything about the magnetic and electric forces? They are in quadrature as the engineers say. To you and me that means at right-angles. Believe me, this is more antagonistic than mere opposition. The dynamic is one of mutual mis-understanding, as it were.
My point is that in bringing the electric and magnetic forces together in the way that the likes of Faraday brought what we commonly call electricity. It is powerful: you can do things with ti that you cannot otherwise do. The reality of electricity is that you have a force – magnetism – that is effectively constrictive. The electric force is expansive. The magnetic force is antagonistic and would crush the electric force; the electric force would expand greatly and without much effect were it allowed to – like a hot air balloon.
Form a balance between the two and you have something incredibly powerful.
This is more of an analogy to the credit-debt problem than you may have been aware of before.
Put another way, if you have a business you need fixed systems (constraints) you also need a dynamic component (imaginative, expansive). With these in balance, you have a business.
These are very different examples that express this process. Any effective regulation is antagonistic. Look hard enough where you have any form of power, and you’ll see quadrature. In the steam engine you have the expansive steam harnessed in a container and released by way of a cylinder – the regulatory component of which is always at right-angles to the power rods.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walschaerts_valve_gear
This may or may not be relevant, I will let you judge.
Last week, I went into the bank, and asked the teller whether my Visa card was a credit card, or a.. debit card. Online purchases from the U.S. got me confused.
In France, ALL of my purchases are debited from my card at the end of the month, I do not pay a minimum payment.
The teller told me that the Visa card was a credit card.. for all intents and purposes.
But… in my opinion my FRENCH visa card is NOT a credit card, and for your information, credit cards à la américaine do not exist in France, even now. Purchases are debited from you card at the end of the month.The only leniency involved (is it credit ? hard to tell..) is that you can pay more for your card so that your purchases are not debited immediately, but at the end of the month. Some.. credit, huh ?
So… how can a debit card really be.. a credit card at the same time unless globalization has so seriously sent the shit hitting the fan that we no longer know which end is up ?
My linguistic background tells me that when… “fair is foul and foul is fair”, well… confusion is in the air…
That means that we no longer really even know what we are talking about.
That’s bad news. That means that we need to start carefully looking at the differences between what goes on in our individual nation states, and less at.. what we THINK we have in common with the neighboring nation state.
We are less.. ONE than we think we are. Thank.. God.
A debit card is an (almost) instant transaction. Your credit card allows you up to 30 days credit before you must pay interest on it. A debit card does not have that facility.
Plus your French Visa card isn’t a French Visa card – it’s a Californian Visa card as their HQ is in San Fransisco (or somewhere like that).
As to nation states, what about the German speakers native to the land of Denmark, and the Danish speakers native to Germany? Is the Schleswig-Holstein problem alive and well??
Or should that be Slesvig-Holsten? 😉
Na, I’m not buying. Plus.. you seem to think that you know things that may not play out on the terrain.
The headquarters of French visa in San Francisco ?
Maybe, why not ?
But… when I pay with my French visa, whoever the transaction is routed through.. French territorial law still holds.
Yes, France is still a nation state, last time I checked.
If you ever had any doubt… you need to find yourself at the border, in an airport somewhere (they all look alike, right ??), with.. a French border guard facing you, and asking for that consummate symbol.. your passport.
And if you want to have an idea of what the American Government is.. you need to find yourself at an airport with an American border guard facing you. That will put things firmly in their place…. I think.
Nothing like a physical body to make things.. REAL for you, right ??
Hi Gemma,
I might be misreading your comment, but wanted to toss this into the ring:
Ingham: “[M]oney necessarily consists in social relations between economic agents and between them a monetary ‘authority.’”
Keynes: “Something which is merely used as a convenient medium of exchange on the spot may approach to being Money…But if this is all, we have scarcely emerged from the stage of Barter”. Me: If the barter stage ever existed! There is apparently no evidence it did.
L. Wrandal Wray: “The clay shubati (received) tablets record these and other debts (Innes, 1913). Each tablet indicated a quantity of grain, the shubati, the name of the person from whom received, the name of the person by whom received, the date, and the seal of the receiver.”
We don’t need double entry bookkeeping to have credit-debt relations, we just need human society, something like a State, and private property.
Heinsohn and Steiger: “Property titles exist in addition to possessional titles. The former are rights to encumber property in order to back money, or to pledge it as collateral in order to obtain credit, while the latter are rights to the physical use of goods and resources. […] Property titles are absent in pure tribal and feudal societies, which explains why interest and money, the business operations of an economy in its true sense, are wanting there.”
Sorry for all this gumph, but there is so much research on this stuff it’s impossible to stop looking, and impossible to be sure you are right. What I think is clear is that money is tightly related to property, State and debt and credit. The invention of double entry bookkeeping later on in human history merely codifies this, gives it a standardised framework, so to speak, and is not the beginning of credit-debt relationships.
As to giving gifts and expecting nothing in return; very true, but generosity evokes a feeling of gratitude, which is like a debt, is perhaps the origin of debt. David Graeber points out that the word freedom has its etymological roots in friendship, and that friendship is kept going by debt (“what have you done for me lately?”) and gratitude. Any relationship where one person is always giving but never receiving from the partner is likely to breakdown. There’s nothing wrong with debt/gratitude. I think interest and measuring it ‘exactly’ via money gives debt a bad name. Although, humans have shown that they want precise measurements when it comes to injustice (wergeld).
Thankyou for your response, Toby.
However, I will re-state: debt and credit are entirely unconnected to money that is given freely. Credit has terms and debt is a bond. A gift has neither. It is an important distinction to make and one that goes to the very heart of what freedom really is.
If a gift is seen in terms of debt, this then must demand the question why it is seen in this light.
Freely given money is given freely. No ifs, buts, terms or ties.
If the person receiving this sees it as anything else, that their problem and one that shows that they cannot think in terms that are free. If you think that every action has a reaction, you are limiting your thinking.
If a person should ‘give’ gratitude in return, it should be done so freely. It was not expected nor was it demanded. It is a gift in return. In this way a smile is worth a million dollars to a sad man.
In a relationship two people can give of themselves things that the other cannot do. That these things are unequal is of no matter – they are the stronger for having each other’s company. The value is in the whole and both contribute as they are able.
If you have friends with whom you have established a contract in the way you describe, are they friends? Or just business associates?
A friend is someone with whom you enjoy time. You enjoy their company more than being alone. That is mutually beneficial and cannot be defined even if you tried. This means you cannot form value judgements for there is nothing to judge. This takes it completely outside the world of exactitude and into the realms where statistics come to life.
Hi Gemma,
I appear to have misrepresented my position. I don’t want to measure freindship at all, what I mean (and others mean too) is that gifts inspire a feeling of gratitude. How this gratitude is expressed is up to each person. We can relate that feeling of gratitude to a sense of unmeasured indebtedness, only the word debt has been so ‘poisoned’ over time that it seems almost like an affront to make that connection. Freindship includes feelings of gratitude (which are not measured), and can be abused. There are one-sided freindships which can break down, not because someone has a kept a precise tally, but has a sense of being taken advantage of. As to a debt being a bond, the expressions ‘bonds of friendship’ and ‘my word is my bond’ hint at how important debt is to society. Bonds bind society together, to be redundant about it. 😉
And of course money can be given freely, but it can’t be created freely. For money to have meaning, for it to be money at all, it has to be a claim (a credit) on something not-money, on goods and services. Otherwise it’s just a piece of paper or a coin or digibit on a computer hard drive. Like I said in my first comment, you are not rich if you have all the money in the world but are stuck alone on the moon with your stash. Money is about debt and credit at its root.
How would you define freedom?
You say “but it can’t be created freely” – yet you can give it away freely.
No ifs, buts, terms or ties.
The debts you can choose to keep for yourself.
So what is freedom? That’s a tough one in a world that’s fixed on logical reasoning and evidence.
Let’s take an example. A computer can win or lose at chess and it matters to the computer not a whit. A man can win a chess game and feel wonderful having won. A real chess master can play a game of chess and ENJOY LOSING.
Why?
Because it was a thrilling game that was filled with intellectual challenges, unexpected moves and he was beaten by a player who is as good as he is.
In fact he’d not enjoy winning to an inferior player – he’d turn the table and fight against his position just for the enjoyment of seeing his junior win.
Freedom in an every-day setting is to do something that you don’t have to do. There will be no response as it is something quite daft like getting off at the wrong railway station. Walking down the stairs backwards, or just tapping your feet.
It’s not much – it is a beginning. Once you get the idea, freedom becomes a little more tangible.
That a thing can be given away freely does not define the thing, it defines a person’s relationship with that thing at the moment of giving it. Money’s creation, being definitionally tied to credit-debt relationships, means that money is in part defined by credit-debt, inescapably. That money is a thing that can be given freely, and that it is understood that something of value has been given, ties into the fact of money’s role in society and its creation as a credit-debt entity.
I’ve always liked the line “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose”, but I think I like your explanation too. What I see in the first half is the process of dedication to something that binds you to it (perhaps via passion), say mastering chess, such that, almost as if a reward at a later stage, you become free to enjoy the game for the game and not for the ego-based need to win. Then you have earned a gift you can share with others, as you describe. And I like ‘the freedom to do things you don’t have to do’ explanation too. Those little things that mean you can enjoy your time in some way, some way that you think up. No matter how bound we are to jobs and other commitments, this kind of freedom can be like a breath of fresh air at times.
Thanks, Toby! When you say “it defines a person’s relationship with that thing at the moment of giving it” sums it all up nicely.
The very real problem with money is thinking of it as an end in itself. Most bankers do – and thereby tie themselves to something that is actually worthless. After all, the only worth money has is the things you can buy with it.
If you have no interest in those things, money is then worthless.
And now I am off to enjoy the afternoon air in Utrecht. And of course, I do have to pay for the train ticket 😉
One of the reasons why we are having this conversation is because we are bilingual, you know ??..
Since I have mucho tiempo to think, and it is a passion, I find it eery how when I start doing something, and cautiously talk about it to someone, they too, very often have started doing it (or saying it, as it may be).
As though, in our megalopoles, we are moving closer and closer to the school of fish state.
This is definitely not a comforting thought. Particularly in a civilization that prizes… freedom, and individuality so much.
On freedom, by the way, I think that it is important to link it to choice.
We have lots of choices in our daily lives, at least, most of us…
Ironically enough, it is probably in our daily lives, that place which we have seriously deserted, and denigrate constantly, that we have the most freedom.
On replication : I think it is essential to differentiate repetition, and replication. In repetition, as I understand it, analogy is the driving force, and what is repeated is not repeated… EXACTLY. Replication is repeating something IDENTICALLY.
Now look at the “ident” word, and you can also see.. “identity” in it. Our modern sense of identity seems to be tied up with exactitude and replication.
I side with repetition… for freedom’s sake ?
Charles Eisenstein’s ex-wife (to source the following quote) puts it very will too:
“Money is only yours the moment you spend it.”
I love that idea. Also, at all other times, money does not really exist. It is ‘conjured’ into existence at the point of exchange, exists only virtually for that nano-second, then disappears again. Kind of spooky, kind of spiritual.
Enjoy Utrecht. I’m about to head off home to Berlin after a long week, and the weather here is wonderful!
Oh! I was off to Berlin for Saturday – only we cancelled it. I’m off to see Brian in Luneburg on Sunday instead. Enjoy your weekend, Berlin’s a great city.
I’m not even sure the money exists for the nano-second you mention. It’s only paper after all. Or annoying little bits of metal in the bottom of your purse.
Interesting, Toby, but…
How do you know when/what you have received when you give ? How do you know, for example, that you have NOT received something ?
Perhaps exchange is more complicated than we think, because relation is more complicated than we think ?
When somebody tells me “you’re beautiful”, I can say that those words are worth… a lot. Worth more, even, than lots of little trinkets. (Na.. I’m not mercantile enough to insist on somebody PROVING that they love me by giving me tons of little or big trinkets.. See “the Merchant of Venice” for details.)
Those words cannot be exchanged for anything, Toby. They are WORTH, and worth a lot, because they are addressed solely to me, by a unique person whose worth is.. worthy to me in that particular place and time. I believe that they are freely given as GRACE which I have no need to merit, and indeed, cannot merit. There is no particular.. REASON why that particular person finds me beautiful. It can’t be explained, or justified. It just.. is.
One of the difficulties of this debate comes from the necessity for money to be able to TRANSFER worth/value from one place/person to another.
When something becomes transferable, its UNIQUE property disappears behind its SYMBOLIC value.
And, as symbolic value takes precedence over the particular, unique value, a certain form of temporality opens up too. And representation opens up, too. (Remember that any form of government is based on representation.)
Money is related to our perception of time.
One last thing, Toby.
I am responding to another comment here, but when you link money to the State, and property, you forget one very important element.
Our modern technology is linked to money, the State, and property.
But really, if you took out an etymological dictionary like the OED, you could look up the word.. industry, for example, and see how our civilization IS an organic structure in which it is impossible to excise any.. evil ? without touching its basic.. fabric, as we say.
Mea culpa, my friend, I am repeating myself here. 😉
A very interesting statement you make “Money is related to our perception of time.” – I had come to that conclusion myself. More to the point, as a marketer I have been digging into the very nature of our perception of time. Which, as you imply, is flexible to say the least.
As to tying the unique to the temporal, that is the very secret of nature itself. As an aside – just remember that every leaf in creation is unique. There will only ever be one leaf exactly like it in all the aeons of creation. Every action, reaction and happening can – and can only happen once.
My point is that in living in a world where predicability is an extremely important element does not mean that events cannot be unique. For all the timetables in the world, British trains will always be late because of leaves on the line, and German ones because of the density of traffic they encounter in the Ruhrgebiet.
Modern thinking is applied to things that are replicable. Modern science demands it – and demands it of a world that can only deliver it in narrowly defined circumstances. Thus you have technology and modern science tied to this narrowly defined slice of nature – and totally incabable of dealing with the rest of it.
The real issue is that the understanding of money lies in its perceived value. As a marketer I have an hourly rate that would make most people’s eyes pop. That the value I deliver is well in excess of the sums I charge means that I am well worth it – in the eyes of my clients at least.
More to the point is that they are nice people to work for, and I enjoy my work. That in itself is a value judgement. Only can you put it in financial terms?
Agreed on most of this.
To a certain extent.. continuity in our civilization demands replication, and the possibility to transfer value (see my comments below about our religious heritage, for example).
And continuity is not only important for civilization, it is important for.. life itself..
You are a trader ? I’m not sure what a marketer is. Will you explain it ?
I am.. a housewife..
Nice to meet you.
Housewife, eh? Best business training out. Tie that to female intuition and you’ll run rings around the lot out of Harvard.
As to marketing – I use my insights to improve a company’s conversation with their clients. Most businessmen speak to their clients as if they were all the same. Only whilst humans are broadly the same across the planet, it is their differences that make – how shall I put it? – the difference. I’m not speaking about racism, just those people who prefer the colour green to brown. They will differentiate themselves – and it is then to these people a businessman needs to speak to. I make sure he’s speaking about green-ness to those who like green – as it were.
As to continuity, there are needs we have in common. There are others we do not. You speak French, I speak Dutch. We both eat, only our tastes are different. How much of that is individual or cultural is another matter. Nor is will it be the same for everyone. The problem with continuities is that they become individual very quickly.
Jesse (see his comments on the previous post) quoted Jeffrey Sachs in his piece re Bernie Madoff:
“But I meet a lot of these people on Wall Street on a regular basis right now. I’m going to put it very bluntly. I regard the moral environment as pathological. And I’m talking about the human interactions that I have. I’ve not seen anything like this, not felt it so palpably.
These people are out to make billions of dollars and nothing should stop them from that. They have no responsibility to pay taxes, they have no responsibility to their clients, they have no responsibility to people… counterparties in transactions. They are tough, greedy, aggressive, and feel absolutely out of control, in a quite literal sense. And they have gamed the system to a remarkable extent and they have a docile president, a docile White House and a docile regulatory system that absolutely can’t find its voice. It’s terrified of these companies.”
It’s terrified of these companies! Complete capture. Jesse also had this to say about Bernie Madoff:
“And the irony is that even the work of Harry Markopolos did not lead to Madoff’s downfall. The market panic in 2007 caused a run for liquidity, and at that point Madoff’s scheme fell apart of its own weight. Madoff himself was able to plan his own confession, and make whatever provisions he wished beforehand as far as records and evidence.
In court he ‘copped a plea’ and was sentenced to 150 years, but did not speak, did not implicate anyone else.
There is a strong suggestion that very powerful and well connected people were involved in this, and that if he had taken some other course of action, Madoff would have been a dead man. This occurred before as the documentary shows, including the silencing of witnesses.”
A dead man!
Good luck changing this system peacefully. The presidents and prime ministers are hand-picked puppets, especially chosen because they WILL go along, and only AFTER they’re installed as the heads of their respective parties does the public get a democratic vote. But what the public doesn’t realize is that they get a choice between shark A and shark B.
And good luck changing this system violently. The sharks are already encircling the ships (countries), fully prepared to act to save their system (Patriot Act, NDAA, etc.)
These are the types of people who have controlled kings, queens and present-day leaders.
Read Jesse’s article again. They all knew about Bernie Madoff, were profiting off his scheme. He didn’t talk, they didn’t talk, and all is well.
These are the people we are up against, and nobody gets too upset as long as their house price keeps rising. You could almost say our silence makes us partners in crime.
http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.ca/2013/06/net-asset-value-premiums-of-certain.html
Good article, Jesse!
Hello Backwardsevolution,
Yes I read the article as I do many of Jesse’s. I agree it is very good. What he has to say about the insitutional desire NOT to see anything or discover anything that might upset the rewarding (for the few) short-term stability of embedded corruption is sordid and makes me angry.
And I agree about that the state of modern democracy is now reduced to being ‘allowed’ to chose between shark A and shark B.
But I do not feel despondent or without hope. Yes, we will need good and brave people who are willing to put themselves in harm’s way, to speak truth to power and if necessary to stand in front of its tanks.
We have always needed them and they are always among us – just unremarked, even by themselves, till the moment comes.
I want to second that Golem. Light and dark. The incorruptible and the corrupted. Just to add that the moment is here. Its called now.
David
Truly inspirational words.
Brian
@ backwardsrevolution & Golem
This monetary system is predicated on expanding debt. If this were not the case, then any other system could have been chosen and implemented.
If someone has decided to impose this particular variety of monetary system, this entity is aware that this system can only hold provided the credit markets are expanded.
If credit market expansion stalls or, Ye Gods, reverses, this monetary system collapses.
Hence, the entity that has imposed this monetary system has a vested interest in ensuring that credit markets are expanded.
But debt conforms to the law of diminishing marginal utility. This simply means that you need progressively more debt to obtain the same result.
As the diminishing marginal utility of debt reaches its mathematical limit, the sponsor of the system has a vested interest in assimilating other systems in order to extend the life of the system.
In this optic, one could see the utility of creating entities like the UN or the IMF whose job is, respectively, to churn great amounts of money and to induce more debt in other systems and, ideally, debt that is tied to the hegemon’s monetary system through floating exchange rates (in this respect, the WTO was a God send for the Fed).
In this optic too, one could see the need to allow the Madoffs of this world to carry on as long as possible…. Madoff like a number of other aberrant constructs that are allowed to carry on despite the myriad ref flags they raise along the way…
I think we need to be honest with ourselves and confront the issue that the overall UK economy has a big stake in predatory finance. It is not just people who work in a few banks. Both New Labour and the Tories chose neoliberalism. We created an economy geared around fostering asset price inflation and that enticed in capital flows from across the world to ride that asset price inflation. That gave us a free lunch. It enabled us to buy real goods from the rest of the world and the money we created to pay for them was returned here to bid up the price of pre-existing or even purely paper assets here. It allowed us to get stuff that most of the world couldn’t afford and only provide account statements in return.That was how Thatcherism worked and Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were carrying on with Thatcher’s project. We have to choose to forgo that free lunch if we want things to be on a sound honest footing.
I had a go trying to unpick the mechanics of this in http://directeconomicdemocracy.wordpress.com/2013/05/09/isnt-a-financialized-economy-the-goose-that-lays-our-golden-eggs/
stone – good piece. Thanks.
Nothing wrong with a ramble. I agree. But why be so afraid of the forbidden word?
MORTGAGE
90% of all money created out of nothing, as a loan, is secured against the value of land – mortgages.
Banks biggest asset by a long way. All other obligations: bonds, stocks, iou’s, paper gold everything is also secured against that value in the end.
If land value rises had a cost of production (labour and capital invested) there would be no profit in its speculation by everyone, not just the banks. Price would be discovered by supply and demand, rather than manic speculation – a legalised ponzi as is the economy everyone is engaged in not just banks.
If you disagree that all credit money is secured against the value of land, then please show what it is secured against. Outer Space? Love? Good ideas?
Try and get your head around this. Money is NOT wealth. It is brought into circulation for mortgages.
You own a lot of property in land. You willingly take the unearned income from it, just like banks. So why are you seeking their scrutiny before your own? This question will be a psyhic one for you, not one you can rationalise.
What kind of Vehicle do you drive?
http://www.meltfund.com/2013/06/the-vehicle.html
On a global level most of ‘us’ are wondering how did ‘they’ get away with stealing ‘our’ land and drive shit cars, except that most of us just walk…….keep your guilt to yourself
and don’t think that just because you assume that you is we/us makes it true or ok. Some of us just succumb to base selfishness more readily than others rather than being truly Selfish (true to the Self) and thus benefiting all of Us
…this message was not sent from my Apple,Samsung……
Suppose that the credit-debit agreement isn’t secured against anything?
Even leveraging the entire land-mass of the North American continent would allow for the $1200 trillion derivatives mountain. To me the problem with this sort of thing is that it’s entirely notional – or computer based. Only the fallout from it’s collapse will be real enough – as are the profits that support the banks that landed on the “go to jail” square years ago.
With apologies if this has been mentioned already we also need to discuss money scarcity. MMT describes the quantity of money available to the treasury as a statement of accountancy. The exact figure is infinity minus one penny and this sum is always available regardless of past budget outcomes. This is why there can be expotential growth forever, although whether that is a desirable outcome is another matter.
This leads us to distribution of said money in the form of currency. Friedmans’ neo liberal creed would have us believe that scarcity is best achieved by top down microeconomic monetarist policies that favour industry and banking and that this wealth will trickle down as workers compete to offer their labour. The outcomes we have witnessed make this one of the most disproven concepts of all time.
MMT takes a macroeconomic view and is bottom up. The Job Guarantee closes the output gap and boosts external demand and those at the top compete for the spending power. This will not eradicate inequality and people will still get rich. I am probably as “intensely relaxed” as Peter Mandleson about people getting filthy rich as long as the system delivers the maximum possible benefit to the maximum number of people.
In a previous article Golem touched upon collateral. That is wealth and the two best examples of these are land and gold as touched upon by Rodger above. Such assets can be transferred into currency in any system.
Money is different things to different people and therefore defies explanation. It is not a maze we should get into. Money is the currency we plebs use everyday to live if we’re lucky. Our main access to this money is through selling labour. It is therefore immoral to deny anyone access to money by flawed economics.
I also wanted to raise the issue of altruism and the fact Libertarians regard this as an act of sabotage of the free market but I have wittered on long enough.
What a blessing it is when Empires over extend themselves.
The cusp of their growth wave always announces their inevitable collapse. And here we are.
The infectious spread of their crimes and idiocy is as contagious as is our hypocrisy.
This is nothing new and is ubiquitous in our Earth.
Now that crowning Babylon has again closed its wide doors to the remnant, who live ripped by a parliament of whores, with no justice to prosecute the crimes, our false masters having a perverted imperial belief in innate superiority and sociopathic arrogance swear anew that they are, once again, strong enough to impose their desolation worldwide; their captured communicators
this time, in our eleventh hour, not only with dollops of fear and black flags, digital insurgencies and advanced technologies but with NATO as their henchman; the racketeer of the bankers’s cabal. So much wishful thinking:
” The more things change, the more they stay the same” .
Have they not already ” rebuilt the ruins ?” True enough.
So much pillaging, corruption and outright fraud and already they added to them steroids, as they circle the drain.
Have they not also taken a large part of ” The Great Spoil” and financially enslaved pretty much the whole world ?
General Wesley Clark was clear with the list for planned enslavements ;
while ” A New Strategy for Securing the Realm” clarified the agendas from the High Elites and their great price beyond.
And there is ” The Project for the New American Century “. And all the rest.
But something stands in their way and numerous it is: those countless true followers of the Prophet Mohammed who will not bow to usury and the remnants of the true western tradition also, who join with them against this Sabbatean kingdom of global corporate control.
Both know that
” all successful revolutions are the kicking of a rotten door .” [ JK Galbraith. ]
and both have a sure and tried history of persecution and defilement, going back to their foundations, and are wise to the hard rain that is going to fall. And they understand non violence and know its strength. Formidable indeed.
Those powers that Be should not Be and won”t Be for much longer.
” Build your wall as high as you want. We are going to meet you on your side. ”
[ atri. to Genghis Khan ]
It is an approaching change of paradigm; it cannot come soon enough.
” If you think that you are too small to make a difference,
you have never spent a night with a mosquito.” [The Dalai Lama.]
” The power to make a small piece of paper,not worth one cent, by the inscribing of a few names, to be worth a thousand dollars, was a power too high to be entrusted
to the hands of mortal men. ” [ J. Calhour, US. Senate 1841.]
” When small men begin to cast big shadows, it means that the sun is about to set.”
[ LinYutang]
Enjoyed that read.
The renaissance is due.
And it should not be ironic, because it almost always is, that greed and the bloodlust for more is the undoing.
And the beacons that shine through time light up again as the wreck nears it’s final rest.
The lighthouses make clear what has been hidden, the quest for more once again too black and ugly to covert.
Literary masterpieces of men stand the test of time, but only when all around has been reduced to rubble.
Unmanned, the wreck on the rocks, the Somali Shilling tells a current tale of growth upon a scorched earth.
@ Gemma and Toby
Fantastic exchange. Greatly enjoyed it.
Sorry for not reading all of the comments. Please forgive me. I feel the need to limit my Internet activity, so pop in and out from time to time.
I understand our current problems with money as stemming from our desire to collectively and individually believe that, in our exchanges, which are relations (as Toby says) we can cancel any form of debt incurred for a SERVICE, for example, by throwing money around. (I call this idolatry of filthy lucre, in reference to our long religious heritage which still determines our behavior and beliefs, whether we know, or acknowledge it, or not. Under idolatry of filthy lucre, money buys, and can buy, everything, with no exception.)
Example : you get on a public bus driven by a flesh and blood bus driver with a ticket you have bought with material filthy lucre (material is the key word here…), or with virtual plastic money, and behave as though purchasing the ticket with filthy lucre entitles you to ignore the flesh and blood bus driver. Like… by buying your ticket, by PURCHASING THE SERVICE, you have bought.. the bus driver, too, and are thus exempted from being polite, and acknowledging YOUR DEBT to him, and his role in your service.
Perhaps… ignoring the bus driver, or smiling and saying hello, even “thank you” is an indication of two ways of being in the world ?
One in which.. by forking over filthy lucre you have the right to be served. Your money buys.. everything.
One in which : filthy lucre buys the service, which is dissociated from the person offering the service. In order to perhaps.. cancel the debt you incur to the person who is serving you, you offer him or her immaterial objects of value, say.. words, which also magically produce effects that sometimes money does. Politeness, which exists though words and deeds, gives added.. value to our exchanges, doesn’t it ?
A world without politeness, a world where we walk past others without acknowledging their presence is hard to live in, i find, at least.
Oddly enough, a world where filthy lucre cancels all form of obligation is one in which service regresses (to me, at least..) to slavery.
Yes… you can receive filthy lucre in exchange for your service, you can even receive lots of filthy lucre for your service and still.. be a slave. Pretty subtle, don’t you think ? Slavery is not a simple question of filthy lucre.
Another source of great difficulty : the idea(l) of service goes together, in our minds, with gratuity, as part of our religious heritage.
That is why François Hollande, our socialist president, used the polysemic word “service” at least five times in his speech upon being elected. He is.. a servant of the Republic.
And why, in France, we speak of what our country is currently destroying at top speed, as “service public”. PUBLIC service.
We have been told that our public service has to make a profit..
That is barefaced ideological war.
What is supposed to be for free (without interest…) is not supposed to turn a profit.
Debra,
For me, you have hit the nail firmly upon its head.
This notion that paying with money extinguishes and replaces all other kinds of debt/obligation/need for kindness etc. is, as you say, a barefaced ideological war. One we aboslutely must resist.
Loosely paraphrasing Heinlein, “The first sign of a society beginning to collapse is a decline in manners.”
He also had something to say about the health of a society being directly related to the quality of it’s public toilets. Where once we had gleaming monuments to Victorian manners, complete with attendants who took pride in running a tight ship, what we have now are mass produced booths of stainless steel which have ease of cleaning (often automatic, now) as their major functional goal. Usually vandalised, frequently faulty, generally expensive and always a ‘visit’ of last resort.
@ Woodgnome,
Cheer up I’m told they are always good if you want a little male company… (;-)
Slavoj Zizek on Ideology and Lavatories.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwTJXHNP0bg
Perhaps Zizeck is borrowing some of the Heinlein ´Shit´.
Good stuff, Debbie, in this comment as elsewhere.
I don’t want to ride on your coat tails, but would like to put this question-cluster out there (again): Can we devise a money system which does not take control of everything, as the current system seeks to? Can we devise a money which we do not idolise? Can we soften our fear-based need to control everything down to the last detail/penny?
Also, I agree with your earlier comment; we no longer know what we are talking about. Our terms are confused, and even the reason we discuss is murky. As Eisenstein puts in, we are in the space between stories. The new story is not yet clear and the old is clearly crumbling, so confusion reigns. This is normal for these kinds of deep-change transitions (apparently), but bewildering none the less…
Toby – can you live in a society where you are willing to bear responsibility for all of your actions?
It is cost-effective to have centralized sanitation systems after all, and is far healthier than dealing with your family’s rubbish, excrement and other detritus all by yourself. Your life is far more pleasant for that centralized system being in place – and it is far cheaper too 🙂
This issue goes way past the concept of money. The issue is of how society controls, and of individuals within it accepting them as a necessary burden. There are many people who value the comforts of simply being told what to do and the responsibilities for their actions lying on the shoulders of others (namely their managers).
The issue of money is but the tip of a very large iceberg, and delves into the realms of what society is, and how we as individuals share the burdens we all create.
Very interesting.
What does “willing to bear responsibility for one’s actions” mean ?
Is it different from… accepting the consequences of acts one had no intention of committing, or accepting that we cannot positively know/be conscious of, all aspects of ourselves, and how we appear to others ?
We have long idealized becoming.. unique, responsible.. FREE singular subjects, for religious reasons. And a tremendous social pressure to become.. FREE, (or autonomous/independant) individual.. atoms has arisen in consequence.
Perhaps this tremendous pressure simultaneously reinforces our desire to be.. MINDLESS, and consciousnessless slugs, in our waking, daily lives (instead of relinquishing voluntary control in our sleep) ?
Freud had tremendous intuition when he said that he was bringing the pest to the Americans on his transatlantic boat trip..
Whatever we do, we will never become absolutely free…
But we can certainly create a lot of grief for ourselves by continuing to pursue that Holy Grail with.. single minded ? purpose.
Debra – bearing responsibility for ones actions. That is to say, if you do something, you tidy up afterwards or pay someone to do it for you.
As to your latter comment, that is another matter altogether! However, taking the step of being conscious of your responsibilities leads to an understanding of those things of which you were not aware. Those who are wealthy today do not realize that sharing out their wealth would in fact make them the more wealthy, not less.
The real secret of freedom is to realize where you can be free – and where you are constrained by (your) physical nature. You are able to imagine yourself jumping over the Empire State buiiding; you cannot do it in reality. You can imagine it on the Nevsky Promenade, yet if you want to see it you must be in Manhattan. You have total freedom in your imagination. Making it real takes a little more skill.
Gemma – “This issue goes way past the concept of money. The issue is of how society controls, and of individuals within it accepting them as a necessary burden. There are many people who value the comforts of simply being told what to do and the responsibilities for their actions lying on the shoulders of others (namely their managers).”
I wouldn’t call money the tip of the iceberg, but it probably isn’t its root. That said, I think the analgoy is misleading since what we are addressing is a complex not a unit (this is probably always the case). So money is an extremely important gateway into the nature of the complex that we need to properly understand to be able to handle its inescapable unraveling. Money is coming undone because growth and work are coming undone. Generating a new money-type or doing without money will require lots of brave experimentation.
As to control and responsibility, these things will be easier to deal with, both philosophically and practically, as the new story takes shape. Until then we will remain quite in the dark as to what sort of society, in terms of complexity, technology, structure etc., we can create in very new cultural conditions.
I was trying to grasp your comment. I will begin by tackling your statement “Money is coming undone because growth and work are coming undone”.
Growth and work are coming undone because society perceives them incorrectly. When I say “society” I mean you, me and the rest of us. There is an old Indian adage that goes “You have every right to work, you have no right to expect anything of it”. That is as true of planting potatoes as it is painting a wall for your boss. That society has fixed rates for farmers and painters is neither here nor there – that very fixity is an assumption.
People need to begin to understand this – and generations have passed their lives driving steam locomotives for a wage packet without having this assumption challenged at all. That many people never understand that their life and work are entirely different things from the common cultural expectations, forming any kind of “new” society is nonsense.
Put bluntly, growth, work and money were never joined at all. That we thought they were is of no imporance whatsoever. What we have to deal with is to base a society on the fact that these are independent happenings. That is when the true values of art and nature will precede those of industrialized products and work.
There is no other way, and if we do not do this for ourselves, we will have it done for us. I know which will be less painful.
“Growth and work are coming undone because society perceives them incorrectly.”
Yes and no, in the sense that I mean economic growth as it relates to money (money measures economic growth).
“That is as true of planting potatoes as it is painting a wall for your boss.”
I disagree. Your boss should be paying you, or he’s not your boss, so you can expect a wage in that relationship. If you are a slave, you can expect shelter and food typically speaking. When you do voluntary work or needed work for yourself, it’s up to your environment what happens to that work.
“Put bluntly, growth, work and money were never joined at all.”
Again I disagree, in the sense that I mean economic growth and paid work. Because GDP growth is measured in money units, and work (paid work I mean here, too, not Work in any broader sense) is the major mechanism for furnishing people with purchasing power, without which GDP growth stops. Hence, the end of growth via environmental limits, the end of work via technological unemployment (which also taps into environmental limits) adversely affect money’s utility. All this means we need new cultural (or social) ideas of work and growth, and a new way of distributing purchasing power, should goods and services for sale still be the way we do things After Collapse.
Toby:
You say “All this means we need new cultural (or social) ideas of work and growth, and a new way of distributing purchasing power, should goods and services for sale still be the way we do things After Collapse.”
To which I answer that until you realize that the reality of the world we live in is that work and its results are not fixed – there is no way out of the blind alley you have wandered down.
Put simply, expecting your boss to pay you is to force a certainty on the future which in real terms cannot exist. That you habitually accept these things makes no difference. Nobody – not you, not me and nobody else can determine the future with any certainty.
That is final.
Expecting to be paid for your work is to expect the future to be as it was last week.
Realize this and new paradigms will spring forth like blossoms.
Gemma, I suspect that we share certain ideas on the subject of… what we can control in our world, and what we can’t, and what our illusion of control produces at this point.
Like Toby, I do not believe that work and money are independant phenomena, at least in Western civilization at this time.
I believe that we have been busy for the last 400 years or so turning the idea of work into a single minded idea of “work for monetary compensation”, as a form of.. salvation in the here and now world (heritage of the Protestant.. revolution).
By doing so, we have been busy eliminating all form of.. social value for work which is not remunerated in the.. public sphere (and here, by “public”, I mean what goes on outside the home, not the “public” sector. Incidentally, this is very much linked to the status of women in our society…).
We have been trying to put a price tag on work, and make work the SOLE LEGITIMATE source of money. (the key word here is “legitimate”…) Making an absolute.. EQUATION.
The more we tend to eliminate… linguistic diversity, the more our semantic and social world becomes.. TOTALITARIAN, and concentrated. And that makes it fragile, very fragile. Dixit the Bible, as source of human wisdom, I believe.
I also happen to feel that our current upheaval still has a lot to do with the way we are fighting to situate ourselves with respect to our religious heritage :”work” in our Judeo-Christian heritage does not have the same value as it does in the Greco-Hellenistic heritage. Not at all, as a matter of fact. And this difference makes for a great possibility of conflict.
As for planting potatoes : at one time, “we” planted pototoes and prayed that they would come up, and we wouldn’t starve to death. We prayed next to our neighbors who occasionally came through and helped us if things didn’t pan out. We KNEW how dependant we were/are on our natural environment, and it scared the shit out of us, sometimes. It made us humble, at best.
Now we have an INSURANCE based society, which is erected on.. monetary compensation, and not so much on prayer. (The problem being, once again, thinking in terms of one OR the other solution, and not MULTIPLE solutions.)
Many people on the blogs do not seem to understand how when you throw “God” out the door, he comes back in through the window, only, like Zeus, in a form in which we have a hard time recognizing him. This is a fatal flaw in understanding our world, I fear.
On “expecting to be paid” : there is a lovely scene in the film “Manon des Sources”, based on the Pagnol novel, where the village’s local spring has suddenly dried up, which is a dire happening. And a villageois totes his shotgun to the local town hall, shaking his fist at the mayor, and proclaiming “I paid for my water, that means that YOU deliver it.” The other villageois shake their heads, but to this man.. he has paid for the water, now.. IT MUST BE DELIVERED.
I love this incident. It illustrates the way we sometimes think about what money can buy (and what it can’t, and the SPACE that opens up sometimes between what money can buy, and what/when it can’t).
At the end, Manon, who has found the way to block the spring, unblocks it at the precise moment when the villageois are circling in a religious procession to.. magically ? invoke the spirits to restore their water.
Pretty neat, huh ?
That’s what I call a nice… COMPROMISE between universes.
Finally, on “expecting to be paid”. There is a difference, re above, between expecting to be paid as an issue of trust, in a relationship based on trust…and expecting to be paid like the villageois above, as entitlement. Putting one’s trust in someone is not the same thing as feeling entitled in a contractual relationship. We can behave like the villageois above, and carry our shotguns, or we can behave.. otherwise.
I got an excellent education, I think, by reading Elizabeth Gaskell’s “North and South”. Probably better than reading some economic books, by the way. There is a 1% industrial head honcho in there who is really.. human, you know ?
Refreshing as an antidote to all the propaganda.
Well said, Debbie.
Gemma, I think this is put a little too strongly:
“Nobody – not you, not me and nobody else can determine the future with any certainty.”
But I do agree with the thrust of what you’re saying. I can say with very high certainty that the sun will rise tomorrow (please no quibbles on earth turning, not sun rising), that I, like all of us, will continue to grow older, etc. There is much that is as good as certain that we can predict. However, I am very much on your side if your suggestion is that we cannot control the future down to the last letter. That is for sure, and I agree too that humanity would be healthier and happier if it allowed more faith into its broader paradigm, if it could learn to accept that this ongoing, fear-based struggle to control everything into predictable perfection is doing far more harm than good.
High time for a change, and all that!
@Debra – thankyou for your interesting comment.
The problem with money is that it is not associated with value. Were it, everything would be fixed for eternity and inflation could not exist.
I happen to love the Manon des Sources film, and the expectations of the mayor are those typical of a bureaucrat. That is to say, one who lives in a cosy world where the expected happens and nothing can get in the way of it. That they are correct means only that they are correct up to a point – and it is at that point that their real terror arises. For they have no means to deal with a world that is not ordered according to their thoughts.
Real thinking follows nature, and does not steer it into narrow channels. Weeds do not grow in rows, we put plants in rows that they are more easy to tend. As to crop failures, it is not something that ever scared me: it is a disappointment nevertheless. However what does scare me is that most farmers have soil that cannot produce food without chemical inputs. Without those, the soil is barren in a way that is truly terrifying.
Trust is a wholly different concept from the contractural. It takes money out of the give-take equation and allows it a little breathing space. Work can be done and it can be paid at leisure, for both are well aware of the processes involved. As a professional marketer, this level of business interaction is my standard. Achieving it is not easy – that does not mean it can’t be done.
@Toby – a fair point which I accept in its entirety. Sadly fear is the motif of modern society.
Gemma, I had to pick up on this, because it ties in so nicely with the breakdown of the control- and fear-based paradigm currently well underway. You said:
“Weeds do not grow in rows, we put plants in rows that they are more easy to tend.”
Control, control, control…
Recently it has been coming to light that farming practices going back millennia strip food of its nutrients:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/26/opinion/sunday/breeding-the-nutrition-out-of-our-food.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Nothing is for free. Control comes with a price-tag too. A steadily cumulative one, and the bill is about due.
Toby, there are ways to grow plants that respect them. I make and use a great deal of compost – it enhances the fauna that live in the subsoil and facilitate root formation. Compost also acts as a retainer of water and nutrients in a form that only plants can access.
That and a few other things means man can cultivate plants and make them healthy. For one thing, keeping your own seeds helps too – my reckoning is that after saving seed over five generations of the plant, the plants are 95% as well adapted to their surroundings as the weeds that have grown there since the last ice-age.
That’s when your own food plants are as sturdy as the weeds that would crowd out the feeble commercially grown seeds that you get in packets.
That’s when your “control” becomes attuned to the plant, not the other way around. It’s how mankind should look at life. It’s how the best marketers work, those who would control their readers are those that lose them. Allowing customers to make their own choices and following them is the most powerful part of marketing. Only those people who like making decisions for others are sowing the seeds of their own demise.
Gemma, you say that “the problem is that money is not associated with value”, etc. Please explain this statement.
Money certainly doesn’t, and can’t.. buy everything, and we know this, but it doesn’t stop most of us from believing… that money is associated with value. At a certain time, in a universe where we can get past the binary “true/false/lie” paradigm, we can realize that what we believe is extremely important in determining the world that we live in.
On fear… yes, fear is an incredible problem at this time, but fear has always been an incredible problem. There was a time when, if you lived in a village, you didn’t go out after dark during a hard winter because the wolves were singing at your door. Or, you may (or may not have..) restricted your travel because there were unsavory types waiting to fall upon you, and confiscate your purse (no, not woman’s purse…).
I maintain that the fear of a catastrophic harvest has been a powerful fear for most of the time humanity has been cultivating.
And… thank.. God that the earth delivered between 1927 or so, and 1935 for some of my mother’s family because they would not be here right now if it hadn’t.
When I was a child, we said.. GRACE at table, because we felt thankful for having something to put in our mouths to eat.
It was a good practice, because.. GRACE was/is truly.. for free, otherwise, it is not grace.
You have problems, though, when you start looking for grace in places where it is not really supposed to be, or when you start feeling… entitled to it.. in the form of “freebies”, for example. (It is not because something is freely given, and you don’t have to.. EARN it, that you are ENTITLED to it. That is a fatal mistake.)
Ironically, our ancestors were already debating about this.
Indeed, probably since the Paleolithic, we have been debating about this in some form or another. Right, Toby ?
Money and Value.
Money to me is attached to the notion of price. Now price – which is directly related to value – need not be what the object being purchased is actually worth in terms of value.
I bought some jet earrings at a second hand shop – I knew their worth. The amount I paid for them was considerably less than that – and considerably less than they’d fetch at an auction house. The gentleman selling them was aware that they were cheap, but he was closing his shop as he was retiring. Plus we had a lovely chat about the things he did.
Another and more important issue is when a business is running into hard times. Someone with keen acumen can buy it for little cost and make it profitable again.
I am buying a railway station in Germany. It is to all intensome purposes a large house with its own train set in the back garden. The railway has no use for it as all the tickets are sold in the trains or online. As it is in the mountains, they can’t sell it for much. Still, they want it to retain its character so are selling it. The value of a home like this is worth more than the money it will cost me.
My business is finding clients for businesses. They need what my customers supply – and is supplied in such a way as to give value. That can be in terms of lack of stress, trustworthy dealings, guaranteed delivery times in an industry rife with delays. All of these things are difficult to put into fiscal terms yet all go towards making a healthier business.
So: money and value are very different things. What’s more, to understand them properly you need to understand the dynamic between the two. That dynamic is powerful and flexible. Learn how to use it and you’ll have broken out of the logical dilemmas facing people who think in “yes-no” terms.
As a last thought – I bless every meal I eat, even a snatched leaf of a dandelion. It was useful with a family as otherwise without the “starting gun” they’d have cleared their plates before I’d had time to take my seat.
Gemma, I understand your point of view about money and price, I think..but…
I am often accused by my friends of relentlessly bringing the subject back to our religious heritage, and in France, that is perceived as the equivalent of justifying the Catholic Church.
But I believe that much of what we are debating even now can also be understood from the “grace” paradigm, which is also, to a certain extent, the paradigm of l’Ancien Regime, or at least, is tied up to it.
Because the idea of money/price/value starts from the assumption that, in order for everything of.. value to be accessible to the largest number of people (a very… democratic assumption, you will agree, made with the very best intentions), the best way of doing that is to stick a price tag on… everything. Make the acquisition of land, and title enter the equation of a money transaction, deserting the hereditary demands of aristocracy.
But the more your (social) universe is reduced to EXACT equations with price tags, the more… “interest” and “calcul” enter the minds of all actors, creating suspicion, and compromising trust. (“Intérêt” and “calcul” (calculation) have very negative connotations in French these days, interestingly enough… That doesn’t stop us from having tons of… accountants, a new office sprouting up every minute, but “intérêt” and “calcul” get bad press. The Protestants and the Catholics still brawling, I say.)
But the good news is…
Our social universe is not really reduced to “intérêt and “calcul”, despite all that we continually.. dump on ourselves.
Yesterday I spent 45 minutes with a young woman in a department store who made me up, suggested beautiful and luxurious make up for me, and… talked with me while this was going on. Yes, I was a client, and it was in her… interest to make a sale to me. Convincing me, and making that sale is important to her for many reasons : because she has to.. work in order to take home money (she was very interested to hear that I do not work, and enjoy being at home. I don’t really.. work at home either), also for her personal sense of.. worth, and her personal pleasure, and pride in her skill.
I made a point of… saying grace to her ? thanking her ? for all the time spent with me, because that grace is in another world from monetary compensation, and her salary can not pay me for what she gave me (which, incidentally did not make me feel.. OBLIGED, either, and she knew this).
And, seen from this perspective, who can really say what the makeup is worth ? As you say above, even if I paid… MORE than what I could have, I certainly received… a lot, too, and it is rather cynical to assume that someone who has a calculated interest in telling me what I want to hear can not be sincere AT THE SAME TIME. Too many people really don’t understand this, through binary thinking…
A price tag can be very convenient, but it doesn’t always… work. Fifty years ago in Turkey, a Western tourist and his wife hit a lamb in their car, and when the man left his car to look for the shepherd to offer.. monetary compensation, he came back to find his wife beheaded. Apparently the shepherd was not very interested in putting a price tag on the lamb’s head… after all, since we are all unique and irreplaceable in ONE world, the monetary compensation can be of little comfort, and it.. BUYS NOTHING IN THE WORLD WHERE WE ARE IRREPLACEABLE.
Since we keep trying to squeeze out that world… it keeps reminding us of its existence.
A disaffected train station ? Pretty neat.
Now you need a disaffected locomotive..
You obviously haven’t grasped the difference between a price tag and an object’s value.
That Turkish lamb was worth more to the farmer than money – or at least in the absence of the husband, the wife found herself being murdered. Had the husband been present the farmer may have realized the value of the offer.
Because value has to do with the subjective perception – the price with objective perception.
The flexibility between these two perceptions can be enormous. As I tried to demonstrate – and you sailed straight over. In doing so, you demonstrate that you have a long way to go before you understand the nature of the yes-no paradigm. It goes deep, very deep.
As to the Christian religion – read the Gospels carefully. Especially between the Baptism and the Crucifixion. You will note that the number of miracles steadily decreases towards the end. You will notice that Jesus has nothing but what he is given – and he makes no demands of anybody in material terms at least. Moral, yes – material, no.
The point is that He was demonstrating how humans should behave on this beautiful blue-green orbe. There comes a point where you break through what the Indians call “the veil of Maya” and you can see. Believe me, when you do, you will be as sad for humanity as I am.
And yet, as He said: “forgive them; they know not what they do”. It is as true today as it was when they nailed him so cruelly to two wooden baulks.
Gemma, your last comment irritates me, with its assumptions about what I understand and don’t about price tags. (Yes, well, I can be somewhat touchy sometimes, mea culpa…)
My turn to say that I think that you breezed over my comment(s) too quickly in assuming that I don’t understand the distinctions that you are making.
Because… price tags are not objective…
Because.. SOMEONE sticks them down. And that someone is not.. objective. Camera lenses can be objective, maybe, but even.. SOMEONE has to take the picture.
My turn to say that I think that you have overly simplified something that is much more complicated than you think.
In saying that “we” have resorted to the price tag to attempt to translate value, and to reduce “value” to a numeric equation, and this.. in the interest of “democracy”, I am not saying at all that I agree with this way of seeing the world. I AM saying that… in a world where every advantage has its disadvantage, making work for money the measure of all… value has had some powerful disadvantages that we are very ignorant of with our… good intentions.
And Jesus ?
Jesus made a point of (almost..) never handling money.
He probably left that… distasteful ? work to Judas…
We know how that story ended, now, don’t we ?? (Talk about a binary ending… hard to do better.)
I am very ambivalent about my Christian heritage right now.
Like most of the members of our civilization too.
I am.. no exception on this point.
I apologize for irritating you. However a comment is a small space – and ideas are not always easy to compress into them.
If you feel that I breezed over your comment, you are wrong. If I misinterpreted it, that is then partly my fault. What I did not do was answer all the points you raised.
As to price tags – here in the west they are tied to money in a strict manner. That is to say, the numbers on them is what you pay. However, there is a danger here: the very concept of a number is an illusion. We live in a world where every leaf is unique. Yet oak leaves look the same and so we can say that we have three of them. They remain different in a very material way. No two things can be identical – that we say they are the same is in one respect quite ridiculous. Yet oak leaves are oak leaves and not birch leaves.
There are occurrances where advantages do not incur a disadvantage. A gift freely received is one such. There is no debt and no contract – the deed is freely done.
That is the clue as to why Jesus never bought anything. Ever. At least as the Christ incarnate – the years betwen the baptism and the crucifixion. Jesus during his ministry would not have bought anything – for to do so is to engage in a contract between two people. That is to say they fix a monetary price to a value. Doing so freely – the one works without expectation, the other gives without demand – is quintessentially different. Jesus gave His life as an example to us as to how we should live. He allowed others to take that very life from him and whilst upset did not condemn them.
Therefore do not be ambivalent about believing in Christ.
Thank you for complexifying your thought, Gemma.
I understand why you talk about, why you believe that a gift freely given, for example, does not incur a disadvantage.
Ironically enough, perhaps you will think that this is hubris, but I see evidence of the power of the gift freely given every day, and how much it can change human relationships, in the way that Jesus also understood this.
But… and this is a big but, Gemma…
Over time, I have come to believe that much of the suffering in our world comes from our desire to live life EXCLUSIVELY on ONE plane, not imagining that life exists, our social lives, and personal lives, on multiple, simultaneous planes, or spaces. (Thus, true, while each leaf, each.. cell is unique in place and time, each also belongs to the category “cell”, and its unique character risks being effaced behind the category. Whether or not it is.. effaced depends on my (and others’) capacity to flesh out (yoopee, that is a good choice of words..) my/their categories, and not reduce them to dusty, generalized abstractions in living room discussions.
And I firmly believe, at this point in time, that Jesus HISTORICALLY made some tragic assumptions that we are still paying for.
Refusing to handle money is an example of the desire to restrict human.. intercourse, and EXCLUDE the monetary plane/place.
And Jesus’s story ended tragically, from my point of view, because… what you exclude, Gemma, comes back to haunt you with a vengeance, in ways that you don’t immediately realize.
This is knowledge/wisdom that has come to me personally through great suffering, and I have seen this phenomenon at work in others, as I worked as a shrink for a while.
What you.. reject, and refuse.. to it, you give ENORMOUS power in your life, and over you.
The Western World remains.. haunted by Jesus’s attitude towards money, and our.. economies are still thrashing around because of Jesus’s.. ambivalence ? towards… commerce/money ?
My position on this, ironically enough, Gemma.. is very.. Jewish…
Rational, to a very great extent, moreover.
On freely given gifts incurring no disadvantages..
perhaps ON THE PLANE where the freely given gifts are given, they incur no disadvantages, and this is.. a good thing, as Jesus found, demonstrated, and taught.
But… on the other planes, Gemma ??
From my perspective.. Jesus’s life and work was a freely given gift.
But… the Church fathers themselves, who were the brightest and best of Antiquity, said “the corruption of the greatest good creates the greatest evil.”
This, too, I have found, after looking hard at the world, and trying to sort out the wheat from the chaff…
Because corruption is the way of the world, Gemma, from my perspective.
There is.. NO WAY AROUND IT.
Now, the wise man or woman takes corruption into account, and turns his tongue in his mouth seven times before opening it.
From this perspective… Jesus was NOT wise..
In my opinion.
Or rather… perhaps his disciples, and Paul… were particularly foolish, because… Jesus wrote nothing down.
THAT was wise…
I have no problem with you seeing the powerful effect of gifts. I see it myself, have done it for no better reason than to give hope to someone.
Only – let me say this. Firstly you see me as having made my thoughts less clear. You cannot see the world as I do, or you would see what brings these scattered examples together. That does not mean that you never will, it means that right now you don’t. The powers of thinking are seductively circular – and breaking out of that is astonishingly difficult. It’s like Chuang Tzu’s asking what one hand clapping sounds like.
Now: we all think we live in the physical, material (read mineral) realm. So let us look at what we buy with money. We feel hungry – we buy a banana and ten minutes later no hunger, no banana and no money. We’re bored and can’t think of anything to do, we buy a video as comfort. We have bought something that brings us a feeling – entertainment in this case. A diversion from the world we would be bored with watching.
That is to say, everything we do with money – a physical transaction of one kind or another – brings us some kind of experience.
the lack or the fulfillment of some need. Those needs may be materially based (hunger) or may be based on things that are less material – envy, selfishness or pride. The point is that you FEEL hungry. You don’t not feel hungry, you get bored or watch the video you bought.
Jesus made no assumptions. If we think he was wrong, it is we that must discover where our thinking is wrong. He wasn’t the Logos incarnate for nothing.
As to restricting human interaction by not handling money – not handling money does not restrict human interactions one iota. That one person refuses to share what they have with a poor and hungry man because he cannot pay only shows that they value their own wealth above another person’s suffering. Where is their humanity? Their need for human interaction (money interaction) has made them inhuman! Unable to interact with one in a situation they would hate to find themselves in. That is in and of itself corruption of the first order – and all because of money!
Jesus was right to keep well clear of it.
Gemma, I was not criticizing you when I complimented you for complexifying your thought. On the contrary, you did not make it less “clear”, you made it more clear in the previous comment.
This discussion is very interesting to me, as you are helping me to clarify… my own positions on this subject, and this would not be possible.. or less possible.. without our discussion.
Toby and I have a long going discussion in Econosophy about the results of the.. corruption of Cartesian thought, which has now been.. reduced to a vulgar binary opposition.
Our ancestors, among whom.. Descartes, were able to think of their human world in a trinitarian system where mind/body/ AND SOUL were intricated.
You will note that our modernity has axed the third term.. soul (I think) to make a binary system from which soul is excluded.
Descartes’ famous.. dualism of mind/body is not dualism at all, to the extent that his system rests on the postulate/rock of God.
But.. Descartes’ system without the third term is particularly… alienating to my mind.
And it is particularly difficult for us to understand how we.. fit everything together, between mind/soul/body at this point in time.
Jesus seemed to have few illusions about the possibility of eliminating poverty in society.
So.. rather than looking to eliminate poverty, he looked for ways to subvert readily accepted prejudices about the.. paradise of being rich, by finding value in… poverty.
We have been busy undoing this legacy, I fear, with our.. good intentions.
I still maintain that Jesus made a mistake in excluding money from his daily life, and delegating/relegating the task to someone else.
Because money is not inherently evil, Gemma, and monetary transactions are not inherently evil.
What is.. evil ? is reducing human exchanges to assign SOLE VALUE to the monetary transaction, and the accompanying price tag. (That is what I mean by idolatry of filthy lucre. Idolatry in the biblical sense, moreover.)
For whatever reason, moreover, and even the more so, if the reason is… for the best intentions in the world…
This judgment made from within the Judeo-Christian paradigms of value.
Outside of them.. things can be, and are, seen from a different perspective…
Ah… but are you sure that the people who we stick behind that nebulous appelation “the rich” are not actively engaging in a form of euergetism that we know nothing about, for example ?
Maybe… our ideological blinders are so.. blinding that we can’t see what is going on in our world ?
And we believed that Internet would make our world transparent..
It will never absolve us of the necessity of interpreting our world, at any rate.
And that is where many of our difficulties arise anyway.
I think that neither side is creating money – just tokens, and that is the basis of all the problems.
There is a system used by the highlanders of Papua New Guinea. (Ie. Tribesmen)
Observe carefully a photo of a highland warrior. Across the front of his chest can be seen a series of small bamboo strips held horizontally. EACH strip represents a pig that has been “lent”. The warrior is therefore a “big-man”. Who has the right to recall ALL of those pigs if necessary. (This can also be for ceremonial use – where many pigs are killed at the same time.)
Basically – debts TO the warrior.
Why? There are no locks on “doors” – theft cannot practically be stopped.
If you have two shirts, “give” one to someone who doesn’t have one – the debt can be called in when you need a new shirt. Thief-proof.
The “mythologies” of barter or money creation both fail when “tokens” can be made in the back-hut, either by Governments or Banks. So what happens is a race to find a gold(ilocks) standard that substitutes itself for”value”.
The papou solution is direct lending of a value that retains it’s original value as an asset when recovered.
Note that “interest” is not part of the affair.
I reckon that a substitute of “Real” money should therefore have a stable and possiby intrinsic value (at least agreed upon). Not be subject to artificial fluctuations and should be free from interest – to be effective. (Gold is one – but is there enough?)
Banks and the Tax-man could both be constrained, and their influence reduced, if the “creation” of money is ‘principally’ an affair “of exchange of debt” in the first place. (Not one or the other deciding to line their own hut by creating exchange-tokens on which interest is payable)
(OK. A bit of a ramble and probably totally impractical, but some NEW solution is called for to preserve the value of money)
It is easy to lose track of the.. fact ? that when we are trying to ascertain HOW money acquires value, and just how to determine that value, we can only do so by going through the consummate symbolic system which is language. Money and language (thus, relation) are inseparable.
And it is easy to forget that our words have very long histories, and meant different things at different times. Even now, the word “interest” in English, “intérêt” in French, although they look almost the same, and on the surface mean the “same”, have histories which are different, just as the histories of our different countries, are different.
And this sedimentation of meaning persists into right now.
Many people on this blog appear to believe, apparently, that gifts are.. what I would call loans.
If you start exploring all the words that come to our mouths to talk about the way we exchange, what we expect (or don’t expect) in return, it is pretty mind boggling.
But all those different words are there to translate multiply ways of exchanging with our near, or not so near, neighbor, ways which have evolved over time. (And, incidentally, they vary from place to place, and language to language, despite the much bandied about idea of globalization which really doesn’t hold up.. outside of the Internet, you know.)
I often cite Shakespeare in “The Merchant of Venice”, who has Portia say something to the effect that she has received payment for the service rendered in saving Antonio without having to receive a.. material token to PROVE that such service was rendered. She says “he is well paid who is well satisfied, and I, in saving you, esteem myself well satisfied”. Is that altruism ? Maybe. Maybe not. Altruism is not sacrifice, because she gets something in return : satisfaction. What she gets in return… originates in herself, as she is changed in relation to the other, but does not materially receive from the other.
Debt is a complicated issue, as the play illustrates, since the indebted person desires to erase the debt, by giving an object which he imagines will “pay for” the service rendered (cancel the debt ?).
Because… “we” do not like to feel beholden to another person. We do not like the feeling that we “owe” somebody something because of the fundamental INEQUALITY that debt introduces into our relations.
And we all know how much we like inequality, now, don’t we ??
Basically, there is a bedrock.. inequality in all relationship. If we.. buy something, it is a form of acknowledgment that we.. NEED it ? want it ?, and in our minds, that creates… dependance, and we all know how much we like being dependant, now, don’t we ??
On toilets.. really, if there is one example in which we are decadent, probably it is with our shit, but this has nothing to do with our manners.
It is as though our modern civilization were built upon the idea that we don’t crap. We are above crapping. Talk about collective denial…(and you thought that only individual people were capable of denial ??).
I think that we have underestimated the effect of the virtual world on our capacity to build the trust necessary for exchange. Business is affected when the actors involved never see each other, touch hands, do not live in the same country, and have little or nothing.. in common. Internet has given us the illusion ? that our big planet is a tiny place, and that we are all connected, but, as animals, our capacity to get our minds around this kind of.. connection is limited. A major paradox.
One which our symbolic systems, of which money is a part, are suffering from.
I just thought I’d interrupt the debate and throw in a little insanity from our Whitehall pals. Laugh or cry…
http://www.civilserviceworld.com/non-executive-directors/?utm_source=adestra&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=editorial+neds+profiles
Oh and some advice from two Price Waterhouse Cooper partners on the way out of the crisis. Which is ironic given that it was their turn-a-blind-eye-book-keeping which got us into it
http://www.civilserviceworld.com/the-road-to-recovery/
These should not be read if you’ve had a bad or hectic day.
Not a piece in the MMT paradigm, but a down to Earth & useful talk on the state of our societies’ economics from (Prof) Mark Blyth:
‘Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=JQuHSQXxsjM
I know lots of people on the blogs like to watch hour long videos (not me).
For the ambitious among you, here is a book reference : Paul Veyne, “Bread and Circuses, Historical Sociology and Political Pluralism”.
Veyne is one of France’s major intellectuals at this time, and this book examines what is called in English, euergetism, in the Greco-Roman world. Euergetism is a form of patronage, by which the rich often spontaneously redistributed their wealth within society, for complicated reasons that Veyne examines in depth.
I will probably not read the book from cover to cover because I am lazy, and.. stupid, but I will read passages, and savor Veyne’s amazing erudition, and his capacity to talk intelligently about economics, and relate the Greco-Roman world to ours.
Veyne is difficult. Not because his style is difficult, because he does not throw jargon around.
But at a certain level of analysis, and complexity, one simply has to read slowly to understand.
Not for people in a hurry…
Many thanks for the tip. I wasn’t familiar with Paul Veyne. I look forward to reading ‘Le pain et le cirque’.
“Euergetism is a form of patronage, by which the rich often spontaneously redistributed their wealth within society” — I believe this is has long been a natural, spontaneous tendency amongst humans for a very long time, at least until the notion of ‘legal’, ‘notarized’ property ownership became the norm and, with it, exclusiveness, wealth accumulation and incentive to capture common resources.
I see the concept of land ownership as being the at the core of what went on to fuel European colonization, extraction of wealth in the southern hemisphere, process which required the implementation of an increasingly sophisticated system of wealth management, ie banks, and agreement on unified means of exchange – money.
I’m going out on a limb with what I’m about to say but, what might a monetary system look like if there were no such thing as property ownership? By that I mean literally land, earth, resources. Every living creature has the innate right to shelter and sustenance, but that humans should have come up with the idea of exclusive ownership of land, combined with increasingly powerful managers of individual ‘wealth’, is at the very core of the conundrum over contemporary economics and ‘money creation’.
Wealth accumulation has reached reached such extremes, at this point, that there is no longer any such thing as national sovereignty. Power, derived from ownership, is in the hands of a tiny, combative clique.
This is the context within which economics and money-creation need to be evaluated and discussed, today. It’s time to take a step back and face the bigger picture. Money, the financial system, the means of exchange, have become anchored to select ownership, to the point that it threatens life on this planet.
.
What is hard for us to understand right now, I think, is that there are.. MULTIPLE “reasons” for the way ideas play out in our daily lives. These reasons exist simultaneously, and not in succession. When you talk about European colonization, I feel that it is important to not lose sight of a major narrative… evangelization. The United States was colonized by the English Europeans, at least, (but not solely, not solely…) as a New Jerusalem.
Both words count : “new” (as in.. new world) and “Jerusalem”, which should get us thinking about historical continuity, and the Crusades. Our Euro-American tendancy towards expansion. (The Jewish Bible greatly justifies nomadism, by the way, to the expense of sedentary agriculture. The Jewish God appears to prefer nomads, as far as I can tell.)
Not only is it cynical to imagine that our ancestors were only interested in exploiting the heathen, it is also.. reductionist, and says more about us, in the long run, than about them. (Attention, I am not saying that you believe this, but I have crossed many on the blogs who appear to believe this.)
A response to you, and to Toby, on property : I do not believe it is the same thing to own large swathes of land that people and animals can roam around on, or to put up fences to DELIMIT your property, and restrict movement.
You can be a wealthy land owner without putting up a fence.
So… what does it MEAN to put up a fence, and what kind of beliefs do you have that justify putting up fences ? (Incidentally, there are uniform fences everywhere in France right now. They are there, often.. to PROTECT us.)
I believe that our words mean through linguistic opposition. We have long opposed “nature” and “civilization”, and that opposition allows us to represent what both are, in comparison to each other. But right now, when we are cutting down the Amazonian forest, and drilling all over the planet, how will we recognize around us what needs to remain EXTERIOR to our idea of organized society/civilization in order for our words to mean, and for there to be a minimum of consensus around their meaning ? If we turn the planet into one big concrete playground/garden, for our own amusement, where do we go from there ? What few people know is that when your utopia arrives/is on the verge of arriving, it is a catastrophy, not a blessing. Because… where do you go from there ?? Particularly when you are an expansionist civilization ?
I don’t think that wealth accumulation has reached great extremes. Because, for example, if you take a trip to the Globe Theater in London, you will see a receipt for £10 that Shakespeare’s company paid way back when in order to purchase a cloak for their performances. Think about what £10 buys now, and think that during Shakespeare’s time, it bought a.. priceless object hand made of the finest cloth, with hand worked embroidery. Now think that you CAN NOT BUY something like this in our world. That is… major inflation, over a very long period of time. That means that at the same time that our technology has been.. INFLATING, INFLATING, the numbers behind our money have been INFLATING too. At a certain point, when the numbers get so.. ASTRONOMICAL ??, the teeny tiny human head/intelligence has a hard time getting a grip on them, right ? (Look at “astronomical” : the word in this context is revealing about the way modern science, and our modern cosmogony tie into this phenomenon, too.) We are animals, after all, even if we represent our world in our minds. (Incidentally, on a comforting note, the Globe Theater is a fascinating place, where people are dedicated to resurrecting our ancestors’ savoir faire which we have lost in the industrial episode, by the way. And it came into being largely through patronage, euergetism, at the beginning.)
Maybe I am going out on a limb, but I sometimes feel that our greatest challenge comes from not feeling tied to the land as unique, irreplaceable physical place. Not feeling dependant on it, for many of us, nor GRATEFUL for what we receive from it. (Maybe the key word here is “dependant”. I believe that we cannot find any value in dependance. We refuse it for ourselves despite incredible evidence that we are frail animals.)
As an American, I grew up as a child of colonists, in my immediate family, even. Some people seem to believe that your roots are in… your mother tongue, your culture, your relationships, even. But I am nostalgic for what I have never known, and can probably never experience : feeling rooted in a particular place. And NOT… a globe trotting nomad. A new form of paganism, maybe ?
“I’m going out on a limb with what I’m about to say but, what might a monetary system look like if there were no such thing as property ownership?”
Those of the property theory of money would say that you cannot have money without private property. This is a notional layer above ownership, which enables the mortgaging of property as backing for notes which then become money in a market place. The property theory school points to state communism which unraveled because there was no private property, though there was ‘money’ and banks.
I agree with the thrust of your comment; we need to re-learn and re-define wealth at the cultural level. It is becoming increasingly obvious that money is not wealth, and thus defending private property (as money’s backing) ceases to be wealth in the way we have become accustomed to understanding it; wealth is mine and only mine and I defend it from my competitors.
What to do about this sea change…
I lean towards a process of broad and deep societal restructuring that has as its defining characteristic the demotion of money-as-wealth and the promotion of sharing-as-wealth, or social and environmental networks as a universal commons that (everyone understands) need to be nurtured because they enable us and give us meaning as individuals. No doubt there will always be private and public spheres, but effective, restorative privacy does not necessarily require private property, assuming privacy is revered by the culture generally. That is, sharing might characterise the public domain via things like open source, but there would be access to privacy within the universal commons for everyone.
Right now this seems like pipe-dream stuff, and maybe it is, but I believe history is pushing us in that direction whether we like it or not. We adapt to ever-changing circumstances and learn new social arrangements, or we perish. As for money, I hope we develop a new non-money money (e.g. like the Information Money idea promoted by Franz Hoermann) that helps the restructuring process I’d like to see get faster and more purposeful.
A musical interlude on Mythology.
´A theme song for saber-rallying and selling wars door-to-door. Remember, we’re looking for the closest thing we can find to John Wayne. Cliches abound like kangaroos – courtesy of some spaced out Marlin Perkins, a Reagan contemporary. Cliches like, “itchy trigger finger” and “tall in the saddle” and “riding off or on into the sunset.” Cliches like, “Get off of my planet by sundown!” More so than cliches like, “he died with his boots on.” Marine tough the man is. Bogart tough the man is. Cagney tough the man is. Hollywood tough the man is. Cheap steak tough. And Bonzo’s substantial. The ultimate in synthetic selling: A Madison Avenue masterpiece – a miracle – a cotton-candy politician…Presto! Macho! ´
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-F_hOL_nw8
Mike I really enjoyed the Mark Blythe link. What occurred to me whilst watching though was that the existing paradigm is not being challenged. I got that impression watching the Launch of Steve Keens new paid by subscription web site.Same goes with Mark Blythe bragging about taking out a huge mortgage. I wonder if MMT and everything else Left/ RIght conservative Liberal Austrian, Keynesian, Freidmanite the whole Baskin Röbbins 57 flavours basicvally owned by the same state monopoly capitalists.They are all the same just a different denomination in the religion of State and Capitalism.
In Mark Blythes Talk he is quite clear the two are dependent upon each other to an extent they drew each other as Eschers hands draw each other and the discussion that is allowed is to argue which of the two hands is to be Cutting the cake and which one choosing all the while only offering the crumbs to the useless eaters who are basically the rest of us our Hamster wheel existences based upon Eschers Staircase..
Roger, sorry, but I am going to rain on your parade.
I remember as an adolescent getting a rush from looking at the Malboro man.
And I was wildly and secretly in love with James Kirk, captain of the Enterprise (oops, I should say, William Shatner as James Kirk, because all James Kirks are not equivalent ;- ).)
Right now, I am nostalgic for the Captain Kirks.
My Daddy was one. They seem to be a dying breed.
AS A WOMAN.. I am nostalgic for them…
What has replaced them… does the dishes, changes the diapers, even vacuums the house, but is somehow not quite as.. exciting as my Daddy was. (Somebody said you can’t have your cake and eat it too.)
There, I got it off my chest, now.
Drawing the teeth of the Captain Kirks makes “us” less violent and dangerous, perhaps, (except for the symbolic violence going on in our economic wars…) but is definitely less exciting in the long run.
Remember that you are an animal, too…
Symbolic Violence? its very real in Iraq for instance.
You make a comment below Debra about the Internet and oneness.
I listened to a talk from Prof James Curran this morning questioning that connectedness he points out that it is a very small percentage of humanity with internet access and the context in which information is filtered by the medium is a sort of closed loop of preachery to the already converted the Internet has as many suspect myths as any other creature of the State Monopolistic fascist hedgemon currently tightening its grip.
It has become increasingly evident that some really do not wish to step outside of the comfort of the existing paradigm turning a blind eye or holding ones nose is easier I am simply incapable of that degree of self denial I have lost all faith or belief, even in the enlightenment I’m afraid.
On Star Trek I like Spok, tells it how it is without sugar coating .
Debra its very nice to have rain on ones parade or indeed some one pissing on ones fireworks please feel free.
As you don’t like You tube might I suggest Currans book
Power Without Responsibility (with Jean Seaton), 6th edition (London: Routledge, 2003).
For those like me that enjoy listening to lectures by writers they admire heres the Link to Prof Currans Talk.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7suK3m6iLSY
Good to be back & find such a meaty feast of thought all laid out for me to pick through & digest. I have spent the last 5 weeks or so with my Father at the forefront of my mind while I try to make sense of the enigma he was & how the person I am is related to his influence.
He was certainly no Captain Kirk, he detested any type of authority, & was I think slightly bi-polar. He basically called the tune while my Mother kept our leaky boat adrift – We were all his subjects as we moved from place to place in order to satisfy his constant restlessness.
It was certainly no orthodox upbringing & one major effect it had on me was to instill in me a sense of being of no place, rootless, as though I have no (other than the usual labels ) nationality. I have no particular allegiance to any country or group, & due I think to the fact that I felt that I was always an outsider looking in, do really feel as though I am a citizen of the World, rather than just one part of it.
There was nothing safe about our lives, but it was exciting if often precarious, as was a childhood devoid of any health & safety considerations & media hyped fears, such as paedophiles etc. Looking at how the majority appear to live nowadays in a kind of safety first beige existance, I feel that I was very fortunate to have the Father I had.
I do not think we are geared for utopia or any kind of heaven, but rather we are geared for survival. My problem with the World is that we are all part of a kind of sausage machine, a production line, like apples prepared for a supermarket, all of the same chemically enhanced form but largely tasteless, with a fully cost accounted price attached. The film ‘ Koyaanisqatsi ‘ still sums it up for me.
The really exciting people who inhabit the mainly testosterone filled pit of Wall st & the like will I suspect be qute happy with a situation where everything has it’s price & the majority are cowering in cages of debt whilst being milked & sedated with entertainment which constitutes a second hand safe form of survival experience. The very unexciting grey old men will be the ones that will end up with the real control though, they will castrate the faux warrior class if they rock the boat too much & our world will be as gruel which they will slowly suck into their cavernous guts through straws.
I would rather it blow up than turn into the above, but of course that is easy for me to say & I have no idea what small part I would play in this & how it would come to pass, except judging by the TPTB’s historical reaction to attempts to deprive them of their raison d’ etre, it will not be very easy or pleasant. My days of running away from policemen are long gone & judging by the 100 or so cops that we encountered on a ferry the other evening, who were part of the 3,500 who are being sent over to protect the so called great & good at the the Enniskillen G8 meeting, they are very different than their predecessors who were much more human. I listened in on a few conversations, not very exciting, in particular from the female members, who judging by their words should have been wearing strapons.
I attended the Globe theatre once, it was something my late wife wanted to experience before she died, it was a fabulous experience, a great legacy left to us by that victim of McCarthyism Sam Wanamaker. Maybe we are in trouble because Shakespeare is a minority interest whereas soaps & simplistic Hollywood output are in the ascendancy. Great art needs contrast & is often born out of turbulence unlike the present state of the plastic arts which to me anyway, seem mostly trivial & totally market based.
I cannot think of any fictional character who compares with my Father, he was an original & could have been many things but for his demons. When I was troubled he would occasionally ruffle my hair, this was priceless & I am glad he never owned a mastercard.
Nice to see you here again, Stevie Finn, you stuck in my mind last exchange around.
My father made the same impression on me, even if he was.. a Captain Kirk type who definitely had power, and spoke to power too. He too, had his demons.
I remember, in the 1970’s, comforting him as he cried about the fear of being labeled or feeling.. homosexual, only because he was a very gifted mentor of young men.
A few years before, I had knocked away at him mercilessly in my teenage feminist fury.
This last Christmas, I helplessly watched my very gifted 25 year old French niece be at exactly the place I was… when I was her age.
“Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose”, as we say here. “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”
Now that I’m over 50, I stay light years away from the crowds, and the policemen, by the way, and have taken to the mountains, and wild places, which I go to.. in my car, and with just one other person, moreover. A man…
Gotta keep your sanity, Stevie Finn, in the sanitized, squeaky clean J. Alfred Prufrock world…
Your dad never owned a mastercard ?? I’m impressed. He was a true.. MAN then, wasn’t he ??
(Do you realize that “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” was written in 1915/17 ?? Our.. best poets were the prophets warning us of impending disaster in the early 20th century already…)
Debra
I hope my sanity is safe enough, although of course a madman would be unlikely to make a sound judgement on his own state of mind. The last six weeks or so I have been adrift, faraway from my usually relatively calm safe harbour. This was due to my Father finally losing his fight against multiple ailments & the fallout from his desperate attempt to stave off the inevitable. You mentioning your Dad was what prompted my comment, which I think illustrates something of how I was feeling at the time it was written.
Very angry while feeling as though a ragged hole had been torn out of me – Wounded basically, & I suppose in that state, the World becomes altogether more threatening & perceived threats provoke a stronger emotional response.
Since my ferry journey with the pawns in blue, the proximity of a small group gathering, who in order to compare egos while plotting to enable another Iraq like Armageddon have imported 3,500 cops & associated hardware at the cost of £50 million, with a few hundred thousand thrown in to turn the economically battered town of Enniskillen into a Potemkin village.
All of this is par for the course & I suppose it being close to home is the difference. I was going to head up there with my camera, but unfortunately due to lost time I have had to catch up with work. It would have been interesting to see a very bored ring of steel watching over the three tents of activists. Perhaps I might have been lucky enough to witness a search for pressure cooker WMD’s.
To see yet again the same wheels turning in order to escalate to war, the same old justifications, chemical weapons blah, blah, blah & the final straw for me, the cheerleading emanating from one of the orifices belonging to that pile of snake shit named Tony Blair was & still is filling me with regret & impotent fury that I share similar DNA to these ( From an extremely safe distance ) renders of life & limb.
They are not even original because the don’t have to be, people will buy it. The majority don’t care until the wolf breathes down their own necks & they also cannot seem to fathom that trillions have & will be spent on a statistically tiny threat, resulting in the death of millions of innocents, while the fight against disease, the real killer, is being passed over to accountants to further line the pockets of soul less money grubbers.
That & all the usual crap from the high & mighty got on top of me, I suppose it might be referred to as World weariness.
I can understand ( I think ) why you fear a state of affairs in which all the excitement in the world is kind of castrated in order to achieve placidity, I think however that TPTB have gone too far. I do not want us to end up having to go through a modern day equivalent of 14th century bubonic plague in order to be deemed as useful to our present bunch of insatiable appetite robber barons.
I personally don’t give a damn how many yachts or how much power they have, but if this behaviour means that my Grandchildren have to touch their forelocks to them while living in poverty, I feel as though they should at least have their wings clipped, if they don’t they will only fuck it up for themselves & us besides.
Going back to the boys & girls in blue performing their Praetorian guard duties, who after all for the most part are just doing what they can to support their families, maybe eventually they, when the buggers push it too far as they always do, will realise that they are propping up another Caligula. & will act accordingly, such a shame about the collateral damage though.
Apologies to all for ranting & being way off topic, I thank you all for being here & your usual tolerance.
Debra – Thank you for your company & another exquisite poem, it’s also good to see you back.
Becalmed I raged at an approaching storm,
Cursing this unseemly man made mess.
Spirit restored by certain beings of female form,
I raise my small fist & I reject my useless bitterness.
Nice to read you again, stevie finn.
You know you are a writer, right ? (Excuse me for repeating myself, I have a longstanding hole in my head.)
For your Dad…
Is there really a good way to go ?
My Dad left me at 57, from a heart attack, because he lived life too fast. He was a man’s man in a world being taken over by women, in my opinion.
It’s hard to tell what courage and virility are in this Disneyland world.
The young men in blue are trying to find themselves… as men, and they need to.
And… what made.. US lose so much faith about the justification of their battles ? The, uh.. NUMBERS of the dead, maybe ? (Yes, well, less technology means.. fewer dead at one whack, at any rate. The.. disadvantages of those advantages are mind boggling.)
I am reading “Les Adieux à la Reine”, by Chantal Thomas.
Prior to that much touted French Revolution, which is at the origin of the initially German word, “communism”, men NEVER presented themselves in military accoutrement at Court.
It was… a breach of etiquette, because it was necessary to keep up.. appearances. Strutting your stuff, “rouler les mécaniques” as we say in French, was considered vulgar, and ungentlemanly.
Appearances are very important.
To all appearance.. and from a certain point of view.. your skin is an appearance as it HIDES all the hardware behind it, and keeps you from being.. transparent.
What did Duncan say in “Macbeth” ? “There’s no art to find the mind’s construction in the face. He (Cawdor) was a gentleman on whom I built an absolute trust.” (I, iv, 12)
Appearances can be deceitful, but they are indispensable.
Back to Versailles, which must have mingled the consummately beautiful with the ills of.. head lice, for example. (I have seen the embroidery, and J. Alfred Prufrock’s wife couldn’t have managed it.)
Thinking about the lovely dead young men I muse that the more we stave off the grim reaper, the more we shove him/her under the carpet, the more the tab runs up…
And then, when the grim reaper presents the bill, it is.. astronomical…
Too much hubris these days.
I too, am rambling, my lyrical friend.
And maybe… strutting my stuff a little bit ? 😉
Debra
Sorry to hear that your Dad left the stage early. It must have been very tough on you as he appears from the sketch you have drawn of him to have been painted in primary colours & as I have recently discovered, it is hard to lose someone that has been a constant presence from childhood, even if a sometimes distant one
As to a good way to go, if a person is loved I don’t think there is such a thing. It was in one way a relief when my Dad finally let go as his demons had decided to join the last supper. A combination of 3 brain tumours, medication & I think, lack of nutrition had him conjuring up many monsters such as sniggering rotting zombies who somehow managed fit in the bed he & my Mother shared. Mum had me delete some photos she took on one of these ghastly nights for proof of his behaviour – Despite doing this quickly, I now have an image of him as death’s head demon.Fortunately I had timed an earlier visit to perfection, one in which we said goodbye, held hands & laughed at those awful incidents which fall under the category of ‘ We will laugh about this one day ‘.. My Dad the once tallest thing on earth somehow shining although reduced to a small helpless physical version of himself will be on the cover page.
My dad wrote for many years all about his early life, & times in the army. He never finished this work -I suspect he did it in an attempt to make sense of his life. He had a very troubled early life due mainly to his Dad’s almost complete absence due to Hitler & consequent events within the family due to that fact. Mainly it seems due to experiences in Burma & a lost wife he loved, Grandad Albert returned as a shadow which eventually drowned in alcohol.
My own relationship with my Father was troubled, I think this was mainly down to the fact that while he was away in the army serving 2 years national service, I as the firstborn of a generation was having my every need attended to by an adoring collection of lovely females. I do not think I ever forgave him for disturbing this domestic bliss with his hob nailed boots & loud voice.
once fully returned he took it on himself to toughen me up, resulting in him, about 16 years later ending up in hospital with badly bruised ribs due to me punching him twice to stop him strangling me. ( This was one of the incidents we laughed about ). I was also at this time a member of a local gang & a football hooligan. fortunately we only harmed each other & mainly ran around like idiots on adrenaline highs, unlike the far right hard core who I later came to despise. At the age of 19 due to a near miss from a broken glass aimed at my jugular, i changed my lifestyle.
I became a ‘ New Man ‘ when I was presented with a daughter at age 23. My then wife earned more than me, which meant I was able to spend a wonderful period attending to this little miracle’s every need while I kept house & sold a few drawings & posters. I learnt to cook much later when my wife developed cancer. However I am sure these things did not emasculate me as during this period I fractured my now very twisted little finger twice more.
I am no pacifist but I hate these wars branded with the lies of ‘ democracy & freedom ‘, but I truly despise those who send these young men & women off to do their murdering for them. At least their was I think, justification for Grandad Albert’s war against Hitler & the then lunatic Japanese, but aside from the weapons of mass destruction which are owned by the so called good guys, we now also have weapons of mass financial destruction, & these two evils are aided & abetted by weapons of mass distraction.
http://gawker.com/i-am-sorry-that-it-has-come-to-this-a-soldiers-last-534538357
My Dad’s death has concentrated my mind on how much time I have left, a time in which my physical & mental capabilities will inevitably diminish. Although I am for the most part happy with my lot & do not regret losing my previous much more affluent lifestyle due to the 2008 crash, my ‘ Wish i knew then what I know now ‘ & bad timing, I now regret the time spent sleeping as there are many things I would like to do. I fear a possible World where those with something to say in whatever form are crushed under the treadmill of either war or just the tyranny of making ends meet, while a bunch of barren power & money grubbers once again lord it over us.
I suppose if life is a fight the later rounds are the hardest but because I have those fundamentals that are needed to make life worth living I am still up for it & will persevere in at least in being true to myself – There is a part of me that enjoys the struggle & I now know what really matters, at least to me. I like this place & the virtual company, I also like it’s moral foundation laid down by David & I have enjoyed your sparring with Gemma who is a Facebook pal of mine – I admire her straight talking as I also admire others who populate these pages who know a hell of a lot more about high finance than I do.
So there you go, you shouldn’t encourage me, I now have to inhabit a small death, as for the large death I hope that mankind’s intuition that there is something else proves valid, otherwise I will stick to what Woody Allen’s Dad said regarding death in the film ‘ Hannah & her sisters ‘, he said something like ‘ i will be unconscious, if not I will worry about it then ‘. I also have my own fusion of cherry picked Buddhism & the ‘ Many Worlds theory ‘ which I hang onto. I wont give any details as I am scared that someone will pick a large hole in my faith of sorts.
Fare thee well Debra & as you have obviously got it, make sure you flaunt it.
Sorry to hear about your Dad Stevie.
All the best
Roger
Thanks Roger – All the best to you & yours.
“It’s Not About Terrorism, Folks” by Karl Denninger, ever the probability and odds guy. He goes through your chances of being killed by a terrorist activity vs. driving a car, etc., and yet the government insists they must monitor your emails, your internet activity, your phone calls.
“The odds of being killed by a terrorist over a five year period are about 1 in 20 million. This means the odds are about 1 in 100 million annually.”
http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=221610
“What is the Government’s Agenda?” by Paul Craig Roberts, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of the Treasury.
“What is the government’s real agenda? Clearly, “the war on terror” is a front for an undeclared agenda. In “freedom and democracy” America, citizens have no idea what their government’s motives are in fomenting endless wars and a gestapo police state. The only information Americans have comes from whistleblowers, who Obama ruthlessly prosecutes. The presstitutes quickly discredit the information and demonize the whistleblowers.
Germans in the Third Reich and Soviet citizens in the Stalin era had a better idea of their government’s agendas than do “freedom and democracy” Americans today. The American people are the most uninformed people in modern history.
In America there is no democracy that holds government accountable. There is only a brainwashed people who are chaff in the wind.”
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2013/06/11/what-is-the-governments-agenda-paul-craig-roberts/
I read the Roberts article.
As an American expatriot who, after September 11, had little trouble predicting what Roberts talks about, I must say that if one lives outside of the U.S., it becomes rapidly apparent that the U.S. government.. outside the U.S. appears very different from the way it appears inside the U.S., whether one is a citizen, or not, moreover.
Now is when things start getting interesting… just what exactly.. IS the U.S government ? WHO… is the U.S. government, which flesh and blood people are involved in the U.S. government ? What exactly do we mean, what are we talking about when we say “the U.S. government” ?
If you open up “Mein Kampf” in a good translation, you will notice how much trouble Adolf has with the words “Germany” and “Austria”. You may get the uncomfortable feeling that he is even personifying them in the over 600 page rant which I have not read in full, mea culpa. Countries as people ? Strange, huh ? If you take things a little further, you may even have a panic attack wondering just exactly.. what a country is, for example, or how you know what one is ? (Remember, “foul is fair, fair is foul”.)
From my perspective the problem has to do with 0 tolerance, and here, the important element is not “tolerance”, it is 0. (Remember that 0 is a construct, a mathematical construct…)
Because in order for us to have.. 100% security, which means 0 deaths from that nebulous terrorism whose definition also shifts according to which side you are on, you also have to have 100% transparency, for example.
Because “we” are truly aiming at 0 deaths in our civilization. 0 violence. 100% love your neighbor, empathy, the lion will lie down with the lamb, etc etc. (And when I say “we”, I am particularly talking about the official “we”.) You HAVE realized this by now, haven’t you ?
Does it sound crazy to you ??
It IS, it IS totally crazy, but as a French sociology professor and I both agree.. the craziness of individuals taken one by one cannot hold a candle to the craziness of a society gone amok.
You think this can’t happen ? (And when society goes amok, it is very very difficult to retain one’s individual sanity in the best of circumstances.)
On collecting the data… above, somebody named Ambrosius had a lovely thought about overextending empire.
Let’s liken collecting all this data to… Napoleon or Adolf invading Russia.
You feel better now ?
i do…
One last thing to chew over… if we COULDN’T collect all this data, we wouldn’t be doing it… Puts things in perspective a little bit, don’t you think ?
Just watched the Greek Government shut down the national broadcasting
channels at 10.55 Greek time. There were just some rumours but no warning,they have it seems just dismissed more than 2000 employees just like that. There was a live discussion ot the NET channel, which showed the demonstrations taking place all over Greece. The presenters said goodbye and shook hands on live TV then someone literally switched the system off and ALL the national channels disappeared.
Worse than the junta. And it happened without warning, just as if it
were Lehman brothers. Absolutely incredible. Reminded me of the last
broadcast from Hungary 1956. God help us because no one else will.
Demonstrations all over Greece, no police presence as yet. None of the other channels reporting it as yet.
Sorry that this is off topic but I am so upset. As a British citizen, I have never experienced this overtly fascistic behaviour which is apparently condoned by the Troika masters. All this is directly contrary to European labour laws but this no longer matters, it seems.
Maralef,
There is something horribly ominous about switching off the broadcast system. With the intertnet it doesn’t leave us in the dark as it would have once. but it is still hugely symbolic.
It says ‘we’ have power and you do not. It says we can cut you off when we want. You are little people we are not.
There is a concerted attack on the whole idea of a nation of people, of citizenship.
I believe we must soon look to each other or we will each be alone.
Write to us here. Tell us what you see. I am sure many here would value whatever you could tell us.
Maralef,
I have taken the liberty of posting your comment on a thread at the Telegraph as I believe voices like yours should be heard. Please let me know if you object and I will remove it at once.
Naturally, the Telegraph readers approve of this and wish it was the BBC. I don’t think I’ve ever witnessed a more pathetic and yet sinister response in my life.
I have posted your Comment on a New Zealand website Maralef.. Please let me know if you object and I will ask for it to be removed
Of course I don’t object. Sorry not to have replied but it’s been rather busy here yesterday and today (we had to go to the tax office in person to prove yet again that we are both legitimately over 65 and in the end, after three fruitless hours, had to leave with accomplishing anything). You see, the government levies an extra property tax via the electricity bill every two months, and there is no way out of that for everyone (payment can be postponed but not avoided). On the other hand, we have to go through endless bureaucratic procedures to prove what is well-known and documented, the date of birth.
At the moment, it is very difficult to know what is going on here as not only did the government pull the plug on all the state radio and TV channels, but journalists on all the private channels went on strike (in so-called solidarity), so there is no news at all as to what is going on here. Unless one has the internet, in which case the Guardian Business blog provides the information as to how to access what is being broadcast. Invaluable.
At the tax office we saw all the people who are really suffering from the inhuman strains which are being imposed on Greece by a completely indifferent set of politicians, or unelected EU Commissioners etc.
Honestly, words fail me. You really have to be here to appreciate what is going on. Ordinary people have no more savings left, after the savage cuts in salaries for public servants (which includes teachers, health professionals, university staff) and the even more savage response of the private sector, where many people work for nothing as they are not paid, sometimes for months at a time.
The official unemployment rate is now over 27% but this is really an under-estimate as many people actually work for nothing but at least they hope that their employers will eventually pay them something, even if not the full amount. in the meantime, every one I know is busy growing food – but then I live in Crete. Here neighbours help one another, and there is a much greater sense of solidarity.
Sorry for pouring all this out. Got to go now, it’s rather late here.
Thinking of you here in Sweden. Lord Byron once went to Greece at another turbulent time, we may yet see solidarity of the same sort from Citizens of the world who realise Greeces Chains today are ours tomorrow.
´´This man is freed from servile bands, Of hope to rise, or fear to fall; Lord of himself, though not of lands, And leaving nothing, yet hath all´´.
Lord Byron
I hesitate using the “fascist” word.
Toby and I have said that we are in the midst of tremendous linguistic confusion.
In the midst of tremendous linguistic confusion.. power dissolves, my friends. Not one flesh and blood person, or corporate entity can confiscate our language for his/its own purposes. “We”… are collectively floundering. Which is far more unsettling than the idea that power is being confiscated by a select few.
I believe that the Internet is a testimony to the unbelievable degree of interconnectedness of our civilization, and that what is going on in Greece is a symptom of increasing attacks against the symbol ? structure ? of the nation state in Europe (and beyond).
In our minds, (this is historically debatable…) Greece is the origin of our modern democracies.
If Greece continues to unravel at great speed, what is being born at Bethlehem ?
(There is great pressure to dissolve the individual European nation states in a federal united states of Europe. This pressure has increased recently.)
Can.. PRIVATE industrial enterprise continue to fund the infrastructure necessary to do business, thus, turn a profit ? The State has been a partner of the capitalist system for an eternity, providing the necessary infrastructure, and funding the scientific research on which our “progress” rests. No infrastructure.. no business.
No, I would say that thinking in terms of fascism is too… rational for what is going on right now.
After all.. man is an animal entirely capable of irrationally taking himself down..
Not a very comforting thought, I fear. Sorry.
with reference to this comment
“The odds of being killed by a terrorist over a five year period are about 1 in 20 million. This means the odds are about 1 in 100 million annually.”
I’d argue that the odds of being killed by terrorists in any single year are much greater than 1 in 100 million. 1 in 20 million is the risk of being killed in any one of 5 years so in effect is the cumulative total of the individual years odds.. the 1 in 20 million is therefore the risk of dying in any one of the 5 years in that period
how you get from the cumulative to the individual year risk is currently beyond but I’m sure a fellow reader of this website will be able to assist if I don’t get there first…..
obvious really, the underlying risk of dying in a single year of 5 is 1 in 500 million (the cumulative risk adds up to 1 in 100 million (the fact that you might die in year 1 is immaterial here, it’s enough you die at any point ion the 5 year period….)
The odds if getting harmed by campaigners for reform and others ‘here to help’ are even. Do not read or talk about this unless you want them to harm you.
http://www.meltfund.com/2013/06/get-ahead-financially-by-chasing.html
Osbourne’s ”Help to Buy” to get the Tories through the next general election?
http://blogs.reuters.com/anatole-kaletsky/2013/06/13/when-illogical-policy-seems-to-work/
And here is Steve Keen’s take on it:
http://www.maxkeiser.com/2013/06/keen-on-george-osbornes-ponzi-scheme/
Thanks for the links Phil
As Keen concludes, it’s ” help to sell! ”
Interesting to see the future get a calendar. But also, it shows that Osborne, or someone feeding Osborne, knows exactly how the economy really works & what policies can reflate an economy……for a while….until they can’t….because it will all be new private debt.
If it’s feeding (Osborne is surely too dopy to grasp economics himself?) then who else but the Bilderberg lot?
But it probably won’t last long – the Euro zone will provide no support – so if the Tories do win in 2015 then things will get very nasty in UK I think.
Judging by Miliband & Balls recent ‘cap social welfare’ spiel, then it appears Labour will be doing its utmost for a Tory win whatever happens. Balls is another Bilderberg attendee, very convenient.
Speaking on the Greek & European crisis – after the switching off of ERT, Greece’s public broadcaster (aka BBC) – James Galbraith.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=tSVvgN5WjR8
Galbraith has a brilliant grasp on the European crisis, comparing the Euro zone & US institutional differences automatic stabilising functions. From that deducing the key political economy issues to be resolved. Which are centred around the fact that the US economy has stabilised but the EU Euro/£ is getting worse and nearer to a trigger to more serious social unrest (however that might pan out, by break up or greater internal repression ).
You certainly get a sense of the panic in Greece as an entire major public institution is shut down in a matter of hours.
Galbraith is one of those political economists that pop up now and again with a great summary of the present global economic situation (or at least the half? comprising US & EU). He must be one of oldest PK (Post Keynesian) economists, as his father presumably was before him.
Anyhow, liked it, and this site that linked the Youtube from Greece:
http://nakedkeynesianism.blogspot.ie/
(Matias Vernengo, Economics University of Utah)
Thanks for the link Mike
I’d say that it only appears to be stabilising in the US because they are better at sedating their population; whether media, entertainment, sports, food stamps, or literally through the widespread use of anti-depressants.
Galbraith Jnr has written some very good pieces, including this lecture on the implications of resource constraints:
http://my.firedoglake.com/selise/2011/04/19/james-k-galbraith-the-implications-of-rising-resource-costs-for-economic-systems/
And not forgetting his book “Predator State”:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Predator-State-Conservatives-Abandoned/dp/1416576215/
But don’t you find his, typically American, use of 10 words instead of one so annoying.
Thanks for the video. I actually watched it from beginning to end.
I find it somewhat ironic that Galbraith Junior, who does not live in the world his father lived in, and probably does not have the mind that his father did, gives a presentation that Greek PUBLIC television could not transmit, but which appears.. over the Internet, without managing to ask himself if there could be some.. RELATIONSHIP between these two occurrences…
I also find it somewhat shortsighted to NOT realize that one of the major issues involved at this time is whether Europe will continue to be.. colonized by its former colony at lightyear speed, or not.
Mea culpa, as an American, I am historically obtuse, but even I know that at the issue of WW2, the United States’… desire was for Europe to create a United States of Europe.
Where are we now with this…AMERICAN desire ??
Yes, I know… I am a foolish, and not a reasonable person.
How many other foolish people are out there ?
There is a saying “a time to build up, and a time to tear down” (Ecclesiastes).
And beyond actively tearing some things down, sometimes they manage to find their own way down, because they have become top heavy, and we have lost faith in them.
“A situation which is now out of control”
http://www.leap2020.eu/GEAB-N-76-is-available-Alert-for-the-second-half-of-2013-Global-systemic-crisis-II-second-devastating-explosion-social_a14266.html
“Before you dismiss the possibility of a 90% drop in the stock market as unrealistic, consider Wiedemer’s credentials.”
http://www.moneynews.com/MKTNews/billionaires-dump-economist-stock/2012/08/29/id/450265?PROMO_CODE=1393F-1
Another loss/bailout coming to the EU taxpayer ?..
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/17/us-nyse-intercontinental-eu-idUSBRE95G0GM20130617
“Myths of Creating Money”…
http://speye.wordpress.com/2013/06/17/you-though-the-bedroom-tax-was-bad-the-much-worse-benefit-cap-starts-in-4-weeks/
An earlier commenter said it: “we all can create money, it is just getting someone else to accept it”.
So the banks create money when they make loans on fractional reserves. And banks are supposed to weigh the risks of the lending that they do. And part of that weighing is in an estimate of the viability of the enterprise that the borrower is engaged in.
It has been my belief for some time that the availability of energy as the basic input to the economic machine is what allows the money supply to expand gracefully. The money supply can be manipulated but unless the economy can accept the increase the manipulation will result in imbalances and sharp corrections. I think this is what has happened over the last decades as the price of oil has gone up.
Ever country in the world is trying to manipulate their own currency supply and to stimulate debt creation and it has gone into paper instruments and finance because the real economy is constrained by the availability of energy.
Will the natural gas availability stimulate a paradoxical inflation by an increase in real economic activity and a commensurate increase in demand for debt as the banks are overcapitalized and interest rates are on the rise?
If inflation is dead why are bonds selling off so hard? If it is just the support of central banks that has been taken away they will soon stabilize if deflation is indeed the case.
Wait and see.
Howdy! This article couldn’t be written any better! Looking at
this post reminds me of my previous roommate! He constantly kept
preaching about this. I am going to send this post to him.
Pretty sure he’ll have a very good read. Thanks for sharing!