Should people be paid for their work? If the answer is no, you advocate slavery. So should people be paid?

mikey mikey wrote:
Answer the question, lets see if it is straw or not.

I AM ALL I AM wrote:
I've said time and again whats needed is experimental proof of concept.
How do you get the initial investment required to set up something to demonstrate it though?
Who is going to invest in a system that would bring down the economic system?

This is an incredible modern-day story of a native peoples' victory over Western globalization. Sick of seeing their environment ruined and their people exploited by the Panguna Mine, the Pacific island of Bougainville rose up against the giant mining corporation, Rio Tinto Zinc.

The newly formed Bougainville Revolutionary Army began fighting with bows and arrows and sticks and stones against a heavily armed adversary. In an attempt to put down the rebellion the Papua New Guinean Army swiftly established a gunboat blockade around the island. But with no shipments allowed in or out, how did new electricity networks spring up on the island? And how were the people of Bougainville able to drive around the island without any source of petrol or diesel?

Watch as the world's first eco-revolution unfolds within the blockade. A David and Goliath story for the 21st century. A multi-award winning documentary.

This is by far one of the most amazing documentaries I have ever seen! Hard to come by, perhaps due its subversive nature...From the little I know, it received an amnesty international documentary award at the end of the 90s and was aired on Channel 4 in the UK sometime before 2002, although even then the crucial scenes of the coconut oil biodiesel processing were cut out (very obviously). Since then I have never come across it. The documentary follows 2 of the first (british?) journalists able to enter the island of Bougainville, in the Solomon Islands belonging to Papua New Guinea, since the island was reclaimed by its local inhabitants. This pristine tropical island is richly endowed with various mineral resources, leading it to be exploited by a huge mining multinational mining company operating in this part of the world (whose name i forget). One day, the islanders take over the mines, destroy the infrastructures and expel the foreign mine employees, and sending a clear message to the outside world. Then followed the successful resistance and defeat of riot police, the PNG army over many years. PNG even hired a SAS-type mercenary unit from England to sort out the embarrassing situation, but they were sent home by the angry under-paid PNG army, at which point the conflict/revolution briefly entered the mainstream media. And since, Bougainville remains under embargo as the world's first self-sustained 'eco-revoltion', yet politically and internationally unrecognised. This documentary shows how the people of Bougainville survived and created an ingenious and functional alternative existence. At the heart of their subsistence lies the humble coconut, providing them with valuable nutrition, lamp oil and home-made biodiesel to run their jeeps around the island, and giving them a upper hand in their fight against the PNG army..I could go on, but my memories are incomplete, and you have to see for yourselves - you'll never have seen anything like it!
www.imdb.com/title/tt0479000/

Wonga don't do business loans andyh, many people wouldn't have been able to start their own businesses without the availability of credit, whether to buy premises, equipment or production facilities credit enables average people to create their own realities.

simulacra wrote:
Because the hungry would be dead?

If people move their money from the unregulated banks into the regulated financial organisations, the banks will have to compete by
accepting regulation, responsibility and social responsibility.

simulacra wrote:
If you have a 27k salary, wife and kids and you have a £800 a month rent, go right ahead and try getting a loan of any decent size.

Small once secured on some kind of property perhaps, depends on outgoings, maybe a car. That'll be your lot and no more.
You'll be stuck paying it off for 5 or 6 years (if you keep your job that long) and you'll end up paying approx twice as much as you initially borrowed over that period.

So you're looking at small car loan size, under 10k and you need to make double that much back within that period plus profits on top to keep you going plus pay all the bills you already have. Oh and if you don't manage it, we take everything you have.

What are you waiting for man, off you go!

andyh wrote: It's true what they say about the people who talk the most knowing nothing isn't it?
You can get business loans up to £300k if you have a viable idea or marketable product.
You also don't need to pay anything back on a lot of those loans in the first few years if you've forecast the initial losses will be recuperated as word of mouth spreads about your product and capital is reinvested in marketing and so on.


Mikey that's a very morbid outlook you have, if credit was completely deregulated money could be more freely available to everybody, people who are blocked out of the production process by monopolists could co create their alternatives..

If you have a 27k salary, wife and kids and you have a £800 a month rent, go right ahead and try getting a loan of any decent size.

Small once secured on some kind of property perhaps, depends on outgoings, maybe a car. That'll be your lot and no more.
You'll be stuck paying it off for 5 or 6 years (if you keep your job that long) and you'll end up paying approx twice as much as you initially borrowed over that period.

So you're looking at small car loan size, under 10k and you need to make double that much back within that period plus profits on top to keep you going plus pay all the bills you already have. Oh and if you don't manage it, we take everything you have.

What are you waiting for man, off you go!

simulacra wrote:
Clear WUM.
The best businesses don't need a loan, never did.

andyh wrote: Sure but you'd be hard pressed to find any large corporation who's owner and board's weren't given a hand up by their family, sponsors or inheritance.

Nobody just stumbles upon a business, the age of the family guild manufacturer is long past i'm afraid.

If credit was freely available, money was printed for need then we would have no poverty.

Money is printed for productive use, it is still not necessarily printed for need.

andyh wrote: Sure but you'd be hard pressed to find any large corporation who's owner and board's weren't given a hand up by their family, sponsors or inheritance.

Nobody just stumbles upon a business, the age of the family guild manufacturer is long past i'm afraid.

If credit was freely available, money was printed for need then we would have no poverty.

Money is printed for productive use, it is still not necessarily printed for need.

... Wage slavery is far better than slavery.

simulacra wrote:
So give everybody a load of debt & everything will be ok?
Genius! Why didn't I think of that? Only it's not working too well for most people at the minute.

Space Bandit wrote:
Maybe you should try re-reading the post, you clearly didn't understand.

WHo said give everybody a load of debt, that's stupid and actually impossible, who would the debt be too if you gave everybody a load of debt?
I was talking about credit, it's the opposite of debt. Little steps

simulacra wrote:
There is a situation where what you say is quite viable and here is why this is just a WUM.
If I could borrow a billion quid tomorrow and only have to start paying it back in 2000 years with no collateral then I would be quite happy to go right ahead.
If everybody could do it then we would flood the economy with so much money then a loaf of bread would cost a trillion quid.

Now go back and crawl under the pwned rock again.

simulacra wrote:
Are you serious?
Seriously?
For real?


Now let me see.... what happens once credit is granted....? Could it be possible that it needs paying back? Would that therefore mean it's actually debt?

The way you dismiss this idea is by characterizing people as a bunch of stupid idiots who would go crazy and take huge amounts of credit for pointless unproductive purposes and never pay it back, it's not true, many people probably wouldn't bother, those with ideas and productive potential could utilize it.

andyh wrote: What is this absurd mystical metaphor which bears no correlation at all to what I said?

Take the example of Bougainville, if credit was freely available bougainville could have created a well developed economy and health service that over decades from 1000 units investment would eventually come to produce 1000000unites annually.

It's a cycle, as I said if you have a viable idea, plan and projections for a business you can get credit to help you fund starting it up. Over many years a 100k business loan might turn into your ability to produce £millions worth of commodities.

The way you dismiss this idea is by characterizing people as a bunch of stupid idiots who would go crazy and take huge amounts of credit for pointless unproductive purposes and never pay it back, it's not true, many people probably wouldn't bother, those with ideas and productive potential could utilize it.

No that's absurd.
You have nothing, you come to me and I give you a loan to tide you by, you now have £50 and a debt for £50, would you use the fifty pounds to pay the debt immediately?