havent been very active in general discussion for a while for a few reasons but i have chatted a lot of shit about the sz having potential for putting our heads together to help put the world to right.


so, a consensus thread. lets see how it goes

i think its best we deal with one area of life at a time, attempt to formulate a consensus on what we think the main issues are, and possible solutions.

as the op, i claim the right to name the first area of life.

means of exchange.

anyone who's ever wasted more than a few minutes of their life reading my thoughts knows that i am an advocate of the complete removal of all forms of currency.

i'm not daft enough to attempt to get consensus on that so i have compromised and moved to an idea that andy has outlined on many an occasion.

the problems with currency stem from its management.
all sovereign states are entitled to create their own currency.
very few do and those that do tend to get bombed.
reason being that a private banking network has global control of the creation and supply of currency.
this network of banks are for profit of course.
not only can they charge interest on the creation of currency but under fractional reserve they can lend out virtual money that they dont have and charge interest on that too.

global boom and bust is a means of the banking network gaining real world wealth and furthering centralisation of power at an alarming rate. land, homes, farms, factories, countries......all going to the bankers


so the solution. i would like us to try and achieve a consensus starting from this 'solution'.

the very notion of making money from money to be chucked in the bin (usury, fr, bonds, all of it) sovereign states print their own money, be it physical or digital or both. they then manage the supply of money in balance with the need of the people to ensure that there is always just enough to pay for everything including investment in infrastructure etc.

so there's yer starting point

play nice

dubmeup wrote:
Which is why people in the west would have to protest the Military–industrial complex first.

You can't even talk about abolishing currency until that happens.

It will take millions of people in the west protesting lockheed martin, raytheon and boeing.

Once those companies are gone people might be able to consider a world without money.

Good thread Dub's.

Dubs, surely you're not suggesting that countries should be allowed to run their own affairs.

Makes total and utter sense dubs.

The problem is that;

a) Nearly all (but not quite) politicians have no fucking idea about it, nor do they care.

b) Those that do see no point in upsetting the apple cart, the last guy that tried was Andrew Jackson. Why bother when you have a cushy number for life and a revolving door and billions of people who wouldn't thank you for it anyway?

c) Public ignorance feeds the above. I feel its impossible to educate more than a tiny fraction of 1% to the overall picture and why its so fucked.

d) This leads to the inevitable conclusion amongst some of the tiny fraction of 1% who do know that the only solution is either violence or extreme 'benevolent dictatorship' .

e) This leads to wanting to bang your head on a wall/commit suicide/whatever.

Hey Dubs can you clarify a few points please?

1.the very notion of mak­ing money from money to be chucked in the bin (usury, fr, bonds, all of it) sov­er­eign states print their own money, be it phys­i­cal or dig­i­tal or both. they then man­age the sup­ply of money in bal­ance with the need of the peo­ple to ensure that there is always just enough to pay for every­thing includ­ing invest­ment in infra­struc­ture etc.

Could you define sovereign state, the sovereign state seems to play a large part in your solution.

People don't really need money imo, a lot of the need for participation in an economic system imo stems from the fact no real wealth is produced, no tools or capital goods are produced locally or independently, people have to sell their labour to produce items, or buy such things on the international markets where currency is the only acceptable exchange, if somebody has imported a bunch of tractors with coin he's gonna want coin in exchange, so it seems to me with government printing money, they will also have to be planning production so commodities and basic necessities are available and trading internationally to secure things like sugar, coffee, bananas etc.

I'm having trouble with this idea of government printed and distributed currency, can you give me an example or two?

#2 rea­son being that a pri­vate bank­ing net­work has global con­trol of the cre­ation and sup­ply of cur­rency.
this net­work of banks are for profit of course.

I guess this is why I have the problem, surely you mean credit and why be vague, the imf, world bank and EU bailout program supply credit to failing governments in exchange for key infrastructure and industry, ie real wealth.

What would be the real wealth behind your sovereign state's currency?

The second half of this programme, and the first item of the first half, discusses one possible solution to the problem described in the OP:



I haven't had time to look into Bitcoin, and I guess the fact that it's digitalised will alarm a lot of people. But I heard Keiser talking about it, and he is well aware of why people oppose digitalised currency, but really believes in this platform. I haven't had time to look into this in depth yet, and it may never gain any traction, but it must be worth a look.

Bitcoin got hacked and failed as a result.

www.gizmodo.com.au/2012/09/bitcoin-tradi...daring-online-heist/

Nice try I suppose but it was inevitable. It wouldn't surprise me to find the guys behind it are on the bankers payroll.

@ra we can discuss the military later, i'd like us to try and stay on topic and take one area at a time

@gue, i think the starting point is fairly clear tbh.
let's exchange the words sovereign state for government if it helps you.
backed currencies imo are open to incredible abuse. i am suggesting a model where the currency isnt backed by anything, it is just a means of exchange. of course thats just a starting point for the discussion. let's see if we can pool thoughts and come up with summat we could all back.

@wub could you post a precy of what that video says please, if it's possible?

@andy yes there are monumental obstacles to any potential solution. i'm inclined to think the best way to approach this discussion is to try to find an 'ideal' solution and then overlay the obstacles and look at thow they may be worked out/around. i'd like to see us try it methodically

andyh wrote: There was another episode where one of the founders was saying the banking system would aggressively attack Bitcoin. I'm pretty sure it's this one:



I'm not an expert on any of the techie stuff, but hopefully they can do something about this and not give up.

Oddly I have no issue with usury - If I borrow something then I kinda expect to return it with a 'thankyou' as it were.

I do however have a huge problem with the way in which we place 'value' on things - that for me is the massive issue.

It is the distribution of resources which is for me the area that needs work and currency is not a resource as such it is merely a representation.

dubmeup wrote:
You want to stop people swapping things? After all, currency is barter where you just dont have to lug a bag of chickens around when you want to swap them for turnips.

The problems are simply a matter of profit-motive/avarice....and its very tricky to legislate against that, even if you institute a system of rationing using "coupons", so that everyone got paid the same coupons like the old ration books.

thoreau wrote:
How do you place a value on something when you exchange something for it which has no value whatsoever?

@ mr shiny. i dont think you are getting the thread. it's not about what i or you want. it's about going through ideas and seeing if we can find agreement.

if i were to address your points we could be derailed on page 1

what would be your suggestions or alterations to the idea of returning money to just being a means of exchange, with government issuing and managing it's balance?

Everything only has value that 'we' give it. Currency has no value in itself - the value if from swapping it for goods that have a 'value'. I hear people saying it needs to be backed by something such as gold - but again gold is only 'valuable' if people believe it has 'value' and there is enough demand to retain that 'value'. It could just as easily be backed by herrings.

thoreau wrote:
ok i sort of agree if you have grown 10 cabbages and offer them to me as credit, i would gladly give you a bit more back.

one major 'issue' with lending at interest is exposed when it's thought of in relation to fr. you then have the situation where someone is lending something they don't have, never had and which is brought into existence when you borrowed it.
personally i do not feel the same about paying interest on that as i do about your cabbages
agreed. the way we establish worth is insane. at this stage of the thread i'd like to concentrate on the issuance and management of currency though ta

resource distribution is very closely related of course and worthy of a section of it's own. one of the first questions of r d is, do we use a currency? as in the op, i dont think we'd get anywhere trying to get consensus on that one. so i started from a point of keeping some form of currency.

it may seem as if i'm coming at this a bit um strict (?) but bear with it folks, as an experiment it's a work in progress

sorry dubs dont mean to take the thread in the 'wrong' direction.

Personally speaking I don't think it matters much who creates and manages the currency whether its a bank or a government - it is what we 'value' and how we consume that allows the system to fuck us over.

Whilst a greater 'value' is placed on 'items' rather then 'lives' there can be no 'taking it back' or resolution to the problem imho ofc

One thing I would suggest which I believe to be equally important, if not more so, would be a serious rolling back of the influence and power of 'stock' markets. I have never seen one legitimate argument as to why stock markets exist, except to enable some very wealthy people to get wealthier. If they ever did have a legitimate purpose, that is long gone, with all of the ridiculous activity taking place today. Just the foreign exchange market alone is worth $4 trillion per day. And the majority of trading now isn't even done by human-beings, it's performed by algorithmic-driven supercomputers. They can, and have, crashed the market in hours before:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Flash_Crash

FOREX is just one market. Pretty much everything that has value to human-beings is traded, and they want to start trading water derivatives in the future. It doesn't even matter whether any of these investment banks make money or not because if they fail they get the people who they're stealing from to 'bail them out'.

Before you ask...no, I don't know how this could be achieved!

thoreau wrote:
Then both the paper and the gold don't really have value.
They never did in the first place.

Perhaps us stupid humans simply need to realise what actually does have value?

thanks wub, stock markets then, i agree it's utterly ludicrous. do we take that as something to add to the start point?

y does there have to b an exchange of anything? y cant we just try to make ppl b good out of the bottom of their hearts...
exmple: that person needs a blanket, i have two, "here ya go"
example: that person is hungry, i have more than enough food, "come have a warm meal n heres something to take with you unless u wanna bunk in the back room"
example: that person needs help with their garden, im gonna go help them till the soil n care for it - months down the road garden owner shares wat comes from the garden
is it really unplausible n unthinkable to just b a good person