Monetary Reform

[1000jrb]

I need to look into this more. I agree that the current monetary system is flawed and is unsustainable, but the playlist had a couple skeptical red flags that caught my attention. Even though it is not directly said, there is an implication of conspiracy & in the animation there was a reference to Lucifer and 666. Do you have any book recommendations on the subject?

[zthustra]

I have a difficult time finding good videos made by people who aren't just a bit on the conspiracy nut side. I've watched this video a couple times in teh last year or so and I don't recall seeing the Lucifer and 666 stuff, but I'll take your word for it. We really need good educational material that doesn't stray from the subject but humans invariably add their bias.

[1000jrb]

I agree that good sources are hard to find. I thought overall the video playlist did a good job of laying out the history and how the current system works. I don't know if we should be looking backward for solutions, but there certainly needs to be a real & honest debate on this subject to get all the facts on the table. Keep up the good work Z.

[zthustra]

I like your point about looking backwards! The real value of conservatism isn't clinging to the past, but learning from it. Perhaps at the turn of the next century, our grandchildren will live in a less populous world with a resource constrained economy. What they call money will be different.

I added some vids by shanedk at the end. The guy is absolutely awesome! Although I'm not into clinging to gold and silver as the only or best money or even unrestrained free market money.

[AntiChristAntiFail]

I wish so dearly Kucinich had a chance to win the election but so many are focused on fucking him over.

[zthustra]

I was never a Kucinich fan, at least not until the most recent few years. Sadly, when I listen to hear him I want to scream. He has no skill as a communicator. Only the bright and the patient ones will even know that he has a messaage worth paying attention to. He needs to learn how to use cadence and crechendo and how to pause at the right moment. He needs to watch Obama speak and learn how it's done.

[Bernd1964]

Money always was the big distributor of wealth in societies with division of work. Many people blindly trust in the justness of money until they find out how unfair and intransparent today's money really is. A superrich and very powerful elite has taken possession of money creation in modern society. We live in a kind of money-feudalism in which the world belongs to elites. It doesn't surprise that these elites are the kings and queens of the past. They still think the world belongs to them.

[zthustra]

For most of my life, I wouldn't have considered reading Marx or Engels. My mind was as closed to them as any right-wing, free-market, libertarian might be. Today I'm listening to the audio version of the Communist Manifesto. When TheAtheistPaladin asked about labor as money I started looking for video and realized it all goes back to The Labor Theory of Value by Karl Marx. Now I need to know what he was all about.

[AncientAtheist]

Damn!

How much does that cat weigh? At first I thought a dog was walking around behind you.

[zthustra]

When George stretches out on the bed its worse than when the kids slept with us. At least he gets up and leaves when I go to bed. The kids didn't. They just kept kicking and pushing.

[tattooskin72]

Always informative :) I'll be watching the play list as son as I am able.

[fatrat600284]

And i would like to ask you something zthustra you know what the problems are with the system we have now but. Do you have any answer/ideas on how we can fix the problems with the system. It's one thing to know what's wrong with the system. But it's another thing to know what's wrong with the system and know how to fix it.

[zthustra]

Fair criticism and as I point out in several videos I'm not really the answers guy, I just shine a little light in the corner to see what kind of shit is going on there.

I I don't think it's going to change. I think in a few years, maybe a decade if we are lucky, population, monetary crisis and resource depletion (peak oil) couples with climate change will pretty much end the good life.

I'm not happy about that! I wish it was otherwise. I'm too small to make a difference. We all are.

[fatrat600284]

I agree with you. The why we live can not and will not last long. So we must get some form of back up plan ready. But i think (one of) The biggest problems right now is overpopulation. The more we reproduce the more our other problems are accelerated.

[zthustra]

I saw an interesting interview with Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson. He said of crisis that some people deal with crisis by hunkering down, stocking up and going into survival mode. Scientists try to solve teh problem. I like that, but I think scientist have already tried. Club of Rome, Limits of Growth for example. The human monkey-things just aren't listinging to scientists. Maybe that will be the next big social change? Listen to smart people! Or maybe it will just be die off?

watch?v=649_fNSlnos

[fatrat600284]

That was a great interview thanks for sharing. The thing is if and when a crisis happens you will have the people who go in to survival mode and then you have the people who try and solve the problem. Are survival depends on the ones who try and solve the problem and how many we can get together. The sad thing is every time i think of some big crisis (war,oil depletion,large scale natural disaster etc.) I see the out come as us just dieing off.

[fatrat600284]

The only why i see any BIG positive change happening with the us government is by getting rid of the one we have now. And starting over with a new type of government. I know this many not be the best answer to problems of government but with the one we have now it tacks too long to get one bill passed that may help us (the people and it not like we are guarantee to get that bill passed.)

[zthustra]

I think that was the allure of fascism. Strong leadership promising swift change. T so-called third way of fascism put capitalism under the thumg of government by exploiting corporatism restrained by tyrants with guns. Of course we know that the right people always got theri way in business and government exploited labor for the benefit of supporters just like it does here only tyrant-fashion instead of pseudo-democracy-fashion.

[TheAtheistPaladin]

Is labor base money explain in the play-list too? I am not sure how that system will work.

[zthustra]

No, I don't have any vids on the playlist that look at how labor could be the basis for money. I dount that the audience is listening to The Labor Theory of Value by Karl Marx anyway. And I'm not even going to suggect a monetary system that could be based on it, but it has been done quite successfully with local currencies. Other than the fact that PRIVATE banks get to make money out of thin air and charge interest for it, and we stay in debt forever, I don't have a problem with token money.

[TheAtheistPaladin]

Token money is certainly less prone to inflation that fiat money but it also tends to be less flexible. There is a give and take to everything.

[zthustra]

Token money is money by fiat. The tokens, be they coin or paper, are money only because they are declared to be so.

Silver and gold coins are tokens when they are coin and commodity when they are melted down for their commodity value.

Silver and gold certificates are tokens with no commodity value, but the illusion of commondity value.

Silver and gold tokens are, as you described, less prone to inflation because the metals are scarce. But paper money has the same problem vs electronic.

[TheAtheistPaladin]

I am sorry, I thought that you meant commodity by saying token.

If you say that token is fiat, then I am agaisnt 100%. If you can simply print the money, then when times get tuff they will print more money to help them get out of it. This always leads to inflation and thus going back into trouble again and the cycle repeats until there is unavoidable collapse. A sound monetary system must be based on something that doesn't come from thin air.

[zthustra]

Amen! I'm glad you posted the comment that you did. Many people fail to understand that gold and silver are tokens. They just happen to be expensive tokens. It is like printing money on linen instead of schoolbook paper and using better ink press instead of a copy machine.

The green back was successful in its day for the same reason that gold and siver were in theirs. It allowed money to expand enough, but it limited the quantity by required actual tokens.

What limits it now? Consumption?

[TheAtheistPaladin]

How fast can you print it? :P

[zthustra]

During fiscal year (FY) 2009, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing produced approximately 26 million notes a day with a face value of approximately $907 million.

95% of the notes printed each year are used to replace notes already in, or taken out of circulation.

Coins and notes account for $28.5 billion of the estimated $14 trillion in total money supply. Notes are less than 0.2% of money and can't really be used to expand money supply.

[zthustra]

I'm once again amazing to realize that ALL of the money, including the estimated/unreported M3 would only just pay off the federal government debt and wouldn't be enough to cover state and local debt too, let alone commercial debt and consumer debt. That's one of the biggest problems with debt-based money!

[joebhed]

If you use the term greenback jingoistically, then you are right because the PRIVATE BANKERS are printing it by the Trillions today, just like my Dad warned me 40 years ago.

But if you mean Greenbacks as in real-dollars, well, the GOVERNMENT authorized $450 M and they printed $450 M.

So, ...... ????

You should read Chap. 16 of The Lost Science of Money.

[joebhed]

In case you haven't noticed, this is EXACTLY what the private Fed bankers have done to you already - and to ALL Americans.

Can you say Fed INDEPENDENCE ?

Yes, you can.

But you cannot say government independence, because they owe it to us, and not the bancorporations.

[SeruQuik]

I remember seeing Grignon's "Money as Debt," and he makes one blatant lie within it. He claims that monetary policy is not taught in postsecondary institutions when it easily is. The one I'm at is a relatively small university that covers monetary policy and the Fed, so I personally don't see where Gringnon got that thought from.

There are legit advantages to the Fed and what it does, among them being independence from political rhetoric/bureaucracy. I'm not in full defense of the Fed, granted.

[zthustra]

I perked up when I heard him say that. Because I'm a business major, I took three semesters of economics and a semester of financial institutions and markets. We also discussed debt-money in our senior seminar as well.

But, the debt burden on ALL money, the Ponzi scheme that is banking was not in the course material. Two professers did try to explain this to the class and it thoroughly confussed them. Some even resented them for teaching more than the book.

[SeruQuik]

Admittedly, the Ponzi scheme of it (which it technically is, as hard as it is to say) wasn't hidden from us in my classes. Rather it was a bit glorified in the sense; it was discussed that with the system, a new dollar bill being printed could add more than $1 to the money supply depending on a number of factors due to this procedure. It's an efficient, albeit unethical, procedure and system.