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Can We Build Our Own Economy From the Ground Up?
The Economy Is Stuck In a Depression … For Most Americans
The mainstream economy is stuck in depression. See this, this and this.
More accurately, there are two economies:
- In one economy, the top .1% are being made richer and richer due to access to government handouts, fraud and bad government policies
- In the other economy, everyone else is getting poorer
Alan Greenspan agrees:
Our problem basically is that we have a very distorted economy, in the sense that there has been a significant recovery in our limited area of the economy amongst high-income individuals…
Large banks, who are doing much better and large corporations, whom you point out and everyone is pointing out, are in excellent shape. The rest of the economy, small business, small banks, and a very significant amount of the labour force, which is in tragic unemployment, long-term unemployment – that is pulling the economy apart. The average of those two is what we are looking at – that they are fundamentally two separate types of economies.
Put another way, the top .1% are currently acting like parasites, stealing the money from the rest of the population.
Moreover, the giant insolvent banks – which are receiving trillions in bailouts, guarantees and opportunities – are not lending to Main Street, while the smaller banks are (even though the smaller banks are being unfairly penalized by the Fed.)
And perhaps most importantly, consumer confidence – and Americans’ confidence that their government is doing the right thing to fix the economy – is extremely low.
Why?
Largely because the rule of law has broken down, and fraud is so rampant – and is actually sanctioned by the government – that it has become “the business model” of Wall Street. And see this.
In short, people no longer trust the economic system, which makes an economic recovery impossible.
So people aren’t spending, but are instead “keeping their powder dry” until the rule of law and free markets are restored. People know – either consciously or below the surface – that we have socialism for the rich, and that the little guy doesn’t have a chance. See this, this, and this.
Under such circumstances, people will not spend.
Is There A Solution?
We can’t get out of this depression until trust is restored and consumer spending occurs again. Trust and spending won’t happen unless the rule of law is followed. But the government refuses to enforce the rule of law or to prosecute most of the Wall Street fraud, partly because Washington D.C. has been bought and paid for by Wall Street.
So we’re stuck in a seeming catch-22.
But maybe we can build our own economy. Yes Magazine has a new article out entitled:
Who’s Building the Do-It-Ourselves Economy?
Corporations aren’t hiring, and Washington is gridlocked. Here’s how we take charge of our own livelihoods.
We – collectively – have enough money in our personal stashes to be able to grow a vibrant economy. If we held our own money, we wouldn’t need the big banks. Public banking could also really help us obtain credit to grow our local businesses and economies. But the big banks (and Federal Reserve itself) are exerting tremendous pressure to kill any public banking movement.
Local currencies and barter are also becoming huge trends. As John Stossel noted in March:
The Cleveland Federal Reserve notes that private currencies have even helped the economy function in the past: During the Great Depression, the Federal Reserve failed to keep enough currency in the economy – so some companies issued their own currencies and helped fill the void.
But the government at times cracks down ruthlessly on alternative currencies … going so far as to label them a form of “domestic terrorism”.
Moreover, there is a growing consensus that – since there is simply too much debt in the world to repay (much of it fraudulently incurred) – the debt should simply be written down. See this and this. However, the bondholders are fighting that idea with tremendous lobbying efforts.
So the large organizations – perhaps with the best of motives – are trying to keep us trapped in the dysfunctional, debt-based system.
Re-Building Local Communities of Trust
As professor of social anthropology – and debt expert – David Graeber points out, we don’t really need debt and money as such:
The big question in the origins of money is how a sense of obligation – an ‘I owe you one’ – turns into something that can be precisely quantified? Well, the answer seems to be: when there is a potential for violence. If you give someone a pig and they give you a few chickens back you might think they’re a cheapskate, and mock them, but you’re unlikely to come up with a mathematical formula for exactly how cheap you think they are. If someone pokes out your eye in a fight, or kills your brother, that’s when you start saying, “traditional compensation is exactly twenty-seven heifers of the finest quality and if they’re not of the finest quality, this means war!”
Money, in the sense of exact equivalents, seems to emerge from situations like that, but also, war and plunder, the disposal of loot, slavery. In early Medieval Ireland, for example, slave-girls were the highest denomination of currency. And you could specify the exact value of everything in a typical house even though very few of those items were available for sale anywhere because they were used to pay fines or damages if someone broke them.
But once you understand that taxes and money largely begin with war it becomes easier to see what really happened. After all, every Mafiosi understands this. If you want to take a relation of violent extortion, sheer power, and turn it into something moral, and most of all, make it seem like the victims are to blame, you turn it into a relation of debt. “You owe me, but I’ll cut you a break for now…” Most human beings in history have probably been told this by their debtors. And the crucial thing is: what possible reply can you make but, “wait a minute, who owes what to who here?” And of course for thousands of years, that’s what the victims have said, but the moment you do, you are using the rulers’ language, you’re admitting that debt and morality really are the same thing.
If Graeber is right in his claim that modern ideas of money and debt came from warfare and slavery, if the large banks and their “bought and paid for politicians” continue to block public banking, and if the IRS is going to tax barter transactions and block alternative currencies, what can we do to escape the clutches of the wealth-extracting system we currently have?
Graeber hints at one possibility:
[French anthropologist Marcel Mauss] was one of the first anthropologists to ask: well, all right, if not barter, then what? What do people who don’t use money actually do when things change hands? Anthropologists had documented an endless variety of such economic systems, but hadn’t really worked out common principles. What Mauss noticed was that in almost all of them, everyone pretended as if they were just giving one another gifts and then they fervently denied they expected anything back. But in actual fact everyone understood there were implicit rules and recipients would feel compelled to make some sort of return.
What fascinated Mauss was that this seemed to be universally true, even today. If I take a free-market economist out to dinner he’ll feel like he should return the favor and take me out to dinner later. He might even think that he is something of chump if he doesn’t and this even if his theory tells him he just got something for nothing and should be happy about it. Why is that? What is this force that compels me to want to return a gift?
This is an important argument, and it shows there is always a certain morality underlying what we call economic life.
In other words, in communities or webs of human interaction which are small enough that people can remember who gave what, we might be able to set up alternative systems of money and credit so we can largely “opt out” of the status quo systems of money and debt measurement.
I’m not arguing for becoming Luddites and living in mud huts (but that is fine, if you wish to do so). Nor am I suggesting that we all have to become selfless saints who give away all of their possessions without any reasonable expectation of something in return.
I am arguing that it might be possible to empower ourselves – and create our own systems for keeping track on a local or people-centered basis, and create our own vibrant economies using the resources we have – by moving away from the national and global systems dominated by the biggest banks and oligarchs, and towards a system where we “spend” resources and goodwill into our local communities in a way in which trust is built from the ground-up, and the energy of trade and commerce can be re-started.
Postscript: Mainstream economists will argue that we need a universal, fungible type of money in order to trade on a global basis. But because currencies are now unpegged from anything in the real world and are traded on the currency markets, their values fluctuate wildly in the modern world. In other words, one of the essential characteristics for money – that they represent a universal, fixed yardstick – has disappeared. And fiat currencies have a very short lifespan. So how valuable are they, really, for anyone but forex speculators?
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I think this guy has some good ideas.
On the other hand, I am about to puke from an overdose of good ideas.
Libertarians get it. Anarchocapitalists get it. Objectivists get it. Lots of others get it.
But where are all of these wonderful communities that should be scattered accross tha land?
They are NO WHERE.
People need to quit TALKING so much and START DOING.
Of course, that is easy to say. I don't know that I would be willing to uproot myself and my family and try to start some neo-utopian community somewhere. It's a lot of trouble. It's risky.
So, I guess I will just do what all of are doing. Talk Talk Talk. Until it is too late.
I think you may underestimate the impact that even small actions taken by one person can have. You could use the metaphor of "the straw that breaks the camel's back" or ideas such as Malcolm Gladwell's book Tipping Point (How Little Things Can Make A Big Difference). I think I really learned this thirty years ago when I started my first business. It was always that last customer of the month that put us over the edge from losing money, or breaking even to being profitable. I always thought to myself, that customer probably has no idea that they just saved our company and made us successful with their single transaction.
You could say that it was all the customers that came before them, and in a way it was, but it was that "little thing" of one customer's choice that made the tipping point difference. If you study concepts such as lifetime value for direct marketers or even the value of a single smoker to a tobacco company, it's shockingly significant when you take the net present value of acquiring one new customer who you will have for life.
I guess my point is that you underestimate the impact that a single choice, be that taking a walk, or helping a neighbor, or canceling your cable TV subscription, or riding a bike instead of driving has on the world. Edward Lorenz in his "butterfly effect" thesis would say that one tiny flap of a butterfly wing is the cause of a hurricane due to the tipping point effect.
To give you one more example, I live in a town where most of the people drive. I drive too, but I make a point of walking from my office to the post office. It's probably about ten blocks round trip and it's farther than most people would walk. I'm always surprised when I met someone new (it's a small town), a lot of times they will say "I saw you walking. You walk a lot." I don't really walk a lot and I probably only walk to the post office every week or two, but because everyone else is driving, people notice. Maybe someone else decides to walk too and so on. My point is you couldn't do much of a smaller act than walking a few blocks, but for what it's worth even the tiniest things seem to matter when it comes to outcomes. Martin Luther launched the protestant reformation by simply nailing a piece of paper to the church door. His 95 theses basically rebuked the church's practice at the time of selling forgiveness for cash.
Dave Harrison
www.tradewithdave.com
1° small is beautiful, be networked and community, value oriented for like-minded individuals. Build up projects on this basis.
2° Think contrarian, go against the mainstream capitalistic, arm wrenching, mind influencing, sterile and noxious value, grain. Economies of scale are out; think local and value chains. Your values. Energy costS will ramp up long logistic chain models even if thy are WAl-MArt sized. Think cloud computing and Internet oriented networking for economic survival.
3° Think cooperative capitalism. As a means to an end. We are ALL entrepreneurs, investors and workers, in the same value chain. We share gains and losses but based on free market economics where we deny Oligarchy and cartel laws being imposed.
4° Be good citizens. HAve a tight coherent but tolerant civic sense. Be inclusive instead of exclusive as citizens, if not as economic actors. The country belongs to everyone even to our opposites as much as to us.
5° Be explicit and action oriented, not passive. Use the social network to make your voice felt. Be proactive more than reactive. Anticipate change , prepare for it, without sacrificing your values. Use the media to broaden the value base.
NEVER GIVE IN TO INTIMIDATION. FIGHT, BUT FIGHT FAIR, LIKE RESPONSIBLE CITIZENS.
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What you describe requires a personal character based on a bedrock foundation of self-discipline, self-denial, and willpower.
Know anyone like that?
Know 100,000,000 people like that?
I sure don't.
To get where you want to go will require at the very least a national exercise program geared to the goal of losing a third of the national per capita average weight. That would necessitate a closing of tens of thousands of restaurants and absorbing those consequences.
A nation of fat people can be expected to accomplish nothing.
There's on other thought that I believe is relevant to this discussion that I didn't noticed was addressed. I will call it the peer-to-peer or resilient internet. To summarize, basically we have enough computing power in a regular wireless LAN card on an old P.C. to connect to your neighbor and to his neighbor and so on and completely by-pass the telecom infrastructure. No doubt with the transmitting power of smart phones we will be able to create an entire mesh network in urban areas simply on the power of the phones bypassing the infrastructure entirely.
Andrea La Pumo of Freaknet media lab and a hacker named Jaromil of dyne.org are the kind of people that are already exploring these forms of resilient networking. Dyne already has a tool for setting up a wireless radio station for broadcasting. These are the pioneers of the next generation of the resilient internet that won't subject you to the kill switch. I'm not a geek and would have no idea of how to set up something like this, but I understand the implications of the kill switch and I also understand that when all communications goes down that that weird guy in the neighborhood with the ham radio antenna in his backyard suddenly becomes the center of everyone's attention.
It's not as simple as setting up a peer-to-peer alternative network as there are also issues with power supply, the manufacturing of parts, etc., but I believe that consciousness of these movements, and in particular the crucial role that "love they neighbor" plays in all this is food for thought.
Here are some links to some of these p2p innovators:
http://tradewithdave.com/?p=3893
http://tradewithdave.com/?p=2160
Dave Harrison
Thank God to read these types of sympathetic posts at ZH. The posts portraying the attitude that "I got my guns, gold, ammo, and food, and the rest of the world can die and go to hell" was becoming the norm here. This latter attitude is just a mirror image of the people (banksters and kleptocracy) that put us here.
Good point, Dave.
That came up in a discussion I had about a year ago, but like you, I just don't have the geek juice required to make it happen. My hope is that some of the younger folks who believe they will die if they can't check their facebook status will be the evangelists and techs for this.
I don't know that this would actually require new hardware- what if every home had a wireless network hub? They're pretty cheap, and could probably be used as a wireless web. Don't know about the phones, as I would expect them to depend on cell towers, but I could definitely be wrong in that.
GW, our problem is that we still want desperately consumerism to come back. But we know in the back of our mind that it is impossible as we damn well know that
1. we cannot re-start the economy without having our accumulated debts under control. Even then, suppose most of our debts have been paid off, when money will become loose again, the consumer will go back to an even bigger debt enslavement within a few years, assisted by the banks and the politicians, searching for the desperate vote.
2. consumerism does not create wealth, it is a fallacy. We only can create wealth by producing things people need, pay off your suppliers and other costs and re-invest the difference.
I am still waiting for the penny to drop with the msm and perhaps I have to wait a long long time. But the moral of the story is that if we keep on looking at consumerism as our saviour, we will get in and out of depressions.
The last 40 years were like smoking a cigarette: damn nice, but you know it is wrong.
Consumerism is essential in US citizenism.
US citizenism has imposed on the world a consumption game.
The rule of the competition is simple: consume as much as you can to deplete the fastest possible world resources. The entity that has consumed the most when accessible resources are depleted is the winner.
Debt is an extraordinary instrument in this game.
That is why nations that can are seeking to go deeper and deeper into debt while nations that cant are on the wrong side of the argument.
In reply to PJPony, here is what I did- talk about a row..
Dear Inspector of Taxes,
Your demand was a shock, as had intended to use that money to plant some nut trees. As you are well aware, we need 50% more food by 2030, 100% more food by 2050 demographically. As a farmer cannot see how we will be able to produce in the next 40 years the same amount of food as we had produced in the last 2000 years.
So a cull will be necessary, and as you are against planting fruiting trees, may I suggest your surviving genes be in the cull. This is a most noble gesture on your behalf, and if you could provide a lock of hair from little Jamie we would store the genome until the appropriate time
Great article! Yes, I'm starting to see a growing barter-based local economy where I live. As more and more people run out of hard currency (or if not "out" then "not enough"), local businesses are starting to get more "slack time" where they do not have paying customers to keep them 100% occupied. This of course makes cash tight for them too.
I'm seeing more and more straight barters of late of the form "I hear your computer needs some work. If I buy the parts, can I get this car work done in exchange for working on your computer?" (i.e. a full barter, no currency involved) whereas even a year or two ago, if anyone tried this at all it would have gone down as "I hear your computer needs some work. So the estimate for the car repairs is $x, I could look at your computer for say $y" -- a cash transaction.
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Wonderful insights George! I am always looking for your new posts.
Much of our misunderstanding lies in being unable to discern what we need from what we want. I remember being instructed long ago that "unlimited wants and limited resources are the engine of economies".
Any person that has "unlimited wants" is doomed to a life of unhappiness. Most of the material items that own us are not needs at all, but things aquired to assuage the ego. The economies of "human interaction" that you cite, give us wealth beyond our imaginations!
Being fairly advanced in my years, I can remember going for drives along the county roads with my parents where small farmers had their truck patches. Not only was cash commerce conducted here, but present also was beautiful human interaction. People were exchanging the fruits of the sweat of their brows. There was mutual respect and admiration. Reputations were more precious than gold. Traditions were observed.
Our biggest economic problem today is understanding real value when we see it. When we can finally agree that "He who dies with the most toys is just a fool, we can start to rebuild our economy.
It is so true: "On a long enough time line....."
or.....today, "Hell is other people".
Wonderful insights George! I am always looking for your new posts.
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Wonderful? How?
It only takes two lines for the article to reveal what it is: US propaganda, which is cheap by design.
Confusion between causes and effects.
The rich are growing richer because of this or that, notably government access.
The reality is that rich people in the US world order have access to the government because they are rich.
Them becoming richer and richer has little to do with the government. Government is just another tool to carry the task.
Smithian economics is all about concentrating the wealth from an exterior to an interior. The natural consequences is that people who own the interior are growing richer and richer as the transfer from the exterior to an interior is going on.
There is no government in it. Government is just a catalyst.
I wont continue on the article because as classical US propaganda, there is almost one fallacy by line so...
Here's the plan. We invent a derivative collateralized by lobbyist bribes from K&J Streets. Then we use some sort of Algorithmic high frequency trading platform to push the price up. Then make a bunch of naked bets against the position when the businesses decide they can no longer afford the politicians and judges.
Hey, it's the only way Main Street is going to get it's hand in the cookie jar.
GW-this is what you have been working for...Please keep it up. - Ned
Of course we can build our economy from the ground up. It's an organic by-product of a society, and almost inevitable.
I'm not going to bore anyone with the old Econ 101 stuff about trade demanding a non-perishable store of labor, since it more or less goes without saying.
Here's a different idea, though- since there is some truth to the fact that paper money is simply easier to carry than a bag of metal, why not use personal checks and reciepts? If a community accepts that a check is an enforcable contract, it is then possible for any producer to create his or her own "money" by denominating payment in the goods that they either produce or possess.
For example, let's say that Bob is a farmer who grows wheat, and Ed is a shoemaker. Bob might not need any of Ed's shoes, but Ed needs Bob's wheat, so he writes him a check for one pair of shoes in exchange for a few bushels of wheat. Instead of taking delivery of the shoes, Bob takes the check to the grocer, and uses it to purchase some milk, eggs and whatever else. The grocer then trades the check to a tailor for a new shirt. The tailor's wife needs a new pair of shoes, so she takes it back to Ed, gets her shoes, and Ed retires the check.
In another case, let's say that you work in a factory that produces iPads. After negotiating with your employer, you agree that your work is worth two iPads per day, and at the end of the pay period, you get a book of twenty reciepts for individual iPads. If you want, you can trade them in for the physical goods, or you can trade the reciepts for other items on the open market.
There is a tangible difference between that and money as we currently use it. Instead of a single currency that can be manipulated or devalued by a single entity, there are multiple competing currencies that are as numerous as the number of people in the community. These individual currencies could be abused, certainly- but in that case, there would be direct legal recourse against the issuer of the debt, and consistant abuse of the system would inevitably lead to a situation where people would no longer accept checks from certain individuals. (Kind of like the list of bad check writers kept at the registers of shops.)
So, it would always be possible that you could lose out on a pair of shoes- but it would prevent a situation where the central bank dilutes the entire money supply, and lessen the potential losses across the board. In a central location, subject to frequent auditing, precious metals could be held in vaults for withdrawl by those who need to trade with another community, or wish to move to a different area- or those metals could be physically stored by their owners.
A member of a community organized like this might carry any number of different checks and receipts of deposit, to ensure that they have some good which is desirable to the counter-party they are dealing with. For those who produce goods with infrequent demand, there could be an exchange market where people could simply exchange the checks and reciepts with others in kind. So, you could bid on, for example, a new refrigerator by offering up a check for a pair of shoes, two bushels of tomatoes, a set of tires, and a half-dozen haircuts. There's no reason why this would need to be a physical location- it could be constructed in an electronic space, with the exchange of checks and receipts performed either by mail or in an automated location where a deposit is made in a lock box which can be opened by the other party at their leisure by entering a code.
Yes, it would be messy and complicated- but maybe not as bad as it might seem. Unlike the old days, almost everyone can read and write- and we have the added and almost incalcuable benefit of computerization. A smart phone has enough memory and processing power to contain thousands upon thousands of transactions, and calculate relative value very easily- leading to decentrilized price discovery.
Anyhow, it's something to consider. Probably has some holes in it, but just about anything does, if you poke at it enough.
well worth the reading, folks.
good show, pro!
now, fire god, light my cig, please!
i'm jonesin after that post.
actually, i was having thoughts along those lines; just didn't get as far as you did in the thinking -- thanks for saving me the effort. so, till i find somethin better, i'll adopt promethus's view on this. it really is some good, practical thinking that i've never seen expressed so poignantly. for, as we all know, currency and it's counterparty chicanery is at the nub of all this mess.
again, bravo, my fellow god -- didn't we get drunk with mercury on olympus, the three of us; or was that baccus...no, couldn't have been baccus.
excelcior,
janus
Cheers. :)
Don't recall any specific bouts of drinking at this late hour, but if you weren't watching my back in Haephestus's forge, I suspect you would have been the right man for the job.
it was just a demi-god joke. actually, i don't think i've had any alcohol in all of 2011. i know i had a bit around the holidays; but, i must say i enjoy this total sobriety.
i get a kick out of all the 'what you smokin' janus? questions. tobbacco; or as lord byron said, "tobacco sublime."
oscar wilde had a great quote about cigs, too...maybe i'll save it for later.
later,
janus
All that you propose works perfectly well, except in one area. It is an old axiom that a unitary and universal money (within a country) is necessary for .... (drum roll) paying taxes. That's the only reason the Feds go after others who would circulate another currency. That's old knowledge, as I say. The collection of taxes makes any other barter coupon system impracticable.
Therefore, abolish taxes! It's thereby fixed. I could exchange labor coupons for lots of handy trades that I am quite adept at. Lovin' it!
RR,
those were my thoughts preciesly...only, i thought the composite work (your minor point notwithstanding) merited unqualified praise. nevertheless, this is thoughtful stuff, gentlemen.
in a very real sense, we are far ahead of the think tanks (you can take my word or leave it, but i read almost ALL of the major houses annual and quarterly reports -- all decent libraries have copies if you're interested). but, dont', like janus, waste your time -- these guys have a form of wisdom, and it is enticing. but, this is meat and bone thinkin...they do the high-frutose and hydrgenated fat kind of thinkin (that's a metaphor most professors won't be able to follow -- so keep scratchin that noggin, nitwits!)
and let's keep chewing he unprocessed and unrendered fat...manner of speaking.
so, RR, i know this is a cheesy and all-too evident tribute...but, i'm a big beatles fan, and this song has quite the significance for the mrs and i:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nucSvl7VXVM
...rocky didn't like that/
said i'm a gonna get that boy,
janus
end the fed.
they made you a moron and a slave.
evolve, god damn it !!
We have to take our fiscal medicine first, in order for people to realize what was done to them.
Barter, cash, gardens and a stored stash
off the grid, drill a well, buy and sell jsut don't tell
leave the bank, debt no more being a banker's whore
make the dogma eat your religion, and be free
"Success: To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Since this system is going to blow up, we need to really think this out from the bottom up. Even the parasites need a viable host.
First off, notational currency is not a commodity! It is a contract. If I give you a piece of paper that says; "Redeemable for one ounce of gold," that is a contract. A promise, not a store of value.
This means various changes in our thinking: First, we can't make a bunch of promises which cannot be kept. When we treat money as a debt based commodity, then we can create as much supply as we can create the demand to store it. Since there are far more people willing to make promises, than have the ability to make good on them, there is the potential for enormous demand, if we are not picky about its quality. Witness the housing bubble.
As a multiparty contract, this makes the currency, not just the banking system, a form of public utility, not private property. When we treat money as property, there is the inclination on the part of everyone to save as much as possible, so in order to keep the economy functioning, ever more must be issued, until such time as people suspect it might be declining in value, then everyone wants to dump it and the system crashes.
If people understand money is a form of community property, then they will be much more careful what value they take drain out of assets and relations to convert into money. This would mean more value would be stored in personal relations, property and natural resources, rather than in banks.
We understand roads function best as public property and they connect many aspects of our private lives. Money is a similar medium, just of exchange, not transportation.
If we really begin to understand the nature of money, then a public banking system will be much more viable.
As for the system as it is, the Federal government's system of spending is designed to overspend and thus create debt. Rather than actually budgeting, which is to list priorities and cut off at what can be afforded, the current system is to put together enormous bills, add enough pork to entice sufficient legislators to vote for it, then the president can only pass, or veto it. This encourages all sorts of extravagant behavior.
A potential system of actual budgeting would be to break these bills into their constituent items, have every legislator assign a percentage value to each one, then reassemble the bill in order of highest to lowest points. The president then draws the line at what gets funded.
This allows the whole legislature to set priorities, not just the most powerful members and makes the level of deficit spending entirely the president's responsibility. As Truman put it, "The buck stops here."
There would be limited inclination to go too far into the list of specific proposals and legislators would have limited desire to push each others interests, since it is graded on a curve. The percentage system would give much more flexibility to balance competing interests than a yes/no system.
Of course, this would seriously reduce Federal spending on local projects, but a local public banking system would fill that hole far more efficiently.
We can't all just crawl in our respective holes when this all breaks down, or those adept at dividing and conquering will continue to rule.
Until the system blows up, I have moved my bank accounts from a TBTF bank to a local bank, started shopping more at the farmers market and swap meet and the hardest thing to do, I try to buy stuff made in America.
"Put another way, the top .1% are currently acting like parasites, stealing the money from the rest of the population."
Where does everybody think all the productivity gains from the last 30 years (personal computers, etc.) went?
Can we build a seperate economy? We'll have to.
Community currencies are not illegal. Lots of areas of the country have them. You just can't issue money that looks like federal reserve notes. Several milliion dollars worth of BerkShares have been issued in the Southern Berkshires region of Massachusetts. Ithica NY has the largest local currency system in use in the US. So the model exists. It just takes people to put it into action. I tried approaching numerous governments regarding this but none were interested. I think to make it happen you have to go to local business and community leaders. Govt. employees lack the imagination and will to make a community currency system work.
Does anyone here remember "The Bob Newhart Show"? I saw it last night for the first time since the 70's!!!. Shit, USA was great back then!
1) Letting the banks fail would have gone a long to shock the system for change. This would have done several things, however painful
- it would have cleansed the capital structure and the zombie state would have been removed.
-It would have illuminated criminal acts (Primary reason why it was not allowed to happen). Criminals would be punished AND consumers could have figured out what the crimes actually were.
-Consumers also would have figured out what the hell nonsense was done with their capital and they would not only have gained appreciation for how badly the criminals should be punished, but also learned what mistakes were made and been capable of not repeating them immediately, again (as we are doing).
2) Accomplishing number 1, voters/consumers could ask "how did it get so f'd up?" This would lead them to the realization that our system is nothing more than a faux regulated system and regulators are nothing more than lobbyist directed corporate employees....which would lead them to the realization that there needs to be a firewall between regulators and corporations...no lobbyists. Maybe the few lobbyists are given a few minutes to state there case in front of all of Congress, but that is it. No campaign contributions, in fact Congress and Senate have such punitive capital rules that only a righteous do-gooder would want the job. No real money there.....which might lead the voter to the idea that smaller government means smaller money....corruption only breeds in a dish of money.
3) Whether you like it or not the population of any Country needs to be managed. You can't have wide open borders and free public education. Our education system is a mess. At that bottom, there are strains from too many English Language Learners coming from families that are not able to finance the system and a public employee choke hold on expenses....at the top - college- the system is corrupted by a government-banker relationship that has done to college what they did to housing....make it unaffordable....it just has taken longer for it to break. Education should be close to free, given that the cost of information has gone to zero. The current structure needs massive revolution exploiting free information.
4) All defined benefit plans need to be scrubbed for fraud. If they have returns assumptions which rarely occur they are fraudulent. If they require new taxes to support old programs they are fraudulent. Not fraud in the sense that they were deliberate, but negligent fraud. As Willie Brown said, "we just didn't do the math." There is no reason why we cannot freeze every pension system that exists, scrub it for errors (fraud), and come up with a net present value and they all become defined contribution plans....for old folks that have benefitted from frauds some help will obviously have to occur.....but if folks have been screwing their kids and their grandkids a spade must be called a spade. Just because the gubmint promised it does not make it right. It was simply a promise made by corrupt politicians....
Thats a good start
I agree. Even though I'd be one of the first to get screwed out of a good pension, I can't disagree with your statement.
The entire system is based on a lie.
Trust is gone, we need to trash this "social-justice" bullshit and have EQUAL justice for all. No more "Nobility" laws or free pass nonsense.
First time posting, long time reader. Love this website! I own a small farm in Ohio. They are coming after us. IRS claimed we under paid taxes by $1500. First time ever. Receive a letter from Auditor. They revalued our property. Property values in our county dropped on average 5-6%. They INCREASED value of our home by $30,000 and our land by $800,000! It's only 40 acres. They are going to raise our property taxes until we have to give it up. Feds may cut taxes, but watch out for State and Local.
Probably going to need an attorney to fight it.