This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
Explaining "Real" Money To Your Children
Submitted by The Dissident Dad via Mike Krieger's Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,
Money is a very important part of all our lives. The understanding of money, how it works, and how we treat it can dramatically improve or diminish our quality of life.
Based on my writings and videos on YouTube, you might think my definition of money is gold and silver, but it’s not. Money is simply a medium of exchange. It can be represented by everything from gold to horse manure. Okay, maybe not horse manure, but it’s not a far stretch with the most popular form of money today being central bank notes loaned out into existence.
The state would love to have you believe that money can only originate from itself, yet people have organically started to use bitcoins and other crypto-currencies as a medium of exchange. Nevertheless, our culture continues to worship fiat currency as if it is the only type of money. I can’t change the fact that at this moment in time the U.S. dollar is the measuring stick for goods and services when it comes to prices. Trying to disprove and dispute this fact was something I struggled with early on when I used to teach my children that only gold and silver were money.
Today, I simply teach them about money as a medium of exchange.
Everyone loves making money. Just a few hours ago, my 3-year-old daughter brought me a cup of coffee with her mom. I thought it would be fun (since she helped make it) to hand her some change sitting on my desk, kind of like a tip. I told her “thank you” and handed it to her. Her little face lit up, smiling and giggling. She was so happy to run off to her piggy bank and make some new deposits.
In my house, while we refer to dollars as money, we also like to barter. I usually trade them their favorite fruit, pomegranate seeds, for kisses. We also enjoy going to the local coin store to buy some silver bullion.
While gold and silver are undoubtedly honest money, bitcoin represents a really cool medium of exchange as well. It helps us realize that money is just an idea. It’s whatever proves most useful and stable to trade with over time.
There is so much to teach children when it comes to money, but to start, I think a good step in the right direction is to not simply philosophically and intellectually capitulate by framing money solely in terms of state-sponsored currency.
Central banks and fascist governments control humanity through a virtual monopoly on money issuance and distribution, which is why I am doing my best as a father to make it clear that money can be anything. No one truly gets any added value from holding a stack of paper. It’s our time that is of value, and the things we own that make our lives better. But money itself is just a means to an end.
»
- 13327 reads
- Printer-friendly version
- Send to friend
- advertisements -
Everything in nature rots and goes away, except our "real" money, fiat, gold or whatever else. Its all sick, disbalancing bullshit.
The past is never dead. It's not even past. Except here at ZIRP headquarters where we've printed enough FRNs to invent a forward-moving time-lapse machine, also known as a prolapse, from which we can suck all prior and future economic activity while we smoke cubans and laugh at the peasantry. - Bernank
The chosenites and all their friends make about a million bucks a year, yet produce absolutely nothing. Almost makes ya want to make friends with them. Almost.
Just like the kings of old who had all silver and gold.
Fear and violence still rule, money is just a lubricant (gold, silver, fiat or any other shit).
Money is supposed to be proof that you did someone a favour. Proof that you contributed to production and therefore evidence that you are deserving of a share of society's production.
IF people were trust-worthy then pieces of paper certainly would form a sound basis for money. What would be written on the paper? eg: "Fred Blogs spent 8 hours helping me fix the fence at my cattle farm and is therefore entitled to one day's share of production". Yeah, I know, I'm dreaming, but that is the starting point for the definition of money. As long as we have dishonesty, the measure of money will be abused.
No simple answers here - just some idle questions with no quick answer:
Do I really have to wait for someone to dig some gold out of the ground before I can do some work and get paid?
Do I really have to wait for someone else to save some money before I borrow some money and buy capital with which to start / expand a business?
Do I really have to work hard on my business so I can pay interest to someone who produced nothing but just gave me some digital ones and zeroes that they conjured out of thin air?
What does it mean to borrow money and buy a business? You bought the right to work hard and pay interest to a bankster?
You are convinced that you can make better use of that capital than anyone else, you've put your life where your mouth is and outbid everyone else for access to that capital?
Those questions are borderline poetic and of course rhetorical. But yet, not so obvious when you consider the structure of things as they stand.
All Federal Reserve notes are counterfeit.
Money is created as credit.
Money is not created as debt.
The Federal Reserve and all central banking is a huge con.
Only the people have the right to print money.
Bankers have no right to print themselves money.
Shame on the Pentagon for being in on the scam to transfer wealth.
Shame on law enforcement too.
They are the modern day version of the redcoats.
What was that about waiting until you see the whites of their eyes?
100 years of structured education, most are lucky to know a dog from a cat. If not for so many house pets, there would be confusion in that matter as well.” -- Mannfm11, at The Market Ticker.
Astounding! Years reading Zero Hedge and most are unable to explain our current money system.
Actually, most here don’t even understand it.
Here is the problem:
Private-money (Bank-Money, example, dollar) and interest (Usury) on the power of private sector.
This will then be turned into debt (serfdom), inflation, hyperinflation, deflation, and depression throughout society.
Here is the solution:
Sovereign Money: http://sovereignmoney.eu/
"Once a nation parts with the control of its currency and credit, it matters not who makes the nation's laws. ... Until the control of the issue of currency and credit is restored to government and recognized as its most sacred responsibility, all talk of the sovereignty of parliament and of democracy is idle and futile." -- Mackenzie King, Canadian Prime Minister 1935-1948.
If you asked an American in 1910 “what money is” he would have shown you a gold coin. If you had shown him a dollar bill he would tell you, “this is not money; dollar is a bank-note. It can become worthless overnight.”
Now, try to explain this concept to an American today as their source of information is misinformation and obscurity… and therein lies the problem of our monetary collapse”-- Keith Weiner, at “Monetary Metals
Well - I must say I was expecting something far less profound. We do have common ground after all, and in the spirit of the season I shall be glad in finding that out. I would have criticized the Dad who penned this missive for focusing on only one aspect of money, in essence relegating it to merely currency. In doing so, that then begs the question, "what is wealth and where does it come from?" His little girl has a piggy bank full of currency - indeed, so how does she go about translating that into wealth... generational wealth even? Answer: the same those who shove fiat down our throats do it. And just as privately, I might add.
When the Pentateuch instructed the creation of commerce, the admonition to strictly observe honest weights and measures was not only directed at the goods being sold, but the "money" used to purchase said goods. This has not changed, nor have the cheaters who sprung up immediately, circumventing these laws.
All Federal Reserve notes are counterfeit. The notes that are real say "We the people", and will be created as credit instead of debt. Until then, let the revolution begin.
> Do I really have to wait for someone else to save some money before I borrow some money and buy capital with which to start / expand a business?
Yes, you have to wait for someone else to contribute to production. his contribution will be your capital with which you can make business.
> What does it mean to borrow money and buy a business? You bought the right to work hard and pay interest to a bankster?
you've got money to buy a business i.e. proof that you contributed to production, that you worthy contributor. if you have no money yet but have other non-monetary proofs (like assets, collateral you have because you are smart) then someone lends you money etc...
Don't want to hijack the thread. Just a repost:
-
Because we know there are fewer good jobs with good compensation, Open Borders drives down Wages, Open Borders creates a huge Black Market Labor Force, we know Capital is moving off shore and we have Decapitalized US Industries, we know that Free Trade isn't Free, isn't auditable, uses Slave Labor, and is part of what is ripping apart US Labor and making US into Debt Slaves.
- Capital Flight
- Brain Drain from US Industries
- Decapitalization
- Open Borders
- Off Shoring Corporate HQ, Off Shoring Production, Outsourcing, Free Trade Agreements that supersede US Laws
- CAFTA-DR, NAFTA
The Model is from Great Britain, Trade Model, this was used by Lords & Kings to get Rich from Cheap Overseas Goods from all around the Globe through Sea Trade Routes. So it is a Model of the Elites... and probably lead to lots of Crime in London where people were very poor.
---
- Labor Force Participation Rate in Japan 59.7% in 2014
- Labor Force Participation Rate in Germany 53% in 2013
- Labor Force Participation Rate in USA 62.8% in 2014
- Labor Force Participation Rate in UK 46.4% in 2013
- Labor Force Participation Rate in France 41.1% in 2013
Labor Force Participation Rate in China 56.6% in in 2013
most of those numbers used 2013 population with 2014 employed...
Hard to compare wages. CIA Fact book is probably better than OECD Numbers.
But we know US Wages, median wages, weekly, indexed to 1984 Dollars are the same today as in 1979 in the USA.
And
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/ROWFDNQ027S ($3.29 Foreign Investment USA)
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/GPDI ($2.89 Private Domestic Investment)
http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/international/intinv/iip_glance.htm
http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/international/intinv/iip_glance.htm ($28 Trillion foreign Ownership of US Property compared to $24 Trillion in US Ownership of Foreign Property) (This is very interesting as Big Banks are growing strongly, but the number of total us banks is dramatically decreasing, like someone is gaming the system, Commercial Banks in the U.S. - FRED - St. Louis Fed)
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/USNUM
Foreign Investors are stronger than our Domestic or Wall Street Banks. We Decapitalize Industry, and our Banks don't Invest in the USA, not in a depression, a recession, and not when we return to normal markets.
Commercial Banks in the U.S.
2014:Q3: 5,636 Number Quarterly, End of Period, Not Seasonally Adjusted, USNUM, Updated: 2014-11-14
--
Weekly and hourly earnings data from the Current Population Survey
Series Id: LEU0252881600
Series title: (unadj)- Constant (1982-84) dollar adjusted to CPI-U- Median usual weekly earnings, Employed full time, Wage and salary workers
Year Qtr1 Qtr2 Qtr3 Qtr4 Annual
1979 339 334 325 328 332
1980 324 314 315 317 318
1981 317 311 304 314 312
2012 337 335 329 336 335
2013 334 333 330 337 333
2014 339 328 332
Constant Dollars, Weekly Earning same in 1979 as 2014.
----
Series Id: LEU0252882800
Not Seasonally Adjusted
Series title: (unadj)- Constant (1982-84) dollar adjusted to CPI-U- Median usual weekly earnings, Employed full time, Wage and salary workers, Women
Year Qtr1 Qtr2 Qtr3 Qtr4 Annual
1979 256 249 248 249 251
1980 248 242 241 242 244
1981 245 239 237 240 241
1990 270 267 259 265 265
1991 271 271 266 269 269
2003 301 298 298 304 300
2004 305 303 301 303 303
2012 306 300 298 300 301
2013 304 303 299 306 303
2014 307 301 300
All Industries, All Occupations, Women, 16 years and older.
-----
Well, Looks like Status Quo Politics. Both the Ds & the Rs... like the way things are going. They never talk about Sweeping Reforms. They protect their own money and sources of political funds.
Congress never looks at the Big Issues. Just look what they did in 2008 after the Financial Crash. Collectively they decided there was no Moral Hazard and that the People that got us into trouble paid big donations to keep the party going just like it was designed.
Looks like 2005 is when the Budget went totally out of Control.
We, The people, are making this thing run. Monthly Treasury Report, 30 September 2014.
2014 Federal Outlays = 3,504,199
2013 Federal Outlays = 3,535,881
2012 Federal Outlays = 3,538,286
2011 Federal Outlays = 3,630,146
2010 Federal Outlays = 3,455,931
2009 Federal Outlays = 3,653,290
2008 Federal Outlays = 2,978,440
2007 Federal Outlays = 2,778,632
2006 Federal Outlays = 2,654,873
2005 Federal Outlays = 2,472,310
2004 Federal Outlays = 2,292,628
2003 Federal Outlays = 2,211,712
2002 Federal Outlays = 2,011,016
2001 Federal Outlays = 1,854,945
2000 Federal Outlays = 1,788,143
So, figure - $1 T for Military (and Black Budget), $1 T for MEDICARE/MEDICAID, $1 T for Social Security.
---
People can take on the power to control Government if they see a deeper truth.
Paid up to end of Fiscal year, 30 September 2014
2014 Individual Income Tax Revenue: $1.394 Trillion
2014 Corporate Income Tax Revenue: $320 Billion
IRS, Total Outlays—Internal Revenue Service, under Treasury, 2013 = $103.3 Billion (Boom)
IRS, Total Outlays—Internal Revenue Service, under Treasury, 2000 = $38 Billion
IRS, Total Outlays—Internal Revenue Service, under Treasury, 1998 = $33.2 Billion (??? What? For what??)
----
IRS, Payment where earned income credit exceeds liability for tax Outlays 2013 = $57.5 Billion (?What?)
IRS, Payment where earned income credit exceeds liability for tax Outlays 2000 = $26 Billion
IRS, Payment where earned income credit exceeds liability for tax Outlays 1998 = $23.2 Billion
----
IRS, Payment Where Child Tax Credit Exceeds Liability for Tax Outlays 2013 = $21.6 Billion (?What?)
IRS, Payment Where Child Tax Credit Exceeds Liability for Tax Outlays 2000 = $806 Million (Million)
IRS, Payment Where Child Tax Credit Exceeds Liability for Tax Outlays 1998 = Zero.....
----
Economy Slow enough for you, President Obama, John McCain, John Boner, Nancy Pelosi, Janet Yellen, Stanley Fischer...
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/M1V (M1 seems to increase with Mortgages)
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/M2V (M2 seems to show different bubble perhaps)
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/MZMV (MZM seems to show peak in Economy 1981)
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/A14187USA163NNBR
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/MULT
---
Deregulation leads to misery? Many industries in the United States became regulated by the federal government in the late 19th and early 20th century. Entry to some markets was restricted to stimulate and protect the initial investment of private companies into infrastructure to provide public services, such as water, electric and communications utilities.
Transportation, Energy, Communication, Finance, Free Trade, Campaign Finance
1978 - Bankruptcy Reform Act of 1978,
1980 - Depository Institutions (J. Carter, followed by S&L Crisis, 5000 convictions, RTC)
1981 - Executive Order 12287, (R. Reagan, removed price controls on Petrol)
1992 - Energy Policy Act (H.W. Bush)
1994 - NAFTA, Deregulation of Trade, 3 Nations (W. Clinton)
1996 - Energy (W. Clinton, followed by ENRON Scandal)
1996 - Telecommunications Act (W. Clinton, cross ownership)
1999 - Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act (Phil Gramm, W. Clinton, followed by 2008 Financial Crisis)
1999 - bombing campaign in Kosovo (W. Clinton, over 60 days)
2000 - Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 (P. Gramm, W. Clinton, derivatives)
2002 - McCain–Feingold Act (G.W. Bush, Campaign Finance, soft money unlimited)
2005 - Energy Policy Act (G.W. Bush, subsidies, excluded clean air Water acts)
2005 - Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 (BAPCPA).
2009 - 2014 Continuing Resolutions in which Congress gives up Budget Powers
2010 - Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (money is free speech for corps)
2011 - US combat in Libya (B Obama, over 60 days)
- (Laissez-faire economic policies)
----
Check out the Multiplier for M1... I may be wrong but 30 years ago the Multiplier for Manufacturing was cited as proof of where the engine of the Economy was.
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/MULT
Nobody talks about it anymore. But what with all that has been deregulated to facilitate "gaming the System" by Elites... MULT just proves how the Elites have Hobbled the Economy for the poor so we have to work for one of the big corporate powers and have to kiss ass for jobs.
Eunuchs, I say. They want to cut off our balls.
----
Because we know there are fewer good jobs with good compensation, Open Borders drives down Wages, Open Borders creates a huge Black Market Labor Force, we know Capital is moving off shore and we have Decapitalized US Industries, we know that Free Trade isn't Free, isn't auditable, uses Slave Labor, and is part of what is ripping apart US Labor and making US into Debt Slaves.
- Capital Flight
- Brain Drain from US Industries
- Decapitalization
- Open Borders
- Off Shoring Corporate HQ, Off Shoring Production, Outsourcing, Free Trade Agreements that supersede US Laws
- CAFTA-DR, NAFTA
The Model is from Great Britain, Trade Model, this was used by Lords & Kings to get Rich from Cheap Overseas Goods from all around the Globe through Sea Trade Routes. So it is a Model of the Elites... and probably lead to lots of Crime in London where people were very poor.
----
How do you or we get Justices that feel outrage about 9-11 to take the venue or lawsuit in their court?
- Presumably there are some Justices that feel outrage at 9-11
- Presumably there are justices that want justice and face voters to keep their jobs
18 U.S. Code Chapter 115 - TREASON, SEDITION, AND SUBVERSIVE ACTIVITIES
§?2381. Treason
§?2382. Misprision of treason
§?2383. Rebellion or insurrection
§?2384. Seditious conspiracy
§?2385. Advocating overthrow of Government
§?2386. Registration of certain organizations
- 1900s when US started Depending on Outsourced Produce
- 1960, when US started Outsourcing Auto Factories
- 1968, when Costs of Vietnam War became Obvious Problem
- 1971, Nixon Shock, US Refuses to convert USD to Gold for Foreign Holders of USD
- 1972, BCCI Bank created
- 1974, CIA Slapped with Investigations of Practices, they decide to Outsource & Subcontract
- 1978, Soviet-Afghanistan War Starts
- 1979, the Top of US Manufacturing
- 1979, when US Median Wages got Stuck or leveled out
- 1980, Presidential Campaign, Debt, Economy, Inflation, Iran
- 1981, the Top of US Money Velocity
- 1982, Ronald Reagan Maxes out DoD Budget
- 1982, CIA Begins using BCCI Bank
- 1986, DoD Contractors Soar with profits & plans
- 1990, Start of US Gulf War with Iraq, US & UK will Bomb Iraq for the next 13 years till US-Iraq War II
- 1994, NAFTA Treaty,
- 1995, Sub-prime mortgages started
- 1995, Community Reinvestment Act, the Clinton Admin urged flexibility,
- 1995, HUD advocated greater involvement of state and local organizations
- 1996, Start of a Period of Accounting Fraud in USA which continues today
- 1997, M2 Money Velocity Top
- 1998, Brooksly Born Rejected on her concerns on OTC Derivatives
- 1998, Derivatives expanded and were not regulated
- 1998, Clinton's Kosovo War
- 1998, Citicorp & Travelers Insurance Merger
- 1999, Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act (GLBA), End of Glass Steagal Act
- 2001, US-Afghan War
- 2003, US-Iraq War
- 2005, CAFTA-DR Related Progression
- 2005, US Mortgage Top of Bubble
- 2008, US-Global Financial Crisis
- 2012, Existing Home Sales finally return to USA
- 2013, IRS Budget exceeds $100 Billion since it now pays out cash to households as Credits
- 2013, Corporate Income Taxes Receipts still fail to return to 2006, 2007, or 2008 pre-crash Level of over $300 Billion
The MANY FACES of RICO Violations???
Audit the SEC, FTC, DOJ, FBI, FED, Congress, FINRA, OCC, Consumer Protection Agency, CFTC, Algo Trading, Shadow Banking, CBO, GAO, DHS, FDIC, GE, Defense Contractors, US Lobbying Foundations & Think Tanks & PACs.
"except our "real" money, fiat,"
Burns easily. Backed by the full faith in the Federal Reserve, US military and BS.
All fiats go to 0.
You can buy $100 trillion Zimbabwe notes on ebay. Bernanke knows, that's why he had his kid borrow close to 1/2 million for medical school. He knows the true long term value of the US dollar. Borrow all you can and follow Bernanke and his kids into paying back with worthless dollars.
We are the only life form on the planet that has to pay to live here..........
I like to get silver and gold coins out of the safe and play store with my 2 young boys. I then get cash out and add it to the game. They ignore the cash and use the coins...Every. Single. Time. Who cares if the cash is green with dead presidents on it; it's still just paper, and even a 6 year old knows that it has no real value.
You can learn a lot from children because everything is in black and white. No programming yet.
Just the magic of shiny. Whenever I get a little twitchy for something I could live without Mr plops down the cost of the item in gold coins in front of me. Ok, you want it? Only if you spend these to get it.
Never once have I succumbed and back in the river it goes.
Miffed
ive done that too. do I want this that bad, or would I rather swing by the coin shop and grab a few ounces of silver? I agree with what the author wrote too, as a father of young children, its something Ill have to deal with sooner or later. The only thing Iwould really add is explaining how debt works. simply avoiding credit cards is only part of it. Do you REALLY need THAT vehicle? When you are 40, are you really going to care what you drove in your early 20s, or if people were impressed or not? Should you finance that new truck for 5 years so you can have a status symbol, or should you buy the older one that you can pay off in two years, or just pay cash for? stuff like that is what I really wish I had understood at 20. I am 29 now, and understand, so I guess im better off than most.
Good point, Carl. I should entice them with an expensive toy and tell them they can have it on one condition: They have to make payments to me, with interest, from their piggy bank money. They'll still be making payments long after the novelty of the new toy wears off.
I'll keep all their payments in a separate piggy bank, of course, and tell them i only did it to teach them a lesson about debt. They're too young to get it now, but in a few years...
EDIT: Carl, if you have that much financial wisdom at 29 you're way ahead of the curve. Cheers!
The women in my harem use loads to the face as currency
Why not? Like the article says, it´s just a medium of exchange. More value than bitcoin which this krieger guy seems to like. Problem is every statist, and I do think this guy is a statist in disguise, would also like a fully electronic currency.
he said 'money is just a medium of exchange'. Which he said sould be anything acceptable to both parties of a transaction. no mention was made of wanting a fully electronic currency by anyone but you, so why are you accusing him of being a 'statist in disguise'?
The Article is not about teaching children about real money which it implies, it´s about bitcoin. Is that not a fully electronic currency? I find a common subtle anti-liberty thread in most Liberty Blitzkrieg articles.
How is bitcoin anti liberty? And if so, why is it loved so much by libertarians and anarchists? Electronic or not, it's outside of control of any state, which you can learn about sparing mere 2 minutes 40 seconds.
http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-drop/n-14-21.pdf
So if IRS issues similar document on transacting in feathers and shells, should they be considered anti liberty also?
It´s impossible to do a transaction without leaving an electronic trail. Is that hard to understand. Try not paying taxes and see if they don´t know you sold them. Jeez, you even bought them with electronic money, not cash.
Yawn: bitcoin mixers, darkcoin.
But you might have missed the point. Like gold, bitcoin is in limited supply. If gov't runs out of bitcoin it cannot print it. In fact, no one can. Want to see state tumbling? Switch to a type of money that cannot be printed and let it head straight into bankrupcy.
Who cares about limited supply? Why is it losing value against the dollar? It is not anonymous, period. Govs would love to eliminate hand to hand transactions because they can track everything electronically. Therefore it´s a statists wet dream.
You owe taxes if you sell gold for a profit. Is gold anti-liberty or the taxes?
Sell bitcoins for cash. Kinda like selling gold for cash.
A bitcoin address can be created anonymously by anyone anywhere anytime. There are certain steps that can be taken to distance your identiy from a bitcoin address.
I don´t believe it´s anonymous. bitcoins flow from one address to another.
Wrong. Bitcoins from from transaction inputs to transaction outputs without indicating which exacly goes where. Just use mixer and stop whinging.
If you feel comfortable with that fine. I´d rather give someone 10 gold coins in exchange for a transaction that I know is onñy between the 2 parties. I see crypto currency as the new scam from the bankers as they switch everything over to electronic currency and the BS will be that they can only create or mine x amount of new currency per year, therefore making it stable. I still don´t get how it´s losing value against the dollar considering how much fiat is being printed.
Do you acknowledge that bitcoin transactions occur between 2 parties, too, without intermediaries? Do you acknowledge that "they" cannot create any more bitcoin at will, no matter who "they" are?
/sarc: By the way, I heard gold is also loosing value in dollar terms.
You see there is the rub, you pay taxes on the profits but don't get reimbersed if you sell(or have to sell) at a loss. This is more proof that our gvt privatizes the profits and socializes the losses. This is actual hard core proof, thank's for the ammo, think i'll go buy a gun ---
My dad does the same with mine!!!
The truth is you're either a slave or slave-owner. Even if you're a small business owner or self-employed, you're still a fucking slave. Real money that's what you want to talk about? I guess Jean-Jaques Rousseau is right that private property is the root of all evils.
"I guess jean-jaques Rousseau is right that private property is the root of all evils"
how have you been reading and comementing here for over 4 years and still make such a profoundly ignorant statement?
He´s not ignorant per se, he´s a commie and a true believer at that. I know, it leaves you scratching your head. They´re rarely as straight forward as he was on that comment.
Yes, when one questions the ruling ideology of private property, he will be labeled a Communist, and lately one of the victims is Pope Francis. Yes, I am proud to say I'm a Marxist because I believe Karl Marx correctly points out what is wrong with the current political economy. Of course, he was not just the only one who figured it out because there are many great Western thinkers before him in the human intellectual history; after all, he was able to stand on the shoulders of giants before him, such as Rousseau. I feel good if I have pissed you off, which means you're one of those dumb fucks who haven't even read any historical human thinkings but have simply swallowed what you've been spoon-fed all your fucking existence.
Thank you for your honesty. Anyone else?
Unfortunately even monkeys have yearnings for equality the latest study shows.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meiU6TxysCg
There is no such thing as "political economy". There is an economy, and the method which is used by shysters called politics, which is merely a form of grafting wealth from gullible masses.
Marx was one of those shysters, and what you posted is a disgrace to what real science is.
According to Wikipedia, Adam Smith (16 June 1723 NS (5 June 1723 OS) – 17 July 1790) was a Scottish moral philosopher and a pioneer of political economy. So you mean Adam Smith is full of shit.
My Dad thanks you for the idea Spungo. Excellent work!!
It our culture it is considered respectable and necessary to lie to children. Indeed, adults tend to be proud of doing that. Few people understand the degree to which the taboos regarding money have become greater than the taboos regarding sex. The article above presents a childish fairy tale version of "money." While symbols could be almost anything, they mean nothing unless they are backed up ...
The only definition of "money" which is sufficiently comprehensive of all the physical, biological and social facts is that MONEY IS MEASUREMENT BACKED BY MURDER.
No, fiat currency like FRNs is measuremnt backed by murder. Money is just something you can exchange with another person, or a way to store the fruits of your labor. free association by private indivduals, the essence of the free market, enables people to exchange in any manner they both agree to. murder or coercion is what happens when you get the govt involved
The kind of "money" you are referring to Greenskeeper_Carl, is the measurement of commodities backed by murder. You are drowning inside of taking for granted the long, long history that made "private property" exist and be taken for granted. However, there is no private property outside of some system of public violence. Nobody "owns" anything except by staking claims that are backed by coercion. Anyone who asserts that they "own" some gold or silver, or whatever, is doing so only within the historical context of the dynamic equilibria between different systems of organized lies operating robberies.
Your idealized notions about the "free association by private individuals" appear to me to deliberately ignore that only can relatively exist within an overall context of robbery. Anything which could be "exchanged" could simply be robbed instead. Most people who promote the idealized versions of voluntary contracts tend to deliberately ignore the degree to which those are relatively trivial, vanishingly small aspects of the overall involuntary contracts, that are due to the nature of life itself, such as that people need air, water, food and shelter, etc., or they die.
Everyone has some power to rob, and power to kill to back that up, as the most extreme form of robbery. Governments were the ways that the history of warfare selected for those powers to be channeled and assembled. That is how we ended up with the current social situation, where governments are the biggest form of organized crime, controlled by the best organized gangs of criminals, the banksters.
However, anyone who blames ONLY the government is deliberately ignoring that there are chronic political problems inherent to the nature of life. They tend to promote the morality of the people who fill the roles of the productive prey of the predatory parasites. They tend to deliberately ignore the historical facts that everything they take for granted as property rights and exchange values were made and maintained by the history of warfare, whose successes were based upon deceits and treacheries, which was the foundation of our current political economy based on enforced frauds.
Anyone who owns any real estate in North American today is only doing so inside the context where the people who were living here for tens of thousands of years previously to the European invasions were genocidally wiped out, until only a few survivors were left to be assimilated. Neolithic civilization is based on backing up lies with violence. It was merely the development of the biggest bullies, to become orders of magnitude BIGGER! However, the fundamentals are as old as any animal pecking orders, which go back hundreds of millions of years. Your responses, in defense of the childish fairy tale version of money presented in the article above is doubly wrong. It is wrong by presuming that there would be some sublime rule of law, to enforced contracts that were made as exchanges, and it is wrong to presume there would be no paradoxes in any attempts to enforce that rule of law.
No one has any "fruits of their labour" unless they have some ability to take preexisting sources of energy and material to transform. Their ability to do that is based on a long, long history of robbery and murder. There is no other basis to private property. Those who promote idealized views of what "money" should be, on the basis of idealized voluntary contracts, are being deliberately ignorant towards what money actually is, namely, measurement backed by murder.
Human beings are necessarily animals that kill to live. Human beings can kill each other. Those things always existed, they just got way more sophisticated through the development of civilization. Along the way, most of the people who are the productive prey lived inside of systems made and maintained by the predatory parasites. Ironically, the predatory parasites taught their productive prey what they should believe in as their morality, and publicly the predatory parasites pretend to believe in the same morality as they promoted to the productive prey.
Guys like those who wrote the article above, and you, Greenskeeper, are stuck in the rut of believing in the biggest bullies' bullshit world view, and therefore, promote false fundamental dichotomies, and their related impossible ideals, which actually make the opposite happen in the real world. Ironically, you think that the morality of the productive prey is superior, while you are only able to do that by maintaining profound attitudes of deliberate ignorance towards basic facts about the real world. Natural selection has always existed. It manifested through human beings into cultural forms of artificial selection, which developed through history to become based on a history of warfare whose successes depended upon deceits and treacheries, which then morphed to become economics operating through financial frauds. However, the basic causes for that were always uniiverally present.
The attitudes towards "money" presented in the article above, as well as your reply, are the typical kinds of childish fairy tales that one expects from reactionary revolutionaries, who superficially begin to understand that governments are the biggest form of organized crime, controlled by the best organized gangs of criminals, but do not understand in any deeper ways how and why that happened.
Typically, people who promote their idealized notions about "free markets" deliberately ignore that there actually has been a "free market" in robbery, which developed as the foundation for the enforced frauds that are our monetary system, where money is measurement backed by murder. Any other view is based on goofy deliberate ignorance, which is much more goofy if the person promoting that is not directly benefiting from being one of the insiders profiting from those enforced frauds.
Even those who are relative insiders to the financial enforced frauds are still suffering overall from the runaway criminal insanities driven by the social successes of systems of legalized lies, backed by legalized violence, which are opposed by controlled opposition groups that promote the same old-fashioned impossible ideals as the basis of their bullshit solutions, which are ironic, since the problems were due to the triumphs of the biggest bullies' promoting that bullshit in the first place.
The article above pretended to be explaining "real" money to children. However, it did not come remotely close to doing that! There is no way to explain money except when that is combined with murder, because money is merely the most abstract form of private property, which was always based on backing up claims with coercions. I REPEAT: Nobody "owns" anything outside of some system of public violence. The debt controls are backed by the death controls. Any other view of political economy free floats in bullshit, which deliberately ignores human ecology and its environment, which, of course, is what the biggest bullies' bullshit does, as therefore, that is the world view that the productive prey were taught to adopt as their bogus "morality." The only things that exist are the dynamic equilibria of different systems of organized lies operating robberies, and that is why money exists as measurement backed by murder.
The fundamentals are that human beings operate as entropic pumps of energy, and the ways that we understand that are as backwards as they could possibly be, because society was built on the ability to back up lies with violence, which developed civilization to become dominated by the best professional liars and immaculate hypocrites.
There is nothing more genuinely "real" in the idealized view of "money" promoted in the article above, nor by you, Greenskeeper.
I disagree and assert:
1. Money is simply the storage of your labor.
2. Murder is not the same as Execution.
3. Entropic pumps of Energy would not care, but you care.
4. You agree that your valuing is your soverign right, but so is mine - Don't tread on me and we'll get along just fine.
Human beings are entropic pumps of energy that are able to make and maintain brains that can sustain a mental model of the world, with a mental model of themselves within their mental model of the world. Since I am somewhat aware of myself, I care about my ability to imagine continuing to have access to air, water, food and shelter. Since the main elements surrounding those concerns are those whereby other people could either assist or prevent me from being able to continue living, the primary thing that I must care about is other people, especially the most arrogantly dishonest and violent people, who operate governments, or control what those governments do.
Money as a storage of labor is one of the well-known definitions of "money." I have collected links to all of the other definitions that I am aware of in this thread: Some Monetary System articles. During that process, I have developed my definition, that money is measurement backed by murder. That more comprehensively correct view can be over-simplified in ways which reduce to the other definitions. However, the other definitions cannot be expanded to include that more inclusively correct definition.
Of course, there are a range of killings, which distinguish murder from execution, etc. ... The criminal laws and jurisprudence are full of such distinctions. I have boiled it down to its basics: murder is the most extreme from of robbery, taking lives, which backs up being able to take anything else. "Sovereignty" is based on the power to rob. Governments attempt to monopolize the power to rob, although they are never completely successful, because everyone has some power to rob. A more harmonious society may exist when there are better dynamic equilibria between the powers to rob. however, the fundamentals are the power to rob. The way towards better balanced rates of social robberies, which look like human cooperation, are through understanding that the basic mechanisms are the power to rob.
The chronic political problems inherent to the nature of life is that life can reproduce itself at an exponential rate, which is impossible for any environment to continue to sustain, and living beings tend to want and need the same things, such as water and food. Therefore, more and more people compete for finite natural resources. They end up killing each other, in order to continue to take those natural resources. Human beings live as robbers in their environment, and kill each other in order to continue to be able to do so.
In a huge, hyper-complicated, civilization, there are not many situations where the fundamental facts are clearly manifested. Instead, there is a long, long history of people staking claims and backing that up with coercion. Therefore, almost everything which could be claimed already is, and those well-established systems of private property pay mercenaries, in the form of police and the military, to back up the alleged rule of law which maintains those claims regarding who owns what, by providing the violence to back up those claims, which are otherwise lies, that have no reality unless those lies are backed by that violence.
If those more sophisticated social conditions were to collapse back to basics, then people would be more directly engaged in killing each other, until some new dynamic equilibria may eventually emerge to balance those rates of robbery. At present the huge social robbery systems use the powers of governments so that the banksters and their buddies can rob everyone else, more and more, in ways which are becoming extremely unbalanced, to the degree that those developments will eventually end in the psychotic breakdowns of those systems of legalized lies, backed by legalized violence.
Although, in a big, big world, you and I would never meet, much less compete, and would still probably do so only through the established systems of crazy governments and their corrupt courts, after we were in conflict ... IF things degenerated to the more basic realities, where there was a limited amount of water or food, or whatever, that both you and I wanted, but there was not enough for both of us, then we would probably end up attempting to kill each other, in order that one of us might survive through that situation.
Of course, in the modern world, where the "money" is electronic fraud, backed by the force of atomic bombs, everything is now more inconceivably insane than we can fully imagine. Money is now primarily encoded bursts of electricity, which only has value due to the inertia of social habits whereby symbolic "money" (paper) was backed up by gunpowder weapons. Now that we have electronic money, backed by atomic bombs, everything is trillions of times more INSANE than ever before in human history.
We are now into the dilemma that all of the past ways that we used to fight to try to survive have become ways that we shall probably end up committing collective suicide. The facts that the vast majority of people deliberately refuse to face the facts that money is measurement backed by murder means that those realities will continue to get more psychotically insane ... MAD Money As Debt, backed by MAD Mutual Assured Destruction shall mostly probably finally end with MAD self-destruction.
Since the death controls back up the debt controls, there could not be any better money system without a better murder system to back that up. Since the production of destruction controls production, the most significant ways that the storage of labor took place was through the history of warfare, where those who were the best at being dishonest, and backing that up with violence, ended up being able to assert that they "owned" the natural resources that they had staked claims to.
The most important form of labor was the labor that soldiers and spies did to kill each other. Successfully doing that stored the most value from that labor, in the form of making and maintaining the set of claims to own resources as forms of private property. However, being able to back up lies with violence has become extremely problematic after the development of weapons of mass destruction. The current paths we are on are for our fundamentally fraudulent money to end with its own mad self-destruction. The only superior alternatives would require better death control systems. However, since the vast majority of people do not understand that, because they do not want to understand, such superior sets of outcomes are very improbable, while civilization madly destroying itself is way more likely.
I find your assertions to be ironic, SunRise, since the last point you make is with respect to your willingness to be violent, which is precisely what I asserted was the general basis for all of the points which I made previously. Money exists because measurement and murder exist. As long as human beings perceive the world in ways whereby themselves and others can be subtracted from the whole, then they must necessarily engage in struggles to rob across the boundaries thereby defined, with the limit case of those struggles to take resources being when they take each others' lives.
My assertions are merely being systematically realistic about the facts, regarding what money IS ... While every other idealized definition tends to be based on notions about what "money" should be. Of course, Zero Hedge is overflowing with articles and comments regarding what different people think money should be. Those people tend to dislike the facts that I point out, namely that money IS measurement backed by murder, and MUST BE.
O.K. RM, sincere thanks for your discourse. As to your next to the last paragraph and my willingness to be violent here are a couple of observations. Your observation is correct. Violence is can't be avoided if it's you or me that someone else murders - murder is violence against an individual's soverign life. Since there is no "God-House" here where two starving people vying for 1 remaining plate of food can go for divine or angelic resolution, it seems to me that it stands to reason that no person has a superior right to initiate violence against another.
The dots I'm not connecting with the assertion that "Money is measurement backed by murder" are: What is being measured - Labor? Food? Desire? Values? What do you define as murder? Finally, it appears you are concerned about these things? Doesn't this imply that you are more than an entropic pump and if you aren't, then again how could you or any of us be concerned about these atomic mistakes? You are the most valuable thing you have. Describing yourself and the rest of us as entrophic pumps sounds like nihilstic despair, but despair implies values thwarted.
Thanks again!
O.K. RM, sincere thanks for your discourse. As to your next to the last paragraph and my willingness to be violent here are a couple of observations. Your observation is correct. Violence is can't be avoided if it's you or me that someone else murders - murder is violence against an individual's soverign life. Since there is no "God-House" here where two starving people vying for 1 remaining plate of food can go for divine or angelic resolution, it seems to me that it stands to reason that no person has a superior right to initiate violence against another.
The dots I'm not connecting with the assertion that "Money is measurement backed by murder" are: What is being measured - Labor? Food? Desire? Values? What do you define as murder? Finally, it appears you are concerned about these things? Doesn't this imply that you are more than an entropic pump and if you aren't, then again how could you or any of us be concerned about these atomic mistakes? You are the most valuable thing you have. Describing yourself and the rest of us as entrophic pumps sounds like nihilstic despair, but despair implies values thwarted.
Thanks again!
Yup, the medium of exchange is anything your community wants it to be. Makes no sense to allow a for profit agency located outside of your community to extract a part of the community's productive efforts just for the 'privilege' to define the medium of exchange.
That which it extracts does not return to the community, at least not in whole.
It's a parasite slowly bleeding communities.
Thin news night with Japan on holiday.
Money = condensed work, expalain that to your children they get it quicker. Your work; stacking wood, feeding chickens, raking the yard. Explain greenbacks as condensed work, it helps the process..
Eventually even "real money" goes away if there's too much of it: From weak hands to strong hands.
Something to do with conquerors ignoring the Commandments of Coveting, Stealing or Killing.
Just ask the Incas, Aztecs or... the Iraqis, Libyans, Ukrainians... the Germans, the Swiss or even the US Gov if they still got the gold.
I'll also explain to them that the government sees my children as a means to an end as well. They care not about them....only them being tax cows for the milking.
Had the most hilarious conversation with my daughter who on her own desperately tried to figure our what money way. If my spouce or I didn't think it was necessary to buy something, we'd say: "Oh, I don't have any money because I gave it to such and such". So, for a while my daughter thought that money was something only one person at a time could have. Looking at debit cards it seemed logical. She was very surprised to learn then that multiple people could actually spend money simultaneously and that the concept was divisible.
Then I became a little more honest and began explaining differences between items and costs. I'd say: "This one item is worth as much as 2 of those items" etc. I introduced her to the concept of affordability.
Then my daughter got curious what work was and why mommy and daddy had to disappear from home periodically. I told her that we did it in order to earn money. Now she was really curious.
I told her that people typically did work for someone rich (with lots of money), and they would surrender some of that money in exchange so that they could, perhaps, one day also become rich. And that made some sense to my daughter.
Then one day we passed a homeless man who was begging for change. Daughter got curious again. She asked: "What's the man doing and what does he want?" I told her that he wanted money. To which my daughter promptly replied: "Don't give him any!" I asked why. She said: "We don't want him to become rich and us to become poor".
Apparently, in her little head all the things I told her previously assembled themselves into a view of the world, where working people (like myself), would all go out and sit in the streets somewhere begging for money. Every once in a while a rich person would come buy and hand the money over at which point he or her would become poor and trade places, having then to sit in the cold, waiting for someone to hand over the money.
I finally realized that in my attempt to make the subject of money kid-friendly I completely messed up my daughter's perception of reality...
... but then again, thinking about what she said to me, maybe I didn't.
In my view, the challenge is to provide over-simplified versions which could be amended later to become better. The deeper issues are whether the childish versions are able to become more sophisticated without having to be demolished and replaced. Of course, one has to tell a childish explanation to a child. However, the trick is to over-simplify in ways which are able to later become better explanations, rather than permanent obstacles to better understanding.
My view is that most people are so brainwashed to believe in bullshit that they remain childish throughout the rest of their lives, because they are no able to demolish their mistaken world view, as a prerequisite to building a better one to replace that.
The overall situation is that the ruling classes wage a war against the consciousness of those they rule over. It is very tricky to get children to properly come to terms with the differences between being aware of the ways that the bullies can be violence, while not believing in their bullshit. The main thing which has happened in our culture is that generation after generation of the biggest bullies backing up their bullshit with violence has resulted in that most of the population have ended up believing in that bullshit. By and large, we live inside a sophisticated slave society. For most people, raising their children presents extremely difficult dilemmas with respect to how they explain that situation.
In my view, the key is to be aware of the abilities that they bullies have to be violent, but not mentally collapse under that duress to end up believing in their bullshit. Since our society is almost totally dominated by entrenched systems of legalized lies, backed by legalized violence, it is difficult to tell children an over-simplified version of that world view, which later could become a more sophisticated understanding. The basic problem with being one of the slaves inside of a slave society is that personal success may be achieved more by those who do not know that. Often I have noted that, for most people, their careers were more successful, the longer they did not wake up to what was really going on.
Given that people tend to be paid proportionately to how much they agree with the biggest bullies' bullshit, and promote that bullshit, educating children to cope with those social realities is an extremely delicate matter, which the article above only skimmed across the surface of. Furthermore, to make it much more complex, while the vast majority of people are ruled over, and tend to do better with the morality of the productive prey people, (while the predatroy parasite people publicly promote the same morality), in private the predatory parasite people in the ruling classes have their own sort of secret morality.
When teaching one's children, is one a member of the herd of Zombie Sheeple, whose children may at best imitate ... or might one be one of the Black Sheeple? In my view, the author of the article above is an example of the Black Sheeple, who is basically still telling their children to be better Sheeple, by becoming somewhat more aware of the Vicious Wolves and their Domesticated Dogs.
I regard you anecdotes, JuliaS, as being somewhat similar efforts to explain "money" to your child. In my view, we should lie to children the minimum possible, and be very careful about how we over-simply the stories that we tell them. However, there are some profound dilemmas that everyone faces, when the basic structure of the political economy is ENFORCED FRAUDS, and has been for generation after generation, so that the biggest bullies already have organized systems of lies and robbery whereby their assert that they own almost all of the resources. By and large, people become successful by working for bullies, and agreeing with their bullshit. Enabling children to figure that out, in ways that still enable them to be relatively successful within that real situation, is NOT EASY!
Sit back and read a good book, it will all be better tomorrow.
Julia,
Think deeply about this statement:
"For general price inflation to exist, someone has to get money for nothing".
A unit of currency is a division of the Gross Product of everyone using the currency. Focus deeply on that fact, and then try to think of an alternative explanation of how a unit of currency can lose value in terms of goods and services.
I think your daughter realized something that you did not.
http://capitalismmagazine.com/2002/08/franciscos-money-speech/
Fucking beautiful.
Fucking superficial silliness!
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-03-05/warning-americans-money-root-all-evil
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkivn_3zn5I
A Warning For Americans - Is Money The Root Of All Evil?
I posted my comment on that view there before.
Liked your post in that thread, RM. There's only one thing I suggest everyone does - permute and extrapolate, at all times. These brains are much higher performance than we give 'em credit for, that's for sure (probably why the labcoats will never figure it out). Give it a little data, and set the permutation option to ON, and there it goes, generating universes of information. You can tap into any of those universes, feel what it's like to be something in it. We call these infinite-oriented terms 'imagination' or 'subconscious'. Somewhere along what you permute, lies the truth. It's gotta be there. Probability damns it so.
If ______ (1) is the root of all evil, and ______ (2) is the root of ________ (1), then ________ (2) is the root of all evil.
Let 'er permute! (of course, our 'initial conditions', i.e. starting knowledge base, makes a significant difference. Less data = less states of permutation)
Thanks, Skateboarder!
Indeed, it is one of the extraordinary aspects of human beings that our brains have so much capacity. Mathematically, the number of possible permutations within the human brain appears to be greater than the number of relatively elementary particles in the observable universe!
It appears that one of the main things that drove human evolution was human beings competing and cooperating with each other, which enabled significant sexual selection, in the sense of true birth control, as well as killing each other, in the sense of real death control, to thus drive the evolution of human brains and cultures to go far beyond what may have been merely needed to continue to live as apes in the natural environment.
Human beings are able to build mental models of their world, including mental models of themselves within their models of the world, that have extremely strange and entangled relationships to whatever may be relatively more objective realities, as demonstrated in the areas of both sex and money! Silly little love songs are much more socially approved of than any relatively more objective statements about the facts of life. Similarly, the social stories about money tend to be more socially approved versions, which are similar to the ways that silly little love songs relate to the realities of sex. I regard most of the contents of the article above about "real" money, and many of the the comments and replies previously posted, as being like silly little love songs about money.
My view is that the biological facts are that sex and death come as a package deal, the same as money as murder come as a package deal. In that context, I quite understand how and why most people prefer silly little love songs regarding sex or money, than like any permutations of the available data that end up being more realistic.
Desire creates the universe, with extremely diverse permutations of what is possible. In my view what we are relatively aware or conscious of is like a tiny focal point through where there are flows of infinitely greater subconscious and supraconscious systems of information. The same as there is a vast realm of subconsciousness within our body, we too are inside a vast realm of supraconsciousness, in the human ecology, which is inside of other ecologies. The recognition that there really was an apparently infinite amount of subconscious information has somewhat been recognized and admitted into our current culture. However, the corresponding idea that there is an apparently infinite amount of supraconscious information, in the ecologies that we are tiny parts of, is not yet as generally accepted. One of the good reasons for that is that people might be willing to face some of the biological facts about their bodies and brains, but they are still way less willing to face the facts about their situation inside of their ecologies. That is especially the case because the human ecology has as its central feature the history of death controls, with the murder systems being the most obvious of those.
By and large, most people want to only have some psychological explanations about "money," while they do not want any ecological explanations about that. For example, here is psychology lecture, which summaries those aspects regarding the psychology of money, while I am not yet aware of anything which summarized the ecological aspects of money as thoroughly, because there is too little source material that currently exists in order to do that at the present time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QlXR0-zZRA
The Psychology of Money
That is a mainstream lecture by Professor Glenn D. Wilson, reviewing some standard psychological explanations. Of course, all of that was too superficial, despite being right enough, on that level. However, as far as I know, there is nothing like that with respect to presenting the evolutionary ecology of money, because that barely exists at the present time, especially since money is measurement backed by murder, inside that context, where the continued social success of the established systems of enforced frauds depend upon most people continuing to be too childish to understand that, and too childish to want to understand that!
It's too early to take apart that neo-Commie garbage. FFS, anyone that uses the term "petit borsiosie" is probably a second year community college student that has no real world experience, and his only knowledge of the real working world is the part time job he had flipping burgers at McDonalds for minimum wage.
The very first sentence you describe Rand as an egotist. If you don't know the difference between egotism and egoism, there is really no reason to continue with you.
Let me just state, for the record, the fundamental principles behind Objectivism.
A. You own yourself and the fruits of your labor. No one has a higher claim to them than you do.
B. No one has a right to *initiate* force or fraud or a credible threat against you. You have a right to defend yourself, either in third-party arbitration, or baseball bats and pistols.
Now under our current system of world domination of those with large amounts of capital, you need to take a long hard look at how they got their capital. If you do, you will most likely not be a method that Rand would approve of. In fact, she referred to it as the "Aristocracy of Pull". In other words, people who capitalise on the special rights that average people believe they have the right to assign to others.
The system is inherently flawed because no one, no group of individuals, no institution can have any rights that individuals themselves do not posses.
If you find yourself having to force your ideas on others with the threat of violence, then your ideas are worthless.
I think you understand all the basic mechanisms BACKWARDS, Franklin.
Real human history was thousands of years of warfare. The people doing that had all kinds of justifications from doing that. There is no genuine beginning, since it goes back through the pecking orders of various animals for hundreds of millions of years.
I was well-aware of the difference between egoism and egotism. Decades ago, I made a point of discussing that. I find so-called "Objectivism" laughable. The only thing that human beings can do is dream with different degrees of data. There is no objective "truth." All truths are metaphorical, some with relatively better models and data than others, depending upon selection pressures infinitely bigger than they are, which they end up being influenced by, without necessarily ever fully understanding.
The only "rights" are de facto. There are no rights without remedies. The basics are the power to rob, which gets organized through systems of lies to operate as systems of robbery. That is the way that it begins. Human beings never know anything but relative illusions, or relative lies. Upon the basis of those illusory lies, they live their lives, taking energy across the boundaries that they perceive.
Throughout history, people were preemptively developing weapons, in order to continue to be able to rob and kill. There was no beginning to that process. It goes as far back in time as human evolution did, with humans as bands of hunters long before their successes transformed them into armies. In that context, Franklin, I regard your kind of morality as being ridiculously backwards to how things actually worked in the real world.
Given that we now have globalized electronic frauds, backed by the force of atomic bombs, it is theoretically imperative to develop better understanding of how and why those systems exist in the forms that they do now. Your kind of morality, Franklin, is that of the Black Sheeple, or reactionary revolutionaries, which is based on impossible ideals, that actually make the opposite happen in the real world, because you continue to want to understand everything backwards, because you like to think that way.
Militarism deserves to be the supreme ideology. Human beings killing each other is the most important thing that they do. The money system that actually exists could not exist unless it paid for a murder system to back it up. There was no beginning to that combined money/murder system. No theories about what money should be, that ignore that money IS measurement backed by murder, have any intrinsic merit.
I repeat my view that the article above promoted a very superficial view of what is "real" money. Those who agree with that view, such as quoted in several comments and replies above, continue to be deliberately ignorant. Of course, inside of our social realities, the situation often continues that people who are deliberately ignorant actually benefit form their systems of lies and hypocrisy, and so, are not genuinely interested in understanding that better.
I repeat that the taboos against understanding money are even worse than the taboos against understanding sex, and that, currently children tend to be told bigger lies about money than they are told about sex, while most adults continue to approve of that. In that context, Franklin, I regard your assertions as being the kind of childishness that you prefer to believe in, and therefore, you support those other authorities that have promoted similarly idealized, over-simplified, social stories, which deliberately ignored the facts of life regarding money.
A classic. It's unspeakable that I had to read that on my own in my mid-30s instead of hearing that from the mouths of my high school teachers.
“Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men’s protection and the base of a moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values. Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it bounces, marked, ‘Account overdrawn.’
“When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, ‘Who is destroying the world? You are."
The saying is "the LOVE of money is the root of all evil."
Not the Scrooge McDuck kind of love.
I have always taught my children what money is using Pavlovian conditioning, from a very early age. I showed them a US dollar and when they came to me crawling to get it, I slapped them in the face. Then I showed them a 1/oz coin of gold. When they crawled to me to get it, I gave them candy in return. They learned pretty quick what money is.
If you did that in a grocery store isle and I saw you I'd shake your hand and say mission accomplished
But store security would call the police and social services and take your kids away for their own safety. And they would later be abused and murdered in one of the satanist networks foster homes
In today's delusional world of moral relevance created in a dystopian Orwellian land of opposites you'd be a child abuser and the state would be the hero who made a bad decision
What a difference a generation makes
"Dads investing wisdom" is a document that my family well knows resides on my computer. My spouse and kids haven't shown much interest, but it was/is important to me, and I believe that someday they will read it. Funny is that while I follow financials daily and read tons, I have few truths to pass on that I feel with reasonable certainity will help guide them. After years of regular review and (re)editing, it remains under ten pages. I've outlined tips like the "rule of 72" and advice like "handling pleas to loan money to others".
For their birthday around age 11, I give kids I know well an envelope with a birthday card and a 10,000,000,000,000 Zimbabwe Dollar bill in it.
Usually after some sink-in time they ask something along the lines what its worth is, and I tell them "Today it's not in use anymore, but when it was still real money you could buy one chewing gum for it."
We start young. We pay their chore money with coins. The tooth fairy brings an ounce of silver from a different country each visit, which helps with geography. We also teach them to give to the church. I have a dream that one day we will be able to give silver and gold to the Lord instead of worthless paper. Btw, if physical drops much lower, banksters, I'm gonna start doing it anyway - I don't care about the deduction. I'll be sure to hit all the mega churches in my area too, you know, to get the conversation started.
The best piece on the topic I have found ever:
http://fofoa.blogspot.com/2011/05/return-to-honest-money.html
you ll find very precise and subversiv analysis of the money system here:
krisis.org
they changed a lot of my misbeliefs...
but - helas - its mostly in german.
I spent some years in the Republic of Kiribati, a small Pacific island nation. Look it up in google maps. The people there are socialist by culture. If you own something (including money) you are olibagated by social pressure to give it to your family (anyone in the entire nation) if they ask for it. One man I knew worked on a German container ship for several years and bought a small motorbike with his savings. After giving up working for them he returned to Tarawa to his family where he began using his new transportation. One day one of his relatives "asked" for his bike and he promptly gave it away with no obligation that it would ever be returned and he didn't even care to ask for it back because it was the "right" thing to do.
I knew another guy who was an Austalian UN volunteer married to a local island woman. One day he and his wife were away and someone went into his house and "borrowed" his telelvision. When he returned home, after rseeing it missing he went to the neighbors house to see if anyone had seen who had "stolen" his television and he was told, "Sure that guy in the house over there". He went to the police immediately to report the theft. After a livid description of the incident to the police they simply asked him if he had asked the guy for his television back. He said that no he hadn't. They told him to go ask for it then which he did and it was promptly returned.
The stories about this culture I could tell you are numerous but the overall culture is clear and natural to them. Family and relationships are the most important thing in life and material needs are dealt with communally. It is their natural way to live and the rest of the materialistic world are a threat to their very existence.
If you have any questions about how this culture works, feel free to ask because it has worked well for 100s of years. and if you downvote me without even commenting or asking a question you're a complete pussy.
So let me get this straight. If we had this culture and I walked into a stranger's home to borrow his TV would I have to put it back if he asked me to?
I'm thinking I might also want to borrow his guns first so he didn't shoot me dead!
Yes you would. Nobody owns guns.
Such potlatch societies worked quite well as long as everyone was reinforced into that collective morality. People were productive in order to enjoy the social prestige that they enjoyed by being able to give away the fruits of their labour. Everyone competed by trying to gain most status by being able to give away more. There was an unbroken cycle of giving away gifts, in which context there was a kind of spirit of the gift that went with it, which obliged the person who received that gift to continue giving to others.
Neolithic civilizations, that specialized in taking, in the most extreme forms of robbery and killing, have wiped out all of those societies that used to be based on giving. However, there were thousands of different culture that lasted from thousands of years, in which the ways that they operated were the opposite to what we take for granted as "human nature." A large aspect of that were the selection pressures that existed in smaller, localized communities, for prolonged periods of time, which tended to favour cooperation over competition. However, of course, the societies that specialized in competition, developing warfare and slavery systems, when they were able to, wiped out all of those other possible localized systems of gift exchanges. In my view, what happens is that in localized communities, that remain in similar environments for thousands of years, they tend to develop dynamic equilibria between the forces of robbery, which tend to favour more cooperation than cut throat competition. They also tend to develop more cultural forms of respect for their local ecological realities, (which may seem religious to them) because they will be pressured to do so, if they stay in the same local environment for a long period of time.
Our kind of civilization only works as long as we can conquer and rape greater areas of territory and the people who used to live there. We have no idea, at present, if our sort of civilization could adapt to survive on a finite planet, after that planet as a whole became a sort of local environment. So far, the indications are that we are going to commit collective suicide, due to our failure to adapt those those emerging conditions, because our society is controlled by systems of lies backed by violence, which have become too criminally insane to survive in the longer term, but nevertheless, in each short-term increment keep on doubling down of their established systems of enforced frauds.
I down voted you.
That's completely fucked up, and would not work at all on anything OTHER than a fucking island with an equal number of numbskulls.
You downvoted me becasue you don't like information about how other parts of the world live or do you think I love that culture? If I loved it I would be living there still.
There are some kids around the age of nine and five and they come from South Korea. Now remember that mine are half Russian and have been to Russia twice and their mother(my wife) IS Russian. These South Korean kids are very polite whereas my children are always hanging on a cussword. There is not so much an issue with the older girl and she won't cuss like a sailor but my young male son sure as hell will.
So the Dept of Russian cursing vagina problems comes into my office yesterday and tells that our son is swearing all of the time but that he curses in both languages. She said "Thanks Dad for teaching him those words", and that now there will trouble in school because he says things like "This is a bunch of bullshit." Wait a minute and he cursed in Russian too so I had to ask where he learned to curse like that? In Russia she says.LMAO!!! And she added that he knowa far more Russian curse words the American ones. Maybe it is a good thing?
I have been giving some silver coins out for the holiday season. They seem to like the gift. I am not giving shitty coins out and the little South Korean kids who hang around here seem to like them. They are silver coins and I have explained their issuance so I think I did what I should do for the kids.
I am not asking anything in return.
Eventually the world will learn again that money is not credit. Fiat rules until it gets too hot, then it will combust.
Money can be anything. The fundamentals make a difference.
I prefer money which is transparent, based on math, doesn't rely on tyrants, and doesn't involve force or discrimination.
Here is a crash course in the true nature of money and some history. If you like big government, you will like fiat money because it empowers the government and controls individuals. If you like small government, you will like PMs because they empower the individual and restrict government. Chartalists (proponents of fiat money) see money as simply an accounting spread sheet. Metalists (proponents of PMs) see money as another commodity with intrinsic value.
It should be noted that America and the American Constitution are based on small limited government. Large government is un-American, by definition. It is clear from their writings that the founders had a firm understanding of central banking and money. Even those who sold the idea of the American dream down the river to the moneyed interests (W Wilson) soon lamented their treachery. We now have a de facto mega government and fiat money banking system and as the founding fathers warned it is all coming undone.
You can only have an enduring fiat money system with a dictatorship. With a democracy or democratic republic, you have to believe that the people are wise enough and unselfish enough to elect wise and unselfish leaders. We are seeing first hand that that doesn't happen.
Explaining the difference in the nominal amount written on a current piece of currency and it's purchasing power compared to earlier forms is all you need to get someone thinking.
Tell someone that gas is still 25 cents per gallon and pull out three 1964 dimes. Take out a $1 Indian Head gold coin from the mid 1800's to explain that $1 used to buy as much as about $58 today. How did the nominal $1 on a piece of paper end up being able to purchase so much less? Show a red seal treasury note on a $5 bill and then an $5 Federal Reserve note and explain the difference. Show what a dollar was defined as in the original coinage act.
How about explaining "real money" to an adult!
Money can be anything in the same way that food can be anything organic...which is to say that while they can be, they are inherently unequal at the job.
While I think Gold is the best money, followed by silver, I believe it best when there are monetary alternatives.
I don't think Bitcoin is as good as Gold in the pure sense for practical reasons (large and growing blockchain and inherent vulnerability to the encryption arms-race). However, I think it is superior to Gold in some facets... such as portability.
And that is the necessary lesson to learn about money, in my opinion. Diversity of money provides a way to distribute monetary risk, and diffuse monetary fraud. The lesson, is that no matter the absolute quality of the money, there is a way to defraud it and the very act of centralization into ONLY ONE money facilitates that fraud.
There is so much to teach children when it comes to money, but to start, I think a good step in the right direction is to not simply philosophically and intellectually capitulate by framing money solely in terms of state-sponsored currency.
While gold and silver are undoubtedly honest money, bitcoin represents a really cool medium of exchange as well. It helps us realize that money is just an idea. It’s whatever proves most useful and stable to trade with over time.'
What do you do when the teacher is clueless about the subject she teaches? Gold and silver are "not" money ... honest or otherwise. BitCoin "is" a medium of exchange but it is doomed because it is "not" money. Money is "not" just an idea. Money is "not" whatever proves useful in trade. All of the above "are" simple items of barter.
So what is money? After its creation, it also is a simple item of barter. In fact, if properly created, it is the most valued item of barter because it "never" loses its value over time and space. It is "always" in free supply.
The key is its meaning and its origin. Money is "a promise to complete a trade". It originates by traders making trading promises and getting them certified ... these certificates (and/or accounting records thereof) then circulate as items of simple barter.
When the underlying trading promise is delivered, the certificates are returned and extinguished. Thus, while in circulation the certificates represent real trading promises.
If the trade is not delivered there is DEFAULT. This DEFAULT must be reclaimed through INTEREST collections to protect the integrity of all other trading promises circulating. Failure to do this results in non-zero INFLATION. The relation is INFLATION = DEFAULT - INTEREST.
What we have in what people improperly refer to as "fiat money" is a failure in origination of the money... i.e. counterfeiting. What we have is a sort of Monopoly game where one player can reach into the bank any time he wants. Such a corruption of a game is no fun and soon no one will play it.
The idea that money evolved from barter appears to be common sense, however, from an anthropological point of view, that is mistaken:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZIINXhGDcs
David Graeber, DEBT: The First 5,000 Years
"If history shows anything, it is that there’s no better way to justify relations founded on violence, to make such relations seem moral, than by reframing them in the language of debt — above all, because it immediately makes it seem that it’s the victim who’s doing something wrong."
I have seen history corrupted innumerable times in my lifetime. It would be illogical to think history has only been corrupted in my lifetime. Rather, history must first be considered corrupted and proved legitimate using first instance investigation, rational review and simple logic. Does the story stand up to simple scrutiny? For example, the government's 9/11 conspiracy does not stand up to simple logic ... WTC7 falling down being obvious notable evidence. That's history being corrupted before our very eyes. That not withstanding, lets logically and rationally inspect trade.
In the beginning there was obviously simple barter. Knowing the three steps of trade: (1) Negotiation; (2) Promise to deliver; (3) Delivery, barter is simply a general trading transaction where (2) and (3) happen simultaneously, on the spot.
It is also simply logical that with trusted trading partners, (2) and (3) were allowed to take place over time and space. To facilitate this a number of facilities were instituted. Among these are insurance, letters of credit, banks, large round stones, tally sticks, coin, currency, credit ... (and this is far from an exhaustive list with new facilities being invented all the time ... e.g. PayPal and BitCoin).
But what is obvious from review of the first instance, what is actually being traded is "a promise to deliver". In a properly managed Medium of Exchange (MOE), these trading promises "can" be recorded and certified. Those certificates (and accounting records) can be traded in simple barter if the integrity of the MOE is transparent and un-corruptable.
The most obvious instance of corruption is counterfeiting. However, in our time, the most widespread instance of corruption is willful manipulation of the certificate issuance by governments and their chartered banks. For example, governments issue themselves certificates representing trading promises on which they never deliver (rollover is DEFAULT) ... and have no intention of delivering. Banks are also charted to do this.
Governments claim a monopoly on the management of the MOE. However, they never really attain it. The more corrupt their behavior, the more their monopoly deteriorates (black markets). There is absolutely no necessity to have a single MOE or to have it run by a government.
We don't have a single insurance company run by the government (though we now see a movement in that direction). Managing a MOE is no different than managing risk. "All" the same rules apply. The best manager with the most transparent obvious integrity prevails. Reliable traders naturally gravitate to that manager and his certificates trade at zero discount.
It is simple to create a properly manged MOE and anyone can do it:
In the meantime these certificates circulate as items of simple barter. They are welcome everywhere by everyone all the time because of the obvious and transparent integrity of the process (the MOE).
This guarantees (un-measurable) INFLATION to be zero at all times everywhere by the relation INFLATION = DEFAULT - INTEREST.
Knowing these to be obvious first principles, one can study history in every period and discover corruptions of the period regarding money.
"In the beginning there was simple" ROBBERY, which followed from the perceptions of subtracting parts from the Whole. The "three steps of trade" emerged out of the dynamic equilibria of the forces which engage in robberies. Many people continue to promote idealized views of having a medium of exchange which deliberately ignores that the fundamental transaction is robbery.
They are proposing ideals about how to renovate the upper floors of a building whose foundation has become rotten, because our society is based on the best organized gangs of criminals controlling governments, which is continues to be possible because enough of the people have been brainwashed to believe in those biggest bullies' bullshit social stories.
Many people continue to promote notions about what money should be that deliberate ignore what money IS, and how and why that is the case. Where is the role of the rule of law to enforce those who refuse to complete trades? What happens if that requires paying mercenaries of some kind to enforce that rule of law? Most idealized world views are based on deliberately ignoring that people who can rob, rather than trade, may well do so, and if they get away with that, then they will do it again. The only realistic resolutions are attempts to develop dynamic equilibria between the forces which engage in robbery.
All idealized markets are based upon presumptions that political miracles have been achieved, without facing the paradoxes with respect to enforcing any rule of law, that result from attempting to stop the robbery from taking control over the ability to trade. Such idealized markets also tend to deliberately ignore that human history has been made on the foundation of such robberies, so that any private property claims that exist now only exist because of a long history of coercion which backed up those claims. All ideals that assert what money should be, such as a medium of exchange, tend to deliberately ignore that the fundamental mechanisms were always necessarily relatively organized lies operating robberies. Those are the realities within which any realistically better monetary systems must be developed.
I think Krieger has confused 'Currency' with 'Money'.
Currency doesn't have to be a store of value, just a medium of exchange.
Real money is good deed tokens. Before money was invented, people bartered: If you paint my cave, I will give you some chickens; If you build me a house, I will give you some cows. If you do something good for me then I will do something good for you. Those who specialized in building houses did not need cows. Money is an abstraction of goods and services. Once "bankers" could print money and "governments" could steal (tax) money then it no longer abastracted good deeds. Fiat crrency is not money. Those who say it is are either stupid or evil.