The Debt Dollar - or, How the Banks Don’t Have Any Money
Once upon a time, money was made out of gold or other precious metals. It was a finite resource and everyone could agree on how much it was worth.
But precious metals are heavy and hard to carry around all the time. Especially on long journeys.
People started trading coins for promissory notes that they could trade back for coins when they got to where they were going. A fairly honest system started by the Knights Templar.
Other folks quickly got into the idea.
Pretty soon, people were trading with the promissory notes and not the precious metals.
Then a banker got a brilliant idea. Since hardly anybody actually used their coins, any more, he could lend WAY more than he actually had. As long as the growth rate stayed the same, nobody would be any wiser.
Until a disaster occurred and there was a run on the bank.
Some centuries later, another banker got a brilliant idea: Why base money on precious metals at all?
The debt dollar was born.
We all know it as “fiat currency” if we know it at all. Basically, banks base their loans on the capital they possess. But that capital also includes how much debt they are owed. Banks can trade debt. They buy, sell and break up debt into shares and sub-loans until the whole tangle is incomprehensible to an outside observer.
When someone pays off a debt (a feat in and of itself, these days) the money that was fictionalised for it vanishes. The system becomes poorer.
So, in its own best interests, the system scrambles after itself to generate more and more ways for the plebes to get into deeper and deeper debt.
Take the “no-interest” credit card. This is a scam worthy of some kind of award. They hand out fliers with a big, bold 0% on the cover, and incomprehensible, teeny-tiny fine print on the page that nobody looks at.
Poor people, desperate people (the best kind of victim in this scam) sign up for a card and promptly use it to eliminate some of their existing debt. Bad mistake. The fine print that nobody reads boils down to “If you use this card for ANYTHING, we will raise the interest rate”. There’s also nice clauses like, “if you look at buying a high-ticket item, we will raise the interest rate,” and, “if anyone checks your credit, we will raise the interest rate.” Basically, even owning the card is an excuse to raise the interest rates.
Pretty soon, the poor sod who signed up for the card is thousands in debt and there’s a whole bunch of laws preventing the poor from declaring bankruptcy.
Yes. The poor can not declare bankruptcy.
Businesses can. Banks can. The rich can. You can’t.
Why? Because the businesses make money out of your debts. They have comoditised your impoverishment for their benefit.
It is, in essence, legalised slavery. The only thing you can do once you’re in the hole is work until you can’t work any more. And all the time, the industry that has enslaved you is piling interest on top of the interest you already owe.
Another scam is Direct Debit. Companies love you to sign up with direct debit. Why? Because the money is taken from your account automatically. And it’s done by a different company, so that even when you cancel the service/membership/whatever, the debt continues. They can say, “oh, that company hasn’t been notified. We’ll get right to that,” and then turn around and laugh all the way to the bank.
If the money for the transfer isn’t there, you get saddled with overdraw fees from your bank.
I have known them to attempt to take money away from someone who had died. Yes. The corporations were stealing money from a dead person.
They’re stealing from the living, too. All in the name of having the most numbers of pretend money.
The system is rigged, folks. The best thing you can do for yourself is try not to fall for the scams. If they only take direct debit or cash - pay cash. Don’t sign for any credit cards unless you understand ALL the terms and conditions. Save for the big ticket items and make do until you can afford it.
Remember, it’s people who drive the market. Drive it towards good, not evil.
An Interesting Proposal for OWS
Many, many critiques of OWS have been superficial, targeting the fact that the protesters wear/use/eat corporate products whilst protesting corporate greed.
I have just come up with a solution.
The Gridle$$ Movement. Hit them where it hurts.
Pronounced “grid-less”, the idea is to move off the grid in protest against corporate greed.
Grow your own food. Make your own clothes. Generate your own electricity. Take up the Freegan lifestyle as much as you can.
Buy as little as humanly possible. Avoid brand names. Reduce, re-use, recycle and repair.
It’s possible, even in a city flat.
Information on how to grow crops hydroponically is available everywhere. Start in the public library if the idea of supporting the internet is now off your agenda. It may even be possible to grow clothing fibre in a flat, especially if you have a balcony. I’m not sure, but if it isn’t, ask for permission to grow clothing fibre on your building’s roof.
Make your last corporate purchases sound investments on your Gridle$$ future. Buy hydroponics supplies, pots, eco-fertiliser [AKA “cow poo”, “horse poo” and even “chicken poo”] and a bicycle with cargo capacity. Purchase solar panels and install them in lieu of curtains/blinds. If you’re not allowed to modify your area, place the panels where they get the most sun. Rig them all to charge car batteries.
Purchase a pedal generator for mutual power and exercise.
Support your local farmer’s market.
Learn to knit/weave/sew/cook.
Make shoes using bits of old tyres from the dump and whatever else you can make.
Pay off your credit card(s). Close your bank account(s). Ask your employer (if you have one) to pay you by cash or cheque.
In all things, spend as little as possible on funding corporate greed.
Sure, it means you spend more time working and less time enjoying yourself, but I’m positive you can find some area of equilibrium.
Isn’t it worth it, just to get the corporations out of our government?
Dollar Shop Economic Theory
I’ve had this one baking on the back burner for quite some time. And since I have nothing else in my head but brewing brony tales, I figured I’d best get this out of my head to make some room.
The Dollar Shop is a phenomenon out my way, where you can walk into a shop and get an item [or a number of items] for a dollar a piece. Some cost more than a dollar. Many cost up to five. You can get a rare few for more than that, but not normally. Dollar shops sell cheap gimcrackery, gadgets and gewgaws. Some, but definitely not all, are useful. Some only catch dust. Almost every last item in a dollar shop is made to last less than a week. A month if you treat it carefully.
They also sell gadgets and gizmos amazingly like the ones you see on TV for five easy instalments of $99.95… for a hell of a load less than damn near $500.
It is so very, very easy to walk into a dollar shop and blow $100. Even if you go in with the intent to purchase just one item, you are guaranteed to find five more that are both tempting and affordable.
And since the cleverer ones stock food and house maintenance necessities, they make money hand over fist.
That’s not the theory. That’s the exposition.
You know these shops. You probably have one or two in your area. Unless you’re in a super-rich gated community, in which anything that’s not worth at least twenty is not worth handing over Daddy’s credit card for.
The theory is this: You can instantly read the state of a community’s economy by counting the dollar shops in a particular area.
At the depths of our own economic pit, four or five years ago, there were seven in my immediate shopping zone. There’s still four surviving, but they’re comfortably apart. It’s when they *cluster* that you know things have gone far up that famous creek. In a barbed-wire boat. Minus the paddle.
When you have competing dollar shops clustering in a shopping zone, you know the folks who live there are populous poor. Or at the very least, populous impoverished. They barely have enough to make ends meet, so they go to the dollar shops to skimp a few cents here and there. The populous comes from the fact that three or more dollar shops can exist in the same zone without driving one another out of business.
When too many people can’t make ends meet, the dollar shops thrive. People can no longer afford to go to the advertised and branded big box mart, and only go there when they can’t find what they need in the dollar shops.
Worse news for box marts, Dollar shops train shoppers to only look for what they need. Seriously, if you want to save your money in a dollar shop, go in with one objective and a definite allowance: “I will only buy X and if I am tempted, I will only spend Y”. That way, shoppers walk out of there without a shitton of useless crap. Or quasi-useful crap.
Dollar shops train shoppers to avoid the trolley-snagging “hot spots” of crap you just can’t sell, Boxmart. It’s in your personal best interest to make sure your shoppers can afford your overpriced crap and not go to somewhere cheaper.
“How?” I hear you cry. “The economy’s about to crash! We have to hang on to our money!”
Well… you have to spend money to make money. No, not on executive bonuses. No, not on clever marketing campaigns. On jobs. Spend money on wages for people who live in the area. Generous wages. Give them a small employee discount. It will generate loyalty and most of their wages will come straight back to you.
Yes, you lose a little on the deal, but it’s got to be better than the money going straight to Mexico (or wherever) by hiring illegal immigrants for less.
The thing is, people who have more money spend it on more expensive things. People with less, take what little they have and use it for their own “selfish” advantage. Which means that Boxmart winds up with nothing.
And that’s the Dollar Shop Theory. See if you can use it in your area.
Time for a New System
No system is perfect. Communism collapses because people like being in power and refuse to give it up for the finishing steps. Capitalism as we know it is about to collapse because people in power etc. etc., and we are genetically geared to want all the marbles and only share with our personal genes.
We seriously need a new system before it all falls over into barbarism, a new dark age, war, pestilence, dogs and cats living together and all that end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it malarkey.
We need a system that works with our primitive little my-marbles monkey brains, because no system that tries to ignore that is going to last for as long as we’d like it to (eg. “forever”).
Gene Rodenberry, bless his soul, envisioned a future in which, “there is no hunger, there is no greed, and all the children know how to read”. I admit, it’s a sweet dream. In a future where you can gather material things at the push of a button(or a verbal command at a replicator) for free, he reasoned, material wealth becomes worthless.
Um. Not quite. Sorry.
People like to have things. Sure, we could all own a replicated copy of the Mona Lisa (just for example) but the original is still inherently valuable because of the history and work behind it. An artist creates from themselves, taking time and making an effort to make something. Not because it earns them money. Fuck, no. They create - more or less - because they are inwardly compelled to.
I admit, Leonardo DaVinci is a bit of a bad example. Most of his surviving works were created because someone paid him to do it. Though his sketchbooks do kinda speak of a kind of OCD/ADD/ASD aspect, because the man left no blank space unoccupied and no idea undoodled.
Think about it, though. Everyone creates. Even if it’s little doodles on your notepad in that endless office meeting from Hell. Some people are doodlers, some people carve by chipping bits out of styrofoam cups - or styrofoam anything. We, as a species, like to do stuff with our hands.
Me, I’m a doodler and a scribbler. Look at any notebook from my scholastic term and the margins are full to the brim with little sketches. The backs of them are worse. Guaranteed. I got worse in University, where I was never without a palm-sized notebook and every spare minute I could glean, I was writing something.
Just look at all the things we would rather be doing. The things we occupy ourselves with in our spare time. Not the fantasy activities, where we run through varying simulations via a game screen. The things we do by and of ourselves.
Some people cook. Some love to clean (If you live in the area of Burpengary, send me a message, maybe we can make a deal…). Some doodle, some scribble, some do both. Some carve - and yes, I include whittling in the classification of “carving”. If you’re making something new by taking material away, you’re carving. Some “weld” by putting existing objects together in new ways.
Pretty much all of us have been trained to throw those idle creations out. Even if we keep them, if another notices, we’re all, “Aw, that’s nothing, just some junk” or sentiments similar. It’s not worth anything because nobody paid us to do it.
What if that became different?
What if, instead of a system based on debt (another topic for another time), we had a system based on time.
Think about it. Time is precious to us. We can feel our lives slipping away when we’re stuck in any variety of queue. We increase our fury as the time for our appointment grows increasingly into the past.
I, personally, will never set foot in a Telstra shop for the rest of my life because they made me wait twenty minutes to see a guy just to tell me the thing I wanted wasn’t in stock. And the half-dozen co-staffers chatting away in the break room only compounded their felony in my mind.
We talk about it as a commodity. I need some me time. Let’s share some face time. I want my (insert time period) back. It’s precious because it is a limited resource. Once we’ve spent it, we can’t reclaim it. We only have so much before it’s gone forever, and so forth.
What if time is currency? We’re paid for the time we spend on a work, and the work we create is worth that much Time.
Sweatshops would be obliterated, because suddenly, quality is worth more than quantity. Personally speaking, I’d love to spend some Time for a garment or five that suits me, fits, and won’t fall apart the instant I wash it or go to pick up a coin on the ground.
Obviously, the time you spend on study must be worth a bit. That’s an investment, definitely. In my pretend system in the Amalgam Universe [Those three stories I shared to date are all set in it] study time is repaid in Perks. The corporate entity paying you for your time offsets your value by supplying things like: food, shelter, furniture, gadgets, uniforms, etc., depending on your prior investments.
In my imaginary future, you pay a Second for the kick, but ten Minutes for the knowledge of where to kick it.
It’s a universe where people follow their talents and their passions, instead of reserving them for “one day, when I’m rich”. Where art and creativity flourish and learning is sought instead of forced.
And I think it would work. More would be done because people doing the work would want to do it. And they’d be happy in their work and, say, not slagging off to play Farmville whilst pretending to fill in a TPS Report.
Plus, pharmaceutical and medical companies would be interested in extending your life and curing your ills because your time is worth something. Hell, every life would be worth something, because of what the person living it can do.
Artists would be paid in micro-transactions. Time spent appreciating the work. Perhaps also in Time inspiring someone. And they could possibly afford to sponsor companies that make the things they need/like/etc.
And nobody would have to do without.
Sure, it’s a system that automatically prevents acquisition of all the marbles, but isn’t infinite marble acquisition what’s going wrong with the system we have now?
The Executive/Corporate Checklist
This information is pulled strictly out of my arse. By and large, it is not meant to be representative of the corporate atmosphere and is evidently extrapolated from what one statistical outlier[ie, not a White, Anglo-Saxon Male aged 18-35] can observe in her few encounters with the business world.