What does debt have to do with it? Just about everything.
I highly recommend for anyone with any interest in why things are the way are to read the book " Debt the First 5000 years" by David Graeber.
Graeber is to modern economics as Hitchens is to Christianity.
In other words economics and how it is practiced to control the world and run the world in a constant war and crises mode carrying on the myths of shortages and debt as constant unavoidable givens in a free market word is a bunch of mumbo jumbo pablum, even if the mumbo jumbo is in fact backed up by guns, laws, police, an insane military force, nuclear annihilation and a global financial-media-educational leviathan that all believe in the false god, socially created debt.
The world and the natural cycles of life and creation of all that we need, food, air, water, resources to house and cloth ourselves cannot support a debt economy. The world cannot support forever a debt economy , a sin based, oppressive regime of constantly demanding more and more, and making all work and produce more and more all in service to an illusion that can never by quenched, never paid off, never can work on a full scale global system.
We need to turn all the current systems of accounting and banking and ideas about human worth and how to go about getting money into systems on their heads.
I am not born in sin and I don't believe that I owe anything to anyone, other than to be here now and make the best of this world, to use my endowments from the universe and from the generations of humanity in a sane and reasonable manner, and to not over consume or burden the world or anyone. If all I can do is sit in my house and watch TV and go Mountain biking that is good enough, my being, my consuming my endowment allows all those in the creation of goods and services process to be doing and getting enough. If I am hyper sociopathic and running around making millions of dollars and subjecting hundreds and thousands of others to my oppression and overconsuming in having multiple huge houses and huge stock and bond and currency accounts than I am consuming others endowmentss, I am become death the destroyer of souls.
I'll make my case again.
In the new economics there can be no transaction debt. Only credit. Both sides of a transaction will get credited. Not one side gets a credit, and one side gets a debit, and a third party gets a slice . Both parties get a credit. But..
everyone only gets so much credit to start with and no one gets 100's or thousands or millions times more regardless of position.
A system must be promulgated then that rewards you for not using your endowment. In practice compensation must be linked to consumption as well as productivity. The consumption of energy and things that pollute being the point. For instance you and your neighbor get the same compensation, but you ride your bike to work every day, your neighbor collects hot rods and drives an old classic car to work, thus you get extra "non consumption credit" he gets "consumption penalties". You buy most of your food from a local coop and farmers market, your neighbor likes to eat out at chain restaurants and buys lots of imported wines, you get "low carbon footprint credit, your neighbor gets " high carbon penalties". Such things could be in this computer age be computized and put on all goods and services globally pretty easily considering that billions of credit cards are kept track of with no problem all with multiple rates and fees and etc.
War has to end as the base for creation of debt and the manipulation of such debt through bonds and currency and private central bank schemes into national currencies and virtual money. The current insanity of cycling the productive output of the global workforce into debt and then destroying the wealth either in wars or in speculative bubbles has to stop. We need a system that makes work and services the base, a demand side economics with the base being human needs not war and debt service feed some bizzare accounting system invented by persons subdued by notions of human sin and worthlessness based out of slavery and feudalism and the ancient ways of war and victor gets all including all rights over human life and liberty.
We need to start with a system that look at what the 7 billion people of the world need now to prosper, and what needs to be done to make the world sustainable in the long term and them create the mechanisms for doing this right now. Right now all the people are here who can do the work, and all the resources needed are here right now, and all the knowledge and science is here right now. Missing is the political will to do what is needed as those in power and in control of the false unreal economy are enthralled by their positions of power and wealth and live in fear and dread that the masses would realize the phantasy and ridiculousness of the current system.
Really what the bankers fear is this: That you wake up one day and realize this:
If all able bodied human beings on the planet, lets say 2 Billion of us, were put to work even at half time, efficiently and to good result doing what needs to be done, each could produce the same or better than the average corporate employee, and the global GDP would be 10 times what it is now. We could be building a beautiful world, producing less things, and producing more quality services and education and health care, and fixing the environmental damage and living better simpler lives with a demand side economics, with a endowment to each human being each year economics, with a no debt economics. The bankers fear that you will ask, if Gross Domestic Product is 15 trillion , where did last years 15 trillion go , and the year before that, and if capitalism works as you say why are any of us working all these years of GDP added up and then the interest and stock growth should mean that all the world is rich and prospering now? The banker will just say it all complicated and arcane and you we just can't understand these mysteried. but there is no mystery. The banker and the economist must destroy all that you produce because you are capable of producing enough in a few years to satisfy all your needs and all the needs of your family and freinds and your community in cooperation with each other and live a life of ease and comfort, the banker never wants you to realize this as this would be the end of him and his never quenchable need to take away everything. We need to stop this soon as these insane persons are moving inexorably towards the ultimate destruction of all the whole world.
On the light side from the book Debt the First 5000 years, it can be concluded that we in the ruling portins of the world do live in a rare era of human relations. I do not need to worry about offending my local lord and having my eyes gouged out for glancing disrespectfully, or have my children pawned to pay off my bad credit card debt, or have my entire town killed off brutally in some minor local skirmish between aristocrats. Nevertheless as of the recent Supreme Court ruling equating money with free speech, most of us now I can say have been cut down to being peons again, that is, non persons politically and economically, persons with no say about the future, their compensation, or contractual rights, and no access to those who are in positions of power. Think you do? Go to your Senators or Congress persons next $10,000 or $25,000 a plate dinner. Yeah sure. Your letter makes as much effect as the guys kicking down tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands. You get a nice auto reply letter, they get legislation. Go to your creditors, insuranc ecompany, health provider, employer, bank, Phone service, internet service, etc and say hey, uh I would like to renegotiate this contract , yeah right, pay up,. read the fine print and pay, you want different terms? Are you crazy?
