This chapter puzzled me in a few places until I re-read those sections several times and they finally made sense. (I have always had trouble understanding economics; it's like quantum mechanics that way.)
"Homeowners don’t question why a house that’s several decades older should cost more, even though other possessions lose value with age and use."
This is an excellent point, and I never thought of it that way before. I'm reminded of the time a friend recommend to me in 2007 that I borrow lots of money to buy a house because prices could only go up. She called this scheme "leveraging". At the time I was living in a debt-free mobile home in Palo Alto, the land of super-high home prices. Needless to say, that plan would have ended in disaster a year later.
As a general comment, it seems to me that the current craze for AI is another form of fake wealth that doesn't create real wealth according to the UN definition, but actually takes wealth away from ordinary people by removing their skills (especially thinking skills but also physical skills) and thus their ability to create future wealth from their labor.
Thanks for re-reading this chapter, Mark. It's intentional that they make economics hard to understand and convince us that it's beyond our knowledge. But I've thought about ways you could teach the principles of this chapter to kindergartners with trading games, where the person with the most money gets to create more or one person owns all the desks that you have to borrow money to sit in. Monopoly was designed to show that lesson, but backfired when everyone loved it.
I remember flyers coming in the mail saying 'Put your equity to work!'
Hmmm... interesting point about AI. Removing the natural ability to think has been a long process. Certainly going back to mandatory schooling but these days I'd say it goes back to the origins of money and the Aryan languages of conquest. Money created cognitive dissonance that prevented clear thinking about ethics because it required one to participate in harm to other people in order to protect your own family. The language tricks kept us from having the words to think about concepts like sovereignty.
Wealth as human capital is the skills and knowledge of the people. I think any product that can be replicated infinitely should always be a gift. Money should be made through time spent on ordinary services and products for people you interact with directly.
"I think any product that can be replicated infinitely should always be a gift."
Richard Stallman (a leader in the free software movement) would approve. I do too; i've been involved in free software since 1977.
"So AI may be pushing us into that. IMO"
Are you saying that AI may be pushing us into the situation you describe in the previous paragraph, where money is made through direct interaction with people? That is an optimistic view, and I hope that's the way things will go. Right now I'm feeling rather pessimistic, seeing an increased dependence on AI for everything from writing software to writing essays. I don't see this ending well, because when the output of this AI-generated content gets fed back into the AI, degradation, corruption and errors are very likely to creep into future generated content, getting worse with time.
You and I are modeling the system I'd like to see. We've made our money doing things that weren't particularly passion-driven. They were a job, coincidentally for the same company at different times.
That's given us the freedom to use our gifts, on our own time, for exactly what we want and give it away. We're not beholden to donors or foundations, or customers or subs.
When people use their art or writing as a business, they need to work for whoever's willing to pay them. It creates a lot of self-censorship, and leaves little time or inclination to do it for yourself on the side.
I think that writing and creativity belong to all of us, not a small group of people whose names you know. Of course, you're right, AI--like DOGE, like the tariffs--is only going to take away, not make new opportunities. But our current system is working for so few people now. I don't know how much time it has left for gradual degradation.
"I think that writing and creativity belong to all of us, not a small group of people whose names you know. "
This is definitely true in music-making, too. A century ago, many people had pianos in their homes, and played or sang to entertain themselves. Not so much now, where there's much more star-worship and less direct involvement.
Corruption of economics - classical economics is Land, Labor and Capital. Henry George showed that land value was socially created and needed to be socialized via land value tax while removing taxes on labor and production. A large populist movement formed in support of this after his great work Progress and Poverty was published. The elites were threatened and financed field of economics created two factor neoliberal econ - labor and capital only - with Land factor (the earth itself!) a mere subset of capital. See the Corruption of Economics. It was the intellectual crime of the past century. In a fair economy labor would own capital quite naturally, there would not be a power struggle between the two. There is a worldwide movement for this, see theIU.org
it is inflation on top of the "law of rent" that describes how land values increase faster than wages. The house wears out but the land value increases over time until a bust follows a speculative boom. remedy - land value taxation / socialize land rent, untax labor and production
I just replied to someone on YT who was also arguing Georgian economics. As I said to him, explain how this works using facts and logic. Why do you differentiate land value from property value? Buildings sit on land so you can't separate the two in value. Tell me how land values can increase faster than anyone who wants them has the ability to borrow money to pay for them? That ability to borrow is based on the interest rate. Of course it's not the house gaining in value, it's the land under it. The two are inseparable.
Land value taxation gives the usurpers the assets and leaves us with the money, which is the opposite of the solution. Land isn't a 'privilege' when people need it to live. It's the basis of self-reliance and subsistence.
I bought my house 38 yrs ago, listed at $235 when the interest rate was almost 20%. The median price in this area is now $1.4M. The 'value' matches exactly my contention that the money supply needs to double every 15 yrs in order to put back in as much as the bankers have extracted. Ownership of the property isn't privatized, it's usurped by the bankers who are charging rent as never-ending mortgages, for homes they've never put a penny into. That's the problem, not privatization.
Under my system, the mortgages themselves are redistributed to the community to stimulate local goods and services. It promotes homeownership, business property ownership and small local landlords. Tell me why an increase in property taxation would be better, Alanna.
“Give a man a gun and he can rob a bank. Give a man a bank, and he can rob the world.”
Love this chapter. And I would dearly like to know how to locate the court ruling you mentioned here: “In the early days of the mortgage, foreclosures were successfully challenged in court because it could be shown that the bank had contributed nothing to the contract in order to make it valid.”
You may have seen Werner also challenges the conventional thinking in economics that prices (especially the price of money, ie interest rates) inversely drive economic growth. (Conventional economics holds that low interest ranges = higher economic growth and vice versa for higher interest rates). I am curious what you make of that as it has been a long time since I studied economics and luckily I haven’t held into the dogma I memorised for exams 😅
Also, wish I could post a link to that RW articles on YT. I've got someone doing some tedious mansplaining there on why housing inflation isn't related to the interest rate. Isn't that the whole reason that the Fed said they needed to vary the interest rate, to 'control inflation'? Little did we know that meant to control it UP.
Oh does YT not allow posting of links? Maybe just post the title of the article? I assume the man is fully grown and knows how to Google 😅😂
I have only skimmed his comment but noted he referred to banks/lenders as “intermediaries” a couple times. They are not intermediaries!! Banks neither operate as “financial intermediaries” (taking deposits and lending to others using those same deposits) nor “money multipliers” (fractional reserve model) but rather credit creators ($ out of thin air - which he does seem to acknowledge??).
I need to get my brain back into western economics mode to decipher his comment as I have been reading and talking to indigenous people where I live and the world looks very different from their perspective!
I found the reference! It's on pp.28-29 of Ellen Brown's Web of Debt:
First Nat'l Bank of Montgomery vs. Daly 1969 was a lawyer who opposed the bank's foreclosure on his $14K home mortgage on the ground that there was no consideration (thing exchanged) for the loan. It was given little credence until Mr. Morgan, the bank's president, took the stand and admitted that the bank routinely created the money it lent 'out of thin air' and this was standard banking practice.
The Justice murmered 'Sounds like fraud to me,' and the jurors nodded. Mr. Morgan admitted that no US law or statute existed which gave him the right to do this. A lawful consideration must exist and be tendered to support the Note.
The court rejected the bank's claim for foreclosure and the Justice threatened to sue the bank but died of poisoning six months later. It's never been overturned.
That is a fun Chat GPT convo! I've never gone too deep into the individual sovereignty question because, to me, we do need community/ gov't to protect our interests against for-profit corporations. I'd just rather have a Council of Crones ;-)
Thanks - I should add this book to my wish list!! And will try hunt around for the ruling as well.
Oooooh, I’m glad you said “we do need a community/govt to protect our interests against for-profit corporations.” When I started listening to the Corbett interview on Freedom’s the Answer…and when I’ve listened to other libertarians (/voluntaryists??) talk, I’ve gone “ok so I get your point about police and laws/legislation and that it’d all be much better under [free market capitalism] if we could make things and trade freely…but, like, how do you avoid corporations becoming “too big to fail” or forming monopolies and oligopolies? And what do you do about corporations that are already monopolies in their fields? If there is no police force then I suppose they will just continue to run the show?? Is there an alternative?”
I think their answer is possibly that corporations only end up getting to monopoly/oligopoly status because of governments and legislation so it all goes back to governments and legislation being the problem…But surely we as communities need some checks and balances on the concentration of power and wealth…and it’s hard to see how to do that without concentrating at least a bit of power and wealth somewhere to forcibly restrict those who might seek to take it all for themselves…but I can totally see the slippery slope argument here too lol
"Economic power is invisible." Such a simple way to dupe us all. Chapter 13, great job at explaining at how finance "works," for those that know how to make it "work." I want to listen again with the book.
Tereza - You are getting very close to the economics of the great American political economist Henry George. A bit more emphasis on land price inflation and the unearned income that is now privatized wealth, yes captured in large part by banks in mortgages. Money should be a public utility used to facilitate exchange rather than a way to capture wealth as human and natural capital. But the problem of privatized land value still remains. That is where the understanding that land value is created by society as a whole is crucial. Land value rises as population increases and rightly belongs to the community as a whole. Public Banks and land value tax in lieu of taxes on labor and production is the prescription for an economy that is both maximally fair AND free. see theIU.org and my book The Earth Belongs to Everyone and so much more online and our worldwide movement in this direction. - Alanna Hartzok 717-357-7617. in Pennsylvania.
As I've said, the second-most powerful force in the universe is a person willing to change their mind. The most powerful is two people asking the same question, with more concern for the right answer than being right. I don't know whether you're willing to look at the question, Alanna, because you already have your answer.
My plan improves on Georgian economics, with which I'm familiar. Coincidentally, I ran across my certificate yesterday for completing an online course in it, which I subsequently taught. Obviously, you know far more. But you haven't used that knowledge to show why it would solve the problems more effectively than mine, which I outline in this episode: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/state-of-disunion-2030.
My plan decentralizes public banking, and gives them the ability to issue the credit in advance to pay the mortgages, so there's always enough. It also gives them control over the taxation and exchange rate of this credit. It doesn't have income or sales tax on local goods or services, accomplishing the goal of untaxed labor and production when it serves the community but NOT when it serves the usurpers.
The unearned income from property inflation is captured 100% by banks since only they have the ability to usurp and profit by properties they don't own and have never paid for.
Rather than admonishing me that I need to tweak my system to bring it up to the great Henry George, take the time to understand mine, Alanna. You have the perfect knowledge and background to delve into the details of my economic system.
On an unrelated site, I was reading about the rabbit holes that divert attention from the actual problem. I think the whole definition of 'usury' as exorbitant interest is one of those. Once I recognized the similarity of 'usury' and 'usurped', I knew that definition had been changed to divert from the problem.
What gives the gov't-endorsed banking cartel the right to usurp ownership of a home in exchange for 60 yrs of labor doing work that they pay for with labor extracted from your father and father's father? Can you do the same with a house you don't own? Of course not. We should really be talking about the banking cartel-endorsed gov't, since that's the correct order.
We need to cut off this system at the root, not trim the twigs, imo.
Florida just passed a bill making gold and silver legal tender. Not a mention in the Financial Times or other MSM... They fear gold as hell. Will they get to kill it?
Gold and silver only have trade value when exchanged for an imperial currency, at the speculative rate. Fadi Lama, who comments here, will take his to a broker who shaves off a sliver and gives him money for it. So it's like holding shares that you sell a few at a time, but that keep pace with the accelerating cost of housing, goods and services. Its value, like Bitcoin, is still what someone will trade in an imperial currency. It's also very vulnerable to theft and even torture, to reveal where you're hiding it.
FDR killed the free silver movement of the Populists and William Bryan Jennings, as I write about here: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/thomas-frank-misses-the-point-on. That would have put debt-free money into the economy. Gold was the means and the ends of colonial conquest, as I wrote about in earlier chapters. From Ch. 3:
"In one example, David Graeber informs us that the conquistadors were bound in ever-deepening obligations to the kings and queens who financed them. Always just one step ahead of their creditors, nearly all died still in debt and the gold and silver they plundered passed through royal hands on its way to financiers in Genoa, Florence, and Naples. The atrocities committed and treasures amassed were never enough to satisfy the backers who financed both the wars and the explorations of the indebted crown."
Yesterday I read two pieces of news, from France and England, about kidnapping and torture to get... BITCOIN passwords. Anything can be stolen with these methods. Biometrical checks will probably reduce the risk but can also be hacked. It is my believe that Bitcoin come out in 2009 (perfect timing) to prevent the gold price from breaking the roof. While its true that there are other assets like commodities, credits, insurance, shares or patents that are more valuable than gold and can be easily swapped and collateralized, the whole financial system, was built on gold foundations thanks to the fractionary credit system, which cleared the way to paper money and now CBDCs and BITCOIN in what is called a dematerialisation historical process. Canada got rid of all its gold reserves !!! They thought it was done. Material wealth could be increased just exchanging paper for working hours (surplus value production). This could have worked by forcing everybody to follow, like with the carbon credit market. But the Chinese wouldnt agree,.for both,.and now the west find itself naked.
There is a correlation between historical currencies. In the Potlatch ceremonies, Canadian native American exchanged a certain amount of blankets for a two feet long piece of copper. A piece of copper was consudered the equivalent of a slave. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potlatch
In more sophisticated cultures based on farming and then trade, copper was exchanged for silver (the ancient talent) and finally gold. Thus, gold still translates to a number of blankets, that is to say, to labour. The fact that it was circulating any more led the financiers to think that they didnt need it in a vault. Nobody was asking for it anyway... They lied, they sold the gold and thought they would get away with it. Everything we are seeing is crime to avoid accountability for historical sins, which relates with the karma concept.
I hope not to have gone off topic. But since your book is about how to destroy an empire, it is all built on slavery and stolen gold.
I'm glad that we agree that the empire is built on slavery and gold, which is redundant since metals represented man-years of labor. You mention the talent, which I talk about in the first chapter: "Ancient Athens was ruled by nine archons chosen by the Areopagus, made up of retired archons. Those eligible for office had to be of noble birth and wealth, as measured in weights of precious metal. A talent of silver, weighing 57 pounds, was equivalent to nine man-years of skilled labor." https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/01-a-democracy-of-slaveowners.
Silver only had value because the land had been usurped, backed by violence and atrocity, which was held hostage so that serfs could only feed themselves by paying rent in barley, which was then used to pay soldiers in an escalating system of control.
The link to Richard Werner shows that it's not a fractional reserve system but credit creation whole-hog. Exchanging credit or paper for hours worked would defeat the purpose, which is parasitic extraction, not exchange. See my response to Mark here.
In a comment on Gabe's article, I show why my system is impervious to kidnapping, torture or internet scams: https://substack.com/@thirdparadigm/note/c-120663636. And yes, 'biometrics' can just result in having your fingers hacked off, before or after you're dead.
In using Wikipedia as a reference, it's important to read between the li(n)es. Gee, those stupid natives invited us to feasts where they gave us copper representing slaves in exchange for smallpox-infested blankets. They liked to show off how rich they were by handing over the most valuable things they had--land, metals, ownership of people. We tried to outlaw it by putting them in prison if they did it, but they just kept on giving things away. It was their primary government, legislative body and economic system: "A gift economy or gift culture is a system of exchange where valuables are not sold, but rather given without an explicit agreement for immediate or future rewards. Social norms and customs govern giving a gift in a gift culture; although there is some expectation of reciprocity, gifts are not given in an explicit exchange of goods or services for money, or some other good or service."
How convenient for us! Much better than a hippie potluck, where everybody bring a dish to share. We've misunderstood that you're supposed to bring the title to your house and money representing ownership of other people.
My book is how to dismantle an empire, not destroy it, which would only count ourselves as the first victims. Hopefully, we agree that it can't be backed by gold, stolen or otherwise, on which the empire of slavery was built.
it is so deeply rotten... There is no truth in it. I use to read chunks of the comment sections on the Internet. There is a lot of awareness out there, mixed with disbelief, hopelessness and disengagement to the accepted narrative. On the other hand, there is sheer stupidlty mixed with increasing levels of AI bots and trolls. This is how THEY are going to handle it. A mix of CBDCs and AI for a new "democrazy". Still, I think Marx was pretty much right predicting the end of capitalism, but not to go back in history to exchange shells but to a postcapitalist global civilization. The when is the question. We might be closer than we think to the breaking point. Anyway, the globalist know this an try to steer the process for preservation purposes.
Gold represents the consolidation of the very complex exchange proces. It was so solid a standard that created a kind of madness in the not so solid human mind. It became not another god, but the only God. Of course Yaved was not happy with the israelites adoring the golden calf and must not be very happy with the world adoring Bitcoin. Nothingness over nothingness in an ocean of nothingness... And EVERYTHING at the same time, for many.
This chapter puzzled me in a few places until I re-read those sections several times and they finally made sense. (I have always had trouble understanding economics; it's like quantum mechanics that way.)
"Homeowners don’t question why a house that’s several decades older should cost more, even though other possessions lose value with age and use."
This is an excellent point, and I never thought of it that way before. I'm reminded of the time a friend recommend to me in 2007 that I borrow lots of money to buy a house because prices could only go up. She called this scheme "leveraging". At the time I was living in a debt-free mobile home in Palo Alto, the land of super-high home prices. Needless to say, that plan would have ended in disaster a year later.
As a general comment, it seems to me that the current craze for AI is another form of fake wealth that doesn't create real wealth according to the UN definition, but actually takes wealth away from ordinary people by removing their skills (especially thinking skills but also physical skills) and thus their ability to create future wealth from their labor.
Thanks for re-reading this chapter, Mark. It's intentional that they make economics hard to understand and convince us that it's beyond our knowledge. But I've thought about ways you could teach the principles of this chapter to kindergartners with trading games, where the person with the most money gets to create more or one person owns all the desks that you have to borrow money to sit in. Monopoly was designed to show that lesson, but backfired when everyone loved it.
I remember flyers coming in the mail saying 'Put your equity to work!'
Hmmm... interesting point about AI. Removing the natural ability to think has been a long process. Certainly going back to mandatory schooling but these days I'd say it goes back to the origins of money and the Aryan languages of conquest. Money created cognitive dissonance that prevented clear thinking about ethics because it required one to participate in harm to other people in order to protect your own family. The language tricks kept us from having the words to think about concepts like sovereignty.
Wealth as human capital is the skills and knowledge of the people. I think any product that can be replicated infinitely should always be a gift. Money should be made through time spent on ordinary services and products for people you interact with directly.
So AI may be pushing us into that. IMO.
"I think any product that can be replicated infinitely should always be a gift."
Richard Stallman (a leader in the free software movement) would approve. I do too; i've been involved in free software since 1977.
"So AI may be pushing us into that. IMO"
Are you saying that AI may be pushing us into the situation you describe in the previous paragraph, where money is made through direct interaction with people? That is an optimistic view, and I hope that's the way things will go. Right now I'm feeling rather pessimistic, seeing an increased dependence on AI for everything from writing software to writing essays. I don't see this ending well, because when the output of this AI-generated content gets fed back into the AI, degradation, corruption and errors are very likely to creep into future generated content, getting worse with time.
You and I are modeling the system I'd like to see. We've made our money doing things that weren't particularly passion-driven. They were a job, coincidentally for the same company at different times.
That's given us the freedom to use our gifts, on our own time, for exactly what we want and give it away. We're not beholden to donors or foundations, or customers or subs.
When people use their art or writing as a business, they need to work for whoever's willing to pay them. It creates a lot of self-censorship, and leaves little time or inclination to do it for yourself on the side.
I think that writing and creativity belong to all of us, not a small group of people whose names you know. Of course, you're right, AI--like DOGE, like the tariffs--is only going to take away, not make new opportunities. But our current system is working for so few people now. I don't know how much time it has left for gradual degradation.
"I think that writing and creativity belong to all of us, not a small group of people whose names you know. "
This is definitely true in music-making, too. A century ago, many people had pianos in their homes, and played or sang to entertain themselves. Not so much now, where there's much more star-worship and less direct involvement.
Corruption of economics - classical economics is Land, Labor and Capital. Henry George showed that land value was socially created and needed to be socialized via land value tax while removing taxes on labor and production. A large populist movement formed in support of this after his great work Progress and Poverty was published. The elites were threatened and financed field of economics created two factor neoliberal econ - labor and capital only - with Land factor (the earth itself!) a mere subset of capital. See the Corruption of Economics. It was the intellectual crime of the past century. In a fair economy labor would own capital quite naturally, there would not be a power struggle between the two. There is a worldwide movement for this, see theIU.org
it is inflation on top of the "law of rent" that describes how land values increase faster than wages. The house wears out but the land value increases over time until a bust follows a speculative boom. remedy - land value taxation / socialize land rent, untax labor and production
I just replied to someone on YT who was also arguing Georgian economics. As I said to him, explain how this works using facts and logic. Why do you differentiate land value from property value? Buildings sit on land so you can't separate the two in value. Tell me how land values can increase faster than anyone who wants them has the ability to borrow money to pay for them? That ability to borrow is based on the interest rate. Of course it's not the house gaining in value, it's the land under it. The two are inseparable.
Land value taxation gives the usurpers the assets and leaves us with the money, which is the opposite of the solution. Land isn't a 'privilege' when people need it to live. It's the basis of self-reliance and subsistence.
I bought my house 38 yrs ago, listed at $235 when the interest rate was almost 20%. The median price in this area is now $1.4M. The 'value' matches exactly my contention that the money supply needs to double every 15 yrs in order to put back in as much as the bankers have extracted. Ownership of the property isn't privatized, it's usurped by the bankers who are charging rent as never-ending mortgages, for homes they've never put a penny into. That's the problem, not privatization.
Under my system, the mortgages themselves are redistributed to the community to stimulate local goods and services. It promotes homeownership, business property ownership and small local landlords. Tell me why an increase in property taxation would be better, Alanna.
“Give a man a gun and he can rob a bank. Give a man a bank, and he can rob the world.”
Love this chapter. And I would dearly like to know how to locate the court ruling you mentioned here: “In the early days of the mortgage, foreclosures were successfully challenged in court because it could be shown that the bank had contributed nothing to the contract in order to make it valid.”
You may have seen Werner also challenges the conventional thinking in economics that prices (especially the price of money, ie interest rates) inversely drive economic growth. (Conventional economics holds that low interest ranges = higher economic growth and vice versa for higher interest rates). I am curious what you make of that as it has been a long time since I studied economics and luckily I haven’t held into the dogma I memorised for exams 😅
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800916307510
https://professorwerner.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/2022-IJFE-Lee-Werner-Are-lower-rates-really-associated-with-higher-growth.pdf
Or for a video version - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txc8yuEeG_c&pp=0gcJCdgAo7VqN5tD
I’d also love to know your thoughts on the finance/sovereignty question as outlined here (it’s a fun read I promise although sounds a bit out there when you start!): https://open.substack.com/pub/shirenews/p/asking-ai-about-us-government-as?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Also, wish I could post a link to that RW articles on YT. I've got someone doing some tedious mansplaining there on why housing inflation isn't related to the interest rate. Isn't that the whole reason that the Fed said they needed to vary the interest rate, to 'control inflation'? Little did we know that meant to control it UP.
Oh does YT not allow posting of links? Maybe just post the title of the article? I assume the man is fully grown and knows how to Google 😅😂
I have only skimmed his comment but noted he referred to banks/lenders as “intermediaries” a couple times. They are not intermediaries!! Banks neither operate as “financial intermediaries” (taking deposits and lending to others using those same deposits) nor “money multipliers” (fractional reserve model) but rather credit creators ($ out of thin air - which he does seem to acknowledge??).
I need to get my brain back into western economics mode to decipher his comment as I have been reading and talking to indigenous people where I live and the world looks very different from their perspective!
Thank you, LoWa.
I found the reference! It's on pp.28-29 of Ellen Brown's Web of Debt:
First Nat'l Bank of Montgomery vs. Daly 1969 was a lawyer who opposed the bank's foreclosure on his $14K home mortgage on the ground that there was no consideration (thing exchanged) for the loan. It was given little credence until Mr. Morgan, the bank's president, took the stand and admitted that the bank routinely created the money it lent 'out of thin air' and this was standard banking practice.
The Justice murmered 'Sounds like fraud to me,' and the jurors nodded. Mr. Morgan admitted that no US law or statute existed which gave him the right to do this. A lawful consideration must exist and be tendered to support the Note.
The court rejected the bank's claim for foreclosure and the Justice threatened to sue the bank but died of poisoning six months later. It's never been overturned.
That is a fun Chat GPT convo! I've never gone too deep into the individual sovereignty question because, to me, we do need community/ gov't to protect our interests against for-profit corporations. I'd just rather have a Council of Crones ;-)
Thanks - I should add this book to my wish list!! And will try hunt around for the ruling as well.
Oooooh, I’m glad you said “we do need a community/govt to protect our interests against for-profit corporations.” When I started listening to the Corbett interview on Freedom’s the Answer…and when I’ve listened to other libertarians (/voluntaryists??) talk, I’ve gone “ok so I get your point about police and laws/legislation and that it’d all be much better under [free market capitalism] if we could make things and trade freely…but, like, how do you avoid corporations becoming “too big to fail” or forming monopolies and oligopolies? And what do you do about corporations that are already monopolies in their fields? If there is no police force then I suppose they will just continue to run the show?? Is there an alternative?”
I think their answer is possibly that corporations only end up getting to monopoly/oligopoly status because of governments and legislation so it all goes back to governments and legislation being the problem…But surely we as communities need some checks and balances on the concentration of power and wealth…and it’s hard to see how to do that without concentrating at least a bit of power and wealth somewhere to forcibly restrict those who might seek to take it all for themselves…but I can totally see the slippery slope argument here too lol
"Economic power is invisible." Such a simple way to dupe us all. Chapter 13, great job at explaining at how finance "works," for those that know how to make it "work." I want to listen again with the book.
Tereza - You are getting very close to the economics of the great American political economist Henry George. A bit more emphasis on land price inflation and the unearned income that is now privatized wealth, yes captured in large part by banks in mortgages. Money should be a public utility used to facilitate exchange rather than a way to capture wealth as human and natural capital. But the problem of privatized land value still remains. That is where the understanding that land value is created by society as a whole is crucial. Land value rises as population increases and rightly belongs to the community as a whole. Public Banks and land value tax in lieu of taxes on labor and production is the prescription for an economy that is both maximally fair AND free. see theIU.org and my book The Earth Belongs to Everyone and so much more online and our worldwide movement in this direction. - Alanna Hartzok 717-357-7617. in Pennsylvania.
As I've said, the second-most powerful force in the universe is a person willing to change their mind. The most powerful is two people asking the same question, with more concern for the right answer than being right. I don't know whether you're willing to look at the question, Alanna, because you already have your answer.
My plan improves on Georgian economics, with which I'm familiar. Coincidentally, I ran across my certificate yesterday for completing an online course in it, which I subsequently taught. Obviously, you know far more. But you haven't used that knowledge to show why it would solve the problems more effectively than mine, which I outline in this episode: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/state-of-disunion-2030.
My plan decentralizes public banking, and gives them the ability to issue the credit in advance to pay the mortgages, so there's always enough. It also gives them control over the taxation and exchange rate of this credit. It doesn't have income or sales tax on local goods or services, accomplishing the goal of untaxed labor and production when it serves the community but NOT when it serves the usurpers.
The unearned income from property inflation is captured 100% by banks since only they have the ability to usurp and profit by properties they don't own and have never paid for.
Rather than admonishing me that I need to tweak my system to bring it up to the great Henry George, take the time to understand mine, Alanna. You have the perfect knowledge and background to delve into the details of my economic system.
such a simple thought, but I never understood why mortgage amortization is not considered thievery.
Why is it the only interest charge that is not "simple" interest?
On an unrelated site, I was reading about the rabbit holes that divert attention from the actual problem. I think the whole definition of 'usury' as exorbitant interest is one of those. Once I recognized the similarity of 'usury' and 'usurped', I knew that definition had been changed to divert from the problem.
What gives the gov't-endorsed banking cartel the right to usurp ownership of a home in exchange for 60 yrs of labor doing work that they pay for with labor extracted from your father and father's father? Can you do the same with a house you don't own? Of course not. We should really be talking about the banking cartel-endorsed gov't, since that's the correct order.
We need to cut off this system at the root, not trim the twigs, imo.
I wonder why we just accept such things as a "given."
Part of the brainwashing, I suppose.
Florida just passed a bill making gold and silver legal tender. Not a mention in the Financial Times or other MSM... They fear gold as hell. Will they get to kill it?
Gold and silver only have trade value when exchanged for an imperial currency, at the speculative rate. Fadi Lama, who comments here, will take his to a broker who shaves off a sliver and gives him money for it. So it's like holding shares that you sell a few at a time, but that keep pace with the accelerating cost of housing, goods and services. Its value, like Bitcoin, is still what someone will trade in an imperial currency. It's also very vulnerable to theft and even torture, to reveal where you're hiding it.
FDR killed the free silver movement of the Populists and William Bryan Jennings, as I write about here: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/thomas-frank-misses-the-point-on. That would have put debt-free money into the economy. Gold was the means and the ends of colonial conquest, as I wrote about in earlier chapters. From Ch. 3:
"In one example, David Graeber informs us that the conquistadors were bound in ever-deepening obligations to the kings and queens who financed them. Always just one step ahead of their creditors, nearly all died still in debt and the gold and silver they plundered passed through royal hands on its way to financiers in Genoa, Florence, and Naples. The atrocities committed and treasures amassed were never enough to satisfy the backers who financed both the wars and the explorations of the indebted crown."
https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/03-white-slavery
Yesterday I read two pieces of news, from France and England, about kidnapping and torture to get... BITCOIN passwords. Anything can be stolen with these methods. Biometrical checks will probably reduce the risk but can also be hacked. It is my believe that Bitcoin come out in 2009 (perfect timing) to prevent the gold price from breaking the roof. While its true that there are other assets like commodities, credits, insurance, shares or patents that are more valuable than gold and can be easily swapped and collateralized, the whole financial system, was built on gold foundations thanks to the fractionary credit system, which cleared the way to paper money and now CBDCs and BITCOIN in what is called a dematerialisation historical process. Canada got rid of all its gold reserves !!! They thought it was done. Material wealth could be increased just exchanging paper for working hours (surplus value production). This could have worked by forcing everybody to follow, like with the carbon credit market. But the Chinese wouldnt agree,.for both,.and now the west find itself naked.
There is a correlation between historical currencies. In the Potlatch ceremonies, Canadian native American exchanged a certain amount of blankets for a two feet long piece of copper. A piece of copper was consudered the equivalent of a slave. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potlatch
In more sophisticated cultures based on farming and then trade, copper was exchanged for silver (the ancient talent) and finally gold. Thus, gold still translates to a number of blankets, that is to say, to labour. The fact that it was circulating any more led the financiers to think that they didnt need it in a vault. Nobody was asking for it anyway... They lied, they sold the gold and thought they would get away with it. Everything we are seeing is crime to avoid accountability for historical sins, which relates with the karma concept.
I hope not to have gone off topic. But since your book is about how to destroy an empire, it is all built on slavery and stolen gold.
I'm glad that we agree that the empire is built on slavery and gold, which is redundant since metals represented man-years of labor. You mention the talent, which I talk about in the first chapter: "Ancient Athens was ruled by nine archons chosen by the Areopagus, made up of retired archons. Those eligible for office had to be of noble birth and wealth, as measured in weights of precious metal. A talent of silver, weighing 57 pounds, was equivalent to nine man-years of skilled labor." https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/01-a-democracy-of-slaveowners.
Silver only had value because the land had been usurped, backed by violence and atrocity, which was held hostage so that serfs could only feed themselves by paying rent in barley, which was then used to pay soldiers in an escalating system of control.
The link to Richard Werner shows that it's not a fractional reserve system but credit creation whole-hog. Exchanging credit or paper for hours worked would defeat the purpose, which is parasitic extraction, not exchange. See my response to Mark here.
In a comment on Gabe's article, I show why my system is impervious to kidnapping, torture or internet scams: https://substack.com/@thirdparadigm/note/c-120663636. And yes, 'biometrics' can just result in having your fingers hacked off, before or after you're dead.
In using Wikipedia as a reference, it's important to read between the li(n)es. Gee, those stupid natives invited us to feasts where they gave us copper representing slaves in exchange for smallpox-infested blankets. They liked to show off how rich they were by handing over the most valuable things they had--land, metals, ownership of people. We tried to outlaw it by putting them in prison if they did it, but they just kept on giving things away. It was their primary government, legislative body and economic system: "A gift economy or gift culture is a system of exchange where valuables are not sold, but rather given without an explicit agreement for immediate or future rewards. Social norms and customs govern giving a gift in a gift culture; although there is some expectation of reciprocity, gifts are not given in an explicit exchange of goods or services for money, or some other good or service."
How convenient for us! Much better than a hippie potluck, where everybody bring a dish to share. We've misunderstood that you're supposed to bring the title to your house and money representing ownership of other people.
My book is how to dismantle an empire, not destroy it, which would only count ourselves as the first victims. Hopefully, we agree that it can't be backed by gold, stolen or otherwise, on which the empire of slavery was built.
it is so deeply rotten... There is no truth in it. I use to read chunks of the comment sections on the Internet. There is a lot of awareness out there, mixed with disbelief, hopelessness and disengagement to the accepted narrative. On the other hand, there is sheer stupidlty mixed with increasing levels of AI bots and trolls. This is how THEY are going to handle it. A mix of CBDCs and AI for a new "democrazy". Still, I think Marx was pretty much right predicting the end of capitalism, but not to go back in history to exchange shells but to a postcapitalist global civilization. The when is the question. We might be closer than we think to the breaking point. Anyway, the globalist know this an try to steer the process for preservation purposes.
Gold represents the consolidation of the very complex exchange proces. It was so solid a standard that created a kind of madness in the not so solid human mind. It became not another god, but the only God. Of course Yaved was not happy with the israelites adoring the golden calf and must not be very happy with the world adoring Bitcoin. Nothingness over nothingness in an ocean of nothingness... And EVERYTHING at the same time, for many.
FDR killed it once. It can be killed again. Parasites never let go of their hosts.
Unless the hosts get rid of the parasites ...
you are more hopeful than I.
;-)
Hope is cheap. What I have is a plan.