Nice reframing: they’re stealing our time. Looked at it through that lens, it’s so much easier to say no to unappealing work. Which I find myself doing lots of these days. Nice cabbage! Glad you and Mary got to hang!
Yes to saying no to unappealing work but no that it means they're not stealing your time.
Whatever you pay in mortgage or rent to someone who then pays a mortgage goes to the usurpers. They siphon it out and use it to enslave you further--in the so-called 'healthcare' system, for instance, that stole massive amounts of your time by failing to give the options you chose to counter the cancer, which they likely inflicted on you some other way.
Within the caret system, your rent or mortgage would be distributed back equally to all members of the ChiTown commonwealth, with your family in a hamlet of a few thousand people. Since you have a large family, by today's standards, and live like a hippie chick after my own heart, you'd probably get back more than you're paying. But it wouldn't be in money you could pay for your housing. It would be for locally produced food, wellcare, education, home improvements and community projects. Before you can use it for housing, you have to earn it back in one or more of those categories.
Imagine if you will, my friend, the possibilities. How many beautiful things could your creative, energetic family do that would fit into these open-ended useful endeavors?
So the value of the caret distribution isn't in what you receive, it's what it allows you to give. You get to give the best of yourself to the people around you. And they get to appreciate you by using their dividends, that are worthless if saved and even disappear.
It's a wonderful life. Fuck Jimmy Stewart and his propaganda for the bankers.
Thank you Fred! Yes, I cite that film (which I loved, btw, there's a reason that Jimmy pulls on my and Mary McLaughlin's heartstrings) in my book. What it says is that deposits are invested in other people's mortgages. There's the famous scene on the bank run where he says, "I don't have your money, it's in so-and-so's house."
But that isn't true, and it's a critical point. Banks are authorized by Congress to create 10X their capital reserves and 10X their deposits in mortgages, needing to meet both. Neither the reserves nor the deposits are loaned out. If they were, they'd be giving us much higher interest rates on our long-term deposits. Instead, a drop in deposits means they no longer meet the requirements for the mortgages they've issued at 10:1.
Based on this, if they issue mortgages at a modest 3% interest rate, the annual compound return they're actually getting on their capital reserves is 30%. Doubling every three years! Doubling it again the next!
It's the most lucrative game in town. Lucrative coming from money, lucre, it's really the only lucrative game in town where money is created from thin air. It's a good trick, but it should be our trick and only our trick. Thanks again!
I could create all the beautiful things, T, if I didn’t have to go to soul-sucking jobs. I had an especially hard one today. Trying to not let it affect me so much that I’m a drag to the fam.
Sorry Tereza, let me add that I'm not familiar with your work in this field, but I will remedy that! Certainly agree that community banking is a very good step forward.
Excellent explanation of the problem. One of my readers referred me here in response to my latest post on The Zeitheist, in which I say that the purpose of money is to steal our time: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/the-zeitheist.
I've been reading my book, How to Dismantle an Empire, into my Substack with the first section compiled here: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/section-one-pieces-of-slave. It looks at why money was invented, citing David Graeber that it created the coinage-taxation-military complex that co-opted all of our labor into a self-perpetuating conquest machine.
It also shows why democracy was a psyop that quelled revolt but left us with the illusion of a choice between oligarchs. In this chapter I examine the Constitution and why it was really a coup that defeated the reason for which the Revolutionary War was fought--Ben Franklin's currency for small-scale sovereignty: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/05-the-short-eventful-life-of-sovereign money.
My system is based on Ben Franklin's scrip, that made the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania self-reliant and prosperous. It combines Ellen Brown's public banking model with the issuance of local credit and community control over its taxation and exchange rate. Using the power of seigniorage to issue three debt-free one trillion dollar coins, it replaces the Social Security Trust Fund that commonwealths then use to capitalize public banks. Like Zarlenga, I withdraw the ability of private bankers to create money out of thin air, but give this to commonwealth banks. Through fractional reserve, they can give Social Security a 7% return, preserving it forever, buy back all properties within their territories and transfer all debts into a debt to themselves. The collective mortgage payments can be equally distributed as targeted dividends for locally produced food, wellcare, education, home improvements and community projects. Like MMT, any debt to yourself becomes an asset. I call this local credit a caret.
I would love to send a copy of my book and will be in the DC area the second half of the month. It would be great to compare plans and consider whether a community-based locus of control is possible. Thank you!
The honor was all mine to spend time in such earnest, far-ranging conversations, Tereza. (And live in the Garage Majal!) Thank you for the incredible hospitality and the shout-out.
Of course you highlighted cabbage, slang for money -- I'd expect nothing less from the Queen of Double Entendres 😉
Cabbage as slang for money! That was another Jungian slip. I'll include it in my episode on Welcome to the Jung-el, to which you've appended Jung-el Boogie. Talk about Queens of Double Entendres!
And yes, I'm SO excited that I get to continue our multilayered convos is about a week, on your turf. This is My Dinner with Andre combined with the Traveling Sister Pants. ;-)
Things you'll never hear in a high school: "When you buy your first home, if you pay just 1.5 months extra towards your principle per year, you will save about seven times that amount in reduced interest payments in the first 5 years of the mortgage." There is literally no better investment on the planet. In the first five years of a mortgage about only 1.5 months of payments goes to principle, the other 10.5 months goes to the bank.
Which is why they don't teach it in high school. They're stealing your assets right in front of you.
I agree with you in principle, Ubetcha, but let's examine that under the current system. I bought my house 37 yrs ago when interest rates were almost 20% and I put 25% down because I had stock options but not enough income to qualify for a bigger loan. The house cost $236.5, which was $1500 over the asking price, per my agent's recommendation. That seemed like a fortune at the time and I almost decided to wait until prices went back down, but my agent talked me out of that. It was the first house I walked into.
When I married and had kids, it kept the monthly payment low enough that we could live on one income and still pay off chunks of the principal. My mortgage was around $1500-$1000 a month. We paid it off in 20 yrs, at my insistence. And paid off a rental property in my husband's hometown of Tucson, which he owns since the divorce. I kept this house, thanks to the 25% downpayment and some other considerations.
In my book, I show how lowering the interest rate allows for a higher house price at the same monthly payment. Just going from 10% to 1% almost triples the amount that can be borrowed. Let's say that this house has now quadrupled on paper, with exactly the same use-value and no improvements.
A 25% downpayment would cost $250K, not $60K, which would be a mere 6% or barely a dent. To finance the remaining $900K at 5.3% would cost $5K/ mo. Not much chance to make that with one income or have money left over to pay above the mortgage.
But let's say you did want to pay down your mortgage. You'd have to pay $7500 extra a year in addition to the $60K a year you're already paying. $60K a year! My whole downpayment for a quarter of the mortgage could have paid the whole thing in four years, and now that's one year's payment.
So I heartily agree that they're stealing the assets, but not that we can make individual choices to be more frugal and get out of it. We have to change the system.
Tereza! The universe must be speaking to us, because I literally had a similar topic on my radar since Saturday. In my monday article, I discuss the zeitgeist and how time is our greatest resource. Then bam, here's this article. We're definitely on the same page and I'll be using this to touch on my piece. Thank you for your work!
I love this! So much synchronicity! I'd say it was crazy but clearly, it's a deeper level of sanity we're both tuning into. We're part of the holygeist or maybe the wholly geist, the spirit moving underneath it all. And I can't believe we both looked at the stealing of time as the zeit of the heist. After I posted mine, I was kicking myself that I never defined zeitgeist but assumed everyone knew the documentary series and what it meant. And here you are, doing that for me!
This is a great article, Franklin. Have I mentioned the relationship between orthodonture and orthodoxy? The first is keeping your teeth in a straight line, the second does the same to your mind. The culling of chickens hit me hard, as an animal husbandry gal. For a few days, I thought they were going to deprive us of all eggs and I was spiraling into a panic. You don't realize how many things need them until they're gone--they're the perfect food. We still have some here but other towns haven't had eggs for a month. How can they have this control over us?
And I've written that my homeowner insurance was canceled for a scant cup of moss growing on the edge of a roof not even covered. I didn't bother to fight it because they would have found something else. They're doing it everywhere in preparation for more fires, tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, etc.
Can't wait to read your piece tomorrow! And I need to follow your leads on the Roman Calendar. And SHE as the mastermind--wouldn't that be mistressmind? But any master is thinking like a patriarch, no matter their appendages or lack thereof. Thanks so much!!!
"The wage-earner’s belief that he was a good person for supporting his own family had to be kept separate from the knowledge that his labor enslaved other families."
100%
"Taxation isn’t a bad thing if the commonwealth issues the money and collects it back."
Exactly!!! The central point is that ALL banking be government owned.
"Let’s say I wanted to sell my house to you but a hedge fund was offering cash in full"
Hedge funds as well as commodity exchanges are mass wealth siphoning operations, should be banned
I have not yet begun to embarrass you, Fadi ;-) I'll work harder at it.
I just love that you get my points immediately and intuitively. Yes! Banking is governance, bankers are the real gov't, not just the shadow. Banking is the primary function of gov't because it's how it organizes labor to get things done.
Some of the other colonies' scrips didn't collect them back in taxes. That meant they were inflationary, since they had to issue more every time they needed to get something done. It also meant that everyone didn't need them, so they didn't circulate.
I think it's possible to leave hedge funds alone if we take away everything they can buy ;-) Under my system, at a $2:^1 exchange rate, the hedge fund would need to pay twice as much in dollars as someone who was able to earn or convert their savings to carets because they were born there, lived there some length of time, or worked there. And then, if the hedge fund rented it out or resold, they'd only get half of what the renter or buyer paid because any money that leaves the commonwealth is taxed by half.
If a hedge fund did buy in and used their earnings to gobble up more property, I'd also have monopoly rules that limited ownership to 2 or 3 units per person. And I'd reserve the right of eminent domain, where the commonwealth could issue the dollars to buy out any foreign owner at fair market value. That debt would then become carets that could add to the distribution of monthly dividends.
I haven't looked into commodity exchanges but I'm sure you're right. Thanks again, Fadi!
"I think it's possible to leave hedge funds alone if we take away everything they can buy"
Agree. For me it is just a matter of principle... only work creates value... money should not be allowed to create money that can procure fruits of work.
"I haven't looked into commodity exchanges"
Oh these are major criminal outfits and play a major role in stealing peoples time. They price commodities. Imagine you are a farmer, work hard all year, your produce is not priced by you but by the commodity exchanges. Same applies to miners. Commodity exchanges where used to bankrupt farmers and buy them out on the cheap, they have also been used to destroy nations that export commodities. They are a key element in the financial sector ripoff system.
I'm admittedly a dunce when it comes to finance and economics, so I am struggling with nearly every sentence in the paragraph that starts with "A debt owed...". I think what you're proposing is a different way of repaying a mortgage from what's typical nowadays, but I think an example with numbers would help me to understand.
Thanks for that question, Mark. It was a new thought I was experimenting with in that paragraph so no fault of yours that you don't get it. I don't even know if it is a good idea or something that I support.
I know you understand that in my system, the commonwealth bank is the only entity that can issue mortgages. That makes them the default owner--when the previous owner sells, they have the exclusive right to issue the credit (dollars or carets) to pay the seller. And they can then collect the debt, the same way that the owner would in a direct sale.
We don't think of banks this way because we think they're using pre-existing money to buy the house from the seller and then charging interest on the loan of their own money or their depositors' money to the buyer. But we know that's not true, they're just claiming the house as their own.
Since you're issuing the mortgage, you could change how you structure it, depending on what your goal is. In Santa Cruz, my goal would be to bring down the price of a house for those born there, for long-term residents plus those who work here. I would want to do that gradually, so it doesn't hurt those looking to sell their house to retire. But I'd also want to show that it will continue to decline to get speculators out of the market early.
Most of this would be accomplished by pricing houses in carets, which would only be available to those categories of people, and making dollars a 2:1 exchange for carets. That lowers the competition, since we bid against each other based on how much debt we can qualify for.
Let's say the maximum annual debt an average Santa Cruz couple can pay is ^25K/yr. If they financed ^300K at 5%, the first year's interest would be ^15K. Plus ^300K divided by 30 years = ^10K + ^15K = ^25K.
The next year they only borrowed ^290K so 5% would be ^14.5K totaling ^24.5. In 10 years, they'd be down to ^200K with 5% = ^10K + ^10K = ^20K. In 20 years, it would be ^100K * 5% = ^5K + ^10K = ^15K. Until finally, they'd be at ^10.5K for the last year.
I don't know if that would be a good thing or not. People typically make more as they get older. But they also might work less if raising kids, as I'd like it to be. What do you think?
Thanks for the numbers example That answered my question about whether the 5% was for the entire original debt and didn't change, or it was on the remaining debt at each month and was therefore less each month (it's the latter).
While it's true that people do usually have more income as they age, I was also thinking about how much more money parents need to put their kids through college now. When I went to UCSC in the 70s, I was able to pay my entire tuition by working at summer jobs in a warehouse, and my parents paid my room and board. Nowadays I'd be $100K in debt, most likely, and my parents would probably try to help with that, but they certainly couldn't cover it all, especially since I have two younger siblings. I hope that in caret-land this problem wouldn't exist.
Yes on the reduction of the principal on which the debt is based. I don't know if I'd reduce it monthly or have an annual reduction--same as interest on long-term savings. I think the payment should be standard with the next year based on the new principal. So if you chose to pay down more of the principal, the new year would reflect that. A celebration and anniversary of your marriage to that house and as you and I both know, you don't own a house--it owns you.
I don't think the university system, that uproots kids at 18 and inflicts them on other people's towns, is a model we should keep at all. Universities should prioritize those who live there, at all phases of their lives. Why have four years of 'freedom' followed by a lifetime of debt servitude?
That first one helped me to understand what the heck happened to UC since I was there. I think I was fortunate to be there in the mid 70s, especially my last year. I was a computer science major, but my biggest source of joy was that the place was rich with classical music, with student and faculty recitals every week, and I reveled in this cornucopia. I know it sounds like a cliché, but that changed my life and I'm still hugely grateful for the experience, 50 years later.
But I agree with you that none of this has to happen at a big, corrupt university, and that it could easily be nurtured in a community-supported system give the right framework (caret).
P.S. Your mom saying you were worth every penny of that $42 was hilarious!
We just missed each other at UCSC, like at Borland. I was a grad student there from '79 to '84, and maybe went to Borland in '85 when it first started--10 people above a car repair garage ;-)
And yes, I thought my mom's note was so cute! I wondered if it was my mom or dad who wrote it but my oldest daughter recognized her handwriting, having been pen pals with my mom. And it's definitely her understated tongue-in-cheek style.
Thanks for that, Cheerio. I haven't listened to Michael O'Bernicia but read the interview summary. Much of what he says corresponds to my goals and he concludes, "to build the first sovereign nations in modern times without governments, taxation and usury." Interesting. I'm glad that the banking fraud is becoming more widely known.
I'm curious about how money is created in his system and how properties change hands. Do you know? I'd love to do a point-by-point comparison of his system and mine and how they accomplish the same goals, as I did in https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/bitcoin-vs-the-caret. I think it's important to be having these conversations. I'll listen when I have a chance.
We start by building private living family trusts...
Yes banking is in crypto... funny that the word is 'dead' in its language roots
The Universal Community Trust uses the same mechanism of process on the govt as used on us - acquiescence AND has a magna carta 2020 filed in The Hague.
They've been at this for quite some time. It's tried and true.
You may wish to arrange an interview or join our group.
Hi, Cheerio. I watched this interview last night and then filled out a form to request that Tom Cowan interview me. Michael does a great job of laying out the problem but his solution doesn't make sense. Tom asked just the right question, "So how do you decide who gets what property?" Michael's answer is that the person signs an IOU to the bank, which they have no intention to repay, and that becomes the money to pay the sellers.
When you say "It's tried and true," can you show how many people have sold their homes in exchange for an IOU with no repayment? Michael says they'll make up any number they want and give it to the bank. If they want 10 houses and can show they'll use them in a good way, they can buy 10 houses. Who decides?
There are many elements my plan and Michael's have in common but before spending time trying to implement a plan, I think it's worth the effort to examine what the goals are and compare how each system would solve them. Don't you?
I would even say that a systematic analysis to find the best plan should precede making it accessible to many people with ease. Otherwise, it's all that work to popularize something that may not work. It takes attention away from other things, since time is finite. I've thought that I'd prefer two dozen people who engage deeply with my book, understand it and say, "Here's what I'd like to do to help make it happen," rather than a million people who've bought and skimmed it.
You are correct about money as debt for purchase of land. However, there is a "law of rent" that demonstrates how and why land prices (and thus housing costs) rise faster than wages. We need to correct the money problem with Public Banks and the land problem with land value tax. See: www.theIU.org
Alanna Hartzok is Administrative Director and a United Nations NGO Representative for the International Union for Land Value Taxation where she helps administer land value tax implementation projects on all five continents. She is the author of The Earth Belongs to Everyone which received the Radical Middle Book Award.
In 2011 she received the International Earth Day Award from the Earth Society Foundation. Her E.F. Schumacher Lecture is titled Democracy, Earth Rights and the Next Economy.
Alanna initiated tax reform legislation, that passed with a nearly unanimous vote, enabling the nearly 1000 towns of Pennsylvania to shift their tax base off of buildings and onto land value.
Her articles are referenced in the Association of Bay Area Governments, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Review, Dialogues (the Canada West Foundation) and in books, including The Natural Wealth of Nations and Creating a Sustainable World. She was featured in Planet Champions: Adventures in Saving the World.
Twice she has been a congressional candidate for her district of Pennsylvania.
Video "Economics of Peace and Earth Rights Democracy" at the 4th Summit of the Global Alliance for Ministries and Departments of Peace
Gotta keep that message about money issuance spreading! Everybody on the planet should read Edward Griffin's 'The Creature from Jeckyll Island' (the Federal Reserve). Guarenteed enlightenment!
Moreover, it's not a dry academic presentation - it reads like an engaging novel. Tremendous piece of work.
Agreed that The Creature from Jeckyll Island is required learning, if not reading. And good timing! I'll be talking about it in the next chapter I read from my book this week, which ends Section Two. It's called The Incomplete Revolution and goes into the tricks that were used to pass the Federal Reserve Act, which of course, was neither federal nor a reserve.
Thanks Tereza, I'll look out for it. Looking forward to learning more about your work, and also that of Alana Hartzok who I found in your comments section. Very important stuff.
I wonder if you heard of Gary Stephenson? He acheived a certain fame through a recent book called The Trading Game (I read it last month) in which he did something of an expose of the world of stock market trading in which he had a roller-coaster experience himself for six years. He similarly came to the conclusion that everything that is paid to mortgages is syphoned off and used to enslave. He seems now to be suggesting (on his youtube channel Gary's Economics) that the answer is massively taxing the rich. That seems a little simplistic to me, but anyway an interesting guy and an interesting book.
I haven't heard of Gary Stephenson. There are a lot of people out there saying the solution is to tax the rich, including Bernie Sanders, Jeffrey Sachs and Richard Wolfe, who incessantly come up in my YT feed. The reason I chose to write this book first, rather than the one on the solution, was to push back on that and the idea that we can vote our way out of this.
To examine that concept, taxing the rich still leaves the bankers with the ability to usurp ownership of our homes and create the money out of thin air that we work for 30-60 yrs (with dual incomes) to pay 'back' to them. As I calculated in my reply to Fred on this thread, that gives them a compound annual return on their capital of +30% or doubling every three years.
They don't even need to take their money out of the bank so that it's taxed at all. They can loan it to themselves, as they do from their Cayman accounts, and make the interest they repay--to themselves!--tax-deductible. They own all the labor in the world, so some good tax lawyers are nothing.
They can buy up all the properties, as is happening now, so that we merely rent and never own. And that's a business investment--no tax, as Trump has shown. If you own the wealth and the labor, you don't need money.
I don't agree with that solution for the same reason I don't agree with Alanna's--it leaves the .00001% with ownership of all the property, then taxes them on it. My solution is similar to the immortal words of the Godfather in 'leave the gun, take the cannoli.' I say leave the money, take the assets. The money will only shoot you in the foot.
Fully agree Tereza - little can be achieved without changing the process of money issue. I mentioned Gary Stephenson just because I found it interesting that he arrived at the same conclusion about where mortgage money goes only by looking at how the financial markets work. The stock market is seen as yet another layer on this giant scam on top of the banking problem. (Also because his inside story of the insane world of financial trading and the creatures that inhabit it was pretty compelling, well written and at times even funny).
Forgive me if I'm just passing around more references that might already be known to you, but the documentary 'The Spider's Web' is also pretty amazing, outlining the the role of 'secrecy jurisdictions', trusts, the City of London, and even the big consulting companies in this ever more monstrous story of villany.
NEVER apologize for passing around references I might already know, Michael. I'm so thrilled that more of this information is coming out and becoming part of our knowledge base. When I wrote my book, it was just me and no one I knew had any interest in these things. Now, thanks to the CovidCon, so many people are paying attention.
Is there an interview or podcast or link to Gary Stephenson's work? I'd like to check it out and see if I can get a conversation going with him.
The Spider's Web is excellent! I'm a third of the way through. At first, I thought the speaker was Nicolas Shaxson, who wrote Treasure Islands, an eye-opening account of secrecy jurisdictions. Frances Leader talks about the three autonomous regions: the City of London in finance, DC in military and the Vatican for ideology. I think the intent is to set up Israel as a fourth where the laws of any country can be circumvented through dual citizenship.
In this early, pre-Substack video called The Three Biggest Conspiracies in Plain Sight, I respond to Russell Brand's interview of Edward Snowden. My three are derivatives, tax havens and money creation through mortgages: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKK2Ntqah3A.
I also think, as a reader, you'd like my book. Then you wouldn't need to second guess what I've already written about, and we can take the convo to the next level. I'll definitely be linking The Spider's Web when I read my chapter that talks about the CoL and tax havens! I hope it includes Delaware when I get further into the documentary.
Hi Tereza remember me? (the silent guy at the infamous Zoom meeting who has no kids and who generally honors the dictum that the good Lord gave us two ears and one mouth so we could listen twice as much as we talk ... lol). Anywize.... Sorry this is so johnny-come-lately and I hope you see it, because I'm not a very good commenter.
Re money stealing our time and lives:
I am increasingly convinced that what I call the money political economy, which has dominated both industrial and “post-industrial” societies for longer than either of us have been alive, really is the enemy of freedom and all that makes life worth living, which is to be able to spend time doing what we were really put here to do, which is develop our unique superpowers and achieve emotional connections with others.
This last can't be done if we’re constantly competing with them, or constantly distracted by the need to earn more of the green stuff in order to spend more on things we don't need. And be told that spending "helps the economy" while decimating our own pocketbooks.
While I'm no fan of technocracy, the technocrats do get one thing right: the need for an economy based on energy instead of on money. They want to replace money with energy credits, though. That’s still a control grid, which is what they want. What is the point of replacing one control grid with another control grid?
The idea I've toyed with over the years: the possibility of generating energy so cheaply that its price drops to zero — or more exactly, to the price of the device on your roof that heats your home or building. Replacing the industrial control grid with decentralized networks. Energy systems able to produce genuine abundance instead of maintaining systems built on a presumption of eternal scarcity. If this sounds weird or crazy, just ask yourself what Nikola Tesla was working on all those years ago, why JP Morgan pulled his funding, why the U.S. federal government raided his laboratories and classified what they found (Tesla's lab notes remain classified to this day), and why several people trying to develop "free energy" devices have been found dead under mysterious circumstances.
Definitely something to investigate and promote. Wish our mutual friend Jack would take this up, it'd be more useful immediately and have potentially far greater long term benefits, because one of the causes of parental abuse and neglect is probably stress from having to work two or three "gigs" instead of the real jobs capitalism created before the techno-feudalists hijacked it. These are the people who worship money like a god while it encircles and enslaves the rest of us. Your thoughts?
What all left-wing intellectuals really suffer is a very ambivalent feeling towards material progress. First because they can´t live without it, and second because they generally don´t contribute nothing towards it.
My reading comprehension and attention span is kinda mid, but I can definitely respond to memes. And my extensive time playing video games has given me superior powers of physical-spatial-moral reasoning. So let me respond to that very concerning photo of the politician at a lectern suspended over a chasm, counterbalanced on a plank by a small crowd of attentive citizens.
The guy with the foul mouth is not much of a team player, is he? I'm worried that, if just a couple others follow his example and shirk their civic responsibility, the whole system will collapse. Like, not only will their duly elected leader fall down into the chasm, followed by his heavy lectern, but then the remaining citizens will be catapulted into the chasm as well, because of all that leverage. They're all in mortal peril! I hope it turned out OK.
I will also note that the crowd of people had to be standing there on that plank BEFORE the politician and his lectern showed up, unless it's like glued or something. Maybe he gradually backed up the plank, dragging his lectern behind him, as the crowd assembled. How's he going to get back over his lectern and return to safety? It's a very problematic photograph.
Haha, excellent point! You will be relieved to know that under my plan, no one can walk away without all--including the guy at the lectern. Even the idea that we can walk away is a hidden moral superiority. It says that we're better people than the 200 generations that have come before us in these 5000 yrs of increasingly centralized control.
In previous eras, the system espoused by the guy at the lectern wasn't accepted the way that we do, where it's become normalized. My chapter on White Slavery shows that. The Irish rebelled against this servitude and paid a very high price for it. They weren't allowed to say, "Fuck this" and walk away. The assumption that we can is both naive and implicitly superior. Thanks for giving me the chance to respond to that meme.
Wow, that Cole Clark tweet with the hand-drawn red circle really delivers the goods!
Clearly, this Donald J. Trump character has no respect for, and very little understanding of, the First Amendment. Also, we're like 40 days into that 2nd term and he's signed so very many things already, I'm sure he's signed that law and don't need to know what it's called or who sponsored it in Congress or any of that. We still have a Congress, right? It's so hard for a simple person like me to keep track these days.
If his first term taught us anything, the only possible way to understand that quoted tweet is at face value. That's the only way I can understand anything anyway. It proves conclusively that Trump is an autocrat, a Zionist puppet, and a very bad orange man. He's probably also a Bolshevik, whatever that is. QED. See, I did a logic! I'm learning!
The meme with the Cole Clark tweet presents two facts, neither of which it seems you dispute. Trump tweeted the statement that at the start of his second term, he would sign a bill criminalizing anti-semitism at the Federal level and prosecuting anti-semites 'who will have no place to hide' to the full extent of the law. Are you saying he didn't actually tweet this? Any conclusions you're drawing or that you think I'm drawing are beside the point. The first part of the meme reproduces his words, nothing else.
Cole states a second fact that 'after the Bolsheviks took over Russia, it became a capital offense to criticize Jews.' It doesn't seem like you're arguing that wasn't true.
Cole takes Trump's tweet at face value, that he intends to criminalize criticism of Jews, and shows that Bolshevik Russia also criminalized criticism of Jews. You draw the conclusions, sarcastically, that "Trump is an autocrat, a Zionist puppet, and a very bad orange man. He's probably also a Bolshevik." Cole said none of that. You're extrapolating and then using your extrapolations to ridicule the comparison of two like actions.
Gosh, T. I can't possibly dispute much of anything with such a keen intellect who always gets the last word. I'm too busy slaving away for the Man, you know?
But, not gonna lie, if I could toss off a couple of sentences to score $100M from some nice old Jewish lady and simultaneously get the Jewish lobby off my back for a while, I might be tempted to make a slightly oversized promise on behalf of an entire legislative body. And if I had to pretend to ignore a fundamental principle of American political thought in the process, hey, what's the harm in that?
Nice reframing: they’re stealing our time. Looked at it through that lens, it’s so much easier to say no to unappealing work. Which I find myself doing lots of these days. Nice cabbage! Glad you and Mary got to hang!
Yes to saying no to unappealing work but no that it means they're not stealing your time.
Whatever you pay in mortgage or rent to someone who then pays a mortgage goes to the usurpers. They siphon it out and use it to enslave you further--in the so-called 'healthcare' system, for instance, that stole massive amounts of your time by failing to give the options you chose to counter the cancer, which they likely inflicted on you some other way.
Within the caret system, your rent or mortgage would be distributed back equally to all members of the ChiTown commonwealth, with your family in a hamlet of a few thousand people. Since you have a large family, by today's standards, and live like a hippie chick after my own heart, you'd probably get back more than you're paying. But it wouldn't be in money you could pay for your housing. It would be for locally produced food, wellcare, education, home improvements and community projects. Before you can use it for housing, you have to earn it back in one or more of those categories.
Imagine if you will, my friend, the possibilities. How many beautiful things could your creative, energetic family do that would fit into these open-ended useful endeavors?
So the value of the caret distribution isn't in what you receive, it's what it allows you to give. You get to give the best of yourself to the people around you. And they get to appreciate you by using their dividends, that are worthless if saved and even disappear.
It's a wonderful life. Fuck Jimmy Stewart and his propaganda for the bankers.
No more bank runs in Bedford Falls or Pottersville! There's a 3rd Way. Thank you, good work here Tereza!
Thank you Fred! Yes, I cite that film (which I loved, btw, there's a reason that Jimmy pulls on my and Mary McLaughlin's heartstrings) in my book. What it says is that deposits are invested in other people's mortgages. There's the famous scene on the bank run where he says, "I don't have your money, it's in so-and-so's house."
But that isn't true, and it's a critical point. Banks are authorized by Congress to create 10X their capital reserves and 10X their deposits in mortgages, needing to meet both. Neither the reserves nor the deposits are loaned out. If they were, they'd be giving us much higher interest rates on our long-term deposits. Instead, a drop in deposits means they no longer meet the requirements for the mortgages they've issued at 10:1.
Based on this, if they issue mortgages at a modest 3% interest rate, the annual compound return they're actually getting on their capital reserves is 30%. Doubling every three years! Doubling it again the next!
It's the most lucrative game in town. Lucrative coming from money, lucre, it's really the only lucrative game in town where money is created from thin air. It's a good trick, but it should be our trick and only our trick. Thanks again!
I could create all the beautiful things, T, if I didn’t have to go to soul-sucking jobs. I had an especially hard one today. Trying to not let it affect me so much that I’m a drag to the fam.
Oh I'm so sorry, Tonika. I couldn't hit 'like' on that :-(
It’s all good. Another day, another way to make it through. :)
Sorry Tereza, let me add that I'm not familiar with your work in this field, but I will remedy that! Certainly agree that community banking is a very good step forward.
This is well put together. You have a way with words without labouring the task, so it’s always fun to read your work.
Thanks so much for that, Glen!
Hey, have you read Stephen Zarlenga's The Lost Science of Money? Kucinich talks about it in this recent essay: https://kucinichreport.substack.com/p/real-government-efficiency-how-to
My guess is you have!
Thank you, Mary! I posted this reply there:
Excellent explanation of the problem. One of my readers referred me here in response to my latest post on The Zeitheist, in which I say that the purpose of money is to steal our time: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/the-zeitheist.
I've been reading my book, How to Dismantle an Empire, into my Substack with the first section compiled here: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/section-one-pieces-of-slave. It looks at why money was invented, citing David Graeber that it created the coinage-taxation-military complex that co-opted all of our labor into a self-perpetuating conquest machine.
It also shows why democracy was a psyop that quelled revolt but left us with the illusion of a choice between oligarchs. In this chapter I examine the Constitution and why it was really a coup that defeated the reason for which the Revolutionary War was fought--Ben Franklin's currency for small-scale sovereignty: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/05-the-short-eventful-life-of-sovereign money.
My system is based on Ben Franklin's scrip, that made the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania self-reliant and prosperous. It combines Ellen Brown's public banking model with the issuance of local credit and community control over its taxation and exchange rate. Using the power of seigniorage to issue three debt-free one trillion dollar coins, it replaces the Social Security Trust Fund that commonwealths then use to capitalize public banks. Like Zarlenga, I withdraw the ability of private bankers to create money out of thin air, but give this to commonwealth banks. Through fractional reserve, they can give Social Security a 7% return, preserving it forever, buy back all properties within their territories and transfer all debts into a debt to themselves. The collective mortgage payments can be equally distributed as targeted dividends for locally produced food, wellcare, education, home improvements and community projects. Like MMT, any debt to yourself becomes an asset. I call this local credit a caret.
I would love to send a copy of my book and will be in the DC area the second half of the month. It would be great to compare plans and consider whether a community-based locus of control is possible. Thank you!
The honor was all mine to spend time in such earnest, far-ranging conversations, Tereza. (And live in the Garage Majal!) Thank you for the incredible hospitality and the shout-out.
Of course you highlighted cabbage, slang for money -- I'd expect nothing less from the Queen of Double Entendres 😉
Cabbage as slang for money! That was another Jungian slip. I'll include it in my episode on Welcome to the Jung-el, to which you've appended Jung-el Boogie. Talk about Queens of Double Entendres!
And yes, I'm SO excited that I get to continue our multilayered convos is about a week, on your turf. This is My Dinner with Andre combined with the Traveling Sister Pants. ;-)
PERFECT 😂
Things you'll never hear in a high school: "When you buy your first home, if you pay just 1.5 months extra towards your principle per year, you will save about seven times that amount in reduced interest payments in the first 5 years of the mortgage." There is literally no better investment on the planet. In the first five years of a mortgage about only 1.5 months of payments goes to principle, the other 10.5 months goes to the bank.
Which is why they don't teach it in high school. They're stealing your assets right in front of you.
I agree with you in principle, Ubetcha, but let's examine that under the current system. I bought my house 37 yrs ago when interest rates were almost 20% and I put 25% down because I had stock options but not enough income to qualify for a bigger loan. The house cost $236.5, which was $1500 over the asking price, per my agent's recommendation. That seemed like a fortune at the time and I almost decided to wait until prices went back down, but my agent talked me out of that. It was the first house I walked into.
When I married and had kids, it kept the monthly payment low enough that we could live on one income and still pay off chunks of the principal. My mortgage was around $1500-$1000 a month. We paid it off in 20 yrs, at my insistence. And paid off a rental property in my husband's hometown of Tucson, which he owns since the divorce. I kept this house, thanks to the 25% downpayment and some other considerations.
In my book, I show how lowering the interest rate allows for a higher house price at the same monthly payment. Just going from 10% to 1% almost triples the amount that can be borrowed. Let's say that this house has now quadrupled on paper, with exactly the same use-value and no improvements.
A 25% downpayment would cost $250K, not $60K, which would be a mere 6% or barely a dent. To finance the remaining $900K at 5.3% would cost $5K/ mo. Not much chance to make that with one income or have money left over to pay above the mortgage.
But let's say you did want to pay down your mortgage. You'd have to pay $7500 extra a year in addition to the $60K a year you're already paying. $60K a year! My whole downpayment for a quarter of the mortgage could have paid the whole thing in four years, and now that's one year's payment.
So I heartily agree that they're stealing the assets, but not that we can make individual choices to be more frugal and get out of it. We have to change the system.
Tereza! The universe must be speaking to us, because I literally had a similar topic on my radar since Saturday. In my monday article, I discuss the zeitgeist and how time is our greatest resource. Then bam, here's this article. We're definitely on the same page and I'll be using this to touch on my piece. Thank you for your work!
PS: here's what I wrote yesterday: https://unorthodoxy.substack.com/p/the-culture-of-our-times
I posted this on yours:
I love this! So much synchronicity! I'd say it was crazy but clearly, it's a deeper level of sanity we're both tuning into. We're part of the holygeist or maybe the wholly geist, the spirit moving underneath it all. And I can't believe we both looked at the stealing of time as the zeit of the heist. After I posted mine, I was kicking myself that I never defined zeitgeist but assumed everyone knew the documentary series and what it meant. And here you are, doing that for me!
This is a great article, Franklin. Have I mentioned the relationship between orthodonture and orthodoxy? The first is keeping your teeth in a straight line, the second does the same to your mind. The culling of chickens hit me hard, as an animal husbandry gal. For a few days, I thought they were going to deprive us of all eggs and I was spiraling into a panic. You don't realize how many things need them until they're gone--they're the perfect food. We still have some here but other towns haven't had eggs for a month. How can they have this control over us?
And I've written that my homeowner insurance was canceled for a scant cup of moss growing on the edge of a roof not even covered. I didn't bother to fight it because they would have found something else. They're doing it everywhere in preparation for more fires, tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, etc.
Can't wait to read your piece tomorrow! And I need to follow your leads on the Roman Calendar. And SHE as the mastermind--wouldn't that be mistressmind? But any master is thinking like a patriarch, no matter their appendages or lack thereof. Thanks so much!!!
Looking forward to the interview with the Good Doc!
I was embarrassed... but thank you
"The wage-earner’s belief that he was a good person for supporting his own family had to be kept separate from the knowledge that his labor enslaved other families."
100%
"Taxation isn’t a bad thing if the commonwealth issues the money and collects it back."
Exactly!!! The central point is that ALL banking be government owned.
"Let’s say I wanted to sell my house to you but a hedge fund was offering cash in full"
Hedge funds as well as commodity exchanges are mass wealth siphoning operations, should be banned
I have not yet begun to embarrass you, Fadi ;-) I'll work harder at it.
I just love that you get my points immediately and intuitively. Yes! Banking is governance, bankers are the real gov't, not just the shadow. Banking is the primary function of gov't because it's how it organizes labor to get things done.
Some of the other colonies' scrips didn't collect them back in taxes. That meant they were inflationary, since they had to issue more every time they needed to get something done. It also meant that everyone didn't need them, so they didn't circulate.
I think it's possible to leave hedge funds alone if we take away everything they can buy ;-) Under my system, at a $2:^1 exchange rate, the hedge fund would need to pay twice as much in dollars as someone who was able to earn or convert their savings to carets because they were born there, lived there some length of time, or worked there. And then, if the hedge fund rented it out or resold, they'd only get half of what the renter or buyer paid because any money that leaves the commonwealth is taxed by half.
If a hedge fund did buy in and used their earnings to gobble up more property, I'd also have monopoly rules that limited ownership to 2 or 3 units per person. And I'd reserve the right of eminent domain, where the commonwealth could issue the dollars to buy out any foreign owner at fair market value. That debt would then become carets that could add to the distribution of monthly dividends.
I haven't looked into commodity exchanges but I'm sure you're right. Thanks again, Fadi!
"I think it's possible to leave hedge funds alone if we take away everything they can buy"
Agree. For me it is just a matter of principle... only work creates value... money should not be allowed to create money that can procure fruits of work.
"I haven't looked into commodity exchanges"
Oh these are major criminal outfits and play a major role in stealing peoples time. They price commodities. Imagine you are a farmer, work hard all year, your produce is not priced by you but by the commodity exchanges. Same applies to miners. Commodity exchanges where used to bankrupt farmers and buy them out on the cheap, they have also been used to destroy nations that export commodities. They are a key element in the financial sector ripoff system.
I'm admittedly a dunce when it comes to finance and economics, so I am struggling with nearly every sentence in the paragraph that starts with "A debt owed...". I think what you're proposing is a different way of repaying a mortgage from what's typical nowadays, but I think an example with numbers would help me to understand.
Thanks for that question, Mark. It was a new thought I was experimenting with in that paragraph so no fault of yours that you don't get it. I don't even know if it is a good idea or something that I support.
I know you understand that in my system, the commonwealth bank is the only entity that can issue mortgages. That makes them the default owner--when the previous owner sells, they have the exclusive right to issue the credit (dollars or carets) to pay the seller. And they can then collect the debt, the same way that the owner would in a direct sale.
We don't think of banks this way because we think they're using pre-existing money to buy the house from the seller and then charging interest on the loan of their own money or their depositors' money to the buyer. But we know that's not true, they're just claiming the house as their own.
Since you're issuing the mortgage, you could change how you structure it, depending on what your goal is. In Santa Cruz, my goal would be to bring down the price of a house for those born there, for long-term residents plus those who work here. I would want to do that gradually, so it doesn't hurt those looking to sell their house to retire. But I'd also want to show that it will continue to decline to get speculators out of the market early.
Most of this would be accomplished by pricing houses in carets, which would only be available to those categories of people, and making dollars a 2:1 exchange for carets. That lowers the competition, since we bid against each other based on how much debt we can qualify for.
Let's say the maximum annual debt an average Santa Cruz couple can pay is ^25K/yr. If they financed ^300K at 5%, the first year's interest would be ^15K. Plus ^300K divided by 30 years = ^10K + ^15K = ^25K.
The next year they only borrowed ^290K so 5% would be ^14.5K totaling ^24.5. In 10 years, they'd be down to ^200K with 5% = ^10K + ^10K = ^20K. In 20 years, it would be ^100K * 5% = ^5K + ^10K = ^15K. Until finally, they'd be at ^10.5K for the last year.
I don't know if that would be a good thing or not. People typically make more as they get older. But they also might work less if raising kids, as I'd like it to be. What do you think?
Thanks for the numbers example That answered my question about whether the 5% was for the entire original debt and didn't change, or it was on the remaining debt at each month and was therefore less each month (it's the latter).
While it's true that people do usually have more income as they age, I was also thinking about how much more money parents need to put their kids through college now. When I went to UCSC in the 70s, I was able to pay my entire tuition by working at summer jobs in a warehouse, and my parents paid my room and board. Nowadays I'd be $100K in debt, most likely, and my parents would probably try to help with that, but they certainly couldn't cover it all, especially since I have two younger siblings. I hope that in caret-land this problem wouldn't exist.
Yes on the reduction of the principal on which the debt is based. I don't know if I'd reduce it monthly or have an annual reduction--same as interest on long-term savings. I think the payment should be standard with the next year based on the new principal. So if you chose to pay down more of the principal, the new year would reflect that. A celebration and anniversary of your marriage to that house and as you and I both know, you don't own a house--it owns you.
I don't think the university system, that uproots kids at 18 and inflicts them on other people's towns, is a model we should keep at all. Universities should prioritize those who live there, at all phases of their lives. Why have four years of 'freedom' followed by a lifetime of debt servitude?
I have these two that talk about other models: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/reinventing-education, https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/five-feminine-economies and this one talks about how much college was when I went: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/inflation-colonization.
Thanks for those links.
That first one helped me to understand what the heck happened to UC since I was there. I think I was fortunate to be there in the mid 70s, especially my last year. I was a computer science major, but my biggest source of joy was that the place was rich with classical music, with student and faculty recitals every week, and I reveled in this cornucopia. I know it sounds like a cliché, but that changed my life and I'm still hugely grateful for the experience, 50 years later.
But I agree with you that none of this has to happen at a big, corrupt university, and that it could easily be nurtured in a community-supported system give the right framework (caret).
P.S. Your mom saying you were worth every penny of that $42 was hilarious!
We just missed each other at UCSC, like at Borland. I was a grad student there from '79 to '84, and maybe went to Borland in '85 when it first started--10 people above a car repair garage ;-)
And yes, I thought my mom's note was so cute! I wondered if it was my mom or dad who wrote it but my oldest daughter recognized her handwriting, having been pen pals with my mom. And it's definitely her understated tongue-in-cheek style.
This too may assist you, a really good interview Dr Thomas Cowan did with Michael O'Bernicia explains the banking fraud: https://rumble.com/v4az689-conversations-with-dr.-cowan-and-friends-ep-74-michael-obernicia.html?e9s=src_v1_ucp
Thanks for that, Cheerio. I haven't listened to Michael O'Bernicia but read the interview summary. Much of what he says corresponds to my goals and he concludes, "to build the first sovereign nations in modern times without governments, taxation and usury." Interesting. I'm glad that the banking fraud is becoming more widely known.
I'm curious about how money is created in his system and how properties change hands. Do you know? I'd love to do a point-by-point comparison of his system and mine and how they accomplish the same goals, as I did in https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/bitcoin-vs-the-caret. I think it's important to be having these conversations. I'll listen when I have a chance.
We start by building private living family trusts...
Yes banking is in crypto... funny that the word is 'dead' in its language roots
The Universal Community Trust uses the same mechanism of process on the govt as used on us - acquiescence AND has a magna carta 2020 filed in The Hague.
They've been at this for quite some time. It's tried and true.
You may wish to arrange an interview or join our group.
https://www.universal-community-trust.org
Hi, Cheerio. I watched this interview last night and then filled out a form to request that Tom Cowan interview me. Michael does a great job of laying out the problem but his solution doesn't make sense. Tom asked just the right question, "So how do you decide who gets what property?" Michael's answer is that the person signs an IOU to the bank, which they have no intention to repay, and that becomes the money to pay the sellers.
When you say "It's tried and true," can you show how many people have sold their homes in exchange for an IOU with no repayment? Michael says they'll make up any number they want and give it to the bank. If they want 10 houses and can show they'll use them in a good way, they can buy 10 houses. Who decides?
There are many elements my plan and Michael's have in common but before spending time trying to implement a plan, I think it's worth the effort to examine what the goals are and compare how each system would solve them. Don't you?
Yes and make it accessible to many people with ease...
It's my intention to do so, I hope you will receive and interview with Dr Cowan and will share this link.
Great thoughts!
I would even say that a systematic analysis to find the best plan should precede making it accessible to many people with ease. Otherwise, it's all that work to popularize something that may not work. It takes attention away from other things, since time is finite. I've thought that I'd prefer two dozen people who engage deeply with my book, understand it and say, "Here's what I'd like to do to help make it happen," rather than a million people who've bought and skimmed it.
Thanks for the good thoughts and wishes!
You are correct about money as debt for purchase of land. However, there is a "law of rent" that demonstrates how and why land prices (and thus housing costs) rise faster than wages. We need to correct the money problem with Public Banks and the land problem with land value tax. See: www.theIU.org
Alanna Hartzok is Administrative Director and a United Nations NGO Representative for the International Union for Land Value Taxation where she helps administer land value tax implementation projects on all five continents. She is the author of The Earth Belongs to Everyone which received the Radical Middle Book Award.
In 2011 she received the International Earth Day Award from the Earth Society Foundation. Her E.F. Schumacher Lecture is titled Democracy, Earth Rights and the Next Economy.
Alanna initiated tax reform legislation, that passed with a nearly unanimous vote, enabling the nearly 1000 towns of Pennsylvania to shift their tax base off of buildings and onto land value.
Her articles are referenced in the Association of Bay Area Governments, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Review, Dialogues (the Canada West Foundation) and in books, including The Natural Wealth of Nations and Creating a Sustainable World. She was featured in Planet Champions: Adventures in Saving the World.
Twice she has been a congressional candidate for her district of Pennsylvania.
Video "Economics of Peace and Earth Rights Democracy" at the 4th Summit of the Global Alliance for Ministries and Departments of Peace
https://vimeo.com/6913526
Glad to see you're still watching, Alanna. I always learn something from you.
Gotta keep that message about money issuance spreading! Everybody on the planet should read Edward Griffin's 'The Creature from Jeckyll Island' (the Federal Reserve). Guarenteed enlightenment!
Moreover, it's not a dry academic presentation - it reads like an engaging novel. Tremendous piece of work.
https://www.amazon.com/-/es/Creature-Jekyll-Island-Federal-Reserve/dp/0912986328/ref=sr_1_4?crid=250WRWILH1QT3&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.P9fmEDFpBHqLZIyst4PSLu62_LnAeFDxL1QgqjKSqaUm1QVqq02e0FZfSjmX_Pj3aOvFfynsnG9v6KQaU9uZO9VL-vVixwOr4hWErz_eDWgR06XxI0Jaolz3Fe3dg49vEq0tOcFJQL51nMnDWANAnTHN2tNoWStxyaHPj-Y5FRI9u9qtGq1ZTHBjeJ6_emDnruuRKh7qBemnXUE7xG57-2gF6_HrYuqOaz59QsjfuuQ.y3tWI1M_WYZBpWmY0vVLrAmBJn4N5lnLNQUfmvw7Ys0&dib_tag=se&keywords=creature+from+jekyll+island&qid=1741070422&sprefix=creature+from+%2Caps%2C404&sr=8-4
Agreed that The Creature from Jeckyll Island is required learning, if not reading. And good timing! I'll be talking about it in the next chapter I read from my book this week, which ends Section Two. It's called The Incomplete Revolution and goes into the tricks that were used to pass the Federal Reserve Act, which of course, was neither federal nor a reserve.
Much of my information came from Ellen Brown's Web of Debt, and she got it from Edward Griffin. BTW, there's a great interview of him by Doc Malik: https://docmalik.substack.com/p/207-g-edward-griffin-the-plan-to enslave humanity.
Thanks Tereza, I'll look out for it. Looking forward to learning more about your work, and also that of Alana Hartzok who I found in your comments section. Very important stuff.
I wonder if you heard of Gary Stephenson? He acheived a certain fame through a recent book called The Trading Game (I read it last month) in which he did something of an expose of the world of stock market trading in which he had a roller-coaster experience himself for six years. He similarly came to the conclusion that everything that is paid to mortgages is syphoned off and used to enslave. He seems now to be suggesting (on his youtube channel Gary's Economics) that the answer is massively taxing the rich. That seems a little simplistic to me, but anyway an interesting guy and an interesting book.
I haven't heard of Gary Stephenson. There are a lot of people out there saying the solution is to tax the rich, including Bernie Sanders, Jeffrey Sachs and Richard Wolfe, who incessantly come up in my YT feed. The reason I chose to write this book first, rather than the one on the solution, was to push back on that and the idea that we can vote our way out of this.
To examine that concept, taxing the rich still leaves the bankers with the ability to usurp ownership of our homes and create the money out of thin air that we work for 30-60 yrs (with dual incomes) to pay 'back' to them. As I calculated in my reply to Fred on this thread, that gives them a compound annual return on their capital of +30% or doubling every three years.
They don't even need to take their money out of the bank so that it's taxed at all. They can loan it to themselves, as they do from their Cayman accounts, and make the interest they repay--to themselves!--tax-deductible. They own all the labor in the world, so some good tax lawyers are nothing.
They can buy up all the properties, as is happening now, so that we merely rent and never own. And that's a business investment--no tax, as Trump has shown. If you own the wealth and the labor, you don't need money.
I don't agree with that solution for the same reason I don't agree with Alanna's--it leaves the .00001% with ownership of all the property, then taxes them on it. My solution is similar to the immortal words of the Godfather in 'leave the gun, take the cannoli.' I say leave the money, take the assets. The money will only shoot you in the foot.
Fully agree Tereza - little can be achieved without changing the process of money issue. I mentioned Gary Stephenson just because I found it interesting that he arrived at the same conclusion about where mortgage money goes only by looking at how the financial markets work. The stock market is seen as yet another layer on this giant scam on top of the banking problem. (Also because his inside story of the insane world of financial trading and the creatures that inhabit it was pretty compelling, well written and at times even funny).
Forgive me if I'm just passing around more references that might already be known to you, but the documentary 'The Spider's Web' is also pretty amazing, outlining the the role of 'secrecy jurisdictions', trusts, the City of London, and even the big consulting companies in this ever more monstrous story of villany.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYfnkLurLA8
NEVER apologize for passing around references I might already know, Michael. I'm so thrilled that more of this information is coming out and becoming part of our knowledge base. When I wrote my book, it was just me and no one I knew had any interest in these things. Now, thanks to the CovidCon, so many people are paying attention.
Is there an interview or podcast or link to Gary Stephenson's work? I'd like to check it out and see if I can get a conversation going with him.
The Spider's Web is excellent! I'm a third of the way through. At first, I thought the speaker was Nicolas Shaxson, who wrote Treasure Islands, an eye-opening account of secrecy jurisdictions. Frances Leader talks about the three autonomous regions: the City of London in finance, DC in military and the Vatican for ideology. I think the intent is to set up Israel as a fourth where the laws of any country can be circumvented through dual citizenship.
In this early, pre-Substack video called The Three Biggest Conspiracies in Plain Sight, I respond to Russell Brand's interview of Edward Snowden. My three are derivatives, tax havens and money creation through mortgages: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKK2Ntqah3A.
I also think, as a reader, you'd like my book. Then you wouldn't need to second guess what I've already written about, and we can take the convo to the next level. I'll definitely be linking The Spider's Web when I read my chapter that talks about the CoL and tax havens! I hope it includes Delaware when I get further into the documentary.
Thanks again!
Hi Tereza remember me? (the silent guy at the infamous Zoom meeting who has no kids and who generally honors the dictum that the good Lord gave us two ears and one mouth so we could listen twice as much as we talk ... lol). Anywize.... Sorry this is so johnny-come-lately and I hope you see it, because I'm not a very good commenter.
Re money stealing our time and lives:
I am increasingly convinced that what I call the money political economy, which has dominated both industrial and “post-industrial” societies for longer than either of us have been alive, really is the enemy of freedom and all that makes life worth living, which is to be able to spend time doing what we were really put here to do, which is develop our unique superpowers and achieve emotional connections with others.
This last can't be done if we’re constantly competing with them, or constantly distracted by the need to earn more of the green stuff in order to spend more on things we don't need. And be told that spending "helps the economy" while decimating our own pocketbooks.
While I'm no fan of technocracy, the technocrats do get one thing right: the need for an economy based on energy instead of on money. They want to replace money with energy credits, though. That’s still a control grid, which is what they want. What is the point of replacing one control grid with another control grid?
The idea I've toyed with over the years: the possibility of generating energy so cheaply that its price drops to zero — or more exactly, to the price of the device on your roof that heats your home or building. Replacing the industrial control grid with decentralized networks. Energy systems able to produce genuine abundance instead of maintaining systems built on a presumption of eternal scarcity. If this sounds weird or crazy, just ask yourself what Nikola Tesla was working on all those years ago, why JP Morgan pulled his funding, why the U.S. federal government raided his laboratories and classified what they found (Tesla's lab notes remain classified to this day), and why several people trying to develop "free energy" devices have been found dead under mysterious circumstances.
Definitely something to investigate and promote. Wish our mutual friend Jack would take this up, it'd be more useful immediately and have potentially far greater long term benefits, because one of the causes of parental abuse and neglect is probably stress from having to work two or three "gigs" instead of the real jobs capitalism created before the techno-feudalists hijacked it. These are the people who worship money like a god while it encircles and enslaves the rest of us. Your thoughts?
What all left-wing intellectuals really suffer is a very ambivalent feeling towards material progress. First because they can´t live without it, and second because they generally don´t contribute nothing towards it.
My reading comprehension and attention span is kinda mid, but I can definitely respond to memes. And my extensive time playing video games has given me superior powers of physical-spatial-moral reasoning. So let me respond to that very concerning photo of the politician at a lectern suspended over a chasm, counterbalanced on a plank by a small crowd of attentive citizens.
The guy with the foul mouth is not much of a team player, is he? I'm worried that, if just a couple others follow his example and shirk their civic responsibility, the whole system will collapse. Like, not only will their duly elected leader fall down into the chasm, followed by his heavy lectern, but then the remaining citizens will be catapulted into the chasm as well, because of all that leverage. They're all in mortal peril! I hope it turned out OK.
I will also note that the crowd of people had to be standing there on that plank BEFORE the politician and his lectern showed up, unless it's like glued or something. Maybe he gradually backed up the plank, dragging his lectern behind him, as the crowd assembled. How's he going to get back over his lectern and return to safety? It's a very problematic photograph.
Haha, excellent point! You will be relieved to know that under my plan, no one can walk away without all--including the guy at the lectern. Even the idea that we can walk away is a hidden moral superiority. It says that we're better people than the 200 generations that have come before us in these 5000 yrs of increasingly centralized control.
In previous eras, the system espoused by the guy at the lectern wasn't accepted the way that we do, where it's become normalized. My chapter on White Slavery shows that. The Irish rebelled against this servitude and paid a very high price for it. They weren't allowed to say, "Fuck this" and walk away. The assumption that we can is both naive and implicitly superior. Thanks for giving me the chance to respond to that meme.
Wow, that Cole Clark tweet with the hand-drawn red circle really delivers the goods!
Clearly, this Donald J. Trump character has no respect for, and very little understanding of, the First Amendment. Also, we're like 40 days into that 2nd term and he's signed so very many things already, I'm sure he's signed that law and don't need to know what it's called or who sponsored it in Congress or any of that. We still have a Congress, right? It's so hard for a simple person like me to keep track these days.
If his first term taught us anything, the only possible way to understand that quoted tweet is at face value. That's the only way I can understand anything anyway. It proves conclusively that Trump is an autocrat, a Zionist puppet, and a very bad orange man. He's probably also a Bolshevik, whatever that is. QED. See, I did a logic! I'm learning!
The meme with the Cole Clark tweet presents two facts, neither of which it seems you dispute. Trump tweeted the statement that at the start of his second term, he would sign a bill criminalizing anti-semitism at the Federal level and prosecuting anti-semites 'who will have no place to hide' to the full extent of the law. Are you saying he didn't actually tweet this? Any conclusions you're drawing or that you think I'm drawing are beside the point. The first part of the meme reproduces his words, nothing else.
Cole states a second fact that 'after the Bolsheviks took over Russia, it became a capital offense to criticize Jews.' It doesn't seem like you're arguing that wasn't true.
Cole takes Trump's tweet at face value, that he intends to criminalize criticism of Jews, and shows that Bolshevik Russia also criminalized criticism of Jews. You draw the conclusions, sarcastically, that "Trump is an autocrat, a Zionist puppet, and a very bad orange man. He's probably also a Bolshevik." Cole said none of that. You're extrapolating and then using your extrapolations to ridicule the comparison of two like actions.
Gosh, T. I can't possibly dispute much of anything with such a keen intellect who always gets the last word. I'm too busy slaving away for the Man, you know?
But, not gonna lie, if I could toss off a couple of sentences to score $100M from some nice old Jewish lady and simultaneously get the Jewish lobby off my back for a while, I might be tempted to make a slightly oversized promise on behalf of an entire legislative body. And if I had to pretend to ignore a fundamental principle of American political thought in the process, hey, what's the harm in that?