Blog 46 Boxing Day, 2016
Unless you happened to get a set of stuffed leather mitts for Christmas, "Boxing Day" must have another meaning. Well, Children, I can tell you. Boxing Day was the day after Christmas Day, when all the boxes the gifts came in were packed away for use another year. You might call it domestic recycling. That was Step One.
Then, your boxes stored, you took your Christmas money and went shopping.
When the owners of stores checked the figures at the end of a Boxing Day, they found they were onto a good thing, and extended their pre-Christmas Sale prices another day, and advertised their Boxing Day Sale! That was Step 2.
Lately, I notice, it has become "Boxing Week Sale!" And surely we can predict a universal Boxing Month Sale! Wow! Then, the Boxing Year Sale, December 26 to December 24!!
Certainly the corporate chain stores, whose employees have forgotten that Sunday used to be called "the day of rest", will rejoice at Boxing Year. The shareholders will demand it, ecstatically.
But what about the money - what the Cogs Blog is all about?
Where does the money come from for a year-long Boxing Day? I should expect to see department stores, as long as they exist at all, to be manned (or womanned) by robots. (Shapely female robots for the Men's Department, of course.) Some wage-savings there will go straight to the bottom line. And the corporate bosses who work seven days a week anyway, will convince the government that its job is to provide the customers with money to spend. Governments will do as they are told as always and, instead of taxing, will just send out a steady flow of GAI payments.
GAI? It's an old idea: Guaranteed Annual Income - for all citizens. Maybe, Baby, its time has come at last!
And where will the governments' money come from? Won't that be inflationary?
Oh, come on, now, get with it. Government money (the kind with the presidents' pictures on it) is rapidly disappearing. And banks don't print money. Banks create credit, which already covers almost all of our money needs. So governments can create credit, too. Indefinitely.
As for inflation, so what? Even if it happens, the law of money will still operate: money goes where money is. It will still accumulate at the top. The Forbes Five Hundred listing of the world's richest people will simply list more billionaires and fewer millionaires, then more trillionaires than billionaires. Quadrillionaires? Sure. We might want to shorten the names of our monetary units to "bills", "trills" and "quads". Everybody will soon forget the zeroes. This is no pipe dream. (Some old folks can remember when a loaf of bread cost 12 cents. Really.) Inflation is just something we do already. Only, with GAI, everybody gets what they want. The poor get three meals a day. The management classes get do their satisfying, creative work. The shareholders get their dividends, and the accumulation addicts, accumulate.
All that sounds like an almost boringly good alternative to the world's current situation..
Happy New Year!
Your devoted blogger.
Monday, 26 December 2016
Sunday, 18 December 2016
Blog 45 "Free" Trade and Global Power, or Why Danny Won't Mow My Lawn.
Blog 45 Free Trade and Global Power
I hired a boy to mow my lawn. At least I think I did. It was his idea. He knocked on my door and asked if he could mow my 1500 square feet of ratty turf. Ten dollars. His lawnmower. "Okay," I said "Start Monday." He did a good job. Every Monday he came. Every Monday, I paid.
About halfway through the summer, I received a birthday present, a shiny green power mower. Well, that should be an improvement, I thought. I'll save a hundred dollars over the summer and also benefit from some needed exercise. So when Danny came on Monday, I told hin that would be his last cut. I paid him, and added a $10 tip.
That evening Danny returned with his lawyer father, who told me that I could mow my own lawn, but I had to pay Danny another $120 for another twelve weeks of the season, plus another $10 tip. He used the phrase, "compensation for the loss of future profits." Keep that phrase in mind. We'll get back to it.
Neighbourly discussion followed, which got nowhere (though at one point he did attempt to twist my arm behind my back. I stepped on his instep, and he swore, but let go of my arm. Finally we hailed a passing neighbour and asked him if he would help resolve a dispute, acting as a third party we both trusted. He agreed, and we each stated our case. He thoughtfully turned it over and then said, "Well, if I am going to be a judge here, I'll have to charge you $10, plus a $10 tip, each."
To avoid an assault charge, I capitulated, and paid..
Does that phrase "compensation for loss of future profits" suggest what the next 200 words of this blog is about?
Part 2
Well, it's a new breed of international trade treaties, which began with Chapter 11 of NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, 1994, a deal between, Canada, the United States and Mexico.
NAFTA's Chapter 11 is not about trade; it was about investor protection. Essentially, it says that if an investor (read: "corporation") of one signatory country invested in another country, and that country's governments made any regulations or laws that affected the profits of "the investor", said investor could claim compensation from the offending national government for loss of profit, including loss of future profits. (You may want to read that sentence again.)
The lawsuit format is as follows:
Each party, the investing corporation and the national government that made the regulation, appoints one adjudicator, and the two appoint a third one. Two out of three is a win.
(I read a recent piece on the exorbitant fees charged by the three adjudicators.)
Every so-called free trade agreement since 1994 has contained these investor protection clauses.
From the corporations' point of view, all of the hundreds of pages of a treaty's trade provisions about tariffs on turnips and regiulations about raisins are mere window dressing. What counts is the investor protection clauses.
In the current global conflict between global corporations and national states, when this joker is in the pact, the deck is stacked. There are now, in fact, dummy corporations set up for the sole purpose of suing a national government for loss of future profits!
Time for the nation states to fight back?
Actually, they are. At least some peoples are - by turfing out corporate-friendly governments and electing... Well, you know who...
Okay.
Okay!
Well, at least I feel good about the exercise, and the green mower works well, too.
I hired a boy to mow my lawn. At least I think I did. It was his idea. He knocked on my door and asked if he could mow my 1500 square feet of ratty turf. Ten dollars. His lawnmower. "Okay," I said "Start Monday." He did a good job. Every Monday he came. Every Monday, I paid.
About halfway through the summer, I received a birthday present, a shiny green power mower. Well, that should be an improvement, I thought. I'll save a hundred dollars over the summer and also benefit from some needed exercise. So when Danny came on Monday, I told hin that would be his last cut. I paid him, and added a $10 tip.
That evening Danny returned with his lawyer father, who told me that I could mow my own lawn, but I had to pay Danny another $120 for another twelve weeks of the season, plus another $10 tip. He used the phrase, "compensation for the loss of future profits." Keep that phrase in mind. We'll get back to it.
Neighbourly discussion followed, which got nowhere (though at one point he did attempt to twist my arm behind my back. I stepped on his instep, and he swore, but let go of my arm. Finally we hailed a passing neighbour and asked him if he would help resolve a dispute, acting as a third party we both trusted. He agreed, and we each stated our case. He thoughtfully turned it over and then said, "Well, if I am going to be a judge here, I'll have to charge you $10, plus a $10 tip, each."
To avoid an assault charge, I capitulated, and paid..
Does that phrase "compensation for loss of future profits" suggest what the next 200 words of this blog is about?
Part 2
Well, it's a new breed of international trade treaties, which began with Chapter 11 of NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, 1994, a deal between, Canada, the United States and Mexico.
NAFTA's Chapter 11 is not about trade; it was about investor protection. Essentially, it says that if an investor (read: "corporation") of one signatory country invested in another country, and that country's governments made any regulations or laws that affected the profits of "the investor", said investor could claim compensation from the offending national government for loss of profit, including loss of future profits. (You may want to read that sentence again.)
The lawsuit format is as follows:
Each party, the investing corporation and the national government that made the regulation, appoints one adjudicator, and the two appoint a third one. Two out of three is a win.
(I read a recent piece on the exorbitant fees charged by the three adjudicators.)
Every so-called free trade agreement since 1994 has contained these investor protection clauses.
From the corporations' point of view, all of the hundreds of pages of a treaty's trade provisions about tariffs on turnips and regiulations about raisins are mere window dressing. What counts is the investor protection clauses.
In the current global conflict between global corporations and national states, when this joker is in the pact, the deck is stacked. There are now, in fact, dummy corporations set up for the sole purpose of suing a national government for loss of future profits!
Time for the nation states to fight back?
Actually, they are. At least some peoples are - by turfing out corporate-friendly governments and electing... Well, you know who...
Okay.
Okay!
Well, at least I feel good about the exercise, and the green mower works well, too.
Monday, 28 November 2016
Blog 44 The New Feudalism, Saluting Nelson
Blog 44 The New Feudalism, Saluting Nelson
Have just ordered a book with "Feudalism" in the title. It promises to be an interesting read. So in preparation for a likely blog on it, let me, briefly, recall the traditional historical stuff on feudalism.
Place: Europe
Time: say, 1000 to 1400 AD
Subject: Economic and political organization of mediaeval society.
Whoa!! That's a large pretentious mouthful. Take it one word at a time.
Highlights (with key points underlined for quick reading.)
Three classes: nobles, peasants, and clergy. Not much in the middle.
Wealth based on land-owning.
That means wealth was not based on manufacturing, trade, finance, factory fishing fleets, tourism, mining, or transportation infrastructure construction. So forget this paragraph
Instead, focus your imagination on farm laborers tilling and toiling, without our modern machinery, to produce food for the owners of the land. All the land was owned by the secular nobility (few) and the Church "lords" (few). Most of the rest of the population were peasants, who labored on the land, or, when needed, fought their lords' wars to grab more land.
The law of money operated then as now. Wealth (land) bought power, and power (land) seized wealth (some other lord's land).
A critical feature of the unequal distribution of wealth was the absence of trade and transport between territories. Local states, kingdoms, dukedoms, were isolated from each other (towns were rare). That is, feudalism looked like the total opposite of today's integrated, global, urban economy - except for the unequal distribution of wealth in both.
The feudal system came out of the disintegration of the largest international community hitherto known to Europe - the Roman Empire.
By 476 AD, when the last Roman emperor was deposed by a barbarian* invasion from the north, local strongmen all across Europe had begun a thousand-year process of forging their own independent, self-sufficient estates based on agriculture and warfare.
It was a shoddy business. (During the process they even forgot how the Romans had made concrete!) So the feudal age was all about localism, agriculture, petty wars - oh, and religion.
Thomas Hobbes, looking back, glumly called it life in a state of nature. "No arts, no letters (literature), no society, and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." (1561).
Perhaps you can see why Joyce Nelson's new book, Beyond Banksters: Resisting the New Feudalism, interests your thoughtful blogger. I survey our own fracturing world, in which our rulers (bound by the law of money) have possibly brought us to an irreversible (?) tipping-point into revolution, separation, isolation and war.
Well, we'll see what Nelson has to say about the irresistibility of it, and report to you. "Irresistibility". Wow, seven syllables and five 'i's!. It should be banned.
The book can be ordered at http://watershedsentinel.ca/banksters. About $25.
* Another verbal footnote: barbarian. The Romans, charmed by their own melodious Latin, thought that the speech of the northern Franco-German invaders sounded like barbarbarbarbar. So they called them barbarians. But if your name is Barbara, you should know also that dark Mediterranean men have for centuries been bewitched by blue-eyed, blond Nordic women...
Have just ordered a book with "Feudalism" in the title. It promises to be an interesting read. So in preparation for a likely blog on it, let me, briefly, recall the traditional historical stuff on feudalism.
Place: Europe
Time: say, 1000 to 1400 AD
Subject: Economic and political organization of mediaeval society.
Whoa!! That's a large pretentious mouthful. Take it one word at a time.
Highlights (with key points underlined for quick reading.)
Three classes: nobles, peasants, and clergy. Not much in the middle.
Wealth based on land-owning.
That means wealth was not based on manufacturing, trade, finance, factory fishing fleets, tourism, mining, or transportation infrastructure construction. So forget this paragraph
Instead, focus your imagination on farm laborers tilling and toiling, without our modern machinery, to produce food for the owners of the land. All the land was owned by the secular nobility (few) and the Church "lords" (few). Most of the rest of the population were peasants, who labored on the land, or, when needed, fought their lords' wars to grab more land.
The law of money operated then as now. Wealth (land) bought power, and power (land) seized wealth (some other lord's land).
A critical feature of the unequal distribution of wealth was the absence of trade and transport between territories. Local states, kingdoms, dukedoms, were isolated from each other (towns were rare). That is, feudalism looked like the total opposite of today's integrated, global, urban economy - except for the unequal distribution of wealth in both.
The feudal system came out of the disintegration of the largest international community hitherto known to Europe - the Roman Empire.
By 476 AD, when the last Roman emperor was deposed by a barbarian* invasion from the north, local strongmen all across Europe had begun a thousand-year process of forging their own independent, self-sufficient estates based on agriculture and warfare.
It was a shoddy business. (During the process they even forgot how the Romans had made concrete!) So the feudal age was all about localism, agriculture, petty wars - oh, and religion.
Thomas Hobbes, looking back, glumly called it life in a state of nature. "No arts, no letters (literature), no society, and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." (1561).
Perhaps you can see why Joyce Nelson's new book, Beyond Banksters: Resisting the New Feudalism, interests your thoughtful blogger. I survey our own fracturing world, in which our rulers (bound by the law of money) have possibly brought us to an irreversible (?) tipping-point into revolution, separation, isolation and war.
Well, we'll see what Nelson has to say about the irresistibility of it, and report to you. "Irresistibility". Wow, seven syllables and five 'i's!. It should be banned.
The book can be ordered at http://watershedsentinel.ca/banksters. About $25.
* Another verbal footnote: barbarian. The Romans, charmed by their own melodious Latin, thought that the speech of the northern Franco-German invaders sounded like barbarbarbarbar. So they called them barbarians. But if your name is Barbara, you should know also that dark Mediterranean men have for centuries been bewitched by blue-eyed, blond Nordic women...
Sunday, 6 November 2016
Blog 43 After the Election
Blog 43 After the Election; (Your Humble Historian Predicts)
Does it matter who wins? Whether it's Hillary or Donald, she/he will do what all presidents, particularly Republicans, have done of recent decades. Once elected, distance yourself from the main bank of electors who supported you. For Trump, that will be the white, slightly racist, somewhat xenophobic working slobs who have taken a beating in recent years in the great transfer of wealth, and, of course, the Christian Right, who also long for the return of the good old days. In neither of these groups will Trump see anything useful to him. So "You're fired!" He'll take the short term view, confident that when he starts running for a second term sometime in 2019, they'll be easy to bamboozle again. Clinton may do a little more to benefit both Trump supporters and her own 2016 base in young people, women, Latinos. But as for corporate wealth and power? She'll find it easier to join 'em than to buck them.
Forecast: The United States of America is in for twenty years or more of continuing decline in consensus. "United" they will not be in social cohesion nor national patriotism. Nor even in political union.
In my modest forecast: the states will claim their constitutional power to secede into separate ideological islands, which they will justify defending, if necessary, with pure citizen firepower. The Second Amendment was never intended to permit every man woman and child to pack a gun. But what it did intend we may well see - citizen militias exerting their right to do so in defense of their "states". So forget about "Unum", and start again at "Pluribus"
Sooner or later, let us hope, a new generation will see the folly of their parents in the early 21st century and insist on at least a return to peaceful co-existence, or, better - who knows? - happy reunion and a "great" American democratic republic again.
They will recall one of the greats: Abe Lincoln, who said "A house divided against itself cannot stand." He was talking about slave and free. The same will be said about poor and rich.
The irony would be rather amusing, too, to hear future historians, recording the big picture, giving credit for the resurrection of the great new American democratic "Share the Wealth" republic to President Trump, because he started it all. I'm serious. So don't be anxious about Tuesday. It just a blip on the cosmic screen.
Wednesday, 26 October 2016
Blog 42 Do We Really Need Governments?
Blog 42 Do We Really Need Governments? - Some Tricky Musings
Let's just start with some background by establishing that there are different forms of government.
In alphabetical order. Asterisk* indicates a form of government defined by Aristotle about 2500 years ago. Nothing new there.
Anarchy*, aristocracy*, autocracy*, democracy 1 (mob rule)*, democracy 2 (representative government), dictatorship, "kleptocracy", monarchy*. oligarchy*, plutocracy, tyranny.* Wow, is that all?
Anarchy means "no government". Aristotle thought of it as "mob rule" He called it "democracy." (Literally, in Greek, "rule by the common people").
Aristocracy - means "rule of the best." Two perverted forms of it are are Oligarchy, which means "rule of the few" and Plutocracy - rule of the rich" from Plutus, Roman god of riches, (Now we're getting warm. )
Autocracy, Aristotle's "tyranny" (modern "dictatorship"). Means "myself-rule" a ruler who rules for his/her own benefit, by force, usually.
Democracy 2, representative government, of, by, and for the people - to quote Abe Lincoln.
Kleptocracy. modern rhetorical term based on the Greek word for thief. So government by thieves.
Monarchy - Rule by a king or queen. Can be autocratic or constitutional.
Note: At the present time, all these forms of government call themselves democratic.
Back to our question. Do we need governments?
Let's talk about modern "democracy".
We all know what the word means. It means rule by the people. So the theory is that the ultimate power lies with the people. But in a population of several million (or billion), different people have different views. So, in practice elections are held, and a candidate with the most votes becomes the people's representative for a defined period.
However, in theory and, especially, in practice democracy works better in small states than in large ones.
So, fundamentally, what does a government do. Two main things, tax and spend.
In the process, money is taken from individuals and corporations, and spent to provide public goods and services, notably for people who can't provide for themselves. It's a kind of charity, but what else could you do? Keep 'em quiet, the Roman emperors said, and they won't revolt. It is a good thing. Really.
If you consider the return on investment, much of it is very good. Public health care keeps workers healthy, and reduces absenteeism in the work force. Education provides better workers, but, the flip side, also smarter voters. Roads, railways, canals, a justice system, benefit almost all classes.
Something else governments are spending large amounts of their tax money on today is paying the interest on government debt. Not much attention to paying down the debt itself, for some strange reason.
(So one way to get some of your taxes back is to save your money and buy your government's bonds.)
The fourth big expenditure - the military. Can't say much about the social value of that, but it does provide employment, and when the weapons are put to use, population reduction.
But - new point - governments all over the world are on the ropes. High debt levels mean higher taxes and/or lower public expenditure. So if you are against taxes, but not against privates banks creating all money, you can advocate that at least some of the big four expenditures be cut. If you could choose only one, which would it be? Health care, education, transportation infrastructure, or military spending?
Why?
Think, now.
My choice would be debt repayment, just because I don't like interest payments. Debt reduction would be really hard on our banks, which have lent most of that money to governments. And some recent governments have tried paying it off - by borrowing more money bank-created money. (????) Can't be done.
But if governments were to resurrect their old sovereign practice of creating their own national interest-free money...
That, would be a real showdown between national states and banking corporations. On which side would you lay your bet - if you had any money left for betting, after your taxes and your mortgage payments?
Banks or governments?
Couldn't we just maintain a beneficial balance between them?
Let's just start with some background by establishing that there are different forms of government.
In alphabetical order. Asterisk* indicates a form of government defined by Aristotle about 2500 years ago. Nothing new there.
Anarchy*, aristocracy*, autocracy*, democracy 1 (mob rule)*, democracy 2 (representative government), dictatorship, "kleptocracy", monarchy*. oligarchy*, plutocracy, tyranny.* Wow, is that all?
Anarchy means "no government". Aristotle thought of it as "mob rule" He called it "democracy." (Literally, in Greek, "rule by the common people").
Aristocracy - means "rule of the best." Two perverted forms of it are are Oligarchy, which means "rule of the few" and Plutocracy - rule of the rich" from Plutus, Roman god of riches, (Now we're getting warm. )
Autocracy, Aristotle's "tyranny" (modern "dictatorship"). Means "myself-rule" a ruler who rules for his/her own benefit, by force, usually.
Democracy 2, representative government, of, by, and for the people - to quote Abe Lincoln.
Kleptocracy. modern rhetorical term based on the Greek word for thief. So government by thieves.
Monarchy - Rule by a king or queen. Can be autocratic or constitutional.
Note: At the present time, all these forms of government call themselves democratic.
Back to our question. Do we need governments?
Let's talk about modern "democracy".
We all know what the word means. It means rule by the people. So the theory is that the ultimate power lies with the people. But in a population of several million (or billion), different people have different views. So, in practice elections are held, and a candidate with the most votes becomes the people's representative for a defined period.
However, in theory and, especially, in practice democracy works better in small states than in large ones.
So, fundamentally, what does a government do. Two main things, tax and spend.
In the process, money is taken from individuals and corporations, and spent to provide public goods and services, notably for people who can't provide for themselves. It's a kind of charity, but what else could you do? Keep 'em quiet, the Roman emperors said, and they won't revolt. It is a good thing. Really.
If you consider the return on investment, much of it is very good. Public health care keeps workers healthy, and reduces absenteeism in the work force. Education provides better workers, but, the flip side, also smarter voters. Roads, railways, canals, a justice system, benefit almost all classes.
Something else governments are spending large amounts of their tax money on today is paying the interest on government debt. Not much attention to paying down the debt itself, for some strange reason.
(So one way to get some of your taxes back is to save your money and buy your government's bonds.)
The fourth big expenditure - the military. Can't say much about the social value of that, but it does provide employment, and when the weapons are put to use, population reduction.
But - new point - governments all over the world are on the ropes. High debt levels mean higher taxes and/or lower public expenditure. So if you are against taxes, but not against privates banks creating all money, you can advocate that at least some of the big four expenditures be cut. If you could choose only one, which would it be? Health care, education, transportation infrastructure, or military spending?
Why?
Think, now.
My choice would be debt repayment, just because I don't like interest payments. Debt reduction would be really hard on our banks, which have lent most of that money to governments. And some recent governments have tried paying it off - by borrowing more money bank-created money. (????) Can't be done.
But if governments were to resurrect their old sovereign practice of creating their own national interest-free money...
That, would be a real showdown between national states and banking corporations. On which side would you lay your bet - if you had any money left for betting, after your taxes and your mortgage payments?
Banks or governments?
Couldn't we just maintain a beneficial balance between them?
Tuesday, 18 October 2016
Blog 41 The Money Scene (review)
41 The Money Scene (reprise) Where does money come from?
First, there are two distinct kinds of money. There is cash, actually printed or minted by governments . And there is credit money, created by banks and rented to us.
You probably use the rented money for almost all of your transactions if you pay by cheque, debit/credit card, or electronic transfers. Credit money does not come from a printing press. But you do have to rent it. (Hey, Doc, you mean pay interest. You can say it out loud.)
Okay. Now for the big mystery, the real secret. How do banks create the money we use>
It has been said by wiser accountants than me, "It is so simple it's hard to believe."
First, there are two distinct kinds of money. There is cash, actually printed or minted by governments . And there is credit money, created by banks and rented to us.
You probably use the rented money for almost all of your transactions if you pay by cheque, debit/credit card, or electronic transfers. Credit money does not come from a printing press. But you do have to rent it. (Hey, Doc, you mean pay interest. You can say it out loud.)
Okay. Now for the big mystery, the real secret. How do banks create the money we use>
It has been said by wiser accountants than me, "It is so simple it's hard to believe."
The Money Scene
You may have seen those TV ads where a young couple smile at each other, and a bank officer - well-dressed, good-looking and devoted to the young couple's best interests - has just told them what they want to hear. She will give them $25,000 for that new car, or for their daughter's school fees, or whatever.
What follows - not shown in the ad - is a lot of document signing. Finally comes the critical moment. After you have signed the documents, the bank agent tells you that $25,000 has just been transferred to your account.
At that moment, at that very moment, $25,000 in new money has entered into the world's economy.
It is certainly real money. You write the cheque and get your car. Or your daughter gets her school uniform.
The process is so simple: a bank willing to lend makes an agreement with a client willing to borrow. And it is same process, exactly, if General Motors or Exxon wants to borrow a billion dollars. It's not cash, but it is money, ready to be spent.
And it is new money. The bank does not take it from a stack of cash in its vault nor shave it from an ingot of gold in the basement. It just pops into existence! Really!
So, remembering the law: Money goes where money is, let's follow the trail. What was the key question you asked before signing (and signing, and signing) the papers to get the loan? Of course, "What is the interest rate on the loan?"
The key word in the global monetary system has to be "interest". Sometimes called "rent".
So the couple, or you, can live in this $25,000 Loan Street dwelling as long as you pay the rent. Correct? But, no, you say. We have to pay back the principal of the loan.
No, no, and no!
Now this may be a little difficult to grasp, too. The bank really does not want you to pay back the principal, ever* So long as you pay the rent they will rejoice to let you keep the credit money. (After all, they created it out of thin air.) For you, on the other hand, if you no longer had to pay the rent, that would be great. Right?
And for the bank? Well not so good. It would be a bad thing for the bank. When you pay back the principal of a loan, they have to write a profitable asset off their books. No loans on the books, no rent/interest coming in. No rent, no profit. No profit, no salaries for bank execs, and no dividends for shareholders. Not good.
You see how the system works? The expectation that you will pay off the principal is just window dressing.
Let me finish with a mind-expanding question. What if you had no government-created non-debt cash money? For the world's banks that is the great and glorious ultimate profitable goal. And they are getting closer to it! Just think, if banks controlled interest rates and fees, and you had no cash available to escape to...
*Next blog will face-off governments and banks. Tune in, I hope you may learn something else new.
Sunday, 18 September 2016
Blog 40 Three Points for Peace
Blog 40 Three Points for Peace A 3-in-1 blog: not the short one we promised last blog. Sorry. But you could read it in three separate coffee breaks.
1. Police and the People
As policemen march to the funeral of a fallen police officer, what thoughts lie behind those grim faces? Could it ever be, "My job would be much less dangerous if we could somehow make friends of these people instead of provoking them."
It is challenging, scary thought, but the alternative is escalation, to everybody's peril.
The initiative must probably come from the police, but they should invite/welcome the people they fear to join the discussion.
2 Religious War. Here's a secret recipe for peace between three religions. Get Christians, Muslims and Jews to start a program - preferably a mass program (no pun intended) - of reading each others' holy books. Let the people read without guidance from their clergy, and search for the similarities. Most will be hugely surprised. Why exclude the priests, pastors, imams, mullahs and rabbis? Because they would be unable to look for anything but differences.
Maybe I can make that point with six almost random quotations from the Hebrew, Muslim and Christian scriptures. (Two each from the Kuran, the Christian scriptures and the Hebrew scriptures.)
Which is which?.
(For the usual names - Jahweh, God, Allah - I have substituted "the Deity,"
Ready?
1 - Do not behave like those who slandered Moses. The Deity cleared him and he was exalted by the Deity.
2 - Make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy.
3 - Fear the Deity and speak the truth. He will bless your works and forgive you your sins.
4 - To the Deity belong wisdom and power, counselling and understanding.
5 - He will save the children of the needy; he will crush the oppressor.
6 - Let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Deity in heaven.
Hint: The first quotation is from the Kuran, which has lots of other praises for Moses, Joseph, Abraham, Jesus, Mary, Jonah, and other characters well-known to Jews and Christians.
3. Narrowing the Wealth Gap. This is the big one; you might want to save it for tomorrow.
Corporations are arguably the chief institutional means by which the rich get richer and the poor get poorer; especially the banking corporations, which create money for buying up assets, but are not much interested in the poor.
The war between nation states and global corporations is about the world's wealth. At present the corporations are winning the war: wealth- and corporate-friendly governments are in power in most of the world. Need I quote examples? Democratic governments, weighted with debt, are definitely in decline.
The corporate propaganda has done a great job of deceiving people into believing that all their troubles stem from taxation by greedy governments. Not true.
But corporations are not invulnerable.
So, in 250 words, or less, CogsBlogger, how do we reduce the power of corporations over governments?
You can never go back, of course, but try your imagination on this scenario:
On the first Tuesday of every month the names of two corporations are posted, world-wide on social media, with a call to boycott their products, on the understanding that as soon as the corporations change, the boycott will be lifted.
The change required of the named firm would be to surrender the company's charter (which was issued by some government) and replace it with a new charter that contained:
i An over-riding social responsibility clause to replace the current exclusive responsibility to shareholders.
ii. A clause making all shareholders liable for the corporation's social violations (think BP oil spill, or Bhopal chemical spill), up to 10% of the market value of their share-holdings.
iii The issuing of 10% of the corporation's outstanding shares to the national government which issued the charter. The government, as 10% shareholder, is then to entitled to 10% of the firm's dividends. Just think, it might be possible for some national governments to abandon corporate taxation altogether. (Wow!)
This is a rough proposal. Lots of improvements and implementation details needed. Not to mention, secrecy at its hatching. Please don't say you saw it first on CogsBlog 40.
1. Police and the People
As policemen march to the funeral of a fallen police officer, what thoughts lie behind those grim faces? Could it ever be, "My job would be much less dangerous if we could somehow make friends of these people instead of provoking them."
It is challenging, scary thought, but the alternative is escalation, to everybody's peril.
The initiative must probably come from the police, but they should invite/welcome the people they fear to join the discussion.
2 Religious War. Here's a secret recipe for peace between three religions. Get Christians, Muslims and Jews to start a program - preferably a mass program (no pun intended) - of reading each others' holy books. Let the people read without guidance from their clergy, and search for the similarities. Most will be hugely surprised. Why exclude the priests, pastors, imams, mullahs and rabbis? Because they would be unable to look for anything but differences.
Maybe I can make that point with six almost random quotations from the Hebrew, Muslim and Christian scriptures. (Two each from the Kuran, the Christian scriptures and the Hebrew scriptures.)
Which is which?.
(For the usual names - Jahweh, God, Allah - I have substituted "the Deity,"
Ready?
1 - Do not behave like those who slandered Moses. The Deity cleared him and he was exalted by the Deity.
2 - Make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy.
3 - Fear the Deity and speak the truth. He will bless your works and forgive you your sins.
4 - To the Deity belong wisdom and power, counselling and understanding.
5 - He will save the children of the needy; he will crush the oppressor.
6 - Let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Deity in heaven.
Hint: The first quotation is from the Kuran, which has lots of other praises for Moses, Joseph, Abraham, Jesus, Mary, Jonah, and other characters well-known to Jews and Christians.
3. Narrowing the Wealth Gap. This is the big one; you might want to save it for tomorrow.
Corporations are arguably the chief institutional means by which the rich get richer and the poor get poorer; especially the banking corporations, which create money for buying up assets, but are not much interested in the poor.
The war between nation states and global corporations is about the world's wealth. At present the corporations are winning the war: wealth- and corporate-friendly governments are in power in most of the world. Need I quote examples? Democratic governments, weighted with debt, are definitely in decline.
The corporate propaganda has done a great job of deceiving people into believing that all their troubles stem from taxation by greedy governments. Not true.
But corporations are not invulnerable.
So, in 250 words, or less, CogsBlogger, how do we reduce the power of corporations over governments?
You can never go back, of course, but try your imagination on this scenario:
On the first Tuesday of every month the names of two corporations are posted, world-wide on social media, with a call to boycott their products, on the understanding that as soon as the corporations change, the boycott will be lifted.
The change required of the named firm would be to surrender the company's charter (which was issued by some government) and replace it with a new charter that contained:
i An over-riding social responsibility clause to replace the current exclusive responsibility to shareholders.
ii. A clause making all shareholders liable for the corporation's social violations (think BP oil spill, or Bhopal chemical spill), up to 10% of the market value of their share-holdings.
iii The issuing of 10% of the corporation's outstanding shares to the national government which issued the charter. The government, as 10% shareholder, is then to entitled to 10% of the firm's dividends. Just think, it might be possible for some national governments to abandon corporate taxation altogether. (Wow!)
This is a rough proposal. Lots of improvements and implementation details needed. Not to mention, secrecy at its hatching. Please don't say you saw it first on CogsBlog 40.
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