"The greater good" is a quick road to the worst atrocities ever committed by mankind, and that's not a partisan or tribal truth.
The reason is simple: in aiming at an aggregate, you ignore the individual.
Let's say you have a button, and if you press that button, ten deserving people (or one hundred people, or one thousands people, or ten thousand people, it doesn't matter) will immediately have a million dollars added to their bank accounts, and one random people will die.
If you care only about the greater good, then you'd press that button all day every day. After all, ten, one hundred, one thousand, ten thousand people will be made immeasurably better off, and at the low cost of only one person dying.
Alternatively, you could choose random criminals to kill and harvest their organs, and those organs could go to save perhaps 6-10 lives at the cost of just one life. The greater good is satisfied, but to the criminals who are selected it would certainly not feel so good.
The reason is simple: in aiming at an aggregate, you ignore the individual.
Let's say you have a button, and if you press that button, ten deserving people (or one hundred people, or one thousands people, or ten thousand people, it doesn't matter) will immediately have a million dollars added to their bank accounts, and one random people will die.
If you care only about the greater good, then you'd press that button all day every day. After all, ten, one hundred, one thousand, ten thousand people will be made immeasurably better off, and at the low cost of only one person dying.
Alternatively, you could choose random criminals to kill and harvest their organs, and those organs could go to save perhaps 6-10 lives at the cost of just one life. The greater good is satisfied, but to the criminals who are selected it would certainly not feel so good.
That goes to the root of what I'm saying, the government did create the system because some unbelievably rich people used some of their money to convince them to create the system.
Prior to the current system, fractional reserve banking still did exist but it was something that had a connection to physics, monetarily speaking. Investors would invest in a bank, the bank would technically loan out the money, and they would probably loan out more money than they had, but investing in a bank account was an investment. You had risk and you had return. There was a chance that too many people would try to pull their money out of the bank at once, and there just wouldn't be money there and the bank would run out of money and go out of business.
Even though arguably what they were actually doing should have been illegal anyway since they were showing two people the same dollar, at least there was a way that they could overdo it. Later, you basically ended up with this lender of last resort with the ability to print as much money as it was required to keep Banks from going under, and then various insurances that meant not only were they taking risks with depositors money, but those risks were fully insured and backed with the full faith and credit of the United States. Then the banks turn around and give the money they've made entirely due to the government in exchange for further favors. They don't even need to tax to get it, they just erode the buying power of everyone earning wages and let banks skim some off the top for the privilege.
Prior to the current system, fractional reserve banking still did exist but it was something that had a connection to physics, monetarily speaking. Investors would invest in a bank, the bank would technically loan out the money, and they would probably loan out more money than they had, but investing in a bank account was an investment. You had risk and you had return. There was a chance that too many people would try to pull their money out of the bank at once, and there just wouldn't be money there and the bank would run out of money and go out of business.
Even though arguably what they were actually doing should have been illegal anyway since they were showing two people the same dollar, at least there was a way that they could overdo it. Later, you basically ended up with this lender of last resort with the ability to print as much money as it was required to keep Banks from going under, and then various insurances that meant not only were they taking risks with depositors money, but those risks were fully insured and backed with the full faith and credit of the United States. Then the banks turn around and give the money they've made entirely due to the government in exchange for further favors. They don't even need to tax to get it, they just erode the buying power of everyone earning wages and let banks skim some off the top for the privilege.
The legal framework is actually completely out of whack. The money that you deposited in the bank has very little relation to the money that you put in there. Right now, reserve requirements are 0%. Meaning, if you put $1 in the bank, the bank is allowed to lend out Infinity dollars.
The only way that you can have a system where you can print Infinity dollars is that the government has created this system. Those are government dollars, and a massive subsidy for one industry that's allowed to do this even though you and I never could.
The only way that you can have a system where you can print Infinity dollars is that the government has created this system. Those are government dollars, and a massive subsidy for one industry that's allowed to do this even though you and I never could.
Can you create money out of thin air? I can't. I'd go to jail if I tried.
So who really created that money?
So who really created that money?
The US federal government has enough of a budget to buy the top 3 companies on earth straight-up.... Every single year. China can buy the top company. Germany, Japan, France, the UK, and Italy could buy about half of the top company. Besides buying things, these governments can also straight-up hand cash to companies for various reasons and using various methods. Besides spending money directly, they can exercise authority to help industries. Central banks for example are an explicit insurance policy for banks (along with all the other insurance policies like fdic). Internet companies get blanket immunity for things that any other company would be liable for, and they also got a largely government funded worldwide communications network that any other type of communications company would have to somehow create themselves. Then there's clever companies that ask for more rules, but rules they can follow to ensure nobody else can create a company that does what they do.
And then the companies hand the money received in one way or another back to the government as "lobbying" for further beneficial rules.
So yeah, we can focus on trying to do the right thing ourselves, but there's some structures you simply can't change so easily. If that's all it took, then the companies would have gone out of business years ago.
And then the companies hand the money received in one way or another back to the government as "lobbying" for further beneficial rules.
So yeah, we can focus on trying to do the right thing ourselves, but there's some structures you simply can't change so easily. If that's all it took, then the companies would have gone out of business years ago.
And the biggest wallet in the world is the state, and it'll happily pick winners anyway, regardless of what the rest of the market wants.
At that point, all that matters is sucking up to decision makers in government. Even the top companies in the world can't compete with that kind of buying power.
At that point, all that matters is sucking up to decision makers in government. Even the top companies in the world can't compete with that kind of buying power.
The scientist in me sort of wants to know what sort of abominations are born in the zootopia world... The Nazi scientist in me sort of wants to run horrible experiments in the zootopia world.
"Especially if the state causes the private company to do it! But only if I agree with the censorship!"
Ken Silverman who made kens labyrinth built the renderer for the BUILD engine in qbasic before porting it to C and assembly to speed it up.
If there were more parents in my generation, I think we'd have learned to be more judgemental.
It's easy to say "not my problem" when you don't have that responsibility, but when you do, suddenly it becomes really easy to judge people for not just dropping the ball but throwing it into an incinerator
It's easy to say "not my problem" when you don't have that responsibility, but when you do, suddenly it becomes really easy to judge people for not just dropping the ball but throwing it into an incinerator
Within what period? I didn't see anything to that effect.
I went to school with a combination of several years working a crappy full time job and some conventional loans, so I only know about this stuff second hand.
I went to school with a combination of several years working a crappy full time job and some conventional loans, so I only know about this stuff second hand.
Usury generally refers to high interest, but it appears that the subsidized rate is about 5%. That isn't usury. Right now, it's a negative real interest rate, they're paying you for the privilege of you owing them money.
Let's see if this works...
@Permabear
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTU_eL75Ako
"Ryan Cohen Slaughters Meme Stocks FOMO Sheep!"
@Permabear
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTU_eL75Ako
"Ryan Cohen Slaughters Meme Stocks FOMO Sheep!"
Federally insured loans that have some of the lowest interest rates available aren't usury. They're just a bad idea.
There's a number of ways to get taxpayer money to people without ever involving customers. There are of course no bid contracts, but there's also forgivable loan guarantees given to preferred businesses or industries, or direct subsidies and grants. You can just create some false program only your "charity arm" could possibly administer to hand the company giving you kickbacks a billion dollars. And as I will explain later, those are just the honest direct ways of putting money in someone's pocket.
Tax is more than just income tax. It's also sales tax, tarrifs, gas taxes, carbon taxes, debt we never intend to pay back and debt monetization which leads to inflation. Put it all together and the government takes an overwhelming proportion of what we earn.
The inflation tax in particular is basically a poor person tax, a middle-class tax, a working class tax. Rich people who own assets see their assets continuously rise with inflation as part of the process of buying and selling in an open market, poor people who actually have to work for their money find that they have to keep on fighting for raises just to keep the same quality of living, and in the meantime their taxes keep going up because they're making more money putting them into new brackets.
Monetary policy is another great way to extract wealth out of the masses and hand them to the wealthy. You don't need to directly hand the money to the wealthy, just make sure that the rich are good and liquid, and the poor aren't, and basically make a promise to the investment class that you're going to make sure their numbers always go up, so they can take as much risk as they want while the working class and the middle class tiptoe over broken glass, one wrong step meaning you lose everything.
Tesla's a really good example. Tesla is the world's smallest car company. They hardly make any cars, they hardly sell any cars, they hardly have any revenue, and there's absolutely no indication that they're going to have very much future revenue. Their main product is Tesla stock. Elon musk became the richest person in the world because there's so much money sloshing around in financial markets it had to go somewhere, and he happened to be the lightning rod. It's fairly unlikely that he became the lightning rod entirely by chance. He got deals on factories and preferential treatment in regulations, definitely preferential treatment and how his companies are presented by the state and the state influenced arms of the media, and so it just became the place to send your money, and because it becomes the place to send your money, it grows, which makes it more the place to send your money. This would never have happened if we hadn't had 15 years of extraordinarily accommodative monetary policy and given explicit and implicit guarantees to the world's richest people that they will never see their numbers go down.
I could go on, forever. I published a book for a reason, because I have a lot to say. But that's enough for now.
Tax is more than just income tax. It's also sales tax, tarrifs, gas taxes, carbon taxes, debt we never intend to pay back and debt monetization which leads to inflation. Put it all together and the government takes an overwhelming proportion of what we earn.
The inflation tax in particular is basically a poor person tax, a middle-class tax, a working class tax. Rich people who own assets see their assets continuously rise with inflation as part of the process of buying and selling in an open market, poor people who actually have to work for their money find that they have to keep on fighting for raises just to keep the same quality of living, and in the meantime their taxes keep going up because they're making more money putting them into new brackets.
Monetary policy is another great way to extract wealth out of the masses and hand them to the wealthy. You don't need to directly hand the money to the wealthy, just make sure that the rich are good and liquid, and the poor aren't, and basically make a promise to the investment class that you're going to make sure their numbers always go up, so they can take as much risk as they want while the working class and the middle class tiptoe over broken glass, one wrong step meaning you lose everything.
Tesla's a really good example. Tesla is the world's smallest car company. They hardly make any cars, they hardly sell any cars, they hardly have any revenue, and there's absolutely no indication that they're going to have very much future revenue. Their main product is Tesla stock. Elon musk became the richest person in the world because there's so much money sloshing around in financial markets it had to go somewhere, and he happened to be the lightning rod. It's fairly unlikely that he became the lightning rod entirely by chance. He got deals on factories and preferential treatment in regulations, definitely preferential treatment and how his companies are presented by the state and the state influenced arms of the media, and so it just became the place to send your money, and because it becomes the place to send your money, it grows, which makes it more the place to send your money. This would never have happened if we hadn't had 15 years of extraordinarily accommodative monetary policy and given explicit and implicit guarantees to the world's richest people that they will never see their numbers go down.
I could go on, forever. I published a book for a reason, because I have a lot to say. But that's enough for now.