she's often used as the inspiration for killing medicare,
Then I like her. "Medicare" is just a euphemism for stealing from Group A to give money to Group B. It's immoral, not to mention economically destructive. Americas medicare system is pretty poor I've heard, it's the flicking of a dime to the vagrant that is the healthcare of the US majority. Mostly its there to pay big pharma and big insurance anyway isn't it? All that notwithstanding, Group A is Group B. Unless you come from planet Krypton, the chances are you will find yourself in both groups during the course of the changing circumstances of your life. |
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Tradition or emergent social arrangements (however you want to call it) are an important part of law. But all of this does not answer the issue of the currency.
Emergent social arrangements, like state, government and taxes for instance... By the way, I beleive there was a time when something called the Tally Stick was fiat, and used to pay taxes. Eventually the bankers managed to overturn the Tally Stick system and replace it with gold fiat instead. The bankers like gold and always have done, because it's easier to control than notches on sticks I guess, warehousing the stuff is after all how bankers started out... |
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Here you seem to be saying anyone who doesn't agree with you is a troll, and anyone whose arguments you find challenging to your own position is merely an interesting troll. I have never called you a troll. Challenging? Saying that fiat currency, defined as a currency imposed by force, can exists without force? That is challenging? You know you are on the wrong and you are just trying to make it personal (and derail the conversation talking about property rights). Answer to my arguments. It's not personal, just telling you how you come across with the troll statement. Indeed, answer to the arguments. If you think force is the defining element of a societies laws, then your outlook strikes me as overly reductionist to say the least. To me, libertarians, an-caps and people with even worse political ideologies often sound as if they would like the world to be far simpler and less complex then it is, so that their arguments can seem to make sense. |
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Acceptable for paying tax. Not only acceptable for payint tax. Also, legal tender laws, which is basically a violation of the right to contract. But even if you believe in taxes, why should the government only accept one currency for paying taxes? Why not charge 30% of your wage, whatever that wage is payed on? History is full of examples of governments payed in different types of currencies. The requirement of having taxes payed in only one currency, the government one, comes from the same objective as legal tender laws: create a currency monopolly. All this barrel of a gun stuff is exactly the same as what protects private property. Law. Defending yourself, is not the same as agression. Indeed. As the state is its taxes, it will defend itself should anyone attempt to deprive it of taxes. I have a problem with taxes when the state imposes itself overmuch upon the citizen, and when the state spunks itself on bombing foreign nations or serving the interests of powerful cliques that have co-opted it to their own purposes. For this reason democracy, education, individual rights and the devotion of the state to all those that would pay taxes are important to me. Furthermore if a person deprived of opportunities and dis-enfranchised from the economy were to engage in theft to support themselves, the agents charged with the protection of private property can come down very hard on that person. I consider this aggression, in a system were people have no other recourse to survive.
BubbleBoy if you continue this way I might have to take away from you the title of most interesting troll of the forum.
Here you seem to be saying anyone who doesn't agree with you is a troll, and anyone whose arguments you find challenging to your own position is merely an interesting troll. |
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The full faith of the government, which provides a useful service to the society: a commodity specifically designed to facilitate trade. Fiat money is in theory superior to precious metals and societies should switch to fiat currency naturally, not due to coercion.
As all things related to government, it can go wrong in two main ways:
- democracy fails because access to power is severely limited, say by a closed plutocracy that derives wealth from monetary control
- democracy works but the average voters don't understand economics
In most societies these days a combination of the two problems make fiat money fail to meet it's theoretical potential.
I concur. |
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Acceptable for paying tax.
All this barrel of a gun stuff is exactly the same as what protects private property. Law.
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Good video, nice chick. Ironic the face of Maumar Gaddafi appeared in the video spitting dollars, considering he's the loony bastard that wanted to introduce a gold-backed Gold Dinar to trade for oil with (possibly the real reason for NATO's sudden concern for the liberation of the Libyan people?) Oh, and I like "flat money" too.  |
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Also, its worth noticing that by lowering interest rates and government spending (the keynesian solution) you are helping banks and the politically connected while hurting the poor. Instead, by defaulting on the debt you are hurting the banks and the investors. This is the reason why the keynesian solution is almost always the choosen one.
Savers and investors are two sides of the same coin... well, at least they were when banks did their job instead of playing the casino thanks to deregulation. |
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A private bank cannot create more money directly, they are bound by accounting laws just like a regular business. The banking system as a whole creates deposit money, but banks still have to compete among each other to attract depositors.
That's just plain wrong. Banks issue debt which is itself an act of creating money. I thik maybe you should research this more - start with Wikipedia. He's right, banks can issue debt in accordance with reserve requirements. |
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And obviously, we are the suckers here because we pay all this with higher prices. And specially the poor and middle clases. Because the people who is closer to the money source (bankers, politicians and their corporate budies) get to spend the money when it has not yet circulated and the prices have not yet rised. The ones at the end of the chain (basically wage earners) get screwed because prices rise when their wages have not yet actuallized. Basically the further away from the money source (the central bank) you are, the more screwed you are. I believe the reason inflationary monetary policy hurts the poor and middle class is that the newly created money is controlled by government, and access to political power is inherently concentrated. If you have power, it's easier to manipulate 500 members of Congress to give your company a government contract than to convince 300 million consumers to buy your company's products. The Fed also has control over newly created money, in its decisions on who to bail out, what assets to accept as collateral, how much to pay for said assets, etc, so inflationary monetary policy also favors powerful interests close to the Fed. You might find the Steve Keen interview in the second half of this interesting: http://rt.com/programs/keiser-report/episode-158-imf-downgrades-keen/ |
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Iceland is a better example. Compare Iceland to the PIIGS. Iceland gave a big fuck you to the banksters while the PIIGS are taking on ever more severe austerity measures. What's the interest rate on Icelandic bonds compared to Portuguese or Irish?
Iceland is the best example of what one should do. Default on the debt and start over again. The austerity mesures without defaulting on the debt will never ever work, and in reality are condenming Greece to years, maybe even more than a decade, of stagnation. The only objective of the EU is that the bankers get their debt repayed. Its a real shame. With this I agree. |
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Clinton handed Bush a HUGE surplus, and Bush readily spent it and then some on pointlessly invading Afghanistan (failed to get biLaden) and Iraq (no WMD? ORLY!), as well as missile defense shields (defend from those... uhm... high tech nuclear missile producing terrorists, ya know), and a massive massive massive dividend tax cut (for the majority of you forum folks out there that don't know what a dividend is (e.g. the guys that are probably mad at me already for making fun of BushmoronJR), it's what rich & smart folks make most of their money from).
Sweden really sets a great example. Nice article!!
Starve the Beast they call it, dumbasses. Take the pooled resources of the community (the "stolen wealth" libertards refer to because they are idiots) and spunk it all on crap like wars, tax-breaks for the 1-percent and massively-unrealistic weapons systems to point at nations that really don't need to have weapons pointed at them. This deprives "the beast" of the resources to do useful things it's supposed to do, healthcare, education, infrastructure, income-support etc. You know, useful stuff, the kind of public goods and services that should be the only fucking excuse an agent made of pooled communal resources exists to supply in the first place. |
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A good article on how the powers can change the rules anytime they want. http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/0589a94e-9d9f-11e0-9a70-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1PkR7ySJHSo, the state of the CDS, a product created to specifically pay out when someone defaults, is in danger. When that someone is really too big to fail, they make sure that they change the rules. What a skewed system. Compare this to the OPEN SOURCE of bitcoin. Anyone can read it. Yes, that's why they're called The Powers That Be. What's your point? |
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Precisely.
Rand and her self-centred sociopathy on one hand, and the murderous Statolatry of the nazi's and the Leninists on the other.
I reject them both. Balance between the individual and the collective is key, neither is anything without the other. They are in fact ultimately, two sides of the same coin. All extremists are basically egomaniacs, I can't stand the fuckers.
This is nonsense and contradictory. Its like saying you want to have fire and water together. It might serve you to keep your mind happy but its does not make sense. Its a contradiction. If you think Rand is great, it is understandable that you are simply unable to hold certain concepts in your mind. |
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Precisely.
Rand and her self-centred sociopathy on one hand, and the murderous Statolatry of the nazi's and the Leninists on the other.
I reject them both. Balance between the individual and the collective is key, neither is anything without the other. They are in fact ultimately, two sides of the same coin. All extremists are basically egomaniacs, I can't stand the fuckers.
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Quick reminder for the last comments, obviously you did not read the thread.
1. TZM != TVP
2. Techno-cult bla bla bla bullshit: don't just put labels, read the material, argue with reason and provide actual criticism or STFU.
Jesus guy, I sat through Zeitgeist Addendum didn't I, wasn't that enough? I could write criticisms but frankly a glance through history should reveal that people have thought Venus Project thoughts before... in history...  even in sci-fi...  Many, many times. There is no Year Zero, if you don't know why already I cannot help you. By all means dream your irrelevant pristine dreams, and don't let boring stupid tedious quarrelsome humanity get in your way. |
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Zeitgaist Movement says some interesting things, but ultimately they are a vacuous techno-cult. It's not the first time in history that misguided and somewhat misanthropic dreamers have asserted that mankind's redemption can be found only in technology. Laughably naive in sum.
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Ok fine, it's not the same. The bitcoin network does not match the vast magnificent power of the natural phenomena from which gold and other metals are created. Nonetheless I stand by the illogic in the comparison. The price of bitcoin flash-crashing on an exchange does not mean bitcoin is now valueless any more than gold would become valueless if a major gold exchange got robbed (or any commodity for that matter). Can the media please stop attempting to give that impression. Bitcoin holders are not now holding their breath because of the misfortunes of MtGox "to see if their bitcoins are now worth less than the cost of the usb on which they are held" or whatever.
thank you, that is all.
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Some-random-supernova ltd, (the manufacturer of gold) to be hauled before the courts. Investors wait to see if shinny lumps of yellow metal will be worth anything.  |
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