Economic Systems

[Thistledown]

I find economics fascinating (and often full of bullshit), so can't resist adding something to the discussion here.

One of the things no one has mentioned is that the Federal Reserve (and indeed all central banks starting with the Bank of England model, the Bank of North America, The 1st and 2nd Banks of the US (precursors to the Federal Reserve)) is NOT a federal entity and is only nominally part of the government.

The Fed and its precursors and contemporaries are in fact private for-profit institutions dedicated to the interests of their anonymous shareholders.

The notion that the central banking system is in place to prevent inflation and stabilize the economy is a bold-faced lie. In fact, the "business cycle" is actually created by the Fed...and because they know when their completely engineered booms and busts are going to occur they can take maximum advantage.

It seems like most of the population is almost wholly ignorant of how the Fed controls our money supply, and by extension most of the world.

There are no easy answers to creating an economic system that serves all and actually promotes humanity on an individual and societal level towards our most amazing potential.

The kind of crony-capitalism we have now is really holding humanity back from our true potential. Case in point...it is more profitable and desirable for the medical industry to invest in treatments that people have to keep buying, than cures which they take once and eradicate the illness. We could find a way to cure most of our ails, but those kinds of projects mostly go unfunded and unpublicized in the mainstream media (owned by the bankers like most everything else).

And really...we have the tech AND the financial resources to solve most of the world's problems for good (http://www.unesco.org/education/tlsf/mo ... ndex.shtml) with a fraction of what we spend on military and the status quo.

I like Buckminster Fuller's approach (and Jacque Fresco as well) of a resource based economy, with a hybrid approach.

Basically 85% of jobs are eliminated or taken over by robots (droids!)...this is already happening but labor resists automation because "people need to earn a living."

Bullshit...we have the tech and resources to make "earning a living" obsolete...

So, basically, everyone gets a roof, healthy food and pure water (not the toxic crappy food pedaled by agri-corps and fast food mind you...real nutritious organic food for all, and yes it can be done within our existing allocations of farmland), and the very best of education.

So, your basic needs are taken care of , and everyone is healthy and has access to education in whatever realms they fancy.

after that, it becomes a meritocracy...by showing ambition and creativity you can become a leader and gain more for yourself in the world, as well as esteem, respect, prestige. This would create a healthy form of competition, and it would free humans from subsistence level work at meaningless jobs that robots can do better.

Some people might decry that this would kill motivation, but I posit that it is having to work two or three jobs just to make crappy rent and eat toxic food, leading to physical, mental and emotional exhaustion and sickness that are the real killers of motivation. Our natural inclination as children is to be curious, to be creative, to be engaged...until it is beaten or schooled out of us by exhausted parents or corrupt institutions.

Just my thoughts...

[Juton]

Let's examine one of the statements from the start of your post.

"The notion that the central banking system is in place to prevent inflation and stabilize the economy is a bold-faced lie. In fact, the "business cycle" is actually created by the Fed...and because they know when their completely engineered booms and busts are going to occur they can take maximum advantage."

I have no doubt that some people have made a lot of money from that activities that precipitated this bust (ie subprime mortgages). I do doubt that there was some intricately orchestrated plan by the super elite to crash the economy. You do know there was a boom and bust cycle prior to 1913 right? I could argue that the cycle was even more viscous then it is now.

But let's step away from that for a moment.

Your views aren't new, they get regurgitated fairly regularly in different corners of the Internet. I'm curious, do you listen to talk radio? Libertarian Podcasts? Right now you stand where so many have stood before, I'm very curious how you got there.

[Thistledown]

Thanks for the curious reply.

There is decent evidence to support the idea that the super elite (at the time, Rockefeller and Morgan and Carnegie..though it has been shown that they were all in fact backed by the Rothschilds) either knew of, or engineered the stock market crash that lead to the great depression my grandparents lived through. Interesting that the major players all pulled out of the market just before it crashed.

Milton Friedman himself went on record as to saying that Central Banking systems allow such booms and busts to be scientifically orchestrated..and of course the anonymous shareholders in the central bank have this inside info and can position their other holdings appropriately for maximum benefit.

I can't give you concrete evidence, and it is far from a pure stroke of logic for me to say this...but I find it hard to believe that these power-players *wouldn't* take every advantage they can to amass more money (and in reality it's about power and control because they control so much money as to make acquiring more merely an academic curiosity).

And yeah, I'm aware that I'm not saying anything ground breaking here...I just noticed the commentary about central banks having been implemented according to Marx's ideas, when in fact the central banks do not serve the interests of the people and the "Federal" reserve is Federal in name only.

As for where I came to these notions, I first encountered them reading the first part of R. Buckminster Fuller's magnum opus "The Critical Path." about 15 years ago.

I remember being so distraught by this new knowledge, gained in my late teenage years as I was trying to figure out what to make of my life...because I realized then that the deck was stacked against me, against most of us by the super elite. So long as they maintain a stranglehold on the planet our evolution is stunted. Now...to qualify that, we have made tremendous progress...indeed Bucky died before the internet, though he in some ways predicted it.

However, we have SO much more tech and knowledge that is NOT being implemented. If we were to do away with the idea of money, and focus on making sure everyone has enough and allowing creativity and real problem solving to flourish, we could make our world a paradise in a decade or so, maybe less. As is our priorities are all fucked up. There is no need for some grand conspiracy, because the major players all make PROFIT the highest goal and progress be damned if it doesn't make them more profit.

Anyways, I basically "went to sleep" for a decade or so and stopped thinking about this stuff until I saw an amazing documentary by Bill Still called "The Money Masters." It has generated some controversy because some of the quotes in the film have been uncovered to be false, but Still himself acknowledged the errors in his forum, and indeed tried to get the movie reissued to correct them...but the financier of the project would not allow it. My intuition tells me it is because with such spurious quotes it allows the whole thing to be cast in doubt...even when most of it is absolutely on the money (no pun intended).

For the resource based economy ideas...again I heard them through Bucky first, but again from Jacques Fresco in the documentary "Zeitgeist Addendum."

Unfortunately that great work is marred by the wacko ideas of the first movie Zeitgeist and it's general hippy new-age presentation that speaks to the choir and tries to dress up the production value with flashy dramatized scenes rather than just focusing on the facts as Still did (and continues to do so on his forum.).

And yes, I do have SOME libertarian leanings...but I am not really a sycophant for anyone and so can acknowledge that even their views and ideas contain flaws. Laissez-faire capitalism is little better than piracy...some regulation by government is necessary which is why I advocate a hybrid approach. As was noted by others, when public utilities get privatized, abuse runs rampant, even though one can equally argue that government is equally much worse than the private sector when it comes to many things.

Ultimately it seems like the foundational issue is really one based in a lacking of consciousness and/or education. The robber-baron says "I'm going to get mine and take care of my own" rather than realizing that he could help lift everyone up.

Humankind needs to evolve into a more ecological-symbiotic consciousness before we are going to start kicking ass and solving problems on a solar-system level and beyond...

[Whatever]

[Shrapnel]

I loved that Tintin book. Classic.

[John Magnum]

Frank, can you elaborate on why you say the USSR won the space race? Most successful lifter rockets? First satellites? I only really know the conventional wisdom that the USA "won" because we shifted the goalpost to "first to the moon" and because decades later NASA and the ESA are the big players (although we still use Soyuzes for everything) and the USA controls the telecomms satellites.

[Juton]

In my schooling I learned a bit about the scientific method. My instructor explained that a good model can explain previous data and make accurate predictions about future data. Did your model of our economy predict any type of bust around 2008? If not then you might be better off discarding it. I'm not advocating you go running to a new ideology, just if your old model isn't holding up get rid of it.

[Koumei]

Frank, can you elaborate on why you say the USSR won the space race? Most successful lifter rockets? First satellites? I only really know the conventional wisdom that the USA "won" because we shifted the goalpost to "first to the moon" and because decades later NASA and the ESA are the big players (although we still use Soyuzes for everything) and the USA controls the telecomms satellites.

The US repeatedly shifted goal posts. Like, all the time. If the Sovjets had landed on the moon first, the US would have changed it to "First people to colonise Mars!"

Yes, the stubbornness and competetiveness of the US really could have given us some crazy stuff if Russia had continued to pump money and research in and win every time. If it were still going, we'd probably be at "Oh yeah? Well you may have reached the edge of the solar system and made your own space base there that is a functioning habitat for humans, but it only counts if you each the edge of the universe!" by now. [Citation needed]

[Shrapnel]

Frank, can you elaborate on why you say the USSR won the space race? Most successful lifter rockets? First satellites? I only really know the conventional wisdom that the USA "won" because we shifted the goalpost to "first to the moon" and because decades later NASA and the ESA are the big players (although we still use Soyuzes for everything) and the USA controls the telecomms satellites.

I know that they were the first to launch shit into space, and the first to launch a human being outside the atmosphere. And the first to set the record for sending up animals to die. Which the US then beat.

(Regardless, I find it sad that the space race, which led to, IMHO, some of the greatest achievements of science ever made, was used almost solely for political dickwaving. When man first walked on the moon, the main reason people thought it was important was because we did it before those damn Ruskies, and not because we, say, actually managed to land on the fucking moon.)

[DSMatticus]

Frank, can you elaborate on why you say the USSR won the space race? Most successful lifter rockets? First satellites? I only really know the conventional wisdom that the USA "won" because we shifted the goalpost to "first to the moon" and because decades later NASA and the ESA are the big players (although we still use Soyuzes for everything) and the USA controls the telecomms satellites.

The Soviets got there first and popped way more of space's cherries than we did. To take the metaphor entirely too far, the only new frontiers left by the time we got our shot would have been things like nostrils and belly buttons.

[fectin]

Why is John Glenn (first man to orbit the Earth) famous instead of Alan Shepard (first American in space)? Because Yuri Gagarin got to space first, but America got to orbit first.