Charles was saying we should focus on an alternative to our currency
value systems. My point to the original email on Framing Resources was
the fact that we are using up Earth's resources at a suicidal rate, and
the result is a system of wealth that cannot possibly last because,
obviously, we'll run out of resources. I stressed that arriving at truth
with respect to an urgent and critical time for humanity and the life
which surrounds it wholly depends on our ability to acknowledge the need
for sustainable processing of resources. But that topic became focused
on money. Fine, whatever. But I was just thinking, even though Charles
is intent on arriving at an alternative exchange, would anyone care to
bring the topic back to resources, since resources are the life blood of
our existence, and try focusing on establishing realistic, intrinsic
value as the basis for exchange. Obviously, it doesn't immediately make
clear how to reconcile the various markets. But neither, for that
matter, does the current system reconcile with illegal markets, nor
false values of currency or the banker's dollar being able to accord up
to 95 times more than its face value for lending or investment power.
But what I'm suggesting is that to have a sustainable future, false
value cannot continue to dominate energy transfers. In fifty years time,
basics such as clean water and good farm land will be at more than a
premium -- but rather than preserving it now, our current approach is to
price it out of the hands of the masses, and exploit what we can,
whether or not it is wise to do so. So, one can redefine our currency
system to more appropriately reflect labour or input energy transfers,
but when the system's values are falsely based, I can't see that it
would much change the first concern -- that being the need for a
sustainable future
-- such as clean water, land for habitation, land for food, land for
leisure.
Perhaps one of the biggest problems is giving such resources a value at
all. Rather, they should be more properly restored as necessities of
life. That would put a damper on ever increasing trends to tax and
charge for that to which we are inherently entitled to have and enjoy as
beings on this planet. We all know that breathable air is next on the
list to tax.
If these basic necessities are removed from the system of monetary
value, that leaves us with everything else above the table, and all that
which is not: the rest that disappears into the back rooms of
government, organized crime, military and close community exchanges.
It is the latter which must be addressed to arrive at alternative
improved exchange systems. Most money, as I said earlier, is made on the
currency exchange markets. More in one day than the GDP of the US
annual. On this fact alone, how do we apportion value to trillions made
gambling on different nations' currencies?. Most other money is made by
having fair quantities to first invest by, then by reaping the benefits
of interests and inflated stock values. Banks make it on interest and
investments, and loan out up to 95 times actual money that they have,
depending on what scale you look at. So, the greatest wealth is in the
hands of those who have earned their falsely valued money through
falsely valued backing. I'm saying that most money isn't real.
How do you improve something that isn't real? Improvement is only
possible when you have something tangible to work with.
Then, we have the untaxed and illegal markets. Another 30% of wealth,
possibly? And finally we have the working classes, who wish to believe
in the value of their hard earned wages or salaries, yet somehow only
account for about 10% of the wealth of the globe, while providing almost
every speck of real labour.
Now, here's another item for consideration. When huge corporations scam,
and insurance companies cannot possibly replace individual losses, how
do we account for loss of moneys which aren't really lost, they are
simply in the hands of other parties, and then recirculated or used to
build more false money?
When the Pentagon announced a missing 3.3 trillion, ( First, one
trillion, shortly after Dov Zakheim took over finances for the Pentagon
budget in March, 2001, then another 2 trillion announced missing by
Rumsfeld Sept. 10, 01, as I read today), and, as we all know, the tax
payers will never be compensated for this loss of their tax dollars,
real or invested, and the money goes underground -- not towards above
board traceable taxable pursuits, how do we reconcile its loss and
subsequent redistribution? 3.3 trillion, in a monetary system, puts a
huge dent into the U.S. pot. Yet the U.S. government has not bothered to
investigate such a scandalous loss which should really upset the apple
cart, as if there was little actual value going for it in the first
place. Enron evil do-ers had to be stopped, but the biggest scam ever,
within an arm of the government itself, meant nothing. Please note that
I am speaking only in terms of value, not even accountability nor trust
issues intrinsic to monetary systems.
There are already distinctly different ways of acquiring/valuing money.
The first is the original -- energy transfers related to labour, goods
and resources. The other is fantasy, for the most part, and should not
be allowed to dominate the original, but does. It is the latter which is
the bulk of what supposedly exists. But changing the system of something
that depends on the energies provided by working people within the
original system will affect the fantasy system, eventually.
Change won't be simply legislated. It will be accomplished by a shift in
resources and/or labour availability, a revolution or coupe, or by a
powerful peaceful global organization. We may not depend on any but
vanishing resources, I think, to force that necessary shift soon enough
to avert global bankruptcy, though I look forward to surprises.
Natalia Kuzmyn
>From Sam Smith, Progressive Review,
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POCKET PARADIGMS
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Global dumbing involves the virtually imperceptible but steady
deterioration of the aggregate human mind -- as well as of its
institutions -- much as the temperature of the earth is apparently
rising at a rate so minuscule that scientists will be still be debating
its escalation even as the waters of the Atlantic Ocean lap at the
potted plants in the lobby of the Trump Plaza. In fact, global warming
and global dumbing are intimately connected. Without the latter,
something actually might be done before that portion of Washington below
the fall line of the Potomac is totally submerged. And like global
warming, global dumbing concerns itself with losses incurred by energy
transfers and nature's ceaseless quest for the random equilibrium of
chaos. It is, in short, the entropy of the human spirit and of the
systems it has created.
In earlier times, it was possible to avoid cultural entropy by stealing
energy from somewhere else. This, of course, was the foundation of slave
trade, the British Empire and various new world orders of the first half
of 20th century. While it still goes on, energy theft has become more
difficult as the world has steadily lost its cultural, political,
environmental and economic differentiation.
A cursory examination of American business suggests that its major
product is wasted energy. Compute all the energy loss created by
corporate lawyers, Washington lobbyists, marketing consultants, CEO
benefits, advertising agencies, leadership seminars, human resource
supervisors, strategic planners and industry conventions and it is
amazing that this country has any manufacturing base at all. We have
created an economy based not on actually doing anything, but on
facilitating, supervising, planning, managing, analyzing, tax advising,
marketing, consulting or defending in court what might be done if we had
time to do it. The few remaining truly productive companies become
immediate targets for another entropic activity, the leveraged buyout.
If global dumbing is not halted, we may wake up one morning and find
that no one in this country knows how to make anything anymore. We may
discover our dearest friends and relatives in a catatonic state before
the TV and the device won't even be on. When we call for help we may
find that 911 has become an endless loop voice mail system from which
one can never disconnect. We may even, some day, elect a hologram as
president -- and be too dumb to realize it. - Sam Smith
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