Monday, June 1, 2009

.69 cents can feed who?

.69 cents can feed a family for a day.  or so the story goes from your favorite NGO.  so how many families would a trillion dollars feed?  the answer (everyone!) is blowing in the wind because THAT money is not for them.  it's for the people who need it least, because if you don't give it to them then the economy will fall apart.  or so the story goes.

the real story goes like this:  money does not exist.  it's simply been manufactured like any other product, but in this case the "product" is paper if you're lucky, or just a number in a computer usually.  it's unfortunate because we work really hard for our money.  but what is it exactly?  well it's always been a number punched into a computer by a banker.  something derived from something a value which creates a loan, which is then loaned out at least 10 times over which make a good portion of money absolutely baseless.  the part that has any value at all (the car for instance on a car loan) has long been forgotten by the time the rest of the loans, and money keyboard punched into the system

so what if we sent a trillion of these to feed every person in need of food.  why not, right?  or does AIG need this money more?  or hell, give em both.  we're just printing (or more likely typing) it up.  why not type up a trillion to feed every starving person in the world?  it'd take me all of 10 seconds to type a trillion into the computer -- 1,000,000,000.  whoops, that's a billion.  lets try again: 1,000,000,000,000.  much better.  wow that's $1000 for each of our starving billion in this world.  was that so hard?

so what exactly makes money tick?  and why did we create a system where it's based on .. nothing?  one word can sum it up .. greed.  if you could make money from nothing, wouldn't you do it?  all you really need is some computer terminals and a big, well-built sign that says "First (any word here) Bank" with some sturdy glass doors and .. voila!  you're in business.

but lets say we hit some kind of snag and the system starts shaking.  who's to blame then?  the people who created it.  but who needs the most help?  the same people who created it seem to need the most money to stabilize it.  ok, no problem.  a few keys into the keyboard should fix it.  10,000,000,000 -- there i did it!  system fixed!

there's a chasm between fact and fiction, between value and nothingness.  one would think (and as a child you grow up to believe) that society is firmly rooted in the former. but nothing could be further from the truth.  what is growing more apparent on a daily basis is that society is firmly rooted in fiction. the power of image, of the bullet proof glass windows, a well-pressed suit and an esoteric vocabulary.  THIS is our money system.  

as any good capitalist would disagree, "capital" adds no value to our system.  just because you HAVE money does not mean that you deserve to EARN money.  what then would you be doing for society?  nothing.  same goes for land (also capital).  just because you HAVE land does not mean you deserve repeated payments for it for the rest of your family's lifetime.  why should it?  because your great grandfather was smart enough to be a Rockefeller and take/buy the center of Manhattan?

i make music.  do i get a perpetual royalty for it until the end of time?  no!  we all own the great classical works that are in the public domain.  not even God collects on the bible, so why should landowners get this?  why should the owners of money not have to do anything more for society but make tons more money?

the system doesn't make a bit of sense.  the system was created by the first rich people who discovered it.  much like columbus who discovered america, it wasn't made to accomodate any newcomers.  it was made for these first people only, or as i like to say that the system is "first come first served".  sure you can live the "american dream" and become a millionaire.  who cares?  they don't.  but they DO want total control over the system.  a few millions don't mean a thing.

2 examples we can take:  banks and healthcare.  so you're walking down the street and need some money.  go to an ATM and pay 1.50 for a $20 bill.  worth it?  why did you just have to pay that to get your own money out of the bank?  what did they actually do for you?  is this a service to society?  or take the healthcare bureaucracy:  a huge administration hellbent on making you ineligible for your benefits.  banks are 20% of our economy.  but what are they actually doing for us?  what percentage of our economy is "landowners"?  or healthcare?  which is projected to be 20% within 10 years.  add all of these up, add in many extraneous government agencies and you have a whole bunch of people that do absolutely nothing to add to a productive society.   America is stuck in traffic, and these people are the toll we all pay just to exist.  

and for the poor who only need .69 cents a day to survive, it seems we can't punch a number into a computer that is less than a billion anymore ..


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