Money as debt.... may be one of the most important things you might ever see

[ORDagnabbit]

Paul Grignon's 47-minute animated presentation of "Money as Debt" tells in very simple and effective graphic terms what money is and how it ... Alle » is being created. It is an entertaining way to get the message out. The Cowichan Citizens Coalition and its "Duncan Initiative" received high praise from those who previewed it. I recommend it as a painless but hard-hitting educational tool and encourage the widest distribution and use by all groups concerned with the present unsustainable monetary system in Canada and the United States.

http://video.google.de/videoplay?docid=-9050474362583451279

[rumpel]

1. This is something everyone should see

Thanks, ORDagnabbit

just the other day I posted this related post:

Beyond Greed and Scarcity

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x265470

We all have to wake up - don't we.

:hi:

totally recommend

[Karenina]

2. A MUST SEE!!!

:kick:

[rman]

3. Interesting

[OneBlueSky]

4. well . . . if money is debt, then using credit cards is the same as using money, no? . . .

just wonderin', mind you . . . haven't viewed the video yet . . . :shrug:

[Greyhound]

9. No chance to watch the video yet, but using CCs, if you carry a balance

and/or pay fees, you get a further devaluation of your, already nearly worthless, dollars.

[gollygee]

5. K&R

I hadn't seen this. Thanks for posting and I've sent it along to people I know.

[Extend a Hand]

6. I'm afraid the jig is almost up

with the rapidly rising rate of forclosures...
:scared:

[knitter4democracy]

7. Wow. That was scary but enlightening.

My dad tried to explain that all to me when I was in high school, but I never fully understood it.

What about credit unions? How are they different?

[EVDebs]

8. Looks like by 2031 oil, the natural resource that allows this system to keep going...

will run out. See Plan B 2.0 (the 'Learning From China' part 1 portion)

Plan B 2.0
http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/PB2/Contents.htm

[rman]

30. The problem with oil isn't so much running out of the stuff,

but running out of sufficient production capacity to meet demand, which seems to be happening just about now.

[Gregorian]

10. The most important point in this is EXPONENTIAL GROWTH.

Everyone needs to take math. Without this understanding, we're doomed. I don't use the word doom very often.

The single root of the problems we face today, which all other factors sit on top of, is growth. Growth of the population. And it is exponential.

People who truely understand this are very worried. The rest are just living life like there is no tomorrow.

I'm not doing justice to this at all. But in a ragged nutshell that is what we need. Everyone must take math and understand what exponential growth is.

We're living in a modern society, using olde world mentality and knowledge. That is why we need to understand math. It sounds so distastful and ridiculous to most people. But it's called responsible. Just like you don't spend money you don't have, you don't grow without knowing where it goes.

[rumpel]

11. kick

:kick:

[Virginia Dare]

15. This is true and at the present time..

there simply won't be enough resources to go around in the not too distant future. If you look carefully at the events in the world today, you will see that countries like China are preparing themselves for this eventuality.

[EVDebs]

19. Kondratieff Long Waves show the corrections in graphic detail...

http://www.angelfire.com/or/truthfinder/index22.html

[NobleCynic]

25. Yes and no.

Exponential growth is a tremendous problem for our future. Our environment cannot take it.

But this film is completely wrong about exponential growth. The monetary system is not responsible for exponential growth in any way whatsoever. It is the natural state of any lifeform that has not reached an equilibrium point in its environment. Because exponential growth occured in the human population under the monetary system does not mean the monetary system is at fault.

It is an error of causation to assume that because two things happened at the same time they must be related.

Improved farming methods and medicines are responsible for our population growth. Not the monetary system. People don't stop/start getting busy just because the federal reserve upped/dropped its rates a quarter of a point.

[rman]

28. The problem is the need for exponential growth of the economy

in order to keep the debt = money system going.

Population growth is not even mentioned in this video.

[nashville_brook]

12. i love the bit about "community barter"

[Gregorian]

13. I almost laughed at how smart those crazy hippies were.

The thing that is so interesting about the barter system is how it levels the playing field.

I am blown away by this presentation in that it does something I thought only a few weirdos like myself thought. Population, growth, sustainability, and economy.

I'm not a doom and gloomer, but the global ecosystem AND economy are both situated on the edge of a cliff. A lot of suffering is right around the corner. THAT is why they are in Iraq. And it is also why so many people are not protesting.

[EVDebs]

20. Local currencies

E F Schumacher Society's link
http://www.schumachersociety.org/local_currencies.html

re local currencies, which are legal to set up BTW.

[druidity33]

23. and also

Time Banks and Time Dollars...
http://www.timebanks.org/


The book No More Throw-Away People by Edgar Cahn is a must read...

Glad you mentioned the Schumacher Society, they're faraway neighbors in the Berkshires and have a wonderful research library nestled in the hills. Attended a local currency conference of theirs a couple of years ago and it changed my outlook on a lot of things... my wife and i even started up a collective for bartering and furthering local currency causes (supplementary currency). It may happen someday, but with so many other issues assaulting us...

[nashville_brook]

22. When Gore talks about *sustainability" he must be freaking people out

remarkable how all this ties together. do something right for the environment and he'll probably end up doing something right for the economy and the poor -- which'll make moneybag people very unhappy.

[Cerridwen]

14. Great video! Thank you so much for pointing me to it.

:yourock:

[Cerridwen]

16. Time to kick this back up

Oh, and I forgot to recommend :blush: I'll do that now if it's not too late.

:kick:

[rumpel]

17. yes - kick

:)

[kineneb]

18. really good presentation!

thanks for the link

[DemReadingDU]

21. afternoon kick

[NobleCynic]

24. Just finished it, noted several major problems with the film

By omitting the rate of growth of physical assets as compared to the rate of growth of the money supply and the rate of growth of debt, the picture painted cannot be considered complete.

If assets have no value whatsoever, then the film is perfectly accurate. If assets have value, the contentions the film makes are at least somewhat in question. Unless you can contrast the bank's assets versus everyone else's assets, the argument that the banks control everything is weak.

Next, the film implies that the loaning of imaginary money is somehow responsible for all of this. Hardly. It just changed the focal point for wealth concentration. Before it was the nobility, now it is the merchant class. The industrialist. The banker. It is the natural tendency for wealth to accumulate, whether the system is closed or open. Even without the practice of loaning money that doesn't exist, in theory you would end with the same result. Wealth begets wealth. Those who control the methods of generating income will expand their share of total wealth until the they control almost everything. Then the system breaks down, a revolution or something of the like happens, a bunch of people die, and a new crowd of powerful and wealthy is ushered in. Then you repeat the process. It is called history. And it is very cyclical. This is just the new incarnation. And a remarkably stable one .

It is good to get people thinking about money and how it works, but from a numbers perspective, the film is not honest. Not through the telling of lies, but through omission.

One other thing that bothered me. Our monetary system is in no way whatsoever the cause of exponential growth in our population or our usage of natural resources. Exponential growth is the natural state of any form of life that has not reached its equilibrium point (or breaking point). Our monetary system thrives on exponential growth, but to assume that the monetary system is the cause is a grievous error in logic. Correlation is not causation.

[Parisle]

27. It all comes down to dinner

--- Put two guys on a remote island,..... one with a shotgun, and the other with 20 pounds of gold. The guy with the gold starves to death. All value is created by human effort. The money managers live lavishly on the backs of people who work,,.,.. simply by having created the means whereby "work" is assessed and quantified.

[rman]

29. Is does address the growth of physical assets,

by saying that the exponential growth of the economy needed to keep this scam going, is impossible to sustain.

[NobleCynic]

32. Sort of

Inflation is the exponential growth of the value of physical assets, whereas actual growth is the rate of increase in physical assets quantitatively.

My problem is a chicken and egg question. The documentary assumes that, because the current system is dependent on exponential growth, that it must have created the growth in order to survive. Not necessarily, the growth likely created the system.

The author admits there are some checks within the system. Inflation for one, acts as a tax on money. Taxes on banking also act as a tax on money. Loans that default also act as a a check on the system. My discomfort with the documentary stems from the complete lack of numbers. If you're going to make an argument that the system, but its very design, will concentrate all wealth into the hands of the bankers, you need some numbers to show that this is happening.

Especially because of the author's attribution of exponential growth to the monetary system rather than as the natural state of any living system, I am hesitant to say to the least to take his word on pure theory. Given such an elementary mistake in game theory and causation, I cringe at the thought of accepting the rest of his position without question.

That said, I realize that the film is not meant for an audience with any background in statistics or economics. Hence the almost complete lack of numbers.

Moreover, there is one basic question that goes unaddressed by his work. Even if the current monetary system has severe intrinsic flaws, do the drawbacks of said flaws outweigh the benefits? By its very design, the monetary system accelerates the application of capital to productive purposes. It encourages work at every level. This has resulted in a massive increase in the standard of living of all people, not just the rich. People take out loans because they expect a greater return on their investment than the interest on the loan will cost them. Not always a greater return in cash flow, but sometimes a greater return in physical assets. The practice of loaning at interest will usually enrich both parties.

[MazeRat7]

33. K&R - Well worth the time watching... Thanks. -nt

[rman]

38. numbers -

How may multi-billionaires are there? Everyone knows there are very few relative to the number of people on Earth. Half of all the wealth is owned by a couple of hundred individuals.

On the other hand half the global population lives on less than two dollars per day. Some of these are hunter-gatherers who live the same kind of live their ancestors have been living for many centuries - but most are suffering from malnutrition.


"...This has resulted in a massive increase in the standard of living of all people"

That's incorrect. The gap between the rich and the poor is widening, not closing.

[NobleCynic]

39. You are correct that the gap is widening

But that the standard of living is increasing across the board is also correct.

Also, in places with prevalent malnutrition, the monetary system is a relative newcomer. Periods of such starvation used to be the norm in all cultures, times, and places. How much of the change in modern society away from cyclic starvation can attributed to the monetary system accelerating the means of production and how much is just advancements in technology is an open question.

It is difficult to justify individuals possessing such wealth while people still starve, but on the balance I believe the monetary system has helped facilitate growth across the board, even if the grand majority of it becomes concentrated in the hands of the few. The question is whether or not the current system does enough good to justify coping with its drawbacks.

Reinstating the estate tax, both here and anywhere else such billionaires live, would go a long way toward making the system more stable. The level you set such a tax at should, in theory at least, determine the likely maximum wealth concentration any one individual can attain. Assuming new developments in medicine don't stretch the human lifespan to infinity.

[Greyhound]

37. A couple of points.

It does address the exponential growth of assets and points out that the system itself requires the unnecessary destruction, or exploitation, of natural resources as well as the constant devaluation of currency or inflation.

While the banks do not currently control everything (although it is close enough), usury ensures that it is the inevitable outcome if the system is allowed to continue long enough for the vig taken to out-pace expansion.

It is simplistic, but considering the educational and interest levels of an American audience, it is the best explanation I've ever seen.

[NobleCynic]

40. Not necessarily

But with the removal of the estate tax, the theory that banks will eventually control everything is pretty strong. If you have a strong estate tax, the cash flow through the system becomes cyclical. The level you set the estate tax, and other taxes on banking, would determine the average level of the money supply that would be concentrated under the bankers.

Thinking on the intended audience, you're probably right. The film may be far more effective in getting its point across by avoiding heady discussions of numbers.

[Cerridwen]

26. Gonna kick this again...

:kick:

[sendero]

31. Interesting..

... and some good factual material to be considered.

But comes along with some conclusions and assertions that I don't find convincing, or more to the point, remotely likely to ever happen voluntarily (such as ZPG).

One positive note is that a tune from one of my favorite recording artists, Boards of Canada, is used for background!

[Greyhound]

34. Finally saw most of it (the last 9 minutes just would not load) and this is the best

explanation I've seen for ordinary people. Highly recommended for those that don't understand why the passage of the Federal Reserve Act was such a terrible thing.

[WiseButAngrySara]

35. Kick. I've had time to view some of it, but did read all of the

comments posted here. I can't wait to watch the entire thing. Thanks for posting!

[NC_Nurse]

36. Very interesting!

Thanks for posting this!
K&R