From: J. Maxwell Legg (income@ihug.co.nz)
Date: Fri Sep 04 1998 - 01:44:37 MDT
Dan Fabulich wrote:
> J. Maxwell Legg wrote:
> >All money comes into existance as a debt. If all debts were repaid there
> >would be no money. For more on the debt engine read "Billions for Banksters"
> >at:-
> >
> >http://www.webbindustries.com/spotlight/f_fr_art001.html
>
> This is an argument against fiat money, not money in general. A gold
> standard, for example, would not have this problem, and unless you're
> attempting to tell me that gold I extract out of a mine I own is a debt to
> somebody else, that pretty much solves that problem.
>
>
Gold is no longer a money standard and the Australian minister who wrote the
"billions for Bankers" article hadn't reached the conclusion that I have that
money can be replaced by a better neural net. Brutal Capitalism's police, secret
societies, drug dealers, gun runners, prostitutes, gamblers, loan sharks, and the
like, are the main ones standing to benefit from a continuation of money use.
They will be the loosers in an era of open information systems when their money
is no longer tolerated.
> And this is simply preposterous. Do you just make this stuff up as you go
> along?
>
> Funding the prison system doesn't help the government make money. This is
> a bizarre idea and I don't know where you got it from.
>
>
Try here. I ripped the following from an ADBUSTER'S website at:
http://www.adbusters.org/Articles/voodoo.html
But there's a glaring flaw in the expansionist argument. They haven't come up
with an accurate way of measuring the economic growth they keep talking about.
Their chief measure of growth is the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and it is
seriously flawed.
Consider:
When the Exxon Valdez spilled its load of oil into the Gulf of Alaska -- a dark
moment in recent American history -- America's GDP went up. (A lot of money was
spent on the cleanup, media coverage, ecological testing, legal fees, etc.) When
the Gulf War broke out, America's GDP went up again. Money changed hands. The
country became “healthier.” Indeed, every time there's a car accident or a newly
diagnosed cancer patient, whenever personal or societal catastrophies occur, the
GDP goes up and the economy.”
Consider:
Walking, biking and mass transit contribute less to the GDP than using an
automobile. Trains contribute less than airplanes; an extra blanket or sweater
less than raising the thermostat; one-child families less than six-child
families; eating legumes less than eating beef; starting a vegetable garden less
than buying at the supermarket; staying home to raise your daughter less than
getting a part-time job at Wendy's. (Indeed, the GDP fails to assign any value at
all to unpaid or volunteer work. Work done by tens of millions of North Americans
simply does not show up on the radar. It's as if the work -- and the workers --
don't exist.)
GDP measures the “goods” but not the “bads.” That's why ecological economists
have developed their own measures of economic welfare. The three graphs on this
page show the GDPs of the US, UK and Germany all heading merrily upward from 1955
through the 1980s. However, a more accurate measure of economic progress, the
ISEW (Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare) developed by Herman Daly and John
Cobb in 1990, tells a very different story. When some of the “bads,” such as
pollution, depletion of non-renewable resources and car exhaust-related health
costs are factored in, a radically different picture of the economy emerges. The
US, German and UK economies all show no improvement in economic welfare since the
1970s. In fact, economic welfare levels off and starts falling dramatically in
each country.
The ISEW (and other economic progress indicators developed since) expose the
expansionists as a bunch of eager beavers without a well-considered business plan
-- pseudo scientists urging the world ahead before they themselves have clear
bearings. Neoclassical economists cling to their mathematical models like
children clinging to their teddy bears. They operate in a kind of academic
isolation that does not acknowledge the effects of their policies on real people.
They see data, not lives. Their world is the world of “revealed preferences” and
“rational expectations,” of “perfectly voluntary exchange” and “negative
externalities” that can be dismissed. Their world is not our world. Their world
does not exist.
“The difference between science and economics,” says F.E. Banks in Truth and
Economics, “is that science aims at an understanding of the behaviour of nature,
while economics is involved with an understanding of models -- and many of these
models have no relation to any state of nature that has ever existed on this
planet, or any that is likely to exist between now and doomsday. The word that
comes to mind when confronted by these fantasies is fraud.”
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