The real question to my mind is what, if anything, can be done about it? Hey, I'm just pointing it out. I didn't say I could fix it.
At a guess, increase the banks reserve ratio from around 5% to 100% at say 1-2% a year and print/spend replacement cash instead. However you have massive political obstacles to overcome, the primary one the politicians being in bed with the bankers. You have to get people to realise they're in a trap for a start.
An excellent plan I admit, but you've forgotten one crucial factor...
Politicians
The US is 8 trillion dollars in debt. That means they spent all the money you had, and then just kept on spending... 8 trillion times. Do you believe for a second that they could leave 1 trillion alone for nuclear waste disposal? The odds at eight trillion to one are not good.
So... Why don't you just chuck it into a volcano? It isn't as if the things aren't already spewing all sorts of radioactive crap out anyway.
Question for you, since pronunciations change, should spelling change too? Yes. Or insist on standardised pronunciation which makes sense with the spelling.
Funnily enough we do all three in english. We have crap spelling to start with, we have changing pronunciation and the grammar nazis insist that there's some sort of standardised version of english. As a language it's a complete mess.
This has massive benefits for advanced literacy, as it means you actually know more words than you think you do, and can quite accurately guess at the meaning of new words you encounter Do you imagine that you can't do things like this in languages like German which have consistent spelling and grammar?
That sounds to me like a recipe for high inflation. After all, the only thing that causes inflation, is inflation: things get more expensive so people demand a pay rise, and then having to pay workers more makes things get more expensive.
Actually not. Money, is a commodity.
It acts just like any other commodity. If there's too much coffee, the value decreases. Money works in exactly the same way. Inflation can only occur if there's too much money in the economy, the value of the individual dollar/pound/euro decreases and everything else appears to increase in cost. All that's happening is that the currency is devaluing, which you then see on the currency markets as well.
The dirty little (non) secret of our current monetary system is two fold. First, "the national debt" and second "fractional reserve banking".
The first point is that the government and central bankers create money from nothing and create a national IOU to balance it. The government borrows money from the bankers and they write down this debt and demand interest on it. The money has been borrowed into existence. This money is then paid to government employees, contractors, suppliers etc where it enters the economy.
The second stage of this is the fractional reserve banking system. This is perhaps the biggest scam ever created. The fractional reserve banking system allows commercial banks to loan out to people more money than they have in reserve. Hence "fractional reserve" Typically they can loan out up to 20 times more than they have in deposits. That is they only have to have on hand about 5% on average of what they are allowed to loan out.
So this money comes from the government national debt, into the economy, lands in the banks deposit accounts and is then multiplied about 19 times as loans. 95% + 95% of that 95% and so on till it reaches 0. It's a recipe for creating both massive debt and massive inflation.
Which the central banks and government attempt to control using the base interest rates. Essentially what it does is divide society into the creditors and the debtors. Every dollar that someone owns is one dollar's worth of debt, owed by someone else. There are other implications also with constantly and repeatedly paying 5% interest on money.
1. The bankers will ultimately be the sole and inevitable owners of everything. They set the rules of the game years ago.
2. Everyone has to work an extra 5% harder each year for their cash, because they have to try to pay this debt. This has implications for everyone and everything. All businesses, taxpayers must constantly expand their efforts by that 5% every year to service this interest. Think about it. This is an exponential increase. 100%, 105%, 110¼%, 115¾%, 121½% and we have to try to keep up. It explains why capitalism has become so rapacious. The debts have to be serviced and to even pretend to do so requires an exponential increase in the economy.
3. The debt can never actually be paid. There isn't enough money in existence to pay of the debt, ever. Because of the interest on the initial creation of the money. You borrow $100 into existence but owe $105 at the end of the year, the extra $5 doesn't actually exist, it was never created, so you borrow some more. And so we divide into the people who have managed to pay the debt and people who are saddled with mounting levels which are literally impossible to pay.
It didn't used to be this way. A trade used to mean that two people exchanged something of value. A chicken for a duck. Both of them benefitted. Even when money came along, it still meant that both parties benefitted, they were exchanging items they valued more, a chicken for a dollar, it wasn't required for someone somewhere to lose out. That all changed during the last century. Our money became debt based. Every dollar/pound/euro/yen/yuan required a debt, paying interest to the bankers, interest on money they created from nothing.
It's not exactly off topic. Money's like the ocean which touches everthing, it's like air, it's everywhere. The reason we have debt based money is so we can create and export debt to people. We can make sure they are in our service for years, decades. It means we can get them to do all sorts of onerous tasks for literally nothing. Cleaning up our rubbish is just one of them, manning our burger joints and working in sweatshops are others. If money wasn't based on debt we wouldn't be able to do this anything like as effectively, people would be able to build capital rather than constantly chase after the black.
Sorry, had to come clean eventually. Yeah, but you didn't, did you. You're just a miserable coward.
Nah. They change the word to fit their rather bizarre grammar and spelling. Germanise it. Unlike the French, who instead promptly riot, claim it's[1] cultural imperialism and simply refuse to speak the word which has no name.
[1] Oh yeah. Then there's the apostrophe wars. I forgot about that aspect of English. Oh, and I before E except after C. I still hear that in my head every time I see the word "received". WTF were they thinking.
I pay several hundred pounds a year to have my garbage dumped in a landfill. They should be buying it from me, recycling and selling it. I'd then have a pretty bloody good incentive for sorting the stuff before it goes out.
The problem with english is that spelling is completely illogical, fixed and used to define the pronunciation of a word. It leaves huge ambiguity over the pronunciation of words which you are unfamiliar with. Every child has to deal with this bullshit as they are indoctrinated at school.
In other languages, there isn't such a problem. The letters have specific sounds and the spelling can be used to reconstruct the pronunciation of the words. See a new word in German for example, you can pronounce it pretty much correctly without having heard someone speak it first.
Please note Its been awhile since I heard that story, but I think the point is pretty clear. That Boeing execs care more about publicity than they do about engineering rigour or passengers.
This is the truth for anyone who wants to make a name for themselves. 90% are forgotten within their own lifetime. 90% of the remaining are forgotten within a generation. Rinse and repeat until we have just a few names from history.
It'd be nice if you had an electoral system where they weren't inevitably going to be insignificant, but you do. First Past the Post collapses to the biggest two parties, leaving you with one dimensional politics.
Well, imagine the machine can guarantee that someone's lying or telling what they believe to be the truth to a high degree of accuracy. If the police offer it to you freely to exonerate yourself and you refuse (as is your right) then you instantly become the suspect. They're going to take a good long look at your behaviour and movements.
It would have the additional benefit of cutting police time by eliminating red herrings.
There's a scanner which can monitor brain activity realtime, depending on which areas light up, police can tell if you're lying or not. They don't even have to ask any questions, simply present evidence to you and watch what your brain does.
Slashdot Mirror
Except the government are buying shit they can't afford, on your behalf. Every American owes something like 20 thousand dollars.
At a guess, increase the banks reserve ratio from around 5% to 100% at say 1-2% a year and print/spend replacement cash instead. However you have massive political obstacles to overcome, the primary one the politicians being in bed with the bankers. You have to get people to realise they're in a trap for a start.
Well, the exponent is small and it's not e^n obviously, but it is exponential. You know, give it 100 years and all of a sudden you owe 8 trillion.
An excellent plan I admit, but you've forgotten one crucial factor...
Politicians
The US is 8 trillion dollars in debt. That means they spent all the money you had, and then just kept on spending... 8 trillion times. Do you believe for a second that they could leave 1 trillion alone for nuclear waste disposal? The odds at eight trillion to one are not good.
So... Why don't you just chuck it into a volcano? It isn't as if the things aren't already spewing all sorts of radioactive crap out anyway.
Funnily enough we do all three in english. We have crap spelling to start with, we have changing pronunciation and the grammar nazis insist that there's some sort of standardised version of english. As a language it's a complete mess.
That sounds to me like a recipe for high inflation. After all, the only thing that causes inflation, is inflation: things get more expensive so people demand a pay rise, and then having to pay workers more makes things get more expensive.
Actually not. Money, is a commodity.
It acts just like any other commodity. If there's too much coffee, the value decreases. Money works in exactly the same way. Inflation can only occur if there's too much money in the economy, the value of the individual dollar/pound/euro decreases and everything else appears to increase in cost. All that's happening is that the currency is devaluing, which you then see on the currency markets as well.
The dirty little (non) secret of our current monetary system is two fold. First, "the national debt" and second "fractional reserve banking".
The first point is that the government and central bankers create money from nothing and create a national IOU to balance it. The government borrows money from the bankers and they write down this debt and demand interest on it. The money has been borrowed into existence. This money is then paid to government employees, contractors, suppliers etc where it enters the economy.
The second stage of this is the fractional reserve banking system. This is perhaps the biggest scam ever created. The fractional reserve banking system allows commercial banks to loan out to people more money than they have in reserve. Hence "fractional reserve" Typically they can loan out up to 20 times more than they have in deposits. That is they only have to have on hand about 5% on average of what they are allowed to loan out.
So this money comes from the government national debt, into the economy, lands in the banks deposit accounts and is then multiplied about 19 times as loans. 95% + 95% of that 95% and so on till it reaches 0. It's a recipe for creating both massive debt and massive inflation.
Which the central banks and government attempt to control using the base interest rates. Essentially what it does is divide society into the creditors and the debtors. Every dollar that someone owns is one dollar's worth of debt, owed by someone else. There are other implications also with constantly and repeatedly paying 5% interest on money.
1. The bankers will ultimately be the sole and inevitable owners of everything. They set the rules of the game years ago.
2. Everyone has to work an extra 5% harder each year for their cash, because they have to try to pay this debt. This has implications for everyone and everything. All businesses, taxpayers must constantly expand their efforts by that 5% every year to service this interest. Think about it. This is an exponential increase. 100%, 105%, 110¼%, 115¾%, 121½% and we have to try to keep up. It explains why capitalism has become so rapacious. The debts have to be serviced and to even pretend to do so requires an exponential increase in the economy.
3. The debt can never actually be paid. There isn't enough money in existence to pay of the debt, ever. Because of the interest on the initial creation of the money. You borrow $100 into existence but owe $105 at the end of the year, the extra $5 doesn't actually exist, it was never created, so you borrow some more. And so we divide into the people who have managed to pay the debt and people who are saddled with mounting levels which are literally impossible to pay.
It didn't used to be this way. A trade used to mean that two people exchanged something of value. A chicken for a duck. Both of them benefitted. Even when money came along, it still meant that both parties benefitted, they were exchanging items they valued more, a chicken for a dollar, it wasn't required for someone somewhere to lose out. That all changed during the last century. Our money became debt based. Every dollar/pound/euro/yen/yuan required a debt, paying interest to the bankers, interest on money they created from nothing.
It can actually be narr
Unless it turns garbage into hand cut hay for our agrarian future, it's the spawn of the technological devil we've all sold our souls to.
Nah. They change the word to fit their rather bizarre grammar and spelling. Germanise it. Unlike the French, who instead promptly riot, claim it's[1] cultural imperialism and simply refuse to speak the word which has no name.
[1] Oh yeah. Then there's the apostrophe wars. I forgot about that aspect of English. Oh, and I before E except after C. I still hear that in my head every time I see the word "received". WTF were they thinking.
Indeed. Clearly modded by someone who has no clue how money really works.
I pay several hundred pounds a year to have my garbage dumped in a landfill. They should be buying it from me, recycling and selling it. I'd then have a pretty bloody good incentive for sorting the stuff before it goes out.
It shouldn't define it.
The problem with english is that spelling is completely illogical, fixed and used to define the pronunciation of a word. It leaves huge ambiguity over the pronunciation of words which you are unfamiliar with. Every child has to deal with this bullshit as they are indoctrinated at school.
In other languages, there isn't such a problem. The letters have specific sounds and the spelling can be used to reconstruct the pronunciation of the words. See a new word in German for example, you can pronounce it pretty much correctly without having heard someone speak it first.
No, really. Look at the ridiculously small mmcmicro and transflash camera cards that are around now. 512 Mb on a card ¼ the size of a postage stamp.
Problems on other carbon fibre structures.
So if you don't break it, how do you know for sure when it will break? Sure there's simulation, but that's... simulation.
This is the truth for anyone who wants to make a name for themselves. 90% are forgotten within their own lifetime. 90% of the remaining are forgotten within a generation. Rinse and repeat until we have just a few names from history.
It'd be nice if you had an electoral system where they weren't inevitably going to be insignificant, but you do. First Past the Post collapses to the biggest two parties, leaving you with one dimensional politics.
Well, imagine the machine can guarantee that someone's lying or telling what they believe to be the truth to a high degree of accuracy. If the police offer it to you freely to exonerate yourself and you refuse (as is your right) then you instantly become the suspect. They're going to take a good long look at your behaviour and movements.
It would have the additional benefit of cutting police time by eliminating red herrings.
lying:
1. a false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive; an intentional untruth; a falsehood.
It doesn't make any claims about determining truth. Now *that* is the philosophical question you were talking about.
There's a scanner which can monitor brain activity realtime, depending on which areas light up, police can tell if you're lying or not. They don't even have to ask any questions, simply present evidence to you and watch what your brain does.
m l
e.g.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.01/lying.ht
As a geek who's been falsely accused, I'm sure he'd be happy to submit to such a scan. Additional evidence for his defence lawyer.
Working out the reality is clearly a challenge.
Of course, divorce court just makes people imagine the worst about one another.
man fuser
man lsof
hth