What Will Replace the Present System

Here is how I describe our present system:

Our means of exchange for goods and services rendered is created by bankers doing nothing to earn their living, by simply creating loans of digital money which has never been earned, on a computer screen, and getting the borrower to agree to pay interest. The borrower in that exchange is the only person who works for a living. The banker does not work; the banker collects interest for doing nothing.

Hopefully, this system will end.

And I guess what replaces it will evolve in local communities worldwide.

I'm interested in members' input on what they see happening in communities already.

Are communities successfully bypassing the system?

Much as you would like to think otherwise, even if your most un-favorite bank goes away, interest will still be a part of the culture, as it has been for thousands of years. If you need to borrow money, whomever you borrow it from will expect a return on investment to compensate for you using the funds instead of him. The same is true if you are the one with funds to invest. You will expect a return on your investment. The ONLY way to stop this is to never buy anything you cannot afford. To a large extent that depends on the marketplace of goods you want to buy. And it depends on everyone cooperating with that point of view. So where you may decide that you will NEVER pay interest, your neighbor is not going to see it that way. And unless you are going to physically restrain him, he's going to want to do it his way. And if more than one neighbor wants to do it, you have banks as the broker to manage it all. These are basic facts of human nature you cannot change without a dictatorship.

Now, in the present time we are faced with an increasing reliance on electronic money. And this brings banks even more into our lives because they get a cut of every single transaction made. It is increasingly more difficult to use cash--or even checks--to handle transactions. You can try to confine yourself to cash, but the problem there is that it is a fiat currency with no inherent value at all. So you're left with barter. What do you have that is of value to me in exchange for something I have that you want? Anything? I mean, you do produce something, right? Or you have a skill that I could use. If you have neither, then surely you don't expect me to pay for you to live.

So that means the only way you can find the "pure" society you want is via a small communal existence isolated from the mainstream, or the complete and utter destruction of the mainstream, an "asteroid hits the Earth" type of destruction that destroys the entire infrastructure of society and eliminates it. If that were to happen you might be able to live in your preferred world for a small window of time before things, including banks, got started up again. Or you could move to some place like Somalia where the breakdown of society is almost complete.

Good luck.

a reply to: ConnectDots

WROL followed by a Tyranny / Dictatorship

(See: Venezuela)

a reply to: ConnectDots

The banker does not work; the banker collects interest for doing nothing.

Banks invented money. Before currency, exchange of goods and services was just change of goods and services between private parties. Bankers interjected themselves between the source of goods and the consumer, the source of services and receiver. Theres no need for money to change hands, the people that wrote "only congress shall have the power to coin money and determine its value" in the constitution, did that for a specific reason.

They already knew from history how common peoples worth becomes hijacked by the money changers.

a reply to: schuyler

I have no objection to interest per se.

What I think might be good is for the government to create money to loan to people who have good ideas for start up businesses, and to charge interest on the loans, which will then be used to issue more loans to more start up businesses.

It's okay for the government to create money for that purpose, in my opinion.

originally posted by: ConnectDots
a reply to: schuyler

I have no objection to interest per se.

What I think might be good is for the government to create money to loan to people who have good ideas for start up businesses, and to charge interest on the loans, which will then be used to issue more loans to more start up businesses.

It's okay for the government to create money for that purpose, in my opinion.

Create money?

that simply devalues money.

And how can the government decide what is good and bad idea? all ideas may have a chance to be fantastic or a money pit. Government has to be equal, so they cant simply decide. This is why a private bank is valueable..they will sit and decide if something is a good or bad idea and invest based on the risk v potential

a reply to: SaturnFX

I think created money only devalues money if the money supply does not represent human energy having been expended to earn the money.

I think the government is in a better position than a private bank is to make the decision about the credit-worthiness of loan applicants, because the government is in the business (when it's not corrupt) of preserving the public good, whereas a private bank is not.

As long as people keep calling other systems communism. We will forever be stuck in a corporate system. So probably nothing. The great trick since companies rose from the old British Empire.

a reply to: ConnectDots

Cycles, dear. The Old one will.

Check out Rollerball. Corporations replace governments as the power brokers. We are well on our way.

a reply to: ConnectDots

I think this FORUM NAME itself is a pretty good description: a GLOBAL MELTDOWN

a reply to: ConnectDots

This may speak volumes in saying what might be coming .

Gold, Guns, and Groceries

We will have food synthesizers and there will be plenty for all. There will be no hate or war or killing. People will do as they will and create beautiful music and art which will be enjoyed by all.

peace

originally posted by: ConnectDots
What I think might be good is for the government to create money to loan to people who have good ideas for start up businesses, and to charge interest on the loans, which will then be used to issue more loans to more start up businesses.

In the United States, in the state of Utah, there is a bank that is owned by the state government which makes loans. The interest earned on them is state revenue.

Of course, the state of Utah cannot create money as I'm suggesting, but apparently a state-owned bank works well for the citizens of that state.

Ellen Brown, author of the book Web of Debt, is an advocate for public banking. There is an organization called the Public Banking Institute for that purpose.

Here is an interview of her:

a reply to: ConnectDots

Our current system is the result of several monetary evolutions. The next big step is probably going to involve something like what cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin has tried to create where the currency is directly backed by the cost of creating that currency, and payment processing generates revenue rather than costs money.

That will create a much higher volume of transactions than we currently have.

I also have a theory that one of the big revolutions that will happen within the next 50 years is that simply the act of needing something will be monetized. The desire for consumption itself is a marketable commodity worth paying for (subsidizing) as it drives job creation, this will probably happen alongside pushing for higher volumes of transactions.

originally posted by: intrepid
Check out Rollerball. Corporations replace governments as the power brokers. We are well on our way.

Yes. I agree. Already done. And we're extremely close to the formal transition, which is when there's no effort to maintain the pretence that things are otherwise. [Note to self: Watch Rollerball again. How did I miss that bit?]

So how will that play? Walmart against Exxon? McDonalds against Halliburton? Will the competition be real? Or just same ol' same ol'?

I recall reading recently that the world’s top 100(?) corporations (excluding banks) already have more wealth than every nation in the world combined. [Sourced from Forbes Fortune 500 and the CIA Fact Book.]

From Foreign Policy, March, 2016.

These 25 Companies Are More Powerful Than Many Countries

Going stateless to maximize profits, multinational companies are vying with governments for global power. Who is winning?

Welcome to the age of metanationals: companies that, like Accenture, are effectively stateless. When business and strategy experts Yves Doz, José Santos, and Peter Williamson coined the term in a 2001 book, metanationals were an emerging phenomenon, a divergence from the tradition of corporations taking pride in their national roots. (In the 1950s, General Motors President Charles Wilson famously said, “What was good for our country was good for General Motors, and vice versa.”) Today, the severing of state lifelines has become business as usual.

ExxonMobil, Unilever, BlackRock, HSBC, DHL, Visa—these companies all choose locations for personnel, factories, executive suites, or bank accounts based on where regulations are friendly, resources abundant, and connectivity seamless. Clever metanationals often have legal domicile in one country, corporate management in another, financial assets in a third, and administrative staff spread over several more. Some of the largest American-born firms — GE, IBM, Microsoft, to name a few — collectively are holding trillions of dollars tax-free offshore by having revenues from overseas markets paid to holding companies incorporated in Switzerland, Luxembourg, the Cayman Islands, or Singapore. In a nice illustration of the tension this trend creates with policymakers, some observers have dubbed the money “stateless income,” while U.S. President Barack Obama has called the companies hoarding it America’s “corporate deserters.” …

Wandering bands of warriors, each with a different resource to provide, battling on the roads to survive.

Also - robots and automation are already replacing people in every sphere - unskilled, skilled and professional - from construction workers to teachers, caregivers, salespeople, accountants and lawyers. ...Once that transition is completed, what will people do? What will be the economic base (besides asteroid mining)?

...Looks to me the time line is getting really short. ...Anyone?

a reply to: ConnectDots

People will always figure out ways to make a buck off of doing as little work as possible. Funnily enough though, you accuse bankers of doing no work yet they stay in the office very late everyday doing this "no work".

Instead of tearing this system down, we should regulate it better. The problem we have with it is that we allowed the government to deregulate the banks in the 80's and are now paying the price for it.