Quinny wrote:I was looking at some debt figures the other day, and asked myself how much debt is actually cancelled out by a contra transaction?
What if netted out there was zero debt? Other more direct World order and PO related questions spring to mind as well.
Alfred Tennyson wrote:We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Tanada wrote:Quinny wrote:I was looking at some debt figures the other day, and asked myself how much debt is actually cancelled out by a contra transaction?
What if netted out there was zero debt? Other more direct World order and PO related questions spring to mind as well.
Debt is to the economy what fertilizer is to a field of crops. A little bit can stimulate growth and produce a healthy bountiful result, but too much acts like a poison killing the soil and making the future crop totally dependent on further fertilizer stimulation. Debt is like that for the economy in that a small amount paid off annually can act like a stimulant making it easier to pay off the incurred debt load, however once you accumulate too much debt your economic system becomes dependent upon it to maintain function.
Tanada wrote:Fiat currencies are a whole different ball of string because they grow or (rarely) shrink by fiat, the will of the government issuing them and they shift from representing wealth to representing debt. If every American in the country were to simply take one dollar bill out of their pocket and burn it today that would decrease the money supply by say $200,000,000.00 In theory this would shrink the money supply by an equal amount and increase the value of the remaining money by a small percentage. However the ability to do this is almost eliminated by the fact that in our current culture about 99% of money is actually in the form of a digital illusion, just numbers in a bank ledger without even a paper dollar of physical substance to give it meaning.
Quinny wrote:how much debt is actually cancelled out by a contra transaction?
Outcast_Searcher wrote:Tanada wrote:Fiat currencies are a whole different ball of string because they grow or (rarely) shrink by fiat, the will of the government issuing them and they shift from representing wealth to representing debt. If every American in the country were to simply take one dollar bill out of their pocket and burn it today that would decrease the money supply by say $200,000,000.00 In theory this would shrink the money supply by an equal amount and increase the value of the remaining money by a small percentage. However the ability to do this is almost eliminated by the fact that in our current culture about 99% of money is actually in the form of a digital illusion, just numbers in a bank ledger without even a paper dollar of physical substance to give it meaning.
For a currency which isn't based on some objective standard which can't be inflated, how much "meaning" can it have?
Once the US closed the gold window (no longer allowing paper dollars to be redeemed for gold), for example -- the dollar is no longer tied to anything except politicians promises and peoples' confidence.
So once that happens, I don't understand how paper dollars (which are intrinsicially worth almost nothing) are anything to feel better about than bank ledgers. Either the politicians running things can be trusted not to misbehave, or not.
At least, gold (or diamonds, or something with tangible, objective value based on scarcity) can't be inflated away at the whim of politicians. And, virtually all paper currencies get destroyed by inflation over time. (I don't think digitical currencies will be any different. Blockchain or not -- they can always invent many, many more).
Alfred Tennyson wrote:We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Drawn from the Old Testament book of Deuteronomy, the concept derives from the biblical injunction for a day of rest one day out of every week, a “sabbath” day that reflects the teaching the God rested on the seventh day after creating the world in six.
There is another injunction for a sabbath year every seventh year, in which people are to not work, and on the year after the seventh of those sabbatical years , i.e. the 50th, (one year after the 49th) there would be a jubilee year during which any slaves would be emancipated and everyone would return to their land and family to live off of natural providence. A clear implication of this teaching is that all obligations, including debt obligations, would be forgiven in the process.
https://theconversation.com/the-debt-ju ... isis-11816
GHung wrote:Since the idea of a "jubilee" goes back at least as far as the old testament, It's clear that societies, economies, and religions understood the need for a reset of things.
. . . . How these resets play out varies, but I posit that our current global system, especially with the use of technology, is over-leveraged to an extraordinary extent and will have an unprecedented reset (which is normally an attempt at rebalancing things), and fear that our level of overshoot (out-of-balance condition) relative to the carrying capacity of our environment, will force a reset of all of our societal systems. We don't have any wiggle room and are running out of planet to exploit. Not nearly enough lifeboats.
kanon wrote: Debt is not the same as money, but the two are often intertwined as they are in the FED system. So, under the FED system, if there was zero debt, there would be zero money.
onlooker wrote:I agree with Ghung in that we are tremendously overleveraged.
.......
........... In order to realize this Zero debt proposal, we would have to completely eradicate the current system and install another without lending if possible. And if not possible, the lending would be asset/resource based so that willy nilly lending could not start up again and loans would be issued consistent with the true worth of assets of both creditor and debtor.
mmasters wrote:If there was no debt there would be no money. Money is manufactured by the debt people accept and the fact people are willing to work for it.
vtsnowedin wrote:mmasters wrote:If there was no debt there would be no money. Money is manufactured by the debt people accept and the fact people are willing to work for it.
No. If I sell you a cord of wood I'll accept $275 in cash from you for it and you need not have borrowed that $275 from the bank and I will not have borrowed any money to cut and split the wood.
mmasters wrote:vtsnowedin wrote:mmasters wrote:If there was no debt there would be no money. Money is manufactured by the debt people accept and the fact people are willing to work for it.
No. If I sell you a cord of wood I'll accept $275 in cash from you for it and you need not have borrowed that $275 from the bank and I will not have borrowed any money to cut and split the wood.
That's money in the system. The foundation of it is debt.
vtsnowedin wrote:kanon wrote: Debt is not the same as money, but the two are often intertwined as they are in the FED system. So, under the FED system, if there was zero debt, there would be zero money.
I'm not buying that. (No pun intended).
If there was zero debt would all the land , houses, factories, automobiles and ships on the seas cease to exist? No of course not. Debt is just the amount you owe balanced against the value of the assets you own. Money is just the medium of exchange that lets you determine how many units of say hamburger it takes to buy a car or how many of your hours of labor it takes to buy this weeks groceries.
Having zero debt is a good thing be it on a personal or national level.
On a personal level it means all your physical assets are fully paid for and all you income can be directed to savings or current purchases and expenses (including taxes) free of interest charges.
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