Can we live without the global banking system?
Unfortunately, Russia is wrong, we are still a uni-polar world, sad but true. In order to change that we must destroy the old and build the new, starting with the world banking system. Yes, you heard correctly. The US controlled banking system defines our world, it controls the movement of money and the maneuverability of national economies, it's what makes Western imposed sanctions so effective and it's what makes Russian imposed sanctions farcical and ineffective. I am personally all for destroying the global banking system, it's corrupt and elitist and bankers (bank owners) clearly have more power than governments and are effectively above the law, so maybe the whole system should go. Actually, its not as easy as all that.
The industrial revolution was the beginning of a boon for banks, at least it was an opportunity, it produced a working class of wage earners who would in theory put their money in banks, use that money sparingly and judiciously, save as much of it as they can, leave it in bank vaults to earn interest and for the banks to use to make even more money. Of course that didn't happen exactly as planned. Wage earners usually have nothing to spare, what they earn they spend on boring stuff like food and rent. So banks hatched a plan: 'What if we place the golden carrot just out of reach of the 'masses of asses' and have them keep running to catch it all the while the asses actually drive the economy and make the banks a tidy profit in the process.' It was a Eureka moment! The banks get rich and powerful and the asses get to die penniless, put out to pasture, forgotten and abandoned.
Like most drug addicts, enough is not a recognizable word to consumers when it comes to money, and the drug pushers love that. We need them and we can't do without them. We're trapped. Or are we?
We do have a way out we just don't have the courage to take it. I am not talking down to anyone here, I'm one of you, I don't have the courage to take that path either, I'm just as trapped as the rest of you are. But, what's the harm of theorizing, of thinking out loud, proposing interesting ideas, some old, some a little newer, nothing really original just an organization of thoughts. To do this we must first try to simplify things a little.
Most households today are composed of two wage earners, a man and a woman and their children, gone are the days of the extended family that shared in the living expenses and the chores. The word chore comes from an agrarian dictionary in fact, its a word used a lot by Americans, especially when referring to punishments parents dole out to their kids when they step out of line. Its hardly surprising since America was once an agrarian society. Today, we still work, most of us not in fields, we still get compensated for our labor, some more fairly than others some less, and we all buy goods we need for life. The difference is that in a post industrial world we do not individually make a finished product that we exchange for another finished product we need, we are just one link in a chain of people who contribute to the making of a finished product. This makes it harder to determine who did more than the other in contributing to the finished product which is the real store of value, the good. That good is exchanged for another good. It's a concept familiar to the earliest European visitors to American shores, who exchanged glass beads for tracts of tribal Indian land!
Perhaps the few who still do produce a finished product from beginning to end that has a high value that people are prepared to pay for are artists and authors whose work is itself of value as it is, but even there you still need an art dealer, a gallery owner and art critics to get your work to market. Authors too need an editor and a publisher, a publisher needs a printing establishment to print the book, the printer needs the paper maker, and the paper maker needs the producers of sustainable farmed trees to make paper. So, we clearly live in a more complicated world than our agrarian ancestors and this complication is somethings banks thrive on because at every stage of production of a product banks are involved, they finance enterprises and lend to the various businesses along the chain and earn a sizable cut at every stage.
Banks and their activities are like the foam on the surface of a pot of boiling milk, the foam doubles the quantity of milk but only when the milk is boiling over. Once the heat is turned off the milk settles. And foam is essentially made up of thousands of trapped pockets of air, air bubbles. That's what happened in the US when the economy cooled to just lukewarm, the bottom fell out of the real estate market and all the bubbles burst! A wise man once said that the best way to double your money is to fold it.
There was a time when wage earners went to accounting at the end of every month to get their wages, usually a cheque or cash in an envelope that the wage earner could take home and spend as he/she pleases. Today, most companies insist salaries are paid straight into employees' bank accounts, which is well and good, it's certainly safer. An employee then gets a shiny new ATM card that he/she uses with glee to get cash from a machine on a wall. Perfectly innocuous so far, but now the banks have a slew of new customers that they can sell their products and services to and get them addicted to easy money, credit cards, personal loans and a host of tempting offers.
Its true we can't imagine our world without banks and the services they offer, but the question here is rather can we imagine a better world without banks that we might want to work towards, to make a real effort, sacrifice all that is familiar and comforting for us to achieve that better world? I leave it to each of you.
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