money as debt

[Kebsis]

Hi everyone. I recently saw this video, entitled Money as Debt. It's an interesting video, imo, about the history and nature of modern-day banking that I won't attempt to sum up here, since I probably will screw something up about it.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...74362583451279

It seems to make sense, although it gets a tad on the conspiracy theory side towards the end, not too much but enough to make me a lil uncomfortable. I was wondering if anyone who watches it may know more about the subject than I.

Of course the video is about 50 minutes long, but it is very interesting if you have the time to view it.

[Gruesome]

Sadly, the video seems quite accurate.

Also see NORTZ v. UNITED STATES, 294 U.S. 317 (1935).

[Kebsis]

Very interesting. However the video seems to be implying some kind of impending, society destroying collapse of our economic system.

[Delvo]

Well, it is designed to pander to alarmists & conspiracy theorists of a particular political stripe, so what you just said is pretty much the thing's whole point. The first time I saw it, I observed a long list of cases of bad logic, assigning hyperemotional descriptions to mundane or irrelevant things, and such, but I didn't write it all down and don't have a working computer at home right now...

[mike alexander]

I don't have the time to watch, so my own contribution is pretty much worthless. As I see it, money is a general-purpose IOU. It has no intrinsic value. The old phrase 'medium of exchange' seems to define it pretty well; the boson of commerce.

[Argos]

the boson of commerce.

Virtually...

[Delvo]

As I see it, money is a general-purpose IOU. It has no intrinsic value. The old phrase 'medium of exchange' seems to define it pretty well; the boson of commerce.

The central point of the video is to treat that as a big dire problem, a conspiracy cooked up by bankers pretending to have more gold in the vaults than they really had, as if money somehow must have its own inherent value (as something other than money) in order to be "real". The problem is that if it did have its own value, it would be a barter good like anything else, and "money" is a different concept from barter goods, one which MUST be merely representational in order to do what it does and be what it is. The makers of the video either don't get, or count on their audiences not getting, the nature of the evolution from barter economies through gold-coin-cash economies to economies with units of money as simply universally applicable units of measurement & quantity description, like inches or grams. (The easiest way to expose that is to notice that the gold items which the video insists are the only "real" form of money had already, for millennia, been merely symbolic rather than practical items anyway, to anybody who didn't have the equipment or skills to make anything else out of them; they could only yield a gain for most of their carriers when traded for something else, not by direct use, so they would, just like "phantom money", have no value other than what other people say they have.)

The video does have a point about economies' apparent dependence on growth (seeming to need a constantly increasing population and resource consumption rate, and to go awry when those fail to keep increasing), but it buries it under, and tries to connect it to, the whole "money isn't real!" conspiracy, instead of letting the growth issue stand on its own.

[Onlooker]

It\'s all true, money has no intrinsic value and is therefore worthless. Send me all your worthless money, and I\'ll get rid of it for you.

[Neverfly]

It\'s all true, money has no intrinsic value and is therefore worthless. Send me all your worthless money, and I\'ll get rid of it for you.

Ahhhh! Richard Hoagland! I am glad you have decided to join us over here on BAUT...

If you could be so kind- I have a long list of questions...

[Onlooker]

Ahhhh! Richard Hoagland! I am glad you have decided to join us over here on BAUT...

If you could be so kind- I have a long list of questions...

Sure, I can be Richard Hoagland. Ask away.

[Neverfly]

Sure, I can be Richard Hoagland. Ask away.

Nahh... I lost interest...


Now I'm off to see if I can get a date with Nancy Leider.

[HenrikOlsen]

Reminds me of the way the Spanish completely ruined their economy by importing shiploads of gold from the Americas.

Thinking money has value above that of being an agreed upon unit of exchange is a way to get a country's economy really messed up.

Had they imported something of actual values such as potatoes they would probably have been much better off.

[Ronald Brak]

One somewhat interesting suggestion is that the industrial revolution occurred in Europe, and not somewhere sensible, was because inflation resulting from Spanish gold and silver from the new world spurred the European economy.

[Kebsis]

What do you mean by 'not somewhere sensible'?

[Ronald Brak]

What do you mean by 'not somewhere sensible'?

Somewhere you'd expect. Travel back 500 years and you probably wouldn't pick England as the first place on the planet to industrialize. China, India, or the Middle-East would probably look more likely. But from roughly that point on Europe seemed to pull ahead of the pack.

[novaderrik]

The central point of the video is to treat that as a big dire problem, a conspiracy cooked up by bankers pretending to have more gold in the vaults than they really had, as if money somehow must have its own inherent value (as something other than money) in order to be "real". The problem is that if it did have its own value, it would be a barter good like anything else, and "money" is a different concept from barter goods, one which MUST be merely representational in order to do what it does and be what it is. The makers of the video either don't get, or count on their audiences not getting, the nature of the evolution from barter economies through gold-coin-cash economies to economies with units of money as simply universally applicable units of measurement & quantity description, like inches or grams. (The easiest way to expose that is to notice that the gold items which the video insists are the only "real" form of money had already, for millennia, been merely symbolic rather than practical items anyway, to anybody who didn't have the equipment or skills to make anything else out of them; they could only yield a gain for most of their carriers when traded for something else, not by direct use, so they would, just like "phantom money", have no value other than what other people say they have.)

The video does have a point about economies' apparent dependence on growth (seeming to need a constantly increasing population and resource consumption rate, and to go awry when those fail to keep increasing), but it buries it under, and tries to connect it to, the whole "money isn't real!" conspiracy, instead of letting the growth issue stand on its own.

but money IS traded as a commodity on the world market. for example, every time the USA wants to spend some massive amount of money on something that isn't exactly politically popular- thus the leaders don't have the political will to raise taxes or cut other spending to actually "pay" for it- they borrow the money from whoever wants to buy some bonds. lately, this has been mostly other countries that have been buying up huge chunks of US currency- usually China and the countries of the middle east. eventually, they are going to want to "cash in" those bonds, which will result in devaluation of the dollar- otherwise called inflation. lately, those countries that have been buying up our dollars on the world markets have been switching over to Euros. so, in other words, they have bought about as much of the USA as they dare to buy, and are now buying Europe piece by piece.