Counterpoint

I need to preface this post with some explanation. My son is 30-ish, and does not fit into any ideological pigeon hole. I have called him libertarian (small l) at times and a communist at others. We have been having this discussion off and on over several years. I have invited him to post here. Alas, I have only his permission to repost with editorial rights. This is not something I believe you will find on your typical political/ideological blog. It is really interesting!

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Okay, I finally got through a fair portion of this. I'm just going to say that I never believed in borrowing money from entities who loaned for profit. It just didn't seem plausible. The assumptions never worked for me. Wages are decided principally by what employees need to survive in a manner they can accept.

When banks loan money to those same individuals, they enter into direct competition with their employers. Inflation goes up by three to five percent annually, wages run behind at one and a half percent. The entities who loan for profit are looking to get the same fifteen percent profit all companies need. This necessitates the passing around of an unnatural deficit like a hot potato. While everyone who wants to engage the individual consumer will have to touch it, they need to be sure it doesn't remain on the books long enough to permanently scar their efforts. Before this concept became the norm, companies were careful to provide products that people could buy with actual money they had saved. Not so much anymore. The potatoes are becoming more numerous and exponentially hotter.

I believe the only way to get out of this mess will be the gradual readjustment to these old ideas or the total collapse and gradual rebuilding of another equally fallible system of self depreciation.

The real truth of the matter is that you can't continue to make money doing nothing. This is the same idea I was trying to convey previously when you thought I was trying to take someone's earned money out of their hands. Investments ultimately don't work because they lead to a psychological shortsightedness which generally seems to reenforce itself.

I know these ideas seem to leave a lot of real successes out but in the end everything has it's useful cycle. People, businesses, and institutions all come upon a time when they can no longer pass muster. The problem with the latter two are that there are always interests that suffer losses when their vehicle for investment ultimately breaks down.

The only survival I see for a truly global community is a society that gives and walks away from the vehicle they have been expecting to carry them. And it is the the institution of economy that is failing us. We need to get back to creating the goods and services that further our causes rather than the ones we think can make a quick buck before getting too hot.

And since I never bought in to begin with, none of this is particularly scary at all. I have no assets to lose.
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Seriously, if you are reading this, you will need to think about what he is saying. He makes some big jump-skips. Just because you may not see his connections doesn't mean they aren't there. I had to think about this for quite awhile before I understood the whole message as well as it's parts. I'm not saying I agree with his conclusions about furthering our causes. What if our cause is to create wealth? But the point about financial institutions being at the root of the problem and making money without earning it as the core value in error - well he does have an interesting construct there. And it is so old-testament!
Still some things I am not getting like system of self-depreciation. Until I get it all, I don't want to try and wordsmith around his thought jumps as I might jump totally off-point, making an ass of myself.