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[penguinofhonor]

snip

Can you get more specific on the "lies" that bankers use to manipulate us, or how they take advantage of our empathy? A lot of your points are pretty vague, to the extent that it sounds at times like you're talking about a metaphysical evil force rather than a group of people.

[misko27]

snip

Can you get more specific on the "lies" that bankers use to manipulate us, or how they take advantage of our empathy? A lot of your points are pretty vague, to the extent that it sounds at times like you're talking about a metaphysical evil force rather than a group of people.

It is the evils of capitalism, comrade.

[Karnewarrior]

snip

Can you get more specific on the "lies" that bankers use to manipulate us, or how they take advantage of our empathy? A lot of your points are pretty vague, to the extent that it sounds at times like you're talking about a metaphysical evil force rather than a group of people.

It is the evils of capitalism, comrade.

[inteuniso]

Defined metaphysical force of evil, yet still haven't explained it. You do know the number one cause of death before... well, "yesterday" was murder, right?

I don't think that feudalism is the right answer for this planet. I think that we can do more with kindness than with meanness. I think that transition is already occurring though; I think that we should work on ensuring this transition occurs, with minimum loss of life and limb.

What's the future? Computer-assisted telepathy, I suppose. Communication has seemed to lower the amount of misunderstandings, which is usually what leads to a murder ("you slept with my SO?" "No, I..." "You're lying!" STAB "No, he wasn't lying, I wasn't sleeping with them." Murder victim's relative shows up, murders murderer, the cycle is vicious, etc.), so if we can end the misunderstanding as soon as it occurs, that will greatly reduce social friction.

[Shadowlord]

What's the future? Computer-assisted telepathy, I suppose. Communication has seemed to lower the amount of misunderstandings, which is usually what leads to a murder ("you slept with my SO?" "No, I..." "You're lying!" STAB "No, he wasn't lying, I wasn't sleeping with them." Murder victim's relative shows up, murders murderer, the cycle is vicious, etc.), so if we can end the misunderstanding as soon as it occurs, that will greatly reduce social friction.

We can't even come up with a way to detect a lie reliably. Cyber-telepathy might take a while.

[Baffler]

Defined metaphysical force of evil, yet still haven't explained it. You do know the number one cause of death before... well, "yesterday" was murder, right?

I don't think that feudalism is the right answer for this planet. I think that we can do more with kindness than with meanness. I think that transition is already occurring though; I think that we should work on ensuring this transition occurs, with minimum loss of life and limb.

What's the future? Computer-assisted telepathy, I suppose. Communication has seemed to lower the amount of misunderstandings, which is usually what leads to a murder ("you slept with my SO?" "No, I..." "You're lying!" STAB "No, he wasn't lying, I wasn't sleeping with them." Murder victim's relative shows up, murders murderer, the cycle is vicious, etc.), so if we can end the misunderstanding as soon as it occurs, that will greatly reduce social friction.

It takes a lot of nerve to say that breaking the power of the global financial industry isn't a solution, then saying that we should prepare society for the coming of AI Jesus instead.

[MrRoboto75]

1. Outlaw fractal lending. This is defacto printing of money by a private entity, which is explicitly illegal. Banks must carry, on hand, hard currency for every dollar they lend out.

That law already exists.  Banks do have to hold a portion of their total assets has hard money in the vault, and face harsh penalties if they don't.  Even so, most banks today hold much more in the vault than that limit requires them to, ever since the last financial crisis.

You are correct in that fractal fractional banking is a form of printing money.  But the laws that control fractional banking exists and are done by the federal reserve (The government).  They could also just... print money... but fractional reserve is a faster and more effective way to control inflation, and can deflate, which just printing money can't.

2. Outlaw the federal reserve. It's a private bank that owns the entire country's wealth. What's more, the Rothschild family, which ownd the fed, also owns every other central bank in the world, with the exception of Iran, North Korea, and Cuba. This alone proves they are guilty of countless of conflicts of interest, as well as treason against basically everybody, because they fund everyone's enemies.

The fed is only a private bank in the sense that it doesn't need direct government authorization to do its daily needs.  It does need to answer to the goals of congress, and they usually do, because by law the authority of the fed is directly stemed from congress, and congress can disolve the federal reserve whenever it wants to.  Since disolving is understandably bad, they comply.  Also, the heads of the fed are appointed by the government anyway.

The Rothschild family has only ever owned major banks in Europe, nowhere else.

3. Outlaw publicly traded stock. The stock market was nothing but a ponzi scheme run by the banks, ever since it's inception. It's only function is to create market bubbles which burst, then the banks pick up the shattered pieces when everyone goes bankrupt.

Bubbles typically make banks fail.  Why would banks, or any other coporation for that matter, put themselves out of business on purpose?

[Rolepgeek]

Kindness as in cooperation versus meanness as defection, and you're correct.

Turns out being mean helps ensure cooperation, sometimes, though, when people would rather defect if left to it. Game theory is useful for finding which way large scale interactions/large numbers of interactions trend to on average.

So, here's something that could maybe fix a lot of the problems. Get ranked voting, proportional representation, mandatory voting/mail-ballot/national holiday on election day, and campaign finance reform. There's multiple ways to go about that last one, I'm not sure which one is best. Which of course means I'm talking out of my ass, but I see two primary ways; either make it so everyone has about the same amount they're allowed to donate (maybe up to five thousand dollars from an individual, and if corporations are people, only 5000 dollars from them, as well(parent company, not all their little subdivisions), and no MNCs get to be involved in elections), with a 'stipend' of money that comes from taxes (there's almost always room for another 5 or 6% on the top brackets; it was at 79+% at one point and economy was fine; it's nowhere near that high now, though obviously technology circumstances are different). Maybe $10-$100 a person per race. Or something like that.

Alternatively, make it so that candidates receive money from a central pool; campaigns all receive the same amount of financing, paid for by tax money. Only issue here is that when there's a lot of candidates, either it starts getting real expensive as each gets the starting flat amount, or each campaign starts having very little to work with as funds get split too many ways. One way to avert this would be having entry requirements to show that you're serious/have a chance, but that carries a number of it's own problems as one can probably imagine.

Of course, one of the big issues with being able to reign in big companies is competitive taxation. They have the right to leave, afaik, and if they feel like they can get more favorable taxation/regulation policy elsewhere, it's entirely possible they will. Speaking of regulations, in terms of economics and gov't interacting with business, fewer unnecessary regulations would really help matters, I suspect. Small business costs from regulations are often significantly higher than large businesses. Closing tax loopholes and preventing the whole 'taxes rise proportional to income until there's a stack overflow error and you no longer pay them, just your tax lawyer' issue would probably help the budget, at least.

@MrRoboto75 Unfortunately, most terrible business decisions are easily made reasonable when you consider them in the light of the corporate god: short-term quarterly profits.

I really do think that if businesses/corporations thought in the long-term for profit, and were informed/intelligent, that they would behave much better. In the age of information, bad PR can be devastating, while good PR can be an extremely worthwhile investment. Look at how they tend to interact with charities, for example. Likewise, cooperation tends to be more beneficial for everyone in the long run than defection (like overworking your employees; turns out you're actually less productive if you're doing sustained 50 hour work weeks than if you just do 40 hour work weeks with a 50 hour only if there's a serious deadline coming up or the like). Same with things like not ruining local infrastructure/water supply/the environment. This is where your business operates. But, of course, especially in the Celebrity CEO era, as long as they can come up with plenty, they don't care if the business goes under >.>

[MrRoboto75]

You can limit money donations if you want, but I imagine the wealthy would just find non-monentary ways to benefit the candidates they like.  Favors, lending of resources like a private jet, etc.

[Loud Whispers]

You can limit money donations if you want, but I imagine the wealthy would just find non-monentary ways to benefit the candidates they like.  Favors, lending of resources like a private jet, etc.

Donation to a "not-for-profit organization ran by the political candidate"

[smjjames]

3. Outlaw publicly traded stock. The stock market was nothing but a ponzi scheme run by the banks, ever since it's inception. It's only function is to create market bubbles which burst, then the banks pick up the shattered pieces when everyone goes bankrupt.

Bubbles typically make banks fail.  Why would banks, or any other coporation for that matter, put themselves out of business on purpose?

Because they know they'll be bailed out by the government? Otherwise, how do you explain the housing bubble that exploded in 2008.

[Lagslayer]

OK, back. Let's see how the thread progressed... Ok, I'm gonna try to address as many responses and points as possible without overbloating this post.

3. Outlaw publicly traded stock. The stock market was nothing but a ponzi scheme run by the banks, ever since it's inception. It's only function is to create market bubbles which burst, then the banks pick up the shattered pieces when everyone goes bankrupt.

Bubbles typically make banks fail.  Why would banks, or any other coporation for that matter, put themselves out of business on purpose?

Because they know they'll be bailed out by the government? Otherwise, how do you explain the housing bubble that exploded in 2008.

This. There's basically no risk in banking anymore, now that any run on the banks is stopped in their tracks, and it's all federally insured, anyways.

You can limit money donations if you want, but I imagine the wealthy would just find non-monentary ways to benefit the candidates they like.  Favors, lending of resources like a private jet, etc.

Donation to a "not-for-profit organization ran by the political candidate"

Hooray money laundering!

1. Outlaw fractal lending. This is defacto printing of money by a private entity, which is explicitly illegal. Banks must carry, on hand, hard currency for every dollar they lend out.

That law already exists.  Banks do have to hold a portion of their total assets has hard money in the vault, and face harsh penalties if they don't.  Even so, most banks today hold much more in the vault than that limit requires them to, ever since the last financial crisis.

You are correct in that fractal fractional banking is a form of printing money.  But the laws that control fractional banking exists and are done by the federal reserve (The government).  They could also just... print money... but fractional reserve is a faster and more effective way to control inflation, and can deflate, which just printing money can't.

2. Outlaw the federal reserve. It's a private bank that owns the entire country's wealth. What's more, the Rothschild family, which ownd the fed, also owns every other central bank in the world, with the exception of Iran, North Korea, and Cuba. This alone proves they are guilty of countless of conflicts of interest, as well as treason against basically everybody, because they fund everyone's enemies.

The fed is only a private bank in the sense that it doesn't need direct government authorization to do its daily needs.  It does need to answer to the goals of congress, and they usually do, because by law the authority of the fed is directly stemed from congress, and congress can disolve the federal reserve whenever it wants to.  Since disolving is understandably bad, they comply.  Also, the heads of the fed are appointed by the government anyway.

The Rothschild family has only ever owned major banks in Europe, nowhere else.

3. Outlaw publicly traded stock. The stock market was nothing but a ponzi scheme run by the banks, ever since it's inception. It's only function is to create market bubbles which burst, then the banks pick up the shattered pieces when everyone goes bankrupt.

Bubbles typically make banks fail.  Why would banks, or any other coporation for that matter, put themselves out of business on purpose?

Having to hold only a portion of the money means that they still get to spend a bunch of money that doesn't exist, and collect interest on a hell of a lot more than that. What is inflation?

And on the fed... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve_System.
The Federal Reserve System considers itself "an independent central bank because its monetary policy decisions do not have to be approved by the President or anyone else in the executive or legislative branches of government, it does not receive funding appropriated by the Congress, and the terms of the members of the Board of Governors span multiple presidential and congressional terms."
In their own words.

snip

Can you get more specific on the "lies" that bankers use to manipulate us, or how they take advantage of our empathy? A lot of your points are pretty vague, to the extent that it sounds at times like you're talking about a metaphysical evil force rather than a group of people.

It is the evils of capitalism, comrade.

Though this may have been in jest, I still feel the need to point out that communist countries have the same central banking systems at their core.

[Rockphed]

Also, don't know if it was millennia that banking has 'corrupted' society, but I would say that getting money out of politics would make things much easier. The hard part is that the money doesn't want to go. :/

Goes back to at least the time of Christ, because the bible rails against it. That's where "sending money lenders from the temple" comes from.

Not that I necessarily believe in everything the bible says, but it does show that this has been a problem for a very long time.

The bible had strong things to say about Usury.  It never bothers to define Usury, but we can probably assume that Usury then, as now, was predatory lending of money at high interest rates.  How high is probably a topic for a forensic linguist.

The casting the money-lenders from the Temple wasn't an anti-banking thing, it was more of a "This is a place that is holy.  Let it have a dignified and sacred atmosphere, not the raucous cacophony of a bazaare."  In modern terms, consider the polite, and not so polite, reminders to turn off cell phones at the movies and theatres.  Or dress requirements for fancy events.

[Lagslayer]

Also, don't know if it was millennia that banking has 'corrupted' society, but I would say that getting money out of politics would make things much easier. The hard part is that the money doesn't want to go. :/

Goes back to at least the time of Christ, because the bible rails against it. That's where "sending money lenders from the temple" comes from.

Not that I necessarily believe in everything the bible says, but it does show that this has been a problem for a very long time.

The bible had strong things to say about Usury.  It never bothers to define Usury, but we can probably assume that Usury then, as now, was predatory lending of money at high interest rates.  How high is probably a topic for a forensic linguist.

The casting the money-lenders from the Temple wasn't an anti-banking thing, it was more of a "This is a place that is holy.  Let it have a dignified and sacred atmosphere, not the raucous cacophony of a bazaare."  In modern terms, consider the polite, and not so polite, reminders to turn off cell phones at the movies and theatres.  Or dress requirements for fancy events.

Usury used to mean the charging of any interest at all.

[Culise]

EDIT: Wrong thread, sorry.