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[SalmonGod]

Debt Slavery -- Why It Destroyed Rome, Why It Will Destroy Us Unless It's Stopped

[Dsarker]

I'm going to be a bastard...

TL;DR.


What was the point of that essay?

[Frumple]

A basic mathematical as well as political principle is at work: Debts that can’t be paid, won’t be.

Most of the rest was support. Also, trying to force people to pay debts that can't be is going to royally fook everything t'ell. Plus some other stuff. History, how it's going down now, etc.

Bottom half or so's probably more relevant to discussion at hand. Find: "Shifting planning away from elected public representatives to bankers" and read from there. Possibly the section right above it.

[Nadaka]

The war is not over: http://news.yahoo.com/occupy-protesters-sue-over-free-speech-force-213132772.html

[Lagslayer]

I'm going to be a bastard...

TL;DR.


What was the point of that essay?

I think the point is "Debt sucks! DON'T USE IT!".

I agree whole-heartedly. Once people start taking out significant debt, the shit starts spiraling towards the fan.

[Zangi]

Well, its a pretty interesting way to put the whole thing.   Seems to make sense too. 

Just that, making it so people can't pay back the debt doesn't really make business sense... without the indentured servitude angle...

EDIT: Even then... you don't need so many... well... I guess if you can trade/sell em off for a premium that more then pays off the debt...

[Frumple]

Slavery, friend. Call an apple an apple.

Slavery approached a good idea when a trained worker wasn't head and shoulders more productive than a untrained one, with similar statement for motivated vs unmotivated workers. That time is not this time. Now it's just a waste of resources you could be investing in better automation and a smaller number of well trained, loyal, motivated workers. Workers which you don't get if you've broken them down into debt slaves

Most of it's just (put scare quotes around that just) a matter of long-term blindness. Neurotic bastids can only see short term profit, and damn the guns regarding everything else. It's not exactly a surprise that particular plan of action goes riiight down the shitter.

[darkrider2]

Perhaps if debts didn't have interests on them they might be repayable within half a life time.

[Osmosis Jones]

Perhaps if debts didn't have interests on them they might be repayable within half a life time.

If debts didn't have interest on them, there would be absolutely no incentive to loan money. Interest is both a fee for the loan, and a form of security; if one in every hundred equal loans fails, interest needs to be at least 1% for the lender to just break even.

No lending means stagnation of economic growth, and suppression of upward mobility.

Spoiler: Example (click to show/hide)

Imagine a tailor. He currently sews by hand, just earning enough to keep paying all his bills. Basically, he'll never be able to save anything. Now, give him a $50 loan so he can buy a nice cheap sewing machine; his work rate increases 100 fold, and he can pay back that machine within a day, but his work rate (and thus income) is permanently increased.

The problem lies with improper vetting of borrowers, and a system that makes it all to easy to spend money you don't have, which is why people then end up with a mountain of debt that can never get repaid. Following that up by preventing the indebted working their own jobs and instead forcing them into indentured labour (which will almost certainly have a lower profit potential then the debto's original job) then just compounds the problem.

[SalmonGod]

and a system that makes it all to easy to spend money you don't have

Or even forces people to spend money they don't have.  Higher education is almost a requirement for anyone who wasn't born into wealth and doesn't want to live in poverty.  Student loans are the most vicious source of debt right now, with specific laws even tailored to make them as difficult as possible.  For example, you can't file bankruptcy on them.

[Lagslayer]

and a system that makes it all to easy to spend money you don't have

Or even forces people to spend money they don't have.  Higher education is almost a requirement for anyone who wasn't born into wealth and doesn't want to live in poverty.  Student loans are the most vicious source of debt right now, with specific laws even tailored to make them as difficult as possible.  For example, you can't file bankruptcy on them.

If I'm not mistaken, a lot of these loans can have a majority of it just erased.

Also, how good is this college education doing people, now? There's no market for those positions, and to top it off, a hell of a lot of these unemployed college grads refuse to take other menial labor jobs, preferring to remain unemployed. Guess they should have taken up something like welding instead. Also, they should get that stick out of their collective ass. Once they finally accept this, everyone will flock to trade schools and suddenly the problem goes the other way. Guess the sheeple are too easily manipulated.

[Phmcw]

Hahahahahaha, as if something could save your economy now. They won't be any menial job for them as everything relocated in Asia, and you're in a TON of debt, so there is no chance of regrowth.
If OWS doesn't bring a change, you're dead.

[Lagslayer]

Hahahahahaha, as if something could save your economy now. They won't be any menial job for them as everything relocated in Asia, and you're in a TON of debt, so there is no chance of regrowth.
If OWS doesn't bring a change, you're dead.

I think you sorely underestimate our adaptability. Given any sort of chance, we can find our groove. It's happened before as we rose to a superpower in the first place.

Besides, it looks like even China is going to collapse with the rest of us. It will be a new dark ages for a while. The economy will go to shit, but the majority of the stuff will still be there. Resources, factories, people, space, technology, all of which we have shitloads of. It's not over yet, unless people refuse to act against the real problem, their own apathy and sheep mentality. An individual who gives a damn has power, others are simply herded.

[Phmcw]

I don't underestimate your ability, and I certainly don't overestimate ours (actually, I'm currently wondering what plan B might be).
You're dealing with a undereducated population, a messed up environment, a highly dependent economy, and a bureaucracy unfit for everything. May I add that you've got, if you don't use it to plunder something big quickly, the burden of a huge and rather inefficient army, and a government run by inimical privates interests. You also have a big prison system and a ghettoized black population.

Europe got problem to but If I had to rate the big powers now I'd say 1) India/China. Lot of strengths: control of a lot of strategic resources good economy. The main downside of India is its bureaucracy while the problem with China is it's unity.
2) Russia : they kind of reached the bottom, and are used to living in a dictatorship, if Putin can launch the USSR again, Russia will be the last place where I would want to live, but may rise to superpower again, especially if they work closely with china.
3)Europe : Problem are unity,that the government is a mess, and that private interest are creeping to get into power. The strength here is the population, hard working and well educated, you could still get good high quality (thus hight value) industry, and the research is cheap.
If we manage to get a government for the Eurozone, we may eventually get better.
4) US : pauperized population, half the peoples are low revenue, highest percentage of population in prison, corrupted police force, terrible bureaucracy and government, highly religious population, creeping fundamentalism, rampant debt problem, research fed by foreign scientists, messed up environment and drug/criminality problems. Yeah sure, sheltered location, natural resources, huge army... but that really doesn't compare.

Btw : US arose to the rank of superpower because everyone else conveniently auto destructed in WW1 and WW2, and that it was the only power left. They took a huge political, cultural and military influence because of it, but it's all. Even their space program was mostly run by German scientists.

[Aqizzar]

Also, how good is this college education doing people, now? There's no market for those positions, and to top it off, a hell of a lot of these unemployed college grads refuse to take other menial labor jobs, preferring to remain unemployed. Guess they should have taken up something like welding instead. Also, they should get that stick out of their collective ass. Once they finally accept this, everyone will flock to trade schools and suddenly the problem goes the other way. Guess the sheeple are too easily manipulated.

Yes yes, you're very cool and edgy for blaming the victims.  I'm not going to deny that a lot of people went to college for the wrong reasons, and now have educations that mean very little to the outside world.  America is producing more Psychology majors than Physics majors, sure.  Mostly because this generation had a lot of smoke blown up it's ass about going to school for it's own sake, with very little guidance.  Do you expect perfectly rational, life-long decisions from teenagers?  (And if you say "sheeple" again, you forfeit all right to be taken seriously for the rest of time.)

Even so, the last decade was still a massive scam on a generation, as everyone sort of decided of their own accord, if you don't have a college degree you're doomed to a life of menial servitude.  Guess what that did?  Shot college tuition through the roof.  I was lucky enough to get a state fund, whereby my family paid for my education in late-80s money, with a guarantee of 120 hours of tuition when I grew up.  An education that was ten grand in the late 1980s became thirty grand in the 2000s, and you and I both know neither money itself nor the cost of running a college inflated by triple in twenty years.  And as anyone could have and should have predicted, an industry of shading banking sprouted up overnight to bilk the Hell out of people who had no experience with signing loans, with parents who never went to college themselves.

And then we get to your tradeschool idea.  For your information, I am will to admit that I'm one of those people who came out of college with an effectively useless degree.  I have no qualms about working a menial job, as I am doing.  Most college grads and students wouldn't either.  The problem is, there's statistically seven people competing for every job opening in the country, and those are just the people who report themselves as looking for work.  And if you actually go out there and look for those jobs, what you'll find is not so much a lack of willingness to do "menial" work (which jobs requiring a tradeschool education are certainly not) or a lack of giving a damn.  It's a demand for experience, because when seven people are competing for every opening, the employer can make the pick of litter.  Who's he going to hire, a fresh college grad or a guy who got laid off from doing the same job?  And when that's the dynamic, you get a whole generation of people with degrees and no real work experience, because there was a never place available to hire them, and the longer that goes on the less attractive they are as employees.

Put simply, there is one and only one solution to the education glut in America - a better economy.