Thread: One idea how to overcome the world economic crisis

The problem of the world economic crisis is unfair foreign trade balances between the states.If one state has negative trade foreign trade balance with other state the first state has to finance this with debt or money from investments.But when the first state has big debt and the investments are low because of the crisis this decrease the foreign trade of this country and lead to economic crisis.To solve this problem those states who has positive foreign trade balances must separate seven to ten percent from their national budget and be obliged to buy with this money merchandises from those states which has negative trade balances with them.The result of this the states who has negative foreign trade balances will receive money with which probably they will buy merchandises from the states with positive trade balances.This will multiply the foreign trade and will lead to ecinomic growth.

The states who have big positive trade balance in practice plunder those states who have negative trade balance.This is not fair and as a result tighten the world trade.The idea positive trade balances states to separate money from their national budgets and spend them for buying merchandise from those states who have negative balances at first sight look bad for the first states but in practice those states with negative balances will spend the money and again they will return in those states with positive balances.This cycle will repeat and will put in motion the world trade.

This way to spend money from the budget will increase world trade and will accelerate growth of the world economic.The other way is big world war.Otherwise the world crisis will continue many years.

Hi georgi_zlatev

I suggest viewing the video "Money as Debt" www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqvKjsIxT_8

www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqvKjsIxT_8

Imo, the entire monetary system is a fraud (in addition to being antiquated and outdated), any solution that doesnt throw out the economic system is imo the equivalent of "fixing" bernie madoff's ponzi scheme so the racket can continue for a few years or decades.

tips: Remember that
- theres a difference between the "economy" and "quality of life" (that a "war" is seen as fixing the economy show just how abject, primitive and aberrant the economic system really is)
- theres a difference between casino-speculative-financialized cloud economy and real economy (wages, purchasing power to buy what is produced, products&services, quality of life)
- Fractional Reserve means Private Banks create money out of thin air and that most money in circulation is not issued paper money but bank credits
- Worgl Use a specific kind of local money for the purpose of economic activity for needed tangible benefits and services and prospered during the Great Depression (still monetary and to be evolved out of, but potentially helpful for a transition)

Other videos for consideration are Zeitgeist Moving Forward (one of those videos, that shows various problems with the economic system including cyclical consumption, and the technological unemployment automation-vs-wages paradox)

cheers

Monetary system should be good. Tracking of labor working is very important

For instance let assume that China has positive trade balance with America.Tariff is one way to make China to accept the new rules.As I said if we make China buy American goods the money which American will get from that is probably to back again in China because American will buy more goods from China.The money will spin between China and America.The forein trade will grow so the economic.America and China will win from this trade.

OK if you want to talk about the Economy as if unicorns are crossing rainbow bridges answer me this BASIC question;

WHERE does the MONEY COME FROM???

or more precisely;

WHAT PORTION OF THE MONETARY MASS IN CIRCULATION IS "REALLY" ISSUED BY GOVERNMENTS ????

thank you

The economists do not understand how the world economy will start to grow.They think that people being rational is the best for the economy but that is not true.I say that the economic growth before the crisis is owe to people irrational actions as buying properties on credit which make the baloon.We may conclude that irrational action of peoples make the economic growth.So to have economic growth we must again make people being irrational which is harder because they are more inform.

(Is this a test for a new type of bot?)

Originally Posted by georgi_zlatev

For instance let assume that China has positive trade balance with America.Tariff is one way to make China to accept the new rules.As I said if we make China buy American goods the money which American will get from that is probably to back again in China because American will buy more goods from China.The money will spin between China and America.The forein trade will grow so the economic.America and China will win from this trade.

But it doesn't. So why try to solve a problem that is already out of control which was caused by greedy companies which moved to China to get more profits there as compared to where they were located to begin with.

If " IOU's" were treated as a commodity as they should be, then it would be apparent that actually there is no trade imbalance between the USA and China. We export IOU's, and they export tangible goods.

Someone figured out that they could prevent the natural flow of currency appreciation by using this as a backdoor fix to prevent it. As long as the USA continues to borrow lots of USD from China, the Chinese Yuan/Renminbi will never rise in value no matter how much more of their production we import than what we are exporting.

Is it a good fix? Oh dear god no. It's the worst possible fix. It's like contracting HIV in order to get rid of Syphilis.

The state who has positive trade balance may buy not only merchandise but may buy technologies from state who has negative trade balance.Other opportunity is the first state to make investments in the second state.The principle is the money to return back in the second state.The second state probably will spend the money and they again will return in the first state.This will repeat and will lead to increase in foreign trade.

If somebody is wondering how big world war can lead to economic growth i can make some suppositons.First let assume that people in given state have 1 million savings in banks.If there is big war it is very probable they become irrational and start spend most of their savings and this will lead to economic growth.The second supposition is that state will print money with which to pay war expenses.If state print 1 million the saving of the people will devaluate in half.From that will win war industry and economic.The losers will be people.If someone guess something else may write.

Yeah. If people are saving too much and you want them to spend it, then inflating the currency will definitely achieve that. It also increases the margin available to businesses, because in the time between manufacturing their product, and the time when they sell it, the price will have gone up.

What is dangerous is deflation. With deflation, a business may spend money manufacturing products, and then the price goes down before they can sell them.

European Central Bank intends to make negative the interests of deposits on financial institution.The result will be decreasing of interests on deposits in whole Europe.That will decrease interest on mortgages.This will stimulate people to make irrational actions as to buy property with mortgage or those who have deposits to spend them because of the very low interests.This will lead to economic growth but at the end the result will be lamentable.Western liberal democracy has to be reformed as making new rules in foreign trade which will make it fair for all states.

The decline of tariffs has left anarchy. Some people are so "pro-freedom" they ultimately become "pro-anarchy" without meaning to, and then they just plug their ears and go into denial when they finally get their way and the system begins to collapse.

It's like a kite without a string. It doesn't fly higher. It actually just comes crashing down.

Originally Posted by icewendigo

Imo, the entire monetary system is a fraud (in addition to being antiquated and outdated), any solution that doesnt throw out the economic system is imo the equivalent of "fixing" bernie madoff's ponzi scheme so the racket can continue for a few years or decades.

Can I throw war in there too, it has rules ffs

Can I throw war in there too, it has rules ffs

Im not sure what you mean by this besides that wars should also be thrown out, but the reason I dont talk about it is that for me its so obvious and second and most importantly because imo Wars are a resulting symptom of the outdated/archaic/barbaric social structure:

a) Monetary System (see "War is a Racket" by Smedley Butler)
b) Hierarchy
c) Secrecy/Manipulation of Information (War propaganda[incubators, WMD, Golf of Tonkin, etc], Censorship[National security/Top Secret/etc], Concentration of Media, etc)


Note that these 3 aspects, as bad as they are on their own, also interact with each other to create a synergy of abuse/corruption/misery/destruction/etc.
(Wanting to end wars is great but not likely to work out until these 3 systemic problems are curtailed. If I had a choice between chucking water out of the boat with a bucket and fixing the unseen hole in the hull below the water, I would fix the unseen hole in the hull, because until you do chucking water out will not permanently solve the problem and that while you fix the breach in the hull its relatively easy for most of the others to see the water and figure out that it should be removed).

Yup, thrown it in, questioned it, then instantly throw it out.

If I had a choice between chucking water out of the boat with a bucket and fixing the unseen hole in the hull below the water

Ever heard the one about a lad having to choose between either a hole in a dam or being late for school!

I spent a good section of my life looking in to the three factors in your list, I almost spend a lifetime going round in circles Good job I didn't understand the fancy numbers from the modern money mechanics!

The fair foreign trade will provide stable economic growth to all states. Otherwise is to make a mortgage baloon with cheap credits but people are more informed and this will not be easy to be done.

Let make some prediction what will happen when foreign trade became fair and mutually beneficial.The capital will deconcentrate and will move in those countries who have negative trade balance with aim to win from this foreign trade.As a result the incomes of people in this country will raise and they will buy more goods which will increase foreign trade.The incomes in all countries will equalize and this will be the first step towards the socialism because the next step to raise the incomes will be to nationalize the corporations or to decrease their profits.

People must not be scared from socialism.The socialism can not compete with democracy for wages because in socialism it is not the main incentive and people work less.In spite of bigger wages the people in democracy stands at the bottom of pyramid of Abraham Maslow while people in socialism stands at the top of this pyramid.In democracy peoples are learned to have more and more material things and they have to work harder for this.

The socialism can not compete with democracy

What does that mean?

Its sounds like you are confusing democracy (or socialism) with a completely different word.

BTW, quick note, Scandinavian Social Democracies are both *more Democratic* and *more Socialist* (have more social considerations) than a whole bunch of countries (and also rank among the highest in quality of life for the whole population). Pinochet was the torture and murder Dictator and admirer of the unicorn-over-the-rainbow-textbook-economic-land Milton Friedman, it was a capitalist dictatorship, just like Banana Republics which have got their name from anti-democratic crony Capitalist Dictator regimes put in place by the US to make sure the locals got screwed and corporations could wantonly plunder and exploit, these Dictatorships are usually both *Less Democratic* and *Less Socialist* than the average EU country.

(I realize that it can be challenging for people communicating in a language other than their primary language, I empathize if that's the case)

Under socialism i mean the regimes in Eastern Europe before 1989 year.Under democracy i mean what came after this regimes fell.

Originally Posted by georgi_zlatev

Let make some prediction what will happen when foreign trade became fair and mutually beneficial.The capital will deconcentrate and will move in those countries who have negative trade balance with aim to win from this foreign trade.As a result the incomes of people in this country will raise and they will buy more goods which will increase foreign trade.The incomes in all countries will equalize and this will be the first step towards the socialism because the next step to raise the incomes will be to nationalize the corporations or to decrease their profits.

Currency manipulation simply takes the place of the tariffs. The poor countries don't win out. They get taken advantage of worse, as do the poor in the country that's importing the cheaper goods. (Since so many of the poor in an industrialized country are working at the same jobs as the imports replace.)


Removing tariffs simply replaces the rule of law with the rule of money. Corporations manipulate the currency values until they find the exchange rate that suits them best (the one where they get to pay the least money for the most production - and the workers are forced to create the most production for the least money because they can't manipulate currency values.)

Originally Posted by icewendigo

The socialism can not compete with democracy

What does that mean?

Its sounds like you are confusing democracy (or socialism) with a completely different word.

BTW, quick note, Scandinavian Social Democracies are both *more Democratic* and *more Socialist* (have more social considerations) than a whole bunch of countries (and also rank among the highest in quality of life for the whole population). Pinochet was the torture and murder Dictator and admirer of the unicorn-over-the-rainbow-textbook-economic-land Milton Friedman, it was a capitalist dictatorship, just like Banana Republics which have got their name from anti-democratic crony Capitalist Dictator regimes put in place by the US to make sure the locals got screwed and corporations could wantonly plunder and exploit, these Dictatorships are usually both *Less Democratic* and *Less Socialist* than the average EU country.

(I realize that it can be challenging for people communicating in a language other than their primary language, I empathize if that's the case)

Socialism works best in countries that have a very favorable ratio of population to resources. The reason? Because the government can tax the resources instead of taxing incomes.

In the USA, where that ratio is more mediocre, it wouldn't work. There just aren't enough tax-able resources to pay for all the entitlements. You end up having to siphon money out of working peoples' pay checks instead, which grinds on the whole system.

In Canada, Saudi Arabia, or any of the Scandinavian countries, it works just fine.

One way for economic growth is one state to print money and spend them through the budget.This way may lead to little inflation but state must do this only when people of this state have enough savings in banks which they do not want to spend or invest them.Printing money redistribute the wealth between those who have savings in banks toward recipients from the budget.

Printing money from one state will devaluate her currency.But if all the states stipulate to do this simultaneously the proportion between the currencies will remain the same.

Printing money from one state will devaluate her currency.

It depends, if a state mainly producing pet rocks Prints money as a means to build an industrial infrastructure that produces many goods and services, what used to be worthless (only purchase pet rocks) will now purchase a lot more useful items and so the currency has more value.

Printing money, which is in fact less than 10% of the money circulating in economies using Fractional reserve banking, is just one part of the equation.

I like the fact that most of you here have learnt economics by youtube videos. Noone cares if money is air or where it comes from. It makes our lives better. Does it really matter if I have an amount of money in bank but not holding them? Not at all. It's the same for countries as well. If a government gets 1b$ loan and borrows it to companies, the market will start working with only a small amount of it as cash. Is it 10%? Then 10% is all it's needed. Deal with it.

Originally Posted by georgi_zlatev

One way for economic growth is one state to print money and spend them through the budget.This way may lead to little inflation but state must do this only when people of this state have enough savings in banks which they do not want to spend or invest them.Printing money redistribute the wealth between those who have savings in banks toward recipients from the budget.

It's not only inflation. As classic economists support (and it is confirmed by the greek case) after a while GDP will fall back to it's previous levels, so all in all it won't even be a hole in the water, but you will have the inflation raised.

Hello Jesus Walk, nice to have your point of view

"I like the fact that most of you here have learnt economics by youtube videos."

So, how long have you had your university degree in Economics for?

"Noone cares if money is air or where it comes from. "

That's is exactly why a large portion of many countries' Debt is a Fraud.
In France for example, people that pull their heads out of the Noone-cares sand and start to examine the banking law of 73 (then article 104 of the Maastricht treaty) are not happy campers.

"It's the same for countries as well."

Allow me to disagree, because countries at the very least, should be able to issue the money needed for their own development and economy without having to borrow that same money at interest, individuals cant do that.

Deal with it.

(This sounds very teenager-ish btw, not that there's anything wrong with being a teenager)

It's not only inflation. As classic economists support (and it is confirmed by the greek case) after a while GDP will fall back to it's previous levels, so all in all it won't even be a hole in the water, but you will have the inflation raised.

Whats your take on the Worgl local currency? Apparently they prospered in the middle of the Great Depression, without inflation or deflation. Is there anything that can be learned from this endeavor?

Originally Posted by icewendigo

Hello Jesus Walk, nice to have your point of view
So, how long have you had your university degree in Economics for?
That's is exactly why a large portion of many countries' Debt is a Fraud.
In France for example, people that pull their heads out of the Noone-cares sand and start to examine the banking law of 73 (then article 104 of the Maastricht treaty) are not happy campers.

Allow me to disagree, because countries at the very least, should be able to issue the money needed for their own development and economy without having to borrow that same money at interest, individuals cant do that.

(This sounds very teenager-ish btw, not that there's anything wrong with being a teenager)

Whats your take on the Worgl local currency? Apparently they prospered in the middle of the Great Depression, without inflation or deflation. Is there anything that can be learned from this endeavor?

4 years,does it even matter?
Define Fraud please. Didn't they pay,let us say, businesses? Private sector in general? Didn't they pay previous loans? Didn't they increase the money liquidity? Didn't they give money to people? I get your point of view, money is being created by air, and it even remain as air (most of it). That doesn't mean anything to me, as long as it works.
You may disagree if you want,you have your opinions I have mine.
I'm not a teenager, I would have no problem of being one, and I won't care how it sounds as long as it is what I believe.
Lastly, take for example Greece. All these years the government kept increasing government's spendings. Now we're in the worst situation in the whole world, unempolyment at 29%, 62 on youth, and guess what: prices haven't decreased a single bit. The market basket that costs 110 in Germany costs 100 in Greece. Government's spendings can be good in the short-run, but no in the long-run.

edit; hi to you too

Originally Posted by Jesus Walks

Originally Posted by icewendigo

Hello Jesus Walk, nice to have your point of view
So, how long have you had your university degree in Economics for?
That's is exactly why a large portion of many countries' Debt is a Fraud.
In France for example, people that pull their heads out of the Noone-cares sand and start to examine the banking law of 73 (then article 104 of the Maastricht treaty) are not happy campers.

Allow me to disagree, because countries at the very least, should be able to issue the money needed for their own development and economy without having to borrow that same money at interest, individuals cant do that.

(This sounds very teenager-ish btw, not that there's anything wrong with being a teenager)

Whats your take on the Worgl local currency? Apparently they prospered in the middle of the Great Depression, without inflation or deflation. Is there anything that can be learned from this endeavor?

4 years,does it even matter?
Define Fraud please. Didn't they pay,let us say, businesses? Private sector in general? Didn't they pay previous loans? Didn't they increase the money liquidity? Didn't they give money to people? I get your point of view, money is being created by air, and it even remain as air (most of it). That doesn't mean anything to me, as long as it works.
You may disagree if you want,you have your opinions I have mine.
I'm not a teenager, I would have no problem of being one, and I won't care how it sounds as long as it is what I believe.
Lastly, take for example Greece. All these years the government kept increasing government's spendings. Now we're in the worst situation in the whole world, unempolyment at 29%, 62 on youth, and guess what: prices haven't decreased a single bit. The market basket that costs 110 in Germany costs 100 in Greece. Government's spendings can be good in the short-run, but no in the long-run.

edit; hi to you too

You make a very good point about the cost of living in Greece as opposed to Germany. Greece has a big portion of it's income from tourism, this means if it could set it's own monetary policy it could pull in masses of tourist with cheap holidays and thus help the debt and restore their balance of trade, but as you quite correctly alude to the costs in Greece are almost the same as the average accoss Germany and infact more expensive than many parts of the former East Germany, being locked into the Euro means that Greece is unable to do anything to lower prices and generate the income it needs, also the Greek citizens are stuck with hugely drecreased incomes and still having to pay the high prices themselves. By contrast the high prices accross Europe benefit the German economy greatly, it helps keep the value of the Euro low for them and their exports cheap, at least be comparison to the high prices elsewhere. So if we consider that Germany exports more goods than any other country we can come to only one conclusion and that is that Germany are getting richer and richer because of the Euro whilst most of the rest of Europe get poorer!

People say countries should live within their means and this is true, but however when the sytem has been designed to favour one country over others and that certain countries are then locked into a perpetual cycle of spiralling debt that they can't get out of because of the system then it's clear it's bad system and very unfair. Greece along with Spain, Portugal, Ireland etc.... would be far better off ditching the Euro. The European project is a good thing and something that should be kept and improved, but the single currency is unfair ill conseived and continues to fail on many levels.

"4 years,does it even matter?"
No. (Generally speaking the more varied the experiences and information you have, with which to evaluate what you were told in textbooks in a critical manner, the better.)




Fraud:
Heres an exageration to drive the point.


~ Imagine you go to your bank account right now, take 2000$ out, and pay 2000$ in taxes for the Alphabet. You learn, that the government's campaign was financed by a law firm ABC INC, that the misiter was working for ABC INC, and a law was passed stating that ABC INC is now being given the rights to the Alphabet, and you collectively need to pay millions upon millions, every year, if you want to use the alphabet of the english language. You need to use the alphabet, well then you have to pay for it, and if you dont have the money, you will owe it at interest.~ Thats a fraud imo.

Imo, It is as fraudulent for a nation to pay for the use of their own money, as it would be for that nation to pay a criminal con artist to use the alphabet.



about the public debt of many industrialized nations since the 1970s here's an example:

Its a short French video with subtitles (I havent watched it yet but I estimate it should be quicker to the point than watching the whole "Money as Debt" video, which is nonetheless worth it)


www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8fDLyXXUxM
Government debt explained (in a few minutes) - YouTube

Originally Posted by Ascended

You make a very good point about the cost of living in Greece as opposed to Germany. Greece has a big portion of it's income from tourism, this means if it could set it's own monetary policy it could pull in masses of tourist with cheap holidays and thus help the debt and restore their balance of trade, but as you quite correctly alude to the costs in Greece are almost the same as the average accoss Germany and infact more expensive than many parts of the former East Germany, being locked into the Euro means that Greece is unable to do anything to lower prices and generate the income it needs, also the Greek citizens are stuck with hugely drecreased incomes and still having to pay the high prices themselves. By contrast the high prices accross Europe benefit the German economy greatly, it helps keep the value of the Euro low for them and their exports cheap, at least be comparison to the high prices elsewhere. So if we consider that Germany exports more goods than any other country we can come to only one conclusion and that is that Germany are getting richer and richer because of the Euro whilst most of the rest of Europe get poorer!

People say countries should live within their means and this is true, but however when the sytem has been designed to favour one country over others and that certain countries are then locked into a perpetual cycle of spiralling debt that they can't get out of because of the system then it's clear it's bad system and very unfair. Greece along with Spain, Portugal, Ireland etc.... would be far better off ditching the Euro. The European project is a good thing and something that should be kept and improved, but the single currency is unfair ill conseived and continues to fail on many levels.

I'll have to disagree. Leaving the Euro could not benefit Greece in my opinion. Greece would have to lower the deficit from 15% to 0% in one night. We just did that few months ago but look at the consequenses; low income,high unemployment while having high prices. Can you imagine the consequences if that 15% had to go 0% in one night? There should be about 400.000 discharges in public sector (At the moment there is no conversation for more than 20-25k discharges and the citizens are about to rebel.). Not to mention the high inflation because of the new currency...Now we all know that there will be another "hair-cut" and probably things are going to get better. Of course they could pass all these measures in a kind of easier way, but whatever. There are explanations for that as well but it may take quite a long time for me to explain .

Originally Posted by icewendigo

"4 years,does it even matter?"
No. (Generally speaking the more varied the experiences and information you have, with which to evaluate what you were told in textbooks in a critical manner, the better.)




Fraud:
Heres an exageration to drive the point.


Imagine you go to your bank account right now, take 2000$ out, and pay 2000$ in taxes for the Alphabet. You learn, that the government's campaign was financed by a law firm ABC INC, that the misiter was working for ABC INC, and a law was passed stating that ABC INC is now being given the rights to the Alphabet, and you collectively need to pay millions upon millions, every year, if you want to use the alphabet of the english language. You need to use the alphabet, well then you have to pay for it, and if you dont have the money, you will owe it at interest. Thats a fraud imo.


Imo, It is as fraudulent for a nation to pay for the use of their own money, as it would be to pay a criminal con artist to use the alphabet.




about the public debt of many industrialized nations since the 1970s here's an example:


Its a short French video with subtitles (I havent watched it yet but I estimate it should be quicker to the point than watching the whole Money as Debt, which is nonetheless worth it)


www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8fDLyXXUxM
Government debt explained (in a few minutes) - YouTube

First of all, I may got my degree but I was rarely reading any textbook, so they haven't give me anything. I passed most of my lessons (like macro,micro and game theory) by experience and common logic. Not that it matters but I'm just mentioning that having few years a degree doesn't mean that you have less experience than someone that has it for 20 years.

As for the fraud, I do not consider it as a fraud because it actually works. You (not you you, in general) are happy when you are borrowing money by a bank, but when it comes to repay it is a fraud? Not for me. They gave me what I wanted/needed and I couldn't care less if they already had these money in the bank or if they just created them. I don't care about how much it costed them to create moeny. I mean I just got what I needed, right? And here comes what I said about countries, it does work the same way.

Lastly, I've seen this video

Originally Posted by Jesus Walks

Originally Posted by Ascended

You make a very good point about the cost of living in Greece as opposed to Germany. Greece has a big portion of it's income from tourism, this means if it could set it's own monetary policy it could pull in masses of tourist with cheap holidays and thus help the debt and restore their balance of trade, but as you quite correctly alude to the costs in Greece are almost the same as the average accoss Germany and infact more expensive than many parts of the former East Germany, being locked into the Euro means that Greece is unable to do anything to lower prices and generate the income it needs, also the Greek citizens are stuck with hugely drecreased incomes and still having to pay the high prices themselves. By contrast the high prices accross Europe benefit the German economy greatly, it helps keep the value of the Euro low for them and their exports cheap, at least be comparison to the high prices elsewhere. So if we consider that Germany exports more goods than any other country we can come to only one conclusion and that is that Germany are getting richer and richer because of the Euro whilst most of the rest of Europe get poorer!

People say countries should live within their means and this is true, but however when the sytem has been designed to favour one country over others and that certain countries are then locked into a perpetual cycle of spiralling debt that they can't get out of because of the system then it's clear it's bad system and very unfair. Greece along with Spain, Portugal, Ireland etc.... would be far better off ditching the Euro. The European project is a good thing and something that should be kept and improved, but the single currency is unfair ill conseived and continues to fail on many levels.

I'll have to disagree. Leaving the Euro could not benefit Greece in my opinion. Greece would have to lower the deficit from 15% to 0% in one night. We just did that few months ago but look at the consequenses; low income,high unemployment while having high prices. Can you imagine the consequences if that 15% had to go 0% in one night? There should be about 400.000 discharges in public sector (At the moment there is no conversation for more than 20-25k discharges and the citizens are about to rebel.). Not to mention the high inflation because of the new currency...Now we all know that there will be another "hair-cut" and probably things are going to get better. Of course they could pass all these measures in a kind of easier way, but whatever. There are explanations for that as well but it may take quite a long time for me to explain .

I guess this is just another of mechanisms being used to keep the Euro together, it seems many people in many countries are frightened by the idea of leaving the Euro. The initial pain that could accompany such a bold move can seem scary but in the long run would restore the economic destiny back into the hands of the people of their own country. It would give them a chance to turn things around, ok yes sure it would mean that people have to buy and use more of their own countries products, rather than relying on exports that would be more expensive after leaving the Euro, which could actually be a good thing in terms of helping to increase, improve and develop a countries own industries and economies and thus restoring the balance of trade. How can local businesses survive and take on workers when a country is addicted to imports?

The truth here is there just isn't a perfect solution for the mess the single currency has left most of southern Europe in, but the longer the situation persists the worse it will get. You have think here is it an accident that most of the countries most badly affected have tourist based economies, and the countries least affected and benefitting the most are the high exporting nations. There is of course the idea that complete control of all debt affected countries should completely hand over the entire running of their countries to the Germans if indeed they do want to get out of debt and to be run in a financially responsible manner. However this is most definately not a school of thought to which I subscribe, I see this idea as a folly, clearly there are many countries that just couldn't and can't work in the same way as Germany. Their economies are constructed in different ways, the work culture is different and indeed lifestyles are very different so I can never see this approach working, just like the way in which this "one size fits all" approach of the Euro isn't working.

But back to your other point, when it comes to inflationairy problems there's no quick fix here, if indebted countries leave the Euro in favour of their own currency likely as no this currency will see rapid devaluation which on the surface will appear as high inflation. Again though this will affect imports to the country much more greatly than the countries own manufactured or grown products. I do feel here though that in this initial period counties should given the temporary financial support they need to stablise whilst leaving the Euro. After all these countries were given the support to help join the single currency so they shouldn't be held to ransom over wishing to leave it and they would still be part of the EU, just no longer a member of the Euro.

What I believe should have happened instead of the Euro, should have been a twin currency system opperating across EU countries. This would have allowed them to set this new currency at a matching rate across the counties, that could have been used for certain types of business transactions, whilst not really adversly affecting the normal currency peaks and troughs of the regular currencies within indivdual countries. Then over a period of time they have scaled up the usage of the second currency within countries for more and more uses whilst still monitoring its affects. Also this approach would have given them an escape mechanism if, as things have done, started to go horribly wrong.
But no this wasn't done, they just launched head long into this whole single currency project with no easy way out, a fait accompli we are all supposed to just put up with come what may!

I totally agree with you, but the question is how much is this "long run" to restore the economy outside the Euro and how much it is inside it... I'll keep agreeing with you, there's no perfect solution but I guess we're trying to solve it with the "best-worst" (meaning the measures that hurt society less) measures.

Is an austerity that destroys peoples lives and puts the nations assets up for sale (ensuring indebted servitude, toll and rent), better, than an Argentinian style default?

The problem with franctional banking is that it's a scam. Great for those who are in charge of it or who participate in it but, horrible for those who do not or can not.

The key to success in the current global economic system is exploitation. One has to exploit those with less, or either provide services or work for those who exploit others.

Originally Posted by icewendigo

Is an austerity that destroys peoples lives and puts the nations assets up for sale (ensuring indebted servitude, toll and rent), better, than an Argentinian style default?

I'd say denpends on the recovery time.

Originally Posted by gonzales56

The problem with franctional banking is that it's a scam

Very true, the problem though is of how we get enough money into our economies, fractional reserve banking works on the principle of allowing banks to lend out money they don't have. This seems great for the banks as basically they get to make money off of us, the public, in the form of interest for what appears to be nothing. Nice work if you can get it!
But also it does play a part in the overall way our economies work as well. Look at it this way the money in our economy is never fixed, by this I mean it doesn't stay at the same amount, this is because people are always borrowing more money, money the banks don't have and indeed money which is created from scratch, thus increasing the total money supply. But this is important because the amount of goods/products within a country doesn't stay fixed either, people are creating new goods/products all the time, but in order to purchase these goods people need the money to do so. This means that if enough money is not being lent out by the banks then not enough new money is being created to allow the purchasing of the new goods being produced.

This is why we still need the banks and the function they are providing, what we do need to do though is make them more secure, better run and ensure they can't keep ripping us off or failing to lend out the money they should be doing.

Ascended, IMO, loans are going to start picking up a lot of steam soon.

Originally Posted by gonzales56

Ascended, IMO, loans are going to start picking up a lot of steam soon.

I hope you're right about that, I suspect though we will see America picking up a lot quicker than most of Europe though. Estimates has been revised back again here in the UK, now suggesting we arn't going to see any real signs of improvement until 2017, where previous estimates had centred around the notion of 2015.

Originally Posted by Ascended

Originally Posted by gonzales56

Ascended, IMO, loans are going to start picking up a lot of steam soon.

I hope you're right about that, I suspect though we will see America picking up a lot quicker than most of Europe though. Estimates has been revised back again here in the UK, now suggesting we arn't going to see any real signs of improvement until 2017, where previous estimates had centred around the notion of 2015.

Let's look at the big pictures: What is America being rebuilt on, industrialism? Industrialism is outsourced to china and India, and after that it'll go to Africa. How about intellectuality? No that won't do anything either, China can do it cheaper, and soon they'll be the same as us at which point we lose our competitive advantage. So what are we?

What happened to innovation?

Originally Posted by jakesyl

Originally Posted by Ascended

Originally Posted by gonzales56

Ascended, IMO, loans are going to start picking up a lot of steam soon.

I hope you're right about that, I suspect though we will see America picking up a lot quicker than most of Europe though. Estimates has been revised back again here in the UK, now suggesting we arn't going to see any real signs of improvement until 2017, where previous estimates had centred around the notion of 2015.

Let's look at the big pictures: What is America being rebuilt on, industrialism? Industrialism is outsourced to china and India, and after that it'll go to Africa. How about intellectuality? No that won't do anything either, China can do it cheaper, and soon they'll be the same as us at which point we lose our competitive advantage. So what are we?

Hey that seems rather a glum view of the situation. America is substantially different from China is point one, and just lets suppose they catch up fully with the US, at this point all of their citizens would be demanding better living standards not working in factories all day for peanuts. I guess the point here is things are changing and people won't be importing cheap rubbish quality goods from abroad indefinately. Resources are finite and people around the globe are already starting to use more of them, so this means there will be smaller shares for everybody. No country in the world will be able to just keep flooding other countries with their cheap goods, because they won't be cheap any more, because even if the labour costs are low the material costs won't be. We should start to see demand rising for high quality products designed to last, this is where rich Western economies can begin to balance their trade deficit's by making quality not volume and by creating high tech products. This is the way of the future, it also provides jobs that should pay much better wages, because would any rich Western country ever really want to, even if they could, compete in a race to bottom for manufacturing salaries, I shouldn'd think so.

Also customisation and a partial return to localism are well on the cards, with many people wanting to support their own communities and business's especially when it comes to food produce. The customisation issue is also an interesting one because we may well see people moving away from mass produced items in favour of things that they themselves have had some input into. This is being pushed along by the digital revolution giving each of us access to the tools to become designers or stylists at least in an amateur capacity.

Originally Posted by babe

What happened to innovation?

Yes I agree.

Im a big fan of innovation!


In an optimal socieo-economic system, all innovations would be welcomed by all citizens, an no one would want to preserve the current situation because they depend on it.


In our monetary system, some are depending on problems and might not welcome some innovations. For example, Pharmaceuticals might not be fans of preventing the conditions from which they profit.


But innovation could be good indeed.


We could ramp up self-service/automated cashiers in the supermarkets. Cashiers would join the unemployed. Then automate subways, out goes the subway drivers. Assuming we keep inefficent urbanism, which safeguards colossal waste of time, human effort, energy and resources, we can automate taxis and buses (google is developing auto-pilot car systems), part of the taxi drivers and bus drivers would go join the unemployed or compete for a job as a car salemen with those already struggling. We could also help Tesla rampup its electric car development, but they are cutting out the dealerships by selling online without obnoxious salesmen many of whom would now join the cashieres, and taxi drivers along with other dealership employees since there is no longer as much need for dealer as middle man. But unfortunately, electric cars are efficient, which is bad in our present economic system, there's hardly any maintenance, so more and more QuickLube and garages would stuggle or simply go out of business(you need less and less), joining the cashieres, taxi drivers, salesmen, dealer staff and mechanics, but they also dont use gas, which is bad for gas station employees, and since they dont transport electricity in huge 18 wheeler trucks smoking around and plowing roads while running on high maintenance gas using cumbustion engines, the tanker drivers would join the others but some might enlist as soldiers to go to iraq, but then maybe you dont need as many soldiers and bring troops home and might as well save be ending a lot of military service, so they are looking for the jobs everyone else are looking for. Oh I almost forgot, electric cars are not just less maintenance, they require less parts that may be subcontracted, so people that work in factories making oil tanks, fuel pumps, mufflers, catalytic converters, spark plugs, air engine filters, oil filters, factory workers making radiators, radiator fluids, etc, etc, etc, are now joining the others.

3D printers, why pay for people in a factory to make a plastic item, that needs to be shipped to a store, which you have to go to, when you can just print the item at home? But then some of the people working in these factories join the will-work-as-a-living-statue-in-your-backyard-for-food parade. Some that work in automated factories could always build robots, so a few could produce an industrial output of robots to do X,Y,Z but then... And if many jobs could be lots to technology around the corner, a truck load of people could be replaced or work less with existing tech, just how many colledge and university lecture teachers do we "really" need to mostly repeat the same things when each subject can be made into a series of multimedia tutorials? Massive numbers of public servants and fiscal specialists depend on a bezentine tax code, simplifying it would massively reduce the work and might put more people out of work.

In our present monetary system, which employs a lot of people to move money around, launder money, taking money(cashier), selling consumption(marketing), finance, banking, fiscal/tax experts collectors, most of whom would not have a job to do in a moneless economy, innovation/prevention/efficiency is often perceived as "bad" (in a sense) for the economy (which would should call the anti-economy) or for some people, which imo indicates that this socio-economic paradigm is not optimal and no longer adapted to the post-automation world, and that it needs to be replaced by something going towards a system as was imagined in star trek, the show in which you had the outlandish science-fiction that was phones without a wire and doors-that-open-by-themselves.

But I am favoring as much innovation as we can come up with, it will create new (and probably more useful) jobs, and we can walk and chew gum at the same time, and innovation might make it easier to transition out of the old system into a new innovative socio-economic system, an innovation into how we organize and interact (hopefully with more free time, free education, more open source projects, more participatory collaborative e-democracy and easily coordinated volunteering, more cooperation)

People thought the offices would be empty soon after computers came along to file all that paperwork so efficiently, but actually the opposite happened. The computers opened up the possibility of new kinds of paperwork, statistical analysis, and better record keeping, and now more people are employed than ever.

What happens if trucks are automated? Maybe we'd find we could run 100 time as many of them. Then certainly people would have jobs as maintenance techs checking on their sensors as they roll on down the road to make sure they're ok. What happens if we use vehicles that require less maintenance and power - same thing. More goods getting moved at a cheaper price, so ultimately the whole industry grows enough so the diminished worker participation level is compensated for.

A lot of what makes cities necessary is manufacturing processes that require lots of different components to be gathered all in one place. Shippers need outgoing and in going freight. If you're going to drive your truck into Los Angeles with a delivery from Chicago, you want to know you'll be able to get that truck reloaded in LA with freight going somewhere else. Otherwise you've got to spend money on gas to drive to somewhere else empty. If you're delivering to a small town, then odds are there won't be any freight leaving that same day. But a big city pretty much always has freight going out.

Now if shipping/fuel costs were very low, it's a whole other story. Now the small towns are much more viable shipping destinations.

Originally Posted by Ascended

Originally Posted by gonzales56

The problem with franctional banking is that it's a scam

Very true, the problem though is of how we get enough money into our economies, fractional reserve banking works on the principle of allowing banks to lend out money they don't have. This seems great for the banks as basically they get to make money off of us, the public, in the form of interest for what appears to be nothing. Nice work if you can get it!
But also it does play a part in the overall way our economies work as well. Look at it this way the money in our economy is never fixed, by this I mean it doesn't stay at the same amount, this is because people are always borrowing more money, money the banks don't have and indeed money which is created from scratch, thus increasing the total money supply. But this is important because the amount of goods/products within a country doesn't stay fixed either, people are creating new goods/products all the time, but in order to purchase these goods people need the money to do so. This means that if enough money is not being lent out by the banks then not enough new money is being created to allow the purchasing of the new goods being produced.

This is why we still need the banks and the function they are providing, what we do need to do though is make them more secure, better run and ensure they can't keep ripping us off or failing to lend out the money they should be doing.

The question is where should the inflation come from? With fractional reserve banking, private industries are deciding on behalf of all of us how much the currency should be inflated. The government could make the decision instead. Then maybe we wouldn't need to pay so much in taxes. The government could just measure the amount of economic growth that is happening and print new money accordingly, then spend it. Why let the banks keep that money?

Clearly inflation of the currency must happen. If we increase our production but don't increase our available money supply, that would lead to deflation, which is even more dangerous than inflation.

I often speak to people, who truly believe that the creation of new technology diminishes the need for a workforce. While that is not my personal opinion, as I feel that creations of new forms of technology develops new job categories, I'm interested in some of your opinions, and why you feel that way. Mahalo.

Originally Posted by kojax

The question is where should the inflation come from? With fractional reserve banking, private industries are deciding on behalf of all of us how much the currency should be inflated. The government could make the decision instead. Then maybe we wouldn't need to pay so much in taxes. The government could just measure the amount of economic growth that is happening and print new money accordingly, then spend it. Why let the banks keep that money?

Clearly inflation of the currency must happen. If we increase our production but don't increase our available money supply, that would lead to deflation, which is even more dangerous than inflation.

The thing here is that money being created by the banks is based on need, if people didn't go to them to borrow money then they couldn't create any new money. The problem comes in situations like have happened over the last few years where people have wanted to borrow money, meaning a need exists for new money, but the banks haven't been interested in lending it to them, meaning that the new money that should have been created wasn't. This has a knock on effect on supply and demand within the economy, where new products and goods being created are, supposed to be at least, linked to the creation of new money with which to pay for them.
So you end up with the situation of people stopping producing goods because they can no longer sell them.

So your idea about government financial intervention to match economic activity could have some merit here, the thing here though would be getting the new money to the people that needed it in the right way, and if this does actually become feasable then the question becomes, how do you prevent this from interefering with the normal opperations and running of the banks without being extra competition?

Originally Posted by babe

I often speak to people, who truly believe that the creation of new technology diminishes the need for a workforce. While that is not my personal opinion, as I feel that creations of new forms of technology develops new job categories, I'm interested in some of your opinions, and why you feel that way. Mahalo.

Technology can open up all sorts of avenues for new jobs, just think without it if you went back in time a thousand years how many types of jobs would there have been?, 20 maybe 30 maximum, where as today we have millions of different types of jobs. Yes sure technology can make us more efficient and cut down the number of man hours required in a particular field, but it is also about constantly opening up more fields to create jobs in. How many people in the world now work in IT? and if we go back a 100 years IT didn't even exist. Technology means that we worker smarter not less, we all still work but in different ways.

Mahalo Ascended. Very well said!

Originally Posted by Ascended

Originally Posted by babe

I often speak to people, who truly believe that the creation of new technology diminishes the need for a workforce. While that is not my personal opinion, as I feel that creations of new forms of technology develops new job categories, I'm interested in some of your opinions, and why you feel that way. Mahalo.

Technology can open up all sorts of avenues for new jobs, just think without it if you went back in time a thousand years how many types of jobs would there have been?, 20 maybe 30 maximum, where as today we have millions of different types of jobs. Yes sure technology can make us more efficient and cut down the number of man hours required in a particular field, but it is also about constantly opening up more fields to create jobs in. How many people in the world now work in IT? and if we go back a 100 years IT didn't even exist. Technology means that we worker smarter not less, we all still work but in different ways.

No one is saying that technology is not creating new jobs or new kinds of jobs. Well, ok, maybe the Strawman in Wizard of Oz is saying that, but I am not.


What I am saying is that in our profit based monetary system, new useful jobs(that are also profit making, like the profit making commerce of crack cocaine) are not created at the same pace as the jobs that are replaced, or at least, it doesn't appear to be the case to me. Which results in either unemployment(for a period of time) or in fabricating useless jobs that conceal unemployment (military jobs, or cyclical consumption jobs, or casino economic shuffling-money-and-papers around jobs).

Here's a humorous exaggeration: ~During the Great Depression, when hundreds of people where in line and large boards said ~men without jobs keep walking~, there were Indeed more type of jobs than in caveman times, you could even have gone to the unemployment lines and say "Hey, Mister unemployed, did you know, the factory job, the tractor mechanic jobs, did not exist before in caveman times, thats why you are overwhelmed with work opportunities, the technologies provide jobs cant you see, if you manufacture razors, and everyone that can afford a razor has one, no problem, 10 years from now we will make a war to create artificial jobs, and unlike the razors, the bombs will self destroy, and destroy stuff we will need to rebuild! And as you starve, be comforted, because in 50 years we will make razors people just throw in the garbage and we'll need more IT people, so to recap, there's no technological unemployment, you never had more jobs now than in the past because there's more tech, and even more jobs will be available, at some point in the future, but theres no technological unemployment and we will not need to fabricate a military industrial complex and trow it away cyclical consumption to hide the fact we cant keep up with the jobs being lost by inventing new profit-motive jobs as fast as the previous are lost. No problem, isnt it all better now"~




Imagine how bad the unemployment (concealed by cooked numbers) is now, and now imagine if we abolished all useless jobs that conceal unemployment, military jobs, cyclical consumption jobs, and casino economic shuffling-money-and-papers around jobs, you would have catastrophic unemployment yet those that remain and to useful jobs could still technically do their jobs and provide services to the entire population. So you could, in theory, I think, reduce the number of work days with useful jobs while people that are unemployed and formerly uselessly employed trained and replaced part time, and while many people with free time could work on automating even more the useful jobs that arent yet automated. I could be wrong, but thats how I see it at this point in time.

So technology is good, but our economic system is crap. Instead of reducing the work with the same benefits until new activities can be fully developed, it flushes people down the drain along with their livelihood until such a time as alternatives (some of which can be in fact useless for society and only justified in a monetary system) can be developed.

Originally Posted by icewendigo

Originally Posted by Ascended

Originally Posted by babe

I often speak to people, who truly believe that the creation of new technology diminishes the need for a workforce. While that is not my personal opinion, as I feel that creations of new forms of technology develops new job categories, I'm interested in some of your opinions, and why you feel that way. Mahalo.

Technology can open up all sorts of avenues for new jobs, just think without it if you went back in time a thousand years how many types of jobs would there have been?, 20 maybe 30 maximum, where as today we have millions of different types of jobs. Yes sure technology can make us more efficient and cut down the number of man hours required in a particular field, but it is also about constantly opening up more fields to create jobs in. How many people in the world now work in IT? and if we go back a 100 years IT didn't even exist. Technology means that we worker smarter not less, we all still work but in different ways.

No one is saying that technology is not creating new jobs or new kinds of jobs. Well, ok, maybe the Strawman in Wizard of Oz is saying that, but I am not.


What I am saying is that in our profit based monetary system, new useful jobs(that are also profit making, like the profit making commerce of crack cocaine) are not created at the same pace as the jobs that are replaced, or at least, it doesn't appear to be the case to me. Which results in either unemployment(for a period of time) or in fabricating useless jobs that conceal unemployment (military jobs, or cyclical consumption jobs, or casino economic shuffling-money-and-papers around jobs).

Here's a humorous exaggeration: ~During the Great Depression, when hundreds of people where in line and large boards said ~men without jobs keep walking~, there were Indeed more type of jobs than in caveman times, you could even have gone to the unemployment lines and say "Hey, Mister unemployed, did you know, the factory job, the tractor mechanic jobs, did not exist before in caveman times, thats why you are overwhelmed with work opportunities, the technologies provide jobs cant you see, if you manufacture razors, and everyone that can afford a razor has one, no problem, 10 years from now we will make a war to create artificial jobs, and unlike the razors, the bombs will self destroy, and destroy stuff we will need to rebuild! And as you starve, be comforted, because in 50 years we will make razors people just throw in the garbage and we'll need more IT people, so to recap, there's no technological unemployment, you never had more jobs now than in the past because there's more tech, and even more jobs will be available, at some point in the future, but theres no technological unemployment and we will not need to fabricate a military industrial complex and trow it away cyclical consumption to hide the fact we cant keep up with the jobs being lost by inventing new profit-motive jobs as fast as the previous are lost. No problem, isnt it all better now"~

I mentioned elsewhere that this problem wasn't seen in the office worker industry. Computers came along and jobs increased. It became possible to do certain types of data analysis that simply hadn't been possible before and this did in fact lead to more total jobs than had existed previously. Fewer people were busy doing the more tedious tasks, but overall more were hired than fired.

Henry Ford's introduction of assembly lines to the automotive industry certainly lead to more people working at building automobiles than had previously. The price of an automobile was prohibitively high before then, when automobiles were being made by hand, and so very few automobiles were demanded, leading to only a few jobs.

Point is, there's not a solid rule going either direction. Dock worker jobs were certainly eliminated en mass by the introduction of containerization, and no new jobs appear to have developed to replace those.

This leads to an interesting question, though: If the technology exists to use fewer workers, how is delaying or prohibiting the use of that technology any better than creating fake jobs, as you mentioned? Aren't jobs which could be done by technology also "fake jobs"?

Imagine how bad the unemployment (concealed by cooked numbers) is now, and now imagine if we abolished all useless jobs that conceal unemployment, military jobs, cyclical consumption jobs, and casino economic shuffling-money-and-papers around jobs, you would have catastrophic unemployment yet those that remain and to useful jobs could still technically do their jobs and provide services to the entire population. So you could, in theory, I think, reduce the number of work days with useful jobs while people that are unemployed and formerly uselessly employed trained and replaced part time, and while many people with free time could work on automating even more the useful jobs that arent yet automated. I could be wrong, but thats how I see it at this point in time.

So technology is good, but our economic system is crap. Instead of reducing the work with the same benefits until new activities can be fully developed, it flushes people down the drain along with their livelihood until such a time as alternatives (some of which can be in fact useless for society and only justified in a monetary system) can be developed.

I see your point. Certainly workers must be oppressed for their wages to be so low that we need to hire people to run around in circles all day. Like hamsters running in a wheel.

I like to think of the economy as a kitchen cooking soup, and it simply has too many carrots. It tries and tries to come up with a recipe that will allow it to use those carrots, without needing more of the other ingredients, but most of those recipes just plain don't taste very good, so they end up having to throw some of the carrots away.

In this analogy, other ingredients would be stuff like natural resources. Can't hire more farmers than you have plots of arable land. Can't hire more miners than you have veins of ore. The oil fields in Texas and North Dakota are employing a lot of people right now. Too bad we don't have more oil fields.

We can't produce more useful stuff without ingredients. If we don't produce more useful stuff, then we won't have any valuable goods and services to give the workers as compensation, so we can't realistically create more jobs (even fake ones.)

Aren't jobs which could be done by technology also "fake jobs"?

Yes they are. And considering those plus the other fake jobs I mention is why I think we can have an alternate system, more or less inspired by RBE (Zeitgeist Movement, Venus Project) in one form or another in which there is no price cost for most (if not all depending on the variant) necessities and basic luxuries are readily available and people can work much much less on various task and occupy themselves with volunteering work and activities (including projects to automate whats left of the task that are not popular). At this point in time I see RBE as a great idea, like human flight before the wright brothers, but I havent seen a prototype that looks like it can fly (though the basic idea is good imo, and needs design/prototyping and testing as the Wright brothers did with planes when it was thought to be impossible).

If we avoid waste, recycle, design things to last and to be upgradable, I think we have enough resources to provide access to all necessities and basic luxuries without marketing (not a private-jets made of gold for everyone, but high quality of life)

deleted to create own thread.

Originally Posted by icewendigo

If we avoid waste, recycle, design things to last and to be upgradable, I think we have enough resources to provide access to all necessities and basic luxuries without marketing (not a private-jets made of gold for everyone, but high quality of life)

Where I differ with this view is that I think prices adjust to accommodate scarcity. I try to look at it as a physical question. A dude with 200 billion dollars in the bank is mostly just holding a lot of imaginary pieces of paper. It's not real wealth until he spends it. Odds are he'll never spend more than a tiny fraction of it. That tells me that, in terms of real wealth he's not actually as rich as he looks.

So I'm thinking that real wealth isn't so poorly distributed. Imaginary wealth is what's poorly distributed.

The economy is simply not producing a enough, real, tangible, wealth to go around. Presumably because we lack the natural resources to create any more.

We are throwing eggs and food away, while people are starving. Not only are we actually throwing actual eggs that are already produce in the garbage, to maintain prices high, but we are limiting egg production on purpose, and thats not fancy pants production but old production. People are dying because we are not making pills that cost a dime, while we manufacture novelty plastic dog shit.

In a few years (WW2) Canada built one of the largest shipping fleets in the world, we could be building greenhouse farms on rooftops of most buildings, we could build or convert giant tanker ships into aquaponic farms that would produce both fish and hydoponic vegetables. We have the technical physical molecular planetary scientific capability to produce gigantic amounts of food and distribute it so that its the same as air or grass (imagine selling a blade of grass for 3$, people would laugh, it could be the same with basic necessities like water, food[ex:fruits, veges, eggs, fish, leaving out land animal meat for arguments sake], housing, most medication.)I will eventally have to make a thread about what is mathematically/reasonably possible if you recycle and use innovation/technology and no holds bar can-do attitude.

In addition to the food rooftop hydroponics could produce. If we can build a space colony or spaceship with hydroponics to feed the colonists or crew, we should be able to build large hydrponics ships instead of battleships or oil tankers.

Speaking of plastic dog shit and of recycling, if we eventually build a mars or lunar or orbital colony, the crap we shit in the toilet will be valuable, it is most likely that we will recycle the organic matter we call shit into the food we eat, along with pee and shower drain water back into water to nurish plants and to drink. We have gargantuan amounts of resources and levels of ease undreamed of for any colony outside earth, we just need to recycle. We can already recycle a lot, but a few years of research into making a space colony would help a great deal.

It's not impossible in theory, but theory tends to get complicated when you try to reduce it to practice. In practice, a garden on a tanker ship is all of about 2 or maybe 3 acres. You ever try to profitably run a 2 or 3 acre farm? There's no economy of scale associated with it. Building top, floating, or otherwise marginal gardens is a kind of fantasy that lasts just as long as until you can find your calculator and crunch some numbers. The people tending those gardens will need them to produce, at a minimum, the amount of food they will need to eat in the time they spend growing it. Otherwise they're not even subsisting. It might work if you could automate it to the point where nobody was actually tending them, but then you'd have electrical costs to deal with.

It reminds of a project a local health club undertook in my area, where they attached generators to the stationary bicycles people were using for exercise. Turns out, in the course of a year, the total amount of electricity generated was only enough for a small household. Meaning - the gym wasn't even covering its own electrical costs.


If you want to build and run a hydroponics farm, it's going to be labor intensive and still consume resources - just different ones. For example, fresh water. You can get more fresh water with a desalinization plant, but then you're going to need gobs and gobs of electricity. You could get more electricity by building lots of solar panels, but then you'd need lots of silicon and other chemicals that get used by semiconductor factories.

It seems to me that every realistic outcome is just another trade-off. Sometimes we get a good trade off, like the Haber Process that allows us to manufacture ammonia for farms. The electricity we lose turned out to be minimal compared to the benefit - so obviously we took that option. However, most of the time if you see a good trade that just seems so obvious you can't imagine why anyone would pass it up ....... odds are there is a reason.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process

The trick is to automate as much as possible. Eventually it could be designed so that the people go to the roof top hydroponic of the supermarket to pick the veges hey want


www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsDa5VFRi90


EDIT:
One has to be mindful of objections with a "thinking inside the box" of the monetary system that might cause a mental blockage to see what can be actually achieved if humans on earth decide to, what is possible to to. When WW2 came, no one said, ~hey but we cant build battleships, because we cant make a tourism attraction that will recoup the cost nor make a profit~ they said we can make them we do make them even if its not happy free market profitable, the main point is they can make them, the main point is what we can produce. If its too difficult to think outside the monetary box, think about the news that the pentagon 'lost' 2.4 Trillion $ like it was misplaced pocket change that fell between the cushions of the sofa, just reallocating all the military expenditure and military industrial production would make a huge difference, instead of a bomb factory you could have a hydroponics infrastructure factory poping out industrial quantities of materials to build hydroponics, instead of GIVING bombs to people for FREE by dropping them on their Heads to incinerate them, you could give the materials for free without killing them, instead of training soldiers to kill people you could train them as logistics-engineering-agronomists advisers so they could help local people (that ask for help or tips) to setup urban gardens/edible landscape and the recycling logistics and the automated hydroponic centers, instead of manufacturing missiles you could manufacture solar panels.

(BTW: sorry, if this is drifting too far from the OP)

er I am a hands on organic lady...I wanna feel that fruit..touch it..smell is..no freaking way buddy

chuckle

Wait... this IS the thread, 'One idea how to overcome the world economic crisis,' right?
Because umm...

I mean that just...

For a moment I thought I wandered into the '8 promising methods of...' Oh, never mind...

There is over 1.5 quadrillion dollars of global derivative debt. In the USA there is over 17 trillion dollars national debt with an additional 171 trillion of unfunded liabilities. To be rid of this debt the world could agree to just let it go like they did in way back in Biblical days. The Hebrews would have a " Great Jubilee" to erase debt and free slave. A jubilee is needed as the other options including war creates debt by the most powerful society to be imposed on the conquered society and themselves.

Agreed

sorry guys....I just read the thread but I am so freaking tired I can't answer and bad news on the Neph with pancreatic cancer....I am sorry