Sunday, February 8, 2009

Sustainability and Capitalism

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1. Capitalism is where the people own the means of production. We do NOT have that now in the US. We have a dirty form of debt-based, private bank, corporate, faux capitalism.
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It's not that capitalism is bad - we wouldn't know; we've never had it in all of the history of the US. We've always been worked over by the banks and their special form of economic terror.
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Isn't that what they are doing now? They dry up the money supply and threaten a "Great Depression" if we don't give them more money and labor ("bailouts" and wage reductions).
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What's it called when you do all of the work and someone else gets all of the economic benefit?
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In a model called "CLEAN CAPITALISM" the people would truly own the means of production because they would own their money. Whereas now, the banks own all of the money and you may only borrow it. We can change that.
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2. Now, banks create money when they make a loan, by "monetizing" a "promise to pay". The borrower signs a promise to pay and they literally type the new money into existence when they deposit the new loan into the borrowers account. They ONLY do this when they make a loan - so the new money always increases the debt.
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Big problem here: when they make a loan, they only create the principal. The money to pay interest is never created within the system. So, the debt is always greater than our ability to pay.
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3. That is, by definition, unsustainable.
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