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There is a phenomenon which I have observed for a long time, which may explain some of what we observe these days.
New technologies, new human capacities, new resources and new ways of organizing human endeavor are not introduced into our civilization uniformly. Some individuals (often some already with certain privilege or power) will typically gain the new advantage before others.
Over the last few centuries, human civilization has gained some rather major advances in organization, communications, transportation, energy, technology, mass media and control, weapons, ...
Money is the universal virtual equivalent exchange marker of human commercial activity. It seems that every thing has its price. Almost any specific physical resource, talent, wealth or power in the "real" world can be converted to and from money. Money has become the nitro-glycerin, the universal solvent, the sine qua non, of human commerce.
Bankers are the middle men of money. They promise to move money across space and time. I can put money into a bank today in North Texas and with a little information that I can pass on, someone else can take it out of a bank in Diego Garcia in a decade (minus a few fees and some loss due to inflation.)
Banks have no particularly serious real physical constraints. They depend only on some decent levels of C4 (command, control, communication, and computers.)
With no onerous constraints in the physical world, and with a privileged position in the monetary world, bankers have leveraged the advances in human capabilities of the last few centuries into an increasingly dominant position. Apparently the dominant banking families now choose our Presidents and whisper in the ears of Popes and Kings.
If cows milk had some universal magic power superior to all else, then I can imagine that a few long standing families of dairy farmers would be written of in hushed tones, alleging deep conspiracies stretching over centuries. I can also imagine that some of the sons of these nearly omnipotent families would be deeply immoral. Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely (Lord Acton.)
Grand conspiracies of ordinary men are indeed quite improbable.
However the grand corruption of the common interests of a few increasingly dominant families who have gained an upper hand thanks to unequal distribution of rapid advances in the capacities of human civilization is perhaps inevitable.
If the above properly describes the nature of the problem facing us today, then it perhaps shines a light on the way out of our current mess.
Advances in human capacity do not fall equally on all humans. Some benefit sooner, some more. But such advances do spread over time. First only faithful scribes of the ruling priests had access to the printing press, the better to make bibles for the priests. Now a nation is quite backward if a majority of its people cannot read and have not a single book. The powers of steel, petro, and computers are spreading rapidly.
In particular, and a key point of this post, the role of bankers as the essential middle man of money transfer is being diluted.
For example, the increasing availability of C4 capabilities to the populace at large is providing a fertile substrate for alternative clearing agencies, such as perhaps Webmoney, Paypal, E-gold, Goldmoney, Netpay, Evocash. E-bullion, Moneybookers, and Ikobo (this list is taken from www.exchange-on-line.com, of which I have no other or prior knowledge and which I neither endorse nor caution against.)
Bankers had achieved a monopoly. No bank could survive in the Western financial world that was not a member of, or at least meekly subservient to, a system of central banks, which were in turn centered around London's City, New York and Basel Switzerland (BIS). This monopoly is now under attack.
Similarly the U.S. Dollar had become the dominant central exchange currency of this system. This dominance is also being diluted of late, as an increasing variety of bilateral and multilateral agreements are made in other currencies.
The biggest problem facing civilization is the excessive concentration of power in the hands of a few banking families, and the essential solution is the dilution of this power, as the capacity and will to engage in monetary transactions spreads increasingly outside the grip of these few powerful bankers.
The most powerful banking families resist this, of course, making what use they can of their control over governments, media, universities and regulatory agencies to obtain increasingly tyrannical control over monetary transactions. The infamous War on Terror has been one of their favorite covers for this power grab.
Resist. Encourage and patronize alternative monetary systems. Dilution is the solution to the concentration of toxic banker power. The solution is inevitable in my view. Only the timing and painfulness of the transition phase are still to be determined.
(For that matter, also consider alternative food, health and information systems, for the same reason. These are suffering from similar problems of an excess concentration of power that usually follows the rapid development of non-uniformly dispersed enhancements in capability.)
New technologies, new human capacities, new resources and new ways of organizing human endeavor are not introduced into our civilization uniformly. Some individuals (often some already with certain privilege or power) will typically gain the new advantage before others.
Over the last few centuries, human civilization has gained some rather major advances in organization, communications, transportation, energy, technology, mass media and control, weapons, ...
Money is the universal virtual equivalent exchange marker of human commercial activity. It seems that every thing has its price. Almost any specific physical resource, talent, wealth or power in the "real" world can be converted to and from money. Money has become the nitro-glycerin, the universal solvent, the sine qua non, of human commerce.
Bankers are the middle men of money. They promise to move money across space and time. I can put money into a bank today in North Texas and with a little information that I can pass on, someone else can take it out of a bank in Diego Garcia in a decade (minus a few fees and some loss due to inflation.)
Banks have no particularly serious real physical constraints. They depend only on some decent levels of C4 (command, control, communication, and computers.)
With no onerous constraints in the physical world, and with a privileged position in the monetary world, bankers have leveraged the advances in human capabilities of the last few centuries into an increasingly dominant position. Apparently the dominant banking families now choose our Presidents and whisper in the ears of Popes and Kings.
If cows milk had some universal magic power superior to all else, then I can imagine that a few long standing families of dairy farmers would be written of in hushed tones, alleging deep conspiracies stretching over centuries. I can also imagine that some of the sons of these nearly omnipotent families would be deeply immoral. Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely (Lord Acton.)
Grand conspiracies of ordinary men are indeed quite improbable.
However the grand corruption of the common interests of a few increasingly dominant families who have gained an upper hand thanks to unequal distribution of rapid advances in the capacities of human civilization is perhaps inevitable.
If the above properly describes the nature of the problem facing us today, then it perhaps shines a light on the way out of our current mess.
Advances in human capacity do not fall equally on all humans. Some benefit sooner, some more. But such advances do spread over time. First only faithful scribes of the ruling priests had access to the printing press, the better to make bibles for the priests. Now a nation is quite backward if a majority of its people cannot read and have not a single book. The powers of steel, petro, and computers are spreading rapidly.
In particular, and a key point of this post, the role of bankers as the essential middle man of money transfer is being diluted.
For example, the increasing availability of C4 capabilities to the populace at large is providing a fertile substrate for alternative clearing agencies, such as perhaps Webmoney, Paypal, E-gold, Goldmoney, Netpay, Evocash. E-bullion, Moneybookers, and Ikobo (this list is taken from www.exchange-on-line.com, of which I have no other or prior knowledge and which I neither endorse nor caution against.)
Bankers had achieved a monopoly. No bank could survive in the Western financial world that was not a member of, or at least meekly subservient to, a system of central banks, which were in turn centered around London's City, New York and Basel Switzerland (BIS). This monopoly is now under attack.
Similarly the U.S. Dollar had become the dominant central exchange currency of this system. This dominance is also being diluted of late, as an increasing variety of bilateral and multilateral agreements are made in other currencies.
The biggest problem facing civilization is the excessive concentration of power in the hands of a few banking families, and the essential solution is the dilution of this power, as the capacity and will to engage in monetary transactions spreads increasingly outside the grip of these few powerful bankers.
The most powerful banking families resist this, of course, making what use they can of their control over governments, media, universities and regulatory agencies to obtain increasingly tyrannical control over monetary transactions. The infamous War on Terror has been one of their favorite covers for this power grab.
Resist. Encourage and patronize alternative monetary systems. Dilution is the solution to the concentration of toxic banker power. The solution is inevitable in my view. Only the timing and painfulness of the transition phase are still to be determined.
(For that matter, also consider alternative food, health and information systems, for the same reason. These are suffering from similar problems of an excess concentration of power that usually follows the rapid development of non-uniformly dispersed enhancements in capability.)
Describing the Nazis accounting of the Jews possessions as "foreclosure"? Huh?
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