Thomasio

Everybody is an atheist, towards all the gods that were ever invented by humans. Some people make an exception for one specific god that they haven't abolished yet. But even on that last one, no matter which one it is, believers are in a minority, because there is no religion that more than half of humanity would believe in, while most religions are mutually exclusive. Christianity will surely disappear halfway soon, the Islam is currently making an attempt to take over the world, but hopefully they won't succeed either. In the very long run humanity will definately overcome its precivilized superstition, let's just hope the remaining backwards oriented movements won't cause too much trouble until then.

Yes, I know what you mean. Countries like Switzerland don't need much for export of goods, they mostly export credit and cash interst. But that's not what I mean, in fact this monetary balance is included or better added to the trade of goods and services, so a countries balance consists of the sum of both. Also a countries balance as a whole includes both, private import and export as well as public import and export. Or in short, whether a country has a surplus or a deficit includes everything going in and out of the country. Furthermore countries that compensate a deficit in the trade of goods and services with a surplus in monetary business are quite rare, those are usually the small countries, the tax havens for the super rich or so, not the usual deficit countries like Greece or Spain. In Europe the situation has evolved to the absurd situation that Germans do not only export goods to southern Europe, Germany is the only of the big countries in the European Union (excluding Luxembourg and other tiny ones) not in deep financial trouble, so Germans ship the goods and the loans required to buy the goods in one package, meaning not only does Germany have a huge surplus in trading goods, they also have a huge surplus in giving loans to foreign countries and (IFFFF the debtors would ever be able to pay) Germans would cash in on their exports TWICE. You're quite right that workers don't get paid as much as they produce value, but from a accountant point of view that's not important. From a financial point of view someone who gets more money than he spends is a net saver and someone who spends more than he gets is a net debtor, independent of how much someone should get compared to how much he actually gets. Private households are even from the little amount they get paid still net savers, because even from their small income they still put about 10% into saving accounts, pension plans, etc. Businesses have become net savers, as a result of several factors. First of all they stopped increasing wages in the 70s or at least they slowed down the increase, while productivity steadily increased, meaning businesses made more profit. Next they invested far less than before, because the relative (if not absolute) reduction in wages led to decreasing demand, which made investing in new factories pointless. Next they used the saved money to buy back their own shares from investors so they don't have to pay as much dividend anymore. Next they bought one another, merged to ever bigger corporations and of course they deduced the price they paid for buying their competition from their taxes. Last but not least they bribed the political class into giving them gigantic tax breaks. Before anyone gets this wrong, of course all of this works only for the huge corporations. Small businesses up to middle class just like private households pay more taxes than ever before. Getting from here back to a status, where businesses, especially big business becomes the natural counterpart of private savings again isn't easy, if not impossible. Most big businesses have accumulated unimaginable savings, they just don't need any loans, no matter what. Have you heard about VW? When they calculated they might get fined in the US to pay 18 bln or so? Have you heard what they did ONE DAY later? They have put aside 6.5 bln of their savings to be prepared for the coming wave of court suits and they stated, even if it were 30 bln in the end, that's no problem for them, even 40 or 50 bln wouldn't ruin them. They released their CEO from his post, but somehow they forgot to mention, they still pay him millions of salary for the next year or so, because they didn't feel like bothering with firing him, they found it easier to keep paying him until his contract expires and the millions that costs are just peanuts to them, they will simply deduce it from their taxes. Meanwhile the city of Wolfsburg (the hometown of the VW central, the only big business in that area and the main source of taxes in town) is in deep trouble, because the very first thing VW did after they expected huge expenses coming their way was, they recalculated their taxes and announced, they would now pay far less. So after all, it's the people of Wolfsburg paying a huge price for the criminal activities of VW, where the loss in taxes for every single citizen of Wolfsburg in relation to their income weighs heavier than a 50 bln fine would weigh for VW, while the biggest winner of the story is the former CEO, who got paid for committing fraud and now gets paid for nothing. Yaya, I know, taxes are theft, so that's not a valid argument, but then ...... as long as the system exists and charges taxes, I don't see how it shall be fair that VW makes innocent people suffer a loss they aren't responsible for.

Yes, such a business model requires continuous growth, which is why it isn't sustainable in a finite world in the long run. Capitalism by itself requires continuous growth, capitalimn cannot exist, if it doesn't grow and create a continuously increasing profit. To make it sustainable, you would have to stop growing the quantity of production at a given point and begin to increase the quality of life for the people. That could be using a 3% increase in productivity not to produce 3% more, but to reduce working hours by 3% or something like that. In a capitalist system all parts of the system depend on one another, businesses can make profit only if their customers have the money to buy the products and since the customers are the working class that consumes out of its wages, capitalism can grow only if BOTH, wages and profits, increase (and decrease) in parallel. Cutting wages upon increasing productivity and shifting profits away from the workers to the super rich automatically backfires, only if the super rich let the working class participate in the growth, so that the working class at all times have through increasing wages the means to buy the increasing production, the system grows and thrives. Of course the system might work even better, if the super rich wouldn't exist in the first place, but that arguably might mean, the huge capital required for progress in our highly advanced technology might not be available anymore, so I'm not sure whether or not the super rich on top of the pyramid are plain thieves or somewhat useful to the system. I haven't made up my mind on that part, so I will not judge this part. Either way, even if they are useful, if the super rich aren't willing to let the workers participate in the increasing overall wealth generated in capitalism, cutting, or even only not increasing wages, literally cuts the profits of the super rich as well. Big problem here is, on an individual level and on short term, cutting wages allows a temporary increase of wealth for a tiny sub group of the super rich, meaning if only ONE large corporation cuts wages, it gains an advantage over other corporations and can use that advantage to increase its profits for a short time. But obviously all other corporations will be forced to cut wages as well, to regain competitiveness and once ALL employers have cut wages, competition returns precisely to where it was before the cut in wages, but then the effect that the working class doesn't have the money to buy all the products anymore kicks in and leads to factories closing, workers layed off and businesses going bankrupt. To overcome this kind of (absolutely human) selfish shortsightet profit maximizing, a working capitalism requires some kind of mechanism that prevents the system from destroying itself. We could get the western world back on it's feet, if we abolish the corrupt system of a super rich elite bribing the political class into supressing wages of the working class. Once we give the working class the means to buy what they produce, a steady growth, including a steady increase in wages as well as a steady increase in profits for businesses would work just fine. That's the part, where libertarians are absolutely correct. I'm not exactly sure whether or not libertarians have a system in mind that prospers out of itself by letting everyone in the system participate in the growth, but since we have so many of them in this forum, maybe one of them can fill in here. ................... Next topic You have to separate internal balances of a country from external trade balances, if you mix them up you're easily confused and lose the main picture out of sight. First take a look at international trade. No matter how much a country produces, no matter how much of it is exported, as long as it imports more than it exports it accumulates debt and if it exports more than it imports, it accumulates savings. Fairly obvious, a deficit country cannot keep this going for long, sooner or later they are bankrupt and an increase in their exports cannot change that, unless they increase exports above their imports, which makes them a surplus country. But the trade balance throughout the whole world is ALWAYS ZERO, the world as a whole is a CLOSED system, for every additional country that makes it into a surplus, either the existing surplus countries lose part of their surplus, or the remaining deficit countries will accumulate even more debt. That's why in the long run the international trade balance for every single country in the world should be even, a country may have a surplus for a few years, followed by a deficit for a few years, depending on the economy, but as soon as just one country in the world is out of balance for a long time, there will unavoidably be some other country somewhere in the world that goes bankrupt. That's why for example the European Union has written into its contracts that all countries must have a balanced trade, they even have rules that countries violating this balance over a long time have to pay a fine to the union, but Germany is permanently ignoring that paragraph in the contracts, they are exceeding ALL limits of the contract permanently and they abuse the power of their money to bypass the contract and don't pay the fine. Once you understand the fact that international trade balances can NOT be a long term basis for growth, because competition on an international level is a zero balance game, you can conclude that exclusively internal growth is what creates increasing wealth in the long run. Then you're back at the fact that only countries with increasing wages will do well in capitalism. There is a reason why the modern form of capitalism got started in England about 250 years ago, while wages in England were the highest wages in the world. There is a reason, why capitalism was creating insane amounts of growth and wealth in the US in the last 200 years up to 40 years ago, while wages were increasing rapidly. There is a reason why capitalism stumbles from one crisis into the next, ever since wages don't increase anymore. ..... and yes, that's because of a government that steals from the workers and gives to the super rich, which reduces the buying capacity of the people upon increasing productivity, which in return leads to less sales for businesses, which leads to factories closing, which leads to mass unemployment. Cutting wages further so that more people get a job doesn't solve that, as long as the total of all wages doesn't increase, it may get a few people out of poverty without the need for welfare, but it won't get the capitalist system out of the crisis, meaning even this kind of creating low paid jobs is only a temporary thing that lasts only until the still increasing productivity launches another round of lay offs. I still believe, it isn't the intend of the government to do this, but since politicians are normal humans like everyone else, they are an easy target for the bribery of the super rich who are just too shortsightest to see that bribing politicians into wage cuts backfires big time. I've just seen a video from Stefan, where he points out how intelligent Donald Trump is. I'm crossing my fingers and hope he does understand that only increasing wages can solve the problem. The democrats have understood at least this little detail, but then ...... they have a ton of downsides, like climate change and other junk and one good point doesn't make an overall good picture.

I believe most people have a feeling, their opinion won't make a difference and nothing they could do would make any difference on anything. In a political landscape where ALL political parties on the most important questions do the same thing, there just isn't any option of voting for a change. If people feel they do have a say in something of importance, i.e. the referendum in Scottland about their membership in GB, you get over 90% voter participation. What the outcome of such a referendum will be is yet another question, that mostly depends on political propaganda, meaning getting a say isn't everything, you also have to grant an objective and complete information about the topic to all voters. If you want people to wake up, show interest in important topics and participate in the solution, not only do you have to point out the downsides of the current system, not only do you have to show an alternative, not only do you have to prove your alternative is better for them, but you have to show people a way of how they could get to that solution without serious downsides in their lives. As far as it concerns anarchy, the big hole in the argument is, you can't ask people to vote republican in order to get to anarchy, simply because even the dumbest voter will understand, voting for ANY of todays political parties will only shift power from one party to another, but will never get anyone to power who would be willing to abolish government, because nobody would abolish himself. As long as you suggest to people they should vote for a party that wants to abolish social services, but keep the stealing through taxes going, they will never see, how losing social services without paying less taxes shall have any advantage for them. As long as you point out the need of terminating war in the middle east, you just can't suggest for a solution a party that has started the war in Iraq based on a plain lie.

Wages were increasing by 8-10% per year, generating an extreme increase in demand for goods, which producers could satisfy only through continuous expansion of production, which required loans to build factories, which generated more jobs, which generated even more demand. An upwards spiral, where near full employment left employers no option but raise wages to have any workers at all, which in return generated the demand for more workers. As soon as wages stopped increasing in the end of the 70s (because employers had managed to buy the political class as well as the unions and bribed them into stopping the wage increase), expansion of businesses stopped as well and that's the beginning of mass unemployment, which has led us to todays downwards spiral in which cutting wages leads to less demand, leads to closing factories and laying off workers. You don't see a contradiction here? If a country imports more than they export, they have a deficit. If a country pays debt back with goods and services, that means they become a surplus country, because they then export more than they import. But that neccessary requires that not only the deficit country converts to a surplus country, but also the surplus country becomes a deficit country. In other words, a country that bases it's economy on an export surplus can never cash in on their savings, unless they cut their own over production underneath the level of consumption of their own people. As long as a surplus country keeps the surplus, they will accumulate savings indefinately, at the most they might shift the debt from one debtor to another, but over all they keep accumulating credit. When after the first world war Germany was supposed to pay the damages they had caused throughout the world, while at same time the winners of the war did everything they could to prevent Germany from rebuilding a trade surplus, it was John Maynard Keynes who pointed out, that Germany cannot pay anything, as long as the others do not allow them to have a trade surplus, but the world didn't listen, they kept requesting Germany shall pay, but still have a deficit and the direct result was the 2nd world war. After the 2nd world war, Germany was again supposed to pay damages, but this time around Germany was allowed to build up a trade surplus, the last payment where Germany paid back their debt from the war was quite recently, but they were able to pay, only and exclusively, because they were allowed to have a trade surplus. In other words, as long as Germany keeps this gigantic surplus they have built up over the last 50 years, together with China they will ruin the whole rest of the world, simply because the only way how the rest of the world could ever pay back anything would be, if Germany and China became deficit countries.

Whether you call it bookkeeping or accounting or whatever, doesn't change the fact, the sum of all savings must equal the sum of all debt. Wealth is created by extending the amount of money in circulation at the same rate production increases, so that at all times in the process the same amount of money in circulation stand against the same amount of products, so that prices remain stable. If more money is put into circulation (not just printed) than productivity increases, you get inflation, if productivity grows faster than money enters the circulation, you get deflation. Money printing by itself doesn't cause any inflation or deflation, only the act of putting money into circulation does. Therefore the initial printing and handing out of money to the population generates inflation, but as long as all the handing out is always exclusively done as a loan which has to be paid back after a while, upon the end of paying back the loan, due to the interest the debtor has to pay on top of the original sum, money gets taken out of circulation permanently, therefore you get eternal deflation, unless you keep printing more new money and push it into the market than all the paid debt plus all the added interest paid takes out. Not sure if I got that worded clear, so lets make an example: I know someone will now try to declare my point false, because an import/export imbalance can shifted properties, but this is just an example for a CLOSED economy. Of course any specific part of an economy can outcompete another part, so that one part actually gains a surplus, but that always means, there will be some other part having the same deficit and if you keep that going for a while, the surplus country will get wealthier all the time, but as soon as the deficit countries are bankrupt, the surplus country cannot have a surplus anymore and their export based economy will collapse, which is what Germany and China experience these days. After all the world as a whole IS a closed economy, so imagine the following example represents the whole world. Nobody says the US couldn't outcompete Mexico or vice versa, nobody says Europe couldn't outcompete the middle east, but overall the balances add up to zero. Let's say we abolish fiat currency, we go for a gold standard and an imaginary closed economy has precisely 1 ton of gold in circulation, 1000 people living in that country, owning 1kg of gold each. They produce all goods and services needed for the people and prices by the law of a free market grant that the sum of all goods and services equals 1 ton of gold. Now imagine, every year, the population grows by a few %, or automation and other improvements in production allow the economy to produce a few % more goods. If there is no gold added to the economy, prices of goods and services will fall every year, simply because the same amount of gold has to buy an increasing amount of goods and services. If the economy has a gold mine, that digs up a bit of gold every year, then - if the amount of gold found per year is in percent of the existing gold equal to the increase in productivity, all prices remain stable, that's the ideal situation a perfect financial system would have. - if less gold is found, prices decrease. - if more gold is found, prices increase. Now imagine some people trying to save some gold, put it in a safe, store it, for retirement or something. The very first, near instant effect would be, part of all goods and services can't be sold anymore, simply because the gold in circulation at current prices isn't enough to buy all goods and services. Next, all prices of all goods and services will fall, because a lower amount of available gold now has to buy all the goods and services. Now imagine, those savers accumulate savings for a while, then they begin to give out loans to those who want to build something, launch a new company or something. At first, all prices would increase, because the gold in circulation increases. Shortly after that, production increases more than ever before, because the new factory built from the borrowed money pushes out additional products, which leads to all prices of all goods and services falling faster than they raised. Shortly after that the loan gets paid back with interest, the gold in circulation gets reduced again and all prices fall even deeper. From now on the creditor doesn't even have to give loans for all the gold he owns, he can keep the interest from the first round, give the same loan as before again and do another round of deflating prices. This is unavoidable, unless you dig up and throw into circulation more gold than the total amount of all loans charge for interest AND the total amount of increasing productivity is, you end up in eternal deflation. Fairly obvious, deflation isn't a bad thing, it's actually pretty good for private customers, if their shopping becomes cheaper all the time, but it's the death of an interest based financial system. Also it's obvious that the increasing productivity will increase wealth for everybody over time, as long as you let all people in the country participate in the money circulation. If you lay off people to cut production to keep prices up, you take people out of the chain, they become poor and begin to depend on welfare or charity, which is what happens worldwide these days. Also it's obvious that those who save some gold and give loans, begin an eternal accumulation of more and more gold, which ultimately means an exponential accumulation of gold in the hands of the creditors, where anyone who has ever checked out what "exponential" means, can figure out, that at a predictable time in the future, they will own ALL gold except of the newly found gold. But as soon as the creditors have accumulated so much gold, that the gold remaining in circulation isn't enough anymore to pay the interest on the loans, the system collapses. This is the point, the financial system of the world as a whole is at right now. Only due to the fact that fiat money can be printed in unlimited amounts (which is what central banks do) our financial system hasn't collapsed yet, but this collapse is dead ahead and predictable. The neccessary money printing, just to keep up with the exponential growing interest creditors charge has by now reached astronomical levels, it just can't go on for long anymore. Now if you want to point out with a gold standard that wouldn't happen, you're only partially right. You're right as far as the system couldn't pump up the gigantic bubbles we have in real estate and stock market, it would collapse far earlier, but it would collapse just as well.

That's the whole point of why it's so ridiculous. If every few years part of the bible has to be reinterpreted because whatever was considered the correct interpretation so far has become verifyably false, if near everything from the book was taken literally 2000 years ago, but almost nothing in the whole book can be taken literally today, clearly there is no truth in it. By today, so much of the actual truth has been discovered by science, that anyone who seriously tries, can push a believer into a corner, where his only, last defense is, close the eyes, run away and deny further talking, before he would be in danger of doubting his religion himself. Nothing new, happens all the time. I haven't even seriously tried, personally I believe trying to argue with religious people is a pointless waste of time, because given enough time in a discussion, you will get believers to say things like: "Even if I was proven wrong, I would still believe I'm right." There's no point in discussing under such conditions, except of one small detail. I'm having a bit of fun with you here, it's not you who I'm trying to convince here, it's the vast majority of all undecided, open minded readers of this topic, because in all cases I know of, any discussion like this one, whether in a public debate, or in a video chat over the web, or in forums like this one, has always led to the majority of readers who were undecided before reading, went to the side of the atheist during reading, because from an outside, undecided, neutral point of view, in discussions like this one believers always make fools of themselves and the fact they all run away in the end underlines just that. But you're right about one thing, a "shield" in form of a functioning brain ist a pretty good defense against religious nonsense.

So since the body is about the opposite of perfect, only the mind independent from the body is what counts? That's the usual "god of the gaps", as soon as something god has supposedly done is shown to be false, believers switch to whatever is left that isn't shown false (yet). But then, the bible says "god made humans in his own image", it doesn't say "god made a mind in his image and placed it into a complete mess of a biologically evolved body". And if that's not enough, what is the mind outside of it's body? I believe you call it the "soul". If young people, full of enthusiasm for Green Peace and stuff, growing up, changing their mind, become either political correct or libertarians or whatever else, do they keep their earlier mind-soul that was in support of Green Peace? If old people suffer a head stroke and "forget" absolutely everything they ever knew, if they have to relearn absolutely everything (my mom had that, I can tell how that goes), if they don't even recognize their own children, where is their mind-soul in the meantime? If through relearning things they become a different person, i.e. my mom went from being the most diligent, helpful, selfless and content person she was before, to a harsh critics of politics, especially the disfunctional medical system and she went from being catholic to a hardcore atheist, because she realized, there is no soul within her that would somehow remain unchanged while her body deteriorates, then what is the state of her soul before and after? What kind of mind will in the end arrive in heaven? The one that was the strongest believer, because that's the one that would be welcome in heaven, or the one that was the strongest atheist, because it's more fun to send them to hell and watch them suffer? Does it go by timeline? Whatever the state of mind of a person was in the last minute before he died? What if the last thought doesn't make any sense, because Alzheimers desease has destroyed the mind? Will the soul remain intact? If yes, in what state will it remain intact? The state of mind from their 18th bday or something like that? An overall average?

Ok, I will admit, I cannot bring you links to ALL the super rich, but here is one good example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_activities_of_the_Koch_brothers According to this, they are "significant financial contributions to libertarian", "advocated for the abolition of Social Security" and all that. Either way, the rest of your question is somewhat independent from this. Of course I do not support government as it is today, because those are in fact what libertarians describe them to be, the executors of the super rich, they get themselves a bribe for helping the super rich to steal from the workers. Of course I don't want this to keep going, of course I want to kick out 100% of all current politicians, send them to hell, confiscate all their property and revoke all their pensions, because they do not rightfully or at least not morally correctly own any of it. The problem I'm having with libertarians is, if you "only" abolish the state, but leave the real criminals their stolen wealth, they will use their money power to quickly find themselves another executor and keep the stealing going. I believe the super rich are in favor of abolishing the state, because they already have an idea, how they could find another executor that does the job way cheaper than the bribery of the political class costs. So to my mind, we would not only have to abolish the current political system, but also have to abolish the super rich class from the top of the pyramid, confiscate all their stolen wealth and send them to hell and the very same thing we would have to do with all the media that currrently runs the propaganda of the super rich. Last but not least, I don't think a plain anarchy could provide a stable and fair system, where then the workers could enjoy the fruits of their labor. As discussed the last days under current events, the problem with muslim immigration and the riots they create has to be prevented, there has to be someone or something that keeps these problems away from the workers and I don't think individual workers caring exclusively for their own property could prevent a mass immigration into the country. I believe I said already, I have no clue, how we could organize that without getting into a bribed political class and of course we have to make sure, whatever system we install to keep peace and social behavior within a morally correct range, must be free of any temptation to bribery, but I don't think a system of everybody caring for himself and somehow everybody will automatically behave will do the trick. In short: I do NOT want to keep the government as it is, in fact I do NOT want one single of todays politicians to keep his job, I want them ALL gone, but I do believe, SOME kind of organization is required, which by definition would be called government, even though it should look and work way different from what we have today and even though I have no clue how we could organize it.

As I said, I prefer #3 and/or #4. I just had the impression Stefan was talking about men being the traditional protectors of women, who gave up the need of men, relying on a state that should protect them, which cannot work, because the state never works or something like that. If I remember right, his last sentence in his video is something like: "If women would now ask us to take our traditional role back, we might think about it." That's why I had the impression he was for #2, but I found that kinda weird, since it seems to contradict his liberal ideas of freedom for everyone. Maybe I just understood him wrong?

Boy, your're funny. How could a creature that takes air and food through the same entry into the body, which frequently leads to people chocking on food, be anywhere close to an image of a perfect being? Created in the image of god is one of the most hilarious claims of religion and just like all the other claims, there isn't the slightest bit of evidence for it. In this case it's about the opposite, 100s if not 1000s of shortcommings of the human body, could be considered near solid proof, this is nowhere near a good design, therefore can't have been designed by a god, or better isn't designed at all, but the result of natural selection, simply the (so far) best out of billions of imperfect options nature has produced so far.

Todays news say, 31 of the attackers in Cologne have been identified, 2/3 of them have a status of asylum seekers, two have been arrested so far. I believe nothing of this has been organized, it's just the logic consequence of what happens if 100s of 1000s of mostly young men from a country where women cannot go out in the street without male company, enter a liberal society in which girls are used to freely go around without getting attacked. (I believe Stefan has made a video about it, where he says about the same.) The fact that police in Germany has been cut over the years due to austerity led to the fact that they were kinda helpless in the situation, but the reason of why the attacks happened in the first place won't change, no matter how much police and/or surveilance cameras they would put into public places, it would have happened, no matter what, only with more police they might have arrested all the attackers by now. As far as I'm concerned, there are four options: 1) Make 50% of the population policemen . 2) Don't allow girls to go out without male company. 3) Allow girls (or anyone) after background check to carry weapons. 4) Kick everyone who believes women are inferior out of the country. Not sure if I got that right, but I believe Stefan in his video, at least in his last sentence, pointed to #2. Personally I'm in favor of a mixture of #3 and #4.

I couldn't have said it any better. But doesn't this mean debtors have to be found? Where do you find a debtor willing to take the loans in a stateless society where private households are net savers, businesses are net savers as well and a 3rd party doesn't exist? I can (once again) point you to the video of Heiner Flassbeck, showing the distribution of savings and debt as it was in the 60s. From time 41:20 to 42:30 he shows, how the state and foreign countries used to be more or less neutral, as long as businesses where the natural counterpart debtors to savings of private households. In such an environment, there is no problem taking the state out. The big problem is, how do you get the big corporations to become net debtors again, after they have moved production to China and gained power over the media, running propaganda for less taxes on businesses so they can make more profit without needing loans?

You see, whether or not there is a reason for something, doesn't mean, if there is a reason, it could be the reason you wish for. Maybe there's no god but only a devil and all he wants is a huge supply of souls to roast in hell. Maybe there's a god who doesn't care for humanity. Maybe there's a huge chain of overnatural beinges, created by over-overnaural beings, created by over-over-overnatural beings and maybe neither of any of them has ever heard about a meaningless planet at the outskirts of a meaningless galaxy, where an intelligent species has evolved that love to worship whatever they wish for. Maybe there's a reason for the universe, but it's not a god. Maybe wishful thinking is never good advice.

A “god-dependant reality” says nothing whatsoever about possible outcomes of obeying god, let alone good outcomes. The claim of god being a good god is a secondary claim of religion, independent of the claim that a god exists. The claim that "good god" refers to gods plans for the personal comfort in an afterlife, for one specific species from one specific planet in a gigantic universe, is a 3rd claim of religion, independent from the claim that a god exists and again independent from the claim that god is a good god. The claim that obeying god shall lead to a better outcome for the obeyers than not obeying god is yet another independent 4th claim of religion, still independent from all the above 3 claims. Maybe god loves experiments? Maybe he wants to see how much morality an intelligent being can develop without worshipping an imaginary overnatural being and will reward only those who behave morally right on their own? Maybe god loves intelligence and reason and rewards only those who do not believe in extremely improbable things. The only way how these 4 claims depend on one another is the fact, they all require a god to exist and even that is so extremely unlikely, that we can surely dismiss another 3 very improbable claims piled up on top of it.

The promise of a life after death is nothing more than an attempt to steal real values from real people in the real world. That's what all religions have in common, they ask you to give up part of your material comfort on earth (where of course the religious leaders are the ones receiving what believers donate), in exchange for a promise they don't have to keep, because by the time you find out whether or not the promise is true, it's too late to request reimborse of your losses.

That's a tricky one, because I'm just a typical private household. Married, we own a house and a car, we have some savings for retirement, but we can already predict, by the time we reach our statistical life expectancy, there will be nothing left. I'm no economist, but I'm trying to make up my mind. That's why I'm engaging in discussions like this one, because I'm trying to get information from ALL sides, where I then try to make up my own opinion out of a summary of all of it. I'm a programmer, so I have a deep sense for logic, meaning I can't overlook logic consequences, such as the fact that all savings require a debtor and increasing savings requires finding additional debtors. I'm a huge fan of statistics and probability calculation and I'm aware of facts like there cannot be infinite growth in a finite world. I've become a fan of Heiner Flassbeck, not because of the solutions he proposes, but because of the statistical data he presents. So what I'm doing is, I take his statistics and apply my own logic to them, which leads me to a result way different from his predictions. But since you asked specifically for my position, I'll give you a few examples of my current points of view. I'm a big climate change skeptic, I believe even IFF humans cause some part of the natural changes in climate, after all humans are part of nature, so some changes in about everything on this planet are naturally to be expected, or in short, advancing and adjusting to changes makes far more sense than trying to preserve the past. At same time I'm very strongly against air pollution, where I believe industrial over production is the source of the problem. Given the fact that roughly 50% of all cars produced in the world are not sellable because there are no customers needing or wanting them, I would strongly recommend to abolish 50% of the worlds automobile industry. The same holds true for about anything else humans produce, we have a gigantic over production of absolutely everything, including the world producing twice as much food as 7 billion people can eat, so I would strongly recommend to abolish a big part of food and all other production as well. But I do realize, in a free capitalistic market, that's just not possible, because in a market where yet another automobile manufacturer can enter the market anytime, if only he has some kind of business model how he can compete and grab a share of the market, the over production of absolutely everything will permanently become bigger and bigger, while air pollution will automatically become worse in the process. The logic idea of competition driving the weakest out of the market, in real life aparently doesn't hold, else half of the worlds car manufacturers should be gone by now. It's absolutely clear by now, while almost all of the big car manufacturers produce twice as many cars as they can sell, all prices of all cars in the world reflect the fact that the manufacturers have twice the expenses. Smaller manufacturers have higher expenses due to less industrialized production, so they can't be a competition for the big ones. Or in other words, IFF we would abolish 50% of all car manufacturing, prices of all industrially produced cars would get cut in half and we wouldn't have one single car less in the streets. The free market doesn't exist there, simply because all major players in the game do the very same thing and the customers have no choice but pay the double price, because a competition that would produce at the low cost of industrialized production but limit their production to the amount of cars they can actually sell doesn't exist. The next logic step is, if we attempt to abolish about 1/2 of the worlds industry, simply because it isn't needed, that would lay off 1/2 of the worlds workers. Since we already have huge loads of unemployed workers all over the world, cutting production and laying off even more workers would definately collapse the capitalist system. I completely dismiss the idea of the diligent becoming successful and the lazy remaing poor. It's a plain logic fact that if the world produces twice as much stuff as needed, while millions and millions of workers have no jobs, there's no point in some people working harder to make more money, because no matter who makes it out of poverty, he will never become an additional worker, he will only replace someone else and the overall unemployment rate on a global scale remains the same. Good example is Germany within the European Union. While Germany has cut wages, has become very competitive and has created jobs, Greece, Portugal, Spain, Italy, France and more other countries now have more unemployed workers than ever before. Now Germany suggests to those bankrupt states in southern Europe, they must become competitive as well, cut wages, create jobs and pay their debt. But competition is a relative concept, even IFF Greece, Portugal, Spain, Italy, France and all the other countries would create jobs now, that wouldn't be new jobs, they would only recapture the jobs that have previously been moved to Germany, meaning if southern Europe gains competitiveness, Germany would lose competitiveness, lose jobs and the overall unemployment numbers would remain the same. In the end, the only result of "everyone becoming more competitive", which is a logical impossibility, means exclusively that all workers in all countries produce more goods for lower wages, which in return means, private consumers have less money in their pockets to buy what manufacturers produce, thus sales numbers will drop, over production will increase and we will end up in a new great depression. Given these thoughts, I currently believe, the only way to give the poor a chance to enter the labor force is a limitation by law of how many hours a single person can work. If we would enforce a worldwide law, limiting the working hours of a single person to 20 hours a week or something like that, for the time being we would automatically get rid of most of the huge over production and almost all people would receive their fair chance to enter the labor market while at same time all workers would have far less stress. It would still leave enough competition in the market, so the diligent would make more money than the lazy, but at least there wouldn't be a need for a welfare state anymore, simply because almost everyone would have access to some kind of job and a demand that almost matches the available offer would result in wages a worker can actually afford a life from. But of course it would mean, the super diligent of today, who manage to compete in a market that will ALWAYS have millions of unemployed, would lose half of their income and since so far these diligent ones are still a slight majority in democratic countries, plus the fact that the super rich thieves on top of the pyramid have no intention or interest in raising wages, I'm quite sure, this will never be done. But then ...... "never" is once again one of my (I admit I tend to do that) exaggerations. I believe the current capitalistic system isn't sustainable, it will collapse sooner or later and the later it collapses, the harder it will crash. Not sure what will happen afterwards, but I'm afraid it won't ven matter, because the fact that today hardly anyone attempts to solve the problems, while the problems keep growing exponentially, will lead to a completely uncontrolled crash in which society as we know it will completely vanish. A German journalist and writer, named Ulrike Herrmann, predicts this even worse than I do. She has written a book about it, where she predicts, capitalism will crash so badly and uncontrolled that almost all our todays technology will become useless, she believes humanity will literally be thrown back into the stone age. Her presentation of the book (in German) you can find here:

It isn't. It's just the logic consequence of allowing private households to make enough money to be net savers and allowing businesses to make so much profit that even after investments they are still net savers. Since the balance must add up to zero, that leaves only the state ending up with the debt. Of course it would be highly preferable if one of the other groups became the debtors, but what do you want to do to achieve that? You would have to either reduce the income of private households, either through wage cuts or tax increase, so much that they cannot survive without taking on debt, or reduce the profit of businesses, either through lowering prices or higher taxes, until they are forced to take on debt. As long as you don't do either of that, the state will automatically accumulate debt. Logic, if you abolish the state, even though you might still not intend to enforce either of the other options of who shall become a debtor, forces of plain logic will lead to one or the other. Doesn't make any kind of difference. A loan still consist of a creditor and a debtor, and their total balance is zero. As long as you cannot make either of the two groups, private households or businesses net debtors, the state is the only group in the game that will end up with the debt and if you take out the state one of the other two groups necessary must become a net debtor.

Thanks for that one, finally someone supporting my view. Now based on this (can we call if a fact now?) theory, it's a must that for every penny of debt the state has, there is a creditor owning it and expecting it back with interest. If the state as a major debtor shall be taken out of the picture, WHO shall in the future take on the debt the state has taken on so far? Or do you plan on reducing savings as well and make it illegal for savers to accumulate new savings? I mean it's quite logic that private households aside of short term loans for a car or a house, naturally save more money than they take on debt, putting part of their income aside, for bad times or for retirement or for their children, so private households will always be net savers. Meaning with the state out of the picture, businesses have to become net debtors or else the whole idea of taking the state out cannot work. Big problem is, how to you transform businesses that are net savers today into net debtors?

I would have never even mentioned any of that, if it hadn't been for THIS video https://board.freedomainradio.com/topic/46102-the-new-pyramid/ upvoted 4 times and even against my questions underneath defended as if it was the common point of view in this forum. This video shows precisely the exploitation of producers by takers, perfectly showing that producers are relatively poor working people, while takers are rich people, company owners, etc. I may have worded that a bit too small, but of course I ment those shown in the pyramid on the very top. I was VERY surprised finding this video in this forum without 50 downvotes underneath, because it clearly presents the core ideas of socialism. Despite the fact communism and other systems claim to be socialism, they are not, the idea of worker owned manufacturing, THAT is the core of socialism. My bad, sorry, wasn't intentional, just replace any instance of "rich" or "super rich" in my post by "thieves", in the same sense the above video calls them "takers". That's what the above video says, I assumed it was common ground in this forum, otherwise I wouldn't have used that argument.

I don't see how competition and the risk of getting caught for a hitman, vs a government that can commit criminal acts risk free, makes any difference on the fact that they are only the executors of the real criminals in the background. If you arrest a hitman, the mafia will find themselves another hitman and if you arrest all the hitmen, the mafia will act on its own. If you abolish the state, the super rich will find themselves another executor for their criminal behavior and if you abolish all possible executors, the super rich will act on their own. That would have the advantage that we would finally clearly see who the real criminals are, but it wouldn't change anything on the fact that they will keep going with the very same thing they have been doing for centuries. The rich have never had any kind of problem keeping their stealing going, whether in anarchic environments like countries in Africa with long lasting civil wars, or in monarchies like France up to the 18th century, or in communism in Russia, or in democracies nowadays, during times of war even worse than during times of peace, in the lawless society of the old wild west same as in modern times with loads of laws, at the most the executors of the crimes got beheaded at the end of a civil war, but the true thieves have never been caught, let alone prosecuted. What makes you think that another round of abolishing (if not beheading) the executors could bring an end to the eternal problem of rich people exploiting poor people? What conslusion do you draw out of the fact that literally ALL super rich people (the actual real beneficiaries of the stealing) are highly in favor of abolishing government? Do you believe they suddenly found their moral side and are now voting against their own criminal behavior, or is it more likely that they expect to have an easier time of even more stealing without a government in between that causes them huge expenses through all the bribery they cost?

That's a moral question and comes down to the libertarian belief that charity in a free society will always be better than welfare under government could be. Libertarians believe, in a free society, where everyone has the option to make his own money, there would be far less poverty, therefore less charity needed, while a huge load of helpful people would always provide enough supplies for charity so nobody would have to starve. Whether or not thats true remains to be seen. As far as I know libertarians don't think past the point of "there will always be enough charity", for the reason that if there will always be enough there is no plan needed of what to do if not.

He could say: "Let there be 20 bill for me", according to your belief he has done just that with the whole universe. He could speak a few tons of gold into existence, just like he created the world. He could offer someone who owns 40 bill to make him 50 years or so younger for half of his money. He knows all the lottery numbers for all future, he could win all lotteries worldwide for a decade or two. If you want him to do it without performing things that are impossible by the laws of physics scientists have firgured out: He could point explorers to the right places of all the sunken treasures on the floor of the oceans for a fee. He could draw the construction plans for a secure power plant that doesn't produce any pollution and sell it. He could write the recipe for a medicine that kills all infectious deseases without negative side effects and sell it. He could put a penny into a savings account at some bank and wait 1000 years.

Can I cut it a bit short? Even if it may skip a few points? Just a few logic questions: 1) If the state steals from us, how come the state is near bankrupt? If the state is just a bribed organization that steals on behalf of the ones who end up with the money in their hands, doesn't that make much more sense? If the mafia kills someone by paying a professional killer, how much safer would the victim be if the killer gets arrested? If the state steals only on behalf of others, if the state only executes the stealing, but forwards all the stolen money to others, then where do those others go, once you take the state out of the picture? You think they would quietly disappear? 2) Why did incredible loads of money printing in Japan, by the Japanese central bank not cause any inflation? Why has Japan had 25 years of continuous deflation and depression, while they have printed money like crazy, reaching a national debt today of almost 250% of GDP in 2015? If money printing directly by the state causes hyper inflation, as we have seen several times in the last years in Argentina and other states like that, why didn't the same thing happen in Japan? I believe, that's because a state that prints money in order to pay his employees, down to the lowest cleaning stuff in state owned offices actually hands out freely printed and therefore worthless paper, which those employees will use to buy goods and services, which allows the manufacturers to ask higher prices. I believe, if money printing is taken away from the state, if an exclusive permission is given to a private bank, who can print money as much as they like, but can hand it out only in form of a loan, meaning they want it back, the actual amount of money going around in the population doesn't increase. Just the opposite, with the interest the state has to pay on national debt, which it takes (steals) from tax payers, the money going around in the population decreases, people have less money in their pockets to buy goods and services, manufaturers have to cut prices to compete on a shrinking market, thus you get deflation out of money printing by a central bank. 3) I stated, the financial balance of all 4 groups in state always add up to zero. You stated you don't think so. I cannot give you the precise numbers for (how many are there these days?) all the countries in the world, but if it's quite common that these numbers don't add up to zero in a country, you should easily be able to find one, no? I mean this is not an impossible proof like proving there is no god, which can't be done, theres a finite number of countries in the world, all of them have official numbers about their finances and their trade balances, so this is a solvable task, especially if you believe it should be the majority of countries where the numbers don't add up to zero. Maybe you know that in our current money system, with central banks, absolutely ALL money is created through loans? Central banks never hand out money for free, they give loans and they want it back (even though we all know, most of it will never be paid back). Private banks create money that isn't even printed, out of thin air with every single loan they give to private people, for every car, every mortage, even credit cards are nothing else but money created out of thin air, that isn't even printed, that isn't influenced at all by the state or the central bank, but it's "only" loans and the banks want it back with interest. On first view this means, banks giving credit out of thin air to private people will at first create some inflation, because people will have more money in their pockets to buy goods, but in the long run it creates deflation, because as soon as people have to pay back the interest on top of the original sum, they have less money in their pockets to buy goods from, which forces manufacturers to cut prices to compete in a shrinking market. On second view this means, there cannot be any money in the world (other than the worthless paper from states that print money themselves) that doesn't consist of a creditor and a debtor with a total balance that evens out to zero. No, I don't want to keep politicians, at least not the way the system works now. As I said, I have no clue how it could be organized, but I strongly believe any kind of economy needs rules including an organization enforcing the rules. I believe such an organization would be called government, but it definately shouldn't be anywhere near the corrupt politics we currently call government, because those are nothing more than the executive of the real criminals in the background. I believe in plain anarchy without any government, 99% of peaceful and modest people couldn't exist in peace, because 1% of criminals would mess up everything, just like a few % of radical Muslims mess up the peaceful life of a vast majority of humans all over the world.

An omnipotent being could convert all the diamonds in the world to glass and then sell a handful of diamonds himself that then would be worth way more than $20 bill. Legally? There is no law against converting diamonds to glass anywhere in the world. Immoral? He might argue, the super rich owners of diamonds were immoral in stealing their wealth from the working people, therefore it's morally right to take away from them what they have stolen.