Very Ape

It's important to remember that Russia essentially no longer sells it's oil in dollars and is severely limiting it's trade in dollars as well as dumping treasuries. Therefore, while in dollar terms the Ruple has sunk as well as the price of oil, of Russia does more bilateral trade with the BRICS countries (including rail line trade across Siberia and into China all the way from Europe), it doesn't really effect them that much. Another way to think of it is that the Ruple has dropped relative to the dollar but oil dropped in dollar terms too, therefore oil in Ruple terms is relatively stable. Russia is in a much stronger position than people realize. Just a minor point, otherwise I agree with everything posted thus far.

I don't think the movement can spread beyond those who already have some inclination towards it. Admittedly I am struggling with this but many people just don't respond to logic and reason. They respond to comfort, repetition, group think, acceptance of authority, etc. I am not sure how to break that cycle. I have heard somewhere that it takes about two decades to propagandize the public. If we wanted to lower the bar and use propaganda to spread anarchy like the Government, it would still take about 20 years to convert the majority of people. I think we all know we don't have that kind of tim. Cultural Marxists are making viral FB posts and twitter feeds about equal pay, gender neutrality, rape culture, etc. which get many people wound up and socially motivated/activated in a way that we can't with logic and reason. That said I find propaganda revolting. I see no solution.

OK... I seriously debated not responding to this. But since people rather vindictive about not having their questions answered satisfactorily here - then here goes. Before I start - Do people really read this to have "pleasant conversations"? Do you just excoriate everyone who doesn't respond in a way that affirms Your beliefs? Isn't that censorship? Isn't that the Fabian strategy of the left? Are you just looking for others to agree with your beliefs? Not much of a boardroom if that is the case. Dsayers... You are the one claiming money is an inanimate object no? I never claimed this. Sorry but you should read what I wrote more carefully and check your assumptions. Money, as discussed by another poster and represented in our current fiat system is a belief, it is a vote, it is an idea. It is a belief in the solvency and word of the counterparty - as discussed. The fact that money can be represented by anything, even a keycode memorized by someone or simply the promise of future labor written on paper shows it is not just an object. It is a belief. For me this is true - for you perhaps not true. Id like to think my concept of money is therefore broader than yours unless of course you agree. It is also more abstract. It is NOT like silverware, or bullets or guns. Those are truly inanimate and take humans to make use of them for violence or utility. Now, do you believe that BELIEFS control people? So now prove to me that money is not a belief and you win - I will submit to your superior logic and I will not post anymore here so as not to "displease" anyone. QED I am not going to respond to anything beyond this. But go ahead, have fun with it...

I'm done posting on this topic. If someone repeatedly says I am not answering their question(s) whilst I am making increasing attempts to answer their questions would it not be easier for them to simply say "I am still not convinced". When someone says "you need to PROVE to me..." or "you are wasting my time", or writes "DEFLECTION" a dozen times, that is not a philosophical exchange of ideas. That is like being put in front of a king and told you must make a funny joke to please him. We are talking about topics that don't easily follow boolean logic and I am trying to show the complexity of the phenomenon we are dealing with. If you feel lectured to, if you notice the sequence of comments, I would offer it is because (and this definitely more directed at dsayers), people kept demanding more and more "proof"... I suspect you (dsayers and others here) have a very purist mindset about inanimate objects "controlling" people. But money is a concept and a symbol too (which I thought was relevant to the discussion of "what is money"), it is not merely an "object" like a say a fork. That, from my perspective, is where you are getting hung up I suspect but again, I am not interested in adding to this discussion. It is the slippery definition of money that allows this kind of confusion and disagreement to begin with. Again, I am personally done here. Take care. Have a nice day.

Self -Edited for the sake others....

Dsayer... Allow me to go down the "rabbit hole" with you a bit further...(pun intended) "You realize that calling something extreme and doing nothing to disprove it is itself not addressing what was said, right?" Did you read anything I wrote after that? It's as though you believe I just wrote one line that and left. "I reject this oversimplification. If it were true, how would that fact of LIFE accrue to money, which is a concept, and came after LIFE? For that matter, how did anybody live before money? How do animals live without money?" Well then, I reject your rejection of my oversimplication (is that an argument? You tell me). Seriously though, just because people lived before without money doesn't mean... a. They lived very long (most died actually). b. That modern people now could easily transition to said lifestyle without money. Do you really honestly think most people could live without money? Could you? Are you one of the 0.1% of the population who is doing this? I know people who are sincerely trying to get off the grid (as much as possible), farm with their hands and it is a struggle at best. I doubt you really know what is involved in off the grid living. I mean without money there is also no electricity and without electricity MOST URBAN DWELLING PEOPLE WILL DIE. Denying that is like denying gravity imo. You can't refrigerate food, flush toilets, wash dishes, medicine runs out, supplies soon run out --> Without these supplies, for most people, Death comes knocking. You also seem to be having a hard time with the idea that people can be controlled by something they are unaware of. I think this is a difficult concept for you as it is for most people. The Rotschilds were smart becuase they understood most people would be bound to the fiat currency system but unaware of what it really was - stuck in the matrix if you will. People can unconciously agree to all kinds of things they are not aware of. A clear example is a cigarette chain smoker claiming "I can quit any time" - can they? I would suggest reading some Freud or better yet Carl Jung's work on the collective unconscious. People really hate this topic because it implies that they don't have free will. And here's where it gets tricky - MOST people actually don't have free will. It too must be developed like any other muscle. You are not just born with it simply because you grew up in an ostensibly free country - you have to work towards it. Gurdjieff is a great person to study on this topic btw. Most people are frankly, robotic in their thinking - like an automaton. "This is why having a closed mind while pretending to explore the truth is a waste of my time." Your time? I didn't realize you were billing me. I thought this was voluntary. My mistake. "Earlier, I claimed that worshipping something is a voluntary choice. Here, you are asserting that it is not, with no acknowledgement that a competing claim has been made. I won't trouble you with the challenge of making the case since I've already done this with regards to the extraordinary claim that money controls people and you haven't begun to make a case." How did religion conquer the world if worshipping something was a voluntary choice? How are muslims forcing women to cover their faces if worship is a voluntary choice? If we can vote with our pocketbooks others can "vote" against you regarding price. How do you think the Rothschild's controlled the price of things? Again, refer to what I said "Furthermore, you're conflating fiat currency with currency." This topic was about defining money in general - if you are getting lost in sub-definitions it is by your own design not mine. If we are talking about "money", I will talk about fiat currency unless you specifically directed me otherwise towards "non-fiat". Ironically this is the problem I pointed out to beging with - since there is no common definition of money it allows you to skirt around me and pretend that I am the one changing definitions. Not fair play I might add. So now you would like me to rewrite everything I spoke of in terms of NON fiat currency? Of which there are essentially none left in our world? You would like to remove from this discussion the primary currency with which over 50% of all global trade and 80-90% of oil reserves and derivatives are priced in? Which country's currency would you like to discuss that is on either a gold standard or say backed by bitcoin? I will gladly change the topic towards those currencies to suit your narrow interests. Would you like me to talk about gold and silver? I could go on at length about them. Also I suspect you are waiting for me to bust out some kind of Marxist statement whereby I conclude that just because people are controlled by something it is evil. I don't really believe that either. Mostly I believe that people need to be aware of the potential within themselves to be controlled, unconciously, by external forces, archetypes, even symbols like $. Once you are aware and AWAKE, then you can make decisions better aligned with your own self interest, as opposed to say the Rothschilds. Speaking of which... "Regarding your Rothschild quote, an appeal to authority is not an argument." Are you admitting he is an authority? The Rothschild's clearly believe that quote about controlling the printing press. They are among the wealthiest people the planet has ever had. You on the other hand, are not one of them - just some anonymous on the internet. As much as I may despise what the central bankers do, I must admire their methods and their abilities to manipulate human beings - to get them to do what is against their own self interest. Much like in the Movie the Matrix, the perfect slave is the one who willingly enters into it, who is psychologically beaten, propagandized, subjugated, blinded and obedient. Is it a "choice"? Well that is all in the definition of "choice". Strictly speaking we can ALL choose not to be controlled by money. But once enough people choose to be controlled by it (consciously or otherwise), then you are stuck in their system, like it or not and their rules around money, in the general sense, will determine the price of everything you buy which in a sense DOES control you in terms of how much labor and utility you will need to provide. And given that there is so little financial education in our world, that we are forced to make money and trade with it before we fully understand what "it" is to survive, most people are for all practical purposes stuck in the fiat currency matrix without much options for the same reasons everyone has said - because everyone else finds it useful to do so. Bitcoin and PM's are your best bet but make no mistake, the government can ban these too, perhaps right at the same time they introduce negative interest rates. You are oversimplifying things is my point. Lastly, With all due respect... You are not a puzzle or a computer I need to solve - I can give you clues but I am not hear to "prove" anything to you. Notice I haven't asked you to "prove" anything to me. I offer suggestions and reasoning to direct you towards what I believe to be true but I am not forcing that on you and I don't care if you agree or not. I offer my reasoning to help others primarily. I would very much like to convince others that gold and silver are REAL money but I didn't feel that was the point of the topic - it would actually be beneficial to me if everyone went out and bought precious metals to drive the price up.

RoseCodex - again forgive my old school style. I'll figure out the quotes later. But to address your comment: "Furthermore, you are using a definition of voluntary that is nearly impossible to fulfill, as we are a social species, with different personalities who specialize in different skills. For example, if I get sick, and need a doctor, and I call one up, and we make an arrangement for him to give me treatment, what is the problem? Is it not voluntary, just because I can't doctor myself? What you're saying doesn't really make sense. I have a guess, that really, the idea of being dependent on others in a voluntary situation makes you uncomfortable because maybe you don't think you have that much value to provide others. Is that close at all?" I think you may have misunderstood my example. The point I am trying to make is... What if I think the currency (debt) I am using is actually backed by fraud, force and collusion BUT I can't get out of using because I am either forced to by law or because everyone else is using it and won't accept anything else? Few people can even wrap their mind around that or ever get to the point of even questioning a currency's legitimacy much like people who vote but don't understand democracy. Most people just go along with it because they see other people doing it too and this you the buyer or seller don't really have a choice. If a seller felt a 60% markup to all goods he is selling in dollars was necessary (for fear of say hyperinflation) vs competitors he would probably go broke - he has no choice but to price it competitively in dollars because everyone else is (nor matter how ignorant their prices are of hyperinflation) and because the government will shut him down if he does not accept dollars. Furthermore the government will make the argument that it is necessary to force people to use dollars to stabilize the currency. The same argument we are all making btw - in other words "If people don't use it its not useful". It is ironic don't you think that the worlds most overprinted, over indebted, violent currency is the one people still, by and large, demand the most? If you can't see the control of the US dollar, the king of all fiat, has over you then I think you are in for some suprises in the near future. I'll leave you with the following quote... "If you give me control of the nations money supply I care not who makes it's laws" Nathan de Rothschild Now why would he (member of the wealthiest clan of men in history) say that if money had no power or control over us? Notice he specifically said he could bypass the government all-together with this one simple power. Again this comes down to people's awareness of what money is... It is symbolic. It is alchemical. It is religious. When we anarchists and libertarians try to argue using sound reasoning and logic with the statists and the sheeple regarding the Federal Reserve, the dollar system, etc. and fail, do you really think it is because of the lack of soundness or logic in our reasoning or arguments that causes them to say "That's not true! Where are you getting that from?". Its because questioning the dollar is questioning something sacred to them. Their whole identity is wrapped up in the dollar - for the dollar to be "weak" causes their whole Keynesian, statist, jingoistic, R-selective (you name it), Anglo-American view of the world to come crashing down all at once. All that emotion and worship wrapped up in one symbol - $

DSayers... I am not familiar with the quoting mechanism here so forgive my old school tactics but let me address your narrowly focused questions again "Your post didn't address anything I said. At least now I have my answer that no, you will not revise your theory, meaning it was never about the truth." I think that's a bit extreme. Regarding your assertion of not having to trade with anyone and making your own clothes, etc. For the vast majority of people they would simply die if they didn't trade. So no that's not true AT ALL. Ironically you seem unaware of the current situation with the dollar. Many countries around the world in fact ARE forced to use the dollar particularly for oil based products. Currency hegemony is a very real thing - try printing your own money. And many people feel the dollar is misprinted relative to other currencies (myself included) and is backed primarily by the threat of war and violence against countries that wish to abandon it. Does it seem like a coincidence to you that the countries who are militarily opposed to the US right now (Iran, Russia, China, Syria) as well as other regimes like Libya that we have toppled recently were all in some stage of abandoning the dollar? Now if you live in the US and want to trade exclusively outside of the dollar system you will face a number of problems including potential jail time. And yet still it's just paper and bra and bytes on the computer. Just because you are not AWARE that you are worshiping something doesn't mean you are not. How many transactions do you make in US dollars vs another currency? That is the degree to which it controls you and the degree to which you hold it as "sacred" in your daily living. I should say how many transactions do you make in dollars vs another currency vs gold and silver vs bitcoin vs bartering Simply doing something out of convenience does not preclude it controlling you. I may find it convenient for instance to smoke cigarettes, snort coke, etc. to help lose weight - but in doing so I also becoming addicted to it. I may find it convenient to take the bus to work instead of driving but if in doing so I never learn to drive or get a car I'm now under control of the metro bussing system and it schedule which may at some point cancel a line where I live or go on strike.

Can you recommend a good bar there?

Whether my argument was sufficiently persuasive I can assure you that money does control you. Unless you are a hermit or pure off the grid bartered it controls you. While I agree one should aspire to pure voluntary actions and decisions, once you give value to something simply becuase others value it too you are not really in a voluntary situation. You are now bound to the perception of value others have and your sense of the sacredness of the inanimate object (be they bits and bytes or fiat paper) is now wrapped up in the opinions of others. Since most people have relatively common agreements about goods and services and price points for them you will have little trouble exchanging but what if you DONT agree? What if you think for instance that the dollar is shit and shouldn't buy anything priced in dollars without a 60% markup? Then what? You're screwed until of course, enough people agree with you. Do you see how you are dependent now on others and not in a voluntary situation at all? I should say "sell anything in dollars" rather

Since money is an inanimate object it has no value intrinsically (maybe you could start an fire with it as in Weimar Germany). We imbue it with value based on our own biases, etc. If we imagine something has value, and others agree with this illusion, and yet we can prove it has no intrinsic value, it must hold some sort of "sacred" or ritualistic place in our mind. When we worship something, it tends to control us no? We haven't figured out how to properly barter yet precisely because we hold money as sacred. And I am a gold and silver bug btw - so I am guilty of my own argument.

My apologies for strong language btw. I did not mean to troll - I actually had a very similar experience to the post author myself as I mentioned. I don't think he should feel bad about his experience at all. He's not alone at all in his thoughts is what I meant to write.

I know I wrote some strongly worded opinions in that last post but I would like to add something that I think is worth considering. I had the distinct feeling that night that just about everyone in Burlington was a student or broke twenty something. I imagined most of the people were paying for their drinks with student loan debt, etc. and I thought to myself that with all the economic shenanigans going on in the US, that most of the people I was looking at were probably already hopelessly in debt and would never rise out of it. Nor would they have the fortitude to stage any kind of revolution and overthrow the forces enslaving them - all they wanted was to be seen out drinking, getting buzzed and then chomping down some pizza. The more adept ones might get back to studying for their exams but probably very few would ever understand how the economy actually works in spite of their education. I was there myself at one point (literally a grad student at UVM) with tons of student debt too but I've paid most of it off now in part because I realized that something wasn't right with the US economy back in 2008 when I was still in school. It made me afraid and that fear drove me to succeed both at school and at work. In short, I felt that there was no real economy there or anyone who understood it - that it was all a sort of illusion with people just drinking their time away blissfully unaware of what is about to transpire in the global economy and will fundamentally alter their lives probably for the worse. It made me uncomfortable and that was partly why i headed back to my hotel room earlier than I intended (was at a conference).

Good questions.... Perhaps it is not pointless - maybe I was too extreme. However you can't really pin down what it is because as I said it is always being redefined with each new exchange. It is whatever the exchangers believe it is - which is kind of trippy I think. Money controls us because we are the ones defining it's value even though it has no intrinsic value. You are fee to pick that argument apart - it just seems to make sense to me these days

Money is a medium of exchange with whatever value people believe it has. Money has no intrinsic value other than as a medium of exchange between a buyer and a seller. When an exchange occurs between a buyer and a seller they, at that precise moment, define the value of the money in terms of the goods or services rendered. No one other than the buyer or the seller should be involved in determining that value. Therefore it is pointless to ask what money "is" because it is being defined and redefined constantly. All you can say is that it is a medium of exchange. Some may say real money has certain qualities like gold and silver but even then people have to agree that it has said qualities otherwise no exchange. Do you feel confused? You should - it's far too simple to comprehend given how much it controls us.

If you only buy from "superior foreign made goods" you are de facto voting that those jobs should be overseas and not local. If you pay for slave labor goods you are the slave owner so to speak. The left never seems to get this concept. They are like "Walmart should be forced to pay higher wages for their employees" which only forces Walmart to raise prices in areas where people can't afford it. Better to stop shopping there altogether and try to convince others - in the meantime though as they slowly go out of business you'll have to accept lower wages for everyone... And ironically once they do go out of business those employees will, in the short run, earn nothing and will have to figure out if they want to go back to agrarian farming or some other form of labor that has been lost since people started importing slave made goods from Asia and believing that was their path to the American Dream. Get it?

Why is everyone so f***king sensitive on here? For the record I agree with the post 100%. America is going down the shitter and the bar scene there just attracts the pigs to the troth. Most Americans are incredibly stupid these days. Just Google Mark Dice. I had a similar experience in Burlington Vermont last weekend where I realized most of the people out were either conceited hipster, annoying social justice warrior or frat boy Joey. There was no bar worth going to because everyone sucked that night and probably that was true in general there (I went to grad school there and felt the same way, spent all my fun time in Montreal instead). Sorry it was true, don't get your panties all twisted about it either folks. Some places on certain nights just suck and bring out the worst in everyone. Like when some car with drunk assholes drives by you and they just scream unintelligible nonsense at you for no reason - imagining them suffering when the country falls about is perfectly normal IMO. I don't feel bad for them at all. Admittedly I wasn't in a good mood already that night but I knew enough about those kinds of places to head back to my hotel before I got too drunk and became a curmudgeon. I suspect other people don't know when to pack it up esp with alcohol involved. That's really the only lesson in it - find something else to do and let the assholes be assholes. Karma will get them some day.

"I know that may sound crazy..." Paul doesn't get his own hints - It sounds crazy because it IS crazy.

Was wondering if Stefan and/or others would be interested in taking on this topic... Paul Krugman has essentially gone "full retard" in this recent NYT op-Ed http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/08/21/opinion/paul-krugman-debt-is-good-for-the-economy.html?referer=&_r=0 Here's the real gem "Believe it or not, many economists argue that the economy needs a sufficient amount of public debt out there to function well. And how much is sufficient? Maybe more than we currently have. That is, there’s a reasonable argument to be made that part of what ails the world economy right now is that governments aren’t deep enough in debt. I know that may sound crazy. After all, we’ve spent much of the past five or six years in a state of fiscal panic, with all the Very Serious People declaring that we must slash deficits and reduce debt now now now or we’ll turn into Greece, Greece I tell you. But the power of the deficit scolds was always a triumph of ideology over evidence, and a growing number of genuinely serious people — most recently Narayana Kocherlakota, the departing president of the Minneapolis Fed — are making the case that we need more, not less, government debt." I this the peak of Keynesian Hubris or what? After all the debt crisis we've had in the last year I wonder if Krugman actually even believes this or if he writes this kind of thing after, say, going on an all-night bender. I was honestly shocked since you would think he would have gone quiet after Greece and Puerto Rico but at least he has shown his true colours now...