Gold is just another currency it also doesn't have any intrinsic value. Or at least not nearly as much intrinsic value as it costs. It is a pretty metal, but then my currency is a shiny yellow metal as well, and what is more, it has this cool bas relief of a queen on it.

Now crude oil on the other hand does have some intrinsic value. We should transition to the oil standard.

I'm not being serious, our modern money system is one of the greatest inovations of the twentieth century. It is one of the key principles that I would hope we never lose even if we go back to the stone age.

Viper,

I haven't said there's anything wrong with the system - I'm saying that I don't think people's needs for 99% of what's on the market is a real one. I think it is mainly based on imagery rather than the realities of a product. Business is about what people supposedly want, rather than what they need. If you went back to 1900, was anyone fretting about saying 'I can't buy a $4000 stereo and a flat in the Caribbean and hook up my satellite TV like Mrs Jones has next door. Well hell, I'll go into a lot of debt to do it.'

The unthinking attribution of consumption to meaning or happiness is the problem I see with it.

Financially, it's fine, other than the fact that since the system was introduced national debt has soared in real terms (i.e. including inflation). We are encouraged to borrow to consume, borrow to invest, borrow on outstanding borrowings.

The point is, whilst banks have got a large number of assets on their financial statements as a result of this, I really don't think people are a lot better off over it than they were 70 years ago.

I also think that if people weren't exposed to corporate marketing and advertising at virtually every practical opportunity, I think they would find other ways to enjoy themselves as humans have done throughout history, and I think they would therefore consume less. And they wouldn't have programmed beliefs from the education system and from the commercial world about what is and what is not the 'right path' through life. If I was to unthinkingly follow the path preached by both worlds about life, I would end up like this:

(1) Working 13-16 hours a day doing a job I don't like, 2 professional mistakes away from financial ruin.
(2) Dreaming about all this stuff I can have and how it'll apparently so make my life such a lot better.
(3) If that job I don't like much doesn't immediately gratify me with this so important stuff, go into debt on it in order to get it.
(4) Not really talking to my family, which apparently I must have, because I'm too busy with work tasks.
(5) Work for the bank for the rest of my life paying back a mortgage on my suburban home which I must have - because my parents had it, my brother has it, my collegues have it ('group think')
(6) Work for businesses for the rest of my life paying for pointless consumables that in actual fact don't enhance my life.
(7) Work for corporations for the rest of my life adding up that 'experience' so that the corporations can profit further from my labour.

I think a lot of people are chained to a debt-based money system that unthinkingly requires growth, purely for the idea of increase material 'standard of living'. They are so chained, that they are conditioned to take it very, very seriously throughout their lives. I personally don't see the need for more and more growth.

And if you think growth (production) doesn't require more energy, go and do some math. People only buy matter or pay for energy to be directed in a certain way (workers). Both require energy to do, and with an ever increasing economic growth, our energy demands have gone up.

Why do you think oil demand has gone up?

Again, my personal feelings are nothing to do with the reality that more energy is required to perpetuate this system. If you like these consumables, fair enough, but personally I have spent the past year deliberately spending very little at all, and I can honestly say it's been one of the most liberating years of my life.

Mark

I've had a look at ITER. In theory, nuclear fusion is possible, however whether it can be made into a net positive is difficult. Perhaps it can.

Fusion requires hydrogen fuel, does not produce as much energy in harmful radiation, and as long as hydrogen can be supplied can provide plenty of energy. In fact fusion is effectively simply a conversion of matter to energy - as long as there's matter in the universe, in theory fusion will be able to convert it to energy.

The Sun's energy comes from internal fusion reactions, however it is different to a fusion reactor. 3 million years ago the Sun was just a cloud of gas - a remenent from the previous star in the solar system (the Sun is actually the third star to occupy the solar system, and the earth and everything on it, including yourself, is a remenent of that and the first generation star). The gas atoms attracted to each other through gravity, and finally collapsed into a condensing cloud which triggered nuclear fusion to occur as friction between those gaseous atoms produced sufficient temperatures/heat. From then on, the Sun's temperature was maintained through fusion and since it has perpetuated itself. In roughly 3 million years, the Sun will no longer have enough usable Hydrogen in its core, and it will cease nuclear reactions - when it will proceed to expand and gobble up the earth and everything up the a good fraction of the solar system, before contracting again and cooling forever.

The problem with reactors is getting them up to such high temperatures, and keeping it there. So far a donut system is used whereby plasma is heated by accelerating it around a donut ring until it reaches such temperatures that fusion can take place. However, for a number of reasons they haven't been able to maintain those reactions.

When they can, and if extracting hydrogen and transporting it uses less energy than the energy you get from steadily fusing it to heavier elements, then we may have an answer. Although of course that would just fuel more economic growth, wouldn't it, which might not be such a good idea.

If ITER can do it, then a sustainable economy with most electricity requirements generated by fusion reactors would be ideal. Then we could try and develop some really amazing organo-fertilisers to replace Ammonia, which is derived from natural gas.

And then we could return to an intrinsic value money system which was debt free and did not have the unquestionable requirement of growth, which as I say I think has chained society to a system that 99% of the population don't like.

Cheers

Mark

{Quote Box; EE}

I thought it was more like 3 billion years.

The main problem is not the system of economy or government, it's the nature of people. Unfortunately, humans have not yet evolved to a point where they can control their own consumption and growth.

In that respect, you could say many other mammals are superior. It's like Agent Smith from The Matrix classifying humans as a virus. We go to an area, consume all of the resources, and move on. That's exactly how it goes with fossil fuels.

A consumerist society makes it worse, but it's not the root cause. Humans have been overshooting their resource bases since the oldest historical records. War, famine, or disease seems to be our population controllers. If only we can evolve into a species that tries to come into balance with its environment. If only we could evolve to a point where we will try to preserve ourselves rather than destroy ourselves. I consider growth to be a form of self destruction, because that's exactly what it leads to. As Arnold said in Terminator 2, "It's in your nature to destroy yourselves."

Sounds like you are blaming the system for the fact that there are a lot of weak willed, character free, easily influenced people out there. Sorry, but the world should not be sugar coated and covered in styrofoam. The world should be an interesting, challenging place where effort, ingenuity, and daring will gain you something.

If you are sinking in the debt swamp, then you only have yourself and your(not you specifically, but people in general.) inability to postpone gratification to blame. Without getting too deep into this, you could also overextend yourself paying for too many visits to a prostitute(Not a very fossil fuel intensive industry.).



Problem with your dream is that someone will still own the patent on the technology, someone will still own the power plants, and they will expect you to clean up after their children or to trim their bushes for the right to use that energy. At some point you will want something that costs more than what you are getting for trimming the bushes, and you will be back at the bank asking them for a loan.(Whether denominated in dollars or electricity credits.)

-Viper

I'm not so sure about that. For one thing, the whole concept of "intellectual property" is a relatively recent development. I could easily see that going by the wayside in a post-peak world. If lives are at stake, who will honor a patent? We see that even now, with AIDS drugs and Africa.



No. Before our current, capitalist/industrialist economy evolved, only people in truly desperate straits ever borrowed money. That's one of the reasons usury was seen as such grave sin in the old days.

I think Markos is right. With the end of cheap oil, we're facing the end of our economic system as we know it. But we're all so used to it, most of us can't imagine life without it.

Cathrine Austin Fitts’ work seems to entirely agree with the main article. In fact, her Solari ( http://www.solari.com ) program wants to show the financial system how much power we really have over her by getting 600,000 (1% of 1% of the people banking) to switch their funds from a large corporate bank to a locally owned private bank or co-op. She also promotes a return to caring less about the “things” we need and more about what we actually need. By this action, given the incredible leveraged effect of the financial markets described above, she feels that we can send a very, very strong message to those in power that we can take away the foundation of their endless, globally siphoning growth.

If the systems have this amount leveraged money in them, we can show them that they cannot take us down this road if we do not all willingly go.

Regardless, a site to check out for more information on this issue.

---
EntropyFails

On the surface gold does not appear to have 'intrinsic value', but it does has a lot of staying power. Gold is the oldest form of currency and will be around long after several of our current fiat currencies have come and gone. As such gold is a sort of 'insurance policy' against economic ruin or hyperinflation. Also because supplies of gold are limited compared to demand gold can form the basis of monetary stability, unlike paper notes or metal coins whose base metal is far more plentiful, and as such can be swept away much more easily in hyperinflation. IMO, everyone should have at least 10% of their savings in gold/silver/platinum in case of an inflationary currency collapse. After reading www.prudentbear.com & www.dailyreconing.com for the last year I'm not very confident in our fiat currencies any more.

Gold gets its intrinsic value from the fact that there is only a certain small amount of it in the earth. It doesn't come from the fact that it looks nice on people's fingers in the form of rings or makes nice bracelets.

It's a similar case for land. There is only a certain amount of land, and therefore it must too have some intrinsic value, because it too cannot be produced from other things (other than land).

That's why the 'gold standard' existed.

No, it isn't. It's just the oldest most of us are familiar with. Older cultures used livestock, cowry shells, clay tokens embossed with seals, base metal coins, etc., before gold coins were struck.

Here's a history of money, if anyone's interested:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/moolah/history.html

And as for trying to switch to a local bank...good luck! Over that past few years, I've watched every local bank get gobbled up by a large international banking corporation. Either Fleet or HSBC. It may have the name of your local community on it, but it's owned by some conglomerate incorporated in Hong Kong.

There are lots of things that are scarce. And there are lots of things that are rare. The word scarce implies that there is a desire for it while rare does not. Not all things that are rare have intrinsic value and are therefore also scarce. Gold is a good currency because it is perceived to be scarce not because it is perceived to be rare. So I would argue it is exactly because it looked nice that gold received its original status as a currency and a store of wealth.

Have you seen Fight Club? If not, I think you'd like it. Especially the part at the end where he blows up all the bank headquarters buildings.

Apropos gold as a currency. It is perhaps not so haphazard a choice as you might assume. Because except being scarce, it also does not deteriorate with time, it is dense and stable, it is easily divided and combined, and it has a number of technical properties (besides being bright and shiny) that will make sure that there is always a demand for it. Can you come up with another substance that has these characteristics?

I'm too cynical to believe this part. I think that the people who created the monetized debt system had to know that the endgame is inevitably a catastrophic economic collapse. The very fact that all the money in circulation is merely the aggregate principal of loans means that the interest fees that the banks attach can never be repaid. Nobody who has examined this money system can fail to understand where it leads.

Therefore, the primary purpose of saddling a country with a monetized debt system is to enrich the bankers. It is not an incidental purpose: it's the motive for the crime, and the crime is high treason.

The bankers have inflicted on us a gigantic ponzi racket and made it mandatory for us to participate, to the harm of us or our descendants. Their aim is, and always has been, to suck the Earth from under the feet of Mankind. When it is time to punish them, let the punishment be fearsome enough to deter any repetition of this crime forever. Is it possible to invert a banker's body by pulling him inside out through his left nostril? Or would some other orifice be more appropriate for this?

Jerry Abbott

Jerry,

I agree with everything but the last part.

I know a few bankers (including my dad, who's now retired), and believe me, most people I've met in the banking system do not really understand the long-term consequences of the system they are working in. It is only those people right at the top of the 'industry' (if one can call it that), and a precious few outside it, who understand the big picture. Many bankers do what they do and are completely oblivious to long-term consequences.

You're right; banks are the highest paying institutions in the world, and also the quickest to offshore and outsource labour. The reason they pay so highly to the top of the hierarchy is because they have a monopoly on the creation of our currency. The Federal Reserve is a privately owned institution; the Bank of England is also a private institution. The British government were the first to be infiltrated by financiers and to allow this to happen. The Fed was created as a (form of) replacement to the US Treasury just before the first world war, which of course also had to be financed, along with WWII, Vietnam, various revolutions, and of course WWIII, which is the current administrations product launch (I use the words of the pentagon).

I'll also tell you that I want the crunch and the bubble to burst as soon as possible - the longer the 'treason' (probably actually a good word for it) goes on, the worse the fallout will be. I also am highly suspect of a public education system that utterly neglects this very basic underlying mechanism of our economy; who controls the National education curriculums for statutory education, I wonder? Do these people think there would be an uprising if it was mandatory for the population to understand this predicament? Do the international bankers have some sort of influence on our National curriculum? I very much believe so, and there is evidence out there to suggest that there are many outside interests at work in our basic economic mechanisms. Perhaps our world 'leaders' are more the pawns of international banks rather than 'good' people with a desire to do good for the nation and the world.

Lastly, I'll say that on the face of it, I do not have a problem with banks. A local, decentralised banking system based on a sustainable form of currency (and there are individuals out there campaigning for new currencies - at the same time, some of our politicians in high places want a one world central currency - a bit strange given our situation don't you think?) would keep people busy and insure people's wealth to a healthy degree and keep human brains occupied with some sort of hope for the future, which is the most important thing; to give people the impression that they have a future. But what I hate is putting the power of currency creation into the hands of a few; giving that sort of power to a small number of humans will always lead to corruption, absolute exploitation and yes, disaster.

In the Middle Ages, the monarchs ruled. In this day and age - and most people don't even know this - our lives are increasingly falling into the control of a few international bankers. I'll also say consumerism is only an illusion of freedom - the freedom to consume within your capacity to do so is not freedom; but then one must have purpose in life to be healthy, mentally.

To quote David Rothschild "Give me control of a country's currency, and I care not who makes the laws"

Mark