{"id":3296,"date":"2018-09-05T11:00:30","date_gmt":"2018-09-05T11:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artbyodo.net\/?p=3296"},"modified":"2022-01-03T15:51:31","modified_gmt":"2022-01-03T15:51:31","slug":"twist-n-shout","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artbyodo.net\/wordpress\/2018\/09\/05\/twist-n-shout\/","title":{"rendered":"Twist &#8216;n&#8217; Shout"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"western\" align=\"center\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><b>smoke &#8216;n&#8217; mirrors<\/b><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"western\" align=\"left\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><span style=\"color: #353535;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/artbyodo.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Twist1a.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-3299\" src=\"https:\/\/artbyodo.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Twist1a-185x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"277\" height=\"448\" srcset=\"https:\/\/artbyodo.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Twist1a-185x300.jpg 185w, https:\/\/artbyodo.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Twist1a-768x1243.jpg 768w, https:\/\/artbyodo.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Twist1a-633x1024.jpg 633w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 277px) 100vw, 277px\" \/><\/a>I am totally discombobulated. Never have I read a book that I didn<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">\u2019t have enough of a grasp to either criticize or praise it. This one\u2019s got me struggling to straighten out the curlicues in my thoughts. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"western\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><span style=\"color: #353535;\"><i>Debt: The First 5000 Years, <\/i>David Graeber<i>,\u00a0<\/i><\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">h<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">as\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">as\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">much\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">to say\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">about value, honor, and social status as it <\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">does\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">debt. In fact, as his thesis develops we find debt\u2019s entanglement with these concepts becoming murkier<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">, and a trump card that buries it all<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">. At the heart of his analysis of debt is the stratification of society that occurred simultaneously with surplus food, and the need to account for the surpluses; writing, not <\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">to record\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">knowledge but to keep accounts; and money, a standard unit of <\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">value\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">for the accounting. He points out early on that this isn\u2019t the economic theory we\u2019ve been indoctrinated <\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">into<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">, quite the contrary, it\u2019s a theory based on anthropological evidence instead of Adam Smith\u2019s making up history to support his wishful thinking of the \u201cinvisible hand\u201d nonsense. Smith\u2019s invisible hand <\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">is, rather,\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">the facts he ignored or never investigated. This, though, is a minor shake up compared to the underlying message\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">: debt=wealth=social status. <\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">S<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">ocial status is built upon honor. Honor is an intangible that cannot be counted. Although, honor is a human given\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">as e<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">very individual has inherently a unit of honor. It can, however, be taken away or given up. When this happens, honor goes from one person to another\u2014the giver\u2019s (loser\u2019s) honor gets tacked onto the receiver\u2019s (winner\u2019s). This <\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">creates a\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">debt. But who owes whom?<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"western\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><span style=\"color: #353535;\">Here we have a problem. It\u2019s easy to see how status equates with wealth, but debt? Then, add\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">to the mix this\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">conundrum \u2014 <\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\"><i>\u201cIf you owe the bank\u00a0<\/i><\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\"><i>a hundred\u00a0<\/i><\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\"><i>thousand dollars, the bank owns you. If you owe the bank <\/i><\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\"><i>hundred\u00a0<\/i><\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\"><i>million dollars, you own the bank.\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"western\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><span style=\"color: #353535;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/artbyodo.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Twist1bb.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-3352\" src=\"https:\/\/artbyodo.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Twist1bb-115x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"786\" srcset=\"https:\/\/artbyodo.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Twist1bb-115x300.jpg 115w, https:\/\/artbyodo.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Twist1bb-768x2011.jpg 768w, https:\/\/artbyodo.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Twist1bb-391x1024.jpg 391w, https:\/\/artbyodo.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Twist1bb.jpg 1559w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>And\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">neither does this\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">explain money\u2014that unit of exchange that stands in place of value. Money<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">,\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">as he explains, was\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">originally used not for daily needs, but for symbolic exchange,\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">such as weddings, or exchange with strangers. Like\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">poker chips\u2014measured, counted, and covete<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">d;\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">like gold, silver, gems, <\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">or\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">as\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">in some cultures shells\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">or\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">beads<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">,\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">all <\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">are\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">objects of symbolic value\u2014but highly coveted<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">. Money is a surrogate<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">.\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">We think of\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">gold and silver a<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">s having\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">&#8220;real&#8221; value. Really? <\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">You can\u2019t eat gold, or heat your house, or clothe yourself, or fulfill any basic need with it. Its value is\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">symbolic<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">. Its power is <\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">given to it by our\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">belief that it has value and that others value it <\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">the same<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">.\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">It was used for buying honor, that is, the buying and selling of people\u2014things that are impossible to put a quantitative value on.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"western\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><span style=\"color: #353535;\">There\u2019s no longer<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">\u00a0any question about the ownership of a person. There should be a\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">new\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">question<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">, a question of\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">the ownership of global resources<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">\u2014<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">oil, forests, fresh water, farm land, minerals. <\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">It&#8217;s from the concept of ownership that debt arises, in part. In part, debt is something we all trade in everyday with and without money, with or without keeping accounts.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"western\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><span style=\"color: #353535;\">But i<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">f I understand debt correctly, it\u2019s <\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">not any more real than money. It&#8217;s a\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">ruse to justify taking more\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">resources\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">than one\u2019s fair share, and <\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">to <\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">foist on the debtor the guilt of having been cheated out of their\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">share<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">,\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">their\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">honor, out of their human dignity. It&#8217;s the makings of<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">\u00a0a slave. Debt, like money, is an artifice, imaginary. <\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">And like money, can be created out of nothing. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"western\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><span style=\"color: #353535;\">Finding a good explanation of how debt, or money, is created out of nothing is foggy. There is one recurring reason cited, war. The conquered survivors are \u201cindebted\u201c to the victors for their lives. They become slaves or subject<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">s\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">who ow<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">e\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">the victors\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">tribute\u2014their labor or resources being the interest due on the debt.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"western\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><span style=\"color: #353535;\">The immediate effects of the advent of the free-floating dollar, then, marked not a break with the alliance of warriors and financiers on which capitalism itself was originally founded, but on something that looks a lot more like its ultimate apotheosis. Neither has the return to virtual money led to a great return to relations of honor and trust: quite the contrary. But we are talking about the very first years of what is likely to be a centuries-long historical era. By 1971, most of these changes had not even begun. The American Express card, the first general-purpose credit card, had been invented a mere thirteen years before, and the modern national credit-card system had only really come into being with the advent of Visa and Mastercard in 1968. Debit cards came later, creatures of the 1970s, and the current largely cashless economy only came into being in the 1990s. All of these new credit arrangements were mediated not by interpersonal relations of trust but of profit-seeking corporations, and one of the earliest and greatest political victories of the U.S. credit-card industry was the elimination of all legal restrictions on what they could charge as interest.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"western\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><span style=\"color: #353535;\">If history holds true, an age of virtual money should mean a movement away from what was, empire-building, slavery, and debt peonage (waged or otherwise), and toward the creation of some sort of overarching institutions, global in scale, to protect debtors. What we have seen so far is the opposite. The new global currency is rooted in military power even more firmly than the old was. Debt peonage continues to be the main principle of recruiting labor globally: either in the literal sense, in much of East Asia or Latin America, or in the subjective sense, whereby most of those working for wages or even salaries feel that they are doing so primarily to pay off interest-bearing loans.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p class=\"western\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><span style=\"color: #353535;\">We run into a giant contradiction when the concept of property ownership is extended to human rights. <\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">Can our freedom be bought and sold, lent and rented, given up or given away?\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">This may seem like a rhetorical question, but it is serious. History is replete with slavery\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">and\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">indentureship. Although those terms are not <\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">used much\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">today in advanced countries<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">. They&#8217;ve been replaced by the term <\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\"><em>employment<\/em><\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">,\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">in effect a &#8220;free choice&#8221; version of the former methods. Now the question becomes, how ethical is employment? How free is an employee? Is it a temporary form of slavery? <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"western\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><span style=\"color: #353535;\">And I have more que<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">s<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">tions.\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">If debt were erased from the economic lexicon, would\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">there\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">be property ownership\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">or wealth<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">? If there were<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">\u00a0no ownership of anything except human rights, inalienable human rights<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">, own-able only by oneself, h<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">ow would an economy be built on human rights?<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"western\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><span style=\"color: #353535;\">He returns to war as the cause <\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">and\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">need for money, as opposed to credit, and to precious metals as a convenient<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">,\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">portable symbol of value. War was all about <\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">pillaging\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">other<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">s&#8217;\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">recourses and treasures. <\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">Supplying the war machine and paying the soldiers led to the need for\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">a common unit of exchange, i.e.,<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">money\u2014something to covet, to get others to covet, and then, use it to get them<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">\u00a0to go along with the war games.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"western\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><span style=\"color: #353535;\">How did we get here? My own suspicion is that we are looking at the final effects of militarization of American capitalism itself. In fact, it could well be said that the last thirty years have seen the construction of a vast bureaucratic apparatus for the creation and maintenance of hopelessness, a giant machine designed, first and foremost, to destroy any sense of possible alternative futures. At its root is a veritable obsession on the part of rulers of the world\u2014in response to the upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s\u2014with ensuring that social movements cannot be seen to grow, flourish, or proposes alternatives; that those who challenge existing power arrangements can never, under any circumstances, be perceived to win. To do so requires creating a vast apparatus of armies, prisons, police, various forms of private security firms and military intelligence apparatus, and propaganda engines of every conceivable variety,\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">most of which do not attack alternatives directly so much as create a pervasive climate of fear, jingoistic conformity, and simple despair that renders any thought of changing the world seem an idle fantasy. Maintaining this apparatus seems even more important to exponents of the &#8220;free market,&#8221; even than maintaining any sort of viable market economy. How else can one explain what happened in the former Soviet Union? One would ordinarily have imagined that the end of the Cold War would have led to the dismantling of the army and the KGB and the rebuilding of the factories, but in fact what happened was precisely the other way around. This is just an extreme example of what has been happening everywhere. Economically, the apparatus is largely just a drag on the system; all those guns, surveillance cameras, and propaganda engines are extraordinarily expensive and don&#8217;t really produce anything, and no doubt it&#8217;s yet another element dragging the entire capitalist system down\u2014along with producing the illusion of an endless capitalist future that laid the groundwork for the endless bubbles to begin with. Finance capital became the buying and selling of chunks of that future, and economic freedom, for most of us, was reduced to the right to buy a small piece of one&#8217;s own permanent subordination.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p class=\"western\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><span style=\"color: #353535;\">The ensuring that social movements get nipped, early and quickly, as\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">we have seen countless times,\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">has been much more effective recently. This is mostly due to the huge escalation of fire power, the militarization of the police.<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">\u00a0That alternative views are squelched or ridiculed, or worse yet, simply ignored<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">, is bolstered by the media<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">. Graeber&#8217;s book is an example. It got some press on its release, then quickly forgotten. So did Piketty&#8217;s book.* So did the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street, and many other protests and demonstrations meant to get people thinking. But now the risk, the perceived risk, because we&#8217;re all invested in the system, is too high\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">for the masses\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">to challenge the status quo, or to ask the obvious questions, or still worse, to not allow ourselves to see the obvious\u2014the endless waste of militarism and competition.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"western\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><span style=\"color: #353535;\">It [capitalism] is ultimately a system of power and exclusion, and when it reaches the breaking point, the symptoms recur, just\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">as they had in the 1970s: food riots, oil shock, financial crisis, the sudden startled realization that the current course was ecologically unsustainable, and attendant apocalyptic scenarios of every sort.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"western\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><span style=\"color: #353535;\">In the wake of the subprime collapse, the U.S. government was forced to decide who really gets to make money out of nothing: The financiers, or ordinary citizens. The results were predictable. Financiers were &#8220;bailed out with taxpayer money&#8221;\u2014which basically means that their imaginary money was treated as if it were real. Mortgage holders were, overwhelmingly, left to the tender mercies of the courts, under a bankruptcy law that Congress had a year before (rather suspiciously presciently, one might add) made far more exacting against debtors. Nothing was altered. All the major decisions were postponed. The Great Conversation that many were expecting never took place.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p class=\"western\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><span style=\"color: #353535;\">You may recall the talk about bailing out the mortgagors instead of the banks. You may recall the mortgagors got blamed for the bad loans made by the subprime lenders who cared less about the borrower&#8217;s ability to repay. You might also recall that it used to be the bank&#8217;s responsibility to protect itself by not making bad loans. Obviously the smart and ethical thing to do is not the <\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\"><i>profitable\u00a0<\/i><\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">thing to do. After all, too small to fail just doesn&#8217;t ring well in the media. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"western\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><span style=\"color: #353535;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/artbyodo.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Twist1d.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-3302\" src=\"https:\/\/artbyodo.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Twist1d-1024x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"377\" height=\"377\" srcset=\"https:\/\/artbyodo.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Twist1d-1024x1024.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/artbyodo.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Twist1d-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/artbyodo.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Twist1d-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/artbyodo.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Twist1d-768x768.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 377px) 100vw, 377px\" \/><\/a>The questions keep nagging me<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">. H<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">ow do pretty shiny things, gold, silver, gems, useless for survival or comfort, get to be so grossly valued that people will lie<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">,\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">cheat, steal and murder for them? And how do they stand-in for anything of real value<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">, or dignity, or honor<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">? And before metals there were other prized objects used for money, things that seem extraordinarily silly to us<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">, such as cowry shells or bird feather<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">s<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">.\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">However, it doesn&#8217;t matter, only its symbolic value matters. <\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">How <\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">else\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">do you convin<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">c<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">e someone to take a lump of silver in exchange for his cow? <\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">I<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">f you were the farmer, that cow provided milk every day.<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">\u00a0It\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">fed your family. Its <\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">manure\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">fertilized your fields to grow other food. Why should you be willing to trade a valuable cow for a shiny bobble? And how did metal become universally accepted and <\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">given outsized value<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">? <\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">Why not bird feathers? <\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">How did entire populations fall for it? All that <\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">needs\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">to be done <\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">i<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">s to mint money<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">, or assign digital credit,\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">and instantly, like magic, value created. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"western\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><span style=\"color: #353535;\">Then there\u2019s the big daddy question: how is debt created? How did the concept of debt originate? He throws out a number of possibilities, none to his own satisfaction. I don\u2019t buy them either. They all seem artificial\u2014as artificial as money. However<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">,\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">one proposal keeps popping up, the standard for everyday person to person exchange is a cashless credit system whereby we each exchange whatever we make or do with others on credit\u2014over time it basically evens out, or we settle up\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">perceived\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">inequalities by giving or getting something to even the score. A rather relaxed, casual system of accounting, but what does it matter? <\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">It&#8217;s based on trust and personal relationships. <\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">No one is out to get rich\u2014there\u2019s no point in it<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">\u2014unless you want to take more than your fair share<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">. It\u2019s all about working<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">, living\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">and cooperating together to mutual benefit.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"western\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><span style=\"color: #353535;\">As he moves on t<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">o\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">recent times, we see <\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">money <\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">matters getting more grotesque. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"western\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><span style=\"color: #353535;\">All this is not <\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">to <\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">say that the people of the world were not being offered something: just that, as I say, the terms had changed. In the new dispensation, wages would no longer rise, but workers were encouraged to buy a piece of capitalism. Rather than euthanize the rentiers, <\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">everyone\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">could now become rentiers\u2014effectively, could grab a chunk [tidbits] of the profits created by their own increasingly dramatic rates of exploitation. The means were many and familiar. In the United States, there were 401(k) retirement accounts and an endless variety of other ways of encouraging ordinary citizens to play the market [the casino known as Wall Street] but at the same time, encouraging them to borrow. One of the guiding principles of Thatcherism and Reaganism alike were that economic reforms would never gain widespread support unless ordinary working people could at least aspire to owning their own homes; to this was added, by the 1990s and 2000<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">s<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">, endless mortgage-refinancing schemes that treated houses, whose value it was assumed would only rise, &#8220;like ATMs,&#8221;\u2014as the popular catchphrase had it\u2014though it turns out, in retrospect, it was really more like credit cards. Then there was the proliferation of actual credit cards, juggled against one another. Here, for many, &#8220;buying a piece of capitalism&#8221; slithered undetectably into something indistinguishable from those familiar scourges of the working poor: the loan shark and the pawnbroker. It did not help here that in 1980, U.S. federal usury laws, which had previously limited interest to between 7 and 10 percent, were eliminated by act of Congress. Just as the United States had managed to largely get rid of the problem of political corruption by making the bribe<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">ry\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">of legislators effectively legal (it was redefined as &#8220;lobbing&#8221;), so the problem of loan-sharking was brushed aside by making real interest rates of 25 percent, 50 percent, or even in some cases (for instance, for payday loans) up to 6,000 percent annually, the sort of numbers that would once have made the <\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">M<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">afia blush, perfectly legal\u2014and therefore, enforceable no longer by just hired goons and the sort of people who place mutilated animals on their victims&#8217; doorsteps, but by judges, lawyers, bailiffs, and police.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p class=\"western\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><span style=\"color: #353535;\">Interesting how important changes in the law get slipped in, or more likely<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">,\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">sold to us under the guise of apparently &#8220;fair&#8221; logic. We have higher paid lackeys (judges and lawyers) telling lower paid lackeys (bailiffs and police) to do the dirty work. How did this happen? Why do people give up their dignity? Why have they handed it over freely and willingly? Brute force is usually the answer.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"western\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><span style=\"color: #353535;\">If war, conquest and plunder, is the key to <\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">creating markets and amassing wealth,\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">and it&#8217;s all dependent on getting masses of the population to support the scheme<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">, through patriotism and propaganda and money, or at last resort, by the threat of force, h<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">ow <\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">is it that\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">so few people (the leaders<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">\/<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">CEOs\/bankers<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">)\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">can <\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">get so many people (the <\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">soldiers\/police\/<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">slaves\/employees<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">) to risk their lives mak<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">ing\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">hell on earth\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">for others with only crumbs\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">in return? What gets the masses to go along with this insanity?<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"western\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><span style=\"color: #353535;\">They had a much more fundamental problem with the market: greed. Market motives were held to be inherently corrupt. The moment that greed was validated and unlimited profit was considered a perfectly viable end in itself, this political, magical element became a genuine problem, because it meant that even those actors\u2014the brokers, stock-jobbers, traders\u2014who effectively made the system run had no convincing loyalty to anything, even to the market itself.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"western\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><span style=\"color: #353535;\">Hobbes, who first developed this vision of human nature into an explicit theory of society, was well aware of this greed dilemma. It formed the basis of his political philosophy. Even he argued, if we are all rational enough to understand that it&#8217;s in our long-term interest to live in peace and security, our short-term interests are often such that killing and plundering are the most obviously profitable courses to take, and all it takes is a few to cast aside their scruples to create utter insecurity and chaos. This is why he felt that markets could only exist under the aegis of an absolutist state, which would force us to keep our promises and respect one another&#8217;s property.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p class=\"western\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><span style=\"color: #353535;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/artbyodo.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Twist1c-e1534864724514.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-3301\" src=\"https:\/\/artbyodo.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Twist1c-e1534864724514-185x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"485\" srcset=\"https:\/\/artbyodo.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Twist1c-e1534864724514-185x300.jpg 185w, https:\/\/artbyodo.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Twist1c-e1534864724514-768x1243.jpg 768w, https:\/\/artbyodo.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Twist1c-e1534864724514-633x1024.jpg 633w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>That\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">quotation <\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">needs a little parsing. <\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">&#8220;. . . no convincing loyalty to anything, even to the market itself.&#8221; Greed, so deeply imbued into the system that it destroys itself in the process. This explains the continuing cycle of boom &amp; bust, the continuing insistence that infinite growth is good and possible, the continuing deliberate destruction of the ecosystem, the continuing exploitation of workers while the\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">latest\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">technological\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">efficiencies should be giving everyone more free time. <\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">Then, <\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">&#8220;. . . even if we are all rational enough to understand that it&#8217;s in our long-term interest to live in peace and security. . .&#8221; Obviously we do <\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\"><i>not\u00a0<\/i><\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\"><i>all\u00a0<\/i><\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">know that, and even if a few &#8220;cast aside their scruples&#8221; the rest of us who do know better, if there were enough of us, would stop the defectors in their trac<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">k<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">s.\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">Since the defectors are not being stopped, since greed has tricked down, since the majority have bought into the lies that have sold us the consumer mindset (advertising is harmless), the growth mindset (the economy requires growth<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">), the regulation is bad mindset (greed is good), we&#8217;re going to have to live with the inevitable not good outcomes. <\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">And finally, <\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">&#8220;. . . under the aegis of an absolutist state. . .&#8221; Something we fear only because the state has been <\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">complicit, <\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">run by those very defectors who have been creating insecurity<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">(war)\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">and chaos<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">(speculative markets)\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">for their own short-term gain at the expense of the majority who\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">just\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">keep <\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">plugging\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">along with blinders. Until the majority of us stop <\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">believing in their game<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">s,\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">and <\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">start <\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">understand<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">ing\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">that we&#8217;re being ridden hard and put away wet, and that we need to change our\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">own\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">attitudes and politics, nothing will change. Business as usual will continue. N<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">othing will change\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">until\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">there is a global collapse<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">,\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">not just of the mon<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">etary\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">system<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">, that&#8217;s merely smoke and mirrors<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">, but of the real economy\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">and real <\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">value\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">: our resources\u2014human and natural.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"western\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><span style=\"color: #353535;\">Looking back to the Great Depression, it&#8217;s a moment in history that&#8217;s terribly puzzling. After the Wall Street collapse\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">in 1929,\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">markets dried up, unemployment rose to over 30%. Roosevelt and congress tried many sorts of remedies to turn the economy around, but people&#8217;s perceptions remained stubbornly negative. Although the 1920s were roaring with enthusiasm and money was in flood, after the crash there&#8217;s suddenly a drought. Where did it all go?\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">All the <em>real<\/em> resources remained, but\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">n<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">othing could get the economy out of its holding \u00a0pattern\u2014not until World War II. Then, just as suddenly, there&#8217;s a rush of money, so much\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">production demand that women were called to the<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">\u00a0labor force. The<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">resources were so great the seemingly impossible was accomplished\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">in a few short years<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">. <em>It<\/em>, t<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">he human and natural resources, had been there all along\u2014the <em>money<\/em> too. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"western\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><span style=\"color: #353535;\">The concept of, &#8220;There isn&#8217;t enough money to do this, or that, or . . .&#8221; is bogus. If we, the people of the world, want to get something done, it&#8217;s only a matter of having the know-how and the resources, then getting to work. If those prerequisites are there, neither money nor debt is an issue. Politicians have never intended to fix the problems of poverty, education, equality, exploitation. The world as we know it today runs on poverty, ignorance, social exclusion and slavery. The old ways of thinking have us by the gonads.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"western\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><span style=\"color: #353535;\">All that I have said so far merely serves to underline a reality that has come up constantly over the course of this book: that money has no essence. It&#8217;s not &#8220;really&#8221; anything. . .<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p class=\"western\" align=\"center\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: med;\"><i><span style=\"color: #353535;\">D<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">ebt: The First 5000 Years,\u00a0<\/span><\/i><span style=\"color: #353535;\">David Graeber, Melville House, \u00a9 2011<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"western\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><span style=\"color: #353535;\">*Related\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">reading \u2014\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">Thomas Piketty&#8217;s <\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\"><i>Capital in the Twenty-First Century<\/i><\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">, and a curious little book of fiction about an optimistic future, <\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\"><i>Looking Backward<\/i><\/span><span style=\"color: #353535;\">, by Edward Bellamy. Also see : [<a href=\"https:\/\/artbyodo.net\/wordpress\/2017\/03\/15\/conspicuous-predation\/\">Conspicuous Predation<\/a>]<a href=\"https:\/\/artbyodo.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Twist1e.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-3303\" src=\"https:\/\/artbyodo.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Twist1e-1024x391.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"244\" srcset=\"https:\/\/artbyodo.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Twist1e-1024x391.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/artbyodo.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Twist1e-300x115.jpg 300w, https:\/\/artbyodo.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Twist1e-768x293.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>smoke &#8216;n&#8217; mirrors I am totally discombobulated. Never have I read a book that I didn\u2019t have enough of a grasp to either criticize or praise it. This one\u2019s got me struggling to straighten out the curlicues in my thoughts. &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/artbyodo.net\/wordpress\/2018\/09\/05\/twist-n-shout\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,6,11],"tags":[729,726,727,725,638,731,730,728,379],"class_list":["post-3296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-discover","category-thoughts","tag-capital-in-the-the-twenty-first-century","tag-david-graeber","tag-debt","tag-debt-the-first-5000-years","tag-economics","tag-edward-bellamy","tag-looking-backward","tag-money","tag-thomas-piketty"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artbyodo.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artbyodo.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artbyodo.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artbyodo.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artbyodo.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3296"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/artbyodo.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3296\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4299,"href":"https:\/\/artbyodo.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3296\/revisions\/4299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artbyodo.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artbyodo.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artbyodo.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}