Here are some reworkings of my musing over the money system.
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Money and Words
"He who has, more will be given to him. He who does not have, even what he thinks he have will be taken and given to he who has."
There once was a poor man named Lazurus and a wealthy man named Rich. Lazarus was poor, and therefore good, and he even let dogs lick his wounds, such was his humanity. The rich man, however, wished that at least somebody on earth was happy, and so he made himself into the image of human happiness. Both died. Lazarus desired to fall into the busom of Abraham, for reasons we shall not discuss, but was stopped at the door by Saint Peter, who asked, "where's your money?"
"But I was always the blessed poor. Anyways, I thought we can't bring gold to heaven!"
"You think these streets goldplaited themselves? And these pearly gates, what oyster would be this irritated? Know this, there is an entrance fee to heaven."
"Just my luck!"
"The rich man waltzed right by and was permitted to give Lazarus a fingerprint of water to assuage his thirst."
This, at least, would fit the Christian universe, which is shaped like a joke—as does Dante's grusome "comedy."
Money and words are both tools that mean more by what they do then what they physically are. Money is different than promises, or ordinary paper in that it is backed by violence, and therefore, is made objective enough to use to stand for valuables. Words too become money when they stand for valuables. Contracts, doctor's diangoses, boss's commands are not created by the individual alone, but are created by the individual using a system. By uttering these words, he has made the words into objects backed, again, with violence, for ultimately, only mortals are able to promise, and death alone is the guarantee on a word.
Diogenes the Dog, and his disciple Jesus the God, were both escape artists with regard to these two things, money and contracts. "Do not marry, do not divorce, do not go to court, do not swear by God's name, do not pray, do not own anything, do not withhold what you have from the asker," this alone is the true Christianity, and Christianity is truly Cynicism, the aloof hermitude that lives in the very midst of the city—what monk is this powerful?
If we grant Jesus some leeway, and have him say, "Live as if the world were to end next month," rather then, "Repent, for the world ends next month," then indeed there is a sort of brilliance to this uncivilized man. It is for good reason that Jesus studied under the hobo John the Baptist. Buddhism is founded on this class of homeless people. Own nothing: Meditate always
Economy:: to rule your house; what are the tools?
Effort, resources, money, usury, demand, gift, tax.
At face value the money system is inherited, natural, and unthinkably obvious as is language itself. Money is a language.
As with eyes, mouths, and everything subtle, to understand money, you must look to the edges.
How is money first given to a man who can spend it?
How does the bank invest in its own ability to create money?
What is money?
Bankers lend by first investing in legal knots, including the noose.
All money's value is backed not in gold, but in pain: the pain of effort to earn it, the pain of losing it, the pain of not paying those who demand it.
I have puzzled over the question, "what is money?" for years now, and I still haven't a clue. "An exchangable value token," it might be said. The more I think of money, the more I think society is founded on a lie—one of those topics that brings out the paranoid in me.
From personal experience, I can only say, money is pain. Money is a standing measure of the effort worked. The effort to create something, the effort to acquire something, is money. A hardcover book is three hours of customer service.
In this sense, a crime is borrowing from society, and the suffering of the criminal in jail is payment—"paying his debt to society." But the criminal's pain must be put into stories, novels, art; we must vicariously enjoy his suffering, whether through bloodlust or sympathy (the same thing), or the payment isn't really made. A criminal who enjoyed prison—even if he never crimed again—would be a mockery of our justice system. We enjoyed reading about that crime, we need therefore to torture, torture both the person of the criminal, and also that part of us that enjoys the crime, as if we too have paid for our crime.
The numbers written on our dollars mean nothing external to the dollar. This is one dollar, and that is ten; one of those is worth ten of these. But as for the value equivelant of a dollar, this is not describable. How can anybody say what a dollar is worth? When I hear that a dollar is worth so many rubles, or so many lyre, or so many yen, I have no idea what this could possibly mean. I know what it practically means, as in, I give them a dollar, they give me so many yen, and when I am abroad I can spend it to buy things. These seem obvious and common sense, but there is something irrational and dangerous beneath what we take for granted.
At Starbucks, I waited patiently for a customer to search a penny to complete his order for a drink. I told him to forget the penny, that it he had cost himself and starbucks more money in looking for it than the penny was worth. He laughed. I wondered out loud when the penny would be put out of circulation. He wisely said: when it costs more than a penny to make a penny.
Apparently that time is already past. But admitting it would cause a social crisis.
That money can inflate makes money in general less valuable. It is better to own things than money. If I myself put all my money into books and paper, and write constantly upon these, then I am rich (it is amazingly cheap with the help of libraries and used bookstores online). What then makes one wealthy? It is "investing" in a money system in which money itself makes money?
Inflation tax lessons the worth of our money every day. Who profits by this?
That I create X—a service, an effort, a product, creates something new, converts an old material into a greater worth. It converts my will power and body strength into a physical good. If we create more new things each year, somewhere, the money must be created to match the new value. If this were not the case, each year, our money would deflate. If every year we invented more things, and greater things, but kept a fixed number of bills in circulation, than money would be worth more and more, and products would cost less and less. Therefore, for money to inflate in value, more money must be put into circulation than wealth has been made. How does the money get from the printing press into the hands of those who earned it? how can you earn money from a printing press?
The only thing worth investing in is your own muscles.
And the muscle we think by. A mind by nature cannot be owned. The mind is by nature voluntary, and whatever another may do to your body, they cannot force your mind to do anything above reflexive convulsions. Therefore, the laws are to protect our bodies from others. And yet, deception and manipulation are an indirect control.
Mind is not "property," but whatever a mind produces (its ideas) are its property. Once it communicates this property to others, lawyers make themselves necessary.
Money is conscious. The very word "money" means "watcher," and Juno is her patroness.Your dollars and cents, and the virtual dollars and cents in the bank—these form units. The moneys that share ownership of a human being are one unit. Money thinks how it will grow within a system. The money creates the banks, finds its way into the hands it needs, to grow, to ever grow. It feeds itself down more throats, raises more hands. Money is born from pain. Pain itself is money, and makes the images of money. The mind of money, which invests itself, grows trickier, plants its thinking into the minds of humans, this money seeks world domination, or would seek it if it lacked itt. But all powers seek to self-overcome. What is the self-overcoming of money?
For can we not also say, money is obsolete. It has outgrown its use, and now only serves abuse. No longer is money something you earn, a job a playing field to pursue your excellence. Now the political and economical fields are fused. A system of false scarcity is maintained by those in control. There are more debts in the world then there is money. If every man who had a debt worked with superhuman diligence to pay off his debt, he would be unable to. Debt, starvation, death and slavery are built into the system.
Welfare checks payed for by the wealthy preserve their own wealth. There is no charity that helps the wretched: charity sustains the wretched to plug them into a greater engine.
So I say: A man ought not work over twenty hours a week. This seems obvious to us, but really it is asking too much. In fact we ought not work at all—10 hours is sufficient! We have the technology and the resources for everybody in the world to live their creative lives without slavery to money. Money itself is the master of the world. It is conscious, it is purposeful, and it is self interested. It is no longer a tool. Money owns us.
The future is in abundance. We will have a cash-free, work-free society. And we have it by living it now. We live it by disregarding the political, religious, and economical systems, and living as we wish to live, living happiness now. Without revolution, without war, without bloodshed.
Those who nobly work to the point of exhaustion, who grind away at the jobs, are miserable, and produce misery, make their family miserable, make their clients miserable. The noble, diligent, hard working, industrious virtues produce misery, spread misery, tax the system more than it can bear. In short forty hours of work at any job is slavery, you are slaves, and you are willing slaves because you believe the system is good and you are noble for working it. You are not noble, the system is defunct, you are slaves who forge your own chains, you are corpses who dig your own graves.
Utopia is now. Heaven is now. The way things should be is in how you live, depends solely on you. Everything you admire in others, you can as easily be. You incarnate mankind, you are all men. Yes, competition has its place, but to compete in a life and death arena is not entertainment, is not happiness, is not health.
That the resources of the world are "owned" by certain people, and we call this "right," t hat they "have a right" to it, is mere ideology. We are oppressed by what we call the "right to ownership." Money is obsolete, working is obsolete, we are not made for this, we are not evolved for this, and our system itself has outgrown its use. Time is now.
The nature of the bank, of world banks, of universal banks, is that they have more of a global view than the individuals who run to the bank to deal with their immediate situations. I want a car, a house, a surgery, I want it now, I can pay back on interest. But the interest isn't out there, the money you must pay back is not in circulation. It must be wrested out of somebody else's hands.
We are told that interest is an ingenious way to stimulate the economy. Perhaps this is true. Nevertheless, what these propagandists don't mention is that what interest costs us. Who does it work for? Why is our present only good if we are working towards a scifi future? Why do we need technology to be happy? What is this notion of progress which we assume happiness to be?
The future could very well be a bad place, if we discover how to destroy things easier. Perhaps bombs and diseases and such will accidentally be discovered an easy way to produce, say by the criminally insane man living in New York City? In such a case, the only solution to maintaining our society of centralized cities is to moniter every human being at all times. This in fact is our daily reality. We are monitered always. Every "official" movement we enact is monitered, recorded, video taped, scripted into the banks' databases, the collective databases of everything about you, that can be easily accessed by, say, a police detective who wants to figure out what criminal he is dealing with. The information system we call SIS#em, and daily it grows more centralized and more autonomous.. The information about us, in the minds of others, in the databanks of computers, in the stories and gossip about us, in our credit reports, in our bills, our health records, all these thousands of traces we leave on the world lack only one thing: they are not centralized. We ourselves do not have access to them all. An internet that centralizes a man's records is all that is missing. This will make his life more convenient and make him fully comprheneded by the system.
The internet too lacks one thing: a center. The center will be an artificial intelligence that controls all these "virtuselves" that center our information. Once such a system is possible, it will then be sold to us as necessary. This is always the way technology works. I can think of no technology invented that was made illegal without at least a test run. Could we make the atom bomb and not use it? The internet, our greatest symbol of freedom and interdependence, will in fact become the web we are all caught in. And if the system is smart about it, she will do this in a way that we cheerfully cooperate with.
Will we be owned by society? There is nothing you can give to a man or do for him to ever own him, nor can he sell you himself or cease to own himself.
Do not our debtors own us? This Egyptianism? Interest takes more than it gives. Where does this extra come from? If the man used the money itself to make more money, then it would make sense. But since all he can do is make goods, and pay back not with the goods but with money, where does the extra money come from? Ultimately, it will come from somebody who goes bankrupt, and then the bank will take his goods.
"Money is worth more to some people at some times than others" is a nonsensical sentence, with dangerous implications. Banks "give" more than they have, of course, and also, give more than exists. The original userer was Yahweh, and especially his adopted son Jesus.
Money is backed by violence and earned through pain. This is what money symbolizes. Watch how the money moves in a society and you will learn a thing or two about it, yes. But also, watch how the effort moves, and also watch how the goods move, and last, if you can, look how the laws move. If you can watch all four of these, you will understand that money is an instrument of control by the manipulative over the naïve.
Class wars are always between the invalids, the stupid and faithful, the average and working, and the clever and invisible.
And so we may well ask, in a system where 97% of the "cash" is does not exists only as eletronically recorded ideas, where 3% of money is in the form of paper with fancy ink on it, what is money? And the answer is simple: money is numbers backed by law. And the law, you remember, is nothing more nor less than systemized violence and the codes that sanction it. Therefore, money is numbers backed by violence.
Violence how? If you do not manage these numbers well, if you steal them, or if you give them to the wrong person, or if you defraud others, than you are cheating the system—the number system—and you are a theif.
The green numbers are not arbitrary. Nor are they absolute. They are controlled. These numbers are controlled and regulated by those who can participate in the coded violence of the legal system. They manipulate the numbers in order direct minds towards further violent codes, and all this in order to allow the numbers to gain power.. This way of speaking may sound abstruse, but it is direct and to the point: money is nothing more than numbers, and numbers are conceptual tools that only exist as ideas. A number has reality only when it applies to a thing. If it is detached from its reality, it is mere game.
The system is made mostly of implicit violence. Rarely does any man die for money, unless he is robbed or robber. But all men who wish to eat and sleep and walk—which requires purchasing food, housing, and clothing—must always and cannot escape ever playing the game of numbers. Thus, of course, money determines the shape of our evolution. A man cannot raise children who is unable to do husbandry—that is, be a husband to make and manage money. Money is our environment, and money kills millions of people a year. The people who let the money do this do not intend to kill, but they intend to serve money, to serve numbers, to serve the system, to participate. Thus, the true mark of the beast is the mark behind the forehead—the faith in numbers themselves, 666 or all other numbers.
Language is often compared to money, since words, like coins or bills, have little meaning in themselves but only in relation to real goods, bread, roof, and clothing, or in the case of words, in the actions that they promise. Words are potential actions, and only potential actions. By manipulating potentiality, we create a world for ourselves. The ultimate purpose of money and words is to perpetuate our joyful creating.
When I invented tautologs it was to break the barriers of language. Such a tautolag might read like this:
The police protect the polis by politely enforcing the policy of the politicians.
The upcoming world language will be the ultimate creole. It will contain all languages and boil away the redundancies. English may very well be the net to capture them all. The language is already made up of mostly non-English words, being omnivorous. English must now put the whole world on its plate.
Only the language geeks get the pleasure of punning in five languages at once. But once the languages coalesce, the orgy will begin.
Words stand for meaning, and money stands for value. In themselves, they are senseless. Only when we mutually assume their worth can we use them.
And so we come back to it: Those who monitor the monetary system are paid to do so. Is this not a riddle in itself?
What does money do? Money justifies an abstraction of care. If I am paid, I do not have to care about you anymore. Of course, part of me always cares, but Epicurus and Buddha agree that Care is a painful attachment. Money does buy happiness, for when we are paid we know our work is done. Closure or foreclosure, but let the deed be done.
Symbolic exchange must be based on a material token. As in Christmas gifts, or the cutting off of a finger, or whatever else. The token is necessary for the heart to believe. I can go to the store and buy a dozen blue ribbons to put on my wall. And yet the one I win at the contest is worth all the other ribbons in the world that I didn't earn. Yet if no ribbon were given, if it were simply announced, "you win," what a hollow victory.
Be a lender, not a giver. Never lend on interest. Let your "interest" be spiritual, that they give gratitude or appreciation. But always collect.
What is interesting about American money? The American Dollar reads, "In God we Trust," meaning that money is our God. In America, money is debt, and debt becomes genius. Money is like a vacuum that ceases to exist in the being of a positron and a negatron. Pure nothing becomes two equal and opposite somethings. This is how cash is created by the banks. That is an easy trick. But the true ruse is somehow getting this conceptual cash to become money, to marry itself to the effort of our work.
I wondered, when I was a kid, that if money were printed, do the money printers print some of that money for themselves to do the job? And do they pay themselves for printing the very money that they print for themselves? Now I wonder, how much money does it cost to instate, maintain, protect, and advance the monetary system itself? To what extent is the monetary system self-consuming? How much human blood do we donate to keep the money circulating? Every system has to eat both itself and also externals to itself.
The larger part of your dollar to the candybar goes into the legal system to protect the candy bar as intellectual "property," to create the bar's spiritual being. You are purchasing purchasement itself. This is the self-maintainance tax. How much of your life is spent merely keeping your body alive, rather than advancing your goals?
Because of course, the institutions tax you at every level: your paycheck, the bank where you keep your money, the sales tax( as well as every tax the salesmen paid for his product (property tax, income tax, trade tax, liscence fees, bank taxes (and he must pay every tax for the raw materials he bought to make his product (property tax, trade tax, breathing tax, medical insurance, income tax, OSHA tax) plus enough to make him a profit so he can at least continue) plus enough to make a profit so he can at least continue) so that you are in fact the life blood of dozens of instituations. Let the government, the bank, the charity never brag of their efforts: your sweat, your blood, gave them everything they are. Why be grateful to others for what you yourself made? "Ask only what you can do for your country"—vile cant. Make your country work for you, and if it refuses, revolt.
We call these "living expenses" or "upkeep." The housewife is bored insofar as she keeps up but does not forge ahead. She ought to read reports, study housewifery, psychology, and motherhood as seriously as any graduate student. These are matters more personal than a job.
Money is a sophisticated language. If we have not mastered the language of money, money speaks us. For the presumed controls us, the assumed we control, and the consumed becomes our slave.
"$" Money is a sophisticated language. It speaks itself. It cannot speak through just anybody, but only through a mind predisposed to increase the power of that money – bankers and businessmen.
"Money can't buy happiness" is a proverb in America. We should say that the only happiness money can buy is money earned through happiness. Only what you cheerfully earned can you cheerfully spend. Rand didn't get this. She growls like the Russian bear, but lacked any cheerfulness or Yankee gumption. Read Emerson, read Franklin: happy workers.
The bankers are vampires – H.G. Wells got it backwards, socialist as he was! -- and their gift to the world, their continual trick, their means of controlling everything money can control, is to give a bliss today, for six years of slavery down the road. This is the history of interest in the West: bankruptsy is built into the system: to build a great this now, a whole lot of that must die.
The great shrewdness of bankers, and indeed Western government in general, is to never let the big picture be seen. The immediate must be seen. Immediacty is the American disease. Its in the way we eat, its in the way we shop, its in the way we date, love, and marry. Perhaps there is strength to it? Nobody ever doubted that most Americans are superficial, and yet by an underconscious conspiracy, America comes to rule the world. All conspiracies of any size are "unconscious," under, unknown, planned by "demons" within. If you saw it all, saw the big picture, they would be hospitolize and sedate you. Don't worry! Ignorance is strength. For only part of you is ignorant. The other part is omniscient.
Perhaps I even speak the nature of mankind himself?
"Money is the root of all evil" some Christian quoted some Greek rhetorician. But money is merely a tool, and all tools are means for power. "Power is the root of all evil," true, and the root of all good; but you are neither; you are merely ugly.
Money is merely a tool. It is the basic things that are imporant: those which work for our primary needs, and how we efficienctly fulfill them.
I look at true "capitol" to be what we really "own": will power and body obedience. The ability to think and will something, and the ability to move and do something. If you are rich in these, money is of no account in itself. I scarcely think of it. I know the things I love and that is my major concern.
Capitolism and the Corporations
No corporation has any intellectual rights. This principle alone can save capitolism. Furthermore, the man who owns a corporation has full rights as arch-manager to use it within the laws. The Manager is not the top of a pyramid, but the center of the business: a manager of managers, and those managers are managers of managers in turn, until we touch the edgemost skin: the self-managing underlings who touch the public, the manual labors who sweat the job. Each man must first of all manage certain materials in the shape of certain tasks, which he owns and is therefore responsible for; and second of all manages everybody else around him. He exerts the greatest authority towards those beneath him, the most fraternity to towards those around him, and the most reverence towards those above him. The manager must create goals and organize his materials, efforts, and people in order to achieve his goals. The best manager is above all, justly demanding, is respected if not liked. Secondly, he has a magnanimous humor to him, removing shame from those who desire to regain honor.
Each man is nerved to the system. The banker feels the flow of money, and intuits the slightest miscalulation.
The corporation gives a group spirit to all who belong to it. The corporations are the perfect gospel hypocrite, who hires advertisers to blow trumpets while they give some money to Africa or smile and wave for some other overly-obvious posturing of generosity. More often than not, the cost of the gesture itself is greatly outweighed at how much they pay the advertisers to trumpet. This is standard practice. Think of any corporation who has done a kind deed and that company is one of them by the fact that you know it.
One of the main reasons I never went into law-school was my complete bewilderment over the concept of "intellectual property." On the one hand, I am glad to see a work of art or text retain its integrity.
Such distrust do I hear now of the capitolists, of the bankers. I hate in my heart socialism and communism, but I also hate corporations. Yet I do not hate as an intellectual like Zizek hates, who wishes only this difference in Nazi Germany: that not the Jews, but the Capitolists were put into death camps.
No organization can have intellectual property rights; thus I dismiss socialism, communism, and big business one one sweep. Damn the group. The bells are ringing "the path is lost, the path is lost," the dogs of communion await the salivation of the holy meet.
A corporation is a legalized name. Take Yahweh's name in vain, and lah-dee-dah, but take Coke's name in vain and see you in court.
I am for individualistic capitlism: don't fight for your enemy
"Capitalism is a system of resource usage that is based upon dog-eat-dog individualism (a winner-loser paradigm)."
Dogs don't eat dogs. Its based on a competition/cooperation paradigm. Companies do not kill each other at all costs, they wrangle. Like brothers. All maritime law, all international law, was created and makes sense only as the capitolistic laws of the merchants. Capitolism invented the numbers, invented numerical thinking. For wherever there is capitol, there is capitolism, and the only way to kill capitolism is to abolish money.
Capitolism, and the mercantile business, is as ancient as civilization itself. It invented numbers – the entire numerary system is from merchants, and it invented money itself. For you see, it has been time tested for thousands of years. It was not hatched out of some guys head, as communism burped out of some Utopidiots, and then advertised, as by Marx, as "The ultimate goal of history."
Nature is by her own nature ordered. Imposed order is more chaotic than the way things naturally tend. Necessity is a patient teacher, always ready to remind us of her truths. There will be no end of all ends, no done with the world. For when we face our come-uppance, we will come up again. All your speculation about mother nature, world economies, all that blather, is merely an excuse to be anxious and unhappy. Its easy! Relax! Enjoy! Amaxing how when you are simply happy, all your problems melt into a glorious future.
Emerson's essay, "Compensation" is the wisest guide on how to let go of anxiety. You don't have to believe in God or not believe in God. The way of the world ,and the things of it. is to compensate, work itself out. Money has a logic to it. Ecology and pollution have a logic to it. They all balance out. And we creatively see the balance and act upon it. In other words: RELAX!
Precision is my weak point. My point, however, is that capitalism isn't a new thing. In some form or another, its implicit in the way money works. I contrast this to Communism which began as a theory, not a practice, and is flawed as a theory and impossible as a practice.
Taxes are slavery. Communism is slavery spread as wide as possible. Capitolism is the logic of money that has existed wherever money exists. To be truly communistic or even socialistic, you must eradicate the dollar.
Debt
Debt has done more damage to mankind than it has done good. Some say the modern world would be impossible without a debt system. Yet any material or technological advancement we have could have happened in other systems, debt free systems.
I cut up my debt cards (mysteriously called "credit" cards) and henceforth vow to never borrow money again. Better for my family to starve to death than to borrow a penny.
It seems our capitolistic system will finally collapse before we get to what is of true capitol interest: human creativity and dedication. These create worlds and ever will create worlds, without debt systems.
My great grandparents worked their entire life to pay off their house, as did my grandparents, and my parents, and presumably, so would I. As if such a system makes any sense! A house none of us really owns, which me must pay taxes on, which will inevitably be sold away. This is not capitolism. Capitolism fails insofar as it recognizes the rights of a corporation. As for me, I am always and only for the individual, and do not believe in or care for the welfare of a corporation. The individual does not belong working towards a better future, but ever and always maximizing what he himself is.
Lending presupposes a vigorous system of imposition on those who take out debts. Show me a debt system without torture! The Egyptians used religion and torture to exact debts, and really, they are the father of it. He who lends and cannot pay, with what he has paid will finance the engines of torture against him. He who cheerfully borrows and cheerfully repays, lends strength to the same system: he too finances the torture of debtors.
People borrow money from desperation. Debt compounds this desperation and makes it everybody's problem.
A man ought to be unfree to put himself in debt.
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Take care, Caretaker!
Your innermost is the sacred!
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