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Alan B'Stard MP

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Posts posted by Alan B'Stard MP

  1. Also why fight toe to toe? Would you go into the boxing ring with a 1980s Mike Tyson? Hell no its why you go asymetric and buy loads of antiship missiles super cavitating torpedoes. So while China only has a 1980s carrier the Varag which is a refit. They have anti satellite missiles, and a massive stock pile of things designed to send carriers to the ocean floor.

    How does an antiship missile make someone pay their bills?

  2. The fact that debt (and thus accounting) arose before money (and saving before debt) implies circumstantially considerable evidence for my position.

    sure it can. That's just saying that not ALL the money issued needs to be paid back at any one point in time. Likewise for private debt - we don't imagine that all private debt needs to be paid back do we - we just need to hope that the obligations change hands with a healthy velocity, at which point paying it all back is no longer a concern, unless your name is interestrateripoff.

    Yes, if the service incurs a cost of energy expenditure by a biological entity. All life is leverage - your life is "backed" by having 5% of the total of your circulating blood cells having their replacements manufactured in your bone marrow. As long as that happens you live, or possibly if you fall short you need to shed some mass damn quickly. The state has an exactly analagous circulatory requirement as does the economy. I don't believe for a second that any of the higher social structures we have created are somehow freed from the basic universal laws of form that have given rise (with a bit of help from natural selection and endogenous bodily constraints) to the creatures on which it is based.

    Burying the tribe's nuts creates a debt, albeit collectively assumed. If I am alone and bury some nuts, then there is no debt.

    Only if there is never any deferred settlement - e.g. no buried nuts, and no saving whatsoever. A debt does not have to be denominated in money for it to be a debt.

    I can therefore fund a debt by burying some nuts. I could then issue nut notes if I like. Still, there is no money here unless I convince everyone else my nuts are good. If I succeed in doing that, then I have made some money. In practice I can't achieve that because I'm just one man among many. If we all bury some nuts we individually own in a big pit and then collectively issue nut notes then that can be money, because the information about who owned which specific nut is lost, and if some nuts have gone bad when we dig them up then no one note holder is picked out from the rest.

    Creation of money from debt is a process of information loss, and therein I feel comes most of the problems and benefits of money.

    I can only say we differ on the definition of debt. For me its someone forgoing a benefit - to have it returned at a later date. The world produces enough surplus for everyones needs - that much we know. No-one needlessly goes hungry for lack of a physical object somewhere on the globe. They may go hungry for not actually having ownership of said item of course.

    If we can produce all that we need in totality - there is no debt in totality. Unequal distribution of these surpluses of is the precursor of this debt - nothing more. Why is debt taken on? To gain access to surplus. How can debt be taken on - because someone has a surplus to give.

    If government emits money at face value equal to its cost of production - provides no services - and said money flows equally among all economic participants - then no debt is necessary. Therefore, money as debt is therefore not a hard rule of the universe. That in fact it creams a little of everyones surplus is irrelevant.

  3. Ogg would dig the nuts up early then they'd all starve.

    However, as long as Ugg was bigger than the rest of them and could scare Ogg and co into compliance they'd get through the winter, although Ugg would get a few extra nuts.

    Its called civilisation. No 'growth' is required, and no money, in this context.

    When the tribe, through successful and repeated application of this recipe grows to a size beyond the basic monkey familial group, money happens.

    I'm not contesting when and how money occurs - just that it is a perquisite that it has to be debt based.

    Firstly, in a productive economy where each transaction forms the national income and is taxed accordingly - can not this taxation money be used to fund necessary public services, using the economies of scale that bulk purchase allows? Is every level of public service from good to bad provision always going to require debt? The first point about debt is that it requires a willing borrower. What if everyone income and associated expenditure is such that no-one needs to borrow? Are you saying in totality there isn't enough national income for no-one to be debt? How? Who can fund the debt in the first place?

  4. Yes it does, they have to pay the police.

    Whenever the government issues currency, it is immediately on the hook for some public goods and services which can be obtained by producing the

    currency and the government needs to come up with the goods or face collapse. The point is, the cost of issuance does not become due immediately,

    which is exactly the definition of a debt.

    That's why currency is recorded as a government liability and has the rulers symbol on it.

    The value in metal coins is neither here nor there, since without the assumed collective debt behind it they are no better than a loaf of bread, in fact

    far less valuable.

    Have we always had Police? Public Services?

  5. There is no point distinguishing between tax and legal tender laws, since both create a cloud of debt, from which money springs.

    If all debtors default but the coinage retains its value then it implies a debt remains that wants clearing.

    No this is wrong.

    If I borrow a tenner from Bank Scepticus - you have funded this loan. I have received a benefit that you have forgone. This is debt.

    Taxation is not debt because the recipient has not funded it initially - and it has no servicing cost to them.

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