This is probably going to sound odd but... I was married to a Scotswoman for 15 years and, by the time we divorced, I had come to think of her as having what I call the European disease which is the implicit assumption that she, as a European, knew better than I, an American, did about just about any subject (at least any subject that did not involve detailed technical knowledge). Listening to Ms. Vlahos, I got a similar sense of blind assumption. Don't get me wrong, I think that what the QI is doing is good and important but I think that in the end it will be OBE (overtaken by events).
Listening to her talk about what we should be doing coupled with reports in RT about the EU quite literally proposing to inflict regime change on Russia. Just because apparently. It occurs to me that between the US and the EU+the UK, you have well over 90% of the old colonial powers. These guys are all evil. They are accustomed to coming in and kicking the locals ass with superior weaponry, taking charge, and getting wealthy on the backs of real forced labor. As long as we have these guys, all of whom think they're the greatest thing since pizza and canned beer, running around without having some portion of their anatomy lopped off, they will twizzle with other countries and think it's OK. It is the colonist's disease and, like the European disease, is immune to logic and reality.
I know what Ms. Vlahos is trying to do but I suspect that the US (and probably also the UK and EU) are simply going to continue in their evil ways until at least the US gets kicked in the teeth. Then maybe they will sit up and take notice. But then it is likely to be too late.
I think the real power behind the throne is that the financial markets need government debt to siphon up a lot of the surplus investment money. The secret sauce of capitalism is public debt backing private wealth. The wars are just a burn pit, so more can be borrowed. That they are monumentally inept and the same people remain in charge is evidence strategy is not the purpose.
Money functions as a social contract, enabling large societies to function. It originated as a method of accounting. Yet as happens all too frequently, the tool becomes the god. Markets need money to circulate, but people see it as the signal to extract and store.
As a contract, the asset is backed backed by debt, so in order to store to store the asset, similar amounts of debt have to be generated. Back in the day, parents raised and educated their children and were taken care of in their old age. Now they have retirement accounts, much of which is backed by the kids having to take out student loans, credit card debt, mortgages, etc, in order to exist.
Econ 101 says money is both medium of exchange and store of value, though a medium is fluid and dynamic, while a store is static. Blood is a medium, fat is a store. Roads are a medium, parking lots are a store.
The reality is that money is a public utility. It's not our picture on it, we do not personally own the copyrights and are not individually responsible for sustaining its value. We own it like we own the section of road we are using, or the fluids passing through our bodies. Yet we treat it as a commodity to mine from society. The golden ring everyone seeks.
Now the only thing the government knows how to do, since everyone has been born into this situation, is to just issue more. When we treat it like confetti, eventually it becomes confetti .
Then states will have to start issuing their own currencies, to sustain minimal, local economies and the United States goes the way of the Soviet Union.
"this is probably going to sound odd"...Pretty much.
This is probably going to sound odd but... I was married to a Scotswoman for 15 years and, by the time we divorced, I had come to think of her as having what I call the European disease which is the implicit assumption that she, as a European, knew better than I, an American, did about just about any subject (at least any subject that did not involve detailed technical knowledge). Listening to Ms. Vlahos, I got a similar sense of blind assumption. Don't get me wrong, I think that what the QI is doing is good and important but I think that in the end it will be OBE (overtaken by events).
Listening to her talk about what we should be doing coupled with reports in RT about the EU quite literally proposing to inflict regime change on Russia. Just because apparently. It occurs to me that between the US and the EU+the UK, you have well over 90% of the old colonial powers. These guys are all evil. They are accustomed to coming in and kicking the locals ass with superior weaponry, taking charge, and getting wealthy on the backs of real forced labor. As long as we have these guys, all of whom think they're the greatest thing since pizza and canned beer, running around without having some portion of their anatomy lopped off, they will twizzle with other countries and think it's OK. It is the colonist's disease and, like the European disease, is immune to logic and reality.
I know what Ms. Vlahos is trying to do but I suspect that the US (and probably also the UK and EU) are simply going to continue in their evil ways until at least the US gets kicked in the teeth. Then maybe they will sit up and take notice. But then it is likely to be too late.
I think the real power behind the throne is that the financial markets need government debt to siphon up a lot of the surplus investment money. The secret sauce of capitalism is public debt backing private wealth. The wars are just a burn pit, so more can be borrowed. That they are monumentally inept and the same people remain in charge is evidence strategy is not the purpose.
Money functions as a social contract, enabling large societies to function. It originated as a method of accounting. Yet as happens all too frequently, the tool becomes the god. Markets need money to circulate, but people see it as the signal to extract and store.
As a contract, the asset is backed backed by debt, so in order to store to store the asset, similar amounts of debt have to be generated. Back in the day, parents raised and educated their children and were taken care of in their old age. Now they have retirement accounts, much of which is backed by the kids having to take out student loans, credit card debt, mortgages, etc, in order to exist.
Econ 101 says money is both medium of exchange and store of value, though a medium is fluid and dynamic, while a store is static. Blood is a medium, fat is a store. Roads are a medium, parking lots are a store.
The reality is that money is a public utility. It's not our picture on it, we do not personally own the copyrights and are not individually responsible for sustaining its value. We own it like we own the section of road we are using, or the fluids passing through our bodies. Yet we treat it as a commodity to mine from society. The golden ring everyone seeks.
Now the only thing the government knows how to do, since everyone has been born into this situation, is to just issue more. When we treat it like confetti, eventually it becomes confetti .
Then states will have to start issuing their own currencies, to sustain minimal, local economies and the United States goes the way of the Soviet Union.