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Anonymous Coward writes:
"http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/ 18/truth-money-iou-bank-of-england-austerity
Back in the 1930s, Henry Ford is supposed to have remarked that it was a good thing that most Americans didn't know how banking really works, because if they did, 'there'd be a revolution before tomorrow morning.'
Last week, something remarkable happened. The Bank of England let the cat out of the bag. In a paper called "Money Creation in the Modern Economy", co-authored by three economists from the Bank's Monetary Analysis Directorate, they stated outright that most common assumptions of how banking works are simply wrong, and that the kind of populist, heterodox positions more ordinarily associated with groups such as Occupy Wall Street are correct. In doing so, they have effectively thrown the entire theoretical basis for austerity out of the window."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 25 2014, @06:06AM
Of course all money is relative. A dollar has no intrinsic value, and neither does gold. Heresy? Look me straight in the eye, and tell me that when you see a picture of a gold bar you don't immediately do some kind of conversion in your head. "If I had that", you think, "I could have this".
Food, shelter, clothing, medical treatment, companionship, some entertainment... maybe a few other things. Once you get beyond that you're happy and money is just a means to facilitate those other things. Nobody really wants money. They want the things money can buy. Some historians say that one of the earliest forms of money were tokens used to pay temple prostitutes. It makes sense. Money itself is a whore that many worship. People have been using her from the dawn of time.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by dime on Tuesday March 25 2014, @06:52AM
I can look you straight in the eye and tell you you're wrong. If you were right, the world would be a better place.
People with real money, old money and not just "millions", don't think of the things they could have. They are the acceleration function to the economy's velocity function to your position function. They think of the ways that money can make more money. Material things can't make people earn more money for you. Only money can.
There are many many people who do not want things. They want money.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by maxwell demon on Tuesday March 25 2014, @08:35AM
They want money because money is power. Not necessarily in the political sense (although it seems to work quite well in that respect, too), but simply power as in you can get almost everything you want. More money means more power.
Note that also power is largely based on faith. Sure, weapons give you a certain amount of power, but that only gets you so far. Look how quickly a dictator loses power as soon as the people don't believe any more in that power.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jimshatt on Tuesday March 25 2014, @10:52AM
You're right, but I've always wondered why this is so. Sure it's cool to have enough money to do whatever you want and still have enough left to resupply your wealth without doing any work (aka Fuck-You Money). But there are some people having more than FU-money. Why? What is the end goal?
Getting into conspiracy theory territory here: Is the goal to have complete, absolute, totalitarian world control? And then what? I mean, I'm fine with that. I, for one, welcome our totalitarian Koch brother overlords. But they have some serious existentialistic issues to resolve after that.