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!!Why it is all absurd and we should wake up!!
Comments
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Clapton,
A monetary system that encourages sustainability of the resources i.e. one that does not require exponential growth to exist, will help us keep our consumption under control and hopefully stop us from dying, well our future great grand children anyway.0 -
Imagine you had a car that did 50 mpg and filled it with a gallon of petrol that cost £5 a gallon
You then drive the car 50 miles from home until you run out of petrol.
How much would it cost you in manpower to pay one/two/three whatever people to push that car home?
Let's say 4 people, pushing in shifts of 2.
Pushing at 2 miles an hour, that's 25 hours. Then all four have to walk home at 4 mph, that's another 12½ hours. Call it 40 hours (lunch breaks) at £7 an hour. So about £280 I suspect.
This is why it would be far more efficient not to run out of petrol. Every 4 men in the oil extraction and refining industries could probably produce £10K worth of petrol with 40 hours labour.
I prefer robots. They don't go on strike.0 -
Loughton_Monkey wrote: »Let's say 4 people, pushing in shifts of 2.
Pushing at 2 miles an hour, that's 25 hours. Then all four have to walk home at 4 mph, that's another 12½ hours. Call it 40 hours (lunch breaks) at £7 an hour. So about £280 I suspect.
This is why it would be far more efficient not to run out of petrol. Every 4 men in the oil extraction and refining industries could probably produce £10K worth of petrol with 40 hours labour.
I prefer robots. They don't go on strike.
Hahaha yeah, we will just bury some dead animals amongst other plant life etc, allow geological pressures to take place and make some more oil when it as all gone, so we never run out of petrol. Enjoy the several million years wait on that one, I hope you can afford to pay your oil rig guys waiting time and provide enough tea and biscuits, while all the other humans wait back at the caves. Make sure we never run out of petrol, I have heard it all now. As an individual yes fill your car regularly, as a globe, it will all go one day.0 -
That's right.
Rising poulations and increasing consumption does not "add up" and is unsustainable.
I have to agree with Clapton here that this doesn't really affect the monetary system.
Don't get me wrong here, I but I would strongly advocate that continuous over-population and/or over-exploitation would have no impact whatsoever on our financial systems or the way money 'works'. Indeed it might demonstrate the way it works rather more clearly.
If/when the demand for power outstrips the ability to dig oil/coal out, it will be a relatively slow process and prices will rise sharply and more sharply until alternative forms become economic. Or we will be forced to use far less power. Or revert to human/horse power [but wouldn't have enough hay to feed all those horses etc..]
Either way, this could be highly uncomfortable and inconvenient. Life as we know it might disappear. House prices might plunge by 95%. Defaults would be rife and all our cash in the bank would melt away. This is not (rather perversely) any fundamental change to our monetary and financial system. It's a rather extreme demonstration of them 'working' in the way they always have.
In summary, I would agree that the scenario is "unsustainable" in the context of continuing our lives comfortably. But sure as hell, it "adds up" perfectly.0 -
boltneck123 wrote: »Clapton,
A monetary system that encourages sustainability of the resources i.e. one that does not require exponential growth to exist, will help us keep our consumption under control and hopefully stop us from dying, well our future great grand children anyway.
in what way does our monetary system require exponential growth in the consumption of resources?
resources are consumed as a result of peoples wishes for goods and services: the monetary system doesn't require that
it's just as easy to bicycle rather than use a car whether we have a fractional banking system or bitcoin or ...(I've already said this)0 -
boltneck123 wrote: »Loughton Monkey,
If you are happy for the human race to consume itself back into caves then you probably don't care about the future of our race.boltneck123 wrote: »Hahaha yeah, we will just bury some dead animals amongst other plant life etc, allow geological pressures to take place and make some more oil when it as all gone, so we never run out of petrol. Enjoy the several million years wait on that one, I hope you can afford to pay your oil rig guys waiting time and provide enough tea and biscuits, while all the other humans wait back at the caves. Make sure we never run out of petrol, I have heard it all now. As an individual yes fill your car regularly, as a globe, it will all go one day.
I didn't have you down as an emiritis professor at the Devon School of Economics and Sophistry, but somehow you seem to be putting connotations to my words that don't exist.
When responding about the cost of pushing a car v buying petrol at £5 a gallon, this clearly refers to the current time and that's why I'd simply fill the car up rather than pay £280 for labour. Elsewhere, I make very clear that petrol/oil could run out one day.
And as for being "Happy" about reverting to the caves, perhaps you would deliver the actual quote where I say that. My argument is that unsustainability of resources is a different debate, and it basically has no effect on the financial systems. These continue to operate as ever.
Please, please, please, learn from others. This sort of so-called 'argument' doesn't work, and will ultimately make you an object of ridicule.0 -
resources are consumed as a result of peoples wishes for goods and services: the monetary system doesn't require that
Yes it does, because under the current system for there to be more money we need more resources, which in turn are consumed.
The recession see's a contraction or pause in growth, wage reductions, redundancies etc once people start to spend and consume more again, things pick up and off we go again until it all crashes again.
The monetary system needs consumption to work, we cannot consume unless resources are procured and manufactured into whatever it may be that the people want to buy. It is as simple as that. We cannot have wealth creation unless people are consuming i.e. someone there for businesses to sell to. Seriously, how can you not get that.
I now give up on trying to convince people of some simple truths.
I will allow you to sit back now, and enjoy the glory of your perceived victory of this argument so that your ego's may not suffer. I am bored with you.
Thank you.0 -
boltneck123 wrote: »Yes it does, because under the current system for there to be more money we need more resources, which in turn are consumed.
The recession see's a contraction or pause in growth, wage reductions, redundancies etc once people start to spend and consume more again, things pick up and off we go again until it all crashes again.
The monetary system needs consumption to work, we cannot consume unless resources are procured and manufactured into whatever it may be that the people want to buy. It is as simple as that. We cannot have wealth creation unless people are consuming i.e. someone there for businesses to sell to. Seriously, how can you not get that.
I now give up on trying to convince people of some simple truths.
I will allow you to sit back now, and enjoy the glory of your perceived victory of this argument so that your ego's may not suffer. I am bored with you.
Thank you.
I rather take the view that it is we human beings that are the cause of consumption, invention, discovery, science, procreation, oil exploration etc rather than some inanimate object called money.0 -
in what way does our monetary system require exponential growth in the consumption of resources?
resources are consumed as a result of peoples wishes for goods and services: the monetary system doesn't require that
it's just as easy to bicycle rather than use a car whether we have a fractional banking system or bitcoin or ...(I've already said this)
He simply doesn't understand, does he?
I think he confuses the concept of ever increasing wealth derived from natural resources being unsustainable, with the monetary system which [very perversely] remains unchanged and actually makes it unsustainable.
Although I wasn't there, I suspect the money systems worked pretty much the same in their fundamentals in the Dark Ages. We may well get back to similar one day, but we'll still be borrowing money, buying & selling, transferring wealth around just the same. Sadly much less of it, though....0 -
Loughton_Monkey wrote: »He simply doesn't understand, does he?
I think he confuses the concept of ever increasing wealth derived from natural resources being unsustainable, with the monetary system which [very perversely] remains unchanged and actually makes it unsustainable.
Although I wasn't there, I suspect the money systems worked pretty much the same in their fundamentals in the Dark Ages. We may well get back to similar one day, but we'll still be borrowing money, buying & selling, transferring wealth around just the same. Sadly much less of it, though....
I don't know about that
but fractional banking systems weren't really introduced / invented until the 16th century although doubtless IOUs provided some elements of that.
growth in consumption, population, wealth, war, trade etc seems to have existed prior to that period without fractional banking0
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