Positive Money

I'm not sure how many people here are aware of the money situation in the UK, but I found this site- http://www.positivemoney.org/ (It's a not-for-profit organisation for education mostly) and some videos thereon very interesting to watch and thought some of you guys from the UK might enjoy it. I expect the situation in similar in the United States or in many countries so you might in fact find it useful wherever you're from, :)

Part 1- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBZWw1DG8zU

Part 2- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jx9w2beoGcw

If you've the time I wonder (Both videos are the short verson of about 20 minutes each)-
Do you agree with the problems stated in the 1st video?

What do you think of the solutions in the second video?

P.s. The problems seemed to be aptly summarised in the first video and as for the solutions they too seemed to be well-argued and make good sense to me, Enjoy!

This is always a fun topic ...

With regard to your first question, Joshua -- agreeing or disagreeing is completely irrelevant. It is the way it is, and it has been like that for several generations. As he pointed out, not very many people pay any attention to it - or perhaps not the right sort of attention, peu importe -, the thing would be to raise awareness as to how when someone takes out a huge loan to buy property that the debt is not localised to their repayments, but it increases the national debt (and the sum on all of our heads), increase inflation and augmenting the impact of recession ... but that isn't going to keep people from wanting stuff, is it ?

For your second question -- there have been solutions like this proposed for decades (and implemented at times over a couple of centuries) but there are a few problems with it. First of all, we just want too much stuff. Second of all, our societal values are now based on the consumer standard of living (the more you can afford the better person you are)
and that is going to take either a couple or three generations of re-education or a global catastrophe (a real one, not another economic pseudo-crisis). We really would do well to get into a resource based economy rather than a speculation based one (in other words, it seems that the resources and how we use them should have value, not concepts like property-rights and possibilities), but I only feel that way ; I'm not an economist.

I'm not an economist either, but I don't really agree with him or his approach - and IMO his solution would lead to stagnation of development and increasing pressure on population to have larger families. Competition underpin's our progress, and the economy does this by being open enough to allow maximum opportunity whilst safeguarding against uncompetitive behaviour. Its not perfect (yet) and will always look unfair when looking upwards along the wealth ladder, and there will always be a baseline of 0 wealth so the wealth divide will only increase as an economy increases.... but ideally the larger the economy the greater services government can exert onto lifting the care of those below some Poverty Line.

But loan's are vital to all that. A loan should be made to work for you in generating growth/profit IMO, and not to acquire things for the sake of possession alone. When people use loan's in that way (to generate profit in markets), then the loan's can be paid off early.

It's new to me though, this vid shows the 3 things they think will fix it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHQ7wvWzUW0

1. Committee to manage money; I sort of thought that is what central banks did.
2. Debt Free Money; Would devalue money wouldnt it?
3. Money into real ecomony; I think this already happens through government spending.

If it will always look "unfair when looking upwards along the wealth ladder", it is because it most certainly is. Furthermore, competition is natural when there is scarcity, but in this economic climate there is no scarcity. It is poverty, not stabilising the monetary system (which under the current one can never be stable) that leads people to have larger families (cf. 'Après l'Empire' d'Emmanuel Todd, 2002).

I really don't have the knowledge to go on about this, so I really am speaking from opinion. It certainly does seem to be as Watts pointed out though, that we have confused money for wealth (and the money isn't even substantial any more).

Yea I think the proposal would create conditions of poverty too (by devaluing money) but the 'democratic' dispersal of monies (as I understood it) would probably mean people would have a larger families deliberately to get more money. I'm sure their idea is more fleshed out then I'm aware, so its just my opinion on the little I've seen this morning.

I do not think for a second that the economy is intended to provide happiness, rather progress. People use money for happiness because they want to participate in the higher standard of living progress might provide, and that means getting on the mouse wheel of working to get enough to pay for the privilege of working, repeat ad nausea until death. That though is only one way to participate in society/economy, and I definitely agree with the bloke when he says people need to learn about money early on. Else people could just go live in the bush somewhere eating wild, there is no law against that as far as I'm aware.... though we'll run out of room soon as population increases and all the nice spots have probably got cities in them!!

It seems the problem with our money system (Federal Reserve system is based off Bank of England) is that the control over the volume of money in supply must be returned to the actual government. This way the government can control how much is in circulation thereby controlling the value, it doesn't matter if it's fiat or backed by gold. Rome created it's empire doing this by printing enough currency in cheap copper, and it's empire crumbled when Caesar went back to gold. Who in their right mind decided it was okay to let a group of private bankers create your currency and loan it to you at interest. Uh oh I'm running out of tin foil. I don't have time to watch the videos right now but you can also check out The Money Masters or his new one The Secret of Oz, and there's Money as Debt I and II. The whole fractional reserve system allows these banks to create money out of nothing and make money off the interest and also ruin people's lives who can't ever keep up with it.

Vusuki wrote: I'm not sure how many people here are aware of the money situation in the UK, but I found this site- http://www.positivemoney.org/ (It's a not-for-profit organisation for education mostly) and some videos thereon very interesting to watch and thought some of you guys from the UK might enjoy it. I expect the situation in similar in the United States or in many countries so you might in fact find it useful wherever you're from, :)

If you've the time I wonder (Both videos are the short verson of about 20 minutes each)-
Do you agree with the problems stated in the 1st video?

What do you think of the solutions in the second video?

P.s. The problems seemed to be aptly summarised in the first video and as for the solutions they too seemed to be well-argued and make good sense to me, Enjoy!

Money is an issue I have some experience with but can't view this video. Can you provide a link to a written version or information closley related?

Rickie,

If you go on this page- there's a video transcript below the video,

Part 1- http://www.positivemoney.org/videos/presentations-by-ben-dyson-others-from-positive-money/the-consequences-of-debt-based-money-video/

And likewise below the video on this page,

Part 2- http://www.positivemoney.org/videos/presentations-by-ben-dyson-others-from-positive-money/video-how-to-fix-the-banking-system-and-make-it-less-socially-harmful/

Yesterday there was a debate in the House of Commons on the topic of 'Money creation and society'. It wasn't particularly well attended but it's a small step, in what I believe to be, in the right direction. I'm not sure what's the next step- but i hope there will be a spread of the knowledge and hope this will come into debate again.

Here's a link for the video, in case you were interested,

http://www.positivemoney.org/2014/11/live-parliament-debate-money-creation-society/