Money
Money
Money
Money requires specific understanding. A trap lies waiting by assuming that a common sense understanding of money represents reality.
“There is no evidence of a society or economy that relied primarily on barter.” Marcel Mauss in ‘The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies’
Instead, non-monetary societies operated largely along the principles of gift economics.
“When barter did occur, it was usually between either complete strangers or potential enemies.” David Graeber in ‘Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value’
Commodities were likely used as the first form of money, such as gold, silver, copper, rice, salt, peppercorns, large stones, decorated belts, shells, alcohol, cigarettes, cannabis and candy. It seems that money emerged to facilitate exchanges between “complete strangers or potential enemies.”
Commodity Money
is similar to barter in use and commodity money provides a simple and automatic unit of account for the commodity being used as money. A unit of account is a standardized measurement of market value.
A unit of account is a necessary prerequisite for agreements that involve commercial debt. To function as a unit of account, whatever is being used as money must be:
- Divisible into smaller units without loss of value, for example, precious metals can be coined from bars, or melted down into bars again.
- Fungible: one unit or piece must be perceived as equivalent to any other, which is why diamonds, works of art and real estate do not work as money.
- Verifiable as to specific amounts. For example, coins are often made with ridges around the edges, so that any removal of material from the coin (lowering its commodity value) will be easy to detect.
Representative Money
stands in direct and fixed relation to a backing commodity, while not being composed of that commodity itself. Representative money consists of token coins or certificates that can be reliably exchanged for a fixed quantity of a commodity.
Paper representative money or banknotes were first used in China during the Song Dynasty. Banknotes were first issued in Europe by Stockholms Banco in 1661.
Under the gold standard, the value of money derived from gold in bank vaults, not government credit. If, for example, the United States of America government defaulted on its debt under the gold standard, the value of the dollar and much of the financial system would remain intact.
The United States Department of the Treasury seized physical control of the nation’s gold reserves in 1934, with the Gold Reserve Act. All of the United States’ monetary wealth was secretly transferred to vaults under the control of the United States Department of the Treasury.
United States Department of the Treasury is the nation’s largest debtor. The 1934 Gold Reserve Act put the United States Department of the Treasury in control of money.
That is like putting a pedophile in control of childcare when we are the children.
The government benefits three ways from using money debasement to create inflation:
- Inflation erodes the real value of government debt. The government repays with dollars worth less than the dollars they borrowed, which immediately transfers wealth from investors in government debt directly to the government.
- Inflation swells federal tax receipts due to “tax bracket creep” as incomes are pushed into higher tax brackets with no increase in purchasing power. Inflationary appreciation of business inventories is taxed as profit.
- Most importantly, money debasement itself levies a hidden “tax” on holders of money, such as people who keep savings accounts.
The 1934 Gold Reserve Act revalued gold (= debased the dollar) from $20.67 to $35.00 per ounce and accomplished all of the above along with much, much more. The United States Department of the Treasury took the control of the nation’s gold and spent it, leaving nothing but United States Department of the Treasury IOU’s backing the dollar.
“To act as a store of value, a money must be able to be reliably saved, stored, and retrieved – and be predictably usable as a medium of exchange when it is retrieved. The value of the money must also remain stable over time. In that sense, inflation by reducing the value of money, diminishes the ability of the money to function as a store of value.” N. Gregory Mankiw (2007) in “2″ Macroeconomics (6th ed.)
The role of money as a store of value that requires holding it without spending conflicts with its role as a medium of exchange that requires it to circulate. Apparently, the United States government encourages money circulation by continuously practicing money debasement.
The pain of taxes – increases - even as Congress declares tax cuts. As long as politicians maintain central control of the money supply, we are all impoverished.
In this environment one must either make investments that return a higher yield than the rate of government money debasement or immediately purchase hard goods known to be valued widely by other people. Any other strategy will, over time, devalue what you were paid for your work to make you, for any practical accounting purposes, a slave.
An example of making a high yield investment would be investing in your own on line business that generates an on going cash flow. Examples of widely valued hard goods include quality tools and firearms.
Fiat Money
or fiat currency is money whose value is not derived from any intrinsic value or guarantee that it can be converted into a commodity. It has no value except by government order or fiat.
The government declares the fiat currency (contemporary notes from the Federal Reserve System) to be legal tender, making it unlawful to not accept the fiat currency as a means of repayment for all debts, public and private.
Commercial Bank Money
is created through fractional-reserve banking, the banking practice where banks keep only a fraction of their deposits in reserve and invest the remainder. Commercial bank money differs from commodity money and fiat money in two ways
- it is non-physical, its existence is only reflected in the account ledgers of banks and other financial institutions
- risk that the deposit cannot be reclaimed upon demand if, for example, the financial institution becomes insolvent because demands upon deposits exceeds both the reserve and the value of the investments
The worthless home mortgages now held at fictional values make all the major banks, along with most of the smaller banks, technically insolvent and the FDIC does not have enough to cover the difference. This was all perpetrated with government oversight, aided and abetted by legislating away regulations.
A few insiders (at Goldman Sachs it seems) well understood the inevitable consequences, transferred their risk to unregulated financial instruments and then sold them to mutual funds and sovereign governments around the world including Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, Spain and the United States of America. This was all perpetrated with government oversight, aided and abetted by refusing to legislate regulations.
Banksters will be blamed but make no mistake, this was a government operation from illicit beginning to the revolting end. The banks, by themselves, never could have pulled this off while governments have proved capable of debasing money without banks throughout history.
from the
United States Department of Labor
Bureau of Labor Statistics
Productivity and Costs, First Quarter 2010, Revised
“Nonfarm business sector labor productivity increased at a 2.8 percent annual rate during the first quarter of 2010, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today, with output rising 4.0 percent and hours rising 1.1 percent.”
Good for corporations and what about workers?
“Unit labor costs in nonfarm businesses fell 1.3 percent in the first quarter of 2010, as the 2.8 percent increase in productivity outpaced a 1.5 percent gain in hourly compensation. Unit labor costs fell 4.2 percent over the last four quarters, as the 6.1 percent increase in output per hour over that period outpaced a 1.6 percent rise in hourly compensation.”
Work harder, get paid less.
The pay you receive is what you spend, that is the economy. If you are paid less, then you are able to buy less with your wages, that is fundamental.
This makes short term corporate profits look good, but with less income you cannot buy what others produce and in the long term this results in corporations either having to
- cut prices (deflation) which damages profitability or
- end up with unsold inventory (priced above the cost of production) or
- fail.
The government monetary policy is not sustainable. In fact, the government monetary policy appears to have hit its limits.
The only thing now keeping the government monetary policy going is the still (apparently) wide spread belief that other people will continue to accept the United States dollar in trade for goods and services. In reality, the last person to accept it, loses.
Get your money working or get it into durable hard goods. A thoughtful balance between the two would appear a wise decision.
5 Relationships Of Raw Materials To Money
Everything we use from this planet to live …
… comes in the form of Raw Materials.
Those who harvest nature’s bounty to provide Raw Materials for human society need to be able to do so without acquiring debt . Otherwise, if providing Raw Materials cost more than it paid, it would not be sustainable and providing Raw Materials becomes impossible.
Those who provide Raw Materials must be able to afford all the finished goods and services they require from the sale of the Raw Materials they produce. Otherwise, they could not continue to provide Raw Materials and survive.
(I know I repeated myself in the above 2 paragraphs. It is an essential point and I did not want it to be missed.)
The Price Level of Raw Materials determines
the amount of Free Currency in circulation.
Free Currency is Debt Free Money.
We’ve had Debt Free Money in the past, Free Currency, once upon a time in the United States of America.
Those who provide the finished goods and services to Raw Materials producers must be able to do so without acquiring debt. Otherwise, providing finished goods and services to Raw Materials producers would not be sustainable and it becomes impossible to provide finished goods and services to Raw Materials producers for very long.
Those who provide the finished goods and services to Raw Materials producers must be able to afford all the Raw Materials, finished goods and services they require from the sale of their finished goods and services. Otherwise, they could not continue to provide finished goods and services to Raw Materials producers and survive.
Those who provide finished goods and services to anyone are paid,
either directly or indirectly,
by the Raw Materials producers.
Having enough debt free currency to allow for the total debt free exchange of all finished goods and services depends upon the price level of Raw Materials.
It is not enough that farmers, fishermen, foresters, miners and recyclers make enough so that they may start a new production cycle, live long and prosper. All those who add their labor to animal, vegetable and mineral Raw Materials to produce finished goods need to make enough so that they, too, may start a new production cycle, live long and prosper.
(I’ll get to the service providers a little later because I feel they require more clarification and differentiation.)
The bottom line is that the price paid to Raw Material producers determine the amount of debt free money available to human society. The amount of debt free money available for personal savings and business investment is determined by the price of Raw Materials.
Here is a five part description of how Raw Materials relate to Money.
- Debt Free Currency
- A society’s annual production of raw materials must be represented in the economy by a sufficient amount of debt free currency (a price level) to optimize the debt free exchange between the raw materials producers and the finished goods and services raw materials producers purchase.
- Those who produce the basic raw materials for society must be paid enough to afford the manufactured goods and services required for raw materials production.
- This amount of debt free currency in free circulation must also be enough to optimize the debt free exchange of all manufactured goods and services at all subsequent stages of the economic cycle.
- Debt Free Exchange
- The amount of wealth in flow within the economic cycle must be represented in the economy by a sufficient level of debt free currency to permit the debt free exchange of all finished goods and services.
- Without enough debt free currency to meet the need of debt free exchange an economy stagnates and dies.
- Finished Consumable Goods
once produced and warehoused, must be monetarily represented somewhere in the economy by more than their minimum domestic labor value equivalent in free currency, so consumption of finished goods can occur without supplemental debt or abstinence from consumption. (a surplus of production in the midst of poverty) - The Volume of Debt Free Currency
available to distribute current production and facilitate the subsequent expansion of commerce is governed by the value placed on raw materials at the first point of sale. - The value of raw materials becomes the primary source of personal savings and business investment.
Human society cannot sell under-priced Raw Materials into a high priced retail market without replacing the underpayment with:
- capital debt
- interest driven inflation
- abstinence from consumption and
- a high rate of unemployment.
Governments and the FIRE (financial, insurance, real estate) industries know this and have known this for a very long time. Yet, these service providers have a verifiably long history of repeatedly screwing things up.
Some services I understand, such as education, entertainment and medical services. These seem reasonable and easily affordable if government and the FIRE industries did not cost so much and actually make things worse by repeatedly screwing things up.
I cannot believe that the world’s wealthiest and most powerful individuals with access to the best education repeatedly screw things up by accident. This whole thing concerning Raw Materials and money must go much deeper than the current financial meltdown and scandal.
The reason just about everyone else, including economists of all sorts, are giving more complicated explanations seems to be their need to retain all the rank, honors and privileges bestowed upon them by governments and FIRE industries.
Somehow, their rank, honors and privileges must be justified and maintained while explaining why things are screwed up. It is then no surprise that explanations become complicated.
To make things even more confusing, libertarian economists say things like:
“The governments of almost all countries are engaged in a campaign against the capitalists. They are intent upon expropriating them by means of taxation and monetary measures.”
-Ludwig von Mises
Now, Capitalism emerged as the dominant means to separate products from their producers subsequent to the general collapse of manorial feudalism during the Great Plague. Manorial feudalism gave us serfdom, bondage to the land, land owned by some big mucky-muck.
(I say general collapse of manorial feudalism because land bondage continues in the Southern United States with tenant farming, the foundation of Southern agriculture since the Emancipation Proclamation.)
In Europe, during and after the Great Plague, big mucky-mucks could not get enough serfs to do all the work, so they invented Capitalism to pay people to work. The plan was to pay people less money than what their products could be sold for.
The difference between the cost of Labor and the value of the products determined the amount of profit because Raw Materials costs had already been fixed.
The big mucky-mucks, AKA Capital, already owned everything, all they needed was a system to get people to work for less than their labor was worth.
(Well, they, Capital also needed a system to keep everyone in line. I get to that part a little later.)
In business, Capital is everything that is not Labor or Raw Materials. Capitalism just privileges Capital relative to Labor and Raw Materials, that is why they call it that.
This development meant that the big mucky-mucks, Capital, needed to find a way to have Labor pay for its own management. The old days of just getting a big guy with a whip to oversee the serfs were over.
Managers from the ranks of the workers themselves seek superior privileges over the other workers they manage. They are allowed rank, honors and privileges to the extent they are successful in profitably separating producers (workers) from their products (the job).
Successful managers are allowed to call themselves Capitalists to signify their usefulness to the system named for them, the Capitalist System.
Capitalists often internalize the system point-of-view through close identification with the owners, the big mucky-mucks, Capital. This mental construct then conflicts with their actual (negative survival potential) position.
Capitalists seem easily confused when the Capitalist System acts to collect the fruits of other people’s production. After all, that is the very reason it was invented.
Capitalists forget they are workers themselves, workers used to more profitably separate products from their producers. Capitalists are central to a system that must pay for its own management because the owners, Capital, does not produce anything of value to sell.
Capital, another name for the power behind the system’s infrastructure, claims its rank through national governments’ sanctioned cartels and monopoly control over Raw Materials. Capital is control over Raw Materials cloaked in status derived from military strength and the proven willingness to use it.
Capitalism is simply a system that privileges Capital over Labor (including management) and Raw Materials. Capitalists are simply specialists in separating products from their producers, Labor, for the benefit of Capital.
It is not that Capitalists are on the wrong side,
Capitalist are the wrong side.
The big guy with the whip who used to oversee the serfs now needed to be paid, just like everyone else in the Capitalist System. Capital invented the rank, honors and privileges of Sheriff just for him.
Sheriffs were employed to evict people from the Commons (common lands) where they paid no rents. With the Commons closed, people were forced into the cities for factory work so to afford rent.
The Security State Apparatus, a necessary part of Capitalism, descended from this role of the Sheriff as compliment to the Capitalist. The workers are assessed for the cost of being kept in line, policed, for the safety and security of Capital, Capitalism, Capitalists and the Capitalist System.
The cost to workers for their own management by Capitalists and the Security State Apparatus, that is, the cost of both separating them from their production and keeping them in line, is paid for by the workers themselves by means of taxation and monetary measures.
This is monitored by a Union enforced Labor hierarchy entrenched in government bureaucracies. The government itself legitimizes and defends the Union, giving it great political power, in an obvious case of conflict of interest and self-dealing.
Debt Free Money,
Free Currency,
comes directly from the sale of Raw Materials.
When Raw Material producers, those who produce finished goods from Raw Materials and those who provide desired educational, entertainment and health services can afford to live on Free Currency, Debt Free Money, then everyone in human society lives long and prospers.
The big mucky-mucks, Capital, using Capitalists and a Security State Apparatus monitored by government bureaucracies loyal only to their in-house Union, makes huge profits on debt. These huge profits come at the expense of Raw Materials producers, those who produce finished goods from Raw Materials and those who provide desired educational, entertainment and health services.
Debt is a fabrication of governments and the FIRE industries.
- Debt enslaves individuals and entire populations,
- enslaved as certainly as a chattel slave during Roman times
- enslaved as certainly as a serf under manorial serfdom
- enslaved as certainly as anyone coerced into doing something they truly do not want to do.
That is the relationship of Raw Materials to money.
Run Faster Than The Slowest Camper
The bear is out of the woods and the bull is running for cover. Forget about out running the bear, that is never going to happen. I will tell you why in a second.
All you really need to do is run faster than the slowest camper.
96 years ago, December 23, Woodrow Wilson used four gold pens to sign the Federal Reserve Act into law. This act is arguably the most destructive and harmful law enacted by a United States President up to that time.
The Federal Reserve Act allowed the inflationary bubbles that created the snowball of debt that currently engulfs us today. Nothing is at all mysterious about inflation;
inflation is government intervention pure and simple.
This proves the lie of the myth that regulators actually regulate rather than serve the interests of corporate beneficiaries. Debasing money is an old trick of governments going back at least as far as Biblical times.
15And when money failed in the land of Egypt, and in the land of Canaan, all the Egyptians came unto Joseph, and said, Give us bread: for why should we die in thy presence? for the money faileth.
16And Joseph said, Give your cattle; and I will give you for your cattle, if money fail.
17And they brought their cattle unto Joseph: and Joseph gave them bread in exchange for horses, and for the flocks, and for the cattle of the herds, and for the asses: and he fed them with bread for all their cattle for that year.
18When that year was ended, they came unto him the second year, and said unto him, We will not hide it from my lord, how that our money is spent; my lord also hath our herds of cattle; there is not ought left in the sight of my lord, but our bodies, and our lands:
19Wherefore shall we die before thine eyes, both we and our land? buy us and our land for bread, and we and our land will be servants unto Pharaoh: and give us seed, that we may live, and not die, that the land be not desolate.
20And Joseph bought all the land of Egypt for Pharaoh; for the Egyptians sold every man his field, because the famine prevailed over them: so the land became Pharaoh’s.
21And as for the people, he removed them to cities from one end of the borders of Egypt even to the other end thereof.
Genesis 47
What happened in Egypt is that the grain harvest was deposited into the secure government storage facility. The government then issued script (money) against the grain reserves.
When the government wanted to spend more than they could back up with grain reserves, they just went ahead and printed up more script anyway betting on ever increasing harvests to make the script good. Of course, with crop failures not only was the inflated script no good, in that it never had backing, but the original script could not be redeemed for grain either because there was none.
Fiscal policy cannot stimulate the economy.
The government has no money of its own.
It has only the power to tax and spend the money of others.
Financial collapse and food collapse have proven to be the consistent downfall of empires throughout human history. I write about the food collapse a little bit further down but first I want to touch upon the evidence of the advanced fear the government exhibits toward the governed.
Of course, since war has been declared upon United States citizens with the War On Drugs that allows the United States government to set new international records in the both the percentage of the population and total numbers of citizens that have been sent to prison by their own government.
The few shreds of the Bill of Rights remaining after the War On Drugs have now been completely obliterated by the subsequent War On Terrorism. The government appears so on edge that any excuse seems provocation enough to justify A Visit And Subpoena From Homeland Security.
The U.S. government fears and wages war upon the U.S. governed for reasons similar to why the Israeli government fears and wages war upon the Palestinians. Neither government would expect anyone to sit still for the wholesale fraud and abuse they dish out for very long.
They wish to avoid judgment and the consequences of their actions, also spelled out in the Bible.
1Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you.
2Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth eaten.
3Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days.
4Behold, the hire of the laborers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabbath.
5Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton; ye have nourished your hearts, as in a day of slaughter.
6Ye have condemned and killed the just; and he doth not resist you.
James 5
When the wealthy cheat farmers out of what the farmer is due the financial system tanks regardless of the unjust wars the wealthy wage.
This truth from Biblical times held up as a key point concerning the Fall of the Roman Empire and still holds true today. Truth seems to endure even if empires do not.
Closing the ‘Collapse Gap’:
the USSR was better prepared for collapse than the US
Despite appearances, we are not merely revisiting old mistakes. Our very way of life has been transformed into dependency upon an unsustainable system now running out of resources.
Die-off is a bottom-up phenomena affecting the lowest rungs of the human socioeconomic ladder first. This is already happening at a scale that is increasingly impossible to ignore.
Spiritual Leaders, scientists, climatologists, anthropologists and leading researchers unsuccessfully try to convince humanity that our self-destructive path is the true root cause of the collapse.
Prepare now.
Prepare now by becoming productive in your own name. Prepare now by connecting with people who appreciate your products.
Those who cannot connect with a personal fan base will be without the opportunity to sell their products directly. Lacking that opportunity, the only recourse will be self-reliance and self-sufficiency.
A lonely path at best.
Timing The Collapse
FNORD
For anyone without income, a home or even hope, the collapse has already happened. The number of those people on the ropes certainly seems to be increasing daily.
On the other hand, in this personal sense, you may not experience collapse during your lifetime. Of course that is not what the doom and gloomers say.
I used to be a doom and gloomer, an authentic doomsday freak pointing out the failures of our system and its imminent collapse. I’ve learned to temper my fears simply by living long enough.
However, in a larger more empirical sense, we may ask what exactly constitutes a societal collapse. Here we are asking about the nature of the collapse of the Euro-American Empire indicated by the ongoing disintegration of its global hegemony.
If you are someone who does not want to read social criticism, stop now.
If you are worried about you head exploding when you are presented with new information, stop now.
OK, now that I know you are willing to deal with this, I will continue.
As a first step, we have to acknowledge certain conclusions by Karl Marx. I know he is widely disparaged in the mainstream media, at community colleges nationwide and in state universities structured to provide occupational training in technical fields.
Rest assured, at elite institutions training the nest generation of leaders Karl Marx is read and discussed. The children of the hegemonic elite destined to inherit the reigns of power over 99.5% of the rest us know and study his work.
Well, they do if they actually did the work and didn’t just have their families purchase their degrees with another endowment. But that is another issue.
Sure, Karl Marx gets a bad name because of the abuses of the word ‘communist‘ by authoritarian megalomaniacs. To be honest, the world has never seen an authentic communist system in operation.
Part of the problem is that in the day and age of Karl Marx communication was a problem for those living in rural areas. Most people living today cannot imagine the isolation experienced by those living outside of city limits.
Karl Marx proposed an urban workers’ vanguard party to represent those in the hinter lands. This idea of a vanguard party has been much abused by totalitarian regimes around the world that bear little resemblance to his proposed communal life.
He was spot on in exposing the fatal flaw in capitalism. Bear in mind that Karl Marx thought capitalism was a good thing at the time and a step in the right direction away from the manorial serfdom that was the previous norm.
Anyway, capitalism depends upon continuous growth.
The capitalistic system just does not function as a steady state model.
Growth is required to pay off the interest charged on the debt incurred during the capitalization of industry and business. Without growth, only enough profit is made to pay off the principle.
Karl Marx realized that the earth is finite and possesses limited non-renewable resources. Once capitalism went world-wide it was destined to collapse.
In the time of Karl Marx, world-wide pretty much meant Europe in the predominant narrow ethnocentric view. And there were those of his (and later) generations who just couldn’t wait.
Just like the early Christians who grew impatient with God’s promise to destroy the world and started setting fires to help God out, early adopters of the Communist Manifesto perceived revolution as the fast track to post-capitalism.
That turned out badly for all concerned, both Christians and communists.
Karl Marx merely pointed out that given the requirements of capitalism regarding growth, eventually it would hit the limits of growth. With this realization he predicted the certain collapse of capitalism and projected forward from there, betting on human intelligence to come up with something better.
Of course, he thought he was as smart as anyone and perhaps he was. Anyway, communism was merely his projection into the unknowable future and the actual shape of things to come is totally up for grabs.
It is understandable that capitalists the world over took offense. This became the primary driver for political acrimony and national conflict ever since, at least as far as the general public was concerned.
Anyway, capitalism did hit the wall in the early 1970s. China, the last big holdout market, joined in capitalist expansion and left capitalism with no place else to grow.
A whole slew of events indicate the truth in this. Not only did we see the abandonment of the gold standard in the U.S. and the free floating of the U.S. dollar but we also saw the beginning of the first giant debt bubbles.
I first ran away to the mountains in the 1970s believing the collapse was in motion. I was right about that but wrong about the timing regarding my personal situation in the U.S.
The capitalistic hegemons turned to their own populations and began capitalistically monetizing every aspect of personal life, expanding into spheres of influence long felt to be intrinsically off limits. They did this with the full support of governments indebted to their central banks.
The FIRE (finance, insurance, real estate) sector of the economy merged to form the financial services industry once government regulations that previously prevented this were abandoned. We now live in the era when all biopolitical production falls under capitalist control through the monetization of the once common property of social networks.
Without real growth, growth that is only possible through capitalist expansion into new markets, debt accumulates with no possibility of ever being paid off. The ballooning consumer debt, commercial debt and government debt are merely symptoms of the current crisis of capitalism.
The global debt crisis is a symptom of capitalism reaching the limits of growth.
This largely financial crisis will predictably cause a great deal of needless pain, suffering and death but all by itself is something that the human race as a whole can overcome. History is full of examples of empires falling in part due to the debasement of their currency by corrupt politicians and their financial handlers yet people survived to prosper again.
However, in the effort to extract greater profits by depressing the price of labor through population overshoot to produce a surplus supply of labor, other limits have been quickly approached. Paid labor, after all, originated after the population collapsed during the Great Plague and is part of the foundation of capitalism itself.
History indicates that the loss of productive farm land through extractive agricultural methods and the resulting decrease in productivity, coupled with erosion, also contributed to the collapse of empires. Despite so-called advances in food production, decreasing food value and exploding populations drive us towards a Malthusian Catastrophe of global proportions.
The so-called advances in food production have literally been fueled by the extravagant use of non-renewable hydrocarbons. Not only that, but civilization itself, especially as we have experienced it, has been literally fueled by the extravagant use of non-renewable hydrocarbons.
The remaining hydrocarbon reserves are being used by the global hegemonic elite to maintain their positions of privilege and power rather than used to enable a transition to another form of civilization. The U.S. armed forces is the largest user of non-renewable hydrocarbons and it is a safe bet that they will use the last of the extractable reserves maintaining the privilege and power of the global hegemonic elite.
This greatly complicates things.
Empires have fallen due to financial collapse and agricultural collapse but none have faced the exhaustion of non-renewable hydrocarbons. This evokes the specter of peak oil.
All the statistics surrounding peak oil originate from within the oil industry itself. We simply cannot know if peak oil is real or simply a clever ploy to increase profits.
In any event, either actual or engineered scarcity will drive huge profits even higher until it is no longer economically viable to extract hydrocarbons from the earth. People just are not prepared for that and, in fact, the global hegemonic elite works against even the possibility of energy independence.
Then there is the issue of climate change as it seems no longer politically correct to refer to global warming. In the end it does not matter if it was caused by people or not because it is happening and the hegemonic elite refuse to risk their privilege and power to enable meaningful change.
Population overshoot, financial collapse, agricultural collapse, exhaustion of non-renewable hydrocarbons, climate change and the machinations of the global power structure to stay in power creates an environment ripe for rampant deadly new diseases. The next Great Plague is now overdue and the ability to globally respond to it with adequate measures simply degrades by the hour.
Plastic pollution, acidification of the oceans and the collapse of one fishery after another are all further symptoms of an impending global collapse of Biblical proportions. This situation is real and very few are even thinking about preparing for it.
Think about preparing for collapse now.
Do you really want to be dependent on society as it is currently structured?
It seems to me that in order to prepare, concerned people need to be reducing dependence upon the status quo. This is becoming increasingly difficult to do because every effort to disengage from the system will be perceived by the system as an act of rebellion, criminal and terroristic.
I believe some people will survive and a few will continue to live relatively well. But to be able to do so will involve becoming responsible for all aspects of your own life.
It may well be that it will be only the minority who actually does the work to prepare will become the few who survive. And eventually, as the facts of the case become irrefutable and obvious to many more people, the remaining carrying capacity of the planet will not support those who start too late.
As long as the system prevails, you will have access to the Internet. The Internet offers more possibilities for creating income independent of mainstream employment than any brick and mortar opportunity in the world.
Perhaps you should be thinking about creating your own Internet business sooner rather that later. Then you will have a measure of control over timing the collapse, at least as far as your personal life is concerned.
What do you think?
Marketing Beats Selling
FNORD
My dad, 84 years old and counting, lifelong salesman, sales manager, sales trainer and independent representative speaks with open disdain about marketers. Yet, when you listen to him talk about his sales process it becomes clear that he takes a straight up marketing approach.
The first thing he does as a “salesman” is to identify companies ready to purchase in commercial volumes. Among marketers this is known as locating a market.
Next he connects with a decision maker and during the interview clarifies what problems they have. Marketers often use polls and questionnaires to discover a market’s needs, wants and desires.
Then, my dad works with one of the companies he represents, or even locates a company he has never represented before, to come up with a solution. Marketers follow the same process and if the solution is an information product either hires an expert, obtains the rights or creates the product themselves.
Finally, he goes back to the prospect company with the solution in hand complete with pricing and delivery information. It also works exactly this way for marketers.
When someone believes they have come up with what they perceive someone else needs, without their input or guidance, they then must attempt to sell it to them in order to regain their investment, personal power and self esteem. Whenever you start with a product before you have a market you are faced with a sales proposition.
This is why marketing may be approached as a science but all sales initiatives originate in ideologies. I’ve lost count of how many people have approached me with their absolute need to sell something they just dreamed up or discovered in a bargain bin somewhere.
Science observes the natural world and creates mind maps to make sense of it. These scientific ideas never achieve closure and remain open to modification and obsolescence.
We create ideologies as mind maps to which the natural world is abused into conforming. These ideologies arrive as a package deal usually complete with a supportive all-encompassing world view.
The map is not the terrain.
Science knows the history of their mind maps and constantly compares them to the natural world so to modify the mind maps and increase their accuracy. Ideology acts as if their mind maps are the terrain while becoming proactive in manipulating the natural world to conform to the mind maps.
It speaks to the power of ideologies that this distinction between marketing and sales often seems to be the biggest conceptual challenge limiting my students. Indeed, they often insist upon just being delivered an ideology while ironically demanding that it accurately correspond to the natural world.
Offered the appearance of free choice, people seem to prefer ideologies which inevitably conflict with the natural world over science that never arrives at closure and always seems as work in progress. Ironically, successful ideologies often masquerade as science while science then comes under attack as ideology.
The weakness of science is the willingness to consider alternative solutions to real problems. In other words, the reluctance to become an ideology also becomes the weakness of science.
The strength of ideology is the high acceptance it finds for the quick and simple answers it provides to real world problems. Unfortunately, the answers are always wrong, regardless of first impressions or our desires for closure.
This problem manifests when a vendor becomes a consumer. Their consumer training to only accept the quick and easy, cheap and simple, silver bullet one-shot solution betrays them when they wish to provide products and services to consumers.
While consumers feel justified in thinking it is all about them this feeding of the ego sets up business people for failure if they cannot make the adjustment to the other side of the coin. This failure to adjust results in a selling ideology.
While a person’s ideas may be interesting and welcome as long as they are a consumer, once they become a vendor of products and services their ideas become irrelevant. The world is full of great ideas that few care about.
This ego driven need to see personal ideas accepted by other people, through deception, fraud and the threat of harm if need be, meets the definition of ideology. This also describes the underlying methodologies of many mainstream selling techniques.
Ideology and selling lack resilience.
The narrow point of view generated by a consumer perspective holds no more attractiveness to others than any other inflexible ideological opinion. This leads to the failures of businesses and the collapse of empires.
Resilience relies upon both the willingness to competently observe reality regardless of what we wish to see and the ability to modify activities accordingly regardless of how habitualized we may have become to them. A fixed belief in our own correctness, self-righteousness in other words, inevitably leads to both our unhappiness and the unhappiness of others.
That is why I do not accept students as clients who insist they have invented the next best thing, whether it be a business service, a physical device or social idea. They are always wrong and doomed to failure.
If you wish to make money, online or face-to-face, it is enough to start with that desire. When you bring your own preconceptions along you limit your resilience according to the strength of your beliefs.
Accordingly, my first question to you then is not concerning your product but concerning the market you wish to join. Identify a market first and the market will identify a successful product for you.
