tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5939915290794973654.post8695163746120551315..comments2024-03-08T14:23:31.503-05:00Comments on A Puff of Absurdity: Varoufakis's Economic History for DummiesMarie Snyderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13872774009526266579noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5939915290794973654.post-58781009850722006972019-04-15T23:37:17.004-04:002019-04-15T23:37:17.004-04:00Thanks for the comment, Bill! I'm terrified by...Thanks for the comment, Bill! I'm terrified by the number of people voting with the Conservatives despite (or because of) the sometime terrifying levels of prejudicial attitudes. I'm just trying to get this economic perspective across as succinctly as possible so people might actually get it! (Particularly those who won't pick up the book.)Marie Snyderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13872774009526266579noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5939915290794973654.post-86261067224818515982019-04-15T06:25:11.717-04:002019-04-15T06:25:11.717-04:00What an excellent post and summary review. You'...What an excellent post and summary review. You've been busy.<br /><br />I woke up early this morning here in Nova Scotia and checked ProgBlog to find this, and managed to read it through before even putting the coffee on. It summarizes what I had been taught as basic economics when I learned of the way banks create money essentially out of thin air though it requires seed money to start from depositors/investors, (and the book updates the whole mind game to include automation). Modern banking is the best pyramid scam ever created and it's legal because those who made out like bandits with it made sure governments kept it that way, regardless of consequences to planet or people en masse.<br /><br />It also shows how in only 300 years we have managed to successfully over-utilize the planet's resources and polluted it to a dead end from which there is no escape, and why we cannot stop doing it as a species. Perhaps I should count myself lucky as a nonentity to have enjoyed a tiny sliver of the good life from the point-of-view of a biological unit - I've never starved or been subject to poor working conditions or gone through war. And that is and has not been the usual state of affairs for most humans. It has at least allowed the leisure time to contemplate exactly how the wealthy manipulate the rest of us for their own ends. And to shake one's head at the collective idiocy of it all. Capitalism or socialism or communism as we've birthed them all require banks. Can't get away from usury.<br /><br />Apparently the Irish Minister of Finance who liked the book but bemoaned the lack of a Step-by-Step set of rules to end the mess we're in doesn't really get it. Modern Finance Ministering for Dummies is what he really wants as he presumably expects his bread and also cake along with a good cup of tea to continue without effort, by the mere waving of a magic wand and following Ten Steps To Success, thus not really understanding the basic explanation provided. Full relief is not possible at this stage without major change, and Fraud and Kenney argue against even a minimal carbon tax as if it were the end of life as we know it rather than an attempt to delay the inevitable. <br /><br />I watch complete dolts, usually Conservatives, wandering around repeating the stupid mantra that "the free market solves everything" based on oligarch jingoism promulgated by newspapers owned by the rich, and not historical fact. Further gerrymandering of public opinion by the wealthy following along after the Ayn Rand school of non-thought has been the trickle-down theory and privatization which collectively have not prevented the wealthy from hoarding money in tax havens. Doug Fraud and that deep thinker Kenney out west still repeat this BS. The Western populace gobbling up the world's resources with abandon as directed, expends its entire native wit on social media occupying its collective mind with SFA of any consequence such as publishing a selfie of breakfast pancakes with organic blueberry sauce - Descartes would have been highly amused. It's Avoidance of Consequence writ large, so one has to question whether attempting to save our species which has ruined the world completely since the last ice age is worth it or not. I don't think; therefore I am not.<br /><br />Thanks for this.<br /><br />Bill Malcolm<br /><br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com