Skeptic Project

@ Muertos and Kepp

I checked the link. Pretty solid case, I even for a moment made the leap that since thermite requires oxidize steel and aluminum you could have had a thermitic reaction from the crash itself with no outside thermite required, but the reaction requires rust.

But here is another thought, steel rusts (oxidizes) faster when exposed to heat, so could that not possibly set off a reaction when coming into contact with molten aluminum?

That being said the corrosive reaction from steam coming in contact with steel and the heat energy generated from the actual fall itself could account for the hot spots and molten metal.

So I would concede this, but it wasn't a hard sell as I was never a truther as I stated in my introductory post.

But I can say that I am a little disappointed and frustrated. It is one thing to have a good argument that can be debated on a an interpretation of the facts (which I assume 9/11 was, that is a difference of opinion based on the facts), it is another to ignore the science. And as far as I could see, the companion guide relies mostly on eyewitness testimony for the molten metal. Not much science.

I will look into this further.

Correct me if I'm wrong (anyone) but I think TeeZeDem was originally just trying to justify why PJ would continue pushing the 9/11 was an inside job nonsense, because of these supposed loose ends.

@TeeZedem I think your wasting you time at TZM they have no intention of doing anything at all.If you are not a CTr as you claim(though cant seem to see why you are obsessed with molten metal if your not)you should realise that all CT rleaders are the same...like televangilists to whom are the only other groups they are remotly akin to they only want money,power and fame.Secondly I know I said id bring it to aaronmatches forum but i leave it here.TVP/TZMs idea that we will outgrow the facets of society I mentioned will never really be outgrown:
1.Competitive sports - never going to happen.People need competition its a natural instinct found in many individuals.Getting rid of competition in the form of free markets and money might work(Im an RBE proponant myself..just not a fan of JF,PM baseless concept) but getting rid of all forms of competition is just idle hippie daydreaming.
2.Monogamy/marriage - This has existed long before religion and will probably continue well into the future even in a moneyless society.Jacques idea that everyone should have casual relationships is just so retarded it makes my brain hurt.True some people are wired to be promiscuous but not will subscribe to it.
3.Pornography/sexual fetishes Guncriminal on youtube gives a hilarious debunking of Jacques skewed view of sex and sexuality which you ought to check out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCL2-KYetRQ /> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mlWPwv6gjI&feature=related /> Sexual fetishes have been observed across the animal kingdom for example necrophillia and rape in ducks
http://www.nmr.nl/nmr/binary/retrieveFile? /> In others these and the other things I listed including alcohol and recreational drugs have always existed and have become so ingrained in human cultures long before our "modern profit based system".My point was that they are not just "distractions" or products of scarcity they are part of and the centre of cultures and subcultures.TVPs biggest mistake is that it ignores the fact that its not dealing with rats in lab we are a sentient species that has millenia to develop traditions,cultures,identities and beliefs (many of which have their roots in our genes).To think everyone is going to drop these in a second to live in some over the top utopian ideal where everyone has the same atheistic beliefs and traditions all because one man says so is ridiculous(do keep in mind hes a 94 man child who hads been cooped up in his own private little ranch for the last 30-40 years)and will only turn people away from suporting it.In conclusion stop wasting time with TZM/TVP it has no credability and no connection to reality.Id like to see a moneyless society but Jacque/Peter/et al talk nothing but shit with no evidence at all.

That was a very informative and detailed post there Special Ed, I especially enjoyed learning from it.

@ Special Ed

Yeah, and that's the whole point. You can't do this with a metal-backed banking system, so as the economy expands (which it does, especially with the telecommunications and internet booms) you need more money to back up these new assets. The best example to prove why metal-backed wouldn't work: there's more value in the US than gold on the entire planet, gold's already lost.

I’m not advocating a metal-back money system. No where did I say I wanted a gold standard. Ron Paul wants sound money, and he thinks that a gold/silver standard might be good, but the examples of currency I brought up was government issued fiat, like the greenback, and the fiat issued on Guernsey.

Yes, but the central banking structure has the power to reel in that to curb inflation.

How does it do so? Two ways, increase the reserve requirements and increase the interest rate. Raising the reserve requirements forces banks to keep more cash on hand and reduces there ability to lend, contracting the money supply as loans come due and they can’t loan them out again. Increasing the interest rates has a twofold affect, first it discourages people from taking out further loans (thus no more new money) and bankrupting a certain percentage of people and businesses that can now longer meet the increase in their variable payments, this is bad debt that is written off.

No, it isn't. It only is if you buy into the myth that somehow the Federal Reserve is responsible for minimum wage jobs.

I don’t see the causation?

If I get a loan from the bank, spend the money, the bank has that money? That doesn’t make sense.

For simplicities sake, if we have 10 apples worth of production in an economy and 10$ total in the money supply, each dollar is going to cost 1$. If I “misjudge” the actual productive capacity and print (or loan) into existence 20$, we have inflation. Now someone always gets that money first. So let’s say you have use of 5$ of that 20$. And you then go out and buy 5 apples for 1$ each as prices do not react to the new money right away. There is now 5 apples left but 15$ left to be spent in the economy. It then becomes evident that the money supply as outstripped productive capacity so in an effort to reach equilibrium between supply and demand, the price of the apples increases. Again for simplicity these remaining apples need to have a price of 3$ to reach equilibrium.

So the longer you wait, the poorer you become.

And how would gold or mixed-metals change that? In a metal-banking system, people are still poor; they'd still get paid poorly. You're simply buying into the belief that this "debt/tax on the people" somehow changes their standing, if that were true then why were there poor people before the creation of FRS? Shouldn't there have been less poor people before? A lower standard of living before? When the debt reached almost zero under Andrew Jackson, were people able to quit their jobs for some imaginary reason? Or really did nothing change at all for regular people?

I wasn’t advocating a mix-metal system, you assume as much because I mention Ron Paul, but I was mentioning him for his understanding of the monetary system not for his return to “sound money”. If you read my responses, I never suggested going back to the gold standard anywhere.

I agree that a having to back your currency with any metal, leads to impoverishment as you do not have enough money to utilize your full productive capacity. But you don’t need a private entity to issue your money. It would be better that the government had the ability to spend money into circulation (with no debt attached) and to loan money into circulation with the interest used to fund the government and the government programs. Why should a government borrow that which it can create for itself?

The idea the Federal Reserve effects regular people and their ability to make money is pure fantasy and has no basis in reality -- poverty, joblessness, lack of spending power is 100% independent of FRS.

What do you think your income tax dollars go towards? Maintenance of schools, roads, government programs? I would be interested to know what you think. I think that the income tax goes directly to debt maintenance. I think that was the entire reason the income tax, supposedly a temporary measure, got implemented in the first place. The government could then borrow any sum based on their ability to levy a direct tax on its citizens.

How much better off you’d be and business in general if they weren’t taxed so heavily? This would raise the standard of living for everyone.

No one ever talks about paying off the debt, for two reasons 1) it probably cannot be paid off as it is too high 2) there would be virtually no money in the system if they did.

Do we really have a decline in a pool of goods here in the US? No. Inflation in the US actually has happened after major shifts in the economy, mainly during and especially after wars. Tell me, did the ending of the war in Vietnam create mass poverty in the US because of the inflation? Not even close. Poverty went unchanged.

Why did that inflation occur? Because the government borrowed massive amounts of money to finance those wars. Pumping up the money supply in excess of productive capacity causes inflation. And back to my apple example, newly created money takes time to work its way through the system so inflation takes some time to show up. And to address why you say so little change in poverty, when you can run your government in a deficit you can stimulate business through tax cuts, you just simply borrow the money to cover it.

How so? You invest in t-bills or something? Tell me one person who has lost money because of the Federal Reserve.

Here is a simple example. You save 100$ in a savings account that pays 2% interest on your deposit. You keep the money in that savings account for 5 years. Meanwhile inflation is running at 4%. At the end of 5 years you would have approx 110$, but because inflation was higher than what you were earning in interest, your 110$ is actually only worth approx 90$. You’ve lost purchasing power by letting your money sit earning sub-optimal interest. This is called the time value of money.

Yes, and that's the point behind it, it allows the money supply to expand with the economy, something absolutely impossible in metal-backed systems. Metal-backing was great with agrarian societies because farming rarely changed, or changed so slowly it didn't really matter, but industrialization changed that greatly, especially after it was heavily ramped up in the 20th century. As I pointed out, there's not enough gold in them there hills for just the value in the US, so what kind of magic should we use other than FRS?

A better measure is to generate enough money to keep level with the amount of goods you produce. The ideal would be no inflation. The old British system of the tally stick worked because tallies were created as production capacity materialized, so tally sticks never lost value and were hard to counterfeit. The were a little cumbersome but you didn’t need to carry a lot of them as there was no inflation.

Inflation doesn't typically happen that rapidly, and that's also why you get a savings account, not hide it under your mattress. People used to do that because of run on banks during the gold-backed era, because the money supply would always outgrow the amount of gold currently in store, and of course banks would exploit this, and never intended on everyone coming and getting their money all at once. Thanks to the FRS and FDIC, and Nixon for dropping the last of gold/silver-backing, you can get your money.

Inflation doesn’t need to occur at all. Inflation rates are also obscured by adjustments like hedonics, substitutions, and weighting so you might think your 3% savings account is outpacing the official %2 inflation, but the real inflation is probably a couple of percent higher, so you are not as rich as you think.

So, when I saved money in a 4% interest savings account and used it to buy my first home I was forced to borrow? That's news to me!

The fact that you saved for your house is not representative of what most people do. Most people have to finance.

Any idea of what the real inflation rate was during that time you were saving? Not the official rate, but the one stripped of hedonics, substitutions and weighting? I would bet that you were losing purchasing power all that time and didn’t realize it.

>> Peter Schiff talks a fair bit about this.
He's a quack.

He predicted the sub prime meltdown. And everyone was calling him a quack then too.

Pure fantasy. The interest payments are roughly 7% and have no net interest, so that wouldn't change much of the debt. How does the national debt change things for a waitress, a guy working on a lathe, a hairstylist, etc. It wouldn't change anything. You'd still have the same work force competing for the same jobs. The greenback was extremely limited, and inflation happened anyway because so many people were counterfeiting it. Imagine what you could do with the money spend on the Iraq war, far, far more than anything the Federal Reserve has done.

I don’t see how you don’t understand that by imposing a tax on people to pay for non-productive interest payments on the debt is not impoverishing everybody.
Greenback had inflation mostly because the British were deliberately trying to devalue it through counterfeit because Abe Lincoln refused to borrow the money from the Banks at interest. It was an act of financial terrorism, but the British ultimately couldn’t crash the Greenback.

Surprise kids, without the federal reserve mommy's below minimum-wage job where she has to rely on tips would actually make her a fortune! Health care would be super cheap, so cheap that insurance cards would rain down from the sky!

Yeah not sure how to respond to that.

They set the stage, yes, but they themselves didn't do much, it took centuries of people working to finally get equality in the US both socially and economically. In contrast, many of these changes happened in other countries in the west long before they happened here.

I think the social and economic equality is still a work in progress.

Have you actually read my site at all?

To be honest I was mostly trying to ignore your debunking of parts 1 and 2, but it is becoming clear to me that I can’t take the stance of “I pick and chose”. I apologize for not taking the time. I can understand why PJ is defending his work, because an attack on it would be like an attack on him, but it is ruining the discourse we could be having. I wish he had continued on the path of distancing himself from Z1 and conspiracy theories in general because I feel I can’t rightly defend this movement with one hand tied behind my back.

You know what is ironic? Before I came here I spent a lot of time debating on the ATS forum defending TZM and TVP from CT’s. Surprising? They think we are a tool of the NWO with our global approach and that robots will eventually be our masters. It was much easier debating with them; I can sort of see what you must go through when we come here and defend the movement to you.

I can’t defend a movement that has built its house on sand. It would be intellectually dishonest of me to do so. I still believe that an RBE is the way to go and that money enforces scarcity and inequality, because those can be described empirically and the financial side is what I have the most experience in. So my options are to quit, or to try to get everybody to back off of this course. So I’ll probably get banned. Fuck.

That's independent of a fantasy that gold-backed economics would change things for the average person.

Yeah, I didn’t propose that at all, that was your assumption.

The Soviet Union collapsed because the economy had stagnated since the 1970s and nationalism in its many republics caused pressure for them to release their stranglehold on the various ethnic groups and satellite nations. After only Russia and a few small nations were left in the USSR, the CPSU was forced out by law, and a referendum was voted on whether or not retain the USSR. Out of the 75 or so percent that voted, a vast majority wanted to keep the USSR, however the referendum results were ignored and the USSR was dissolved into the Commonwealth of Independent States -- that's a very brief and summarized history, but the IMF had absolutely nothing at all to do with it.
As for the other nations, it's not just the ridiculous aspects of IMF loans that are responsible, but also poor government management of money, lack of a qualified work force, and so on.
But again, the IMF is independent of a fantasy that gold-backed economics would change things for the average person.

Yeah, didn’t propose that at all.

I wasn’t talking about what happened before the IMF intervened I was referring to what happened after they were “rescued” by the IMF. Give Shock Doctrine a read by Naomi Klein. It describes in detail what the IMF does to reshape economies that are in trouble and need help. The cure was worse than the disease.

Those are almost all recessions, not depressions, in fact only one is a depression. You're also forgetting that for the majority of those the banks were still backed by gold and silver in the Federal Reserve, whoops! In fact on your list, there's only been 4 since it was completely abandoned, and the last two especially were caused by economic bubbles, from over investing, not from the Federal Reserve.
Funny how they always leave out their side. I can do the same, prior to the Federal Reseve, with actual details:
Wow, 25 on my list, but 17 on yours, and the playing field is even, the periods of 1812 - 1910 cover roughly the same time period from 1913 - 2010. Now, to be fair let's do complete research into yours as well and provide details for all to see.
So before gold we had one roughly every 2 - 4 years, after gold it changed from 5 - 10 years, I can deal with that.

Because without a gold standard you could “paper” over problems by borrowing the money as it is only limited by your power to tax your citizens. It’s just kicking the can down the road. Not that gold was the solution, but the debt (using your numbers) skyrocketed from 909b to 18t today with any sort of convertibility to gold, foreign or domestic. It seems unrestrained to put it mildly.

I actually did the stats from your years, and the average length of the depression pre-fed was 1.8 years. After the Fed it was 1.6. It did improve a bit. The average length between recessions/depressions pre-fed 4.04 years. Post fed it was 4.11 years. How I calculated the time the recession depression lasted is by taking the year it began and subtracting the year it ended to get me the range, in times when only one year was listed, I counted the entire year as 1. To get the range between depressions recession, I took the year that it ended and subtracted the year that the next one began. It would be more definitive and accurate if we could get months, but I am betting it would show a similar distribution.

On your list you had 17, but I added to it and now there are 19, but still less than my list with 25 covering the same amount of time.
With or without FRS we learn a serious lesson: bubbles happen, economic downturns happen, wars cause economic problems (or in the case of WWII can reverse them). To nail every problem to FRS is not only profoundly incorrect, but dishonest.

I don’t expect them to nail every problem, but they could definitely justify their existence by having a track record that was more than slightly above “a little better than not being there at all”.

So I would say that having the Fed to prevent bubbles and economic downturns is marginally better.

You're forgetting the Federal Reserves ability to retract.

Sorry, retract what? Money supply? Reserve requirements?

Furthermore, the debt doubled several times over after it almost zero'd out under Jackson, without the FRS. Let's take a trip back though, all the way back to the debt before FRS ($2.6b) and years after ($25.9). Pretty scary, but there were 2 recessions and a war in that time. Let's walk a little further:
1928 - $18.5b
1930 - $16.2b - Wow, it's lower, how about that, let's keep going.
1940 - $50.6b - Up again, pretty far too, scary too, but that's what happens when you spend to recover from the depression

Isn’t this around the time that they removed domestic convertibility of the dollar to gold? Wasn’t privately owned gold confiscated from private citizen by government decree? As you would say, that was the whole point, take the dollar partially off gold so they could borrow to spend.

1950 - $256.8b - Post-war America, man, with the debt this large, you'd think there'd be massive job loss, because following your logic the bigger the debt, the less people have. Oh wait, it was the exact opposite.

All the infrastructure that was built up from the war was turned to productive retail inventory. The US manufactured and sold its way out of debt. The economy was prosperous in spite of the huge debt, not because if it. You are confusing causation with correlation.

1960 - $290.5b - Didn't even come close to doubling in 10 years, much less 7, nice math you got there, and this is after yet another war.

You were the one that said that the Fed added only 7% to the national debt per year. I was using numbers you provided. So my math is correct as is my logic, it is your input that is wrong. I assume the 7% you provided is actually an average taken over a period of time. Nice try, blaming your numbers on me.

That's only true if you believe the conspiracy theories that the person who called the fire department set the fire, instead of the reality that he stood to lose a lot from the building burning down.

Your quote debunking the JP Morgan conspiracy:
“I have seen many conspiracy sites that square the blame on JP Morgan, claiming he "published rumors" of various banks, and all this. I cannot find any real evidence of that what so ever, outside a reference to a Life Magazine article, as quoted above by the film. I could not find that article, and considering Life Magazine has a history of publishing half-truths anyway, I cast doubt on the source until I can see an actual copy of the article in question.[16] “

I don’t think this qualifies as debunking, casting aspersions on the character of a magazine, while stating you haven’t read the article because you cannot find it. It is more honest to say you cannot confirm or deny the validity of the article because you haven’t accessed it yet without making judgments.

Well, we could argue that with capitalism in general.

Sure we could. But how does that detract from what I said?

>> Calling the 12 banks of the Federal Reserve decentralized is putting lipstick on a pig and calling it pretty.
What?

Let me clarify since you didn’t like my simile. When the Federal Reserve System was rolled out as 12 banks instead of one, ask yourself why bother having 12 banks when one can do the job. It was for the appearance of decentralization, to make this central bank more palatable than the first two.

>> Breaking up the banks into 12 institutions was a rouse, camouflage for the people and nothing more. The Federal Reserve is just as central as the Bank of England.
Yeah, and that's why it's "central banking" did I ever say it wasn't centralized banking? No.

Agreed. But the comment wasn’t directed at you, it was to lay down context of how the Federal Reserve got passed when the US had rejected two central banks before it.

If you were going to start a Pizza restaurant, would you ask a chef how to make the best pizzas or would you just assume you know? The reason bankers were involved was because they're good at, guess what, banking. They didn't have Google back then, so there wasn't going to be any research done in that manner, it was much more wise and logical to ask bankers how they would create the system and build from that.

Interesting and normally I would agree with you as something similar is proposed within an RBE, let those who have the relevant knowledge have input into the decision making. But clearly can you not see how this was a conflict of interest, no pun intended?

>> With Louis McFadden you are skirting close to the edge of invoking Godwin’s Law.
No, I'm not. If we don't understand what motivations McFadden would have had for opposing the Federal Reserve we can't understand clearly why he did. I never compared McFadden to Nazis or claimed that anti-Semitism and Nazism were one in the same, they aren't. You're simply trying to avoid dealing with the issue of McFadden and Lindburg's stupidity and disconnection from reality.

No, you the one that referred to his anti-semitism, which was not an uncommon position in those days and somehow inferred that he is less knowledgeable about the nature of the monetary system as a result. Why mention it if it is not relevant to the understanding of monetary policy? You must therefore think it is relevant.
And I quote:
“Louis McFadden was quite a shady individual, and he believed that Jews controlled the world, most specifically the American economy[25]. McFadden also blamed Jews for various changes in the American economy, including the Federal Reserve[26]. He was also a major supporter of Hitler and the Nazi policies that were anti-Semitic; more specifically he supported Hitler's attempts to destroy the alleged Jewish control over the German economy, media, education, and business[27]. And for the sake of full disclosure, when he ran for president in 1936, one of his campaign slogans was "Christianity instead of Judaism"[28]”

So here's the deal: either capitalism is unjust and causes the problems (being that they're independent of FRS, I'd say that's probably true) or just going back to the gold standard would create such prosperity, what's the point of promoting TZM at all, instead of just the gold standard?

I never was promoting the gold standard.

If he lets go, he'll admit to being wrong in his eyes, so he won't ever do it.

I’m coming to agree with that sentence.

You seem to not only have little understanding in economics and history, but also even what I believe though I have made that clear countless times, even in articles you imply you've read. You quote me as saying and believing things I never said or believed and then attempt to use it against me; I see that the Peter Joseph Force is strong with you young padawan learner.

I could same the same for your grasp on economics and history. I didn’t give part 1 and 2 a good read, because I think part 1 is irrelevant and part 2 I just don’t support. But I did read part 3, very closely. And it was you, throughout this entire rebuttal that accused me of supporting mixed metal by assuming that because I’ve read Ron Paul that I automatically support his position on the gold standard, when in fact I never referred to the gold standard at all. The only examples I offered up were government issue currency, still a fiat currency.

"But lets say for argument that there was not a good answer, then the conclusion would lean towards the planting of thermite from outside sources. "

Why would it lean towards that? I don't think anyone else thinks that here.

@ Sil and Edward

I never said thermite was planted in the tower. I'm not defending the truther position. Muertos ask me a hypothetical question and I gave a hypothetical answer.

To be specific, Sil, if there was not a good scientific explanation (and there is) for why there were hot spots and if there was thermite present (which has never been conclusively proven), then what would be a reasonable conclusion based on those points.

@ Duncan, yeah that is the point if the reaction could occur without any further introduction of materials then it blows the truther position of "molten steel" out of the water. I hold much the same theory you do, that the attacks happened and the administration took full advantage of it to push their agenda.

Best discussion I've read since coming to this board.

Great insight by both Ed and TeeZedem.

Personally, as I've stated on this board, I've always been keen to RBE. But my issues with it is that we still have too much scarcity, and nowhere near the technology to pull it off.

As for TVP and TZM, my main issues have been with the CT's, and the blank slate. Not to mention the attack on religion. I'm not religious, but to try to tell people how to think and what to believe is an attack on free will. That's leaning too far towards collectivism. More freedom, and an easier life should always be the ultimate goal. Again, this is just my opinion.

@Alton,

You and I obviously highly disagree on capitalism in general, but I'm curious if you agree when I say: the Federal Reserve is irrelevant to anti-capitalists, because it's a part of capitalism. I don't see any logic in focusing on it as a reason to oppose capitalism, because capitalism existed prior to it and would exist outside it. In fact, many capitalists, especially libertarians and objectivists often argue that the FRS is /less/ capitalist, so basing your anti-capitalist notions on a single concept is just asinine.

There's an old saying, and I'm paraphrasing: it's easy to say what you're against, but a lot harder to say what you stand for. TZM can talk about some far off future all they want, but they can't even seem to figure out step 2, step 1 being 'spread the word'.

@Alton
"After a while when scrutinizing how Jacque and company explains the RBE, I felt there will be much more waste compared to the current system he criticizes. If people at all times can get whatever they want with no limits, and all consumables and products are made with high quality resources and materials, that will drive up opportunity and environmental costs much more. Even scarcity will rise rapidly."

I agree with you..........
I think a good analogy for a RBE is a buffet.
Look at people in a buffet, who eat what ever they want, as much as they can just because it it doesn't cost anymore to do so. Then look at how much people waste, they will take tons of every dish and only have a taste of each. When dinner is done often plates are still full of food because people took much more then they could actually eat and the throw it into the garbage.
Then compare to when someone eats out at a regular restaurant, for one they get better food, secondly they don't stuff their face and often do not order so much food they cannot eat it.
I know this isn't really scientific evidence against RBE or anything, but it is very similar to the type of observations Fresco trys to pass of as research.

> There's is no evidence that they would do the same if permanently guaranteed
> access to unlimited food.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/news/the-16320bn-food-mountain-britons-throw-away-half-of-the-food-produced-each-year-790318.html</p>

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/6495889.stm</p>

> It was around eight years ago that the number of overweight people in the world began
> exceeding the number of underweight people - many of them seriously undernourished

> Barry Popkin says the way we have organised agriculture is a key factor:
>
> "Over the past century we have worked very hard to produce cheap beef. The global
> price of beef has gone down to about a quarter of its cost in the 1950s.
>
> Millions more around the globe can now afford to eat beef
> "This makes it that much easier for poor people to consume beef, and the same has
> occurred for edible oils and sugars."

> "In the past, when we were hunter-gatherers, our bodies were programmed to eat what
> we could when we could," said Dr Finer. "We needed to store food because we didn't
> know where the next meal would come from."
>
> But now that agriculture has delivered plenty, the messages our brains give to our
> bodies may no longer be appropriate.
>
> "The human brain is very good at telling us we are hungry and need food. But the
> problem now is that there is always plenty available and the brain is not so good
> at telling us we have had enough."
>
> Pursuing my diversionary tactics further, I asked Dr Finer if that meant human beings
> were therefore predisposed to getting ever fatter and fatter.
>
> "In a world of ever-expanding food supply", replied Dr Finer, "and where we don't
> expend enough energy through exercise, the answer to that is 'Yes'."

http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/News/Media-office/Press-releases/2007/WTX041553.htm</p>

> The recent Government Foresight report on obesity suggests that by 2050 more than
> half the population of the country will be obese, costing a potential £46 billion
> to society

So, it appears that until we can evolve (Or GM humans..) away from eating too much, or we make food expensive again.. (Or we have fat limits.. (Sadly appears not legal in the developed world to use that solution..)) we are stuck with the situation that making food available to all, will lead to people getting fat.

Going by current buffets, it is safe to say there is already waste occurring despite an upfront cost. Waste even occurs currently at non-buffet restaurants. Take money out the picture where everything is like a buffet, and it is a safe bet that whatever people waste now will go up since there will be no constraints (I'll like 10 burgers and 8 ipods mam) and no upfront fee (there is always a cost technically though) in what they prefer to consume or produce. It is even very probable that people won't take good care of things even more, since they can get a replacement or get it fixed for free at anytime and there is no "property". Plus, Jacque Fresco will waste all the photovoltaic cells on the entire surface of buildings with no doorways instead of saving some for transportation, gadgets, and floating cities.

As silly as it may seem, I hypothesize that people overindulge at buffets because they see it as a luxury. It's comparable to the argument for lowering the drinking age in the US. Teenagers in Europe do not binge drink as much as US teens because drinking is not as special to the former.

Perhaps the buffet wasters do so because it's one of their rare moments of unrestrained freedom. If our society was built around offering buffets 24/7, we might not indulge as much or be as wasteful.

(I'm probably wrong, but I'd like to run a study to prove so)

Oh, well, you know where I'm from "Planet Earth" when you talk about how much better a gold standard is, glorify the green back, and remark that on a gold standard we'd be more prosperous, I can't help but think you're in favor of it.

Where precisely did I talk about how much better the gold standard is? The only slightly positive aspect I might have mention in the last post is that it prevents unlimited expansion of the money supply. The greenback wasn’t backed by gold, it was legal tender.

I didn't say there weren't problems, in fact if you recall, I remarked that I liked a lot of the ideas you said were being used in Canada.

Except that things in Canada suck as well. We have a nationalized central bank and from 1938 to 1974 used to borrow directly from the bank (up to 1/3 of the budget) essentially interest free (all interest charged was returned to the government as dividends). In 1974 the BoC decided such practice was inflationary and all borrowing had to be down from our private banks (TD, RBC, CIBC, SB, BMO) at interest. That is when our debt began to skyrocket. Debt maintenance on our yearly budget usually ranks about the third largest item.

If you try to oversimplify FRS, you end up making it more simple than it actually is, and you can bend it toward whatever cause you want.

Well I don’t know how to make how inflation works any clearer to you.

Again, as I asked, show me someone who has been hurt for waiting too long and saving money.

Retired people on fixed incomes. Inflation eats into their standard of living.

I assumed that because you said we'd "see prosperity like you’ve never known."

I accept that you admit you made an assumption. How prosperous would you feel if you got to keep all (or at least most) your money?

No and yes. No it wouldn't be better if the government had direct control, we know from history that when they do have direct control over central banking, they tend to absolutely fuck up the economy -- however, ironically, this would give the people more control over it themselves, and this would be better in the long run. Yes, it would be great to have it setup to where there were more options than just inflating the currency.

I agree, ordinary citizens have no control over the Fed. In an extreme case, they could vote for a Congress that would repeal the Fed charter, but that is highly unlikely. Money creation in government hands would be more responsive to the will of the citizens. You say the government will most likely fuck up the economy, but I say to you that the economy was already fucked up by Alan Greenspan and his artificially low interest rates after the dot com bubble.

God, not this again. You can look this up yourself. I'd be interested to know how exactly roads and government programs were paid for without income tax in the current tax system.

They mostly get paid for by borrowing money. The total collected income tax revenue is about 2.2T, of that about .9T is income tax, of that .5t goes towards debt maintenance, 2010 total budget was an estimated 3T. So I guess you could argue that at least .4T goes to running the government and maintaining infrastructure, but then I would ask, where does the money for the following taxes go?

Property, pensions, severance, Social Security, stock transfer, tobacco, tonnage, transportation, utilities, accumulated earnings, alcoholic beverages, amusements, apparel, capital gains, consumption, dividends, employment, estate, excise, franchises, fuel, furnishings, gas, sales, gift, gross receipts, holding company, inheritance, land, life insurance, luxuries, motor oil, motor vehicle, occupation, operators license, obviously not an exhaustive list.

You think wrong.

I’d say I’d be approximately more than half right, currently. Keep borrowing, and I’ll become 100% right.

Well, it is apparent, you have been reading the words of Austrian Economists. Why do TZM members like Austrians so much? No one could be more absolutely different, yet because they're supported by so many conspiracy theorists, TZM members take their word to be gospel truth.

No argument there, except the gospel and CT part. I don’t like that.

Again, this is Austrian Economics at work and if that were how reality worked, the third world would be a powerhouse. You can see prior to the introduction of income tax and other things that people were far worse off than today.

Is it Austrian to have the government issue loans and fund itself with interest instead of taxes? Before the Income tax act, the government funded itself mostly on tariff’s and some excise taxes. As a government you can still do all the wonderful things you need to do to make people better off, but you don’t need to tax an individual on his labour, which is unavoidable if you are employed. People would still get credit cards, LOC, HELOC’s, Investments loans, mortgages, operating loans, but instead of going into the pockets of private corporations, it is used for the public good.

Uh, yeah, they do all the time.

When has anyone presented a serious game plan for paying off the debt? And if they did do they understand that the money supply would dry up?

So apparently inflation can happen within a decade or so as per everything I showed you, but it takes poverty years to catch up, or in this case poverty begins to go down in the 1980s post-Vietnam war, which if it was supposed to wait so long, it should have gone up; I guess that happened for the lulz.

I told you, governments just borrow the difference to institute offsetting tax cuts, to continue to stimulate the economy. You can compensate for inflation by providing additional liquidity so wages can go up, if wages go up in tandem with inflation then no one really notices. A government can do this, but not forever.

Maybe you shouldn't use a 19th century bank that doesn't adjust for inflation, because they all pretty much do now. It's called "adjusted savings rate" (depending on the bank in question) welcome to the 21st century of banking.

Oh that is clever, but this is what people do when they actually understand what inflation is, they figure out the real inflation rate, and then they chose investments that have a higher rate of return.

But since I was unaware of the wonders of 21st century banking, let’s get back to the point of when you said show me who has lost money because of the Fed. When the Fed holds down the interest rates, banks saving rates also are held down. High interest savings account like ING returns a little more than 1%. Even official inflation statistics are higher than that, so to make money you need to take on more risk in your investment portfolio, like stocks, since bonds suck at the moment, or preferred shares.

Of course with more risk comes more volatility and if you don’t know what you are doing, you could do some damage. Some ways of mitigating that are segregated funds that lock in and protect your principle and periodically you can re-lock in to protect your gains, my piece of 21st century advice to you. Of course you could hire an investor to do this for you, but they most likely push their bullshit products on you and don’t care about your portfolio as long as they make their commissions.

I was actually surprised that you had a saving account that gave you 4% return, as saving account in Canada are little more than places you park your money temporarily.

That would be best but you're talking about a system created before modern bookkeeping, the idea was that loans would show how the economy was growing and would expand the money supply that way. No, it wasn't the best of ideas, but that doesn't mean we should scrap it.

The British tally system was created before modern bookkeeping; they used it for over 700 hundred years. This would be the most stable monetary system in history I think. I suggest you read The Web of Debt by Ellen Brown.

With the way the banking system currently works, yes it does, but if changes are made -- some large -- it could be avoided. Again, savings are adjusted for inflation.

Only with your automatic “adjusted saving rate” which I have never heard of before except for some bond issues.

Yeah, after even George W Bush had mentioned it in front of Congress, that's not a prediction, that's piggy backing, it's exactly what Gerald Celente does.

Yeah I would like to know the date on that. If it is earlier than Feb. 2006 then my hats off to GWB.

http://www.europac.net/media/lectures_amp_debates/february_2006_peter_schiff_us_bubble_economy</p>

Approx 25 min in.

Because we had massive poverty before hand? You haven't explained why the system was even worse before FRS if it was so bad.

Now I’ll give you that having an income tax allowed for the development of big projects in infrastructure and technology that wouldn’t or couldn’t be touched by private enterprise and it was these improvements that lead to generally more wealth, but again this could have been done with government issued money. And now we are in a position where the debt maintenance is eating a seriously large chunk of income tax revenues. So you can do less and less with tax revenue and have to do more and more with borrowed funds.

-- Yeah not sure how to respond to that.
Because it's using your logic and it's incredibly naive to believe something like that, but it seems from what you've said, you do.

That’s pretty good, taking what I say, putting your spin on it and passing it off as my “logic”. How about you stick to what I say, instead of extrapolating what you want me to say to make you look better.

True, but it's far better now than it was 40 years ago.

No disagreement there.

-- To be honest I was mostly trying to ignore your debunking of parts 1 and 2, but it is becoming clear to me that I can’t take the stance of “I pick and chose”.

Well, I really think you should read the parts before arguing against what you *think* I've said in it.

I deserve that. Chastisement noted.

I also see a lot of good things in RBE, and I have been a TVP supporter (of the ideas, not blank-slate) for over a decade now, and as I pointed out in the introduction to the Z2 article, I thought that conspiracy theories were going to make TVP look even more ridiculous. Well, you wouldn't be the first to be banned or to quit over the conspiracy theory issue. I'm not sure when you got involved with TZM, but earlier this year before they added the test, we had a lot of people getting banned for speaking out against conspiracy theories, many came here.

I took that test; I thought it was a little weird.

The Shock Doctrine came well after the USSR was gone, and was a part of an Austrian-style of building, and just like all Austrian Economics in the real world, it was a complete disaster.

Yeah, I’m sure that is not right. When the USSR collapsed and they needed loans from the IMF, they had to open up their economy, sell off all state owned property and resources, no restrictions on foreign trade and investment. That was a disaster. It is Milton Freidman’s free-market economy in its purest form, which amounted to little more than legalized plundering. The IMF refers to it as economic shock therapy. Again I encourage you to check out the book by Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The rise of Disaster Capitalism.

-- Not that gold was the solution, but the debt (using your numbers) skyrocketed from 909b to 18t today with any sort of convertibility to gold, foreign or domestic. It seems unrestrained to put it mildly.

I mentioned many reasons for that.

Sure you did mention reasons for the increase in debt, which answers the how, but why have the debt, why borrow to pay non-productive interest to private parties? We don't need to do that, so why do we continue to do so?

-- Sorry, retract what? Money supply? Reserve requirements?

The money supply.

Which we already discussed how they do it, which causes great hardship on individuals and businesses that happen to be leveraged at the time.

The reason people were prevented from hoarding gold is because it was a gold backed economy, and inflation against gold was done on purpose so they could spend more, which is a terrible idea.

So people were prevented, at the time, from accessing the only means that could protect them from the inflation the government wanted. It kind of like telling a person to keeps there hands donw so you can sock them in the face. It is actaully kind of funny when you try to picture that.

-- All the infrastructure that was built up from the war was turned to productive retail inventory. The US manufactured and sold its way out of debt.
But it didn't, the debt when up 5x.

I apologize that statement was misleading. As a % of GDP, debt decreased as the GDP increased through the use of their productive assets to generate products to sell.

You're using the numbers way too simply, and assuming that if it was 7% of debt each year, then it's compounded. I was speaking that today it’s about 7% of money goes to paying off interest incurred by the FRS, however obviously that amount was much smaller previously, especially before our $18t dip. $18t, just typing that I can’t wrap my head around that much money.

Yep, your right, I assumed that 7% was also the interest rate. So what it would be is 7% of the debt multiplied by the average interest rate on the bonds, which is quite low at the moment. My bad.

I don't think simply making claims about JP Morgan counts as evidence, especially ones that lack historical proof.

Touché. But until you actually read the original article you don’t know if it is a claim, or if there is actual evidence to back it up. Libraries would have a microfiche archive of newspapers and magazines, or maybe you could write to Life magazine directly and see if anyone would scan and e-mail the article directly. If there is a fee, I would gladly pay it.

-- It was for the appearance of decentralization, to make this central bank more palatable than the first two.

To fool who? And it isn't that big of a secret if that's the case. The more logical assumption would be that during the mixed-metal backing era of FRS having it spread out was quicker and more logical.

To fool the congress and the people who voted them in. That to spread them out because it was in anyway more efficient is your opinion of logical. Based on the context of history, the US didn’t have a good track record with central banks, so I would say it was more logical to present them as a decentralized banking system, with no one branch having absolute power. Except that all branches were working in concert, like a cartel. Today we acknowledge that the Fed is indeed a central bank system, because the baggage associated with a having a central bank is long in the past.

You mentioned that we'd be so much more prosperous with a gold standard, which is not only untrue, but implies you think it should be used over what we have now.

Could you quote exactly where I said “prosperous” and “gold standard” in the same sentence? I don’t believe in that so I find it hard to believe I would actually type that.

Ask yourself this TeeZedem, why do you care about central banking so much? If you really are in favor of RBE, the whole idea is irrelevant, absolutely, positively irrelevant; It couldn't possibly get more irrelevant, yet you guys [TZM] hang on to this as if changing central banking would make a damn bit of difference. As I showed you the economy was just as -- and a bit more so -- unstable before central banking, so the FRS does work better in that regard. Is there any evidence what so ever lack of FRS would mean life would be better for regular people? Absolutely not, I'd like to see historical precedent, not Austrian theorizing.

I care because central banking is what runs the major economies of the world today. They are THE power. It would be foolish of me not to care about central banking and irresponsible of me not to learn as much as I can about how they operate. If any change is to happen it will be over the objection of everyone who supports the concept of central banking and that is a lot of money to contend with, money being power.
You’ve showed me, and we still disagree on just how stable the system is with the Fed in place, stable in respect that the Fed controls the boom bust cycle, but that is accepting that there has to be a boom bust cycle. What I do know is that the Fed has its hands on the wheel and can boost or wreck the economy as it sees fit.

I’ve given you examples of where a lack of central banking is actually a good thing. Guernsey is one, they issue their own debt free money, the use of the british tally sticks, that is not to say that all central banks are useless, the BoC from 1938 to 1974 greatly aided in the prosperity of Canada, much like the Chinese National Bank helps them.

I'm also curious as to why so many foreigners (you being Canadian) are obsessed with the American banking system. I get emails from as far away as Finland and Brazil about how screwed up American banking is. Shouldn't people worry about their own countries' banking?

We are “obsessed” with the Fed the same way we are obsessed with our own central bank. They are all set up in different ways, but all are accomplishing the same thing, boosting our national debt. And make no mistake, our central banking is just as screwed up as yours is.

My point here being that if you're in favor of something technocratic like RBE, the ramblings of Austrian Economists like Peter Schiff aren't relevant to the argument at all, as they are institutions of capitalism and the state. The reason no other anti-capitalist groups argue against FRS is because they weren't founding by former-Ron Paul following conspiracy theorists who are afraid to admit being wrong.

It doesn’t matter what I am in favour of. What matters is what I’m in favour of better than the current system (i.e. the Fed and central banking in general)? Like someone mentioned earlier on in this thread, to convince anyone that our system is better, we must first understand the current system and all the arguments for and against it. We advocate a moneyless society, so it would be necessary to oppose the concept of central banking (being the majority). Other anti-capitalists, just disagree with capitalism and think that some other –ism would be fine and don’t address the question of money, money is assumed to be necessary.