[ExI] Why the 2008 crisis ended capitalism and democracy

[SR Ballard]

Here's one thing that I don't understand about national debts. Why are they
even a thing?

Suppose you have 2 countries.

Country A owes B $1M
Country B owes A $2M

Why can't Country A and B just "trade" their imaginary debt to each other,
so that A owes nothing, and B owes $1M?

Country A owes B $1M, owes C $2M
Country B owes A $1M, owes C $1M
Country C owes A $2M, owes B $2M

Country A has $3M in debt and is owed $3M
Country B has $2M in debt and is owed $3M
Country C has $4M in debt and is owed $3M

Couldn't A and B swap $1M in debt; B&C swap $1M in debt; C&A swap $2M in
debt
Then A would have no debts; B has no debts; C has $1M in debts to B...

I mean, I understand that governments tend to owe "themselves" or their
citizens money, but surely something similar could be done?


I mean, If I owe my Uncle 500 dollars, and he owes my aunt 400, and my aunt
owes me 300...
My aunt gives me 300
I Give my uncle 300 (and still owe him 200)
He gives my aunt 300 (and still owes her 100)

So couldn't I just say, oh, nevermind on that 300, then I owe him 200, and
he owes her 100? Because even if we all pass around $1, that's eventually
where we will end up... if we just subtract the debt, it's like we passed
around that dollar, but really, really fast.






On Sun, Jun 10, 2018 at 7:41 AM, BillK <pharos at gmail.com> wrote:

> Is the global economy just a giant debt scam? What the financial elite
> doesn’t want you to know
> Yanis Varoufakis saw power up close. He says capitalism is dead,
> democracy is crumbling and we’re ruled by debt
>
> Andrew O'Hehir   June 9, 2018
>
> <https://www.salon.com/2018/06/09/how-the-greek-debt-
> crisis-exposed-the-global-economy-as-a-giant-con-and-led-to-donald-trump/>
>
> Quote:
>
> What was the cumulative global result of all these processes? Do you
> really need to ask?
>
> Is this where we get back to Trump and Brexit and the rise of
> authoritarianism and right-wing nationalism around the world? It is.
> Varoufakis sees all those things as clearly connected and part of an
> unmistakable backlash. After mainstream politicians had cynically
> transferred those billions of dollars in banking losses onto ordinary
> people both in America and Europe -- magically combining the high
> taxation of social democracy with the austerity state of free-market
> capitalism -- they then pretended to be baffled by what happened next.
>
> The political movements that benefited from this climate, as
> Varoufakis puts it, were those fueled by racism and xenophobia, "the
> right-wing monsters that breed in the environment of deflation."
> Establishment parties then "wondered why it was that the discarded
> people from our neighborhoods and villages and towns turned against
> them and decided to vote for somebody that peeved them, annoyed them,
> just in order to get back at the establishment that had discarded
> them. Great wonder, isn’t it?”
> ---------------------
>
> This is a long article, but well worth reading, as it explains a lot
> of the world weirdness.
>
> BillK
>
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20180711/34546beb/attachment.html>