How the government prints and distributes money [video]
youtube.com
youtube.com
For the same amount of money, we don't all have to work as hard or produce the same amount of economic value, this is a true fact and it's ethically wrong. The economic reality of our situation affects every person on the planet so it affects everything. It's vitally important that we all understand how the system works even if explained in such hand-wavy way.
It's no coincidence that they don't teach this in schools. You'd think they would want people to know how money is created; after all, everyone spends their entire lives working for that money but we know nothing about it - The elites who control the banks don't want people do know because people would be able to see so many issues.
Isn't it strange that in school, we learn Maths, Physics, Chemistry, English, Geography, History... The arguments used for teaching those subjects is that they provide a good foundation of knowledge for all citizens... but when it comes to one of the most important subjects in our lives which affects every single citizen, we don't know anything about it. We all come out of school having a pretty good idea about how gravity works but we know almost nothing about how the financial system works (even though knowing about the latter can be used to our our advantage). It's no coincidence. If the majority of people knew, the current system would collapse and be replaced by something better.
It's a very difficult topic to grasp and is subject to various changes, from vested interest of groups (said group which itself could be composed of competing entities) to ideological decisions.
Crying wolf and having borderline conspiracy theories about "how the government is here to robe you!" and "how the elites are here to maintain ignorance!" doesn't help this discussion.
The real discussion is how wealth should be allocated: toward which goals? (consumption? investments? which kind of consumption or investments?) by who should it be allocated? (banks? selected individuals? governments?) What is the "correct" wealth distribution (high or low inequality, more or less towards investments or consumption etc).
If you frame the debate this way, you start to have more constructive criticisms of today situation and the current system (Which don't get me wrong, is definitely flawed and biased toward wealth concentration).
And I've seen videos on Youtube doing exactly that, contrary to the video linked there which is more about ranting, is poorly structured and doesn't give a clearer view of the situation.
This is so disingenuous and reeks of a superiority complex. "This system is too complex for poors to understand, that's why we, the educated and wealthy, are printing more money for ourselves. It will trickle down, we promise! We're really smart and know what we're doing!"
> Which don't get me wrong, is definitely flawed and biased toward wealth concentration
Exactly right. It's not complicated because it needs to be, it's complicated to hide layers and layers of corruption where we have codified methods for handing more money to people who already have enough of it.
> you start to have more constructive criticisms of today situation
I disagree with this. The average American has no avenue for "constructive criticism" of this system, because the average American has no access to the political system. The only way to combat this problem is to raise hell, and possible even to spill blood -- considering how soon our corporate overlords are willing to sacrifice us to preserve their quarterly earning reports.
Well, no. I doubt anybody on Earth (including bankers, billionaires or governments) truly can grasp all the ins and outs of money/debts creation and all the consequence it has on the economy and society. At best they can have a local and short term view which are in their best interest.
For example, 1929 crisis, more than 90 years after the events is not a completely settled question among scholars up to this day (not so much on the origins but more on the effect of the responses of Hoover/Roosevelt distinct policies and the policies of other countries around the world at the time).
To make a really bad analogy, the current financial system is a bit like this big old legacy system with COBOL, some partial rewrite in Java, some ad-hoc hacks created when it crashed. It's a huge mess to entangle, not always logical, but it kind of works except when it doesn't. And nobody really knows fully how it works. The current financial system is a bit like that, except it's a 300/400 years old (~creation of the first central banks), has seen tons of crashes and hacks, and has laws, procedures, customs and policies as "source code" which makes it really hard to read.
Then the whole system needs to be thrown out and rewritten from scratch. It's pretty obvious who benefits from all the jargon, complexity, and abstractions. And it's not labourers, that's for sure.
If, without telling you, I took a gold coin from you and replaced it with a gold-painted led coin and then I gave your gold coin to someone else, this is stealing. The fact that you don't realize that there is a difference does not matter. How is this different from what the Fed is doing?
It's not right to assume that this economic system treats us all equally on the basis that everyone is equally incapable of understanding it.
People game the system by observing what works and reacting to familiar situations in ways to maximize their personal benefit. If the rules of the system don't change for a long time, the system becomes ossified and we end up with an inherently unjust system.
Goodhart's law states that "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure" - The measuring tools which the government has been using to operate our economy are already well understood and have being exploited for a long time.
Such as what?