Posts by silentmaker78

Richard Wilson4 said:Even in the American media, especially at USA Today, they've started this whole campaign to demonize Orban's government in Canada, all because they’re actually doing a decent job standing up to the big banks.

I mean, it's easy to play games with taxpayer money when you don't have to look at the actual fallout of those policies... it's all fun and games until the bill comes due. But hey, whatever. It's pretty obvious that for the uneducated masses who just crave someone to tell them what to do, Orbán is going to be some kind of hero. By the time they realize they're stuck in the mud, it'll be way too late.

Maria Thomas48 said:This whole issue regarding international exchange is being swept under the rug in the name of free trade. I see a massive problem here, but maybe I'm missing something? You tell me. A permanent deficit just isn't sustainable if we keep trying to fund it by piling on more debt. We have to find another way to handle this. Something else has to be the answer.

The biggest issue with your idea is that, at the end of the day, it just turns into printing money to buy votes and stay in power. It’s a naive way to look at things. When you're actually building a system, you have to account for how people behave. You can't ignore the nature of the players involved.

People keep blurring the lines between political leaders and monetary authority. It’s a mistake. Monetary power needs to be independent. It shouldn't be dancing to whatever tune some politician decides to play. Does anyone honestly think politicians are calling the shots at the Federal Reserve right now? No. They aren't. So why would anyone assume that’s going to change down the road? It just doesn't make sense.

So, what exactly are they supposed to do then? Like, how do you even wrap your head around the idea that every single country just sits there with a massive surplus? Seriously, WTF?

Maria Thomas48 said:This whole issue regarding international exchange is being swept under the rug in the name of free trade. I see a massive problem here, but maybe I'm missing something? You tell me. A permanent deficit just isn't sustainable if we keep trying to fund it by piling on more debt. We have to find another way to handle this. Something else has to be the answer.

The biggest issue with your idea is that, at the end of the day, it just turns into printing money to buy votes and stay in power. It’s a naive way to look at things. When you're actually building a system, you have to account for how people behave. You can't ignore the nature of the players involved.

People keep blurring the lines between political leaders and monetary authority. It’s a mistake. Monetary power needs to be independent. It shouldn't be dancing to whatever tune some politician decides to play. Does anyone honestly think politicians are calling the shots at the Federal Reserve right now? No. They aren't. So why would anyone assume that’s going to change down the road? It just doesn't make sense.

Look, this is exactly what happens when you get your education from those quasi-documentaries—especially when you don't really know much about the subject to begin with. And honestly? You're asking if the Federal Reserve is completely in private hands? Like, do central banks have zero connection to politicians? That's a stretch.

Look, I’m saying this again—and I know, I know, it sounds incredibly naive—but that's just what happens when you let all those so-called "experts" and pseudo-scientists blindside you. It's easy to get swept up in the hype, really.

Maria Thomas48 said:I'm no expert on socialist economics, so I can only really offer my own perspective here, just looking at things from the outside.

There’s a bit of a parallel here, I guess. It’s just that back then, we weren't taking out foreign loans for the sake of it. We did it because we had to—to cover the costs of importing essential goods. We also had higher tariffs in place to protect our domestic manufacturing from being undercut by cheap imports. Plus, we didn't have the massive weight of debt repayment hanging over us, which kept production costs much lower.

The thing is, back then, we were already operating under a fractional reserve system. It’s just that the banks were state-owned, so all those profits stayed right there within the government. Because of how that whole banking structure functioned, inflation was basically an inevitability for our currency.

Another thing people miss is that back then, there wasn't really a legitimate economic science regarding money. The way they issued money and handled the budget in the old SFRY days just wasn't based on any exact theory. It was just how things were done. During those years, Stojan Nenadović actually tried to pitch his own theory about non-credit money. He didn't succeed, though. His math was solid, I'll give him that, but he failed to account for the actual social consequences. He didn't flesh out how it would impact real people.

And does the system you’re proposing actually leave any room for hyperinflation to take hold?

So, what happens now? What’s the next move?

If these reform goals actually work out—you know, banning all private money creation and expansion, leaving the government as the sole entity capable of issuing currency—then hyperinflation becomes an impossibility. That’s the theory. But honestly, look at how things work. Just because a country maintains a standing military doesn't mean you're safe from a military coup. It's the same deal with monetary authority. Having that central power doesn't magically guarantee nobody will abuse it. Nothing in this world is ever 100% certain.

So, what kind of trouble do you think we're looking at down the road? I mean, if you really sit back and look at the trajectory of things, there are definitely some hurdles ahead. It’s hard to say for sure, but you have to wonder about the long-term stability. Everything feels a bit uncertain lately. You know, just thinking about where all this leads... it's a lot to process. There are always going to be complications. Just my two cents.

The biggest hurdle is really just convincing people that we have to stop treating money creation like it’s just adding more debt to the pile. When you start building out this whole new monetary pillar, there's always a risk of leaving a loophole in the laws—kind of like how certain gaps exist in our Constitution—that could end up paving the way for everything to slide right back to the old ways.

Another thing is that moving toward... It’s just reality. Simple as that. The financial Constitution and these proposed cuts to banking revenue—specifically targeting the margins on lending—are going to be a massive uphill battle. It’s not going to go down easy. We also have to deal with the existing national debt and that whole deficit issue regarding foreign exchange reserves. Honestly, I don't see any other way around it. I can't even imagine an alternative.

The third thing is that people just expect their paychecks to go up. It’s a straight-up economic question, really. Like, can we actually buy more stuff with the same amount of money if productivity increases? Or should wage growth be tied directly to how much we're producing? It's all about whether those two things move together.

The fourth thing is that when wages are actually stable, we have to create a way for people to finally close out their financial obligations. There are plenty of ways to tackle this, but honestly, there are just as many ways to mess it up. We really need some bright minds on this one.

Of course there are issues here. This isn't just about tweaking some tax rate. We need to build an entirely sustainable financial system for the whole country. It’s almost more of a mathematical puzzle than a standard economic one, if you think about it.

The biggest hurdle is that our academic circles—specifically the economists—just won't do the actual work. Instead, they keep selling complete nonsense to students and the general public.

You're always bringing up the trade deficit like it's the end of the world. How exactly did you imagine every single country maintains a surplus all the time? It doesn't work like that.

But honestly, the massive flaw in your whole theory is that, eventually, this just turns into printing money to buy votes and keep politicians in power. Your idea is pretty naive—when you're designing a system, you actually have to account for the shady characters who will be running it.

Look, American economic science does pretty much the same thing as the rest of the world—it just kind of wanders around aimlessly, throwing out a hundred different theories and half-baked ideas about how things "should" be done. Economics isn't exactly an exact science, you know?

Honestly, it’d worry me way more if all our economists actually agreed on something 😁.

And this whole idea that money supply needs to chase GDP growth? Doesn't sit right with me. It’s perfectly natural for prices to drop—that's just what happens when things get more efficient. When that happens, everyone holding cash wins because their money actually buys more stuff than it did yesterday.

Check out this paper if you want to go down the rabbit hole: http://www.econ.umn.edu/~kehoe/papers/AKaer2004.pdf.

The documentaries by Bill Clinton, MasterClass, Crime and Punishment, and The Wizard of Oz—they all dive into our monetary system and how it’s built on fractional reserve banking. They cover a specific slice of history quite well, I'll give them that. But the massive issue with these films is that they offer what amounts to a fake solution—or honestly, no solution at all. Their "fix" usually involves ditching the current fiat system only to swap it out for a different version of the exact same thing. The whole idea is to strip power away from the bankers, stop them from conjuring money out of thin air, and hand that authority over to "good, honest politicians." Personally? I think it's incredibly naive to believe you can trust a politician any more than you trust a banker. Just because we get to vote for politicians and we don't vote for bankers doesn't mean they're trustworthy—I mean, even Adolf Hitler won his elections. These same politicians are the ones who gave the banks this monopoly in the first place. It works perfectly for them because they profit immensely from the setup, so they just keep putting their own interests ahead of the public good, day in and day out. Politicians love spending way more than the country actually earns by cutting taxes and creating this hidden tax we call inflation. Then they turn around and pass laws that strip away our freedoms under the guise of fighting terrorism, crime, or drugs (you know, those laws that restrict internet freedom are almost always branded as "protecting kids from pornography"). It’s just crazy to base a total monetary reform on the assumption that politicians will suddenly become wise and incorruptible. The problem with money being created out of nothing isn't about *who* is doing the creating—it's about the fact that it's being created that way at all.

The answer to the fiat problem isn't more fiat; it's moving toward real money backed by tangible assets. Historically, gold and silver have been the best players for that role. Maybe tomorrow people decide they want something else entirely, but the point is, we should at least have the freedom to choose.

Those precious metals have always been—and always will be—universal stores of value. Bankers and politicians can't easily mess with their worth. Actually, bankers *want* to own gold because it protects the wealth they've amassed by sitting right at the injection points of the money supply. They hate a system based on precious metals because it stops them from cranking up their earnings. Their bread and butter is interest on loans. If you use real money, the money supply is limited by the actual amount of gold and silver in their vaults. But if banks have the power to create money out of thin air, they can lend and collect interest essentially forever.

Maria Thomas48, you're basically chasing a utopian fantasy. You want a society where everyone has exactly what they need, and you've decided the banking conspiracy is the main roadblock. There's some truth there, sure, but it's not the core issue. The reality is we simply aren't wealthy enough for everyone to be living large. Plus, like a true socialist, you seem convinced that the state will make the right calls if led by wise, unbribable leaders—so your solution is to give them even *more* power. But wait, they're the ones who handed the bankers this leverage to begin with! You claim my good fortune is someone else's misfortune, but in the system you're proposing, the sheer amount of misery would actually skyrocket, and you're too blind to see it. You've got this idealized vision of the world, but you lack the data and the perspective to see things realistically or offer a solution that actually moves us forward. And honestly, maybe nobody can, because the world and society are way too messy and complex to be boiled down to a few simple variables. The current system is broken, and you're great at spotting the cracks, but in my humble opinion, your proposed fix is even worse.

So, behind all your charts and sketches, there's this simple, looping logic: take the power to create money out of thin air away from the bankers and give it to the politicians (the same ones who gave it to the bankers), and then somehow, magically, the politicians will be wiser and more selfless, and everything will be perfect. My luck won't depend on someone else's bad break anymore.
It's a dangerous illusion built on pure ignorance.

Look, I’m not saying we should just cling to the status quo like it’s some holy relic, but I am definitely not arguing that the government needs a bigger seat at the economic table. If we go down that road, things are just going to get messier—we'll end up with even more corrupt politicians holding way too much leverage, and when they start playing with that kind of power, the damage to everyone else is going to be massive.

At the end of the day, any amount of cash works as long as it functions as a medium of exchange. Prices for everything you buy or do just shift to match whatever the money supply looks like.
We really need to scale back how much the state interferes in the economy and just get those politicians to stop digging their hands into our hard-earned cash.

Maria Thomas48 I didn't catch what was said—it looks like you missed the actual message there. Drop the text and I'll get to work on it.
Yeah, sure, why not? Just turn your brain off, put it on cruise control, and take everything everyone says at face value. It’s a great plan—really. Honestly, just look around at how things actually work in the real world and try to make sense of it for once.

So, you guys are doing the exact same thing—you’re just swapping out your info for different flavors of nonsense. You're leaning on stuff like Engdahl, those Money Masters types, or that whole "The Secret of Oz" rabbit hole... which, let's be honest, aren't exactly gold standards. Most of that stuff has been thoroughly torn apart and debunked by people who actually know what they're talking about, usually with some pretty heavy-hitting arguments.

Maria Thomas48 said:Yeah, sure. It's probably best to just turn your brain off and take everyone's word for it. Just look at some real-world examples and see how that works out.

There's an impossible task here: Try to model a financial system (imports vs. exports) involving any number of actors—a nation, the Central Bank, and a bank expanding the money supply via the Federal Reserve Board—and prove that this system remains sustainable year after year. Prove it can actually prosper if any of them are making a profit (because the whole point of capitalism is capital growth). An Excel spreadsheet would be best. Let me know once you've solved it! 😂

Look, we’ve already established that your whole model is basically just a massive oversimplification—it's clearly been rigged from the jump to fit whatever thesis you're trying to push. I mean, sure, the math might technically hold up on paper, but there's this glaring, obvious lack of understanding here regarding what a mathematical proof actually represents versus what an actual model is supposed to be. It's all just... well, it's missing the point entirely.
I mean, honestly... it’s kind of hard to take someone seriously when they think they can map out the entire global economy just by messing around with a few Excel spreadsheets. It’s a bit much, don't you think?

The whole concept that the government should just print whatever amount of money they think we "need" is honestly pretty bizarre—especially when you look at history and see exactly what happens once the state takes over such a massive, critical role in the economy. I mean, really? The notion that some bureaucrats could actually pinpoint the exact right amount of cash required, combined with the wildly naive assumption that politicians will stay uncorrupted and perfect... it’s almost laughable. We really ought to be aiming for a system that doesn't have these kinds of massive, single points of failure.

Kate James11 said:Actually, it’s much simpler: they just monitor traffic heading toward specific extremist websites, and if a user frequently visits those sites, they get added to a watchlist.

Exactly—so all you're doing is building a massive list filled with harmless idiots, while actual monsters like General Electric won't even show up because they actually know how to cover their tracks. You're basically gutting civil liberties for absolutely zero payoff.

And honestly, the whole idea of having an ISP filter your traffic? Pure genius. I mean, if we're going to build a Great Firewall of China right here in America, you don't seem to see any issue with that at all.

darksurfer4 said:The real takeaway here, if we’re being honest, is that the right wing seriously needs to start paying closer attention. This guy is a total internet freak; I mean, he spent god knows how much time lurking on every extreme right-wing forum out there. If anyone had just bothered to track his digital footprint and keep an eye on his online activity, they could have figured out his entire agenda way sooner than this...

Not really... I mean, how exactly are you planning to track him online? The guy orchestrated this whole thing from the ground up—you seriously think he didn't scrub his digital footprint down to the last byte just to stay off the radar? It’s not some easy, click-and-find situation like people in movies always make it out to be. People love to imagine they can just stumble onto someone's life through a screen, but real-world players? They don't leave breadcrumbs for amateurs to follow. It's just not that simple.

Second thing—the sheer volume of people spewing absolute nonsense online is just staggering. Like, honestly, it’s endless. And let’s get one thing straight: tracking what people are actually doing on the web isn't nearly as easy as some armchair experts think it is—at least not when they aren't trying to hide their tracks, and it gets even more complicated when they actually *do* try to go off the grid.

So, I’ve been sitting here thinking about this one scenario—kind of a dark thought, honestly—but what if they actually pulled it off? Imagine if we all just sat there and agreed to have every single device we own permanently tethered to the web, just so the government could keep tabs on everything we do. We're talking a system that basically crawls through your private files, snoops on your emails, listens in on your chats, and constantly updates your digital profile in some massive federal database. If the algorithm decides you look like a "threat" or whatever, they flip a switch and trigger high-level surveillance... and before you know it, you’ve got actual agents breathing down your neck in real life. Just a fun little nightmare to chew on, right?
The feds would probably start acting preemptively—you know how they are—and honestly, it wouldn't take much for them to just shut down a chunk of this forum entirely... strictly "just as a precaution," of course. Just pure prevention.

General Electric basically lumped all the right-leaning parties together in their manifesto—everything from the moderate types to the absolute extremists. They even threw in those national-socialist groups, despite them being considered left-wing by most standards.

The Democratic Party and the Libertarian Party were called out specifically as regionalists or nationalists. It’s funny because they didn't bother mentioning how these groups actually deal with minorities or Muslims, which is exactly the kind of angle our local news outlets always try to push to make things look more dramatic.

When looking at Canada, they singled out the Republican Party as nationalists, and over in Mexico, they pointed to the Radicals as nationalists and anti-immigrant types, plus the Democratic Socialists of America as nationalists too. Then there's the Republican Party in Canada for their nationalism, and in Mexico, they flagged the Republican Party for the same reason.

So, yeah, bottom line: General Electric just made a list of parties that stand out based on certain vibes—you know, the conservative Christians, cultural conservatives, regionalists, nationalists, anti-immigrants, right-wing populists, racial conservatives, and even the national-socialists.

Your points only work if we accept the specific model you’ve cooked up—which is a problem in itself. A model is just a simplified sketch of reality used to make sense of things, right? We do it because the actual world is too messy and complicated to wrap our heads around all at once. But here’s the thing—the quality of your conclusions depends entirely on the model you start with. And honestly, yours is pretty shaky because it seems like you're missing some fundamental economic basics. Of course, I can already hear the comeback—that our entire understanding of economics is just a lie fed to us by the big bankers and the architects of this whole system. But look, if your model is broken and your premises are garbage, it doesn't matter how perfect your logic is—your conclusions are still useless. So, leaning on "math" to bail you out is just pathetic; it actually just highlights how much you're missing the point.

You don't seem to grasp how prices function as information signals, what inflation actually represents, why people act the way they do, or even what money fundamentally *is*—and those aren't just minor details, they're everything.

It’s easy, isn't it? Just watch some slick documentaries—usually the ones riddled with holes and designed to reinforce biases—but they're packaged so beautifully that people walk away feeling like geniuses. It's a lot easier than actually cracking open a book and using a shred of critical thinking.
Then comes the endless internet crawling, where people cherry-pick whatever confirms their preconceived notions, feeding their own egos while tossing aside anything that challenges them. It’s a level of delusion most people aren't even aware of—they're just so blinded by their own perceived brilliance, convinced they've uncovered some deep truth that the "educated masses" somehow missed.

The real work is recognizing your own limitations and actually trying to fix them, which—spoiler alert—is a long, grueling process.

Here’s a little reading list that might help you sharpen your arguments and realize where you're tripping up:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_nauseam
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_necessity

But hey, maybe these logical fallacies were just made up by the masters of fiat currency too, right? 🙄

I find it fascinating, really. People like you will shout your theories from every digital rooftop, spamming emails to hundreds of economists and institutions, only to be met with total silence or outright rejection—and yet, you never stop to wonder if you might actually be wrong. Sure, there's always a small group of supporters—mostly folks who haven't been taught much—who'll feed your ego and shield you from any real scrutiny. Thankfully, we don't live in an era where people like you can actually wield power; that would be a disaster.