<Believe it or not, for many Americans, repaying your debts is not just good business, but a matter of morality and character.>
Heck CB, some of my best friends are Americans. I'm sure, like me and millions of people around the world, maintaining a good reputation is important to hordes of Americans. They do not steal [even if nobody is looking], they respect other people and their property, even if they are only foreigners.
Not only that, but I believe Americans should be treated as human and that they have many good human characteristics. They should get a fair trial, then a fair hanging, if they commit crimes in other countries [but only trial by military tribunal - not an actual civil trial and only by 2/3 majority, not unanimous verdict].
On the borrowed effort business, I think I'm not getting my message across quite right. When somebody gives you a dollar in exchange for something you've given them, they owe you some effort. They have borrowed effort from you. That's because you have done something and they haven't yet - they gave you a promise.
Yes, to get the dollar, they already made some effort, so they have been repaid by you for their effort. But it's you, the holder of the dollar, who is left holding the bag. If all the dollars suddenly go 'poof' due to sudden panic and debasement or political madness in the USA electorate [which can happen - and some would say is actually quite likely and even underway right now], then you will have expended effort to get that dollar but have not been repaid.
In the same way, the billions of dollars given to people around the world who sold stuff to Americans, are holding the bag and hoping the game keeps going and they do in fact get to exchange those dollars they are holding for actual goods and services.
I know everyone [except me] thinks that the USA dollar is as good as God; "In God We Trust". But we atheists are a little suspicious of mysticism and too much trust in some supernatural spook which only the priesthood in the Federal Reserve seems to be able to meet in person. They think it's as inviolable as the second law of thermodynamics. An arrow in time. Which, uniquely [as far as I know], I also consider to be incorrect. The second law is that in heat transfer processes, entropy increases. This is alleged throughout the universe. It's wrong!
The money-printing game is great for the USA and while everything ticks along nicely, it's fair reward for providing a robust financial system which the world can trade on. It's like the invention of CDMA which the world can communicate with provided a royalty is paid to QUALCOMM.
I happen to think there are better ways to run a currency and that competition for the financial transactions business will lead to the creation of it. It's about the biggest business on the planet. Leaving the printing presses to Uncle Al and Uncle Sam without competition is not likely to continue in the free world. The Q will send the $ the way of the horseshoe [good for certain anachronistic purposes; such as dealing in third world countries without cyberspace, illegal goods, bribery and the like, but not for real, open, legal goods and services].
I understand very well the main wealth-creating processes have nothing to do with money printing. I explained that - laws, private property, security, contract enforcement, free enterprise, capitalism. Money printing is just the measuring stick of the output of the wealth-creating process. But having good financial systems is part of the wealth-creation process [it's too hard using gold coins for example].
Mq |
