How did the European Union become such a messed up democracy

[copious]

I think its the concept of money is rudimentarily flawed to begin with.

Presume you have 2 people in a vacuum and each has $100. Total wealth = $200.
Person A wants to buy something costing $200 and borrows $100 from Person B.
Person B charges interest of 1% off the amount of $100 he loans to Person A due a month later.

Fast forward 1 month later, even if Person A has $100 to return Person B, where is Person A going to find that extra $1 to return Person B?
Answer: This extra dollar never existed anyway, and is impossible to synthesize unless you 'globalise' and make that problem someone else's somehow.

Fast forward that to today's world with proportional zeros at the back of the example above and basically its financial musical chairs with nations instead. Who is going to be left without a chair when the music stops?
We've got suckered into the idea that all wealth is infinite when it is inflationary debt at the engine of this fallacy of providence.
Worse, we get frustrated over imaginary money that never existed anyway, yet earns interest off itself and over the years breathed a life of its own.

The Bible mentions that only God can make something out of nothing.
This 'interest' thing. That's the poison. The more imaginary dollars we create and foolishly expect people to pay despite knowing the fact they can't is unbridled malice at its vilest potency. And that's the underlying reason why the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Imaginary money the rich behold the poor to pay knowing they already scratch the bottom of the barrel.

In the Quran, knowingly beholding someone to pay you interest is regarded to be 'Haram' (illegal, prohibited) because it triggers an exponential algorithm of seismic future calamities and is better nipped in the bud. But today that's rampant. For those who read about Jal and Dajjal or to which subjects like Endtimes or Revelations in the bible pique your interest, all these machinations of today's modern world and imbued together with something bigger.

That's right people, the plot thickens.

[octobrev]

Under the current banking practices, person B could loan $900 holding his $100 as reserve and expect the same 1% interest that doesn't exist anywhere.

[Magn]

My main reservation about interest is that there is no cap.

You end up with a stupid situation where an entity (person, nation, company, whatever) can barely pay the interest on a debt, let alone the debt itself.

When you get to that point, you have glorified slavery.

I agree that there should be some sort of interest when you lend money (afterall, it is an inconvenience to the lender to temporarily part with the sum and there is a risk of not getting it back), but there should be some sort of cap on the interest paid, say 10% of the original amount so that an entity can't generate oodles of money doing nothing, but collecting interest. Once the interest cap is reached, the only increase on the amount due should be inflation.

Furthermore, I think there should be more limitations on what you can buy with debt (getting a vehicle, because you need it for the job you just got is fine, getting a 40 inches TV screen isn't).

[octobrev]

Having any interest at all breaks the system and causes perpetual debt.

[Magn]

Having any interest at all breaks the system and causes perpetual debt.

Interest breaks the system when you can't pay it.

In a system where wealth can only be traded (natural resources only), that's a problem.

However, to some extent, wealth is generated.

You can't generate natural resources, but you can generate skilled labor and intellectual property (books, musics, games, etc).

So to some extent, if by taking wealth (borrowing), you generate more than the interest on the wealth, then you essentially generated wealth which you shared partly with the person you borrowed from.

The travesty occurs when the lender takes the lion's share of the profits or when non-renewable ressources (which are the property of all) are not distributed fairly.

In essence, natural resources don't lend themselves well to a free market view of things, but labor (to a lesser extent) and intellectual property in particular behave somewhat better in such a model.

Someone being able to get 10 times the amount of natural resources as the next guy (when the ressources are used for pure self-interest and not for some enterprise that will produce a useful service) breaks the system, but someone being able to get 10 times the intellectual property doesn't.

[octobrev]

That's true but only from a micro perspective. There are roughly 10 trillion us dollars in existence and over 15 trillion dollars in debt because every dollar that enters the system "must" be paid back with interest. The problem is masked by gdp measurement, which counts the same few dollars multiple times as they trade hands. The eu follows suit if I'm not mistaken.

[Magn]

That's true but only from a micro perspective. There are roughly 10 trillion us dollars in existence and over 15 trillion dollars in debt because every dollar that enters the system "must" be paid back with interest. The problem is masked by gdp measurement, which counts the same few dollars multiple times as they trade hands. The eu follows suit if I'm not mistaken.

Ok, so what you're saying isn't that interest is bad per say, but that it is applied badly right now.

Here's an example of well applied interest:

You are starting a business venture, but are short on funds.

So you borrow money to finance your enterprise.

However, if it doesn't work out, you may not be able to pay lenders back so to account for the risk they are taking in financing your venture (and the inconvenience of making their capital temporarily unavailable to them if you do pay them back... they might fall on hard times and need the capital right away after all), they charge you some interest.

The rate of interest can vary depending on how safe the venture is, but it should be reasonable (not 20% applied indefinitely).

I don't see anything wrong with that model.

I think the real problem is that money is borrowed and interest is charged (and at usury rates) for the wrong reasons.

That is the real evil.

[octobrev]

I'm not against a reasonable interest rate within the bounds of the system but the central bank cannot charge interest on the currency it provides. Everybody is upset about their national debts but it's absolutely impossible to ever actually pay it off.

[Kemia]

**** the bankers, **** the "european union" **** the north american union, **** THE IDEA OF A CENTRAL BANKING AND ONE WORLD CURRENCY, **** THE IDEA OF A ONE WORLD GOVERNMENT


yes i know, bad words. Sorry but seriously, **** CONFORMISTS!!!!

[Kemia]

Ok, so what you're saying isn't that interest is bad per say, but that it is applied badly right now.

Here's an example of well applied interest:

You are starting a business venture, but are short on funds.

So you borrow money to finance your enterprise.

However, if it doesn't work out, you may not be able to pay lenders back so to account for the risk they are taking in financing your venture (and the inconvenience of making their capital temporarily unavailable to them if you do pay them back... they might fall on hard times and need the capital right away after all), they charge you some interest.

The rate of interest can vary depending on how safe the venture is, but it should be reasonable (not 20% applied indefinitely).

I don't see anything wrong with that model.

I think the real problem is that money is borrowed and interest is charged (and at usury rates) for the wrong reasons.

That is the real evil.

'


to me the real evil is the fact the private bankers can do whatever they want in our planet and get away with murder and rape....... is fcking pathetic!

[goodz]

http://www.debtclock.ca/index.php?op...d=43&Itemid=40

I owe 16 grand!

[Petehamilton]

I reject the premise, after 2 world wars, this is progress...

[Dakke]

One big problem with the EU is the language barriers. 23 official languages is not maintainable in the long run. That excludes minority languages that is over 100.

Different languages (even different dialects do, but much less) creates a natural "we and them"-attitude. Such attitude creates misunderstandings and conflicts which are contra-productive for any union.

Sure, in most areas in EU, English is well understood as a second language by at least the younger population. But it is IMO a huge difference between using a native language compared a second.

Actually I believe that if there where a lot fewer languages in the world then there would be a lot fewer conflicts.

[crashteal]

I reject the premise, after 2 world wars, this is progress...

After 2 world wars, we should be better off then this.

[spyder882001]

it's because its a democracy and not a republic.