How is at a time when consumers are no longer slaves that the economy tanks and bankers are killing nation-states. Nation-states exist for one reason only: they create a national society of people that are assumed to be related enough to each other so that society can function. To make national markets possible nation-states need a currency: national if not yet replaced by a regional one. And for the currency nation-states need banks.
Nation-states need banks for a different reason than they used to. Prior to 1971 banks provided useful services: hold money safely in accounts and write out loans with that money for collatoral. Since 1971 however banks write out fiat money: they lend 10 times or more the amount of money they own (the actual factor depends on the regime of the currency). Money is not backed by anything: that means all the outstanding money cannot be redeemed all at once for anything valuable. That means that our entire economies are gigantic bubbles. Think about it: if all the money out there cannot be redeemed all at once for valuable things, then why is everything so pricey? Money is valuable for only two reasons:
- Because national governments claim to back up the money in case banks fail (as they’ve been doing for some time now).
- Because we have to pay our taxes with it.
This doesn’t make any sense: governments should never bail out banks. All banks do is hold our money, and the money it does lend is backed by valuable collateral. Then why are things so messed up? Since 1971 capitalism (the accumulation of money with the purpose of dominating less wealthy people) got replaced with debtism: making money out of thin air. Many people will deny this is true, but you can easily do the math yourself.
Saying we’re in the Great Unwind of all that phoney money is kicking in an open door. Nation-states are not supposed to protect banks in the first place, but when they do they should protect the interests of its people. Then why aren’t they? Why are they pampering bankers with taxpayers’ money? There is only one explanation of course. The obvious explanation is that governments are stupid, but that would be the wrong answer. The correct answer is that banks own not just governments but nation-states. By lending and lending and lending us money at an interest they have control over everything we do. When nation-states would say no to bankers and their rich tax-funded bonuses banks would stop being the nice guys they’ve always been and get what they believe is theirs in other ways.
If banks would do that - to which they have the right under our brilliant legal systems - nation-states would stop to exist. I pretty sure very few people get what this means but we don’t have to look any further than Iceland. Technically the Icelandic nation is not bankrupt because they got a big loan from the IMF. But the Icelandic people are bankrupt: they can’t pay back the loans on their overpriced houses and luxurious SUVs. And here’s the point to really think hard about: banks don’t confiscate. Banks let people live in their homes although they can’t make payments, and they let them drive in their cars although they can’t make payments. Weird, isn’t it?
Look at the alternative: the people of Icelands get kicked out of their homes and are forced to live in the streets. Tens of thousands of people living on the street and at the same time many thousands of empty houses owned by the banks. It would simply mean the end of the Icelandic nation-state, and an example bankers don’t want to show to the rest of the world.
The question is: even with collection suspended, where is the morality in this? Nation-states realize they can’t protect through national society the people they are supposed to protect from the bankers. That’s why everything is in a lull right now: the earth beneath our feet is shifting but everything is seemingly calm. Could it be the calm before the end of nation-states?
People are very scared and they should be. They know what has happened to them is not right, in the moral sense of the word. And the people that are to be blamed are not only walking away, they’re walking away smiling. There simply is no more morality in nation-states, and there are no options available for restoring morality within the context of nation-states. What national society is supposed to protect us from is predatory behavior in others. For that protection we accept social boundaries and constraints. When it turns out predators are unchecked then why are we the people still behaving morally?
The problem is with the people that are supposed to protect us, not with us. They’re acting immoral but we obviously find ways to act continue to act morally towards each other. We are re-defining morality these days, every day. We are showing our governments that we can and do act morally even after they’ve thrown all morality that is supposed to come with nation-states out of the window. Now that nation-states are no longer the source of morality, who needs them? What’s going to happen when people are brought before the courts for claiming back the money on those outstanding loans? Are we the people - the only remaining source of morality - going to stand by idle and watch our fellow citizens being judged by nation-states that have lost all morality?
What governments and bankers do not realize - and what many of us don’t realize - is the game has ended. It has ended and it did so quietly. What remains is large chunks of national civil law that have become unenforceable, and citizens have taken over morality. We still need a justice system but we don’t need it from nation states. We still need a currency but we don’t need it from nation-states. Everything that is good about our world we have learned from national society. Everything that is wrong about our world today is because nation-states are overdue.
We have to declare this. We have to walk to the streets - quietly - all on the same day and let our governments know that on that day all nation-states in the world stop existing. I can’t do anything by myself, but we can stick our heads together. All we have to do is pick a date and let as many people as we can know what to do. It’s simple, and it will solve a lot of problems.
Probably the best way to get started in on Twitter. I’m @devijvers, let’s start this conversation there. I don’t know who you are so give me a ping using #morality. Oh, and don’t listen to anybody predicting anarchy. These people don’t know what the word means.
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