Money is a debt derivative, and the principles of our civilization

[ThePythonicCow]

Money (as in the Dollars, Pounds, Euros and such of our currencies) is NOT simply printed into existence. It is far more powerful, and dangerous, than that.

It is most commonly lent, in exchange for debt, or in exchange for facilitating the work of the money masters (such as bribes, salaries for bureaucrat, funding NGO's, black ops, ...). The value of your money derives from the value of the debt, fraud and ruthlessness backing it.

Our money is the foundational derivative of our monetary system, just more liquid than mortgage backed securities, stock market derivatives or profits from drug and human trafficking.

The most wealthy families use such derivatives, by means of various banking, legal, government, labor, military, intelligence, professional, education and propaganda organizations, to control humanity. Now AI is adding "computational" to these organizations. As I found myself skilled at managing "their" money, so now I am working on learning to use AI, and similarly my son has developed some skill with guns ... such tools can be useful ... the intention of the user is what matters more.

If you live off money, whether earnings or savings (such as I once did as a paid programmer, and now do off Social Security, which is backed by US Treasury debt), then you risk being a debt slave.

The value of the debt backing "your" money (whether your neighbor's car loan, his child's student loans, or the debt of a major nation) is a derivative of that debt. If that debt fails, so does your money.

To minimize revolt, or perhaps better stated to control when revolts occur, the banks, governments, insurance companies and other monetary based institutions might hide that collapse from you, by playing more games with this ocean of derivatives. So perhaps my Social Security payments will come to be backed by a (Trump?) Sovereign Wealth Fund's claims (that is, derivatives) on the land (farming, mining, drilling) and profits of industry (itself a derivative of their factories' productivity).

Once we exchange our own work and behavior, for money or assets (including most houses these days) essentially priced in the debt market, our financial worth is based on derivatives of the (currently primarily debt and fraud based) monetary system.

Training for this can begin with allowances to small children for "good behavior", "doing tasks", or "good grades". It matters whether one is training to build a child's physical, mental and spiritual growth, or their "public" appearance of power and renown. No doubt Bill Gates was raised and rewarded the second way.

Such "derivation" may well be essential to building humans, families, communities, nations and civilizations. What matters is the intention of that training.

When I was a child, the local public school had been bound closely to a healthy farming community for 200 years ... it trained me in the values of that community.

When I was a child, I demonstrated to the local school board that the Principal's wife (an English teacher) had stolen a couple hundred dollars of school funds. The school board accepted the resignation of both of them ... no lawyers involved ... just people who had known and truted each other for generations. I gained trust with those who knew. One has to find such communities as the Amish for that now, on most any non-trivial scale.

When I was a child, we repaid our debts because that was the right thing to do in our families and communities. Nowadays, we track our institutional "Credit Score" to gain better bank loan terms.

Our civilization has failed to develop a monetary system that fundamentally reflects the finer qualities of individual humans, families or communities. Rather it reflects the rapaciousness of those must successful at seeking power on a global scale, and measures the compliance of the individual with "the rule of (their) law."

Perhaps our civilization is approaching the time for another galactic magnetic current sheet.

[petra]

When I was a child...

I thought the world was the way it was supposed to be. It took me into my teenage years to realize things were all wrong. I spent most of the start of my life working illegally. I would play diablo 2 ladder with my bot, and sell the items on eBay. I also made decent money auctioneering cards on magic the gathering online. After that I started working for a scammer making websites. It wasn't until I moved to BC with my boyfriend that I realized jobs were supposed to have tax.

[grapevine]

Interesting thread, thanks Paul. . .

I looked up the history of money which of course started simply with bartering and exchange but where it gets complicated is the idea of "worth", ie that something is worth more than another thing. And that got me thinking about salaries and people's "worth" being tied into that, which then becomes tied to "class" and our place in society.

Arriving at today, with the threat of food shortages and famine looming, it's quite easy to see how a tin of lentils could become priceless in the months to come and money will once again be relegated sharply backwards. Which then begs the question why are we being encouraged to buy gold and silver when it will be just as useless as money?

[ThePythonicCow]

Posted by grapevine (here)
Which then begs the question why are we being encouraged to buy gold and silver when it will be just as useless as money?

To the practical extend of my resources (time, energy, material), i spread my prep pile across more than one area that might be valuable for me, in my circumstances.

In this case, in the chaos I anticipate in the remaining years of this life, I expect several of my preps to be worthwhile, perhaps at different times. When I have the spare time or ability, I prep a little more in the area that looks to give me the best benefit (for me) to cost (given my time and material capacity).

Our future looks to be "quite interesting". We will a variety of challenges, Your prep should have a variety that best balances with your anticipated risk/reward opportunities.

Minimize your risk of getting it seriously wrong at the wrong time, while improving your potential to do well or at least ok for most of the changes you anticipate as best you can.

For the precious metals, I would guess there is a good chance there will be a time when they are a fine place to have invested some, gold for its likely return at some point as a core asset for ordinary people (as usual happens with the collapse of a debt-money "fiat" system, and silver more for its likely value as a conductive metal with extraordinary electrical properties.

So for the lentils vs metals case: yes, get some of both, if you can and if you see each might be worth holding, given your abilities, resources, concerns and passions. Later, sell, gift, use or barter, with similar tradeoffs.

[ThePythonicCow]

Posted by grapevine (here)
where it gets complicated is the idea of "worth"

Well, I might use the word "worth" a bit differently. Like many of the one syllable old English or Germanic words in English as I know it, I take that word to be a more general term, not a "complicated" word like many words of Latin or Greek origins that are used in more technical material. This reflects my ancestors, who were commoners in Northern Europe, who had their day-to-day language for common use, then were invaded by the Romans, who had been informed by the Greeks, and brought in foreign (to us) technologies and concepts.

Claude Haiku 4.5 tells me:
=== ===

The word "worth" has a solid Germanic pedigree:

Old English weorþ → Proto-Germanic *werþaz → Proto-Indo-European *wert- (to turn, to become, to be)

The root notion is "to turn" or "to become," which evolved into the sense of "value" or "what something turns into" (its equivalent, its price). This metaphorical bridge—from "turning into" to "being equivalent to"—is common in value semantics across languages

=== ===

That's actually a surprisingly good application of the word "worth". It means what can you turn something into. A Baht note in Bangkok, a cigarette in prison, and a US Dollar in Denver might each be worth a tidbit from a street vendor or cell mate in the corresponding location, but nothing in the other two of those same locations. Commonly, the location a use of the word "worth" applies to is left to be implied from the context of its usage. For most of us who don't prescribe to beliefs such as the Egyptian pharaohs allegedly held, nothing is worth anything in the coffin beside our corpse.

I would study the meaning of the word "worth" in the etymology section of your dictionary (now via AI in my case), rather than in the College of Business Economics graduate courses of the University of North Texas (which I actually attended ... for one week ... before circumstances sent me along another path.)