Pyramid Comment

This journal takes an alternative view on current affairs and other subjects. The approach is likely to be contentious and is arguably speculative. The content of any article is also a reminder of the status of those affairs at that date. All comments have been disabled. Any and all unsolicited or unauthorised links are absolutely disavowed.

Saturday, November 01, 2008

Money Machine

Money cannot be created and obviously it does not constitute reality and perceived wealth. Wealth is generated only by possession and so to possess more is to increase wealth. But true wealth cannot be increased without a concomitant decrease elsewhere. Redistribution by repossession: Winners And Losers.

Oil companies are drowning in oceans of 'profit', but this profiteering comes from somewhere. To acquire a financial benefit, a sale has to be made to a buyer. Oil itself is just a dirty and very messy substance that only has potential to move money around once it has been converted into a volatile waste product: petrol, diesel or kerosine. The heavy fractions may lubricate the wheels of industry, but all oil derivatives lubricate the money machine. Exclusively.

Money laundering - cleaning the dirty oil

Paradoxically, the cynical trinity of alcohol, tobacco and oil are all gargantuan money makers and are totally destroyed in the process of becoming valuable. The consumer or user is responsible for the destruction and so the money makers get rid of that responsibility by simply moving it on to the end-user. In the global phenomenon of sustainable resources, these three constitute the absolute opposite.

Buying and Selling: originally, before money was invented, a bartering system would cause trade to occur between parties. When cash money began to be circulated (from the shadows of the very distant past), the owner of the source would have controlled the flow in totality. The Egyptians and Romans had coinage though nowadays all countries have a currency.

The perception is perpetuated today with the invention of interest, once cynically described as Just Compensation:

  • "...usury has always evoked the notion of money demanded in excess of what is owed on a loan, disrupting a relationship of equality between people, whereas interest was seen as referring to just compensation to the lender."
The concept of coinage (a system of metal currency) goes back to 560 BC (Croesus).