When is enough, enough?

reply to post by xxshadowfaxx

thanks for that link it raises some great points.
equality isnt hard, we just have to want it.

Originally posted by buni11687
reply to post by ShortMemory

 

Im sorry if some of this didnt make sense

It makes sense to me. You pretty much spoke my exact feelings. Ive been waiting for a worldwide movement and it is finally here.

thanks for the support, it always helps to know your not alone..and i guess i should really thank ows for giving us that.
now that its here, its not happening quick enough...i want proper change already. i just worry that if its going to happen its going to be bloody

reply to post by ShortMemory

it always helps to know your not alone

Before I found ATS, I thought I was a tiny voice, if not completely alone. After I joined ATS, I found that others held a same/similar voice.

Fast forward to 2011. The same/similar voice that I had, is now worldwide.

reply to post by buni11687

Before I found ATS, I thought I was a tiny voice, if not completely alone. After I joined ATS, I found that others held a same/similar voice. Fast forward to 2011. The same/similar voice that I had, is now worldwide.

i know what you mean, its not hard to tell that people in power try to isolate people with our views. it feels good to know you believed in something before everyone started doing it, i owe that to my parents..always had the ability to see things for what they were.
yep worldwide and still growing!

Originally posted by ShortMemory
you trade goods for other goods and services. it worked for hundreds of years.

It works for the elite who have lots and lots of goods and serf labor to trade. It doesn't work so well for the poor and the unskilled, who tend to remain poor and unskilled in a barter economy. There are just too many inefficiencies in the barter system to make it work for most people.

Say you're a farmer; you grow vegetables and have some livestock. You get cancer and you need a medicine made only in China. China doesn't want your vegetables and livestock; they can grow their own. They don't want any services from you; they have their own farmers. So you have to arrange the trade through some sort of middleman. And he has to arrange not only the purchase of your medicine, but its transportation, meaning he has to have on hand something that both a Chinese pharmaceutical company and a freight company want. Not all pharmaceutical companies or freight companies will accept what he's willing to trade, so the best deal available may be a bad deal. Maybe the trade ends up costing you half your farm, which the middleman will give to a real estate developer who will provide the middleman with raw steel, which the middleman will give to another middleman for ten million boxes of toothpaste, which he will trade to the Chinese for your course of treatment, after which they will trade sixty in-flight defibrillators to an airline to fly it to Los Angeles. From there, your middleman arranges for you to trade the output of your remaining farm to have another freight company which will fly your medicine to you. You die while all this wheeling-dealing is going on.

Here's an alternate scenario: You're a wealthy plutocrat. You own a wheat distribution company and buy all the wheat in America. You don't give the farmers very good exchanges for the wheat, because you don't have to. The business of multiple-exchange bartering is so complex the farmers can't get out of their relationship with you, and no one else can break into the barter lines you've created. You get cancer and need a medicine made only in China. You contract directly with the Chinese to send them eight million bushels of wheat for your course of treatment. The Chinese send you the medicine and you recover and live a long and healthy life. The wheat farmers, because they must deal only with people who buy wheat, continue to be your virtual slaves.

A third scenario: You're a farmer. You get cancer and need a medicine made only in China. You contact the manufacturer over their web site and initiate an electronic transfer of money. They use an electronic transfer of money to pay a shipping company to deliver the medicine to you. You recover and live a long and healthy life.

Money works and it's fair because it's simple and everyone agrees (more or less) on its value. Anyone with money can do business with anyone who wants money. You don't have to hunt down obscure barter items like a quest in some video game, you just call up a trade partner and ask them how much they want for whatever they're selling. And it's very easy to compare competing offers: if you sell grain, you know that $8/bushel is better than $7/bushel. Under a barter system, you have to compare the values of the unlike objects and services. Which is a better deal: one set of curtain rods per bushel, or a pair of gently used children's pants? To know the answer to that question, you have to know how many curtain rods or pants it would take to acquire the goods and services you need, probably after a middleman takes his cut. And let's not even get into emergency expenditures, necessary exchanges you cannot possibly anticipate or plan for.