Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Money - pt1

Even though we are actively encouraged not to think about them in such terms, many of the ideas labelled as ‘conspiracy theories’ are essentially theoretical models put together to explain how the world works.

Virtually everything we believe about science and human affairs is underpinned and challenged by a mass of theoretical models. Models that are, rightly, subject to a continuous process of scrutiny, debate and refinement.

And then there are ‘conspiracy theories’ which are subject to no more than derision.

Very often the differences between an idea that gets into a textbook and one that can only find a home in some dark corner of the Internet are slight. Most ‘conspiracy theories’, discounting the ones that genuinely are plain bonkers, become labelled as such because they fail two key tests -
  • They attribute events to some controlling intelligence which, post-Enlightenment, is a definite 'no no'. All truly clever, truly educated people know that everything that happens in the world is either random or deterministic
  • Conspiracy theories are sometimes rejected not because they are conspiracy theories but because they are the wrong kind of conspiracy theory and clash with an established paradigm. Hence, suggesting that elements of the US Government might have been involved in 9/11 is insane but believing 9/11 was carried out by a shadowy international crime network controlled from an underground base in remote Central Asia is supremely rational.
-

I mention all this because I’m beginning to detect to re-emergence on the Internet of an all-time classic Unified Conspiracy Theory, or should I say theoretical model, that fans of 1920s and 1930s history will know and love.

It is, of course…


BANKERS CONTROL THE WORLD!!!


The basic version Bankers Control the WORLD!!! conspiracy theory goes something like this...

  • Using fractional reserve banking techniques, Central Bankers flood a target economy with insane amounts of money that they whisk out of thin air. The result is a BOOM of massive inflation, excessive consumption, trade deficits and indebtedness...


Then, when the time is right…
  • The Bankers move their own money into commodities or alternate currencies that retain inherent value.
Then…
  • The Bankers BUST the bubble they created by sharply restricting the money supply, causing a major recession/ depression...


Then...
  • The Bankers start foreclosing on everyone like a bastard, whilst bringing their own money back into the economy and picking up the resulting bargains on offer.

    Those people who took out loans when prices were high and money was cheap and freely available who manage to avoid foreclosure will still be bollocksed by the effort of servicing those loans
    with money that is now neither cheap nor freely available.

    It’s a Grapes of Wrath thing...


  • Repeat for centuries

Obviously, any parallels drawn between current times and the late 1920s can only go so far. For example, the prospects of people having to buy single loaves of bread with wheelbarrows filled with devalued, hyper-inflated money are slim. Everyone uses credit cards now. Much more convenient and easier on the arms. Besides, good-quality wheelbarrows would be expensive and could be bartered for bread.


The deluxe version of the Bankers CONTROL the World!!! model includes such optional extras as…
  • Buying-off or in some other way controlling all major political parties and stifling political expression
  • The establishment of restrictive security measures and databasing in advance of the bubble bursting and the social unrest that will go with it
  • Invading oil-rich countries to stop rag heads popping the bubble early by selling their oil in a currency of their choosing
  • Preparing the groundwork for excuses to distract people from what really is fucking their lives up. Stuff like, ooh I don’t know, an ill-defined, unwinnable global war, or targeting and demonising a particular social class or racial group, or maybe invoking the spectre of impending ecological catastrophe, something like that
How crap would living in a world like that be, eh?


The 1920s and 1930s - a good time for lamp design, not such a good time for economic or political moderation
/ big art deco fan
/ not so keen on depressions or fascism
/ except the uniforms


Of course, as with all models, the real fun comes when you test your new model out by applying it to the real world to see if it offers any new insights into that world and, the acid test of any serious model or theory, gauging the quality of its predictive power...


.

7 comments:

Wolfie said...

can assure you that this is not a "conspiracy theory" at all. My work gives me full access to confidential reports and investment strategy proposals which underline this but naturally they are couched in more positive and abstruse terms.

As a full-time cynic I would argue that we have simply gone through a steady evolution; the age of Kings, the age of Governments and now the age of Financial Institutions. I guess its human nature to be wicked and greedy and removing one lot of bastards only results in a new and even worse set of bastards. c.f. The Bolshevik Revolution.

Its just that with each generation the fallout gets bigger...

Tony said...

Didn't knew about Hugo Boss and the Nazis. I guess it figures.

Tony said...

Oh, and one thought I had recently, which could be from the "Institute for Plain Bonkerism":

Why would anybody be interested in turning this planet into a inhabitable desert? Some people fancy the thought of terraforming other planets like mars, to make it a place where humans could live. What if somebody already lives on that planet? Asking them to help change their climate would be out of the question, but turning them into money obeying slaves, you can bring them to do anything. Mankind controlled by extraterrestrial lizards would fit nicely into this model (if you could call that bonkerish thought a model).

/end "Plain Bonkers"-mode

Stef said...

LOL

A nice idea for a low-budget TV mini series you've got there

But seriously

As anyone who really knows what is going on knows David Icke is a disinformation agent and his theory that we are all controlled by lizards is nonsense

They're really spiders

Anonymous said...

wanta have some real fun ... imagine the power it would take to create a single world currency operating largely through electronic impulses. ... ... ... ... ... "It would be difficult to exaggerate the psychological and social impact of the anticipated replacement of the jumble of existing monetary systems--for many, the ultimate fortress of nationalist pride--by a single world currency operating largely through electronic impulses." ... ... ... now imagine the power & prestige

Tony said...

As I have seen this I had to think about the Hugo Boss Nazi connection...

Stef said...

@anon

Imagine?

Is there any need to? We're more than halfway there already