on money (in the abstract)

[Joseph Tracy]

Wrong again wellintown, I have no particular antipathy to banking or investment services. I am opposed to financing and profiting from  theft , lies, and murder.  Try some other lies. You seem to be having fun. 
Yes,progress, what wonderful stuff. Take a swim in the Gulf of Mexico and enjoy some progress.  Go to Iraq and behold the progress. Did you know that because of progress we now "have rockets instead of Plastic Man arms that can stretch across continents." It's that good.
On Nov 24, 2011, at 11:41 PM, alice wellintown wrote:

> Angry that the world is so unfair? Infuriated by fat-cat capitalists
> and billion-bonus bankers? Baffled by the yawning chasm between the
> Haves, the Have-nots – and the Have-yachts? You are not alone.
> Throughout the history of Western civilization, there has been a
> recurrent hostility to finance and financiers, rooted in the idea that
> those who make their living from lending money are somehow parasitical
> on the 'real' economic activities of agriculture and manufacturing.
> This hostility has three causes. It is partly because debtors have
> tended to outnumber creditors and the former have seldom felt very
> well disposed towards the latter. It is partly because financial
> crises and scandals occur frequently enough to make finance appear to
> be a cause of poverty rather than prosperity, volatility rather than
> stability. And it is partly because, for centuries, financial services
> in countries all over the world were disproportionately provided by
> members of ethnic or religious minorities, who had been excluded from
> land ownership or public office but enjoyed success in finance because
> of their own tight-knit networks of kinship and trust.
> 
> Despite our deeply rooted prejudices against 'filthy lucre', however,
> money is the root of most progress.
> 
> http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97395387
> 
> On Thu, Nov 24, 2011 at 10:25 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>> Nowhere did I say that "there is an ongoing war between
>> the rich and powerful and the poor and powerless" . That is simply inaccurate. I agree that there is a dialog of kinds between the monopolizers and those they injure and OWS is one face of that dispute. I am not against money. It's convenient and very useful as a medium of exchange. I'm trying to think and talk about how it seems to work.
>> 
>> As for your hard to parse final sentences,   I think my personal answers are yes yes and so what, but I've never understood most of what you write.
>> On Nov 24, 2011, at 8:47 PM, alice wellintown wrote:
>> 
>>> Right. ...the first sentence is dotted to the post that I replied to.
>>> In that post the author claimed that there is an ongoing war between
>>> the rich and powerful and the poor and powerless. I said it is not
>>> war, but human evolution sped up by technology.
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> 
>>>>> This is not a war. It is human adaptation, co-evolution, if you
>>>>> prefer,  or simply response to opportunities Those who can monopolize,
>>>>> regardless of the waste they produce and how much damage they do, are
>>>>> the fittest. But, with the revolution in communications technologies,
>>>>> those who were exploited because they were unaware of how the fittest
>>>>> came to monopolize, are now more aware. And, because they now sense
>>>>> that they need to defend themselves, they are doing so. We adapt by
>>>>> culture, by attitude, with technology. We copy certain patterns in
>>>>> evolution and then speed them up. So we have rockets instead of
>>>>> Plastic Man arms that can stretch across continents.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Money will survive. So will the banks, the investment houses, the
>>>>> political systems. So will, in the short term, an impoverished world
>>>>> for those who now call themselves the 99% or whatever percent, who
>>>>> are, for the most part, folks who are better off than most and only
>>>>> now realizing that this is not their birthright and that they need to
>>>>> fight to keep this position in the world. This is war.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Can you live without it? Are you fit for that? I doubt it.
>> 
>>