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An economic breakdown is not the same thing as an "end of civilization" event. As much as the finance bros want you to believe that the world can't exist withou

An economic breakdown is not the same thing as an "end of civilization" event. As much as the finance bros want you to believe that the world can't exist without debt and bonds and all of the modern machinations built on top of those things, a breakdown in those systems merely means that those systems stop working. Obviously the finance system is completely entangled with modern supply chains and a million other things that more directly effect our daily lives. But lets not pretend that life as we know it would cease to be if a couple of banks had failed in 2008. I've read plenty on the subject and it's very clear to me that 2008's "financial crisis" represents an almost complete failure of government duty to the common man in favor of a few very rich individuals made even richer by the bailout. Please, for a moment, try to engage politely with others on the forum. Just because someone believes differently from you doesn't mean they aren't well read. Sometimes we've just read different things than you. If you engage politely, you might be able to convince me that your worldview makes more sense! But if you act like a jerk and break the civil communication rules in place on this forum, there's not a snowball's chance in hell that I'll come around to your way of thinking.

hnews_account_1 4y ago
1) I’m not trying to convince you. That is a fool’s errand in my online experience. I’m far more likely to come across adamant people than I am to come across sensible ones, so there’s no point trying to convince anyone. 2) if you think the end of money isn’t an apocalypse, then I don’t know what to tell you. Like sure, we may have done a debt jubilee, picked up the pieces and marched on, but chances were more that things would collapse utterly. Yes, the world cannot exist without modern finance just as it cannot exist without civil engineering or farming. It can technically run without computers although it’ll be a shell of a shell of what we have today. But money is beyond all meaning of the word “essential”. It is a mark of civilization. All civilizations that moved beyond barter came to the same way of thinking - representative tokens i.e. money. Don’t buy into modern leftist propaganda. Wall Street is corrupt but that doesn’t mean capitalism is bad and money shouldn’t exist. 3) 2008 was much, MUCH more existential than “a few banks failed” and you have not read enough if your takeaway from your reading was “the govt was wrong to bail them out”. The govt was right to bail out the institution. The corruption that pervades Wall Street is removed by a layer at which the govt failed and allowed failed CEOs and political operators to make overnight fortunes by announcing taxpayer funded support. The alternative of not bailing them out was the total collapse of the US financial system - the biggest, most elaborate and deeply connected system on the face of the planet facilitating your every requirement from clean drinking water to toilet paper to the smartphone or whatever you’re reading this on. If it’d collapsed, no amount of scenario building could come close to the destruction that would’ve been wrought upon the planet. You think this is hyperbole. It is not. Even people outside the US agree on that assessment. Your reading has been very selective and surface level because it is not your daily job. You likely read propagandists and other types of pundits who are not experts in the field.

hnews_account_1 4y ago

1) I’m not trying to convince you. That is a fool’s errand in my online experience. I’m far more likely to come across adamant people than I am to come across sensible ones, so there’s no point trying to convince anyone. 2) if you think the end of money isn’t an apocalypse, then I don’t know what to tell you. Like sure, we may have done a debt jubilee, picked up the pieces and marched on, but chances were more that things would collapse utterly. Yes, the world cannot exist without modern finance just as it cannot exist without civil engineering or farming. It can technically run without computers although it’ll be a shell of a shell of what we have today. But money is beyond all meaning of the word “essential”. It is a mark of civilization. All civilizations that moved beyond barter came to the same way of thinking - representative tokens i.e. money. Don’t buy into modern leftist propaganda. Wall Street is corrupt but that doesn’t mean capitalism is bad and money shouldn’t exist. 3) 2008 was much, MUCH more existential than “a few banks failed” and you have not read enough if your takeaway from your reading was “the govt was wrong to bail them out”. The govt was right to bail out the institution. The corruption that pervades Wall Street is removed by a layer at which the govt failed and allowed failed CEOs and political operators to make overnight fortunes by announcing taxpayer funded support. The alternative of not bailing them out was the total collapse of the US financial system - the biggest, most elaborate and deeply connected system on the face of the planet facilitating your every requirement from clean drinking water to toilet paper to the smartphone or whatever you’re reading this on. If it’d collapsed, no amount of scenario building could come close to the destruction that would’ve been wrought upon the planet. You think this is hyperbole. It is not. Even people outside the US agree on that assessment. Your reading has been very selective and surface level because it is not your daily job. You likely read propagandists and other types of pundits who are not experts in the field.