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No grand conspiracy is needed. The purpose of the government is to be a place you can go, when you need to obtain someone else's money to spend on someone othe
by bcoates 12y ago
No grand conspiracy is needed.
The purpose of the government is to be a place you can go, when you need to obtain someone else's money to spend on someone other than yourself (and if you're doing it right, keep a bit for yourself).
The purpose of finance, is to be a place you can go, when you've been given someone else's money, and need to find something to spend it on (and if you're doing it right, keep a bit for yourself).
The interests are so perfectly aligned no external coordination or policing is needed -- the system just works.
Naturally everyone involved is buddies with each other, and taking care of your buddies so that they can stay in a position to take care of you is just human nature. Even less sleazily, if you actually want to get something done inside the system, the only source of actual competence is the insiders -- it's not like there's some priesthood of uninvolved experts that have the slightest clue how to manage things. Financial regulatory capture isn't so much a tragedy as the only way anything could possibly get done.
- api 12y agoGreat reply, but I think it supports the nobility thesis. Non-conspiracy mechanisms are more effective than conspiracies... a real conspiracy is hard, and most utterly fail. The essence of your post is "the only source of actual competence is insiders." It's a difficulty that emerges around any attempt to create an alternative anything. But it has been done. I do wonder if we are seeing the very earliest embryonic steps toward a new kind of financial system with stuff like bitcoin. It's not even close to baked, but there is there there.
- crdoconnor 12y ago>Financial regulatory capture isn't so much a tragedy as the only way anything could possibly get done. It could more accurately be described as a parasitic takeover of the host. Whether you consider that tragic I guess depends upon whether you are part of the parasite (the financial system) or the host (society).
- eli_gottlieb 12y agoJust because you can phrase things to sound similar does not mean they are actually similar in reality. For thousands of years, governments were not run by or for bankers, except on the rare occasions when they were. In fact, bankers were often lynched and run out of whole territories whenever governments or even the masses could not pay their debts -- the state power was held by those with lands and armies rather than by money-lenders. If you cannot be bothered to examine today's situation in its particulars, you won't come up with workable solutions. For my own position: definancialization of the broader economy would go a long way to breaking banks from the state.
- api 12y agoTrue, but that could be viewed as a big bank (government) eliminating smaller competitors. I think the OP was saying that governments can almost be viewed as a type of bank.
- pm90 12y agoThey were definitely run for bankers, if not by them. In fact, one of the main functions of Governments is to act as representatives of the people trying to deal with individuals/organization who manage wealth.