My mom was complaining about some pyramid scheme get friend fell for and I explained how every business is a pyramid scheme.
You work, you produce way more value than you are paid, that money goes to paying other people and growing the business to make the shareholders rich. You aren’t rewarded for your work, generally. Somehow this is normal. The only difference with a real pyramid scheme is that they generally lie about how much you could succeed.
My wife and I are both lucky and we bought our place mortgage free because we were able to save while paying off our old place.
While making the purchase we specifically talked about how if the market crashes by 50%, we’re still better off. Because most likely every home will be similarly cheaper. And our earning potential would be similar.
The difference is that it’s hard to predict what will happen in an economic contraction like that. There would be a lot of joblessness and a lot of hardship.
I think you’re missing the point, at least as far as I understand it.
Child predators experienced some kind of trauma, and as a result they never developed. That could be external trauma (abuse) or internal trauma (thoughts, mental illness) but as their body “grew up” and they began developing sexual urges, they never matured.
Think about your first crush. They were your age, probably, unless you had a crush on Jennifer Connelly like every other millennial boy. As you grew up your crushes were probably always within a few years of you. It’s just how it works.
In “minor attracted people” (I hate that term, but it works for criminals AND non-criminals so it’s valid) the attraction just doesn’t get updated.
Humans are REALLY BAD at controlling our impulses. Especially impulses that are taboo. Especially biological impulses (eating, sex, learning, games, etc).
So these people go into fields where they can be around kids. And then an “opportunity” arises and they either can’t fight their criminal impulse or they rationalize their criminal behavior.
I actually don’t disagree with most of what you’re saying. I’m mostly pro-capitalist but anti-crony and anti-corruption which it sounds like you are too.
Maybe I’m just misunderstanding, so I’ll try and clarify:
If a bank earns 1% interest, that doesn’t grow the money supply.
X$ exists.
Banks loan out 10*X$ (or whatever).
The loaned money is debt and so doesn’t change anything because the cash and the liability counter each other.
The bank charges Y$ in interest.
After the debt is repaid, the bank has X+Y$
You’re saying that because the Y$ comes from somewhere, it’s not inflation. However as banks are profitable, they clearly have more money left after paying salaries, wages, costs, and dividends.
As long a the money that the bank has is growing, the amount they can lend is growing which means the pool of available money is growing.
It might not be “real” money (I’m probably misusing the term “money supply”) but it doesn’t change the fact that more “money” is available.
Raising interest rates means people borrow less which means banks make less money and grow slower. If this were to keep up eventually the banks would lose money and the amount of loans they could give out would decrease and the available money would decrease. Which might finally put an end to this rampant inflation.
I don’t like all of the fuckery the banks get up to. But even I’m willing to admit that this is a Pandora’s box situation… I’m not sure we can ever go back.
It would be like trying to restore the gold standard. Just… How?
If banks hold 100% of the money and lend it all out x10 (fractional reserve) and earn 1% interest, the money supply is growing by 10% per year.
That’s inflation. All that money goes to the banks.
Edit: that’s 1% on top of whatever they have to pay for the money from the fed, so 7% rate plus 1%, or whatever.
That doesn’t even account for the stock market and other speculative devices.
When business and the wealthy class get richer, they want to get even RICHER. Prices rise. Which drives record profit, which makes rich people wealthier, which causes the cycle to repeat.
Raising interest rates is SUPPOSED to make people uncomfortable and stop spending. It’s not working yet, because literally EVERY INCENTIVE IN OUR SOCIETY is pushing people to spend spend spend.
There is no functional market force driving down housing costs, food costs, or education costs. Unchecked capitalism can’t work.
We just need proper incentive structures and regulation. But seeing as nobody has the guts to start figuring that out, the only lever we have is interest rates.