Mint Raw Money
Once upon a time, there was a microcosm, and it was called the Schoolyard. People here did all sorts of learning and counter-learning things, prior to that mythical time when they might one day be grown-ups. The whole school was some kind of church or something, teaching heleocentrism and alchemy or whatever, and it wasn't too relevant. More relevant was the economy, or the underground economy, which was growing up around lunch money. This economy was robust because it involved real things like food, cigarettes, candy, awkward pre-teen dry sex and various computer-type thingies. Somehow, certain students who were keyed into the corrupt logics of the anachronistic school itself decided to take the bully route, instead of building real wealth. So, they made themselves look bigger and more important through the doctrine of, "build yourself up by knocking other people down." So, they roamed about striking fear into sincere hearts, beating people down, stealing their lunch money, and banding together into gangs, (or,"families," {goggle}). They referred to these gangs as institutions, such as, "The Justice Department," or, "The United States Chamber of Commerce," or, "Exelon," etc. There wasn't really a need for these institutions, or syndicates, until the bullies came along with their bully logics and their need to insulate and protect themselves behind walls plastered with naked girls and bars serving illegal substances and comic books. And, boy, were the prices high in there - like one bucketful of lunch money would allow you to dunk the school-master. So, they required tax and protection money from the general population of students, who were thankful for their services, such as keeping the bullies occupied elsewhere and out-of-sight. Nevertheless, the bullies demanded their lunch money. They emptied pockets and drained it all away. Then they accepted IOU's. Or clothing. Or gold fillings. And the general public built great totem dolmens to their overlords, dreaming of a day when some magical birdman would come and save them all, and stop this rather dubious practice of sacrificing third graders to the great god, Gluten. Yes, Skippy, they were a bit like Mormons... And, ironically, the Student Body's President was also named, Mitt Romney, nickname, "Mint Raw Money," and his vulture side-kick, Lyin' Ryan. There were also other familiars like a certain Scott Walker, and Reince Priebus, and Kochs, and other assorted Germans from Wisconsin.
When the Schoolyard was getting to the point where it was resembling a holocaust-like prison camp, or, "The Lord of the Flies," some genius in the Bully class realised that something should be done about the fact that there wasn't enough lunch money to collect, no matter how inhumanely you treated the slave school-children, or how many you sacrificed, or how often you petitioned the actual School leaders who were too busy boiling heads, so they set about a plan... The plan was to, somehow, steal more money. However, it would be difficult to put this very original new plan into action, since there wasn't any more money to steal. (At least there wasn't enough coming in from the pockets of parents out there).
Once upon a time... At the beginning of time, man knew he had to provide for his family. Even before this, he knew he had to provide for his great, growing, protein-consuming self, and all his miscreant adventures. But, to raise a family, man needed woman to work the budget, allotting so many beans here, and so many beans there. But man thought this was tedious, and he just said, "Hey! We can just STEAL stuff! Why do we have to budget anything? I can just go out and steal more stuff!"
And the woman said, "But no. That would upset other people, the course of nature, and possibly the gods. I will take the beans you grow, and budget them out. This will not anger anyone, and so no one will attack us!"
And the man said, "I don't care if anyone attacks us. I think that would be fun. If someone attacks us we can kill him and eat his meat. Then take his wives, and, oh, I mean..."
So, they came to an agreement. The man would go out and get beans and anything else, but the woman didn't want to know where it came from. She would just fold it into the budget, and partition it out in appropriate amounts to various needs, or wants, or extravagances, and fur coats maybe... The man, on the other hand, was not in charge of treating beans, or money, as a finite quantity. He felt his mission was to go out and STEAL MONEY by hook or by crook. With this advantage, by folding in wealth that wasn't really theirs, the population could grow and grow and grow. And that, my friend, is how men came to be in charge of the Federal Reserve, where money is stolen simply by printing it out of thin air, loaning it out, and charging people for borrowing it...
Women budget. Men steal. There are of course overlaps, just as there are overcoats, and pockets are hidden like nobody's business.
So, the bullies in the schoolyard ended up having this same ancient conversation with the leader women of their tribe, who normally attend to skinning rabbits.
"How about we print more money OURSELVES?!" asked the men.
And the women said, "But no. That not only would throw budgetting off, it's illegal. It might bother the country."
"OK, then we'll start a whole new country! You know, a REVOLUTION! Just like the Founding Fathers did, to get out of the monetary thumb of the big banks, corporations and kings-slash-religious leaders!"
And the women said, "No. That's risky and troubling. Plus it won't work." So, they came to an agreement...
The women would adjust to a new accounting system, and the men would not print more ACTUAL MONEY, (like gold-backed or silver-backed government-printed certificates). They would print lots of easy MONOPOLY MONEY. And these would REPRESENT such-and-such dollars - like checks do, or like FEDERAL RESERVE NOTES DO. And the women pretended that these were equivalent to real dollars. And everyone was happy. Even the schoolchildren were convinced that all this new money would trickle down to them and they could buy yachts which would float high on the tide.
But, it didn't turn out that way. Why? Because the basic BULLY economy had no interest in PRODUCING wealth, it was interested in EXTRACTING WEALTH, or even the ILLUSION of wealth, based on the ethic of BUILDING THEMSELVES UP BY BEATING OTHER PEOPLE DOWN. To them, that was the whole point of economics - their own Academies said so. Control. Force. These equal selfish "wealth" and "power." And so forth. So, yes, they used the phony monopoly money to divert wealth and power up to them, like a shell-game. Meanwhile, all the other schoolchildren got very bloated stomachs and strange new viral illnesses, as they had SOME of this money, but not enough to cover the now exorbitant, and accelerating/rising, prices and costs of living. By the time they had enough money to buy a book, the book would cost 5 times as much. 100 times as much. A million times as much. Because, my friend, there were pretty much no more books. They were being eaten, or handed over to the Chinese as collateral against all the loans (bonds) being extending to the Bully system. And so on.
The whole, illusory, house-of-cards system was held together, really, only by BULLYING. I.e., the Bully-Industrial-Technocratic-Media Complex. And then along came the prophets...
And so forth.
There was to be a lot of real-world stuff included in this post, but I have no idea what it is, so maybe I'll do a part 2 later. At least now you have a nice little story to read to your kids who throw fruit at you every night.