Credit, Debt & Money
I'm thinking about credit.
Credit can not exist without debt. They are opposites. Together, equal amounts brought together "cancel" each other out. They create a zero... nothingness.
The potential for credit lies in promise, future, property, violence, strength.
Credit represents that the creditor has given something to the debtor, and has not yet received as much in return.
I have given much time, focus, and attention to my career, but I have not yet received as much in return. I have credit, mostly in various banks, and I also hold some currency. Some might think of these as assets, which they are, but their only value is for what they can be exchanged.
When the economy collapses, those net creditors, like myself, may find that.... tbat we have worked and "saved" for years... and all those investments, savings, credit and money... that it vanishes like the fog on a warm summer morning... and that what we have left... these "assets" of home, car, and physical trappings... aren't really very useful without credit.
Something similar may happen to debtors... their debts may vanish... hard to believe how that would work exactly given that their creditors would not be wanting to let those debts go away... but in a hyperinflation, that is exactly what happens.
I see both happening at the same time, although it might not appear that way.
When hyperinflation events have happened in the past, people with lots of credit, within that society or economy, saw their credit shrinking rapidly by the day. They may have given incredibly of themselves, and yet in the end, the measure of credit shrank to nothing.
How much credit should I get as a teacher or professional educator?
As everyone's credit dried up, due to a hyperinflation for example, what it really means to them or to me is that to that particular society (or that economy), what they or I gave my life doing really ended up not being what that society needed... I gave with an understanding that I would earn credit, but holding such credit means ensuring that the economy I've invested is sustainable.
I might have taught lots of students how to use computers better, but unless that translated into preventing an economic collapse, then it was maybe not the best use of my time.
Perhaps I would have been wiser to have spent my life creating a permaculture orchard from which ample annual food harvests would come. A healthy orchard certainly would be of much greater benefit to me, my family, and my community than having a healthy pile of hyperinflated currency and worthless stock certificates.
Credit and debt are about the future as much as the past.
Credits and debts are created in the past, and extinguished or resolved or paid off in the future... if everything goes according to "plan", that is.
At any moment, anyone could refuse to accept dollars in payment for a debt, and while not legal, there would have to be a very well functioning legal system to make sure the debt could be paid, or from the other extreme, to ensure that the creditor did not violently pry the value owed out of the debtor.
I think about these things because it would not surprise me at all for the monetary system, economic system, financial system, whatever we want to call it, to collapse, and for us to be facing some very challenging times, and a real in-the-face life lesson on credit, debt, and money.
Credit can not exist without debt. They are opposites. Together, equal amounts brought together "cancel" each other out. They create a zero... nothingness.
The potential for credit lies in promise, future, property, violence, strength.
Credit represents that the creditor has given something to the debtor, and has not yet received as much in return.
I have given much time, focus, and attention to my career, but I have not yet received as much in return. I have credit, mostly in various banks, and I also hold some currency. Some might think of these as assets, which they are, but their only value is for what they can be exchanged.
When the economy collapses, those net creditors, like myself, may find that.... tbat we have worked and "saved" for years... and all those investments, savings, credit and money... that it vanishes like the fog on a warm summer morning... and that what we have left... these "assets" of home, car, and physical trappings... aren't really very useful without credit.
Something similar may happen to debtors... their debts may vanish... hard to believe how that would work exactly given that their creditors would not be wanting to let those debts go away... but in a hyperinflation, that is exactly what happens.
I see both happening at the same time, although it might not appear that way.
When hyperinflation events have happened in the past, people with lots of credit, within that society or economy, saw their credit shrinking rapidly by the day. They may have given incredibly of themselves, and yet in the end, the measure of credit shrank to nothing.
How much credit should I get as a teacher or professional educator?
As everyone's credit dried up, due to a hyperinflation for example, what it really means to them or to me is that to that particular society (or that economy), what they or I gave my life doing really ended up not being what that society needed... I gave with an understanding that I would earn credit, but holding such credit means ensuring that the economy I've invested is sustainable.
I might have taught lots of students how to use computers better, but unless that translated into preventing an economic collapse, then it was maybe not the best use of my time.
Perhaps I would have been wiser to have spent my life creating a permaculture orchard from which ample annual food harvests would come. A healthy orchard certainly would be of much greater benefit to me, my family, and my community than having a healthy pile of hyperinflated currency and worthless stock certificates.
Credit and debt are about the future as much as the past.
Credits and debts are created in the past, and extinguished or resolved or paid off in the future... if everything goes according to "plan", that is.
At any moment, anyone could refuse to accept dollars in payment for a debt, and while not legal, there would have to be a very well functioning legal system to make sure the debt could be paid, or from the other extreme, to ensure that the creditor did not violently pry the value owed out of the debtor.
I think about these things because it would not surprise me at all for the monetary system, economic system, financial system, whatever we want to call it, to collapse, and for us to be facing some very challenging times, and a real in-the-face life lesson on credit, debt, and money.