Bankers, today's bankers are largely bureaucrats. They work in large firms and they work long hours and they toe the line. They are largely bland and quite boring people. It was the robber barons of yore who took risks that were closer to the Hollywood version of evil.

It is the hedge fund managers of today who take risks with other people's money that might play the role of evil today. Except most of it is theater, and most of that is quite boring as well.

As Taleb and many others point out, much of financialization, a word which defines our era, is merely a form of insurance. And insurance is a profitable business. Except when it fails.

In the case of the banking system, systemic players get bailed out when they fail, and so the game is rigged. So maybe rigged is a better word than evil for the banking system? The term used here in the literature is "moral hazard". The Too Big and too Bland to Fail Banks get to privatize the profits and socialize the risks through the medium of a sovereign state and a central bank. That is the moral hazard.

From even a purely financial perspective, from even the most "markets are the most efficient" way to allocate resources model, the moral hazard problem is a very big problem. The incentives are skewed as they might say from that way of speaking.

At a larger level, the dominant form of capitalism that we have in the world globally would probably best be described as monopoloy or oligopoly with state sponsorship. Monopoly capitalism is its own subject of study.

There is a vast literature on these subjects. Most of the vids I saw posted here do not get into the discussion too deeply. For example, money and the money markets today depend upon the "shadow banking system" or very interdependent credit markets for maintenance of the money supply. I don't see any discussion of that aspect in what was posted here.

Exactly, the hedge fund managers have no skin in the game, so they'll take enormous risks that someone investing his own money would never take. Everything is so leveraged, and the amount of leverage seems to increase with each cycle. Then you have inflation baked in as well over the long haul so some of the gains we see in markets are really inflation. And like you said, governments exercise so much control over banking and markets.

Basically I think people see the banking system as evil because of the secrecy of the fed, along with the huge, too big to fail money center banks, who basically print their own money for free the lend it out. And the fact that most people are up to their eyeballs in debt.

But the system has given us our current world basically, which with all its problems, is also sort of amazing.

Could be better.

I will try to be as clear as I can about the problem I see with the banking system.

Bottom Feeders.

No doubt

The banks lend us money that doesn't exist. That's a scam and scams are evil

And that money comes from making people take loans they cant afford. The debt industry is what keeps the banks going. Modern day slavery, if you will.

So we all heard the analysis. What's your practical (!) hands-on solution now, guys?

supporting bitcoin/cryptocurrencies and local economies?

Is this really hands-on? My local supermarkets don't support bitcoins and buying stuff locally may be a short-term fix, but buying stuff locally with a supranational currency backed by a central bank doesn't solve the problem.

Also I deem cryptocurrencies currently garbage, as they are too volatile and place an unnecessary burden on the environment. Bind them to useful computation and make them stable will fix this issue, but I haven't seen this yet.

However, the WIR Franc, an independent (interest free?) complementary currency, sounds more like a fix. Unfortunately I'm not from Switzerland, like most of the Nexus or the world:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WIR_Bank

Everyone needs to strip down naked and run into the woods, screaming like a banshee. Problem solved.

Can i keep my socks ?

I'm floored by the lack of agency in that quote. No one "makes you" take a loan. No one held a gun to anyone's head and said, "buy this house" or "use this credit card" or "take this student loan".

People take on debts because they think they can pay them back. And there is nothing wrong with debt per se.

One solution to the current banking system would be to nationalize it, as it is insured by the people already. So if the risks are already socialized, we should socialize the profits as well.

They should essentially be utilities.

That won't solve the "problem", but it will help.

I should have elaborated what I meant by "making people". I meant exploiting people who want to establish themselves by enticing them with seemingly lucrative offers. That's what the whole corrupt banks debacle came from not too long ago.

I agree with the nationalising banks part. But I'm always concerned with anything that exercises a lot of power. Caution is a virtue here.

Nationalize the banks and socialize the profits. Decrease the size of the fractional reserve ratio the banks are allowed to operate under. Reform lobbying laws and campaign finance so that bankers have less influence on the legislative process.

Individually, buy less stuff. The entire system is built, fundamentally, on the idea of endless consumption. If we all live a more ascetic lifestyle, we can decrease the impact we're having on the environment, and if material and financial gain are no longer our priorities, we limit the power of the money masters to control us.

Blessings
~ND

This video also explores this idea of over consumption.



RIP Georgie Boy.



It'll be very difficult to push an ascetic lifestyle in this culture that craves pleasure. Almost impossible, unless some large scale catastrophe befalls us or the world has a global awakening. The former seems more likely, unfortunately. Which makes the latter all the more desirable. We should work towards that global awakening to prevent the catastrophe.

I predict that this revolution, if it happens, will not be violent. It will be a dissolution of all these consumerist values. I hope.

I think while food security is still an issue for the majority of the planet, a hyper-idealised transition from unsustainable, open ended consumerism to something else entirely will be met with friction.
But that's not to say it isn't a possibility, but historically these things tend to be rich in blood.

As consumers, we can revolt with our hard earned's. There are bountiful examples of conscious corporations right now who have humanities best interest (along with a little kick back of course) at heart, with more to come I predict.
The difficult battles will be fought around the hoisehold dinner table, with food distribution monopolies un-eager to see fundamental change.

Everyone stop breeding now!!!

This uneagerness is stemmed from greed, is it not? That's the point of a monopoly. There are two types of monopolies, the greedy ones and the pragmatic ones. The greedy ones don't want any opposition, so they can have free reign of all the profits the industry provides. THe pragmatic one is, well, pragmatic. No point in having 18 and a half postal service companies. There are courier services, sure, but they are a small scale version of a national postal service.