[quote=scaredyclassic]This debt book is the most interesting book I have ever read.[/quote]
skimming the first chapter
on page 2
I spoke of poverty, of the looting of public resources, the collapse of societies, endemic violence, malnutrition, hopelessness, and broken lives.
“But what was your position?” the lawyer asked.
“About the IMF? We wanted to abolish it.”
“No, I mean, about the Third World debt.”
“Oh, we wanted to abolish that too. The immediate demand was
to stop the IMF from imposing structural adjustment policies, which were doing all the direct damage, but we managed to accomplish that surprisingly quickly. The more long-term aim was debt amnesty. Some thing along the lines of the biblical Jubilee.
just happened to recall a PBS video which mentioned something about the concept of eliminating debt was associated with the Jewish Revolts Against the Romans and the willingness of rebels to use murder to achieve their ends won the “extremist” the name ZEALOTS
the actual translation of the historical text WRT to debt is:
“made haste to burn the contracts belonging to their creditors, and thereby to dissolve their obligations for paying their debts; and this was done in order to gain the multitude of those who had been debtors, and that they might persuade the poorer sort to join in their insurrection”
so from what I gather, the poor feeling screwed and wanting some kind of reset (via anarchy) is an idea that goes back thousands of years
skimmed a few videos of the author describing his idea of debt forgiveness and IMHO think its dumb/unworkable (w/in a modern society)
for example if there is debt forgiveness then isn’t a program like social security considered a debt transfer program of the young to old?
on second thought looking only at the data (i.e given demographics, existing global economic trends) and ignoring economic/political self interest of the old and special interest groups like the AARP that lobby politicians, perhaps following the example set by ZEALOTS thousands of years ago would solve the modern day problem of unsustainable wealth transfer!
