Re: money is nothing more than lines in a database
"these days almost all money is nothing more than lines in a database somewhere."
Sssshhh. If enough people stop believing the emperor has lovely clothes, what on earth do you think will happen to the financiers and their powerful friends?
Mind you, Galbraith's "Money: Whence it came, where it went" was based around that idea back in 1975 and the powers that be have so far managed to make sure the idea has not become widespread, and are still trying to do so (e.g. by redefining the meaning of "austerity").
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Kenneth_Galbraith#Money:_Whence_It_Came.2C_Where_It_Went_.281975.29
"The study of money, above all other fields in economics, is the one in which complexity is used to disguise truth or to evade truth, not to reveal it.
Chapter I, Money, p. 5
The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled.
Chapter III, Banks, p. 18"
And many many more.
Once upon a time, before the BBC was allegedly taken over by alleged lefties who used to work for the Conservative Party (e.g. Kuenssberg) they broadcast whole series from Galbraith and others similar.
Nowadays, "nation shall speak peace unto nation" is a distant memory.
Or there's this, from Oliver Postgate (yes, *that* Oliver Postgate):
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/oliver-postgate/2008/02/money-devil-god-bank
"[...]
The Devil said "High finance isn’t real. It is a vast, on-going confidence trick.”
[...] Explain, said God. [...]
“Right then,” began the Devil, “Basically it is all about money, which also doesn’t exist, or rather, is, in itself, worthless.”
“Eh?”
“You can’t eat money,” explained the Devil. “You can’t mend the roof with it. Money is just a token by which the giver undertakes, when requested, to hand over to the receiver material of a certain agreed value . . . OK?”
[continues]"
Biting the hand that feeds IT
