Written by Khannea Suntzu

Red versus Blue – D E B T S (2 Events, Saterday and Sunday)

““What is causing debts in western democracies. Populist politicians that promise the world to their constituents to get elected? A prevalent culture of cost dumping where everyone externalizes their misery over the fence for someone else to deal with? Human selfishness? The corporatist system? Corruption? Parasitical elements in western democracies … Democracy itself? Overpopulation, and the fact we get ever more people ever more viciously competing over ever scarcer resources? The fact that we are running out of oil, and as a consequences twe are running out of the basic fundamental thing that powers industrial society? Or is it something completely different?…”?”

ground rules: http://khanneasuntzu.com/2010/09/04/red-versus-blue/

DATE: 18 and 19 September, Saterday and Sunday. resp. 9:30, AM/SLT

PLACE: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Cosmosia/242/41/26/?title=Cosmosia%20Red%20Versus%20Blue%20Pier&msg=Straight%20Ahead%20For%20the%20Action

YES you are free to assert that I have postulated a false dichitomy here. YES you are free to argue a radical third position. YES you are free to argue the Venus Project and Zeitgeist. Yes you are free to say Ron Paul is a nutjob. YES you are encouraged to speculate I have a sinister secret agenda here, or that I am “a wolf in sheep’s clothing” when hoisting these events. 🙂 The question then would be – what is this secret agenda?

ground rules: http://khanneasuntzu.com/2010/09/04/red-versus-blue/

YES you are free to assert that I have postulated a false dichitomy here. YES you are free to argue a radical third position. YES you are free to argue nootropics. YES you are encouraged to speculate I have a sinister secret agenda here, or that I am “a wolf in sheep’s clothing” when hoisting these events. 🙂 The question then would be – what is this secret agenda?

2 thoughts on “Red versus Blue – D E B T S (2 Events, Saterday and Sunday)”

  1. I’m in the U.S. so I know more about the problem of debt here than in other parts of the world, so I’ll comment on that. Part of the problem is the widening gulf between the wealthy and the poor. That’s nothing new, but has been going on a while. Two stories in the past week highlight this — one on how the number of people living below the poverty line in the U.S. has reached a 15-year high, and another story (earlier in the year) reports on the increasing number of millionaires.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/17/us/17poverty.html

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/09/number-of-us-millionaires_n_491942.html

    What this means is that wealth distribution is following power laws (as opposed to normal distribution/bell curve.) This is ultimately an unhealthy situation on its own, but since we have many more credit instruments, this makes the problem worse. Many people easily get in over their heads living on credit. When the 2008 credit crisis hit, that caused a systemic failure through the economy. At first businesses — and even state governments — were unable to make certain payments because they got into the habit of borrowing and rolling over debt. Then it spread to individuals and of course those that had expensive mortgages started to default, which in turn magnified the problem because of some of those debt/credit instruments based on high risk mortgages.

    Hopefully Elizabeth Warren, in her new position setting up the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection, will be able to address many of the points of that led to systemic failure here.

    http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/credit/interviews/warren.html?utm_campaign=homepage&utm_medium=feeds&utm_source=feeds

    — Bryce

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