this post was submitted on 08 Dec 2023
206 points (87.9% liked)
Comic Strips
12495 readers
3818 users here now
Comic Strips is a community for those who love comic stories.
The rules are simple:
- The post can be a single image, an image gallery, or a link to a specific comic hosted on another site (the author's website, for instance).
- The comic must be a complete story.
- If it is an external link, it must be to a specific story, not to the root of the site.
- You may post comics from others or your own.
- If you are posting a comic of your own, a maximum of one per week is allowed (I know, your comics are great, but this rule helps avoid spam).
- The comic can be in any language, but if it's not in English, OP must include an English translation in the post's 'body' field (note: you don't need to select a specific language when posting a comic).
- Politeness.
- Adult content is not allowed. This community aims to be fun for people of all ages.
Web of links
- !linuxmemes@lemmy.world: "I use Arch btw"
- !memes@lemmy.world: memes (you don't say!)
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
The best absurdity is global finance .... the idea and belief that there is trillions of dollars worth of promised wealth everywhere yet the majority of it doesn't exist, except as promissory funds or glorified paper IOUs, yet we have so much faith in it that that belief is what runs our modern world.
If you have a dollar, and lend it to me, and I lend it to my friend Alice, we have 1 dollar, but the total debt is 2$.
Nobody is claiming there are trillions of wealth around. But there are trillions worth of debts. Because countries, companies and people lend to each others a lot.
How’s that absurd?
Then Larry asks for $2 and that indebted $2 becomes $4 for Larry who now lends it to Steve who can now say he has $4 but now there is $8 worth of debt ... all from $1 along a long chain of people promising to pay things back, even though they have can't.
Multiply that by trillions and now we have a long line of debt that is impossible to ever repay and the only way to maintain the system is to keep making promises to more people and institutions that it will be repaid back. An article I read about this scenario years ago estimated that if all global debt was halted today, no more loans were made and everyone and every institution was told to start paying back everything at a minimum amount ... it would take millions of years to completely pay off everything.
Nobody likes it being said and everyone claims it isn't so but in other circles ... it's called a Ponzi scheme ... where a scam artist takes your money and promises to make it grow by promising it to other people in an every longer chain of people with ever increasing amounts of money ... the only way to stop it is to uncover the scheme and force everyone to accept the corrupt absurdity of it all
If we all took a step back and lost faith in the financial and banking world .... all of it would come crashing down. It isn't a system built on wealth and money ... it's a system of faith .. and as long as keep believing in it ... it keeps working.
I seem to remember one techno-Asian-dystopia book that may have highlighted this, where every week all the major banks have a ceremonial exchange of tons of gold bricks, as a proof to solidify their claims of having money that’s owed/exchanged.