Ok, I know you don't see it, but being alarmist doesn't equate to being a sage. Yes, there is risk in living in the modern world, and using a bank and a credit card, but it is manageable. It's not a big deal. There's a lot of risk to having all your savings under the mattress, too, or carrying $5000 cash with you all the time.

If you're so worried about the hidden puppetmasters pulling the rug out from under you, maybe you should divest yourself of cash too, and go back to bartering real, actual goods. After all, what is cash, but another form of credit? You should get rid of those marks before the Rothschilds plunge the currency into another round of inflation.

People can always use chickens. They also lay eggs. See if your landlord will accept chickens for payment.

:sign_yeah: There is also numerous software available whereby you can encrypt your own data. However, it's always a good idea to back up your information.

Alarmism has nothing to do with it. The massive redistribution and the expropriation to make ordinary people pay with their pensions and savings for the debts risen by political parties and politicians and banks, negative interest rates and all that - that is reality.

Also, if you have money at your bank, on your bank account, at your bank, you are de facto an investor, not different to holding stocks. You bet that the money manages well and you get a share from its profit. in times of so-called "negative interest", this is illusional. But more important, you have to pay for the bank if it manages bad or get hit by disaster. Investors risk.

Such a thing like "negative interest" does not exist. The direction at which "interest" flows, is one way per definition, not possibly both ways, depending on times. It flows from leaser to lender, never th eother way around. Negative interests are no interests, they are fees at the cost of the investor - who of course is no investor then, but an idiot.

In Germany, deposit insurance "guarantee" :D deposits of up to 100.000 Euro per person. But already this low level means that if this guarantee ever gets called up in huge numbers becasue one bank suffers a meltdown, there would be more demand for "money" than there is real money available. The discrepancy exceeds a factor of at least 75. In such a scenario, if you have more money on your bank account, you probably simply lose it. Period. Which serves you right. you were an investor, you had a right to bid on profits when opening a bank account and save money there - and you had to accept the risks. You played, you lost. Next.

The turmoils this could - and will - cause in real economy, if the trigger is just big enough, will mean a massive drop in stocks indices. This is becasue companies gpoing bancrupt and cannot work anymore, loose their value, and so does their stocks. So when you think you did clever by buying stocks, I tell you - you cannot avoid to nevertheless live dangerously. History shows this impressively. I mean none of all what I say is new - we have been there before, haven't we.

If you hold physicla precious metals, there could be prohibition at any time, if it serves the politicians' interest to keep the show running and themselves starringatf the party.

I am surprised that a capitalist like you - at least I take you for one - so comfortably ignores all this, Neal. Just for that tiny piece of plastic in your hand.

Worst news of all, is this, imo: the old reasonable rules, those that modern alchemists started to ignore and to ridicule - even these rules seem to have no validity anymore. the system'S inner dynamic has become so unpredictable and instabile that just anything could happen, anytime, and nothign is ruled out. you cannot calculate probabilities and base your decision on that anymore, that has become an illusion. In other words, as I see it the situation is so disastrous that practically every form of investing has become - a gamble from A to Z: stocks, gold, property, cash money - everything. Because probabilties mean nothign anymore, and just anythig can happen just any moment. That bad it is. There is no responsible way of investing anymore, it all is becominging gambling now. And the banks want everybody to get him forced to participate - at his cost. Investing, and gambling - are two very different things. To buy a tiny bit of time.

With every single time you pay via credit card instead of notes and coins, you signal and vote that you accept credit card payment, and you make it more likely that the banning of cash money comes even earlier, like now in Scandinavia where they now will enforce it by law. You then will not only pay seldomly with cash money in Sweden - we will be prohibited and will find it impossible to pay with anythign different than a credit card there. Money becomes illegal.

Last but not least, digital payment means record keeping. You have nothing but lame words as promises for that these records will ever be deleted. Every single pack of bubble gum you pay for, will be recorded. And who knows. Maybe there once will be a time when bubble gum is considered to be illegal, or makes you a social outcast. And then these records will be dug out and used against you. Or a deale long ago can be used to compromise your reputation, to character-assassinate you. It will be done. And laws will not prevent this. Insurance companies will read these records, and draw their conclusions, and set your payments accordingly - if they even accept you. You may not get that job, and will not even know why you were not accepted. They know, however - they read your history of past spendings and buyings, leading them to conclusions about you.

Not even mentioning the profiling options for targetted commercials and avertising.

But the worst thing in all this is that people will be forced to expose their private property and savings to plunderings by the state by needing to chnage material wealth for imagined digital "wealth" that can be exproriated with a pressing of a button. No defence possible. Thats is the top on reason why cahs money should get banned, all other reasons are strawman arguments only.

If that does not worry you, Neal, considering the disastrous state of the "money" system, then nothing ever will frighten you in life. Again, that is no alarmism at all. Its fact, and already happens right now, day in and day out.

In Cyprus, savings above some treshhold of I think 500.000 Euros some years ago got plundered by the state, the bank deposits held by people simply got automatically sacked by the state-ordered ratio. And nothing the owners of this property could do against it, if they had it at the bank. In India just tne days ago they have sacked all banknots of the highest and second highest value - a state with over one billion people. They want to force people to bring money back to the bank in an effort to chnage the old notes for new, smaller ones. They say it is against corruption, but truth is - they want to make people handing their money over to the banks so that the state can control these properties better - and tax and plunder them more easily.

Modern state thinks it must control and overwatch all and everything. That too is part of the promise of socialism. Net takers applaude it. Net givers obviously not.


And if you think you are safe when holding your values in physicla gold and store it in a hideout in a safe, then again any time some ruthless politicians can have a law that prohibits the private possession of gold. That will be the time when i consider even the use of violence to fight this state as a valid, morally demanded option. Needless to say: the masses get told they will socially benefit from these plunderings, will applaude all this, they are net receivers (takers). That is how socialism ticks.

In then end, Neal, you are opening the idea of private property, and the basic natural right to own private porperty, for negotiations and indicate you can accept to let this idea go. The stronger the state, the less freedom and the less right to own property. That simple it is.

And it is already happening. In your country. In mine. And guys like you just turn away and close their eyes. so many are like this. Just not caring, just not imagining to give up that "comfort" of plastic money.

Cash payment over here is more than twice as fast as credit card payment, btw. The health argument (germs on notes and such), has been debunked. The crime argument has been revealed as a myth already. There are no pragmatic arguments in defence of credict card money. And still they want to enforce it, against all resistence, against all reason, against all arguments, against all warning.

And you do not even wonder why, but being annoyed by "alarmism"...?

If you people would do damage just to yourself, I could accept that and live with that, it would not need to concern me. But you guys pull people like me down the drain alongside with you. And that is the only real injustice here, the mean thing you all are guilty of - that you ruin it not just for yourself, but for all others' future as well. You do not even stop before the interest of your children's future but encourage them to continue the mistakes you have started with.

Alarmism...? No, Neal. Freedom. The right to own property all alone, all yourself. Else it is not private property.

On a more theoretical level, the big disaster that economy theory has fallen into is that it has chosen to completely ignore the meaning and importance of money, it has taken the need of money totally out of all its highflying, cleverly spinning formulas. And this spells disaster. Money gets ignored, gets seen as an invalid variable that has no meaning. But money is what grout is for a wall of bricks. We will need to learn that again the rock-hard way. And we will. It will become brutal.

Why should I silently accept to be punished for your, the majority's sins? Its what the ancient Greek called ochlocracy, the tyranny of the majority over the minority. The tyranny of the plebs. Today we mislabel this as democracy. What a cruel joke of history.

Is this another thread you are keeping politics out of, Skybird?

I'm actually in most ways in agreement with Skybird. The different trends going on right now are rather alarming. The populous on average is getting poorer, while that 0.00001% are becoming more wealthy at an almost exponential rate. I am seeing all kinds of systems of control and observation being steadily put into place, with computers being a massive vulnerability to personal privacy. The corporate world in particular has been at the head of these constant attempts to data-mine people so as to get even more money from them.

There is just so much happening on so many levels, which will have really bad consequences to the average person, on virtually ever aspect of that person's life. At every turn our rights are being eroded, laws are being changed to favor the wealthy or the powerful. People are being psychologically manipulated like never before. The education system across the globe is functionally being destroyed, to disrupt the intelligentsia. Intelligent engaging radical professors are being slowly purged in favor of bland inoffensive teachers that will tow the line.

The world is becoming a more dangerous place, and almost no one is paying attention any more, as we are being turned into completely egocentric entities that only care about self gratification and utter selfishness, who no longer think for themselves at all, who only rely on news sources that feed their own monologue. As long as I get what I want, who cares.


Mark my words, things are going to get a lot worse over the next few decades for all of us.

My doomsday plan is simple. While people scramble for resources I'll hit up the pharmaceutical plants. Those prepper and militia types aren't going far in this new world without their Lipitor and Trexall. :haha:

In German: http://www.focus.de/finanzen/experte...d_6270981.html

India. Your neck hair should raise when reading this. That it does not, shows what a thankful victim you are. You get lured to embrace serfdom. And you accept it for the cheapest of prices, so you indeed get what you deserve. One will see if you still smirk and laugh in 15, 20 years.

Corrected that for you.

I mean: consider what people are willing to give up: their privacy, their freeedom, their protection from a tyrannic, plundering state. And for what? To pay cashless. To play "customer" on their smartphones that some even claim to be object of a basic "human right" to have a smartphone.

If these infantile, stupid, lazy things are the standards by which modern man defines "progress" and "modernity", then mankind should go extinct better yesterday than tomorrow, for then it already has overstayed its time anyway.

And we laugh about ancient primitive tribes agreeing to let the white man into their land just for a box of worthless coloured glass marbles? We have no reason to laugh about them. We are acting like these primitives did. The difference is that those tribes did not and could not know whom they were dealing with. But we today: we could easily know what we carelessly trade away - if only we would want to know.

Just that turning away and mocking the warnings is so much more party-like.

Has it ever been any different in the history of mankind? Tribal Chiefs, Pharaohs, Sultans, Kings, Emperors, Politicians, business tycoons etc aren't very different because in the end of the day they take care of themselves better then they do us.

business as usual.:)

What was this thread about again....?

George Soros?

Yes its the same in some ways, but it is also much different too. The ability to gain information and spy on individuals is far beyond what it was even 40 years ago. For a while the average person (in first world nations) was reasonably well off, they could afford a house, the would have a full time job that paid alright, and they were not constantly borrowing money. The economic divide had shrunk greatly by then, verse the 1920s or earlier, and this is what we are now sliding back towards at a very rapid pace. Meanwhile the corporations have gained more power than ever before, where they can even sue entire countries (and win) such as the tobacco companies have done as late, or just plain thumb their noses at that country's rules, regulations, and laws. Meanwhile food prices keep shooting up, and the housing market in most major cities is now virtually affordable.

Ya.. no, I'm talking about a developing Orwellian dystopia, not doomsday. As virtually no one seems to pay attention to the big picture...

I actually chose not to use that word, as insulting people is about the worst way to convince them :03: Piles of rhetoric don't work either.

Even if it may be kind of true.

The vulnerability of data and info networks, the attacks on both, and then the implication of the insanity to have all money transactions and currency systems in general to be shifted into such a highly vulnerable hunting ground. I then got carried away a bit by your suggestion that all that is just "alarmism" and that your right to pay with a piece of plastic is weighing heavy for you. At least more than your freedom from totalitarian control by the government, I concluded.

Because that is what is being tried: to not enforce these changes with force and pressure, but to make people wanting them. That is the perfect coup then - when nobody sees the need or feels the desire to even wanting to resist. Where there is the censor moved to the inside of people's own heads, they will not be aware of censorship anymore. They censor themselves, and they want it. Perfect coup.

"Visa - Die Freiheit nehm ich mir". - German commercial.