Democracy Study Guide

So again - no need to reinvent any wheels, we just take what we all know is basically a decently functioning complex system developed over hundreds of (modern) years allowing us to have a huge modern market society with tens of thousands of goods and services easily bartered through a massive credit-exchange system, remove the parasites from within that system who control it for their personal wealth and power with no care for the severe societal and personal and planetary problems they create through exercising that control, and make any other tweaks we decide are needed to refine and improve it for modern democratic use. As with so many things, a lot easier to say than to do. The problem of course will be getting rid of the parasites, who will not go peacefully, which is touched on elsewhere, the only point here is to briefly turn on some lights explaining why the capitalist economy is so inimical to a strong, egalitarian democratic society, and describe how a non-capitalist, socialist 'of, by and for the people' economy will function so much better for most of us. And to do that, first we need to explain clearly what these wicked parasites have been doing for the last couple of hundred years to control the economy so they maximize their wealth-taking (while getting most people believing it's a great system yea!!) and leave ever-fewer crumbs for the rest of us to fight over.

The modern 'economy' is basically all about money at its root, and as a country of 'informed' citizens tasked with setting the best economic policies for all of us, we need to first have an understanding of something very few people understand, as this is something the modern 'education' system carefully keeps locked in the dark room where things the rulers do NOT want talked about or understood are carefully kept away from public knowledge. In terms of the economy, the big, important fundamental question is - as 'money' is the basis of everything, where does this 'money' come from and who controls that source, and what does that mean for our lives, our country and the world?? And rather than repeating something here I've already described at length, a brief history lesson to get this in perspective, which you can find here .

So to summarize all that, essentially in the modern world 'the economy' is basically a huge village market where people exchange things, just a huge system of financial interchanges between people and businesses and governments buying and paying for goods and services, and people doing whatever they do to earn the 'money' that is effectively the oil which enables all of these exchanges to occur easily and safely. In a democratic economy we'll still have that great marketplace which is the central point of any society, that plethora of businesses offering and exchanging the myriad of goods and services that we have now, with a few very significant exceptions. We'll all still have to work of course, to provide those goods and services (a few exceptions for one thing or another, but basically like today, we have to work to earn money, and to earn the respect and acceptance and trust of our fellow citizens who are all working) - but we'll have a great deal more freedom in terms of finding work we enjoy doing, part of a cooperative, running a small business, many kinds of short-term casual labor, etc, but there'll be no capitalist wage slaves forced to work to buy cheap food and live in a cheap flat to survive to work the next day to support the miserable unhappy poor life, and raise poor unhappy kids, etc., and without the capitalists skimming a significant percentage of the wealth we all create in their rat race society where so many race and race just to go backwards slower - life will be a great deal more calm and pleasant and secure for all. The democratic economy will not be based on huge capitalist businesses exploiting all and sundry to ensure a steady stream of money from the bottom to the top - anything a capitalist business can do a cooperative can do probably better, as an integral part of the greater economy rather than an externally controlled parasite extracting as much wealth as it can from the local economy for minimal quality goods for transfer to capitalist bank accounts elsewhere.

And the 'money', or more correctly 'credit', used for all of these exchanges will no longer be created as interest-bearing debt by a private banking cartel, the basis of the economic dominance of the capitalist economy and the endless insecurity of modern economies, but will be controlled and issued only by the democratic government, under the supervision of informed and engaged citizens, to create a secure level playing field for all, rather than the current capitalist-controlled economic playing field upon which the capitalist sector controls everything of importance, ensuring their wealth and power are never challenged by normal people. There will be a lot of fine details to be worked out, but they will be worked out by honest people within the framework of a truly democratic economy using their intelligence and initiative to create a better society for us all, rather than a capitalist economy which works great for the capitalists, and thus the endless tricks and scams the capitalists have to steal wealth from society will be removed, and pretty much everything much much better for all of us after that.

We can see the capialist-controlled economy as a metaphor for the human body suffering from some seriously debilitating parasite - we can still live our lives, and try to find some happiness and enjoyment carrying that burden - but if Doctor Dave has a look and prescribes some effective medicine to get rid of the parasite - you're going to be a hell of a lot happier with that burden removed. And so with our society - the great market framework is generally a good one organically taking shape over centuries adapting to new times and advances, but it's infested with a terrible parasite creating division and weaknesses among our striving to be happy citizens - get that nasty, lying, violence-inducing capitalist parasite out - and we're going to be a lot happier and the system is going to function a lot better for all of us. Except the vile parasite of course.

A couple of common questions:

>> what about inflation??? - When you issue credit interest-free, the 2nd main driver of inflation (after credit/money created for speculation) will be removed from the system, so it will be very much less of a problem, and easily controlled. If some outside-our-control factor emerges which could push the economy into some kind of potential inflation spiral (business A has to pay more for input X from outside our country, so has to raise prices, which goes through the economy in a domino-plus effect (hmm, costs me 3 cents more to produce my product, so I'll just raise the price 5 cents heh heh - and the next guy the 5 cents goes to 8 or even 10, and etc etc etc)) - we stop it at source. Assuming this is a necessary commodity of some kind, the government can simply pick up the higher cost for that business at source, thus stopping the inflationary spiral before it gets started. There may be related questions - the point is, we do NOT accept the capitalist way of doing things - we creatively attack any problems and solve with the good of the citizens as our driving principle, not the wealth and power of the rulers.

A second big complaint related to inflation with 'fiat money', which I am of course talking about here, is that 'creating money' will always and inevitably lead to massive inflation and currency devaluation. This is just a nonsense. Creating *too much* credit, and charging interest on that created credit, will of course lead to inflation etc - but any economy needs to expand the credit supply regularly to account for a larger population and more value in the society (i.e. builing a house adds value, etc), so the credit supply must be continually adjusted to meet this demand. And in a truly democratic society of informed citizens, it is the latter type of credit creation we will of course be using.

And what aboout taxes?? Taxes will be a far different thing in a true democracy, as 'we the people' will, in our ongoing discussions about what is going on in **our** country, decide the broad outlines of our budget - what services **we** want and believe we can afford, and how **we** are going to arrange to pay for those services through some combination of taxes and the government creating new credit/money in an expanding economy. We can be quite sure, however, I think they will be much less of a burden than they are now, as our totally corrupt capitalist governments are simply stealing a lot from the citizens in various ways through corruption, of course, abyssmal wasteful management, programs designed for nothing more than monitoring and controlling citizens, and etc. When we have a healthcare system designed to maximize health rather than turning over huge amounts of money to Big Pharma, we'll be getting far better care at a far lower cost. And etc - things to be talked about in the Democratic Discussions.

I won't say any more here, a true, open-market economy in a truly democratic society not dominated by some powerful group for their own benefit is a very organic thing, and we can't really predict where it will go as we transit to this from the top-down-controlled capitalist economy. But what is completely essential in a *democratic* economy is a set of rules which prevents any kind of monopalization of major sectors of the economy by powerful interests, and a credit/money administration system which is designed to be fair to all players, and not used by a small subset of players as a weapon of power as described above. And I do believe we can do that, with informed discussion of all engaged citizens, also desirous of such a fair economy.

A bit more reading -

PEI Revival Plan - Prince Edward Island, where I was living at the time, whining about what to do about the economy - the ideas were good then, and most still are - once you remove the banking cartel from control of the government, which was not going to happen at that time in that place

- and another from a couple of decades later, a new 'Green' person was elected to the legislature, and seemed sincere in requesting ideas about improving the Island economy, so I wrote a short essay about the most important thing that could be done - PEI Rustico Farmers Bank Script - about which he showed no interest at all. When you are closed to new ideas, that's what happens. But the essay is still completely valid, one way to begin to challenge the bankers' control over everything - tell them to go away and do it yourself.

- or go where you like -

What it's about, By Way of Intro: A curious question, 1. Basic Democratic Building Blocks 1 - the Democratic Citizen, 2. Basic Democratic Building Blocks 2 - the Democratic Framework, 3. Creating or Awakening the Democratic Citizen, 4. The Ways of Power, 5. And in the end ...., A1. Basic Democratic Process, A2. Basic Democratic Economy, A3a. Big Lies 1 - Democracy, Media, Money, A3b. Big Lies 2 - Wonderful Capitalists!! EVIL!!!! Commies!!, A3c. Big Lies 3 - Pure evil indeed - but who???, A3d. One lie to rule them all, one lie to bind them

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