Jaeger Research Institute

INTEREST & TAXES Why Banks & Governments May Become Obsolete in a High-Tech Civilization by James Jaeger

The two largest expense categories in the average person's annual budget are most likely interest and taxes. (For those of you who have limited time, you can read the "Summary for Debt- and Employee-Slaves" at the end of this essay, and then come back and read the supporting details if you ever get any freedom.)
Interest, also known as "debt service," comprises more than 50% of ones mortgage payment until payment 277 out of 360 payments in a 30 year loan. The monthly mortgage payment is often the largest lump-sum to go out each month and, as just cited, interest is the major component of this major payment for about 75% of the term. And if one is a renter, their monthly payments are probably going to pay their landlord's interest payments on the property they are leasing. Interest payments are also in your car payments and credit card payments, and school loans often at extremely high rates. All debts considered, I would say it's conservative to say that servicing debt preempts about 25% of the average household income each month.
Taxes, on the other hand, are embedded in almost every transaction. Not only do Americans pay income taxes -- according to an ATR (Americas for Tax Reform) study -- taxes from federal, state and/or local government are levied on every stage of production and distribution. This amounts to a hidden tax of between 26 and 75 percent on every product one consumes. As of 2006, an automobile retailing for $23,000 costs only $12,650 to manufacture, including the dealer's profit. The difference of $10,350 is confiscated by the government as taxes. This amounts to hidden tax of 45 percent on this particular transaction. According to the Libertarian National Committee:
"Taxes account for 28 percent of the price of a restaurant meal, 75 percent of the cost of a pack of cigarettes, 43 percent of the cost of a beer, 40 percent of the cost of an airline ticket, 31 percent of the cost of a loaf of bread, and 54 percent of the cost of gasoline. These "hidden" taxes -- along with state and federal income taxes -- are the reason why the average American family now pays 43 percent of their income to the government. That's more than they pay for food, clothing shelter and transportation combined."

Taxes are also extracted when property is transferred, when people trade with foreign countries and even when they talk on the phone. Survivors are taxed when their loved-ones die. People are taxed even if they DO NOTHING AT ALL with their money, for they are hit with yet ANOTHER hidden tax known as INFLATION. Inflation is a hidden tax because, as the government prints up ever more FIAT CURRENCY to pay its bills, it erodes the purchasing power of our dollars already in circulation.(1) The extra money we have to pay for products and services as a result of inflation is thus a hidden tax.
In addition to all these taxes, let's not forget the endless fees many of us are compelled to pay to tax accountants, tax attorneys and business managers just to COMPLY with the insane tangle of tax laws. All taxes considered, it's conservative to say that taxes preempt at least 50% of the average person's income.
Thus between interest and taxes (debt service and tax service), Americans pay out an average of 75% of their income -- directly or indirectly, overtly or covertly -- to the banks and the government. Given these payments, exactly what do banks and governments give to citizens in return and can we still afford their services?

What Governments and Banks Provide:
Some say governments are supposed to protect the people. Others say governments are supposed to provide for the people. Still others say governments are supposed to protect AND provide. If you are in the camp that says they are supposed to protect, this is assumed to mean provide for the common defense as well as local police forces. If you are in the provide camp, you want government to provide schools, roads, health care, affordable housing, welfare for the unemployed and social security for the aged or retired. You also want the government to provide tax "incentives" for industry and stimulus plans when the economy slumps as well as bailouts for companies that are "too big to fail." And of course if you are in both camps you want government to provide all of the above, and possibly more.
But what do banks provide for the 25% of our income we give them? Well they provide a safe place for us to store our money. They provide a medium of exchange so we don't have to trade cows for pigs. They provide methods for transferring our money around the economy and making payments. They give us interest on the money we deposit with them. They provide statements as to how much money we have and how much interest we have earned.
The services that banks and governments provide aren't necessarily bad, but are they indispensable? Are they necessary? Can we afford them? Are there alternatives? What would a civilization without banks and governments be like? Would it even BE civilized? What would a society where an additional 75% of people's wealth was directly available to the citizens be like? What would a society where the money allocated to banking and government was available for research, development and production of the advancement of technology be like?

Where did Governments and Banks Come From?
Fifty thousand years ago, there were no governments or banks. At some point our ape-ancestors realized that they could extend their physical strength (and numbers) by means of technology. Early technology thus focused on providing and protecting. The first "people" to thus cease on technology used it to provide food, clothing, shelter and build weapons for protection. With such weapons, certain groups were able to dominate certain resources and thus provide more food, shelter and clothing for the members of their group. Confiscation of resources by one group from another group thus enabled certain groups to dominate other groups through force: thus governments were born.
A GOVERNMENT IS NOTHING MORE THAN A GROUP OF PEOPLE THAT HAS TEAMED UP FOR THE PURPOSE OF CONFISCATING RESOURCES BY MEANS OF FORCE DELIVERED BY WEAPONS IT HAS BUILT THROUGH TECHNOLOGY.
As the group grows, any and all technology created by the group, or stolen from other groups, is incorporated into the manufacture of weapons and systems which facilitate such manufacture. Money and banking were thus invented by governments primarily in order to facilitate the manufacture of weapons, thus assuring the survival of the government.

"Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun." -- Mao Tse-tung

Unfortunately (for governments), the manufacture of weapons requires employment of humans. Thus governments were FORCED to provide for human needs humans could continue to make weapons, weapons to support the sponsoring government's existence. Of course all governments claim to be in existence to "serve," "provide" and "protect" people, but these are only secondary purposes, for the real purpose of governments is to use the human brain for the production of weapons. As weapons are amassed, all governments will continue to overtly or covertly confiscate resources and further consolidate their power. Governments have been doing this for thousands of years.
PROBABLY FEW PEOPLE WHO WORK IN GOVERNMENT TRULY UNDERSTAND WHAT THEY ARE PARTICIPATING IN, NOR DO THEY UNDERSTAND HOW THEY ARE FURTHERING A CAUSE THAT PREEMPTS SO MUCH HUMAN EFFORT AND PERPETUATES THE CYCLE OF VIOLENCE ON EARTH.
As society "advanced," governments realized that there was a limit to how much could be accomplished using just brute force and threats, thus new technologies for the acquisition and maintenance of power were sought out. One of the most successful technologies developed was MONEY -- and its spin off technology, DEBT. The invention of money was a stroke of genius for it meant that the productive energy of humans could more universally be harnessed and monitored. Governments could now extract the productivity of subjects, now called "citizens," to manufacture weapons by using the "carrot and stick" provided by money. Since money could be spent on things OTHER than interest and taxes, citizens were quick to adopt it for "convenience" and as a "medium of exchange." But money and debt proved to be the ultimate "ball and chain" for the citizen, for now the citizen could be put to work on an endless treadmill -- not only making weapons for the government so it could continue it its parasitic expansion into the resources of the environment -- but so the citizen could service debt in order to keep what few possessions s/he had managed to acquire with the 25% left over after interest and taxes had been extracted by banks and governments, respectively.

What if there were no Banks or Governments?
Consider what would happen if suddenly every government on earth ceased to exist. The first thing you would probably notice is many blank fields on your TV set where endless political commentary formerly took up air time. The next thing you would probably notice is your mail had stopped being delivered. Later on, you would notice that your property tax bills didn't arrive and police patrols weren't traveling up and down your streets. What you may also notice is your water and electricity might stop being delivered if you live in an area where you have allowed the government to "provide" these serves. But with these major problems would come major joys. For one, your son would be home from the war, as there would BE no more wars. Governments, abetted by banks, are the source of wars. Governments wage wars with other governments and usually need some sort of "precipitating event" to get people to participate. As a result, people get ground up in the war machine, but governments grow in health. The inestimable damage and destruction to human life and property would suddenly cease if every government on earth were to suddenly disappear. Ending government rule on Earth would signal a moral decision by the masses of humanity. That decision would be to repudiate the aggressive and barbaric actions of the first groups of ape-ancestors who used technology to confiscate resources and thus gain special privileges from their fellow humans who were struggling just as much as they. Ending governments would be a clarion call to justice for the human race for it would declare that force and violence used by one group against another group was not valid or to be tolerated.
Next, consider what would happen if suddenly all banks on Earth closed, banks the technological enablers of the immoral institution of government. If this happened, mechanized civilization would probably stop as we are so addicted to money and debt, we are currently helpless. People who suddenly had no "system" for keeping score of "value" or "who owes who" would have psychological meltdowns. If people didn't know who owed who, they wouldn't work, they couldn't even think, so damaged have their meat-brains become due to the money-debt system injected into their very souls. On top of this, most people are in jobs they don't like. They work just to "make money." They work for the weekends. They work to service debt and pay taxes so their assets aren't confiscated by the government or its lapdog banking agents. Most people are debt slaves. They submit to employment for the sole purpose of slaving off debt and facilitating the government's age-old pursuit of weapons. They submit to employment in jobs they hate with the hope of spending 25% of their money on something that gives them sustenance and maybe a little pleasure.
One does not have to recite the endless available details on the pros and cons of the current economic-political system to establish the fact that such system is NON-optimum, if not totally insane. I don't have to spell it out that this system relies on brute force to exist. If you don't pay your taxes and interest payments, the gov-bank Gestapo will eventually send a marshal to your doorstep to forcibly extract payment from your person or hide. Further, I don't have to go into details on the liabilities of government-sponsored war or how war destroys and prevents human progress. I don't have to go into the details about the partnership between the US Congress and the Federal Reserve, or how such banks provide fiat money so the government can manufacture weapons to police the poor so they won't steal (too much) from the rich. Yes, all governments really do is expand the tax-interest, slave system until the poor can eventually be jailed, killed in a war or replaced by machines. Then the elite can live in peace.
Yes, the current bank-gov system, with its interest-tax paradigm of enslavement -- steals at gunpoint 75% of citizens' labor, then, through the imposition of endless "laws" and "regulations" jails the poorest and/or sickest members of society. It then uses the youngest of society's citizens to fight government-sponsored wars and seeks to advance technology for seemingly one purpose: to increase profits through the manufacture of weapons and the confiscation of resources. Increasing profits, better known as increasing "stockholder value," accomplishes its deeds mostly by exploiting cheap foreign or illegal-alien labor or replacing human labor all together with machine labor. U.S. corporations should serve the GENERAL WELFARE of the U.S. This means they should equally serve the interests of stockholders, employees and customers while avoiding the outsourcing of their pollution on the environment and taxpayer).
No matter how you slice it: the current bank-gov paradigm exists, not to serve the GENERAL WELFARE of people, but to serve the profit-motive. This translates into serving mainly the interests of stockholders, banks and the government. It can be argued that the profit-motive in a developing civilization DOES serve a purpose, but there are other motives that may someday surpass even the God-almighty, dollar-driven, profit-motive. The knowledge-motive, the exploration-motive, the accomplishment-motive, the love-motive are some that come to mind. No doubt, like the survival-motive, the profit-motive IS deeply embedded in the genes of certain humans more than others. Such people, the "money-mentality," have little or no sense of their effects on their fellows or society when they wield the power of money. Others in, what could be called, the money-mentality, meat-heads in suits ARE aware of their negative effects on their fellows and society and continue with such behavior because they are control-challenged. Having been abused in their earlier years, possibly by a controlling parent or some other dominating figure, they dramatize their obsession to control others with money, especially if they ascend to a position of power within the banks, corporatocracy or government. Technologies and pastoral counseling exist to help even these unfortunate people.
Some believe that 'capitalism, and those who believe in profit, currently support the world and without it many more people would have no hope of a better world; that change will bring new ways of taking care of the basic needs of the world's people; but for now money is needed to pay the bills and survive (unless we want to revert to trading goats, chickens and cows).'
It is true, money operating as a means of exchange, IS a useful technology, however let's be sure to differentiate between the following technologies:

MONEY
DEBT
PROFIT

Money, as a pure medium of exchange is fine.
Money created by monetizing debt, "fiat currency," is NOT fine.
Money created as a result of "fractional reserve banking," is NOT fine.
Debt, is NOT fine for the borrower, for the reasons discussed in this essay.
Profit, is NOT fine, under certain circumstances.
Profit creates SCARCITY and COMPETITION. Competition often leads to conflict and/or war. Profit created by entities that, in any way, use fiat currency or fractional reserve loans is dirty money. It's dirty because it was obtained through unfair advantage. People and entities that can create or access money "made out of thin air" have undue advantage over people and entities that must use human effort to access money. Usually the entities that get first call on the nation's fiat money and largest loans -- all generated by fractional reserve banking -- are large corporations, banks and government agencies. Smaller business and individuals, the majority of entities in the US, do NOT get to take advantage of fiat and fractional money as much as the large entities just cited. Who did the fiat money from the recent Wall Street bailout go to? People late on their mortgage payments and small business, or did it go to major banks, insurance companies and investment houses? It went to the later, obviously so they can continue their pursuit of unethical PROFIT.
Thus, only profit derived by producing a finer product, one that's needed and wanted by civilization, and done so without the use of the unfair advantage of fiat or fractional money, is ethical profit.
SINCE MOST OF THE ENTITIES IN EXISTENCE TODAY USE FIAT OR FRACTIONAL MONEY, THEIR PROFITS, BY DEFINITION, ARE UNETHICAL, IF NOT OBSCENE AND/OR IMMORAL.
In a civilization where nanofacturing remedies scarcity, the profit motive goes away.
Ironically, a civilization probably won't reach the level of nanofacturing until it removes the profit-motive. Unfortunately, catch-22s aren't just replete amongst Hollywood studios and major agencies, they are embedded in the fabric of planetary existence.

How to Address an Oppressive Bank-Gov System:
So what is the solution to the tax-interest trap the majority of us now find ourselves in? The solution is: move away from it in stages. This can be done in a number of ways, some radical but risky and some slower but more evolutionary.
A radical but risky method of disenfranchising banks and governments would be for all Americans, on say January 1, 2010, to stop paying all interest and all taxes to all governments and banks. This would drive these two entities into total chaos, completely reduce the United States to ashes and then sink the rest of the world into the pile. That's the good news. The bad news is before this could happen the governments would probably freak out and use their militaries to kill all the citizens. Real logical. Further good news is, all military action would probably cease because they would be universally de-funded. Many soldiers don't like their jobs any more than the next person: they only took the "job" because society didn't give them the wherewithal to exist on other vocations. Under such circumstances the governments can only send in so many marshals to so many homes to collect taxes and interest payments from citizens and then they are over-extended. Again, those marshals probably don't like their jobs any more than the soldier or the factory worker about to be replaced by a machine or Chinese slave. All of them are basically good people in a bad system, just trying to do their jobs so they can take care of their families and enjoy the 25% of their income that's not confiscated by their very own bosses.
A less risky way to disenfranchise the current banking-gov complex might be for all citizens to slowly reduce their interest and tax payments. This could be done by reducing all interest and tax payments by an amount equal to the inflation rate published by the government in the form of the Consumer Price Index. If, for instance, the CPI for 2008 is 5%, citizens would simply calculate what 5% of the interest portion on their mortgage and credit card payments amounted to, and send in payments reduced by that amount. They would calculate 5% on their taxes and send in 5% less each year and where possible. They would make these reductions on their interest and tax payments on the grounds that the fiat and fractional money created by the bank-gov partnership has over-taxed them through inflation by the exact amount indicated in the CPI, thus they have reduced their payments by the same amount. Of course, the figures published by the gov-bank complex on the CPI are drastically low, as much as two or three times low. Using such a gradual reduction of interest and tax payments would probably not work unless people started doing it spontaneously and in large numbers. If the gov or banks suspected it was an organized plan, they would probably use their police powers to shut it down.
The best way to disenfranchise the current banking-gov complex is to stop supporting it. Since governments rely on banks to create money for them to spend on the police powers that keep them in business, a non-support strategy must start with the banks. The largest non-support of the banks is to refuse to borrow money. If all American citizens cut their credit cards in half and stopped taking out loans for cars and homes, they could bring the banking business to its knees. Advocating citizens stop making payments on their debts is not the intent of this essay. Keep making your payments, but incur NO new debt. Strive to pay off all your debt obligations. This strategy would allow the banks to survive long enough to re-think their business plans thus avoiding a sudden meltdown and opening the door to a possible orderly, free market transition. No loans means no expansion of the money supply through fractional reserve lending. For every dollar of debt paid off, the money supply shrinks by 8 to 10 dollars. Thus, simply refusing to use debt could eventually destroy fractional-reserve lending and force the banking system into more ethical practices, such as storing money, facilitating transfers and providing accounting service.

Why Debt Makes Little Sense:
Let's take a look at borrowing money and the invention of debt and see if such practices make sense for a technological civilization.
Basically people and governments use debt so they can HAVE something NOW rather than later. You want that DVD player NOW. You want that new car NOW. You want that new house NOW. You want that new factory machine NOW. You want that labor or loyalty NOW. You want that military NOW. You want that country's resources NOW.
This is why people and entities borrow money. They use the energy of borrowed money to acquire something NOW, whereas, in the absence of such energy, they are forced to acquire it LATER.
Thus, what borrowing actually does is reverse the time track. Through borrowing, one gets TODAY, what the physical universe was prepared to provide only TOMORROW. This is not only a reversal of the time track, it's a reversal of CAUSALITY itself. Debt thus tampers with the very fabric of the cosmos. It is no wonder the Bible states: 'Neither a lender nor borrower shall be.'
So what happens to a civilization when it fools around with a law of the cosmos? What happens when the EXCESS energy that everyone SHOULD have in the future (as a result of collective productivity), has been preempted by the greedy beneficiaries of debt? Here's what happens: the lender is placed into the future and the borrow is kept in the past. In other words:
DEBT BRINGS LIFE TO THE BANKS, WHILE BRINGING DEATH TO EVERYONE ELSE. DEBT IS THE FICTITIOUS REMEDY FOR SCARCITY.
By using debt, civilization will eventually cause its demise, and the victims of debt will eventually destroy the purveyors of debt just to survive. It's as simple as that and it has already happened many times through out history. It just hasn't yet happened on a global scale, as is now proceeding.
The money you pay in interest to your lender is money you created through personal human effort. Since payments continue into the future, yet the law of entropy dictates that that which you purchased through debt will decay, you are, in essence, allocating your present-time, live energy for future rotting matter. Finances cars ARE made out of sheet-metal ... which rots. Not only this, by the time you are finished paying for the item you bought with debt, you will have paid two to three times more than the original purchase price. Thus with every loan a person takes out today, they are burdening their future by a factor of two to three. That DVD player you paid $150 for on credit will cost you $300 by the time you pay down your credit card balance. That car you paid $23,000 for on credit will cost you $46,000 by the time you service your last payment coupon. That house you paid $200,000 for will cost you $600,000 by the time you make your 360th monthly mortgage payment.
So every time one takes out debt, they are superficially improving their present at the expense of their future.
DEBT MAKES THE PRESENT SEEM BRIGHT BECAUSE IT STEALS ENERGY FROM THE FUTURE.
The beneficiaries of debt are the banks, for they are able to use government power to force people to comply with the Federal Reserve Act and pay interest on fiat/fractional money that they create out of thin air. People sometimes even use credit card debt to pay taxes, but governments OFTEN use new debt to pay old debt when they aren't using taxes to pay debt. A sizable percentage of the tax money you pay us used to pay debt service on the national debt but eventually national debt service will exceed the national budget. Again, all of this money the banks lend to you and the government was created out of thin air by basically two government-sanctioned practices: FIAT MONEY and FRACTIONAL RESERVE LENDING. It's a sick and twisted ponzi scheme, and you are the victim.

Benefits of a Debt-less Society:
If American citizens were to refuse to use debt, they would eventually have everything they wanted and be free from the slavery enforced by the government. In today's world, where the media has indoctrinated all viewers to be "good little debt slaves," saving isn't very sexy. But consider this: if you were to put aside the equivalent of one car payment into a savings account every month and take the bus, you could own a car in less time than the 5 years it takes to pay off a car loan. If one makes a "car payment" into their savings account each month, they will not only earn interest on such "payment," they will have saved enough to buy a car in just 2.5 years. Thus, when they acquire the car, they will own the car completely. If they then sell the car after 3 years, they will then have enough equity in the car to finance more than half of a new car. If they have continued to make "car payments" into their savings account, they will have enough money, when combined with their equity, to self-fund the purchase of a new car. If, such a person strives to continually purchase cars that are more expensive and have better re-sale value, they will eventually drive better, more valuable machines while not wasting ANY money on debt service. The money they would have spent on debt service will thus be available to making THEIR future brighter rather than the BANK's future brighter.
If every citizen in America were to do this, the collective future would be brighter and society would advance towards the state of a Class I Civilization.

Phasing out Governments:
The only way governments can be phased out is for banks to be phased out first. More specifically, banking practices of fiat and fractional money must be phased out first then governments will shrink and crumble or go back to Constitutional limits. We have seen above how the reduction of debt will make a person's future brighter while serving to disenfranchise banks who make fractional loans. The next stage of phasing out government is to phase out, not only fractional lending, but fiat currency. Governments, in their partnership with the Federal Reserves System, have come to rely on monetizing debt thus creating fiat currency. By doing this, the Fed violates Article I, Sections 8 & 10 of the U.S. Constitution because it makes a "THING" other than gold or silver "money." See a documentary film entitled FIAT EMPIRE for details. The Founders specifically stipulated that money was to be backed by gold and silver for the express purpose of preventing the government to go on spending sprees with money created out of thin air, i.e., fiat currency.
The financial crises that manifest in October of 2008 is a result of the government's violation of Article I of the Constitution. At this writing the government, the banks and the media are still trying to cover up the actual cause of the debacle. They are trying to blame the economic meltdown on a lack of regulation resulting in excessive sub-prime lending, securitization of mortgages and impossible-to-evaluate, overly-complex derivatives. What the media and government talking-heads are failing to reveal that FIAT money and FRACTIONAL RESERVE lending practices are at the root cause of all of this. They are failing to state the actual cause because they hope that, once they get the system back under control, they can reinstate another fiat-money system, whether national, regional or global. In other words, the bankers and their partners in crime -- the Congress and the mainstream media -- have devised the money-making scam of the millennia. Here's how it works in brief.

Money-Making Scam of the Millennia:
Congress needs money fund the domestic and foreign police powers (weapons) that keep it in power. The banks need interest payments to give them and their corporate clients the income to continue living the extravagant life they have become accustomed to. The mainstream media needs revenue to continue operations, such operations including the continuous flow of propaganda necessary to ensure an indoctrinated slave workforce which pays taxes and interest as well as consumes products advertised by their clients. So, the three buddies -- the gov, banks and media -- work to keep each other in business regardless of the needs of "the folks," society or the goal of higher-class civilization.
One of the reasons the Obama-McCain presidential election went on for 21 months is because of the $5 billion that was made available to all of the candidates collectively. Much of this money came from big corporations and lobby groups. Most of this money goes into TV advertising. So, by promoting big expensive campaigns funded with corporate money, the mainstream media is able to offset the revenue losses due to citizens defecting to alternate news sources, such as the Internet. The candidate who spends the most has the better chance of winning, thus being in a better position to return corporate favors. The Congress wins because the mainstream media keeps the fiat/fractional ponzi scheme quiet and, in return, the Congress makes sure the major networks have access public airways and bandwidth to continue their spam and unsolicited propaganda. From the ability to monetize endless money through the Federal Reserve System, the government is able to wage perpetual wars and thus "justify" the expansion of the military-industrial complex Eisenhower warned us about. Huge military expenditures and wars make it make it easier for the government to roll over debt. Thus war promotes the interest of bankers because ever larger interest payments can be hidden in ever larger military expenditures. And, in return, the government uses the police powers acquired by fiat money to secure the banks and their wealthy elite in the corporatocracy from the growing number of "terrorists" out there. Please note, the mainstream media is, of course, part of the corporatocracy, as are the 30 corporations in the DOW and numerous multinational corporations that have gone traitor to the U.S. middle class and its manufacturing base. Through this system -- what Eisenhower should have called the military-industrial-government-banking-media complex -- the status quo of this "new world order" is maintained. This Order, also referred to as the "Corporatocracy," is now being expanded to the entire world under the banner of "free trade" and Globalization. Thus, at this writing, the world is headed for a global state, centralized and controlled by the technology of fiat money.

A Proposed Remedy:
Again, the only way to stop the fascist Globalization, or rework a centralized global governance scheme into a distributed management scheme is for We the People to withdraw support for interest and taxes. Interest and taxes are the chains by which the corporatocracy and government enslave the masses and extracts the energy they need to survive and expand.
Fortunately or unfortunately, it is much easier to phase out interest payments than taxes. As explained above, government force will be used to keep a slave paying taxes as well as all contracted interest on debt, so the only non-violent recourse a citizen-slave has is to refuse to use DEBT. Refuse to use CREDIT CARDS. Refuse to use MORTGAGES. Refuse to take out CAR LOANS. Refuse to incur new interest payments on DEBT: especially after debt has been paid off.
Right now, as I listen to mainstream TV while writing this, almost every channel has a talking head on telling me how to "take on the responsibility of debt," how to "be on the money," why "only properly managed debt can take one to true affluence." This propaganda goes on endlessly. Refuse it. Ignore it. Repudiate it. Spit on it. These reporters, actors and "news" analysts are "just doing their jobs" making YOU the victim, because they are in the same cesspool in which we all find ourselves when we participate in the insanity. By living off the victims they create, they perpetuating the system until we all crash and burn. Interest and taxes fuel the system that enslaves us all. Eventually even the elite will be enslaved because the superintelligent AI machines (they will someday build to replace all human slave labor) will turn on them and destroy them: like cockroaches under the heel of an immense black boot. Ironically, the universe WILL attain its equilibrium. Even banks and governments shrink to insignificance under reality.
REFUSE TO USE ANY AND ALL CREDIT.
SERVICE YOUR EXISTING DEBTS, BUT REFUSE TO INCUR ANY ADDITIONAL DEBT OR BUY ANYTHING ON CREDIT.
The ponzi system of debt is probably going to crash anyway. Some say it's inevitable. After you finish watching FIAT EMPIRE, watch a movie called MONEY AS DEBT and another movie called ZEITGEIST ADDENDUM. The only question is this: How do you want the system to crash? By refusing to use credit, both for consumption and business, YOU will be in control of the crash. By continuing to borrow, using credit, both for consumption and business, THEY will be in control of the crash.
If THEY are in control of the crash, THEY -- the military-industrial-government-banking-media complex -- will seek to do at least the following:

A. Use their collateral "rights" to confiscate as many of your assets as possible;

B. Set up some sort of "false flag" operation to "justify" further abridgement of civil rights;

C. Establish another fiat currency, whether regional or global so they can continue their ponzi;

D. Spin the crash in their terms to justify their crimes and keep the masses uninformed.

If YOU are in control of the crash, YOU -- We the People -- will seek to do at least the following:

A. Re-establish self-government under the principles of the U.S. Constitution more stringently adhered to;

B. Amend, with input and debate of all American Citizens, the U.S. Constitution to provide for a more equitable, stable currency and monetary system;

C. Work to integrate the United States into the World community upon a less intrusive and more self-sufficient basis;

D. Work to decentralize banking, government and military power with the end goal of evolving the obsolescence of all three;

E. Create a super-technological, nanofacturing-based Class I Civilization that relies 100% on renewable energy (solar, plasma fusion, wind, geothermal) and evolves the obsolescence of the profit-motive, as well as debt, and eventually money itself, as a means of "keeping score" on human achievement.(2)

What Would a Future with No Interest or Taxes Look Like?
As debt is phased out, the banks relying on it will go out of business. Money allocated by citizens and business to interest payments will be available for research and development as well as better and more efficient production. The massive human resources now allocated to accounting and keeping track of payments will be freed up for more productive endeavors. The money supply will drastically shrink. Prices will drop. It will look like a depression, but as the energy preempted by the elite's debt is re-allocated to the GENERAL WELFARE of the nation, PRODUCTS WILL IMPROVE IN QUALITY AND LAST LONGER. There will be less INSANE diversity of products, but the product lines that DO survive in a FREE MARKET will be more practical and better engineered. You will not have to buy a new coffee maker every two years. Instead, the coffee maker you buy will be better-made, more-functional, more-aesthetic and LESS expensive. It will easily last six years. Your car will also be better-made, more-functional, more-aesthetic and LESS expensive. It will easily last twenty years without parts breaking down to planned-obsolescence from the money-mentalities' psychopathic profit-motives. Look how many car repair services there out there. Faulty, cheap, minimalist, poorly-made products are the money-mentality's idea of a prosperous economy running on the profit-motive. All this is made possible by government-sanctioned banks and their piss: fiat and fractional money.
As the parasitic banks' causality-twisting debt is removed from society's balance sheet, prices for PRODUCTS will drop but prices for human SERVICES will remain constant. Why is this? Because, even though the money supply is shrinking (due to the pay-off of debt), the money which businesses retain (as a result of less interest payments to banks) can be REDISTRIBUTED to employees as wages and salaries. In other words, we will live in an era where business owners will recognize its more rewarding to pay PEOPLE than pay DEBT SERVICE. Paying people for their REAL human efforts will result in higher moral and greater productivity. Paying banks for their BOGUS fiat money simply results in the validation of a contra-survival system and encourages yet more debt.

Bank Fraud:
In the last analysis, why should the banks get to create a "product" (money) out of thin air and then charge a "rental fee" (interest) on it when everyone else in society must create real products out of real earthly resources using real human effort before THEY can sell or rent them for their fees?
THE PRACTICE OF FIAT AND FRACTIONAL BANKING IS CRIMINAL. A CRIMINAL PRACTICE FUNDING A GOVERNMENT ENCOURAGES A CRIMINAL GOVERNMENT TO EVOLVE.
As citizens segue away from debt and credit, the multinational corporations that rely on fiat money and "easy money" will atrophy. Many will bankrupt and be replaced by ones that rely on "capital formation" (savings) rather than artificial money (fiat currency).
Both small and large companies that have less debt will be stronger and succeed without having to rely on the exploitation of slave labor and foreign markets. As the corporatocracy weakens, its stranglehold on Congress will diminish. If citizens continue to vote out incumbents -- especially ones that advocate or condone fiat money, regulation, war and deficit-spending -- Congress will come back under the control of We the People. As it does, we can put our brains together to perfect a new economic system that doesn't require debt and big government.

Outsourcing Government:
Most or all of the functions of government above first discussed can eventually be outsourced. Public works projects, local, state and national police protection, utilities, postal services, Medicare can be out-sourced to private industry. As private industry -- unencumbered by interest payments and excessive taxation of big government -- exponentially strengthens, it will be able to assume all of the functions of government without the waste.
Since a government with nuclear weapons really answers to no one, not even its citizens, it taxes and spend however it wishes without regard to economy, quality, aesthetics, uniformity or any other human-friendly considerations. In short, whereas governments may have served a common purpose in past centuries, they may quickly become an impediment to technological progress in a world seeking Class I Civilization status. Thus, governments, and the banking systems that supported them -- will have to be revised and eventually phased out in roughly this order: borrowing, debt, fiat/fractional money, profit as unjust enrichment, weapons, governments.
And this is not only good for people in general, but for you, who may be reading this who works government or the banking industry. There is no attempt to say you are evil or that your industry and efforts didn't serve a purpose in civilizations' growth. I believe they did. They got us to where we are today: a world much better than the world 500 years ago. But now the training wheels of civilization -- banks and governments -- should come off. As Ray Kurzweil maintains in his book, The Singularity is Near, technology has progressed exponentially over the past millennia no matter what the economy has done or who has governed. But today, the technology of governments and banks are becoming obsolete. It is now evident they enslave and inhibit the full potential of civilization because they breed waste, scarcity, greed and wars, among other anti-social maladies. Worse of all, they suppress the exploration and colonization of the Solar System, starting with Mars. According to rocket engineer, Robert Zubrin, a civilization that fails to confront "frontier shock" will become stagnant. In a civilization expanding into an unimaginably vast Universe, the idea of keeping score with pieces of paper or bits & bytes is ridiculous. Maybe this is the REASON the gov-bank, money-mentality is trying to keep everyone sequestered on Earth.
Bankers and governments must come to realize the realities of existence. They need to stop pursuing a limited, planet-spun reality, a reality not even theirs to define, a reality limited by the views of fat, desk-bound, myopic accountants, lawyers, brokers, bankers and investors. These are all apologists of a silly little system on a silly little planet. Bankers and governments may not want to hear it, but yes, technology will set even THEM free. It always has; it always will. They, in fact, owe their very existence and bank to technology. They are in their position of power for one, and only one, reason: technology. Technology made possible the weapons they used to commandeer resources. Technology made possible the invention of fiat money, fractional reserve banking and debt, tools they use to force their will on others to pay interest and taxes.
TECHNOLOGY PRODUCED THE WEAPONS THAT ENFORCE THE PAYMENT OF TAXES AND INTEREST AND TECHNOLOGY CAN PRODUCE THE MEANS WHEREBY HUMANS ARE FREED FROM TAXES AND INTEREST.
And ARE Mr. Banker and Ms. Government really in any better boat than the masses they claim to serve and/or represent? No doubt they hate their job as much as the next guy. They just do it because they are desperately seeking a way to make life better. They figure a rising sea floats all boats. That if they can help their fellows through better government, or perhaps a better loan, they will improve their lives, hence the lives of the rest. Unfortunately, their system of achieving, even their own ends, is not working any longer.
One can always tell if a system is working by examining the stats. Not just the financial stats, as these generally reflect the state of affairs only after the fact. You examine a normal data flow. Stats there can be examined by almost anyone. Stats like: population on earth; number of people that starve each year; wealth distribution; number of people incarcerated; average per capita income; life expectancy; sick vs. healthy; number of wars started that year vs. number ended; number of weapons produced; debt levels; wealth disparity; cost of energy; cost to lift a pound into space; people employed by private vs. public sector. Of course stats reflect basically quantitative, not qualitative conditions, so they are not the end-all.
But the stats indicate that, in many ways, we should be proud of building a better world than the world of 500 years past. The World is currently a stagnating, if not threatened by a new Dark Age. The mere fact that we have not continued with manned exploration of the Moon and Mars is proof of this assertion. Again, a civilization advances to the degree it experiences the frontier shock of exploration. The fiat money-mentality that has hijacked this world has suppressed the advance of Humanity. Such mentalities must be removed from the equation and enlightened if possible. If We the People get active and take greater responsibility for our self-governing Republic, We the People can vote the money-mentality out of power in two ways: politically and economically. We can refuse to vote for their Government with the ballot and we can refuse to support their Federal Reserve System with debt. Once this happens, society will improve and even bankers and government officials will become enlightened as they too emerge from the dark and experience better lives.

Summary for Debt- and Employee-Slaves:
Interest and taxes are the two largest expenses to the individual and to society. The cost of interest and taxes in a technological society are no longer warranted by the benefits delivered by banks and government. Were society to phase-out, first banking, and later government, it would prosper as never before.
Government and banking may have served a purpose in the past and may have brought us to a higher state of proto-civilization, but in order to reach the status of civilization, full Class I status, the parasitic, suppressive and destructive effects of banks and government must be remedied by removing their enabling technologies: interest and taxes.
The remedy should not, and cannot, be drastic, for the institutions of banking and government have interwoven their tentacles firmly into the fabric of society, both in the US and the rest of the World.
The US can lead the way, not only through (solar, fusion and geothermal) energy independence, but by re-establishing a world-class manufacturing base and by taking the initiative to remove debt, fiat money and fractional reserve banking from its business practices. Re-establishing the gold or silver standard for the dollar would thus signify to the world that "we mean business and we are open for ethical, real free-market business at this time."
Ultimately, if the above fails, we will be forced to conclude that ALL economic systems, and the political systems they have spawned, have failed or served their useful purposes. Among these would thus be Marxism, Communism, Socialism, Fascism and yes, Capitalism, brought down by regulation, fiat money, greed and the profit-motive of Monetarism. All of these systems were ultimately based on the profit-motive. All of these systems promoted scarcity, greed, crime, conflict, incarceration, ignorance, fear and war. All of these systems are now obsolete and must go.(3)
It is impossible to phase out government before phasing out fiat and fractional banks. Fiat and fractional banking make possible the endless expansion of government and the endless expansion of the fascist corporatocracy. The QUALITY of government is no substitute for the QUANTITY of government as, apologist for the plutocracy's globalization agenda, Fareed Zakaria, would have one believe. Fiat and fractional banking combine to promote the expansion of globalization -- world conquest by economic means -- because they give the corporatocracy unfair advantage. This unfair advantage results in corporate fascism and unbridled capitalism that has reduced the US to a nation with an export profile worse than a banana republic. OBVIOUSLY, certain foreign powers and supra-national entities are hell-bent on destroying the United States. Anyone that doesn't get this yet, is simply a moron.
The end result of globalization, as now practiced, will be unlimited totalitarian rule using the forces of scarcity, profit and military might to accomplish its ends for the benefit of a plutocracy (a rule by the rich). This future is not burned into stone. This future can be replaced with a distributed system of government and economics, fueled by clean, renewable energy. Eventually, as all banks and governments are phased out, the energy lost, absorbed and wasted by such entities an be recycled directly into higher human civilization, as well as the exploration and colonization of the Solar System. Taking money or energy from the wealthy and redistributing it to the poor or middle class, or vice versa, is NOT the answer. This is socialism, a system that didn't work because such system depends on confiscating, through taxes, the FRUITS of production. A technological civilization that does not waste the energy of humans (as embodied in the medium of exchange known as money), and that draws energy from renewable sources (such as solar, fusion and geothermal) will be a civilization that creates such abundance the motivations that used to stimulate production (the profit-motive) and the methodologies by which such production were managed (money, accounting, paper, computer data bases) in a world of scarcity, will become obsolete.
In short: the energy wasted and preempted by the current-day corporatocracy, banking system and the military-wielding government needed to enforce this artificial construct upon humans, when phased out of the manufacturing process, can, and will, make it possible for Earth to reach Class I status as a civilization and Class II status within the next one hundred years.
The amount of monetary energy released for GENERAL WELFARE, upon the termination of the interest and taxes now paid to banks and government can be estimated:
ALL INTEREST PAID + ALL TAXES PAID

minus
ASSETS OF ALL LENDERS

minus
ALL GOVERNMENT ASSETS

equals
MONEY AVAILABLE FOR THE GENERAL WELFARE
The sum of money that results from the above equation is the sum of money that has been available for the GENERAL WELFARE of We the People over time, but been preempted by the plutocracy. It will be seen that the sum of money and assets collected by lenders + government will be truly vast and the sums retained as assets by same will be truly vast as well. Accordingly, the sums that have "trickled down" have been relatively minuscule. American Citizens might take note of this as they pay their INTEREST and TAXES.
In a system where banking and government services have been retired or absorbed by private FREE ENTERPRISE local entities, vast sums of monetary energy will be available to the general public. Under such a free market system, where regulation of the money supply as well as other government regulation is non-existent, civilization will be able to advance technologically without the parasitic and predatory hindrances experienced in past centuries. Eventually, lending and money itself, in any and all forms, will become obsolete. As discussed, the only recourse citizens presently have is to opt out of debt. The only way the current ponzi scheme of fiat and fractional reserve lending can continue is to expand its borrower base. Each new borrower gives the system the ability to generate the next round of fiat money which will then be used to service the previous round of debt. Globalization under the false mantra of "free trade" is the gov-corporatocracy's attempt to expand this ponzi into the rest of the world's economic systems.
IT IS MATHEMATICALLY IMPOSSIBLE FOR THE CURRENT DEBT PONZI TO CONTINUE.
THE ONLY QUESTIONS ARE: HOW LONG WILL IT PERSIST AND WHO WILL REMAIN STANDING AFTER ITS DEMISE?
Again, the rejection of credit is the only thing the citizen can legally do to hasten the demise of the bank debt ponzi and the force governments use to support it. Patriots in America are advised to opt out of borrowing and then encourage others, in other countries, to do likewise. Pay your taxes and interest so you don't go to jail or place assets at unnecessary risk, but once debts are paid off, don't play that game ever again. No government can force you to borrow.
Eventually ALL DEBT should be phased out of civilization. A truly powerful civilization does NOT have to borrow and a civilization will never become truly powerful if it continues to cripple and enslave its populations with debt service. You will win and civilization will win if you move in this direction. Keep your assets out of the hands of the banksters who make asset confiscation their covert game. The banks will eventually fold and take the Federal Reserve System and the 'corporations that grow up around them' down. Once the Fed is gone, Americans can proudly say they have slain the dragon again -- for thrice in US history central banks have preyed upon American souls and diminished the American Dream.
So, the entrance point to getting rid of government is to get rid of the central bank, known as the Federal Reserve System. The entrance point to getting rid of banks is to stem borrowing, credit, debt, leverage and interest payments, however you can phrase out these scourges. Then, as the corporatocracy -- the one that funds political campaigns in exchange for re-configured laws and special privileges -- falls apart, vote out and jail all the congressmen and congresswomen that have facilitated this unconstitutional, corrupt and predatory System. A case could be made, that they are all guilty, with the exception of Ron Paul, who was slain by the corporatocracy's media henchmen, as we all saw. The mainstream media and the violence-spewing, Hollywood-based US motion picture industry are in serious need of society's review. Little of material importance or truth is normally discussed in mainstream TV, the print media or by the irresponsible, crazed celebrities who have been bought and sold by the MPAA studio/distributors. Certainly few, if any, of the concepts discussed in this essay have ever been addressed by any of them.
For more information on how the media, starting with the Hollywood-based MPAA studio/distributors can be reformed, see the works of entertainment-securities attorney and author, John W. Cones, at the Film Industry Reform Movement site at http://www.homevideo.net/FIRM.
The invention of debt and fiat money inevitably truncates expansion, facilitates endless war and consolidation and aberates society. Had the United States stayed out of debt from 1913 to the present, we would see growth rates in excess of 25% per year with exponential expansion on the horizon. In other words, we would see growth rates that could be called the Singularity. But, because of the choices we have taken as a nation, this is now unlikely. We are slaves to interest and taxes and our money has been reduced by 95% of its former purchasing power.
Again, debt is what brings life to the banks, while it is what brings death to everyone else. Debt is the fictitious remedy for scarcity.
People and governments, that use debt do so because they want NOW, what they only deserve to have LATER. Debt causes a reversal of the timeline. Worse it is a violation of universal causality. The excess energy that everyone should have in the future (as a result of collective productivity), is preempted by the beneficiaries of debt. This places the lender into the future, and the borrower into the past, another way the time track is artificially reversed.
Is it any wonder that the largest debtor nation that ever existed -- the United States of America -- is one of the poorest nations in mathematical academics? You think this is just a coincidence? If the citizens of the U.S. had made the choice to use capital formation (savings) to finance expansion, most of the excess productivity from industry could have gone into R&D and further expansion. The gargantuan increases in productivity as a result of intensively funded R&D, would have ignited an exponential curve of advancement because all of the money allocated to interest payments (and debt service) would have been available for R&D as well as expansion, wages and salaries. It would have taken us longer to have arrived at even a 1960-technology level, but by now, 2008, we would be at a technology level of 2050 were interest not bleeding the energy of society off and into the coffers of the military-industrial-government-banking-media complex. As it is now, the criminal violators of the Constitution that imposed fiat money(4) , have absorbed most of this expansion and wealth. They have thus preempted the long-term productivity of every man, woman and company in the nation, exactly as Thomas Jefferson warned they would do if the money supply were not backed.

"If the American people ever allow private banks to control their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all their prosperity until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."
-- Thomas Jefferson

All of us have been suppressed by interest and taxes -- the enslaving instruments of banks and governments. The people and agents that have duped us are the same people that are behind the Federal Reserve and all earlier central banks that rely on fiat money and fractional reserve banking. Remove these criminals from society, don't support the system of credit and restore all monetary systems to free market systems (without the fraud of fractional reserve) and the COST of money will naturally adjust to free market conditions, productivity will increase exponentially and we will evolve the obsolescence of centralized government and economic systems. Temporal causality will be restored and values will return because the energy of civilization will be allocated by democratic, free markets, not by a bunch of greedy administrators that sit on the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee and/or in the halls of Congress.(5)
Had society not sold out to greed -- taking NOW what one deserves LATER -- it would not be addicted to the invention of DEBT to endlessly "stimulate the economy" and just get along. Debt is a spin-off technology of money. Money is a technology of banks. Banks are a technology of governments and people known as monetary scientists, who hundreds of years ago, figured out a way to use mathematics to eventually enslave all of civilization after bleeding away its assets.(6) Technology is neither good or bad. Technology spawned the problem of taxes and interest and technology can remedy it.

--------------------
(1) Fiat Currency -- 1) Federal Reserve Notes issued by the private bank known as the Federal Reserve and backed no longer by silver or gold, but the "full faith and credit of the U.S. government (and military)". 2) Money the government orders its citizens to use even though it's becoming worthless. 3) Paper bills of credit that are no longer redeemable in gold or silver hence are illegal under the Constitution. 4) Fiat Currency currently comes in 1 dollar bills, 5 dollar bills, 10 dollar bills, 20 dollar bills, 50 dollar bills and 100 dollar bills. Each bill says: "This is legal tender for all debts public and private." That's the government's cue that you better accept this paper or we will blow you to smithereens. Hear that Cits? Hear that OPEC? Hear that Chinks?
(2) Definitions:
Class I Civilization -- A global civilization that has learned how to utilize all its planetary resources in an economical manner that benefits all of its human population without the use of force, coercion, deception or destruction to the environment or the population.
Class II Civilization -- A stellar civilization that has learned how to utilize all its stellar system's resources in an economical manner that benefits all of its civilized planets without the use of force, coercion, deception or destruction to the system or its planets.
Class III Civilization -- A galactic civilization that has learned how to utilize all its galactic resources in an economical manner that benefits all of its civilized star systems without the use of force, coercion, deception or destruction to the galaxy or its stars. See http://www.jaegerresearchinstitute.org/articles/glossary.htm for other definitions.
(3) To get a better appreciation of what is meant by the idea that Marxism, Communism, Socialism, Fascism, Capitalism and Monetarism are all based on the profit-motive and promote scarcity, greed, crime, conflict, incarceration, ignorance, fear and war, watch a documentary entitled ZEITGEIST Addendum at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7065205277695921912 A review, and this author's opinion of this movie is at http://www.jaegerresearchinstitute.org/articles/zeitgeist2.htm.
(4) See movie FIAT EMPIRE at http://www.FiatEmpire.com. Also see the book entitled, THE CREATURE FROM JEKYLL ISLAND found at http://realityzone.stores.yahoo.net/crfrjeiss.html
(5) This committee operates in secrecy as it doesn't publish its minutes until some time after the fact. Hardly an "open market" as its name deceptively implies.
(6) A case could be made that people who have money to lend have something of value "for sale." This "something of value" is something they had to pay a price for. Why is this value not a valid product that the owner should be paid for? Why should not the owner of MONEY be able to sell his MONEY and collect INTEREST just as anyone else gets to sell their product? The answer to this question is: a person who generates money using actual HUMAN EFFORT, who does NOT create that money by means of fraudulent fractional reserve or monetizing debt (i.e., fiat currency) SHOULD be able to rent his or her money and collect interest. All the author is saying is: NO ONE IN THE ADVANCING SOCIETY SHOULD BORROW THIS MONEY BECAUSE BY DOING SO, THEY ARE INCURRING DEBT AND, AS DISCUSSED ABOVE AT LENGTH, DEBT PLACES THE LENDER INTO THE FUTURE AND THE BORROWER INTO THE PAST. Debt brings life to the lender, while bringing death to society, for debt is the fictitious remedy of scarcity.

Originated: 07 November 2008
Revised with input from Harvard: 10 November 2008
Revised with input from Harvard: 11 November 2008
Revised & Polished: 12 November 2008
Portions originated: 21 November 2005
Portions revised: 18 August 2007

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