{"id":32842,"date":"2018-03-27T10:27:26","date_gmt":"2018-03-27T15:27:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=32842"},"modified":"2018-03-27T10:27:36","modified_gmt":"2018-03-27T15:27:36","slug":"the-degenerative-impacts-of-our-money-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=32842","title":{"rendered":"The degenerative impacts of our money\u00a0system"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The degenerative impacts of our money\u00a0system<\/strong><\/a><\/canvas><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
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\u201cThe way that a national economy preys on its internal colonies is by the destruction of communities\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2014 Wendell Berry<\/strong><\/p>\n

The creation of money with interest has two main impacts on the operation of today\u2019s economies.<\/p>\n

Our monetary system creates the need for economic growth by\u00a0design<\/em><\/h4>\n

One of the most important lessons of the economics dimension<\/a> of Gaia Education\u2019s online course in \u2018Design for Sustainability\u2019 is to understand that the current design of our money system has an inbuilt growth imperative<\/a>. Let\u2019s go over this again: Consider that over 90 per cent of the money in circulation has been created by banks as debt. Borrowers are obliged to repay both the capital and interest. The only place more money can come from in order to pay this interest is an expansion in the money supply overall\u200a\u2014\u200anew loans issues and debts entered into in order for the system to keep functioning.<\/p>\n

For economic growth to take place new investments have to drive further loans (debts) to be issued and this in turn stimulates more rapid economic growth. To keep the wheel spinning, consumption has to keep growing. We have created a material culture that is addicted to the rapid exploitation of non-renewable natural resources and levels of fossil fuel consumption that are driving us beyond humanity\u2019s safe operating space, beyond planetary boundaries and towards a future of catastrophic climate change. The spiral of degeneration and decrease in whole systems health and viability will continue, if we do not respond promptly, globally collaboratively, and decisively as one <\/em>humanity.<\/p>\n

The creation of a money system that pays differential interest to lenders and borrowers, by design<\/em> creates a system that needs exponential<\/em> growth<\/a> in order to keep going This is because, as the size of the economy grows year on year, so the volume of required interest repayments increases, even if the interest rate remains the same. This is called the compounding <\/em>of interest, or compound interest<\/a>. As a result of compound interest, our money necessarily follows an exponential growth pattern: at 3% compound interest, it doubles in 24 years; at 6%, it takes 12 years; at 12%, 6 years (Martenson 2011).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n

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The degenerative impacts of our money\u00a0system \u201cThe way that a national economy preys on its internal colonies is by the destruction of communities\u201d \u2014 Wendell Berry The creation of money with interest has two main impacts on the operation of today\u2019s economies. Our monetary system creates the need for economic growth by\u00a0design One of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[15669,195,286,19490,6113,2994,14273,2069],"class_list":["post-32842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-daniel-christian-wahl","tag-debt","tag-exponential-growth","tag-growth-imperative","tag-insurge-intelligence","tag-interest","tag-medium","tag-monetary-system"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32842"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32842\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32843,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32842\/revisions\/32843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}