The 2084 Precept (38 page)

"Yes, you have mentioned several times that
conflict is the main trait of your species, and that arguing is the
unarmed version of it."

"Yes, well let me get down to the nuts and
bolts. Most of our economies are based on what we call growth. Low
growth is a troublesome circumstance, zero growth is extremely bad
news, and negative growth produces a poisonous crisis involving,
among other things, high unemployment and a corresponding rise in
poverty. More and more and more and more is what our system is
based on. It is like pushing a snowball uphill. It gets bigger and
bigger and heavier and heavier but it has to be kept rolling at all
costs. And when it does stop, because it eventually has to of
course, we have another crisis. The construction industry is an
easy example of the folly of this kind of economic system.
Construction forms a major part of most of our economies and it is
the reason why we continue to bury our planet under a massive layer
of concrete as fast as we can and, like the snowball, this activity
must be maintained—forever. If it stops, or nearly stops, thousands
of construction companies go bankrupt, their suppliers go bankrupt,
millions of workers become unemployed. The economic model then
suffers under the murderous dual effect of heavily reduced taxation
income coupled with an enormous increase in social benefit costs.
So the snowball has to be restarted and we have to begin
suffocating our beautiful planet with more and more concrete again.
This is the only thing that the masses and their elected clowns—at
national, provincial and municipal level—can envisage. More, for
them, means better, flap, flap. They don't understand why ‘more’
should mean better, but they can't envisage anything else. And so
they proceed to do as their predecessors have done and as their
successors, with equal certainty, will continue to do. Flap,
flap."

“You frequently use this expression
flap,
flap,
Peter. What do you mean by that?”

“Ah yes.” I answered with a smile.
“Definitely not a common expression. It is merely the way in which
I picture the birdbrains all over the world as they flap their
wings with one new idea after the other, day in, day out, while at
the same time squawking ‘more is better’, ‘more is better.’”

“Ah hah!” Jeremy laughed out loud, his eyes
lit up, he waved an arm around in the air. He really enjoyed that
one. He chuckled and he cackled, a rare interlude away from the
depressing content of our interview themes. “All succinctly
summarized,” he continued, “by means of a single once-reiterated
word. Yes, I like that, Peter, I really like that!”

“Pleased to have been of assistance,” I
said.

He laughed and nodded his head. "Flap, flap,
O.K., thank you very much.” And then he was back to serious mode,
the solemnity required for his delusional study work for his
delusional doctorate taking precedence again.

“And so this ‘more is better’ is a pillar of
most of your so-called economic systems?"

"Yes."

"Amazing."

"I should also mention inflation in this
connection, Jeremy. Inflation is necessary because we are a greedy
species by nature, we are always wanting more. As a result, we have
recognized that zero inflation is impossible on an ongoing basis.
Wages, salaries and the prices of goods may
not
stay the
same (now wouldn't that be stupid?). They must in fact increase,
because deflation would be even worse than the 'zero' scenario.
Nevertheless, we
do
recognize that too much inflation is
bad, it leads to uncontrollable chaos. If you research the horrors
of the hyperinflation in Germany's Weimar Republic in the early
part of the last century (prices would double in a matter of hours
and a loaf of bread, for example, eventually ended up costing 200
billion marks), you will understand what can happen. And so most
countries want inflation, but introduce inflation limit targets.
Needless to say, the politicians are frequently unable to control
or manage the targets they create, and so the targets are often not
met, what's new?"

"So it doesn't work of course."

"Only for certain periods of time and
usually only by luck. The way the United States is going today,
printing—just as in the Weimar Republic—more and more currency, is
a guarantee of what is going to happen. The dollar is now a
worthless piece of paper. So are many other currencies. The only
question is how long it will take before the international
masses—and their international birdbrains—recognize this. But more
important than all of this is the subject of debt."

"Ah yes, economics based on debt, you
said."

"Yes. Most of the world's developed states
have an economic system which can only survive if they borrow
money…more and more each year. Another type of snowball being
pushed uphill, flap, flap. The birdbrains in charge wish to finance
the things the voting masses would like to have but for which
insufficient tax income is available. And so they borrow the money
to do it and, since they themselves have no personal liability for
these debts, they borrow more and more and more until they have
created a situation whereby the amount is such that it can never,
ever, be paid back. Irresponsible idiots, according to the
powerless minority, a charge which the majority and—need I say
it?—the birdbrains themselves reject."

Jeremy stood up, stretched, and began to
pace slowly around the table. He wanted to get back to his office,
but he also wanted to hear a little more about our so-called
economic systems.

"They blame the world markets," I said,
"they blame the banks, they blame everybody and everything except
those responsible, namely themselves. And so what do they do? They
borrow even more money to pay off the old debts as they become due,
as well as the additional new amounts they need each year to enable
them to continue with their totally insane system. They keep
muttering the word 'growth'. Growth and more debt to be able to
achieve the growth is the only way out, they keep saying. At the
same time, their puerile verbal inanities continue and they add
more and more unbelievable promises to the historic political
dunghill. 'We will stop increasing our country's debt by the year
2020' or whatever. Laughable, not even their aunts believe them.
But the aunts are a minority. The masses believe them, and the
masses therefore vote for them. And if somebody were to stand up
today and say, 'I will stop this lunacy tomorrow morning; we will
only spend what we earn', you can believe me that he or she would
hardly receive a single vote. Because the intelligence ratios of
the masses continues to be the same as those of the clowns they
vote for."

"So they think that the cause of the problem
is colossal debt which can never be repaid. And they think that the
'solution' to this problem is to create even more debt which can
never be repaid? New unprecedented levels?"

Jeremy's forehead was more than furrowed and
his eyebrows were raised high above his chapel hat pegs.

"That is the way it is Jeremy. Obviously, at
some point in time this snowball also grinds to a halt. The most
bankrupt countries in the world at the moment include Japan, the
USA, Italy, France, Germany, Great Britain and a host of smaller
economies such as Greece, Spain, Ireland, Portugal and so on. And,
I don't know whether you can believe this, but some of the bigger
bankrupt countries are even giving away more billions they don't
have—they only have debts—to some of the smaller bankrupt ones,
like Greece. And all of them will soon go feet up, no need to think
about it."

"What do you mean by soon?" asked
Jeremy.

"Oh, I can't tell. I don't know. Could be
years. That depends at the moment on countries like China. I say at
the moment because, under this system, China will go down the same
road in a few decades' time. Countries are like companies, they
have customers who buy their goods. And when a customer has no
money left and he can't continue buying from you, you have a
choice. You can stop selling to him, in which case you lose money
and you create unemployment for yourself, or you can lend him more
and more money so that he can continue to buy from you. In the
latter case, and ridiculous though it may seem, you are, unless
your customer is going to repay you one day,
buying from
yourself
. Now, up until now, it has suited China to assume that
major customers like the USA will repay their loans, and it has
therefore continued to lend them more money. By the massive
purchasing, for example, of US Treasury Bonds. But when China
determines that its potential losses are bigger than its benefits,
either because their hard-earned money is going to disappear into a
big black hole, lost forever, or because the dollar begins to
heavily devalue, in which case the value of their loans will
disintegrate, they will stop. How soon this will happen, and some
economists still maintain that it won't, nobody knows. But it gives
China tremendous power, economically, politically and
consequently—very important on this planet—militarily. We in the
industrial countries are placing ourselves in their hands and our
future birdbrains will go flap, flap."

"I see," said Jeremy with another laugh, "or
at least I think I do. No wonder your system doesn't work."

"Right. It works only as long as people keep
lending money to those who want to borrow it in order to spend it
on what they can't afford. And all of this is aggravated by the
fact that the borrowers have to continue finding even more money to
make ever-increasing interest payments on their ever-increasing
debt. Some economists have now begun to admit that the Euro crisis
arose because the birdbrain liars have committed massive crimes by
breaking their own EU economic contracts and by ignoring their EU
constitutional laws. They say that, thanks to those imbeciles, the
whole Euro system is doomed. At the same time, it being the human
race, a large number of other economists continue to maintain that
the whole thing is
not
doomed. They say it is a great and
wonderful system. But trust me, Jeremy, everything will one day go
belly up. A mammoth crisis. Economic history will be
rewritten."

"Now hang on there a moment, Peter. You just
described the politicians as liars. Now that is definitely an
opinion as opposed to a fact."

"No, Jeremy, it is not an opinion. It is a
fact. A fully substantiated and proven fact. Certainly, it is a
generalization in the sense that a minority must be excluded. But
in general, if they didn't lie, they wouldn't keep their jobs. Or
even be voted into them in the first place. It is an integral part
of their profession. Someone should collate the evidence into a
book. The title could be '
The Top One Million Lies in Political
History
'. It would make for an interesting read."

"Well, please do me a favor, Peter. I find
this interesting. But I am running out of time. Just give me two or
three examples please; current ones, up-to-date ones. Maximum two
or three."

"Nothing could be easier, Jeremy. We have a
whole cornucopia to choose from. How about this one? The birdbrains
in various countries have recently been telling their electoral
masses that they are SAVING MONEY. Check it out, it's been in all
of the headlines. This is, however, one of their many lies. In
spite of the national bankruptcy situations they themselves have
already created, they continue, as I have already made clear, to
pile more and more debt every year onto the shoulders of said
masses. Now any person with more than five brain cells knows that
saving money means taking money you have and, instead of spending
it, putting it away for a rainy day. The birdbrains, on the other
hand, are taking money they
don't have
—they only have
debts—and are increasing the debts still further. Their countries'
debts, you understand. But because they now intend borrowing only
large amounts of money instead of crazily large amounts of money,
they issue the statement that they are SAVING MONEY. These people
are professionals, Jeremy. They know that if they lie about
something, and that if they do it often enough, the masses will end
up believing them. And—hopefully—the masses will vote for them next
time around. And the masses are stupid enough—the 10% intelligent
ones carry no weight—to do exactly that."

"Dementia," said Jeremy quietly.

“And the Greece fiasco,” I continued.
“Hundreds of billions in loans being thrown away by those European
birdbrains naïve enough to believe the Greek birdbrains’ promises
that they will repay them. Naïve enough, indeed, to believe that
the Greeks
could
repay them even if their birdbrains were
not
lying
in the first place. Allow me to mention some of
the German birdbrain lies to those who voted them into power. The
Finance Minister in 2009:
‘We Germans will not pay for Greece’s
problems’
(five months later the first European rescue
package of 110 billion Euros was approved by the German
government).
And the same man again in 2010: ‘
The rescue
packages are becoming due. That is what was clearly agreed’ (eight
months later the EFSF rescue package was prolonged - and what is
more, for an indefinite period).
In the same year, the German
Chancellor said:
‘all the experts confirm that Greece can meet
its debt obligations, both with regard to the interest payments and
to the repayment of the nominal loan amounts’ (ten months later,
100 billion Euros of Greek debt was simply waived,
obliterated).
And in 2012, the pinstriped statements became
even more colorful: The CSU Party Chairman blustered:
‘There can
be no more concessions, either on repayment deadlines or anything
else’;
the Chancellor again:
‘Greece has already achieved a
lot and is achieving more every day’;
and the Finance Minister
again:
‘the agreed-upon measures are costing the taxpayer
nothing’;
and the Bavarian President:
‘what must never be
allowed, is to waive any of Greece’s debt’
; and the FDP Party
Chairman………”