Medieval Methodology.

[insulin]

Trough out medieval history we will always find an example of a corrupt empire. The ruthless tax systems that made it impossible to hang to your land home and even your children. I fear that we have not evolved from this system. In modern economics we pay tax on our food, water, land and earnings.

I stand to be corrected but we end up paying more or less 60c of every R1 to the government in the form of tax and services and the many hidden food and trade taxes that adds to the total sum. Then the banking system comes along and takes from your remaining wealth in the form of transaction fees and services thus you safe only a fraction of your true earnings.

Now one cannot help but to ask why? Keep in mind that the government also receives money from all the natural rescores also one must remember import and export tax on particular items. Then there is a host of other tax systems that seems to take that little extra in the end of the day.

Well I find the system self-defeating because it is taking so much money from the community that living cost dwarfs the total income of an individual. Now how thus our modern day tax system compare to the medieval methodology that was used?

Well I am shocked to say that it is still very similar. You still face liquidation, prison and you can still lose your children to the government. So the basic methodology remained the same. Now how can we accredit modern government with forward thinking if the system they use is still as medieval as it was a few hundred years ago.

This system is not only outdated in principle but barbaric in its raw nature. You still stand to lose everything.

Yes the tax system does exist for good reason but one cannot help to think that the benefits of this system are nearly completely one-sided.

Now one must understand that a few hundred years ago we had scarcity thus money was invented. Today we have scarcity by design to maximise profit. The fact is we have the capacity and the technological knowhow to eliminate scarcity thus the need for money itself can no longer be justified.

So why are we still living under and outdated tax system?

Can it be that the answer is as simple as this one word “Greed� is it even remotely possible?

Well there will be a bunch of people that will say no... We cannot exist without money and they will copy and paste links to prove there statement.

Yet I remain sceptical because we don’t need money what we need is forward thinking and I will stand by this statement.

What do you think?

[Graeme]

If you vote for a government that will give you everything that you want, it will take everything that you have.

[insulin]

So do we just accept this then? Then I have lost the plot. It is that kind of attitude that just sucks the life right out of me. The willingness to accept that it is okay for us to just lose half of our money every month and then we just lose our homes, property and our basic ability to sustain a living. OK... fine clearly I failed again...

[Chrisjan B]

The Bible says: Give the king what the king is due... it may not be word correct but it conveys the meaning, albeit it does seem to be excessive.

Heck we even pay the Microsoft tax...
Life is a bitch and then you die..

[insulin]

Chrismine: Don’t get me started on that topic... I kind of like it here I don’t want to banned please...

[Chrisjan B]

There is also things that make me foam around my mouth and makes me speak colorful languages - ABSA Bank and JZ for instance.

Dave will not ban us if we express our thoughts colorfully I hope - he can always mark the thread for adults only.

Shall we ask him?

[twinscythe12332]

I'll start with a phrase, and elaborate from there. "nothing in life is free."

we have always wanted goods and services, regardless of how primitive. When we see something we like, we immediately want it. If we stole it, we had the chance of being killed by the owner. Back then, the mentality was if you steal my stuff, I'm going to make sure you can never steal again. Originally, when a baker wanted a cow, he would barter for that cow. what happens if the cow owner doesn't want bread? the bread owner would have to find out what the cow owner wanted, and swap his bread for it. and if that person didn't want it? the cycle would continue until the bread owner could eventually get what he needed to barter through to get the cow, or he would have to forget it. Wouldn't it be easier to have a universally accepted form of barter? originally that was precious minerals, gold, silver, and metal in general. Now it is Pounds, Dollars, Rands, etc. MONEY.

Now even back then, we were assigning leaders to represent our interests. kings, queens, the local spokesperson, whoever it was, the majority welcomed them as a leader. a Government is made up of a group of people who are meant to look for the best interests of a country (not always the case, as we all can see, but that's another story altogether). plenty of people will be unhappy, sure, but it is the MAJORITY who wins at the end of the day. the French Revolution is a perfect example of what happens when a minority (in this case government and high-class) doesn't listen to the majority. The order is unbalanced and so balance is restored.

Now onto taxes. Police, public hospitals, schools, basic housing, grants, government salaries, etc all are paid using taxes. People earning a higher income get taxed more in essence because they have more to give. you cannot honestly expect someone earning 100 bucks a week to pay the same tax as you. they would go into debt, and yet are just trying to earn a living! the same goes for the opposite. if you're earning a high salary, and another person is earning a very low salary, how is it fair that you pay the same tax? a scale is introduced to pretty much even things out.

as for cars, petrol and rent... do you really NEED that stuff? there are people out there who live on less than 800 rand a month. they have a roof over their head, food, water, and a few mates around them to chat to when they get bored. their NEEDS are met.
Those higher up, earning good salaries want the nice car, want the super-fast computer, want the meat instead of the mielie-pap.


Banks are a service, and we seem to forget that. we pay for the security of our funds( I know you're reading this, and are saying "but what about the ABSA story..." I'll get to it in a sec ), and the transfer costs are there for similar reasons. we also pay for a certain degree of ease of access. which is easier: paying for a car with a briefcase full of money that you had to count, hope like hell you weren't robbed during transit, and eventually handed over to someone.
OR
making a deopsit from your account into the other person's account, taking the payment slip, presenting it to the car owner and getting the keys (not always exactly the way it goes, but it's just an example)

the alternative is keeping it under your matress... oh wait, that isn't very secure... what about a safe? oh... someone broke into it and stole ALL my money. when they break into a bank, it's from everyone's money

[insulin]

I was hoping that someone would bring in trade dynamics and basic tax association protocols. Yes I do understand that there was a stage in our evolution that we needed a trade system. However I was hoping that we are evolving from this stage to the next. See the concept I am trying to establish is based on intellect being the foundation and economy will be replaced with progress.

This will start with living standards being equal. The reason we want more is not based on a human driven thought. See we are conditioned so that we want, or to must have. This is not human nature it is commercialization. See if we can get people to accept that the basics is good enough then we can focus not on making money and earning salaries but rather we can focus on progress.

Progress and technology is the extension of the human mind. Right now we are limited because we still think that we need money where today we don’t need money we need working solutions to sustain human life indefinitely.

Now at this moment you say that a person that is earning R6000 per month is paying less tax then a Person that makes R60000 a month. How sure are you about this statement? See the bulk tax deduction from the pay will be massively deferent however we still pay the same amount of tax on our food, water, and services thus the living cost for the person that only gets R6000 is technically more because she or he has less to start with. So What I am saying is that the tax we pay on everything else is the same no matter if you are rich or poor.

Now you may continue in saying that we need to pay our police, hospitals, roads, water and sanitation. I argue if the police where adequate I don’t need an alarm system. If the state hospitals where safe I will not need a medical aid. If water and sanitation was actively controlled and taken care off we will not need water purification systems in almost every home.

So what I am saying is that we need more active solutions that by design is sustainable and not economically cost effective. Thus my statement remains we are working with a medieval mindset thus progress and human sustainability cannot be met... The principal of the system is self defeating.

So what I am saying is we have the capacity to generate almost anything in excess why then do we need money if we can probably take care of all humans by simply working as one. This is possible and in remote areas of the world communities did so without any outsider help. But then the outsider wanted to intervene and introduced scarcity and greed. Thus there way of life was disrupted and we see another sweatshop producing cheap goods.

I just sometimes feel I am not smart enough to explain this properly... But I can promise you once you start to Google rescore economies you might see a deferent picture. Not a perfect picture but a better suggestion to sustain life.

[insulin]

I also wish to point out the following Yes it is said that nothing in life is free. This is not the truth. This is not the truth at all. Living is free it always was free. We grew food from the land and made clothing with plants we are so intelligent and so passionate about the simple joys of life that control measures had to be created. Measures that involves government and religion. Fact is we became more aware and found that conflict facilitate death and profit. Religious background is almost always war with but a few acceptations to the rule. Face it life was free once! Historians proved this with years of research. Today we have the technology to sustain that freedom. With present technology fully utilized you will never see hunger and pain again. And we can sustain life indefinitely and grow intellectually. Intellect is after all the greatest gift we ever received.

Scarcity is the product of a primitive trade systems. Until we realize this progress will always be painful and slow.

[Marq]

My favourite subject.....There has to be a better way to do life.

Some thoughts that I reckon are pointing in the right direction come from Jacque Fresco.....

'What's in it for me', is the way people think. And so if a man makes money selling a certain product, naturally he is going to fight the existence of another product that may threaten his institution. Therefore people cannot be fair and people do not trust each other. A guy will come over to you and say, "I've got just the house you're looking for".
He's a salesman. When a doctor says 'I think your kidney has to come out', I don't know if he's trying to pay off a yacht, or that my kidney has to come out- it's hard in monetary system to trust people.
If you came into my store and I said this lamp that I've got is pretty good, but the lamp in the next store is much better, I wouldn't be in business very long. It wouldn't work… If I were ethical, it wouldn't work. So, when you say industry cares for people… thats not true. They can't afford to be ethical. So your system is not designed to serve the well being of people… if you still don't understand that, there would be no outsourcing of jobs… if they cared about people. Industry does not care. They only hire people because it hasn't been automated yet. So, don't talk about decency and ethics… we cannot afford it and remain in business.

It is important to point out, that regardless of the social system, whether fascist, socialist, capitalist or communist, the underlying mechanism is still money, labour and competition.
Communist China is no less capitalistic than the United States. The only difference is the degree by which the state intervenes in enterprise.
The reality is that "monetary-ism", so to speak, is the true mechanism that guides the interests of all the countries on the planet.

The most aggressive and hence dominant variation of this monetary-ism is the free enterprise system. The fundamental perspective, as put forth by early free market economists, like Adam smith, is that self-interest and competition leads to social prosperity, as the act of competition creates incentive, which motivates people to persevere.

However, what isn't talked about is how a competition-based economy invariably leads to strategic corruption, power and wealth consolidation, social stratification, technological paralyses, labour abuse, and ultimately a covert form of government dictatorship by the rich elite.
The word corruption is often defined as moral perversion.

" So you see, you have built in corruption. We are all chiseling off each other, and you can't expect decency in that sort of thing.

And feeling that, they don't know who to elect. They think in terms of a democracy, which is not possible in a monetary based economy.
If you have more money to advertise your position… the position you desire in government, that isn't a democracy. It serves those in positions of differential advantage… so it is always a dictatorship of the elitists- the financially wealthy.

"WE CAN EITHER HAVE DEMOCRACY IN THIS COUNTRY OR WE CAN HAVE GREAT WEALTH CONCENTRATED IN THE HANDS OF A FEW, BUT WE CAN'T HAVE BOTH" - Louis Brandeis, supreme court justice

"It's not politicians that can solve problems. They have no technical capabilities. They don't know how to solve problems. Even if they were sincere, they don't know how to solve problems. It's the technicians that produce the desalinisation plants. It's the technicians that give you electricity…that give you motor vehicles, that heat your house… and cool it in the summertime. It's technology that solves problems, not politics. Politics cannot solve problems, because they are not trained to do so.

Very few people today stop and consider what it is that actually improves their lives. Is it money? Obviously not… One cannot eat money or stuff money into their car to get it to run… is it politics? - All politicians can do is create laws, establish budgets and declare war. Is it religion? Of course not…. Religion creates nothing except intangible emotional solace for those who require it.

The true gift that we have as human beings have, which has been solely responsible for everything that has improved our lives... is technology.

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