The Banking Game!

Reader Dearest,
Join me as I propose a toast to the Banks! You see, as we enjoy some moments
of reliefs from GST and a demonetized economy, in the beautiful game of boots, balls
& a cup and some games of thrones, I believe it is time we took a moment out to
appreciate the very people we ‘owe’ our existence to.
However, I need mention that I’m in a small dilemma. A year back, my
neighbour had started a business, having acquired a slab of vibranium, weighing
10,000 grammes allowing each of us a share of it. He said, in legal contract, that he’ll
sign a legal bond which will be worth a 1000 th of the slab he has, which is 10 grammes
of vibranium. Now he gave me in good faith, 10 such bonds, with the condition that at
the end of the year, I’d return him 10 such bonds, along with an extra that I’ll have to
collect from the others, as usury. Wouldn’t you accept the deal? I mean who doesn’t
want 100 grammes of vibranium for a year? Of course I did & guess what, I still
haven’t found that 11 th bond he needs. So I’d request you to search for a bloke Steve —
he’s a real nice guy — to lend me 10 grammes of spare vibranium.
Well, jokes apart, the above should sound familiar to what we all do daily, or at
least, monthly, don’t you think? It’s a trap! A scam! Don’t believe me? See for
yourself.
My neighbour is like a bank. A bank issues currency notes, at an arbitrary
desired rate, say $1 for each milligram of gold. Now, it lends you say $10; at an
interest. When the period finishes, you will have to return those or equivalent notes,
along with the interest, something like $11. Just one problem. Each person in the
market has been made to agree to this exact same thing — meaning, supposing there
are 20 people in a market, the bank has issued 20 × $10, that’s $200 and demands
from it 20 × $11, that’s $220. Guess what? Since $1 is a signed bond issued by the
bank, such that $1 equals 1 mg of gold, there are a total of $200 in the market. The
extra $20 just doesn’t exist. Now how many times has it been that capitalism has been
justified by the “no free meal” concept? Well, apply it to the banks. That’s exactly
what they’re demanding. Now the only solution is that you fight amongst yourselves
& acquire $11 or more for yourself to be able to repay the loan, leaving others buried
in debt. Now, there are three things that can happen:
I. The bank refuses to lend more ‘money’ to the one’s in debt and they die of
starvation since they’ve no money to buy food, other resources or services with;
II. The one’s in debt provide the bank with their own gold or whatever, to clear
the debt;
III. The bank issues new currency at a lower rate, say $ 2 for a milligram of
gold, reducing the “purchasing power” of the currency, and lending it again, under the
same rules, to allow the process to continue. Now, new lending banks crop up around
this central bank & lend this money to more borrowers, who use this to pay their old
debt to the main bank but are now in debt to these nodal banks, and thus, indirectly
in debt to the central one.
Notice, that for cases I & II, in either case, because the number of people have
decreased or the amount of gold in the bank has increased, the ratio between gold-to-
people has increased, making it seem as though the system has gained wealth though
the total gold in the system is still the same. In case III however, your $1 can no
longer buy you the 1 mg of gold, meaning with each passing moment, the prices of
commodities would increase — a.k.a. “inflation”. If you think a bit deep again, you’ll
notice that although the Bank has re-calibrated it’s metrics, not everyone will be
becoming “aware” of this instantaneously. Notice that the one’s who’ll have the
greatest chance of getting a loan, would be the one’s who’ve been able to pay their
debts, by trading ( taking ) money from others. Hence, they’d be the first one’s to
receive the largest share of the new loans — $20 instead of $10. Now, they’d be
charged by others at the same price as before, trading with others, not realizing that
their scales are no longer the same, allowing them to purchase products at half their
actual price. This would go on of course, till the next layer interacts with themselves
to realize that the scales have changed and hence, change their metrics too. In
essence, the damage having already been done during this transition itself, this will
cause the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer — creating a perceived
hierarchy & the infamous Pareto distribution.
To sum up, thus in this banking game, the bank always wins and the people
always lose, the rich get richer & the poor are driven to starve.
The reason is simply because it is what’s to happen in it, by design itself, making
you an unconscious murderer, in the same way people in general fear powerful AI
may murder all of humanity.
Now in a globalized economy it’s this same process just amplified, since now it’s
no longer that one standard being used — there are millions, gold, oil, silver, steel,
everything. Globalization thus, isn’t the cause of the trouble — it acts the same way in
fiction, the Earth’s sun turns any Kryptonian being, like Jor El into Superman. The
real evil lies in the monetary system itself.
“Now enough with lamenting about problems!”, you may say. Of course you
should.
“Aren’t we just helpless cogs? Where’s the solution?”
The answer to that my friend, is a strict ‘No’. You see, the solution isn’t yet to
be found, because it’s already is in existence, and has been evolving for quite some
time, having improved quite a lot today.
Yet, most, almost all of you aren’t even aware of it, being hooked on to those old
parasitic systems, with your eyes completely closed & waiting to be spoonfed, instead
of just opening your eyes to enjoy the plenty around you. So, if you’re still waiting to
be spoon fed the solution to all your problems, by them! It won’t happen — the mass-
media, your governments, the banks, corporations and all these centralized, systems
only thrive with you being exploited. No, there’s no central person or group
knowingly behind this. There’s no Illuminati or any of that shit behind this. This is
just simple network dynamics in action — the same thing responsible for making
simple molecules into singled celled organisms and later, in 3.7 billion years, the
biodiversity we find today, including us humans. This is also what is responsible for
making us into intelligent, self-aware beings, since in the brain, there’s no central
neuron or soul that’s you, it’s only the dynamics of the collective that makes it so.
The solution has many names and many forms, an “ Open Source (Sharing)
Circular Economy ”, “Open Source Society ” and so on. It’s not a product to be
purchased, but a system to be practised, if you’re wondering, mistaking this article to
be an advertisement campaign or “communist propaganda”, but a wake up call to you
all — each & every one of you out there.
Of course, one can’t kill the snake from which one hangs. The first step, hence, is
of course, liberating yourself from this parasitic network which talks in money &
feeds on your minds and bodies. No, I’m most definitely, not asking you to follow
your ancestor’s ways & live ‘simple’ and in-turn, lacking medical facilities, short,
lacking diversity, freedom and knowledge, extremely mundane, racist, casteist or
classist, extremely imperial, extremely patriarchal (or matriarchal in some societies),
extremely unscientific, superstitious and religious lives, in small, homogeneous, tribal
societies, that essentially grew big to create the problems we have today. No, please
don’t repeat their footsteps. But you must stop using money. How? Well, the way to
free yourself out of a system is to first check & study how you’re dependant on the
system.
We need money to acquire resources from society — from each other . Of course,
what that means is if you make it a social practice, to share with each other without
asking for money , a huge lot of most problems in the world will be solved. Foolish,
right, since there’s no method to prevent the receiver from selling it back to me,
charging money. Well, that’s where Open Source , decentralized ledger technologies,
such as the blockchains & tangles come in. I definitely don’t mean Bitcoin or any
similar ‘coin’ of course, since it’s just plain, old money. There are many other systems
evolving and have evolved using those systems; why not dive in & see for yourself,
what suites your needs most & if there isn’t one exactly, fork the system & create
your own, tailored system from it, for free. These of course, are just the start. Again,
we ourselves are also creating a similar system, like a non-trade based cryptocurrency
or social network , that we’d more than welcome you to try, use, modify, share and do
whatever you like to do with it, absolutely for free, just like everything else “Open
Source”. You also need to free yourself from being dependant on corporate products.
Since historically it all started with personal computing & software, especially
the Operating System, I’d like to pay my tribute to them, by requesting you to switch
to Linux or BSD distributions; or any other platform such as Haiku, etc. I suggest
Linux because of it’s historical significance and the already large communities around
it, hence the development around it. No, it’s not a command-line OS like DOS if that’s
what you’re taken aback by. That was 1991 — the year it was created. 1992 onward, the
GNU system, that’s termed Linux, already ported the then GUI's, such as the Unix
CDE. In 1998, with KDE 1.0, we already had what you Windows users got with
Windows 10 for instance, Multiple Virtual Desktops, called Workspaces in our lingo.
Yes, 1998, 20 years ago. If you’re a Mac user, well 2006 was when Steve Jobs
presented it to you — that’s still 8 years. You see, Linux (GNU) has developed leaps
and bounds since 1998 & is nothing like what you think of it when you hear it’s name.
It’s much beyond that. But these are not created by companies, but by communities —
people like you & me, who lack the money, resources & motivation to create paid
advertisements that you are used to on television, YouTube, Facebook, newsprint,
billboards and so on. Hence unless you search, it’s really unlikely that you’ll ever find
them. Some companies like Canonical & Google have promoted their distributions,
Ubuntu & Chrome OS and helped the communities; but it’s too little. Even Android is
based on Linux and hence, should be of ample proof on it’s user-friendliness. The
murky water now seems quite clear, doesn’t it? Also notice, these aren’t made by paid
slaves, but passionate people . Well, it’s not just the OS. Industry standard proprietary
software, just like Windows & OS X, need to be bought, and cannot be legally
tampered with to suite your own needs and courtesy the small community size of
Linux users, isn’t available on them. But equally, if not more capable & polished
alternatives are available. GIMP , Libreoffice , Firefox , Chrome , VLC , Clementine ,
Wine , Virtualbox , Wikipedia , Wordpress, Wire to name a few. And if you are lost not
being able to find the Linux, well, there isn’t. There are a myriad distributions , each
tailored for different needs, but in essence, once in the system, it’s extremely easy to
tailor it to behave exactly how you want it to work like. But why stop there? You’re
still dependant on others. If you learn a foreign tongue to discoveries the diversity of
human culture, why not try out your mind & hand at one that a computer
understands? It’s really easy. If you believe otherwise, trust me, you’ve been lied to
all your life by a bunch of power wielding, halfwit, semi-literates who you’ve
worshipped as geniuses. You’re not stupid — no one is; just a novice & there’s a ton of
resources to learn from. Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Massive Open Online Courses, such as
edX, MIT’s Open Course Ware, YouTube are just a beginning. It just needs your time,
a little effort, practice and freedom to experiment. That’s all. Learn . The World is a
beautiful place & it needn’t be the Inferno that it is today.
I apologize if you’ve been too bored with my words on just Free & Open Source
Software , where it all began. There’s more. Open Source Hardware , Open Source
Ecology , and many more, even decentralized Space Agencies with the same
philosophies, such as Autonomous Space Agency Network (ASAN) & Libre Space
Foundation , who’ve sent satellites and even rockets up there. This is no joke. Our
world, our movement, everything we’re into isn’t just hobby, it’s serious passion, as
serious as those conducted by your governments and companies. And it’s not just the
“Science” & “Technology” stuff — if you’re into “Arts”, Creative Commons 0 & CC-BY-
SA, the generalized equivalent of the GNU GPL , is the way we do it.
Coming back to the tangible world now, the next things we depend on for which
we need money, even more so because these are indirectly owned by corporations and
governments. Let’s resolve them one at a time.
Locomotion systems, like cars, trains, buses, airlines, ships & spacecraft, and
communication networks, like the internet, telephone systems, etc. are essential to
our life. Now the energy to run these come mostly from fossil-fuels, extracted &
distributed (traded) by centralized corporations. Of course, stealing it isn’t easy & they
can’t be acquired in easy, decentralized manners from existing wells either. But guess
what, fossil fuels aren’t the only or even the best sources of energy and are already a
big “No-no” now because of their environmental impacts. “Climate Change”, i.e.
increasing the average temperature of our planet, resulting in changed water cycles,
leading to stronger precipitation, more violent storms, floods, harsher climates (colder
winters & hotter summers), including more wildfires & droughts, has already proved
to become a hell of a problem threatening our civilization for good. The good news is
you can fight both the parasitic system and Climate Change at the same time. The
methods to produce Solar Cells, Wind Turbines and similar devices aren’t patented;
they’re public domain too — Open Source. Get together in small communities and
produce them from local resources and you’ll be living “off-grid”, at least off the one
that charges you money, in no time. There are many aids too. Open Source Ecology
has created a lot of tools, from tractors to Aluminium Extraction using solar power
and the soil you stand on and many more in their almost complete Civilization Starter
Kit.
You see, these decentralized, universal, renewable alternatives — sunlight, wind
energy, potential energy of water stored at greater heights, in the form of rivers and
rainfall, geothermal energy, tidal energy and so on — are best harnessed together, in
large groups, much, much larger than what centralized corporations are capable of, let
alone efficiently, without catastrophic warfare , genocides to cause mass displacement
of billions. That’s a huge advantage we have to our cause.
Vertical farming, hydroponic farming, genetic engineering & artificially growing
tissues can easily do the same, rather much better than traditional farming
techniques, growing more food to feed each one of us than currently possible.
Distribution is equally possible on greater scales, since for locomotion, open
source, community produced, solar powered vehicles among others & decentralized car
sharing techniques can disrupt the entire world with ease, if all of us pitch in.
A lot needs to be done in medicine . There are Open Source Prosthetics already.
Drugs however, are a different story altogether courtesy the culture you enjoy. It’s
almost illegal to produce them yourself today so the only way possible is in secrecy.
Thankfully, cryptography is an aid there, since via the same Deep (Dark) Webs used
by people to exchange narcotics, (which again, are just usual chemicals which the
governments have no rights whatsoever to dictate over, as long as one uses it on
oneself or in groups where members have given unconditional consent and are aware
of what they’re doing) along with public distribution systems mentioned above,
alongside using Open Source GPS Guided Solar Powered Drones to deliver resources,
can be well used to disrupt the current patent-ruled medical industry that denies
people a right to live, just for some cash.
Of course, if you’re happen to be one of those who wish for “Natural” products
and “Traditional” ways, and deem the practices mentioned above “uncivilized” let me
remind you two things. The traditional practices that you so uphold were also
fledglings at some point of time and neither were all those traditional practices very
efficient or just. Learn history to learn from history, not to give yourself a stupid
identity out of it. That historical identity & cultural heritage you so boast of are just
bullshit. Do not what your ancestors did, what what works best. That’s it.
Coming to the point on “natural ” products, chemicals are what we’re made up of.
What we consume, are chemicals too. What chemicals you consume of course,
matters because both water (di-hydrogen monoxide ) & Potassium Cyanide are
chemicals, just like the hormones which give you your special feelings and mood
swings. So it’s important to know what you consume, and the greater the control over
that, the less the chances that you’ll be poisoned by something. Of course, I don’t
support the companies you so hate, not because they don’t produce “naturally”, but
because they don’t disclose their methods, compositions and lie all the time.
So please don’t be afraid of Open Sourcing the medical field; and it’s not just the
medical field, all parts of Academia need to follow suite too. Astronomy & Statistical
Physics among others have led the way, with the arXiv . Library Genesis and
Alexandra Elbakyan’s SciHub are equally beautiful tools and need to be publicly
accepted as well.
These are of course, just starting suggestions and only a tiny fragment of the
Open Source World to be discovered, not some Biblical 10 Commandments; so we’re
all waiting to see what we can together discover and create; because there’s an entire
Universe for us to explore & enjoy.
So why are we to limit ourselves to fighting amongst ourselves like cannibals in
this nest, the egg we call Earth?

If you want to help us and find people to do things with, here’s a suggestion,
publicly display any of the popular Open Source symbols to tell that you’re willing to
share. Similarly, to find people like you, who have read this article and believe in it,
greet each other with “Let’s Open the World’s Sources!” and now you can at least
trust yourself with less scepticism. Liberate yourselves. Liberate the World!
Thank You. Now spread the news!