Trade Ya's Message

[Ianpiersonjdavis 514]

I don't think the episode intended to have a real message given the lack of the diary entry and in that sense it seems like more of a filler episode.

[ScarfaceOne 264]

I've just realized the moral now. Friendship is better than sentimental value. The thing is, I've been trading in Borderlands 2 and it was awesome because the guns actually had use to them. If they actually wanted a useful item then it would have been better.

[Scoots and Dash 208]

Trade ya's message had to be:

 

Don't trade Fluttershy into indentured servitude for a book. In fact, never trade anything related to Fluttershy for anything.

 

[SasQ 1,382]

OK. I am confused about the Message of Trade Ya.

No doubt, since you don't seem to understand economy at all.

 

The problem is is that it is favouring barter trade instead of economy.

Here's the first place you're wrong.

Barter is not an opposite of economy, as you seem to state it, but rather it is the very basis of economy.

 

In economy, people (or other entities) exchange some goods when it is benefiting for both sides of the transaction. People used barter long before they even invented money, and nature uses it everywhere to this day. Humans are the only animals who use this "crooked economy" called money, and I'd even say that inventing money was the worst possible invention of humanity. I'll explain why in a moment.

 

But even when you use money, you actually barter (perhaps unknowingly, as is in your case), because you're trading one good for another. It just happens that this another good is some special commodity called "money". But notice that money is as well a commodity as other commodities you used to. The only things which make money so special are that:

- it is easily available

- it is usually easier to carry and exchange money than some other stuff

- its rate is a fixed standard amongst all trading entities instead of established on a peer-by-peer basis.

(The last one is actually not that simple, since it just shifts the problem somewhere else: one can still control the exchange by setting up the price.)

 

And so is Minecraft

Minecraft is not "favoring" barter: it uses it naturally. (It's the basis of economy, remember?)

 

Which on xbox will be updated in 4 updates

I see you mentioned it several times. How is this relevant at all?

 

The thing is. Barter is communism.

LULWHUT?!?! o_O Are u serious?!

Do you even know what communism is? You don't seem to, if you confuse it with barter. And judging by your age, you couldn't possibly experience communism yourself, so you know nothing about it.

 

I spent 9 years of my young life in communism. I didn't understand much of it back then, but now I still have clear memories, and I can understand it from perspective. Communism, as an idea, wasn't that bad at all. Nature still uses it here and there. The only problem with communism was power-greedy people (as usual) who used this idea to gain control over other people and exploit them for their own benefits (to the point of killing lots of them). Same problem is currently rotting democracy (which in U.S. and many other democratic countries over the world has no similarity to true democracy as it were in Ancient Greece anymore), and capitalism (which is another twist of that same theme). I advice you to study more history and the manifest books on communism as an ideology (not how it turned out). You will be surprised how your point of view has been corrupted. Governments do it all the time: they always spread bad propaganda about the competitive systems. If you live in communism, you're being taught that democracy is the worst. If you live in democracy, you're being taught that communism is the worst. If you live in monarchy, you're being taught that anarchy is the worst. You can pretty much figure out the pattern, I hope.

 

My country is currently a part of the European Union. And you know what? It's again socialism all around, but they don't call it that way officially. But the methods and propaganda are the same as they were in communism. Only more clever (they learn from their past mistakes, contrary to most of the people).

 

Because Communists have no money.

Bullshit. There was a currency used in my country when it was being governed by communists.

There were also coupons for different kinds of stuff, distributed evenly amongst people depending on how much they worked (or how much they were involved in the structures of the communists party). You can consider these coupons as a form of money, though, since people used it as such: they were exchanging it for other commodities, and they were exchanging the very coupons themselves, too, if one had some unneeded coupons and needed something else.

 

The problem with coupons was only in that they were distributed scarcely: translating it to the ideas you understand, they were being paid less than they afforded with their work. Which, for me, is not different from what I experience today in my country, even if we use money now.

 

Interestingly, I heard that there are food coupons used in U.S. even these days (unless they has been on hold after the recent government shutdown, but I'm not updated on it). Doest it mean that U.S. is a communist country these days? (Perhaps....)

 

I am proud we have money. Like Eric Idle "There is nothing quite as wonderful as money!!!".

Instead of just repeating "smart pants", use your own brain and think about it yourself, because what they tell you about money is the biggest lie in our history. Nature doesn't use money, and look how it thrives. People use money and at present they depend their very existence on money, and see how it broadens the chasm between rich and poor, making the percentage of rich still smaller and smaller, and constantly growing the pool of the poor.

Do you know why?

Because money has been invented to do that. Let me quote another smart guy, Robert Kiyosaki: "Money has been invented by the rich, to make them even more rich, by exploiting the poor who don't understand what money really is." (This quote might be not literal, I'm quoting from memory, but this is consistent with his philosophy about money.)

 

In natural circumstances, any commodity which is easily available, easy to carry from place to place and exchange into many other commodities, can serve as a currency. Living organisms, for example, use several common chemicals as currency (simple sugars, nucleic bases, and their combinations, such as ATP or NADH/NADPH). I know people who use cigarettes, beer, or pizza, as currency. I know some who use prepaid cellphone codes as a form of currency (since they're underage and they are not allowed to use bank accounts yet). And there's also this recent invention called Bitcoin, a digital cryptographic currency.

 

So far so good. Up to this point, money is a great invention. It can be easily carried and exchanged, so it facilitates our lives and economy. It is also easier to have some common standard for exchange, than tracking of how much chicken you need to exchange for a goat. Money is just that: a commodity which facilitates barter.

 

But here comes the pitfall: fiduciary money.

 

Naturally, a currency has a value in itself. Gold has a value. Cigarettes, vodka, beer, pizza: they all have value. Cellphone prepaid codes have value: they exchange for a certain amount of minutes you can use by your cellphone.

 

But some rich smart-asses noticed that they can exploit the monetary system by convincing people to use their "virtual money", which doesn't have value in itself. First, they were offering saving one's money in their safes in banks. In return they gave "bank notes": papers which assured there's a certain amount of gold in the safe which can be retrieved back at will. People preferred to carry and exchange these "bank notes" instead of gold, since it was easier. And since each "bank note" could be exchanged back to gold, people were happy with that.

 

But this was only the first step on the banksters' master plan. They knew that people don't take their gold back too often, so they started to lend this gold to others for an interest, making money on other people's money. This way they become quite rich. But not rich enough for them: one can always be more rich

 

So the next step was to introduce the fractional reserve system, which allows them to actually lend more money they have. In many countries this is more than 10:1 at present! Can you imagine?

Probably not, because you may ask: How can they lend more money than they actually have in their safes? There's only as much gold as people have stored them, right?

 

Nope Not anymore.

Usually there's not a single gold piece in any bank nowadays. They don't have much bank notes there either. It's all "virtual money", which are just "creative accounting" based on the fact that their "bank notes" replaced the other true currencies long time ago. You cannot exchange your dollar (which is a measure of weight of certain amount of gold) into gold anymore. You can only exchange it for another dollar, or be lucky that someone else will trust in the piece of paper you give him and give you something else in exchange (barter again!).

 

Banks can create as much money as they please, out of thin air. Once it was as easy as printing some more bank notes. Paper is cheap. Way more cheap than the stuff you exchange it for with people who still believe in its value. Of course they needed to claim themselves a monopoly for printing bank notes, since otherwise everyone could do the same and undermine their clever system.

 

Nowadays it's not even necessary for them to print money: they can simply type in some digits into a computer. Especially when people use credit cards and cellphone payments (giving them even more power).

 

Well, almost: They still need you for their system to work. They need you to sign the loan agreement. Then you can get as much money as you can, since they know they will get them back ultimately. And even if you don't, they have nothing to lose anyway, right? ;-J The only loser is you, always.

 

But there's another catch (as if one weren't enough): When you analyze this whole system, you will notice that banks don't create money for paying your loans. There's only as much money in the system as they produced for you from your loan agreement. But they don't create money for the interest you will have to pay to them.

The effect?

You will need to pay for it from your own hard work, and with your own real resources. This way they gradually exchange their virtual resources (fiduciary money) into real resources, taking more and more control over the whole economy and bending it to their own needs.

That's why I said that monetary system is "crooked economy": It disturbs the natural economy based on exchange of real goods for other real goods of "equal value" (why in quotes? I'll explain in a minute), and gradually replaces it with a system which exchanges virtual goods for real goods, so that all real goods become property of the creators of the system themselves (which are not numerous, but very clever and powerful). They have monopoly over the process of creating money, and they can manipulate its value to suit their own needs (guess who manages the currency exchange rates globally?).

 

For true money, there is no need for anyone to have monopoly over its creation, since creating it requires sacrificing something else of equal value, which makes the true money have value in itself. One cannot just make it out of thin air. E.g. when a plant wants to make some sugar, it needs to use CO₂ from the atmosphere, some water, and sunlight energy. When one wants to get some gold, one has to mine it. (Recall where all the natural resources come from in Minecraft, used for bartering afterwards.)

Virtual money, on the other hand, can be created out of thin air by those who are allowed (and secured only to themselves) to make it. And it is them, not you, who have full control over it. If you need some money, you need to come to them and beg, or die starving on the street.

 

OK, I promised to explain the "equal value" yet (which will help you to understand the message of this MLP episode), so here it is:

The point is that in true economy it's not really that much "equal". If it were, the whole process of exchanging anything would be a waste of time: You already have something you want, so why to exchange it for something which is not better in any way?

 

And that's the base of the whole economy: You exchange one good for another good only if you can get something better in return! Something which has actually more value to you than what you're giving off. And the same goes with the person you're exchanging it with. How is it even possible that something has more value to both persons who exchange it? Here's how:

 

How much value is in a bread which has a price tag of $1?

Is it one dollar? More? Less?

The true answer is: It depends on who you ask.

If you ask the baker, this bread is worth much less to him than that $1. The products he used cost him less in total, since he buys them in bulk. Also the cost of producing the bread is less when he can bake more bread at once. The total cost of all this stuff must still be less than $1 for him, because otherwise he wouldn't be willing to give it off to you for one dollar.

For the customer, on the other hand, this bread is worth more than $1, because he cannot bake it himself. Even if he's not that much a mindless dependent drone servant and he knows how to make bread himself, it can still be more costly for him to bake just one single bread. But he has some money which are useless for him, so he can exchange them for some bread. The bread is definitely worth more to him than that $1, since otherwise he would rather keep the $1 instead. But he cannot eat $1. Bread is more valuable to him. If you can understand this, you know the gist of all economy.

 

Side note: What do you think has more value to Google? Dollars? Or information?

To help you to answer this question, notice that they pay dollars for information ;-J

Edited April 28, 2014 by SasQ

[RNgineer 161]

OK. I am confused about the Message of Trade Ya. Although not as confusing as Pinkie Sense. The problem is is that it is favouring barter trade instead of economy. And so is Minecraft(Which on xbox will be updated in 4 updates).  The thing is. Barter is communism. Because Communists have no money. I do not like the message. I am proud we have money. Like Eric Idle ''There is nothing quite as wonderful as money!!!''. And it is better to go to Antique cellars then swap meets. What do you think?

Since when is bartering communist? 

[ReverseFaller 2,484]

They have currency in the show. (Bits.)

 

It seems like this "trade" event was more or less just for fun. You go there, trade some stuff and have a good time. 

[pony.colin 156]

OK. I am confused about the Message of Trade Ya. Although not as confusing as Pinkie Sense. The problem is is that it is favouring barter trade instead of economy. And so is Minecraft(Which on xbox will be updated in 4 updates).  The thing is. Barter is communism. Because Communists have no money. I do not like the message. I am proud we have money. Like Eric Idle ''There is nothing quite as wonderful as money!!!''. And it is better to go to Antique cellars then swap meets. What do you think?

 

1. The system of bartering, is not Trade Ya's message. The Rainbow Falls Trader exchange apparently was more based on trading conventions or some form of it (based on some of the responses I've seen here).

 

Bartering is basically another system of exchange; an exchange of goods and/or services that are exchanged directly for other goods and/or services without the use of a medium instrument, such as money. It's basically another form of economic exchange, usually done directly without time delay.

 

Money, or the more common form people often associate today are banknotes – used in a similar fashion to promissory notes – (though not exactly the same) – previously they were originally used as such (go back to the medieval era) – and were notes loaned from banks used to indicate to payees that the bank owed them this sum amount (usually coins) at some later date. Eventually they gained their own value and became the standard accepted form of money.

 

Money is a medium instrument used to assess the value of something's worth. And SasQ has already gone through the trouble of writing out some more further details of money and how bartering is still another form of exchange plus how money works.

 

 

Read his/her post ...

Barter is not an opposite of economy, as you seem to state it, but rather it is the very basis of economy.

 

In economy, people (or other entities) exchange some goods when it is benefiting for both sides of the transaction. People used barter long before they even invented money, and nature uses it everywhere to this day. Humans are the only animals who use this "crooked economy" called money, and I'd even say that inventing money was the worst possible invention of humanity. I'll explain why in a moment.

 

But even when you use money, you actually barter (perhaps unknowingly, as is in your case), because you're trading one good for another. It just happens that this another good is some special commodity called "money". But notice that money is as well a commodity as other commodities you used to. The only things which make money so special are that:

- it is easily available

- it is usually easier to carry and exchange money than some other stuff

- its rate is a fixed standard amongst all trading entities instead of established on a peer-by-peer basis.

(The last one is actually not that simple, since it just shifts the problem somewhere else: one can still control the exchange by setting up the price.)

 

Side note: What do you think has more value to Google? Dollars? Or information?

To help you to answer this question, notice that they pay dollars for information ;-J

 

 

 

 

2. Bartering is also NOT COMMUNIST. Communism (given some of the responses made here) still seems like the most misunderstood concept kicking around in the West (actually I'd probably make a guess that it's just as misunderstood in the East as well, given how the two really mimic each other at times). (Not that I'm surprised given the context of the Cold War – or possibly that people are still stuck in that mode).

 

Communism is an ideology; a political, social structure ideology that abolishes private ownership and the means of production are redistributed. It would lead to (in theory) a more equal society: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need” the basic idea that everyone's needs will be satisfied. It's a one level, equal, classless and stateless society. Based on the premise of class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat; a simplified form would be class struggle --> leads to revolution (a process erected by the proletariat) --> leads to overthrow of the bourgeoisie government and the set up of a worker state --> after revolution, leads to dictatorship of the proletariat (where the party rules the country on behalf of the working class) (this really should only be temporary phase) --> after all opposition to this government has been crushed, THEN no government is needed after this because all people will be treated fairly and will be content –-> leading to a stateless, classless, one level equal society.

 

No country has ever achieved this and those countries who we call communist have never been truly communist in the original sense of what Karl Marx was trying to write about. And I figure no country will ever genuinely try to. No country will ever come close to trying to get to the last step of Communism, (no government on the face of this earth will ever become the “self-abolishing government for the good of the people”).

 

There's a lot more to Communist theory and such, but there would be more subjects that would have to be covered upon and already a number of competing views within Communism orthodoxy (and I'm probably doing a rough/bad job of trying to write a cliff notes version of this already). Anyways, basic point – bartering is not Communism. Bartering is a another form of exchange.

Edited April 28, 2014 by pony.colin

[SasQ 1,382]

@@pony.colin, you've explained the basics of communism very well.
I'd yet add that communism is the only system which sees the idea of property as what it really is: just an agreement among people. Because when you look at it honestly, you will notice that there's no such thing as property in nature: every single piece of matter you "have", is just a borrow from the Universe, and it's never your own. Even your body is a debt you will have to pay someday (when you die, and return your matter to the common pool so that it could be reused), and this is not even the same body you've born with; it changes and regenerates constantly.
 
You can say that you "own" something when you have it in hand, but you "own" it as long as someone takes it from you  Communism doesn't lie to people that they "own" anything. Western world, on the other hoof, tries to convince us that we can even own immaterial things, such as ideas (see copyright & "intellectual property" rights). This is bullshit squared; a pleasant illusion, but still an illusion.
 
@@ScarfaceOne, if you really look for some communism ideas in "Trade Ya", here's one I could find:
When Applejack offers Rarity to pool their trade stashes, so that together their trading force would be greater than each of them could have alone.
 
 ─ I just hope I brought enough to trade.
 ─ I know what you mean, Rarity. Hey! Why don't we pool our trade stashes?
─ Pool?
─ That way, if one of us finds somethin' real valuable she can't live without...
 ─ She'll definitely be able to get it! Who could say no to exchanging a single object for such a huge assortment of items?
 
That is, they decide to join their stashes and share them among themselves as a common resource, used in trading exchange for leverage, and to increase their chances for a successful trade.
 
This is actually a good idea. I used it when in college to buy books I couldn't afford myself: I had a friend which had similar interests to mine. He couldn't afford for these books himself, too. But when we joined our money, we could buy a book and then share it: one week I could read it, and the next week he could do it. This made both of us happy.
 
But it also shows where this communistic idea falls short, when Rarity and Applejack both turn out to have different application for their common wealth. First they at least tried to reason with each other and decide which one's item is more worth getting. But since they couldn't settle the matter, they ended up arguing about which one's goal is more important to spent their common wealth for.
(BTW I wonder if Rarity could swap these brooches unnoticed at that moment to take the vintage one with her ).
 
This is possibly the biggest flaw of communism: What if more than one person wants to use the common stuff at the same time? They can't have it both, so they need to share access somehow. Also that's probably why communism relies upon some external entity (usually the government) to manage the resources and share them fairly among all users. The problem lays exactly in how to do it fair enough so that everyone was happy. And how to prevent the manager himself to appropriate the resource for himself. This is where communism usually falls short.

Side note: Interestingly, this very problem lays at the basis of the client-server architecture, multitasking and window managers in computer science. E.g. if there are more than one processes running on the same machine with just one CPU and memory, there has to be some entity (i.e. the operating system's sheduler) which will share access fairly among processes, not allowing one process to starvate the other. When there are more programs which want to display something on the same screen, they cannot do it at the same time, or they will be painting over one another's graphics and no one would be happy. Enter the window manager, which is the only process with exclusive access to the screen, and it shares the screen fairly among programs, giving each of them a rectangular area on the screen (a window). Similarly a web server shares access to a website by multiple clients which are trying to access it all at the same time.
 
I see how much bad mouth there is in the Western world towards communism. It's often being compared to Nazism or Fascism, which are another pair of horseshoes. But people often don't realize that they use communism here and there unknowingly, and they see nothing bad in it when they don't know it is communism.
 
For example, I have a friend who once was in a monastery for some time. Monasteries work quite similarly to communism: All monks work together for the common good of the whole monastery. Everything they afford goes to a common pool and then it is used by the monastery to buy different stuff for the community and can be used by its every member. This is actually a great idea, since any single monk couldn't earn enough money to buy the stuff they have there. But when they pool their earnings, their buying power increases exponentially. They can buy stuff they couldn't be able to buy alone, and then every monk can use that shared good. They have a cook who cooks food for them (they often help him with it, for fun and company). Then all monks have access to food, even if only one of them at a time needs to prepare it for the rest of them. This saves them time: they would waste more time when each of them alone had to cook his own meal. Every excess of their common budget is shared among them equally, and they afford around $100 extra money every month for their own private expenses. Interestingly, they all have normal jobs (teachers, lawyers etc.), and they could be just fine alone. But for some reason they prefer to live in that community and share their profits & goods. They seem to be more happy within that system, so it seems to work when used properly. That is, when they can agree about how to use their common wealth.
 
One more place where communistic ideas are in use, is the open source & free software community. Lots of programmers contribute their programming work to the common pool of source code, where it can be reused by others for the good of them all. In most cases for free.

Edited April 28, 2014 by SasQ

[ScarfaceOne 264]

Trade ya's message had to be:

 

Don't trade Fluttershy into indentured servitude for a book. In fact, never trade anything related to Fluttershy for anything.

 

 

That picture looks so wrong!!! LOL

No doubt, since you don't seem to understand economy at all.

 

Here's the first place you're wrong.

Barter is not an opposite of economy, as you seem to state it, but rather it is the very basis of economy.

 

In economy, people (or other entities) exchange some goods when it is benefiting for both sides of the transaction. People used barter long before they even invented money, and nature uses it everywhere to this day. Humans are the only animals who use this "crooked economy" called money, and I'd even say that inventing money was the worst possible invention of humanity. I'll explain why in a moment.

 

But even when you use money, you actually barter (perhaps unknowingly, as is in your case), because you're trading one good for another. It just happens that this another good is some special commodity called "money". But notice that money is as well a commodity as other commodities you used to. The only things which make money so special are that:

- it is easily available

- it is usually easier to carry and exchange money than some other stuff

- its rate is a fixed standard amongst all trading entities instead of established on a peer-by-peer basis.

(The last one is actually not that simple, since it just shifts the problem somewhere else: one can still control the exchange by setting up the price.)

 

Minecraft is not "favoring" barter: it uses it naturally. (It's the basis of economy, remember?)

 

I see you mentioned it several times. How is this relevant at all?

 

LULWHUT?!?! o_O Are u serious?!

Do you even know what communism is? You don't seem to, if you confuse it with barter. And judging by your age, you couldn't possibly experience communism yourself, so you know nothing about it.

 

I spent 9 years of my young life in communism. I didn't understand much of it back then, but now I still have clear memories, and I can understand it from perspective. Communism, as an idea, wasn't that bad at all. Nature still uses it here and there. The only problem with communism was power-greedy people (as usual) who used this idea to gain control over other people and exploit them for their own benefits (to the point of killing lots of them). Same problem is currently rotting democracy (which in U.S. and many other democratic countries over the world has no similarity to true democracy as it were in Ancient Greece anymore), and capitalism (which is another twist of that same theme). I advice you to study more history and the manifest books on communism as an ideology (not how it turned out). You will be surprised how your point of view has been corrupted. Governments do it all the time: they always spread bad propaganda about the competitive systems. If you live in communism, you're being taught that democracy is the worst. If you live in democracy, you're being taught that communism is the worst. If you live in monarchy, you're being taught that anarchy is the worst. You can pretty much figure out the pattern, I hope.

 

My country is currently a part of the European Union. And you know what? It's again socialism all around, but they don't call it that way officially. But the methods and propaganda are the same as they were in communism. Only more clever (they learn from their past mistakes, contrary to most of the people).

 

Bullshit. There was a currency used in my country when it was being governed by communists.

There were also coupons for different kinds of stuff, distributed evenly amongst people depending on how much they worked (or how much they were involved in the structures of the communists party). You can consider these coupons as a form of money, though, since people used it as such: they were exchanging it for other commodities, and they were exchanging the very coupons themselves, too, if one had some unneeded coupons and needed something else.

 

The problem with coupons was only in that they were distributed scarcely: translating it to the ideas you understand, they were being paid less than they afforded with their work. Which, for me, is not different from what I experience today in my country, even if we use money now.

 

Interestingly, I heard that there are food coupons used in U.S. even these days (unless they has been on hold after the recent government shutdown, but I'm not updated on it). Doest it mean that U.S. is a communist country these days? (Perhaps....)

 

Instead of just repeating "smart pants", use your own brain and think about it yourself, because what they tell you about money is the biggest lie in our history. Nature doesn't use money, and look how it thrives. People use money and at present they depend their very existence on money, and see how it broadens the chasm between rich and poor, making the percentage of rich still smaller and smaller, and constantly growing the pool of the poor.

Do you know why?

Because money has been invented to do that. Let me quote another smart guy, Robert Kiyosaki: "Money has been invented by the rich, to make them even more rich, by exploiting the poor who don't understand what money really is." (This quote might be not literal, I'm quoting from memory, but this is consistent with his philosophy about money.)

 

In natural circumstances, any commodity which is easily available, easy to carry from place to place and exchange into many other commodities, can serve as a currency. Living organisms, for example, use several common chemicals as currency (simple sugars, nucleic bases, and their combinations, such as ATP or NADH/NADPH). I know people who use cigarettes, beer, or pizza, as currency. I know some who use prepaid cellphone codes as a form of currency (since they're underage and they are not allowed to use bank accounts yet). And there's also this recent invention called Bitcoin, a digital cryptographic currency.

 

So far so good. Up to this point, money is a great invention. It can be easily carried and exchanged, so it facilitates our lives and economy. It is also easier to have some common standard for exchange, than tracking of how much chicken you need to exchange for a goat. Money is just that: a commodity which facilitates barter.

 

But here comes the pitfall: fiduciary money.

 

Naturally, a currency has a value in itself. Gold has a value. Cigarettes, vodka, beer, pizza: they all have value. Cellphone prepaid codes have value: they exchange for a certain amount of minutes you can use by your cellphone.

 

But some rich smart-asses noticed that they can exploit the monetary system by convincing people to use their "virtual money", which doesn't have value in itself. First, they were offering saving one's money in their safes in banks. In return they gave "bank notes": papers which assured there's a certain amount of gold in the safe which can be retrieved back at will. People preferred to carry and exchange these "bank notes" instead of gold, since it was easier. And since each "bank note" could be exchanged back to gold, people were happy with that.

 

But this was only the first step on the banksters' master plan. They knew that people don't take their gold back too often, so they started to lend this gold to others for an interest, making money on other people's money. This way they become quite rich. But not rich enough for them: one can always be more rich

 

So the next step was to introduce the fractional reserve system, which allows them to actually lend more money they have. In many countries this is more than 10:1 at present! Can you imagine?

Probably not, because you may ask: How can they lend more money than they actually have in their safes? There's only as much gold as people have stored them, right?

 

Nope Not anymore.

Usually there's not a single gold piece in any bank nowadays. They don't have much bank notes there either. It's all "virtual money", which are just "creative accounting" based on the fact that their "bank notes" replaced the other true currencies long time ago. You cannot exchange your dollar (which is a measure of weight of certain amount of gold) into gold anymore. You can only exchange it for another dollar, or be lucky that someone else will trust in the piece of paper you give him and give you something else in exchange (barter again!).

 

Banks can create as much money as they please, out of thin air. Once it was as easy as printing some more bank notes. Paper is cheap. Way more cheap than the stuff you exchange it for with people who still believe in its value. Of course they needed to claim themselves a monopoly for printing bank notes, since otherwise everyone could do the same and undermine their clever system.

 

Nowadays it's not even necessary for them to print money: they can simply type in some digits into a computer. Especially when people use credit cards and cellphone payments (giving them even more power).

 

Well, almost: They still need you for their system to work. They need you to sign the loan agreement. Then you can get as much money as you can, since they know they will get them back ultimately. And even if you don't, they have nothing to lose anyway, right? ;-J The only loser is you, always.

 

But there's another catch (as if one weren't enough): When you analyze this whole system, you will notice that banks don't create money for paying your loans. There's only as much money in the system as they produced for you from your loan agreement. But they don't create money for the interest you will have to pay to them.

The effect?

You will need to pay for it from your own hard work, and with your own real resources. This way they gradually exchange their virtual resources (fiduciary money) into real resources, taking more and more control over the whole economy and bending it to their own needs.

That's why I said that monetary system is "crooked economy": It disturbs the natural economy based on exchange of real goods for other real goods of "equal value" (why in quotes? I'll explain in a minute), and gradually replaces it with a system which exchanges virtual goods for real goods, so that all real goods become property of the creators of the system themselves (which are not numerous, but very clever and powerful). They have monopoly over the process of creating money, and they can manipulate its value to suit their own needs (guess who manages the currency exchange rates globally?).

 

For true money, there is no need for anyone to have monopoly over its creation, since creating it requires sacrificing something else of equal value, which makes the true money have value in itself. One cannot just make it out of thin air. E.g. when a plant wants to make some sugar, it needs to use CO₂ from the atmosphere, some water, and sunlight energy. When one wants to get some gold, one has to mine it. (Recall where all the natural resources come from in Minecraft, used for bartering afterwards.)

Virtual money, on the other hand, can be created out of thin air by those who are allowed (and secured only to themselves) to make it. And it is them, not you, who have full control over it. If you need some money, you need to come to them and beg, or die starving on the street.

 

OK, I promised to explain the "equal value" yet (which will help you to understand the message of this MLP episode), so here it is:

The point is that in true economy it's not really that much "equal". If it were, the whole process of exchanging anything would be a waste of time: You already have something you want, so why to exchange it for something which is not better in any way?

 

And that's the base of the whole economy: You exchange one good for another good only if you can get something better in return! Something which has actually more value to you than what you're giving off. And the same goes with the person you're exchanging it with. How is it even possible that something has more value to both persons who exchange it? Here's how:

 

How much value is in a bread which has a price tag of $1?

Is it one dollar? More? Less?

The true answer is: It depends on who you ask.

If you ask the baker, this bread is worth much less to him than that $1. The products he used cost him less in total, since he buys them in bulk. Also the cost of producing the bread is less when he can bake more bread at once. The total cost of all this stuff must still be less than $1 for him, because otherwise he wouldn't be willing to give it off to you for one dollar.

For the customer, on the other hand, this bread is worth more than $1, because he cannot bake it himself. Even if he's not that much a mindless dependent drone servant and he knows how to make bread himself, it can still be more costly for him to bake just one single bread. But he has some money which are useless for him, so he can exchange them for some bread. The bread is definitely worth more to him than that $1, since otherwise he would rather keep the $1 instead. But he cannot eat $1. Bread is more valuable to him. If you can understand this, you know the gist of all economy.

 

Side note: What do you think has more value to Google? Dollars? Or information?

To help you to answer this question, notice that they pay dollars for information ;-J

 

Erm, The PC Version is updating the trading system in update 1.8 or 1.9 and that is 4 updates away so it will be TU18 or TU19. Because the Xbox version is 1.5. By the way. I Live in a monarchy. But i don't seem to like them because i think they are mere Celebs. And pointless. But i may like them again because i am becoming a christian.

 

 

And here is my song based on art of the dress, state of the art about communism.

 

Communism putting it together,

It's a rather simple system.

The people earn the same

And everything's the same price

Meaning there will be no discounts and no VAT or alterable prices 

And that is the State of Communism!!!

Edited May 3, 2014 by ScarfaceOne

[Dowlphin 463]

OK. I am confused about the Message of Trade Ya. Although not as confusing as Pinkie Sense. The problem is is that it is favouring barter trade instead of economy. And so is Minecraft(Which on xbox will be updated in 4 updates).  The thing is. Barter is communism. Because Communists have no money. I do not like the message. I am proud we have money. Like Eric Idle ''There is nothing quite as wonderful as money!!!''. And it is better to go to Antique cellars then swap meets. What do you think?

Apart from a general massive naivety, this is also quite the opposite of what should be obvious to anyone who actually paid attention to the show.

They have a currency called "bits" in Equestria. It's coin money, apparently gold-based.

Trade Ya was obviously (as they said in the episode!) a special event - a trade fair - where people would go and trade. A special event like a flea market. Not the norm.

And how exactly does the episode 'favor' barter? Were you even awake during the episode? Didn't you notice how the whole story was depicting the complications and hardships of that non-fixed-currency barter system?

 

That post is unreal.

Edited May 9, 2014 by Dowlphin

[ScarfaceOne 264]

Apart from a general massive naivety, this is also quite the opposite of what should be obvious to anyone who actually paid attention to the show.

They have a currency called "bits" in Equestria. It's coin money, apparently gold-based.

Trade Ya was obviously (as they said in the episode!) a special event - a trade fair - where people would go and trade. A special event like a flea market. Not the norm.

And how exactly does the episode 'favor' barter? Were you even awake during the episode? Didn't you notice how the whole story was depicting the complications and hardships of that non-fixed-currency barter system?

 

That post is unreal.

 

Yes i know they have bits. I'm just saying. What's the point in a Trade fair when you have money?

[GlowingFlask 2,356]

Karl Marx communism: No upper governing class whatsoever, everyone is equal. Wanna be a doctor? Be it. Wanna be a shop clerk? Be it. We all share our things. Everything is shared between us so we are all equal. We all do the job we really wanna do for the better of humanity.

 

IRL communism: Quasi-omnipotent government distribute the riches how they see fit, taking a larger part for themselves. 

 

 

Needless to say, Karl Marx though human weren't human and wouldn't get lazy saying: whatever I do, I get the same benefit.