In the time of my five decades of life, we have seen such changes. We have seen the Western world take on the monstrosity that is discrimination. We have seen women achieve equal rights, after thousands of years of discrimination. We have seen black people and indigenous people, in Australia and other western countries, finally be recognised as simply “Human”. I would not suggest that these fights have been won; but we have definitely seen great progress.

And yet, I would suggest the most egregious discrimination is still in front of us. This discrimination is so ubiquitous, so all pervading, we don’t even see it. We take it for granted, every day.

Every day, we judge each other.

We -or at least, the more rational among us- judge each other not by our sex, or by the colour of our skin, or even by where we were born.

We judge each other by how much money we can put -and keep- in our pockets.

The more discerning reader might note the care I took, to avoid saying: “how much money we produce”. This is because, in this age, if anything we discriminate against people who produce; if you have to get your hands dirty to make a buck, you can’t be very bright.

I believe history will judge this age, as the time when some of the richest people were also the most useless. A great many of the richest people in our age produce nothing. They create nothing, they build nothing, they make nothing.

In fact, worse than nothing. They create debt.

Out of thin air.

In our current system, new money is created when a person, business or government walks into a bank and says “if you give my money today, I will give you back MORE money than I borrowed”.

Currently, minted money accounts for only about 3% of all money in circulation. The other 97% exists only in bank ledgers, as IOU’s from borrowers.

Almost half the price of most of the items we buy, can be attributed to interest on loans; by the producer, manufacturer, transporter, retailer etc., etc.

And the profits from this interest taking ends up, not in the coffers of democratic governments, but in the pockets of a few privileged individuals.

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The Crap we are fed.

How often have we been told by Governments of both persuasions that we must have investment? They make it sound like a gift.

Last I heard, investors put money into something, with the very real expectation of taking considerably more out; over a given -or sometimes, almost unending- period of time. The smartest investors obviously, achieve the best return for the lowest outlay.

What should we do then?

Hang a big sign outside Sydney Heads:

We live in a world which produces enough food for everyone. That’s right; we produce more than enough food for every single person on the planet, yet around 30,000 children die every day, from hunger, bad water and diseases all directly attributable to their lack of wealth.

And today, because the western world is facing a paper crisis, that number of fatalities, that number of children tried, convicted and sentenced to death for the crime of being poor, is set to escalate.

A paper crisis.

Not a shortage of paper. Not a shortage of resources, or willing labour, or technology, or intelligence, -although that last point is arguable.

A lot of people, living breathing children, women and men are going to die… because bankers can’t make their figures add up.

And the reason they can’t add up, is because they were essentially nonsensical to start with.

We have devolved into a simple two class system; those who pay interest, and those who collect interest. The collectors of interest are -ultimately- all individuals, whereas the payers of interest can be entire nations.

The poorest nations on the planet cannot afford to feed their own people, yet they are still expected to pay back loans to the richest nations.

“For every $1 in aid a developing country receives, over $25 is spent on debt repayment.” Source

Far from the rich helping the poor, the poor are working -and dying- to make the rich even richer.