Is he serious?

Oh, yes, he is. He's very serious. I'm very serious.

Yeah, yeah, yeah ... I hear all you whiners, too: nobody made him take the loan; he didn't have to sign the contract ... but, is that really the case? No car, no job. Where's the choice? There are many times in life when we simply have no choice and we end up in a situation that we wish were otherwise. My question is, why don't any of us count so much that our situation can be considered? Why are we treated like human beings? Why are we simply contracts, and agreements, and obligations, and, well, just things. When you strip a human of his/her humanity, you do violence. And that's what we do, and that's what we think is right these days. Yes, we've stooped this low.

For all the touting that conservatives do about the worth and necessity of the individual, I find it somehow surprising that as soon as money is involved, the individual isn't worth anything at all. Any individual can suffer a twist of fate, a set-back, an unexpected and temporary change of fortune. Why can't that all be calculated in? Why is this so difficult?

Well, it isn't difficult if you owe enough, or if you appear to be rich enough, or you have the proper gift of persuasion. Rupert Murdoch can be on the verge of bankruptcy, but if he calls in his creditors and tells them they are going to negotiate new terms, new terms get negotiated. If you're not of Rupert's "stature", you're nothing more than free game. The fact that another can consider you so unimportant, so insignificant, so not worth dealing with, is another piece of evidence for my violence hypothesis. Since I can bully you, I will; since I cannot bully Rupert, I won't. How phony can you get? And these are the folks we like to praise as "captains of industry", "gurus of high finance", "business leaders" ... right.

Truth be told, they are little more than braggarts, bullies and cowards. They hide behind their rules and laws when it suits them and when they can get away with it, but otherwise, they bow, scrape and kow-tow before anyone upon whom they can place a monetary value greater than their own (in that moment). Isn't that just grand? How proud we must be? How satisfied we must be with our own humanity.

Well, not really. You may think they are business or finance geniuses, but they're simply crappy human beings. They're hypocrites and purveyors and multiple standards. They're inconsistent, arbitrary, and in the end, cruel, and simply violent. If you admire them, or support them, or simply don't care, well, you're just as bad.

Funny, I can't remember the last time I was this serious.

Does he mean me?

Yes, he does; that is, yes, I do.

Lots of you don't feel spoken to, and I think for two primary, but very different reasons. First, there are those who just don't get the debt-violence connection. And, second, there are those who don't think I'm talking to them.

Let's take the second group first: I'm talking to you. It's that simple. I'm talking to you because I'm talking to everybody. As George Carlin put it, you're here, you're guilty, end of story. Get over yourselves. You're involved, you're not immune. None of us are immune. If we're not actively playing the debt game, we're playing it indirectly. We support it because we don't understand it, we think we know better, but the fact of the matter is, hardly anybody really thinks about it because we think that's just the way things are. They're not. This is how we made them (or allowed them to be made). There's nothing natural about it. It's artificial, just like everything humans make is artificial.

So, now the other folks, the one's who don't get it yet ... here's the deal:

To me, the definition of violence is simple: it is the ability one has to have someone else conform to that person's will, when the person simply can't say "no" without repercussions to his/her well-being. Say you just got a job, but you can't walk to it nor can you take public transportation (because more often than not there isn't any). Now what? You need a car. Have the money? No. Answer: car loan. Do you have a choice? Not really, if it's up to you and you can't mooch off others. Great. Now you have a car, but the company decides it's closing shop and sending all the jobs to China. Now you have no job, therefore no money. Does the lending institution tell you not to worry about it, they'll just put the payments on hold and as soon as you're back on your feet again, you can pick up where you left off? I doubt it. They want their money, they want it now, and if you don't pay it, they'll send some thuggy looking individual to intimidate you into putting up the cash or simply taking back your car, by force, if necessary. That's violence folks, and the fact that they can do that without the slightest hesitation, without fear of the slightest sanction, they exercise violence ... against you. It may be psychological, it may be potential, or it may even be physical. You're in debt, you're subject to that violence.

You don't count. Your circumstances don't count. Nothing counts but the money you owe. And "they" can get it, one way or the other, by force, if necessary, and you have not recourse whatsoever. If that's not violence, I don't know what is.

So, was that it?

For those of you who are still having a bit of difficulty shifting back from personal to political mode, hang onto your hats, I need to make the shift again. What we wouldn't put up with on a personal level, what we realize is simply unfair, if not immoral, at a nation-state level, is still going on every day. It's not making things around the world any better, but what is going on says a lot about us as people.

I don't know how many of you have ever been to Greece, but I highly recommend it. The country itself is simply beautiful, the weather is grand most of the year, and the people are among the most friendly and warm-hearted that you'll run into anywhere. Just like anywhere else, there are good folks and some not so good. In many regards the Greeks are just like you and me. They're not sloppy, lazy, or deceitful. They love their families and would like nothing more than to see they live happy and healthy lives. Unfortunately, they are being victimized through no fault of their own (other than they happen to live there. Here's why I say that.

When the whole financial crisis with Greece started, they had a public debt level of about 165% of GDP. In came the banks, and particularly the IMF, told them they had to get their stuff together or no one would help them. The political tug-of-war began. In the meantime, the banks and IMF have been forcing the country to privatize where possible, sell off public assets, so to speak, they cut the salaries of all their civil servants, teachers, security and rescue personnel, and they cut earned pension benefits for their seniors; they have eliminated their healthcare system. On top of this, the richer, lender countries have poured several trillion dollars into the country as well, and now, after all of that they are being threatened with begin thrown out of the euro zone and too many outside nations are back to pointing figures at the lazy, screwed-up Greeks. The problem is that even with all the saving, the austerity, the pressure from above, their debt is now at 197% of GDP. How is that possible?

It's possible when you don't want to help, when you don't want to really do business, but when all you want is money. The banks, who received untold billions in bailouts for outright criminal behavior, now have the audacity to demand of others what they were not willing to do themselves. You don't have to be a financial expert to know that debt is being used here as a cudgel. We're allowing the Greeks to be beaten to death by supposed upright, honest institutions. They're not. And by not speaking out against them and by not pushing to have them back off or be shut down, we are simply accomplices to the crimes.

What else is it about?

Last time I mentioned that there were two issues involved here. The one has to do directly with the scenario, but the other one can be thought about separately as well. We saw that the conquered people had no yet paid off their debt. There was still a lien against them. Sure, you can say, why should they pay, it wasn't there decision to take on the debt in the first place. But apart from that, just looking solely at the numbers, if we assume that the regular payments were made, when is a debt actually paid off?

Why do we find it reasonable to borrow, say, 100,000 (€ or $, it doesn't matter), at, perhaps, 5% interest, and think that the debt has first been repaid when almost half-a-million dollars or euros have left our bank account and go to the lender? Don't get me wrong, I know how interest works and I know how compound interest works as well. Uncle Al (Einstein) was once asked what he believed to be the most powerful force in the universe to which he answered "compound interest". He was know for being a pretty smart guy. He nailed this one, too.

It is interesting to note that we have a strange relationship to such things. At 5%, the lender should be saying the 5,000 is what his troubles are worth. I don't think that's all that unreasonable, but when considered in absolute terms, I have trouble wrapping my head around the fact that the lender thinks his efforts are worth more than three times the principle. That sounds more like extortion than business to me. My question is then, why do we put up with it?

It is not by accident that almost every religion in the world abhors usury, that is, the practice of demanding too much for your trouble when you lend money to another. I don't think this is a religious issue, but for most of their existence, religions have purported to be the bearers of a culture's moral standards. In other words, in most times and in most places, demands of this type were simply considered immoral. And now, we think they are normal. Obviously something has changed, and I don't think I'm too far off base to maintain that one of the first things we've sacrificed has been our innate morality.

The fact of the matter is that all such relationships, all such money relationships, are simply immoral acts. Just like the guilt you accrue when you don't speak out against aggression, so too do you express your own immorality when you don't speak out against de facto extortion as well.