Geezus, German philosophy is the absolutely most destructive and disastrous thing we can listen to. They ruined the last century with rantings of foolishness. Let's not let them ruin another century.

Money is more important if you live in America, where you have to buy your own health insurance, and there is little social safety net left.

Could it be that in Germany, the fear that comes with lack of growth is mitigated by the social safety net there, and therefore fewer Germans are seeing wealth as being necessary for a healthy, happy life?

..."eight out of ten Germans crave a new economic order."

Well, considering how well the last "New German Order" turned out, I see absolutely no reason to be skeptical.

I don't think Germany's actions over the last few years had a damn thing to do with what Abbey was talking about when he warned against "growth for the sake of growth". It had to do with Germany's leaders believing austerity was the best way poorer Euro nations might weather the global economic meltdown, then making damn sure they adopted it. The other nations gave in to Germany's often blunt persuasions, cutting them off from anything Keynes would have suggested, so now the pan-European recession has as a result dragged on so long it's catching Germany a bit too. France no less. Germans are chagrined, and fucking well should be.

The shitty news Dan posted of Spain's hungry? I'll lay that at Germany's feet. Greek rioting over austerity? Thanks, Germany. France beginning to panic, Hollande's popularity in the toilet? Merci, Merkel.

"Cancer is ultimately a rebellion against the fascist state of the body" is my favorite Mudede-ism since Marxism and Insects.

"Cancer is ultimately a rebellion against the fascist state of the body."

Here's a good example of why many people here don't take you seriously.

Replacement for Charles's buggered first link:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/…

The Guardian's take is always worth having. Too bad Charles can't invest a few seconds in making sure links work.

@7: That would detract from the .03 seconds he takes to make sure his pictures are clear and relevant.

Cancer is NOT "a rebellion". Cancer is a cell's loss of integrity & it's internal growth regulation. The body is not a fascist system. It is an ecosystem of many parts (incl. non-human parts: gut-flora, skin bacteria, mitochondria) that work together in a dynamic, mutually beneficial way. The body is mutual aid and voluntary cooperation, not authoritarian control. Cancer is a selfish being taking more than it needs and burdening it's neighbors. Terrible, terrible analogy, Charles.

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Now about this "Growth": Positive-interest currency requires constant growth because all money is backed only by debt+interest, and you need to constantly create new money to throw into that ever-widening debt-hole. Economies, like companies, must always "grow" or there will be a restriction of cash floating about, punishment by "the market", and trading will become harder for everyone because the fewer dollars in circulation become more expensive to use. (Actually, it can be successfully argued that money is really backed by war, but that's a bit too complex to tackle here.)

Interestingly, Money didn't always have positive-interest attached to it, it's not an inevitable feature of money, it's just a popular one and a relatively new innovation to boot. And that's what Paech is getting at when he mentions "regional currencies". These currencies are NOT just tiny versions of the Euro or the Dollar. They are non-interest bearing currencies, such as the Ithaca HOUR, or any of the LETS system currencies, or "Grains de Sel" in France. They are mutual credit currencies that specifically facilitate trade and the strengthening of communities.

Positive-interest currencies --and this may not be readily apparent because they are probably all you've ever known-- encourage greed, hoarding, and anti-social behaviour. Just take a long look at Mitt Romney.

PRO-social behaviour is encouraged by gifting and helping people. This is the "glue" of human society: a "gift economy". Mutual-credit (zero interest) currencies facilitate more gift-like behaviour because they allow people to easily trade with a currency that is not actually artificially controlled and expensive, like dollars are. They also don't require constant growth, but allow people to trade when they need to, so we can focus on things other than "the bottom line".

Y'all should read "Debt: The First 5,000 Years" by D. Graeber. It is an incredibly well-documented anthropology of debt and money, and it overturns critical myths economists repeat about what money is or is not --- for example: Barter did not come before cash. Credit did. Non-interest bearing credit was used by people in human communities to exchange goods and services on a reputation and ability basis, thousands of years before coins (let alone paper money) ever appeared.

If regions developed these currencies, it would take significant inflationary pressure off the national currencies, and we could better manage capitalism's tendency to grow into malignant speculative bubbles and then crash, forcing austerity and economic hardship on people. With multiple currencies to use, you get more freedom to decide how you will buy something, instead of being forced to use one dictatorial economic tool alone. Economic democracy.

These crashes aren't going away, folks. Europe's problem is not Germany's "fault" either. Economic crashes are baked right into the monetary system we have. They started as soon as the first "joint-stock" companies came into existence (eg. Tulip mania, South Sea Bubble) and they will be an ongoing reality as long as we keep exclusively using interest-bearing currencies as our only trading tool.

This is the core issue to address, not pointing fingers at different states or governments. They are acting at the mercy of "the dictates of the market" themselves. And "the market" has no mercy, it has only one morality: Profit.

The trouble with captitalism's dependence on perpetual growth is that it is ultimately unsustainable. While some growth can be obtained through productivity gains inevitably it involves ever increasing consumption of ever diminishing finite resources.

However I have to laugh whenever I hear that much beloved term of leftist academia 'late capitalism'. What exactly is going to replace it? The notion that you can convince the masses to willfully organize into subsistence communes is so obviously ludicrous. The alternatives are totalitarianism and collapse.

This line is telling: 'is it not natural that Germans, who are more likely to have steady jobs and can pay the mortgage, are less concerned with economic enrichment than Greeks who struggle to find a job?'

Greeks and Spaniards are struggling to find jobs because in the First world we don't need 100% of able-bodied people working 35 hour weeks. We don't even need 50% of people working that much. We're living in a period of absurd abundance and any scarcity is the result of badly managed economies.

All we need to do is make everyone miserably poor and we'll all be happy!

10, What is being proposed to "replace" capitalism is the widespread use of non-interest bearing currencies for local and regional trade, and an international barter currency (the value of which would be a representative "basket" of goods) for international and corporate trading.

(Corporations already barter with each other to the tune of billions in value a year, but they are stuck trading "hotel room nights" for "frequent flyer miles", as opposed to have a much more functional liquid medium of exchange.)

I say "replace" because these initiatives won't actually replace interest-bearing dollars/euros/etc., but will function alongside them. This is slowly happening already.

11, Agreed.