Auspol April - Long Live the Glorious State of North Queensland

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Auspol April - Long Live the Glorious State of North Queensland

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hooman: Oct 11, 2007; This guy seems legit.; Fun Shoe

MysticalMachineGun posted:

Hey hey HEY HEY it's not April yet get the gently caress back in the other thread

You're living in the past, stop living in the past.

# ¿ Mar 31, 2016 04:00

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# ¿ May 11, 2024 18:09

hooman: Oct 11, 2007; This guy seems legit.; Fun Shoe

LibertyCat posted:

They can demand sovereignty, insist that they never signed a treaty, and that the Australia Government has no claim - but if you can't pass your own laws , collect your own taxes and boot out everyone who isn't a "citizen" you're obviously not a Sovereign Nation. Recognizing the "Continuing Sovereignty of First Nations" (as NIRS announces each day) is ignoring reality. Actual sovereignty is a pipe dream.

Let's be blunt; when the Europeans arrived, they were not greeted by a collection of civilized nations. Australia was inhabited by illiterate stone-age tribes that could never have defended their homeland from any settlement by other groups. I wish it hadn't involved bloodshed but I don't see any feasible way the original inhabitants could have kept ownership of the continent into the 1900s.

# ¿ Mar 31, 2016 19:19

hooman: Oct 11, 2007; This guy seems legit.; Fun Shoe

freebooter posted:

Yes. The problem I think comes when Australians freak out at holding two different notions in their heads. They can't accept that the country they love might have done awful things in the past (or the present) and they can't accept that dispossession and colonisation is bad (and should be acknowledged and recompensed) even if the descendants of those who were dispossessed are better off than they would have been otherwise.

Which is the same as that old "British brought the railway to India" malarkey. Like, yes, they did, indisputably, craft India into a better nation than it would be otherwise, but that doesn't excuse the exploitation and horror.

Advancements in technology improve people's lives.
Advancements in technology have improved Aboriginal people's lives.
There are ways that Aboriginal people could have been given/traded etc. the advanced technology to improve their lives without colonialism.
There is no justification for colonialism.

The problem with saying "The Aboriginals are better off than they would have been without colonialism" is that you're attaching together Colonialism and trade in technology which are in fact two completely separate things, the invasion of Australia and the transfer of technology between civilisations. You can trade technology without invading and exploiting and slaughtering the people you are trading with. Colonialism itself was bad for Aboriginals.

# ¿ Apr 1, 2016 17:46

hooman: Oct 11, 2007; This guy seems legit.; Fun Shoe

turdbucket posted:

Yeah even accounts by settlers in Sydney go on and on about how the land is like one big maintained park estate like they knew from England. Land management seems to have been extremely important to indigenous Australians.

No wonder libertarians hate them so much, those big government savages!

# ¿ Apr 2, 2016 07:43

hooman: Oct 11, 2007; This guy seems legit.; Fun Shoe

Jumpingmanjim posted:

NSW Police raided the home of former Prime Minister Tony Abbott this evening:

https://www.facebook.com/nswpoliceforce/videos/10153703751401185/

Belljar

# ¿ Apr 2, 2016 13:09

hooman: Oct 11, 2007; This guy seems legit.; Fun Shoe

# ¿ Apr 2, 2016 14:39

hooman: Oct 11, 2007; This guy seems legit.; Fun Shoe

MaliciousOnion posted:

I don't do sex, so I don't really know what the ins and outs are. But I would say that if a woman takes a man into her bed or couch and starts making out with him, it's up to her to tell him when to stop. If he has to ask permission all the time to do anything at all (as I was taught by the feminist harpies that ran the sex-ed classes in the early 80s when I was in high school) it would take all the spontaneity and enjoyment out of it. To enforce constant consent-seeking like that comes across to me as positively Orwellian.

So it's up to the woman to either spell out before starting what her limits are, or to tell him to stop if he goes too far. And then to give him a reasonable time to stop; I've read of court cases where a boy was sent to prison on a rape charge because he took 5 seconds to pull out after the girl asked him to stop. She should actively push against him and tell him, repeatedly, to stop. I would posit that if she tells him to stop more than 3 times and he doesn't, only then she might have a case.

I've also heard that bringing a man close to orgasm and then forcing him to stop with a charge of backed-up semen causes a lot of pain. If a man causing pain to a woman is regarded as a crime, then so should a woman causing pain to a man. Bringing a man to that stage and then forcing him to stop seconds short of blowing his load is rape against the man in my book.

edit: MRA-snipe

This guy is as well educated about sex as Libertarians are about literally everything.

EDIT:

hooman fucked around with this message at 14:56 on Apr 2, 2016

# ¿ Apr 2, 2016 14:51

hooman: Oct 11, 2007; This guy seems legit.; Fun Shoe

LibertyCat posted:

Nice strawman you've built there.

I'm no hardcore MRA type. Classical feminism was badly needed, it's ridiculous to oppress half the human population. If both sides have equal opportunity than I call it a win.

I am against enforcing equal outcomes. It demeans women who got there on their own merits, because some people think "oh we only gave that position to Shelly because she's a woman, she can't be that good". Putting people places where they otherwise wouldn't qualify (due to their lack of merit) only reinforces negative stereotypes.

When you are getting risky life-saving surgery, you want the best person for the job holding the scalpel, not someone who got there for PC reasons. If a woman surgeon would be the best person for the job we should stop any bona-fide discrimination that would keep her away. Ditto being carried out of a burning house, on aircraft with some kind of catastrophic failure, behind a desk keeping your employer from going bankrupt.

How supporting a meritocracy qualifies as me saying Women are inferior and oppressors is beyond me.

I'm guessing The Black thing is due to my comment about ~5% of the US population being responsible for around half of all US murders. It shows there is something very sick in the American system as these numbers are incredible. If 5% of all cars resulted in half of all deaths we'd have massive inquiries into seeing what the hell is wrong and how do we fix it. We wouldn't, say, introduce safety regulations that don't help much but penalize ALL cars because it's politically easy.

If outcomes aren't equal how can you possibly believe that opportunity is?

Do you even know what nepotism is?

People only dogpile you because you make really misinformed and kind of offensive posts. You did better regarding Aboriginal civilization prior to being massacred by whites because at least you accepted that you didn't know enough about it and asked for reference material in order to inform yourself, but seriously libertycat, your levels of ignorance and the opinions you've drawn from that ignorant standpoint are the same for equality, taxation, welfare, justice and economies as they are for aboriginal history. That's why people dogpile you, it's nothing personal, if I came in here and said equally misinformed poo poo I guarantee I'd get the poo poo dogpiled out of me as well, and in the past, I have.

EDIT: Curse you doctor spaceman, you made my first point far better than I did and before I did.

# ¿ Apr 3, 2016 08:41

hooman: Oct 11, 2007; This guy seems legit.; Fun Shoe

fliptophead posted:

Skipped the last few pages because I'm probably blocked already plus this will be ignored but speaking as a hated STEM employee plus a vulgar socialist it always astounds me that modern assholes ignore the fact that processing (programming) and also data analysis was left to the ladies as it was seen as lesser work that men shouldn't be bothered with. Now, it's the total opposite and hilarious when dickheads try to rewrite like only men understand logic. Reminder if caveat that I have not read anything previously plus apologies if this is a retread. Eh. I can't even remember what prompted this...

There's actually quite a few STEMs in here. This is a good point because it speaks to social constructs around gender being the problem. The solution to which (the social constructs that harm both men and women) is feminism.

Libertycat you can feel free to call me a "hopelessly naive" for the views that I hold, but I hold those views because I have done research into them and found what I personally believe to be good solutions to problems. However on any topic I'm willing to listen to the arguments of others and change my view about a subject. A good example of this is silencers, which, from the arguments and evidence presented in here I now do not disagree with the legalization of. Can you say that you hold your opinions with the same degree of flexibility? Because honestly I didn't know much about the definition of civilization until this debate happened but the evidence that I have seen presented here seems to indicate that Aboriginal settlements fit the definition of civilization. Given how you've been wrong in the information you have presented before about Aboriginals and how they lived prior to white colonization are you willing to accept that possibly your view of civilization that excludes aboriginals may be wrong?

# ¿ Apr 3, 2016 12:35

hooman: Oct 11, 2007; This guy seems legit.; Fun Shoe

The Lord Bude posted:

It would be so delicious to see both the Newman government and the Abott-Turnbull government fall after a single term.

Abbott-Turnbull-Andrews Government

:getin:

hooman fucked around with this message at 14:08 on Apr 4, 2016

# ¿ Apr 4, 2016 13:58

hooman: Oct 11, 2007; This guy seems legit.; Fun Shoe

SeekOtherCandidate posted:

https://www.facebook.com/jeremybuckingham/videos/vb.791925860826604/1158992000786653/

gently caress jez bucks is a loose unit

Hooooly poo poo.

# ¿ Apr 4, 2016 15:04

hooman: Oct 11, 2007; This guy seems legit.; Fun Shoe

SynthOrange posted:

Why cant we have both?

Everyone was first against the wall when the revolution came.

# ¿ Apr 5, 2016 05:19

hooman: Oct 11, 2007; This guy seems legit.; Fun Shoe

SynthOrange posted:

Also surprising probably no one, a bake sale at UQ to highlight wage differences between men and women by indexing cupcake prices to gender ended up with threats of rape and violence.

Why are white men the most fragile, thin skinned assholes imaginable?

I ask this as a white man.

# ¿ Apr 5, 2016 07:58

hooman: Oct 11, 2007; This guy seems legit.; Fun Shoe

Uh-oh, something I don't like happened. Better consult the "Every Single Possible Response for a White Male" Playbook!

*looks at single sheet of A4 paper*

code:

Threats
Violence
Sexual Violence

*turns over sheet of A4 paper*

code:

THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK

Welp!

# ¿ Apr 5, 2016 08:51

hooman: Oct 11, 2007; This guy seems legit.; Fun Shoe

GoldStandardConure posted:

Maybe if they taught men how to negotiate better, they could get a better price for their cupcake.

I'm gonna "THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK" the poo poo out of you for that.

# ¿ Apr 5, 2016 09:05

hooman: Oct 11, 2007; This guy seems legit.; Fun Shoe

Negligent posted:

I'm a gender fluid pansexual multi racial human can I have a free cupcake

Sure on the condition you bring that self to every job interview in the future.

# ¿ Apr 5, 2016 09:36

hooman: Oct 11, 2007; This guy seems legit.; Fun Shoe

Sludge Tank posted:

I'm just curious if all the shipping companies that exploit Panamanian and Carribbean flags of convenience will get fingered in this. Probably not seeing as it's just a publicly accepted reality.

gently caress I wish they would.

# ¿ Apr 5, 2016 12:04

hooman: Oct 11, 2007; This guy seems legit.; Fun Shoe

Anidav posted:

I wonder if some ALP focus groups made them determine that the public is capable of critiquing the LNP without the ALP saying anything so therefore it's best to attack the Greens because it gets younger people engaged into voting therefore by extension expanding the ALP's 2PP while the public rips the LNP apart themselves

Then they preference LNP above Greens.

# ¿ Apr 5, 2016 12:42

hooman: Oct 11, 2007; This guy seems legit.; Fun Shoe

Recoome posted:

BCR is cool and good

Strongly Agree

# ¿ Apr 5, 2016 13:29

hooman: Oct 11, 2007; This guy seems legit.; Fun Shoe

EvilElmo posted:

As much as I enjoy watching the usual suspects fall in to a circle jerk of how horrible the ALP are... you're currently basing this off what one backbencher said on Sky News?

Let's wait until we see the Green/LNP deal before you get too hard.

edit: Anidav, I would have thought as a former failed YL member you would have had a least a vague understanding of how preferencing deals worked.

Compared to the paroxism you went into over no evidence the greens have done a preference deal?

# ¿ Apr 5, 2016 14:54

hooman: Oct 11, 2007; This guy seems legit.; Fun Shoe

sidviscous posted:

Real answer? Because when you're accustomed to your status as a cis het white male never being a negative in anything or even something that you think about most of the time, any tiny trivial disadvantage that might come to your attention is so rare that it seems much bigger than it is.

I came out trans last year and it puts poo poo in perspective. Sure, I might have lost a fuckton of outward privilege, but the biggest takeaway is how much I retain for being white, educated and employed in a relatively open minded industry- poo poo I didn't even think about before

Thanks for this. I'm very intellectually aware of my privilege, but being a white, first world, rich male means I have no lived experience of discrimination just the ability to compare my experiences to others.

# ¿ Apr 6, 2016 01:23

hooman: Oct 11, 2007; This guy seems legit.; Fun Shoe

Cartoon posted:

And for those who need a dose of schadenfreude/instant karma:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-04-05/mother-regrets-decision-to-reject-whooping-cough-vaccine/7301836

No, this is simply tragic. Failures to inform/stamp out antivax poo poo leads to terrible situations like this one. It's not like she was travelling the world promoting antivax, she was just woefully misinformed.

# ¿ Apr 6, 2016 01:45

hooman: Oct 11, 2007; This guy seems legit.; Fun Shoe

Higsian posted:

Making words with 'bro-' in front of them is real dumb. People should stop doing it.

Actually let's expand that to the word bro and all derivatives of it.

Bro-gate

# ¿ Apr 6, 2016 03:31

hooman: Oct 11, 2007; This guy seems legit.; Fun Shoe

http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/apr/06/csiro-climate-cuts-about-cutting-public-good-research-documents-show

Read the article.. jesus loving christ.

# ¿ Apr 6, 2016 04:21

hooman: Oct 11, 2007; This guy seems legit.; Fun Shoe

Firetrick posted:

Does finding debris from lost planes contribute to jobs and growth?

It's good for the offshore industry with everything else shut down.

# ¿ Apr 6, 2016 08:32

hooman: Oct 11, 2007; This guy seems legit.; Fun Shoe

Cartoon posted:

You are so full of poo poo it is astonishing:

http://www.qgso.qld.gov.au/products/reports/employment-by-industry/employment-by-industry-201603.pdf

By employment, mining doesn't even get its own bar graph.

http://www.qgso.qld.gov.au/products/reports/qld-econ-review/qld-econ-review-201301.pdf

The only place it gets a top spot is by export income.

https://www.qrc.org.au/_dbase_upl/QueenslandStory2015_final.pdf

65 billion towards a total state GSP of 300 billion is at best 20%. Why at best? Because those are rabidly inflated figures from the Queensland Resources Council. Here's a more accurate picture:

(That's from Qld Treasury)

Your second point (not quoted) is however right on the money and is why Qld needs to look for less concentrated ways of developing its economy. Having a couple of big mining regions means they get a good deal while everyone else eats crow. At least agriculture tends to be disbursed as can be tourism. The mining road is a one way trip to oblivion.

If the worlds economy picks up (which ironically may be due to more readily available power in India) then betting on coal is, at best, a steady financial investment. It is however a terrible 'investment' in pollution and a huge risk to the Tourism sector which had at least the promise of sustainablility. Those big numbers from mining are the total cash side of things. The amount of money that Queensland ultimately sees from Coal is tiny compared to a sector like Tourism.

-/-

Those in the ALP camp who keep bagging the Greens need to wake up and read the polling numbers (Or actually pay attention when Antony Green is talking).

LNP primary votes ~ 43 %
ALP primary votes ~ 34 %

This is partly because nobody can really tell who is who and what they stand for so 'team' loyalties count for a bunch in those figures. Neither of them can get past 50% without the help of at least preferences from:

Greens primary votes ~ 11 %
Others primary votes ~ 12 %

At least the Greens are a coherent block of votes. That 12% contains a huge proportion of politically motivated nut jobs sprayed across the political spectrum from Right to Left like hundreds and thousands on a birthday cake. Even the better of the 'others' like Xenophon are likely to have a hugely mixed bag of positions across the broad range of policies.

Now if the Greens direct preference to the LNP it is 100% game over for the ALP. 43 + 11 = a boot stamping in the face of Australia for at least another 3 years. Even with the Green's unfettered preference support the ALP ( 34 + 11 = 45%) need nearly as large a chunk of the nut job pie as the LNP to get over the line. That's why I reckon a majority labour is a complete pipe dream and the best any of us can hope for is a minority Labour government at the next federal poll. The truely scariest of all notions is if the two majors go into some sort of lock step alliance as they do over the majority of terrible poo poo anyway. 43 + 34 = We are very very very hosed.

If the greens start preferencing the LNP I'd drop my membership and go back to voting Labor.

That said though, Labor preferencing the LNP as well so :suicide:

# ¿ Apr 7, 2016 02:23

hooman: Oct 11, 2007; This guy seems legit.; Fun Shoe

Les Affaires posted:

Just institute a 100% death duty on the deceased estate

Do this anyway :getin:

# ¿ Apr 7, 2016 15:31

hooman: Oct 11, 2007; This guy seems legit.; Fun Shoe

To quote Auspol before Australia elected Are Tones.

Death is Certain.

# ¿ Apr 8, 2016 08:46

hooman: Oct 11, 2007; This guy seems legit.; Fun Shoe

Privatising Telstra really was just a huuuge loving mistake.

# ¿ Apr 9, 2016 04:31

hooman: Oct 11, 2007; This guy seems legit.; Fun Shoe

�Excessive taxes, excessive debt serve as a handbrake on economic growth.�

Malcolm Turnbull, 2016.

Jesus loving christ.

# ¿ Apr 9, 2016 07:20

hooman: Oct 11, 2007; This guy seems legit.; Fun Shoe

Endman posted:

lmao

The cognitive dissonance is astounding; one of those is literally solved by the application of the other.

What Panama papers? What bank malfeasance? What misallocated spending?

# ¿ Apr 9, 2016 07:34

hooman: Oct 11, 2007; This guy seems legit.; Fun Shoe

Anidav posted:

Is class warfare really at a stage where capitalists can chain your personal lifelong debt to your parents and significant other?

Oh my sweet summer child.

# ¿ Apr 9, 2016 08:50

hooman: Oct 11, 2007; This guy seems legit.; Fun Shoe

The richer you are the bigger the benefits you get from the government in terms of actual dollars between negative gearing, CGT discount, private medical discount and reduced super taxation. Someone on centrelink getting 15k a year is a drop in the ocean compared to the massive massive benefits the rich draw from. Especially when you consider a lot of income is drawn from shares from big companies which are also propped up by massive government subsidies (diesel fuel rebate etc. etc. etc.) despite being hugely profitable. Most of that profit is then offshored screwing Australians out of even more money by tax avoidance. The rich take far far more from the system than the poor ever could.

Hey Libertycat, based on our discussions and interactions what would you guess my field of study, earning power and employment status are?

# ¿ Apr 9, 2016 11:35

hooman: Oct 11, 2007; This guy seems legit.; Fun Shoe

Skellybones posted:

Genderblob Ponynomics/None/None

# ¿ Apr 9, 2016 11:47

hooman: Oct 11, 2007; This guy seems legit.; Fun Shoe

Lizard Combatant posted:

A dial tone

If y'all don't adopt "PissCat" I'm going to need a new user name

Lizardy Combatant

# ¿ Apr 9, 2016 12:59

hooman: Oct 11, 2007; This guy seems legit.; Fun Shoe

EDIT ^^^^^: Racism

thatbastardken posted:

the beirut police department?

# ¿ Apr 10, 2016 14:30

hooman: Oct 11, 2007; This guy seems legit.; Fun Shoe

Only Bill "The Empty Suit" Shorten can save us from Malcolm "Toff Man" Turnbull!

God this is going to be a depressing election.

# ¿ Apr 11, 2016 02:45

hooman: Oct 11, 2007; This guy seems legit.; Fun Shoe

Milky Moor posted:

this whole 60 minutes stealing children thing is the most bizarre poo poo i've ever heard

Colonialism lives on, alive and well on commercial television.

# ¿ Apr 11, 2016 04:23

hooman: Oct 11, 2007; This guy seems legit.; Fun Shoe

Albo would be a better leader than empty suit right wing powerbroker blib blorpen.

Albo would not be the great savior of the Labor Left however, just make Labor more electable.

Labor being more electable is without a doubt a good thing.

# ¿ Apr 11, 2016 07:22

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# ¿ May 11, 2024 18:09

hooman: Oct 11, 2007; This guy seems legit.; Fun Shoe

This is a good article, even though it's a bit old, regarding debt and deficit. With thanks to BobVonUnheil who linked it to me.

"Guardian posted:

The French are right: tear up public debt � most of it is illegitimate anyway

As history has shown, France is capable of the best and the worst, and often in short periods of time.

On the day following Marine Le Pen's Front National victory in the European elections, however, France made a decisive contribution to the reinvention of a radical politics for the 21st century. On that day, the committee for a citizen's audit on the public debt issued a 30-page report on French public debt, its origins and evolution in the past decades. The report was written by a group of experts in public finances under the coordination of Michel Husson, one of France's finest critical economists. Its conclusion is straightforward: 60% of French public debt is illegitimate.

Anyone who has read a newspaper in recent years knows how important debt is to contemporary politics. As David Graeber among others has shown, we live in debtocracies, not democracies. Debt, rather than popular will, is the governing principle of our societies, through the devastating austerity policies implemented in the name of debt reduction. Debt was also a triggering cause of the most innovative social movements in recent years, the Occupy movement.

If it were shown that public debts were somehow illegitimate, that citizens had a right to demand a moratorium � and even the cancellation of part of these debts � the political implications would be huge. It is hard to think of an event that would transform social life as profoundly and rapidly as the emancipation of societies from the constraints of debt. And yet this is precisely what the French report aims to do.

The audit is part of a wider movement of popular debt audits in more than 18 countries. Ecuador and Brazil have had theirs, the former at the initiative of Rafael Correa's government, the latter organised by civil society. European social movements have also put in place debt audits, especially in countries harder hit by the sovereign debt crisis, such as Greece and Spain. In Tunisia, the post-revolutionary government declared the debt taken out during Ben Ali's dictatorship an "odious" debt: one that served to enrich the clique in power, rather than improving the living conditions of the people.

The report on French debt contains several key findings. Primarily, the rise in the state's debt in the past decades cannot be explained by an increase in public spending. The neoliberal argument in favour of austerity policies claims that debt is due to unreasonable public spending levels; that societies in general, and popular classes in particular, live above their means.

This is plain false. In the past 30 years, from 1978 to 2012 more precisely, French public spending has in fact decreased by two GDP points. What, then, explains the rise in public debt? First, a fall in the tax revenues of the state. Massive tax reductions for the wealthy and big corporations have been carried out since 1980. In line with the neoliberal mantra, the purpose of these reductions was to favour investment and employment. Well, unemployment is at its highest today, whereas tax revenues have decreased by five points of GDP.

The second factor is the increase in interest rates, especially in the 1990s. This increase favoured creditors and speculators, to the detriment of debtors. Instead of borrowing on financial markets at prohibitive interest rates, had the state financed itself by appealing to household savings and banks, and borrowed at historically normal rates, the public debt would be inferior to current levels by 29 GDP points.

Tax reductions for the wealthy and interest rates increases are political decisions. What the audit shows is that public deficits do not just grow naturally out of the normal course of social life. They are deliberately inflicted on society by the dominant classes, to legitimise austerity policies that will allow the transfer of value from the working classes to the wealthy ones.

A stunning finding of the report is that no one actually knows who holds the French debt. To finance its debt, the French state, like any other state, issues bonds, which are bought by a set of authorised banks. These banks then sell the bonds on the global financial markets. Who owns these titles is one of the world's best kept secrets. The state pays interests to the holders, so technically it could know who owns them. Yet a legally organised ignorance forbids the disclosure of the identity of the bond holders.

This deliberate organisation of ignorance � agnotology � in neoliberal economies intentionally renders the state powerless, even when it could have the means to know and act. This is what permits tax evasion in its various forms � which last year cost about �50bn to European societies, and �17bn to France alone.

Hence, the audit on the debt concludes, some 60% of the French public debt is illegitimate.

An illegitimate debt is one that grew in the service of private interests, and not the wellbeing of the people. Therefore the French people have a right to demand a moratorium on the payment of the debt, and the cancellation of at least part of it. There is precedent for this: in 2008 Ecuador declared 70% of its debt illegitimate.

The nascent global movement for debt audits may well contain the seeds of a new internationalism � an internationalism for today � in the working classes throughout the world. This is, among other things, a consequence of financialisation. Thus debt audits might provide a fertile ground for renewed forms of international mobilisations and solidarity.

This new internationalism could start with three easy steps.

1) Debt audits in all countries
The crucial point is to demonstrate, as the French audit did, that debt is a political construction, that it doesn't just happen to societies when they supposedly live above their means. This is what justifies calling it illegitimate, and may lead to cancellation procedures. Audits on private debts are also possible, as the Chilean artist Francisco Tapia has recently shown by auditing student loans in an imaginative way.

2) The disclosure of the identity of debt holders
A directory of creditors at national and international levels could be assembled. Not only would such a directory help fight tax evasion, it would also reveal that while the living conditions of the majority are worsening, a small group of individuals and financial institutions has consistently taken advantage of high levels of public indebtedness. Hence, it would reveal the political nature of debt.

3) The socialisation of the banking system
The state should cease to borrow on financial markets, instead financing itself through households and banks at reasonable and controllable interest rates. The banks themselves should be put under the supervision of citizens' committees, hence rendering the audit on the debt permanent. In short, debt should be democratised. This, of course, is the harder part, where elements of socialism are introduced at the very core of the system. Yet, to counter the tyranny of debt on every aspect of our lives, there is no alternative.

Nationalise banks now.

# ¿ Apr 12, 2016 01:25

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Auspol April - Long Live the Glorious State of North Queensland

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