aries

With the recent news of the banks handing out bad loans and requiring the government to bail them out it has become aparent that the current economy is not going to work for much longer. There are million of debt slaves all over the world at the moment who are struggling to feed, cloth and house themselves and their families. This can not be accepted by rational people.

 Money is currently generated through a complex system that start with loans to the government from the federal reserve. This is debt money and that process hurts everyone. Iv been lucky and grown up among fairly sucessful people but I have also seen the people that struggle to live day to day and Iv witnessed how things are difficult for them. The rich feel as if they have won something major in life and the truth is they have, peace of mind. They have been able to keep their head above the water through managing their money so that loans and interest don't hurt them. Iv seen people poorer than the others but yet are harder workers and don't get anywhere in life. The key to this is loans, debt, interest and management. The banks treat these people like they are friends but in truth they do nothing to help them as they allow these people to take out loans either directly through the bank or by issuing them credit card that have an interest rate on them knowing full well that its likly that the person won't be paying their bills in full which causes them to gain interest. Ever wonder why some cards offer no interest rate if you pay the bill in full? its because the banks know who their actual friends are and they treat them well.

 

People receive these credit cards and are told that if they pay at least 75% of each months bill then they will start to build good credit(trust that they will be able to pay off said loans or debt) but the people that are good at managing money know that none of the money actually exists so they never add more to their debts than what they can pay off at that moment. Literally they do not spend what they do not have. But sadly students are fooled into thinking otherwise and willingly except the interest rate and only pay a little bit of the bill each month and slowly their debt grows to the point that they can't pay it off and slowly become slaves to the bank via their debt, the rich are not debt slaves. 

 Iv seen both friends and people iv met struggle to be able to pay their bills and slowly fall into the hole more and more and have to seek the assitance of companies to help deal with their debt and have to work exta jobs to simply to survive. The did not and can no longer follow the simple rules to keeping their heads out of debt which are.

1. Never accept DEBT at all, period, no question no exception.

2. Own everything you have, no car leases, avoid home loans, dont let banks own what you have(see 1.)

3. Don't buy something if you don't have the money at that moment.

4. Stock market, yes it hurts the economy but having money in it will help you gain more money to buy physical assets.

 

Lets look at these rules in more depth.

 

1. Debt, pay every credit card in full, use cash whenever possible as it insures no debt is transfered to you. Never ow anyone money regardless of who they are especially if they are a bank.

2. Own everything you have, sounds simple but people most people don't. Ever heard of forclosure, the banks sezing cars and other property? its because the person didn't own that stuff via debt to the bank. Want a new car but can't afford it so going to lease it or make payments? too bad! go find a used car that you can afford and can pay for full on the spot that way no bank can ever take it away from you. Houses are the one thing thats hard to buy in full due to their price but luckly the housing market right now sucks so its a buyers market. Depending on how dedicated you are to avoiding debt you may want to look at getting a cheap apartment to save up to buy a home(yes I know in some cities apartments are cheaper than houses and that may work for you as long as it doesn't build debt) or you could buy trailer and put it on a small lot of land or purchase land in an area where you could build the home yourself and save the cost of paying a contractor to build it for you (look up house kits or dome houses). Arcologys will become housing for wogs and others so that will help lower th cost of a home dramatically. So pay in full which leads to rule three.

3. If you don't have the money for something then don't buy it, wait until you have the money and then buy it. This wouldn't be a problem if the actual greenback was still around so we will have to make due. Buying stuff with money you don't have is the easiest way to get into debt. Lets see I want a new Macbook pro for two grand but I don't have the money so I'll put it on my card and pay about $20 a month for it, NO! you've just stepped into putting yourself in debt to your bank and credit card company. How about you put that twenty dollars into a box until you have the two grand in cash and then go buy it so your not building debt and afterward you own it and no one else which reminds me of one of the previous rules on this list.

 4. Stock market, Yes NASDAQ, bull and bear markets. The stock market is like the Slurm queen from Futurama, its disgusting and everyones feeding off the stuff that comes out of its ass. It hurts our economy slowly but you can take advantage of it by thinking and investing smart. By investing money slowly and using your earnings and dividens to purchase more stock and physical assets then you will be better off in the future. Your physical assets don't have to be gold or silver, they can be homes, or other goods that others might be interested in. Heck buy collectables and then sell them again in cash for a profit so you can have a stockpile of cash or if you want to get survivalist style start purchasing stockpiles of ammo, water filters, food storage supplies and actual food. It may seem silly but if I had stockpile of rice and other dried meats back during the great depression then I would have been a rich man and i'd have my physical money for when the economy recovers and if not guns and ammo in your stockpile help create new countries sadly(empowerthyself hopes to change that but its always good to keep in mind) Or have land. Land is great, during times when people are starving it becomes easy to hire people to help farm if they agree to give them a percentage of the harvest.  

 

In summary the best way to be sucessful in the current economy is be prepared for it to fail which is what wogs like to do anyways, we know stuff will fail so we get the best so its less likly to such as belts and boots    yumm   boots. 

 

Ah Yes the ARCOLOGYS

 

This will be the future meat of Empowerthyself. Where groups of people have empowered themselves and are working together to be sure they all stay empowered long term. They will be communities that are self sustaining in food and power and with their own independent economy which can be transfered into the economy of the sane via selling the access food and services created by the arcs. Housing will mostly be created with renewable or recyclable materials that are easily aquired such as shipping containers, tires or adobe. Using modern technology in the fields of solar power and other methods for generating electricity the arcs will be able to produce all their own electricity which will take them off the main grid. Food will be grown in both foods and verticle farms that will be built into the arcs which everyone helps contribute to. Possibly in the future rapid cell regeneration technology could be used to grow meat rather than requiring it to be harvested from living animals. 

 

Mainly though the Arc will not have to depend on the modern economy to survive so the arcs as a whole will be debt free and unable to aquire debt to the system as they will only input into the economy rather than having to take from it to survive as everything else currently does. 

 

Well I hope this gets some of you thinking, please let me know what you think of it. I look forward to writing more such articles for you all to read. 

Remember when we were all in Highschool trying to decide what we wanted to go to college for and the main question was always "what do I want to do for a living". That question alone is one of the things that is hurting eduction. No longer are people educating themselves for the sake of learning, but for making money. Hundreds of years ago there were people who could be called scholars who read books that covered many subjects and tried to gather as much information as they possibly could and they simply made their living by using whatever skill they were best at.

Universities are divided into Colleges which then have their own degrees that you can gain and these degrees point to certain career paths, a pretty little system for creating pretty little machines. Children are no longer encouraged to learn everything they possibly can and to read books that interest them, now they are told to choose a career path.

We are currently in the middle of an economic crisis and the only people that seem to know how we got here is the people that deal with the economy or those that have gone out of their way to educate themselves about it, everyone else just watches the news and blames whatever they are told to blame and think its the fault of a few silly bankers.

Why arn't these Universities or a one time charge deal where students can get a degree if they want to secure some kind of job but also be able to walk into any class that they might find interesting. If your walking down the hall and you see a sign that catches your eye, shouldn't you be able to walk in and learn whatever you want without having to worry is you've paid for said class?.

For a good part the internet has given the new generations all the knowledge they want or need that the schools are not providing. Personally I learned more from reading and watching Discovery and History channel than I ever did in any public or government funded school. Why is this? Why are outside sources trumping the education that is supposed to prepare kids for the future? The system is so screwed up I can't even imagine a new replacement for what we have but I know a few steps that will help things

1. Encourage students to learn what they want
2. Give the students control of the education
3. Take away study guides and curriculum books
4. Give open access to ALL BOOKS & DOCUMENTARIES
5. Let the students discover themselves and what they want to do with no judgment

That reminds me of another evil, books written by a board that crams alot of information into one handy hardcover book which is as useful as a wedge. History books are a main source of evil, they cram WW2 into maybe 5 chapters. Rather then having students read 5 chapters and take a test why don't we encourage them to read stuff like Meine Kampf or books written by expert authors that cover specific fields of the war? History is so full and detailed that no one person could remember it all but why should we try to compress it down to chapters? Same thing with math, rather than books with example questions and equations lets give students real problems to solve so that they can understand the purpose of the math they are using and god forbid try to tie it in with someone they are interested in.