Michael Hudson

Everything I say is really just a question. If you have a better answer, please say it.

[Michael Hudson @Ihearmichael]

@elonmusk Perhaps is more vanity than empathy. Those people want to look like they care because they’re driven by vanity. And that vanity causes people to be willing to sacrifice the future of their own children in preference of looking like they care.

[Michael Hudson @Ihearmichael]

That government sends people to prison for criticizing the Muslims, or Israel for genocide. They want you to think that they are compassionate and care for the vulnerable and helpless, but their actions belie them.

The same people who would condemn the Brits for colonizing two hundred years ago, refuses to try and stop genocide today. In fact they put people in prison for criticizing those who commit such genocide.

Whatever the sins of governments two hundred years ago, the sins of this government is far greater. When they had the chance to help end a genocide, not only did they effectively do nothing, but they even supplied the means for the genociders to do it with.

Two hundred years ago, that government ended the trans-atlantic slave trade, punished slavers and freed 150,000 slaves which they returned to Africa - at a cost of the lives of over seven thousand British sailors and soldiers. This government supports genocide, ethnic cleansing and starving civilians to deaths - in modern times.

You would think that after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights a new era was upon us. However, this British government, even in an era where genocide, ethnic cleansing and starving of civilians is illegal under international law, finds a way to perpetuate it unnecessarily. And then they condemn their own people to a life lived in fear of the slightest comment against the powers that be.

One reason you promote free speech is that the average of all the answers, both right and wrong, is the right answer. The average of all the imperfection, is perfection. This is shown by scientific studies on masses of people guessing how much an ox weighs, or the number of jelly beans in a jar. Some answers are wildly wrong. But the average of all of all the answers is almost always better than the experts.

And this is the problem with the laws in Britain, it restricts answers that when input into the whole would have achieved a balanced and proper answer to the questions of the day. It warps opinion and causes good people to live in fear when all that is actually needed is a good conversation.

Instead of oppressing its population with fear of speech, the government should have encouraged discussion. It chose oppression and suffering over freedom and love.

[Michael Hudson @Ihearmichael]

The same ones who want the English to feel guilty for colonization two hundred years ago, don’t want the same English to criticize present-day genocide. Obviously, they care nothing for humanity and just use ancient history as a tool to extort the people of today. They’re just gangsters.

[Michael Hudson @Ihearmichael]

@realDonaldTrump Thanks so much for giving diplomacy a chance.

[Michael Hudson @Ihearmichael]

@realDonaldTrump Please reconsider what you say is the planned action that will take place tonight. Whatever you consider is the crime of Iranian regime, the consequences of it to its people will only be what you make it. And to so many others, it will assuredly be considered a war crime.

[Michael Hudson @Ihearmichael]

@ChristianHeiens And thus, no matter how off a person’s opinion may appear, if it is excluded, then it throws off the proper result of the calculation.

[Michael Hudson @Ihearmichael]

My apologies for so many replies to your post. But please also consider that mass human decision-making has been shown to be very effective at making decisions.

Take for example studies showing that the average guess of large numbers of people, very often arrives at a better answer than even the experts. Examples are often performed using guesses of jellybeans in a jar or how much an animal weighs.

The first study involved a scientist taking the eight hundred guesses in a raffle of how much a bull weighs. The experts were about three pounds off. The scientist calculated the guesses of all eight hundred people, many of which were over a hundred pounds off. But the average guess of all eight hundred people was one pound off.

As mystical as it sounds, that the many can outperform the one, it’s been proven time and time again. A film character once said, a human is smart, but people are stupid. But science has shown the opposite.

Human beings are known for their imperfections. But the average of all human imperfections is perfection. Or in many cases, very close to it.

And I apologize, just one more point. As far as comparing democracies and dictatorships: Democracies are important because governance should only be by consent. In large groups, like in a structure in the United States, consent to a process to resolve our differences, rather than the use of coercion, is really what allows us to have reasonable expectations of freedom.

We can choose to participate in democracy through free and open political processes, as opposed to the political processes of dictatorships. A person may never know what he did wrong, if anything, if that even matters in a dictatorship.

Politics is rough everywhere, but the political system of democracies allows for disagreement without arbitrary and capricious, or even violent results. We all get to agree to allow all to live in democracies, no matter the political results. But in dictatorships, that is hardly as certain.

[Michael Hudson @Ihearmichael]

Also consider that dictatorships will be punitive to those who don’t do what the dictator wants. And how will they be punitive? They will take all your stuff as punishment for disobedience.

And so with dictatorships, you end up with either no money, if you want freedom, or no freedom, if you want money. And the rules will be whatever the dictator, or power group, says that they are. That’s so much more restrictive than democracy where you have enshrined rights and courts, instead of arbitrary violent coercion, to enforce them.

[Michael Hudson @Ihearmichael]

@ChristianHeiens And by richest, i mean per capita.

[Michael Hudson @Ihearmichael]

Switzerland had had mass democracy for eight hundred years in two cantons in the form of initiatives in which people vote for the laws, and for a hundred and fifty years in the whole of the nation. They have never massively redistributed wealth and are the richest, most peaceful and most democratic nation on earth.

[Michael Hudson @Ihearmichael]

@MDirie_ @ianmiles I do wonder the effect on the native labor force of Artificial Intelligence taking and transforming jobs combined with the increased immigrant labor.

[Michael Hudson @Ihearmichael]

The monetary system. Roughly speaking, for every dollar created, there is a dollar of debt. So every dollar created is tied to a dollar of debt. So for one person to have money, someone else must have debt. And the government holds that much debt, because if it didn’t, our economy would collapse, ironically, from lack of debt.

Basically what drives the economy is this debt because from the debt comes money. So when people want a loan, money is created; then when the debt is extinguished, so is the money. But the money comes with compound interest.

Central banks around the world, including the Federal Reserve, create money from debt. This creates complexities involving who holds the debt. For example, for someone to have a million dollars, someone else must have a million dollars in debt. The government, as an entity, holds the largest amount of this debt.

I don’t support that monetary system per se. I think bitcoin, etc. has proven that thriving alternative monetary systems are more than viable.

If you want more insight try The Chicago Plan Revisited, 2012, IMF, working paper. In it the chief economists describe some of the system. I recommend it because it is from the “bank of banks.” The “working paper” version is found on the IMF website.

[Michael Hudson @Ihearmichael]

@Vision4theBlind And even hundreds of years ago, all were sworn to secrecy to not tell their wives what they and their friends did that night.

[Michael Hudson @Ihearmichael]

@mtgreenee Awww, I don’t want you to resign. You are far too entertaining for the political world. And, you’ve advanced some great ideas recently.

[Michael Hudson @Ihearmichael]

@amyklobuchar Hunger as a bargaining chip…..where have we seen this before?

[Michael Hudson @Ihearmichael]

@SenSchumer I thought he was talking about Gaza.

[Michael Hudson @Ihearmichael]

@realDonaldTrump Thanks for stopping so many wars.

[Michael Hudson @Ihearmichael]

@Anthea06274890 @EndWokeness I hope people would get due process.

[Michael Hudson @Ihearmichael]

@AuthorJJReeves @amuse Ok, love the plant based sausage, but they did have a very valuable niche. As a nation-wide restaurant, their style was one of a kind. Rainbow chairs, not a problem. I just loved the uniqueness of it and hate the thought, ironically, of losing diversity of restaurants.

[Michael Hudson @Ihearmichael]

@SterlingDuPre @ArthurMacwaters Sex between owner and slave was illegal in America, unlike other places that had slavery.