swottler's comments

swottler | 3 years ago

You are talking about credit, not money. Banks create actual state-backed money, which can be physically (or more likely electronically) paid to a third party after they've loaned it to you.

A better example would be if you were in the bar alone, and had no money, and instead just wrote an IOU on a bit of paper with your contact details. If we lived in a mythical 100% trustful utopia, then the barman would just accept this as money and so would anyone else in future who the barman needed to pay for anything. But we obviously don't live in such a society so unfortunately no, not anyone can just create money!

swottler | 3 years ago | on: Shoichiro Toyoda, who turned Toyota into global automaker, has died

There's an excellent episode of This American Life about the NUUMI experiment and why it failed to change GM.

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/561/nummi-2015

swottler | 3 years ago | on: Mild autumn weather has sent European gas prices plummeting

Source?

swottler | 3 years ago | on: Quebec Sovereignty Movement

Could you clarify? Wouldn't this only cut Newfoundland and Labrador off from the rest of Canada? Can't see how this would affect Western Canada's access to the population/economic centre which is basically just Ontario, and to a lesser degree BC and Alberta itself. (Excepting Quebec, which I guess all of Canada would be cut off from to the same degree in this scenario).