mbarrick | Stinking, greasy cog in a soulless and corrupt machine

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Stinking, greasy cog in a soulless and corrupt machine

So I got a call from the Student Loan Nazi's today. In all the years I have been faithfully paying back this debt I have never had the same cubicle monkey twice. The stinking, greasy cog in the soulless and corrupt machine du jour was one Chad Manning, "Collector Assistant Supervisor" (or "Super Ass" for short). From the word go he took a condescending tone with me that immediately raised my hackles. In the course of trying to pay back this loan I have been lied to by the banks and subsequently had my loan defaulted through no fault of my own (I even still have all the correspondence to prove it was their error, not mine - not that it is of any use at all). Thereafter I have been harrassed, threatened and lied to by the American owned collection agency that has the exclusive contract to collect on the Canadian government's debt (and pocket a whopping 20% in the case of student loans, per the Cananda Student Loans Act). I've had them reneg on agreements, fail to follow instructions, and even process post-dated cheques ahead of the date they were written for. I'm sick of explaining my life to an endless parade of Edmontonian hicks. Given what I expect to not get back as a tax return this year should pretty much, if not completely, elimitate what's left of this loan I have it in mind to give my new pal Chad (I wonder if he is any relation to Preston?) Manning a call and express my heart-felt opinion of him and his profession.

Student loans should be abolished, as should consumer credit, and even credit on a whole. Credit just artifically inflates prices and further floats along an untimately untenable system. Do you think a "starter" home in Vancouver would go for $250,000 if people actually had to pay up front for it? Without credit you would see apartments selling for $10,000, houses for $20,000, new cars for maybe $2,500 or so... The average North American has about a $15,000 USD credit card debt alone, let alone student loans and mortgages. And while they wallow in their debt they go ahead and do things like "invest" in "ethical funds" and think they are being smart and good. I don't care whose stock one buys into, it's just feeding an even more fucked-up part of the same fucked-up system. Those stocks are effectivly loans to companies. Public companies operate with a mind to feeding the debt they owe to their stockholders, not with a mind of actually producing any real wealth. That's all it comes down to: produce more than you consume.

I'm 35 years old and my fondest financial wish right now is to have, on paper, $0. No loans, no credit card balances, no money in the bank. From that point on my money is entirely my own business.

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Man, I can definitely relate to you on this one. I put off having a credit card until I was nearly twenty-two, just because the idea seemed and still seems to be totally insane. I use it for online purchases, restaurants, and that's about it. The "keep buying, don't worry" mindset that you're in danger of falling into when you obtain one of those things is truly frightening.

I've managed to avoid the student loan pit, but it's meant gradding two years later than "normal" and not ever really living "uni life". I've basically been working half-time and going to school half-time the whole way through in order to avoid loans. The idea of owing the government more money after getting bumped out of the student tax bracket after gradding is scary.

I saw a sticker on a lamp-post on the Cambie Street Bridge a while ago that made me laugh: "Invest? Isn't that like giving them a stick to beat you with?" Not your politics, I know, but still seemed apros-pos.

"Invest? Isn't that like giving them a stick to beat you with?"

Well I suppose it depends wich side of the war you are on.
Are you a casualty , and innocent bystander , or a soldier?

The advantage of real war over economic war thoug .. is that
soldiers get to die. For them the pain is over .. they get honored and remebered and monuments are made for them.

In an economic war .. casualties have to live in poverty with the scars on their name and credit for their failures in battle. You will never see a statue for all the dot com
start ups for their heroic valliant efforts , you will never
hear praise for fired comerades.

Perhaps this is why Japanese businessmen kill themselves so often. To regain their honor.

That quip about investment is consistent with my politics. I'm in in favour of private ownership. Incorporated public traded companies have little incentive to do anything but inflate the speculative value of their shares. Rather than focusing on the production of real wealth public corporations focus on the psychological creation of illusory value. The dot.com debacle is a fine example of this. Start-ups abounded that had no foundation in viable business, i.e. no plans to produce anything of any tangible value. They capitolized on the ignorance of investors (Venture capitolist circa 1998: Tech is good. I don't understand it, but the nerds all say, "Wow! This is soooo cool," and I'll make my money back when they IPO / Average sheep investor circa 1998: Tech stock is hot, I better buy some... what IPO's are there today? Anything will do...) and all that really happened is the investors got bilked. I know a tiny number of tech-plebs who were lucky/smart enough to cash in on their options (and get a cut of the money robbed from the investors) and a whole lot more who lost their jobs (and homes, cars, and anything else they bought on credit and hadn't finished paying for).

I'm obscenely pleased to be working for a privately owned company that manages renewable resources to produce a necessary product of tangible value. I have no problem at all with the fact that my employer is rich enough to have, for example, recently gotten a private tour of the Tate Gallery - he earned it fair and square. I'm happy to help this company do what it does because I know that contributing to this company in the business of just creating illusions to bilk investors (as opposed to the God-awful bank I used to work for - I loathed being a part of that company).

A viable company has to sustainably produce more than it consumes and do more good than harm. And that applies not only to companies, but to any group and any individual.

Well that was the thing I love about the Dot com business

You sold products that didn't exist (software and web sites- no physical form)

And placed them in a virtual space

to people who didn't know (clueless investors)

for imaginary money (the dollar has no value since we are off the gold standard, and bank balances are just 1s and 0s)

and make a profitable business

But therin lies the inherent flaw with the DOT COM community.
When you compete in an industry built on imagination and fabrication. To survice you have to be a better imagination
than the next guy. But eventually the ultimate lie will be revealed - wich will reflect your lie.

"you got some pictures , post them on my server $5/month"

"no - rent some space on my server, it's built reliable and you get 1 gb traffic for $4 a month"

"no - rent space on my server...more storage, and 10 GB bandwidth for your family photo album for $3 a month"

"no - rent space on my MEGA-SERVER 50 GB Storage for
you family portraits, 15 GB alone for your pictures of your cat and UNLIMITED bandwidth and a free footmassage...Plus our servers are faster because we sandpaper the Network cables for $2 per month"

Why have $5 of monopoly money when you could have $5000 monopoly money?

Why pay $20 for something you DON'T NEED when you could pay $7?

I learned long ago than there is no way to compete against
an effective liar.

and the problem is that when the smoke clears and all the liars have been revealed - no one will be willing to pay $20 /month for legitamite server storage for their
website and bandwidth.

easy way to handle it... when someone calls, ask who is calling and what it's about and then tell them the person they are calling is deceased... it works every time... later if they do get ahold of you, and tell you about the misinformation... tell them that the person they must have talked to is deceased.

Peace

LOL.

But really, it's not so much that they called, I was expecting the call. I send them batches of six post-dated cheques every January and July. I've been doing so for seven years. You'd think by now they'd realise that I was committed to paying off the debt, but every six months I get some new kid that has his snot-nose in the air and talks to me like I am about to welch and skip to Costa Rica.

It's just this one loan and credit agency, too, which handles the federal portion of my student loans. The provincial authority that administers the collection of my provincial student loans simply takes a pre-arranged amount from my account each month and sends me statement at the end of the year. It's painless. They haven't needed to talk to me nor I them in over four years. They aren't compelled to treat me like an assumed criminal on a regular basis.

i agree about the abolition of debt...i was there about two years ago, not owing anyone, paying for everything with cash...i'm not in a bad way, and much better of than most, but still i wish i was back there...it is true that our entire society is run on debt...corporate debt has never been higher in history, and while they were harping on governments to pay off their deficits because they "were out of control" they just kept piling up their own...mergers have made it even worse, because often profitable companies are sold off, and the corporation that buys them rolls the money they borrowed to buy them into that companies bottom line often rendering them unprofitable and reducing their staff, selling them again, or folding them up and moving them to mexico...and stocks are artifically inflated anyways, as their price in no way reflects their value...there will come a day when this house of cards will come crumbling down and it will be interesting as i'm sure it would make the great depression look petty in comparison...but that may not be in our lifetimes...they should also go back to the system in which banks could only lend out what they held in deposits...for they have fueled this massive debt load which plagues our society...then corporations would have to be accountable for their actions and spending...and money wouldn't be lent to just anyone who asked...we can dream, but this system won't change unless it collapses...as our society doesn't fix anything until it completely collapses...

I say we just call the whole thing off ....

Erase the debt record .. clean slate for everyone.
Consumers,Companies,Countries.

Consider that EVERYONE is in debt .. and No-one
can get ahead becuse a portion of their income
goes to interest alone. And this money is a loss
to society because NO-ONE is getting rich off it.
and it cannot get re-invested into economies.

Wouldn't that be nice.

Here's a little reductive example of why credit-based money is inherently flawed:

100 people live on an island. They all have professions of some sort, carpenter, farmer, tailor, etc. Initially they get on just fine by trading value for value, i.e. the farmer gets new pants from the tailor in exchange for a chicken. Unfortunately the situation soon arises where the farmer needs his chicken coop fixed by the carpenter, but the carpenter doesn't need a chicken. What the carpenter needs is a new pants. But the tailor doesn't need any carpentry services. So a 101st person, a banker, lands on the island and says, "I have the answer to this dilemma. I will print up money and you can use it a medium of trade in situations like this. We'll say the value of a ten pound chicken is 10£. I'll print off 1000 1£ notes and lend everybody 10. Then, Mr. Farmer, you can just give Mr. Carpenter 10£ to fix your coop, and you, Mr. Carpenter can then give that 10£ to Mr. Tailor for a pair of pants. Nice and simple."

So the people agree this makes things a lot easier and go for it, but then the banker says, "Of course, I need to make a living, too, so in return for providing you with this credit I will charge you some interest on the loan. I'm fair so I'm only looking to get my 10£ out of it all, so I will only charge 1% intrest. Isn't that reasonable?"

The people agree that the banker is entitled to his fair share and should get his 10£, too. So at the end of the year the people owe the banker the 1000£ he lent them, plus the 10£ interest. Problem is, there is only 1000£ in circulation because that's all the banker lent out in the first place. It is impossible to pay back the loan at the end of the year unless the banker loans out more money, which, of course, he does, and he charges interest on that, too.

But since each year there is extra money in circulation when 10£ was to be worth the same as a 10 lb. chicken or a pants what happens? Either the price of goods inflates, and 10£ will soon only buy a 7 lb. chicken and a pair of pants costs 13£ or new chickens and material for pants have to be brought in below cost, or both. Soon 10£ hardly buys a chicken wing and the tailor has sweat shops on another island pounding out pants. What with the price of chicken is such a sorry state the farmer has to mass-produce and needs way more chicken coops. The carpenter gets in the business of making arrows so that he can threaten farmers on other islands and force them to hand over their chicken coops. And of course the islanders don't actually need all the chickens so the farmer uses every marketing ploy he can to manufacture a bogus market for chicken, encouraging as much waste as possible.

And there you have it: perpetual inflation, exploitation, war, consumerism, and super-size chicken burgers no one can finish. All thanks to credit-based money.

Yeah .. then PETA would go after the chicken farmer

Poeple will protest the tailors sweatshops

the carpenter would be protested for detroying farm land
with all these chicken coups

and soon Apple will step in to help the farmer
to introduce

.......the iChicken Cluck Different

Yes, I wholly agree that banks should be returned not being able to loan more than they have in depostits. For one, depositors would be treated a lot better again. Instead of being consumers buying bogus "services" (and the more services the more service-charges... upsell, upsell, upsell!) we'd once again be lenders paid by the bank. Our deposits would be their bread and butter so instead of "spend, spend, spend" they'd be calling "save, save, save" like they used to.

Not only that, but they money on deposit would have to have some solid basis in reality again, i.e. real value. We'd *have* to go back on a gold standard or something similar. Money would only exist if there was real value to back it up.

yeh well we can thank mr. nixon for the "floating" currency we are currently saddled with and the resulting snake in europe...although the european union is taking care of that somewhat...the other nice thing would be that if banks needed deposits to lend they would actually have to give a reasonable return on your deposit to encourage you to deposit in their bank...so instead of a mark you would become an important part of their business...john ralston saul brings up a lot of these points in his writing, that's one of the reasons i've been drawn to it...

Creditel? Equifax? or Canadaian Bonded Credit?

I am in almost EXACTLY the same boat. I just reamed the
agent out over the phone last night with threats of
having them charged with telecommunications and mail fraud
over them lying to me about non-receipt of payment and
then breaking our "agreement" by double billing me through
christmas.

Lucky for me I think I am getting a sizable tax return
and I should have this Student Loan Sword of Democles
wipped out by the summer. yaay.

Unfortunately I still have about 10,000 in other debts
but I can handle those. Visa and MC have been remarkable co-operative and easier to aquire for getting funding for school.
and are much easier to payback. (less monthly minimums required
direct deposit options, options at any time for making higher payments)

-- you know .. you are still getting fucked ... but its nice when they use lubricant.

Canadian Bonded Credit, which was formerly known as Equifax. They are one and the same. Equifax bought CBCL and assumed their name in Canada, obscuring the fact that Equifax is based in Altanta, GA.

ahhh the Joys of CBCL....

I think we need to form a CBCL support group.
or better yet... never pay off our loan .. get tie-dyed
shirts , a microbus , and follow out debts around from
one agent to another, from company to company.
Let's be debt-roadies

or you could do what i did in the old days and declare bankruptcy...it was worth it for me as i went to school when interest rates were 18 - 19%, that's the eighties for you...so by the time they caught up to me my interest payments were $5 a day...and the obnoxiousness of the credit company made my decision for me...if they were going to pick apart my life with a fine tooth comb, then i might as well make it worth my while...so they never saw a cent of my money...at the time i had a part-time job throughout the year and a summer job at taxation...so i never made enough to fulfill the obligation they wanted out of me...so for seven years i got to be debt free, as i was only required to pay $1300 over a year to get a discharge from my bankruptcy...but while they were determining that you got to keep anything you made a month up to $1350 and then you paid half what you made over that...it was actually nice to have no payments, other than regular bills, for seven years...and to actually buy things in cash...and i really never suffered that much, because as soon as that seven years was up every credit card company in the world was lining up to give me a card...i had to actually determine if i really wanted something before i bought it as i would have to make do with less money for a while...mind you i don't think that students should be saddled with such debt anyway...but that's what you get from a society that considers higher education a luxury...not realizing the true cost of an uneducated society...oh well they closed off the bankruptcy loophole now...

Actually , I never declared bankruptcy (because my student loan
was too low- and you couldn't bankrupt out of government debts) and never really wanted to.

My recent debt buildup over the last two years through Credit cards was ironically spent going to school (becuse I couldn't qualify for a student loan , becuse I never paid it off becuse I couldn't get a good job becuse I didn't have a good education because I couldn't qualify for a student loan etc...)
and aquiring tools.

I never bought stereos and DVD players , and boats , and clothing.

All purchases were made on tuition , computer and video equipment -as tools of the trade.

"...i had to actually determine if i really wanted something before i bought it as i would have to make do with less money for a while..."
The problem I have had with spending though (and I have just realized this) was spending some of the money on things I thought I might need - not what it turned out I did need.

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Stinking, greasy cog in a soulless and corrupt machine

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Actually

Dot bomb

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"Sorry, I'm dead."

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Lending

Re: Lending

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