Systems
- Systems permeate our lives
- What do they do for your life?
- What do you do for them?
Self-Licking Ice Cream Caught Live. Read About It Now!
Systems permeate our lives. They are the connective tissue that hold society together. To a very large degree, they dictate the way we live. As they evolve, change and become more complex, if they are successful, they become self-sustaining. Eventually, they tend to become self-serving. They are the self-licking ice cream cone: systems unto themselves.
Think about these systems and ask yourself whether they serve your best interests or whether you are serving theirs:
- Political systems
- Social systems
- Defense systems
- Energy systems
- Economic systems
- Communication systems
- Transportation systems
- Education systems
- Banking systems
- Entertainment systems
These systems determine the solutions that are available to us. What if instead we created a model where solutions determined the nature of systems? What would that look like?
We would begin by asking ourselves whether this system or that one really serves our purposes or whether we are serving its purposes. If both of us are being served, kismet! That’s wonderful. That’s a system we want and need. Let’s give it the Better Citizen-Business Bureau certificate of approval.
But, if we scan those systems listed above and say to ourselves: is this system or that system meeting my needs? Or, am I in hock to the system and I’m not sure why? Is there an alternative? That is when we need to ask ourselves: why am I doing this and how could it be done better?
So, you’re in hock to the bank. Maybe you had a student loan, maybe a medical emergency, maybe you needed to add on a bedroom to the old homestead. Whatever the reason, you put a few thousand dollars, maybe a few tens of thousands of dollars, on your credit card.
You have entered a different universe. You are a plump chicken that has landed in sight of a flock of raptors.
It isn’t a case of whether they, but rather of which one of them, will bring you down. Also, how painful will it be?
How surgically will they remove your money from your pockets? What shred of decency might they leave you as a sign of their generosity? After they have taken everything else.
The American banking system has become piranhas in the river, to mix our metaphors. Their teeth are razor sharp, the purpose is clear, and they are on the hunt.
Capitalism demands growth, year over year, and even quarter over quarter. You either have to grow your market or you have to extract more profit from your existing market.
Our banks are trying to do both. Wells Fargo has been opening accounts in the names of fictitious people, or people who speak no English. They charge these poor, unknowing people fees that go unpaid, causing the interest rate to soar and damaging the “customer’s” credit rating.
They even took the initiative with these made-up accounts to add on an insurance policy from Prudential, just to squeeze out a few more dollars and compound the grief. Prudential for its part claims it was not a party to the fraud. This is how Wells Fargo grows its market.
For their existing market, the banks have developed any number of carefully calculated ploys to lure you into defaulting on the terms, the very extensive terms written by very expensive lawyers in very small print, of your credit cards. If you do default, and their algorithms tell them that a sufficient number of us will, it allows them to raise the interest on those cards to what once was widely considered usurious rates.
No more. 29.99% interest? Why not? It’s the new normal in banking. The big boys need to eat. It’s you, the customer, they are eating.
Banking today is exemplary of a system badly in need of reform. It serves itself, not the customer. The banks are not a solution to your needs, but you are a solution to theirs.