The Credit Curse

A few years ago my wife and I watched the old TV show Little House on the Prairie. It was entertaining, but mostly interesting as a time capsule nostalgia trip. The TV shows back in the 70s and 80s often didn't do a great job of translating a story to the visual live action format. Anyway, I remembered a scene from that show recently: Pa Engels often works at the local saw mill. He works when they have to cut boards. He doesn't work there when there's nothing to do.

That's completely different that today's work world. People go to work when there's nothing to do. Sometimes there are off-project chores that are actually valuable, but it's also common that employees end up burning time on make-work activity. This happens because people are more often than not paid from credit. A company averages out all its cash flows via financial activity.

I think this particular aspect of economic life is the result of much frustration and annoyance. It's why people hate work and terms like "wagie" are used. Everyone knows the whole thing is nonsense and bullshit and the system is pretty arbitrary.

The "no credit" world existed in the US, especially prior to the era of the railroads. In the neighborhood where I live, new settlers built a flour mill sometime after 1812--maybe 1815?--and the whole project was "financed" through barter. People worked on the mill based on a promise of future flour or services. That sort of small deal making was eventually replaced with "finance", money and credit. Banks became universal intermediaries.

That also allows the governments to tax transactions, wages, etc... Now there's a big, bloated system to "facilitate" trade. People traded the high friction person to person interaction of 1815 with a giant parasitic system that robs them every single day.