On Canceling Debt and Modern Banking

With regards to Joe the Usurper canceling some student debts:

You have to understand how modern banking works, especially at the federal ("We own the printers") level. It costs them nothing in the short term to cancel debt.  That doesn't mean they won't still raise your taxes, though.

Debt is money created out of nothing. It's an entry in a spreadsheet. When you pay it off, the money returns to being nothing, a '0' in the spreadsheet. Only while the debt is active does the money exist. The trick is that you have to pay real money as the interest. When debt is canceled, the bank loses nothing but the income stream of interest payments.

Paying off debts is deflationary. The money is returned to sender and destroyed.  Canceling debts is inflationary, because the money isn't destroyed. It's still out there, being traded around.  It's exactly the same as printing money and handing it out. Okay, well, to be honest, it's the issuance of the debt in the first place that is inflationary. But if the money isn't zeroed out again through repayment, it is a permanent net increase in the money supply, making the rest of the currency worth just that bit much less.

Ah, the joys of modern banking.  What, you thought that the banks could only lend out money they actually had on deposit?  Silly citizen, that hasn't been the case for decades.  

In traditional fractional reserve banking, if a bank maintained a 5% reserve, they could lend out 95% of total deposits.  In modern fractional reserve banking, they can lend out 19 times their total deposits.  And if you put the loaned money back into a bank account, it counts as a deposit.

As an item of curiosity, the current mandatory reserve rate is: zero.  Banks can create all the debt money they like, with no limit.  They're just numbers on spreadsheets, after all.  Until the Fed monkeys around with the reserve percentage, forcing small banks to call in their loans, bankrupting small businesses.  (Anybody else remember 2008?  This is what really happened then to collapse the economy.  And when small banks couldn't meet the new, higher standard, the Fed forced them to sell out to the big banks.)  (Never forget that the 2008 recession was a choice the government made.  It didn't happen by accident.)

More on why Bell's Theorem is bunk

Bell's theorem utilizes mathematical sleight of hand to "prove" its point.  It uses probabilities to describe the "real" inequality, but the square roots of probabilities to describe the "quantum" equation.

Reference the Wikipedia article.  This is the inequality for "real" locality.

These are probabilities, each of which has a value of +1 or -1, so at most 1+1+1-1 = 2.  Seems straight forward so far.

Then the theorem goes on to derive the quantum formula for the same system.

This looks legit, except for one problem.  The 1/√2 is not a probability, but the square root of a probability.  (In QM, the coefficients are squared to get rid of imaginary numbers, and these squares add up to 1.)  So when we square them to get the actual probability, we get 1/2 for each.  1/2 + 1/2 + 1/2 - 1/2 = 1, which is less than 2.

How has this glaring error gone unnoticed for decades?

The "proof" for the three test system is even dumber.  It sets up a two state system with three possible inputs, for a total of 9 possibilities, then goes on to show that once you remove four possibilities, the remaining 5 cannot be evenly divided by two.  It's utter twaddle.They are always opposites, but only when measured on the same axis. 

Create two measuring systems, each with three axes spaced evenly about the center.  Test A in one and B in the other.  If you measure both A and B along axis 1, they will be true and false (or false and true).

If you measure A on axis 1 and find it to be true, what is the chance that B will be true on axis 2?  Axis 3?  50% each, obviously, since they are both evenly spaced from axis 1 and each other, and B must be true in some axis other than 1.

Creating a "test" that ignores the probabilities of events and only counts possible outcomes is silly, not to mention disingenuous.

A year ago

 History may not repeat, but it often rhymes.

Why Bell's Theorem is bunk

  First off, you need to know that Bell's Theorem purports to prove that for quantum mechanics to be true, local realism must be false.  More precisely, that entangled particles communicate their states to each other faster than light.  This is simply wrong.

  Background:  Quantum particles are really waves.  The wave function is the basis of QM.  It shows how the probability of a particle being in some state evolves over time.

  Entangled particles have opposite properties.  When treated as waves (which they are), their phases are 180 degrees (pi radians) apart.

  Probability:  Our knowledge of what state something is in, expressed through statistics.  In QM, probability is expressed as a sum of square roots.  If a particle can have two states, "heads" and "tails", and each state shows up 1/2 of the time, their probabilities are expressed as: (1/√ 2) + (1/√ 2).  Rant:  The main problem with the Copenhagen Interpretation of QM is that they believe the probabilities are the actual particle, and that the coin can really be heads and tails at the same time until you look at it.  In other words, they mistake the map for the territory.

  Bell's Theorem (AKA Bell's Inequality):  For a decent explanation of this, watch the "Looking Glass Universe" series of videos on the topic here.  Fun, isn't it?  Basically, Bell's Theorem states that for local realism to hold, you count up the states a particle can be in, compare it to the QM derived probability, and you'll find that the QM probability is greater that local realism allows.  Experiments prove this.  (More background:  the EPR paradox.)

  Fault in Bell's Theorem:  It's completely stupid to treat analog sine waves as digital square waves.  Bell's Theorem ignores the simple fact that outcomes have different probabilities of occurring.  Looking Glass Universe has a video that indirectly shows this here.  

  When you measure a particle, the particle interacts with the measuring device in some statistically significant way.  Measuring always changes a particle's properties.  So, when you measure spin, the only possible results are up and down.  (These are short hand terms for right handed and left handed spins, by the way.  They come up because they way the testing device works makes electrons either go up or down, based on their spin.)  However, the probability of getting spin up isn't always 50% (1/√ 2).  It's based on the state of the electron and the state of the testing device.  The more the electron's spin is pointed off the axis of the apparatus, you have a smaller chance of getting an "up" result, and a larger chance of getting a "down" result.  Because these are waves interacting in a probabilistic fashion.  For a demonstration, watch Minutephysic's video here.

  The flaw is simple.  Sine waves are not merely on or off, positive or negative.  They have a continuously changing phase.  If you measure it crudely, you will get a result of positive or negative.  But that's ignoring a lot of information about the wave.  Look at the images below, and see if you can tell the difference between a sine wave and a square wave.  (Hint:  The sine wave is analog, where the square wave is digital.)

Images from Wikipedia

  The fundamental error shown with a very simple example to make it more obvious:  Assume that you have an unfair coin.  Heads shows up 1/3 of the time, tails 2/3.  If you toss the coin twice, how often would you expect to see heads come up twice?  1/3 * 1/3 = 1/9.  How often would you expect to see tails come up twice?  2/3 * 2/3 = 4/9.  But if you simply lay out a table of all possible outcomes (because outcomes are all you can measure), it shows two heads 1/4 of the time and two tails 1/4 of the time: equal probabilities!

     Flip 1        Flip 2
    Head          Head
    Head          Tail
    Tail            Head
    Tail            Tail

  Bell's Theorem does not rule out local realism.  It rules out analog being digital, which is true by definition.  Quantum coins are not fair.

  The map is not the territory.

Edit:  Here are two videos giving a very clear and comprehensive view of Bell's Inequality.  It should be obvious where the problem lies - when you assume that all probabilities are always equivalent (the a-b-c chart in the first video), you're describing a square or triangle wave, not the sine waves of reality.