Bankers, big business, and the future

people talk about losing their freedom to commercial interests - I think I can provide an example of a potential source of same.

The example is not that much a stretch of the imagination - it'll just take a little set-up as follows. Once upon a time insurance companies were not allowed to sell financial services, and banks were not allowed to sell insurance. The reason it was against the law for insurance companies to sell financial services was largely due to the potential high risks associated with insurance - i.e. 9/11 type large claims could wipe out a company. If that company were acting as a savings and loan business also, those deposits would be in jeopardy of being lost when a large claim produced itself. Flooding, drought, embezzlement, there could be any number of things that could cause an insurance company to go under, and that conflicted with the protection investors are supposed to have with financial institutions. Banks were not allowed to sell insurance for the same reason, but today you can go to any bank for any type of insurance, and you can invest in insurers upstream financial services branches. Why the change? Because now - today, anything that can show profit is acceptible. In regards to more lost freedom we are dollar driven, things that affect our dollar have much deeper consequences than we might care to admit.

Part two of this example is how much further personal freedom can be lost - and how close it is to reality. We can use E-bay, Paypal and banking mergers as a prime example. Right now my savings/overdrafts are protected from paypal should I decide to remove their access to my bank accounts. But what happens when paypal decides to acquire a financial charter to 'protect' it's customers and decides to freeze all accounts should there be a dispute over an on-line sale? What happens when they share rfid access to the rest of my accounts with 'big brother'? Not only can it happen - at the rate we're going it will happen. Look how fast modern counter culture groups are commercialised. Punk, hip-hop, rap - there seems to be nothing profit cannot assimilate, there is no argument or dissent to it. 

Unless an instrument such as the NI4D is in place we will have no control over what corporate 'America" can do to us.

As the saying goes:  a friend is one who gives you a hand up - not a hand out.

Gravel

NI4D