If you wanted to go about farming people, the most efficient imaginable crop would be debt farming.
People used to call debt, "The Devil's handshake." You don't hear that one much these days, but it's still true. Of course we don't mean the red devil with horns and a pitchfork anymore. Today's devil is a bank, which farms people like they were crops.
Debt farming is a perennial crop. Think apples instead of corn. You plant the human in debt, give him some money, and then you keep collecting, once a month for the rest of his life, or until he digs his way out, which is often about the same.
Sure, the human doesn't have to take the money. He chooses his debt. It's all voluntary, right?
Yes, but look at all these shiny things the human can't have if he doesn't take the money! Giant TV! $200 sneakers. A New CAR! Of course he could save up for a used car, but look how shiny this new one is! And it would take forever to save up $40,000, but if he just sticks his head in this pile of debt, its only $500 a month!
And what if the human gets sick? If he's lucky, he gets insurance at work, but insurance doesn't pay everything. Well here's a shiny new credit card!
We like to think of banks as a big vault, full of money. But that's not what they are about. They are farms where row after row of humans are planted up to their necks in debt.
That two hundred dollar pair of shoes on the department store credit card will cost you $300 when they are done with you. That $40,000 car may cost you fifty or sixty thousand. A $250,000 house? Half a million. Good farming, eh?
And unlike regular farming, they don't need fertilizer. Most people will do anything to pay up, and if they don't, the bank can come get the house or the car and sell it - to someone else who can't afford it, and needs a loan. The banks don't loan out their own money, or even much of their depositors money. They create most of the money at the time of the loan. It's more or less free to them.
If the human wants to live the life he is told to live, he must get in the hole. Notice the terms here. I didn't make this stuff up. "In the hole." "Up to his neck." "Dig his way out." This isn't just an amusing metaphor I'm playing with. It's the way we see it in our heart of hearts. The human must get in the hole, if he wants to be accepted by society. If he wants friends and admirers. If he wants anyone to sleep with him. If he wants to be happy. Don't believe me? Watch some TV commercials. Look at a billboard. A magazine ad.
But what if the human doesn't get in the hole.
What if he doesn't take the money? What if he gets a used car and some tools and learns how to maintain it himself? What if he gets a bicycle instead? Or a bus pass? What if he buys some clothes at a thrift store, and takes up reading library books instead of watching a big TV? What if he learns to make a cheeseburger at home for a fraction of the cost of fast food? What if he finds more interesting friends?
What if lots of humans did that?
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