Statement of Purpose

“Choice depends on the ability to choose, and of course when you’re shackled with debt you don’t have the freedom to choose... People in debt become hopeless and hopeless people don’t vote. There are two ways in which people are controlled: First is to frighten them, and second is to demoralize them.” - Rep. Tom Bean

I. Creditland is you.

Creditland in an online community of debtors. The site aims to provide online space for users to anonymously share their stories and strategies for dealing with the increasingly unmanagable debtload for the United States citizen.

We are not an 'advice' site. The people who use this site come to their own conclusions. Creditland just lets us all tell the story. In addition to debtors, experts will be trawling around the site giving feedback and forums for them will be set up, while editors will be working in the background to ensure we stay on topic and focused.

Creditland considers consumer debt to be a private subsidy by private industry which frequently finances costs which are covered by governments of other first world countries: Health care, child care, college education, etc. These debts enable corporations and our government to shame the people of the United States into complacency.


II. Humans represent a very expensive risk

The fact of human inefficiency and potential costs in a modern society is a primary reason for the existence of modern governments, to pool liability to benefit the greater good. The pretense that economic management human existence can be profitable is false. The wholesale movement of quality of life activities to the for profit sector has been one of the great falsehoods of modern economic dogma.

The largest, most effective insurance of individual well-being has always been, and will always be, the domain of governments beholden to their people.

III Ecomomic fundamentalism (EF) (ref. Milton Friedman) is an irrational, blind-faith course of action to solving the problems of human existence, while conveniently making the rich richer.

The limits of the environment are not factored into economic models; they are assumed to be infinite. The work of mothers and caregivers are not counted as economic activity. Free trade creates economic balance, rather than a 'race to the bottom.' Not only do these 'facts' of advanced capitalism fly in the face of commonsense, which they do, they also represent a few of the basic, unshakable beliefs of EF which have become outdated and no longer useful.

Creditland seeks to contextualize this blind-faith belief system with stories of people who are actually living within this, and other, economies.

IV. Every human being has an economic experience, and derives some kind of knowledge from that.

For it is a fact of life that each of us, in the advanced western world and in the economically conditioned third worlds, have a very lively and complex economic experience. We deal with economic pressures of all kinds – to consume, to produce, to keep up the appearance of opulence and prosperity and to rack up as much debt and goods as we - and our earth - can handle.

And with that experience and some luck, we won't just commiserate but will create wisdom and strategy against the terms-of-agreement lawyers and consumer-debt investment bankers who seek to raise our never-ending monthly payment, to saddle us with just enough debt to always tread water, and frequently sink into foreclosure, or bankruptcy - if Congress and President Bush hadn’t outlawed it for most of us in 2005.

For corporations, bankruptcy remains as easy to attain as ever.

V. Nobody’s fault, EF is just a faulty system hitting a wall

This nightmare of exorbatant rising costs of living paired with stagnating wages and increasing opportunity in the low pay, low reward service sector is happening, in some form, to almost all of us. It is the American dream, re-written by corporate deregulation. (see movie, The Corporation)

This is no one person's fault - and we blame no individual. Creditland just seeks the wisdom of everyday experience in an open sharing forum. Creditland seeks to turn isolation into strategy; credit card offers into absurdity; and foreclosure into something worth more than the collapse of your dreams.

The economic discussion, for far too long, has been the domain of 'economists' and 'experts.' You don't have to be an expert to know when your personal finances are not working. And you don't have to be an economist to figure out this is happening to a tremendous percentage of...well, everyone in the United States.

Let's get started. We are now looking for people going through economic experiences to submit content - regular installments which simply tell your story. Much like this blog is at publisher.blog.creditland.org, your story (we only ask you to be honest) will be set up at youranonyoumousname.blog.creditland.org and migrate to the Creditland test site in the next month or two.

Keep in mind, bloggers will be "Correspondents" in the final site.

With best wishes for a new language,
Welcome to Creditland.
You are not alone.