For reasons which need not concern you here, I bought a simple little motorcycle from China. The machine cost me about U$D 500. I paid just over U$D 100 to have it shipped to my home port, where I could pay the Customs duty and VAT and pick it up. - Right?
No, very very wrong.
I phoned 'the shipping agents' on the Thursday. They told me that, instead of arriving here, it was to arrive on the following Sunday at a port on the other side of the country. I should phone another northern city for details, but on the Monday following arrival. This I did in the morning, and was told in a very friendly way that, yes, it had arrived, and that I could have it cleared by Customs there or here. I was not told at that stage what costs would accrue. They said they would notify me, but that the next day, Tuesday, was a public holiday.
On the Wednesday, still not having heard from them regarding precedures and costs, I telephoned them and, as a result, at 17.13 that Wednesday afternoon, received by email a list of their own charges which, without even mentioning 'Customs duty' and 'Value Added Tax', amounted to more than U$D 700, or much more than the cost of the machine, which, of course, I could not have until their bill had been paid.
No, the CEO of the company, by name of 'Bilbao', for those keen students interested in what place-names, colours, fishes, animals, christian names, commodities etc. as surnames indicate, was not available for comment as he was away on holiday for a further two weeks. I could imagine where.
The list of costs - plus their own VAT, of course - included a hefty 'documentation fee' for which there was no documentation that could not be produced by the merest routine touch of a computer button, a remarkable communication fee, a notably muscular terminal handling charge, another statuesque handling charge, a workaday warehouse charge, which should not be applied until at least a week has passed, ("but is included just in case", I was informed by another agent who was to far outdo even these initial attempts at highway robbery), a flaying Customs agents' office fee - for something which I would do myself for nothing . . . These are just some of their routine charges - for nothing, for being there. And all these were apart from the puny legitimate port charges.
So, simply for being there, having a person unload a box from a ship, for which I had already paid, taking custody of it and writing a bill, this parasitic intervenion takes as much as all the dozens of people concerned in mining and founding and producing the various metals, designing and manufacturing the components and assembling the machine, negotiating its sale to me and finally crating and despatching it halfway around the planet. - Just for being there and having the cheek - chutzpah, do they call it? - Good business? No, from my point of view, and which ought to and might well become for them, very bad business indeed.
In other words, these thieves, just for adorning our societies and 'being there', take control of and triple the cost of an initial purchase, loading cost on cost in an immoral escalation of prices and costs between producer and consumer. You try and do business anywhere and you will find these parasitic vermin interposed between producer and consumer to take and take and take - just for being there. They do nothing but enrich themselves and impoverish the rest, just because they are there and that is what they do. - Call them wholesalers, retailers, middle-men, agents, consignators, consolidators, intermediaries, facilitators, shippers, managers, brokers, plus dozens of other fancy titles they have invented for themselves, and you will find them there, lice on the belly of production and supply, replete with loot and orotund with oblique terminology of 'demurrage' and 'in concept of' this or that, which mean nothing and are meant to mean nothing, and 'the going rate' and 'norms' of charges to take the maximum, which as in the other professions is just a polite term for 'price-fixing' and evidence of collusion, and all taking - just for being there. They pay some of our own to do the work of taking as much as they can from the rest of us, while they themselves holiday with clean hands and doubtless clear consciences. These discreet but pushy intruders simply manipulate any situation to extract as much cash as possible, again for no reason other than they have inserted themselves there.
Good? No, Bad.
You know, if and when you want to appreciate where the riches of the world are going, you might consider these and their pockets, and the fact that they almost exclusively are of the tribe who pay no taxes but rather channel their loot to a 'Joint Charity', which skims off a trifle for its alien interests and returns the rest to them for their further brigandage against the innocent, unsuspecting rest.
Incidentally, for the information of those unfamiliar with the realities of 'finance', the VAT and 'Customs duties', too, like the rest of the taxes, licences etc., are simply to help pay interest on what is loaned willy-nilly to our countries by the tribe now personified by the Rothschilds via our 'leaders' whom they routinely bribe. - Or didn't you know about that? - (No? - See R.html).
These are they who call us 'cattle' and, via their domination of 'educational publishing', obstruct our children's learning in order to make them stupid - I don't know about you, but I don't like that. In fact, I don't like any of it.
So think about this. Is insurance to provide insurance? The loving tones of the insurance salesman, and the chill rejection of the claims department clerk, should convince you that the exercise is simply for the Insurance Company owners to take and hold 'the money'. This is why insurance companies are often richer even than banks. Are the forests being felled for 'the logging interests'? - No, it is done for the financial ambitions of 'the logging interests'. War is simply for the unclean profits of the arms maufacturers and sutlers and oil dealers, as transport and the consequent filthying of the atmosphere and overheating of the planet are similarly for the monetary expectations of the oil dealers. Even the medical world of benevolent compassion has become an industry mainly for the heartless reaping of the cash from the misfortunes of others. Fall ill in America and you will experience at first hand the sickness of finance in full and rampant flower.
The problem is the existence of the fiction of finance, which enables avarice to take physical expression, always simply the finance. The growing and supply of food have become mere vehicles for the financial benefit mainly of the trading intermediaries, which is why, if populations don't have the money, famine is so rife on a planet that provides abundance for the needs of all its children.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).