Showing posts with label Economics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Economics. Show all posts

Tuesday, 26 August 2008

So, If Money And The Human Condition Aren’t The Problem, What Is?

The World Bank logoImage via Wikipedia
Some things just aren’t there when you need them.

Or if they are they are in limited supply when lots of people want the same thing.

So money is there to enable the well off to get those few things for themselves rather than lose out to the others who want these things but don’t have the money.

If you build a system that runs on money it means that commodities that are scarce go up in ‘value’ where as commodities that are plentiful or in over supply lose ‘value’.

Capitalising on commodities, whether these are necessities such as food and water, or items of social value like jewellery or speciality things like art, has a good side in that it allows for the skills of mankind to have an overall beneficial drive towards a better and more fruitful society – that is if you believe that without tools like capitalism the world’s population would remain ignorant savages...

It has a downside in that it devalues too many things too often to allow for a complete system to be in place that works for everyone under its aegis.

It does look as if one power group has build this system in order to maintain control over all the ‘things’ that group needs to the exclusion of a large proportion of the rest of the World’s benefit.

… and the truth is that is exactly what has happened… and is still happening.

The realities of the structure are being changed but the power still remains in the hands of the few over the many.

Non violent pressure from massed groups of people will change the way things are done but only if those people are willing to carry on the social structure that works whilst throwing away that which doesn’t. This way of changing society usually takes far longer than other direct methods because there is usually very little effect on those in power, mainly because whilst they have what they want they find it easy to ignore words – no matter how loud they are. Direct peaceful action which disrupts the economics of a country does tend to have a better effect but getting a country full of people to move their asses is hard work, especially if many of that country’s people
are content with their lot… especially when they view what they have in comparison to many countries not to far from their backyards.

If that country is tightly controlled by the economic set up, the plutocracy is a long standing system, bureaucracy is a group of people who stand between the plutocracy and those without – or are those who want the changes to
come now but still rely on money as a core belief which allows control to be maintained by the plutocracy – then people are malleable… social causes get their ‘dander’ up but real fighting for life is something best left to the professionals… besides which society is trying to make people mellow so that there is less friction … better to send an angry letter.

It seems that only by enacting a complete breakdown of society can any major changes take place otherwise most people are content because ‘now’ always seems better than ‘before’ – all the more so if the country they live in is one where power has had to be struggled and fought for by one group over another for years.

So, over years and centuries a system is built that is an interlocking set of ways that doesn’t allow for a complete breakdown except in the most violent or repressed of incidences.

Yet this system is completely controllable. There need never be a class who have nothing. Never need there be people who die from lack of something that is in supply. Never again those with whilst others die because they
don’t have the money to buy what’s needed.

Imagine calming down the human race whilst turning them on to the joys of being a human being on planet Earth.

A dream.

One of those idealistic futures of mankind where it all works out because it can.

We are starting to see the global meaning of cooperation. Of clarity of word and deed. Of honesty of trading and of purpose.

The equipment and desire is already there regarding a system rebuild – a service pack for Life I. A set of patches that work to update what we have now, the setup of which is inadequate to all our needs, that sorts out thewrinkles made from old material. Don’t throw away everything just because part of the man made operating system of life doesn’t work. But do sort out the bits that don’t work.

It’s likely to happen though – throwing all of it away in order to remove the, perceived or even real, shackles. Using in-depth profiling tools for each person can only go so far in giving them what keeps them quiet. Situations
can be controlled by media output but only if the media wants to, or are forced to, be part of the mechanism for control – and only if the population allows it through compromised standards, apathy or lack of knowledge of
their true rights as defined by the majority of other humans on this planet.

One day has to be planned for. The day of crossover where those ‘with’ cannot keep hold any more. Or where they have to share on an equal footing with rest of mankind… or will the man ‘with’ buy the power to give him ‘all’ whilst everyone else goes without?

No. because it always goes pop, like an erupting spot, except it’s the real lives of, sometimes, millions of people. Let alone the animals and flora that get roasted because the system is inadequate and antiquated. Are the Chinese going to decide that they deserve everything? Are the Americans? The Russians? The Israeli’s? The Europeans?

Or is it really true what The World Bank and others say? Does everyone want freedom and prosperity for every single person? They seem to be saying that’s what they want. Darvo. Non stop talking about trying to get to this point in time.

But, as ‘they’ say ‘slowly slowly catch a monkey’ and, even, ‘don’t rock the boat’.
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Are you proud of the work you do?

Examples of single line tokens: Tablet on left...Image via Wikipedia Are you proud of your lineage?

Do you feel capable because you know what you know? Are your skills worth having?

Are you glad that you are one of the few people who can make a specific item or one of the few who know so much about a particular subject?

Do you love your home or your land and see each as a living entity with history and a future?

Does your Art fulfill you yet leave you questing for more?

Are you satisfied with a lot of your life?

Do you really know how lucky you are?

Has the fact that we are the only life of our kind for light-years around here really made you stop, think and understand the awe inspiring nature of that fact?

Now …

… go and count your worth.

First of all. How are you doing this? What tools or add on are you using? Is your first step to be towards a work of great learning or towards a calculator?

Which counts for the most in your head? Which counts for the most in the reality you are surrounded by? Your every day life.

If you removed money from your life and from those around you would you all survive in the world of today?

If your spiritual life can sustain your earthly body then you are a lucky human being. If you need money in order to live then chances are that you live under some form of control that means your spiritual world is limited by your daily need to sustain life and soul through dint of labouring or through the receiving of charity.

So…

Jumping back to the beginning. If you are pleased, proud or contented with what you know and where you are then you should be able to pin a fairly good score to the doors of the spiritual growth path of life.

And that’s quite a lot of people in this world, from all walks of life, who are happy to be alive.

So, it should be possible to make a few alterations to some of the core basics of this artificial system that mankind has built that should help the rest of the human population, whoever needs it, to sort out their struggles and build something that has the qualities they desire in the space they live in.

Times of plenty are usually times of deliciously full living. Even if that is the ability to stare into space without a care in the world – other than those of every day living – the cares that society imposes as part of its feeding rituals long gone.

For the first time in the growth of the civilisation called humanity we have the tools to progress to the next step in our own social growth.

Controllable thanks to the internet, computers (of course) and the many systems worldwide who now use digital communications and data as part of their cores.

And thanks as well to the tons upon tons of history that is now being collected and digitised for all to study and ponder upon.

With a bit of judicious tinkering it would be quite possible to rebuild the financial roll of this society into one based on the losses of any negatives regarding money.

Taking the core principle of the Local Exchange Trading System model – that money is created where and when it is needed – money suddenly becomes as available as air.

What doesn’t happen is that everything shoots up in price or that businesses collapse or that suddenly, because they have endless amounts of money people start forcibly buying anything they set their eyes on.

The capitalist/ money system already built into this world along with the governing systems with all their laws, rules and regulations will stop this happening.

Money is an invention – or more truthfully it is a token system used to facilitate trade and, now, living as well.

These tokens have assumed far too great an importance. Their lack can mean the difference between life and death.

It is very obviously not the tokens themselves that are at fault. It seems to be the fact that mankind has decided that these tokens only grow at their own rate and are linked to prices of scarce metals.

Rather than seeing this world and its systems as capable of working without the pressure of a token system that has got too powerful for its own boots – we tend to see that without money we are stuffed.

Which, in this day and age, is just plain stupid. But true.

If the top end of our social structures had little or no tokens then we could be justifiable if we altered the system to one that worked. Why is it that we are not justifiable in changing it when those at the top have but those down at the bottom struggle and even die through lack of buying power.

It can be changed and that change need not be as destructive as past attempts have been. Those 'with' need not lose what they have. Those who have never ‘had’ will be able to finally build lives that are as fulfilling as those
lives of people ‘with’.


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William Cobbett

Portrait of William Cobbett for use on the Wil...Image via Wikipedia William Cobbett, in Rural Rides, wrote of the plight of the farm workers – their repositioning as the lowest of the low in the hierarchical class structure of the UK.

The Industrial Revolution altered many things. One of these seems to have been the mindset of the farmers who decided that wealth and position were quality items to aim for as part of their quest in life,

Farm labourers stopped sharing houses with their ‘masters’. The Enclosure Act removed the small strip cultivations and parcelled land into larger fields, each with its own crop, covering multiple acres rather than smaller, sub acre plots of differing focus’. Wages dropped to appalling levels and machinery took over tasks that required ten people suddenly required far fewer. Admittedly jobs in industrial areas suddenly required more labour but since there were so many unemployed or unemployable people around this left many in dire poverty.

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