By profit we usually mean financial gain, but it's more general meaning is just a gain or a benefit. If financial gain is a motivator, wouldn't it make sense to harness it to things that 'profit', that is benefit humanity, rather than seeing financial gain as unconditionally good, ecept for the restraints we have put on it (illegal drugs, for example)?
The obvious example of where we've got it wrong is harnessing it to work - human labour. With one habd we're trying to be mor efficient - achieve more with less human labour, but with the other we lock work to income. Makes no sense.
Another example. Would it not make sense to incentivise people remaining healthy, or being restored to health from illness? How does this fit in with people making money from pharmaceuticals? You're ill? Good - I'l sell more drugs, employ more doctors and nurses, build more hospitals.
I don't know if money can be used to incentivise only those things which are truly socially desirable, but if it isn't, what are we doing with it.
Showing posts with label debt money. Show all posts
Showing posts with label debt money. Show all posts
Wednesday, 22 June 2011
Sunday, 27 February 2011
Zeitgeist links
Francesc0 of the UK Zeitgeist movement occasionally sends a bunch of links in an e-mail to supporters. Here's his latest. Tipping point ahead is particularly powerful
Zeitgeist Moving Forward
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z9WVZddH9w
Positive money - How money is created by banks
http://www.positivemoney.org.uk/videos/
Does it matter? In a society where money seems to command our lives, I would say it does indeed.
Positive Money: One Good Cut
http://www.onegoodcut.org/?autoplay=1
Tipping Point Ahead: Wake Up, Freak Out - then Get a Grip
http://wakeupfreakout.org/film/tipping.html
Available in 22 languages.
Interesting repository of articles about the advances of science and technology
http://www.zeitnews.org/
In Debt We Trust
http://www.creditaction.org.uk/helpful-resources/debt-statistics.html
All is fine in the UK. Let's keep on watching TV and consume. The future is bright.
Tame the vampire squid: Take back our banks
http://www.giantvampiresquid.org/
Corporate EUtopia - how new economic governance measures challenge democracy
http://www.corporateeurope.org/lobbycracy/content/2011/01/corporate-eutopia
Animal Feed Lobby Targets EU's Zero Tolerance Policy on GM
http://www.corporateeurope.org/agribusiness/content/2011/01/eus-zero-tolerance-gm-under-fire
Deadly Medicine: FDA Fails to Regulate Rapidly Growing Industry of Overseas Drug Testing
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/12/17/deadly_medicine_fda_fails_to_regulate
Rachel Botsman: The case for collaborative consumption
http://www.ted.com/talks/rachel_botsman_the_case_for_collaborative_consumption.html
Move Your Money campaign in the USA
http://moveyourmoneyproject.org/
We don't have to keep our money in the coffers of the big banks. In the USA, the Move Your Money campaign, launched by the influential online news source the Huffington Post, has inspired Americans to move all or some of their money into accounts with alternative institutions.
In the UK, the banking sector isn't nearly as diverse as in the States, but there are still good alternatives. Check out Triodos, the Co-operative, the Ecology Building Society, the credit unions, National Savings through the Post Office, and the exciting new territory of person-to-person lending at Zopa.
Zeitgeist Moving Forward
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z9WVZddH9w
Positive money - How money is created by banks
http://www.positivemoney.org.uk/videos/
Does it matter? In a society where money seems to command our lives, I would say it does indeed.
Positive Money: One Good Cut
http://www.onegoodcut.org/?autoplay=1
Tipping Point Ahead: Wake Up, Freak Out - then Get a Grip
http://wakeupfreakout.org/film/tipping.html
Available in 22 languages.
Interesting repository of articles about the advances of science and technology
http://www.zeitnews.org/
In Debt We Trust
http://www.creditaction.org.uk/helpful-resources/debt-statistics.html
All is fine in the UK. Let's keep on watching TV and consume. The future is bright.
Tame the vampire squid: Take back our banks
http://www.giantvampiresquid.org/
Corporate EUtopia - how new economic governance measures challenge democracy
http://www.corporateeurope.org/lobbycracy/content/2011/01/corporate-eutopia
Animal Feed Lobby Targets EU's Zero Tolerance Policy on GM
http://www.corporateeurope.org/agribusiness/content/2011/01/eus-zero-tolerance-gm-under-fire
Deadly Medicine: FDA Fails to Regulate Rapidly Growing Industry of Overseas Drug Testing
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/12/17/deadly_medicine_fda_fails_to_regulate
Rachel Botsman: The case for collaborative consumption
http://www.ted.com/talks/rachel_botsman_the_case_for_collaborative_consumption.html
Move Your Money campaign in the USA
http://moveyourmoneyproject.org/
We don't have to keep our money in the coffers of the big banks. In the USA, the Move Your Money campaign, launched by the influential online news source the Huffington Post, has inspired Americans to move all or some of their money into accounts with alternative institutions.
In the UK, the banking sector isn't nearly as diverse as in the States, but there are still good alternatives. Check out Triodos, the Co-operative, the Ecology Building Society, the credit unions, National Savings through the Post Office, and the exciting new territory of person-to-person lending at Zopa.
Saturday, 13 November 2010
Britain's Trillion Pound Horror Story
http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2010/nov/12/britains-trillion-pound-horror-story-tv-review
The Guardian (link above) has a discussion about this TV programmed and an article about it in the guise of a TV review.
Presenter Martin Durkin set up the private sector good, public sector bad dichotomy early on, and said more than once that the public sector is now BIGGER [his emphasis] than the private sector, as if that was inherently bad/wrong/stupid. He made repeated reference to 'the productive economy', giving me the impression that it was identical with the private sector, but later in the programme he visited the NE for a nostalgic look at how it was an industrial powerhouse in the 19C. He was appealing for a manufacturing led recovery.
He didn't address the point that the technological advancements of the 19C and since have increased productivity wildly, reducing the need for work. We can't possibly as a planet keep consuming more and more to generate enough work for people to do so they can get money to spend on consumption. This isn't a moral imperative - there is a physical upper limit to the planet's resources.
The documentary's cartoon, parodied civil servant was seen taking money out of a restaurant's till to pay his wages, and then using the same money to buy himself food in the restaurant. Thus taxation was demonstrated as being 'theft' - one of the refrains of the programme is that government is spending OUR money. But this is just money circulating. It has to do that to work. In the private sector you may go into a coffee shop (these seem to be held up as the pinnacle of private sector achievement) and pay for your coffee. Some of the money will go to workers in the shop and some to the owners. The people who receive that money will go to other shops to spend it by the same process and so on. Why no shouts of "they're spending MY money" here?
I think we're supposed to be quite happy handing over money in the private sector as we do it willingly and have a choice, but this is disingenuous. You might have a choice of where to buy your food, but you have no choice but to buy food. You'd rather not have to pay it - free would be better - but you accept (grudgingly perhaps) that you have to. Rather like taxation, in fact.
I'm not saying tax couldn't be simpler, fairer, or lower, but paying for goods and services is part of the system we live in.
Durkin's point that pretty much everyone should have a job in the "productive economy" is standard fare, but let's examine it. You need to have a job to earn money so that you can buy things to keep companies in business so they can employ people. This is the cycle of consumption and it's one of the big problems of the monetary system.
Another key problem Durkin didn't really touch on is where "our" money comes from. The answer is that it is created by banks, and as you know they don't give it away, they want it back with interest - ie more money - but as they are the sole purveyors of money (ultimately) you can only ultimately get the money to pay the interest from them - at more interest. It is of course impossible to pay this back.
The programme's contributors mention "creating wealth", without really explaining what wealth is. We might understand it as making money, but as the programme commented, creating money ("printing money") is pointless and wrong if there are no goods and services behind it. Exactly. This applies to all money in both sectors, not just the public sector.
Wealth is not money. Wealth is the beneficial resources we have available to us.
The Guardian (link above) has a discussion about this TV programmed and an article about it in the guise of a TV review.
Presenter Martin Durkin set up the private sector good, public sector bad dichotomy early on, and said more than once that the public sector is now BIGGER [his emphasis] than the private sector, as if that was inherently bad/wrong/stupid. He made repeated reference to 'the productive economy', giving me the impression that it was identical with the private sector, but later in the programme he visited the NE for a nostalgic look at how it was an industrial powerhouse in the 19C. He was appealing for a manufacturing led recovery.
He didn't address the point that the technological advancements of the 19C and since have increased productivity wildly, reducing the need for work. We can't possibly as a planet keep consuming more and more to generate enough work for people to do so they can get money to spend on consumption. This isn't a moral imperative - there is a physical upper limit to the planet's resources.
The documentary's cartoon, parodied civil servant was seen taking money out of a restaurant's till to pay his wages, and then using the same money to buy himself food in the restaurant. Thus taxation was demonstrated as being 'theft' - one of the refrains of the programme is that government is spending OUR money. But this is just money circulating. It has to do that to work. In the private sector you may go into a coffee shop (these seem to be held up as the pinnacle of private sector achievement) and pay for your coffee. Some of the money will go to workers in the shop and some to the owners. The people who receive that money will go to other shops to spend it by the same process and so on. Why no shouts of "they're spending MY money" here?
I think we're supposed to be quite happy handing over money in the private sector as we do it willingly and have a choice, but this is disingenuous. You might have a choice of where to buy your food, but you have no choice but to buy food. You'd rather not have to pay it - free would be better - but you accept (grudgingly perhaps) that you have to. Rather like taxation, in fact.
I'm not saying tax couldn't be simpler, fairer, or lower, but paying for goods and services is part of the system we live in.
Durkin's point that pretty much everyone should have a job in the "productive economy" is standard fare, but let's examine it. You need to have a job to earn money so that you can buy things to keep companies in business so they can employ people. This is the cycle of consumption and it's one of the big problems of the monetary system.
Another key problem Durkin didn't really touch on is where "our" money comes from. The answer is that it is created by banks, and as you know they don't give it away, they want it back with interest - ie more money - but as they are the sole purveyors of money (ultimately) you can only ultimately get the money to pay the interest from them - at more interest. It is of course impossible to pay this back.
The programme's contributors mention "creating wealth", without really explaining what wealth is. We might understand it as making money, but as the programme commented, creating money ("printing money") is pointless and wrong if there are no goods and services behind it. Exactly. This applies to all money in both sectors, not just the public sector.
Wealth is not money. Wealth is the beneficial resources we have available to us.
Sunday, 18 July 2010
Controlling the resource that is human labour
If you've got more than enough money you can lend the excess out to others and get interest. If you're the big four (Rockefeller, Morgan, Baring, Rothschild), then you've got pretty much all the money between you and everyone else's money is on loan from you.
Even for the hyper rich, controlling money is useless - what you want to control is resources, and that is why resources are accessed through the medium of money rather than by birthright or for free. For most people, the main way to get money is by working and thus the resource that is human labour is controlled - helped along by the fact that the money has to be paid back with interest and the interest can only come from the same place the capital did - ie the big 4, basically.
But by the same mechanism, human labour is working against technological efficiency. Technological efficiency is good on the face of it, but if it deprives you of a job then it deprives you of money and therefore of access to resources, therefore you don't want it, even though it's a good idea on paper.
When this problem is spelt out this simply, the stupidity of it is clear.
If money truly represented actual wealth (ie the resources we have to sustain human life on this planet) as many people think it does, then it would make some kind of sense. But it doesn't. It simply represents debt that most people are working to pay back but which in total can't be paid back because of interest. The amount of money in existence is growing independently of the true growth in the economy - ie increasingly efficiently deriving the resources we need to sustain our lives
Even for the hyper rich, controlling money is useless - what you want to control is resources, and that is why resources are accessed through the medium of money rather than by birthright or for free. For most people, the main way to get money is by working and thus the resource that is human labour is controlled - helped along by the fact that the money has to be paid back with interest and the interest can only come from the same place the capital did - ie the big 4, basically.
But by the same mechanism, human labour is working against technological efficiency. Technological efficiency is good on the face of it, but if it deprives you of a job then it deprives you of money and therefore of access to resources, therefore you don't want it, even though it's a good idea on paper.
When this problem is spelt out this simply, the stupidity of it is clear.
If money truly represented actual wealth (ie the resources we have to sustain human life on this planet) as many people think it does, then it would make some kind of sense. But it doesn't. It simply represents debt that most people are working to pay back but which in total can't be paid back because of interest. The amount of money in existence is growing independently of the true growth in the economy - ie increasingly efficiently deriving the resources we need to sustain our lives
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