Tag Archives: Capitalism

The Trans-Pacific Partnership.

10 Sunday May 2015

Posted by in Privatization, Sustaniability, WORLD POVERTY WHERE'S THE GLOBAL OUTRAGE

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A new word in the English language has recently been coined: investor-state.

The term refers to corporations who have the power to sue nations before a jurisdictional tribunal for infringements on their commercial interest.

Phillip Morris, for example, has sued Australia over that country’s rules requiring hazardous warning labels on cigarette packaging.

Now they say that there is nothing so useful to man in general, nor so beneficial to particular societies and individuals, as trade.

This however is a step to far by Capitalism. The notion that an agreement is clothed with a public interest and has been devoted to the public use is little than fiction intended to beautify what is disagreeable to the sufferers. US

The TPP is a far-reaching proposed multinational agreement among a dozen Pacific Rim countries (but not including China) designed to lower or eliminate tariff and trade barriers among the subscribing nations.

The pact deals with monetary tariffs, intellectual property rights, trade regulations and quotas imposed by the signatory nations with a goal of reducing those to a minimum to allow trade to flow freely among countries.

The countries involved include Brunei, Chile, New Zealand, Singapore, the U.S., Australia, Peru, Vietnam, Malaysia, Mexico, Canada and Japan.

Advocates note that domestic markets alone aren’t sufficient to create the sales, the return on investment and the innovation needed to advance the production of goods and services efficiently among Pacific Rim nations.

The trade agreement has been characterized as “NAFTA on steroids,”

A deal that will easily allow foreign competitors in low-wage nations or multinational companies with overseas operations to pay extremely low wages to workers and to ignore pollution and worker and consumer safety rules that prevail in the more developed countries when producing goods in less-regulated environments.

What particularly alarms ( in the USA)  is that TPP critics on both sides of the political aisle is that the  TTP partnership’s advocates are pushing for Congress to give the president fast-track authority to finish negotiating the deal, to limit debate on the pact’s provisions and prohibit Congress from amending the deal, giving elected representatives the power only to reject or approve the deal as a package.

The TPP is a back-room secret trade deal that will have a huge negative impact on FOOD SAFETY, internet freedom, environmental protection, national sovereignty, intellectual property and more. It is basically a permanent power grab by corporations and financial companies that will make it impossible for the citizens of countries joining the TPP to choose what laws and rules they want to live under.

The TPP is a massive giveaway to multi-national corporations like Chevron and Monsanto and Phillip Morris.

If TPP is signed it’s here forever.

Read more here: http://www.thenewstribune.com/2015/02/22/3648823_the-trans-pacific-partnership.html?rh=1#storylink=cpy

So who are these investor-states?

Well, besides , Monsanto, the Bank of America, Chevron and Exxon Mobil are among them and they’ve been granted their power though a negotiated agreement known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

Ironically, only 5 of the 29 measures in this agreement speak directly to trade issues. The other 24 reach into areas previously unthinkable.

It restricts, for example, a sovereign nation’s ability to support local produce within its borders and proposes sweeping changes with regard to the internet. The United States government rejected SOPA, the bill that would have instituted rigid copyright laws on intellectual property, but those same rules are proposed under TPP.

To say that the negotiations underway lack transparency is an understatement. So far, the measures have been kept under lock and key. Even members of Congress are beginning to complain about the lack of information.

All signatory countries will be required to conform their domestic laws and policies to the provisions of the Agreement.

Why should you be concerned?

Because the,

TPP raises significant concerns about citizens’ freedom of expression, due process, innovation, the future of the Internet’s global infrastructure, and the right of sovereign nations to develop policies and laws that best meet their domestic priorities.

Because the,

TPP will affect countries beyond the 11 that are currently involved in negotiations. Like ACTA, the TPP Agreement is a plurilateral agreement that will be used to create new heightened global IP enforcement norms. Countries that are not parties to the negotiation will likely be asked to accede to the TPP as a condition of bilateral trade agreements with the US and other TPP members.

Because we must,

truly address the secrecy or the private-industry-dominated process.

In sum, the TPP puts at risk some of the most fundamental rights that enable access to knowledge for the world’s citizens.

Below is a 10 minute clip from Democracy Now which speaks to the issue:

http://www.democracynow.org/2013/10/4/a_corporate_trojan_horse_obama_pushes

In the World we have seen the consequences of giving corporations the same right to free speech as individuals.

Giving them nation status is an idea that should keep everyone awake at night.

Don’t just read this. Wake up and do something, even a comment might help or pass it on.

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Our Politicians need to wake up to the fact that- Globalization and technology stop at no border.

06 Friday Feb 2015

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After seven or eight post on Nuclear Weapons its back to what’s wrong with Capitalism/ Democracy.

Those of you that have been reading my blog will have already seen that I have advocated that Greed is the root problem when it comes to both the above.

I have suggested that we need to come together through Social media to stop Sovereign Wealth Funds privatizing the resources that we all rely on. To stop Computer Algorithms from plundering the Foreign Exchange, Stock Exchange, not to mention E Bay Auctions.

I have also stated that this is impossible, but that it is not impossible to place a 0.05% WORLD AID COMMISSION TO CREATE A PERPETUAL SOURCE OF FUNDS TO REMOVE INEQUALITIES IN THE WORLD.

Unfortunately to date most of my readers are to busy living their lives to engage in developing such an idea other than pressing the like button.

Not to despair. Today, we are living in the age of globalization and technological revolution.

Both have delivered much benefit to society, but have reshaped the political economy of western industrialized countries in ways that challenge the middle class and those striving to get into it.

THE TROUBLE FOR CAPITALISM IS THAT IT HAS SOMEHOW OR OTHER STOPPED SERVE THE VAST MAJORITY OF SOCIETY AND IT IS THEREFORE TURNING – DEMOCRACY INTO WORTHLESS VOTES –  that are now turning to Internet Petitions and reality TV. 

This sea change has been facilitated by technology that has loosened the connections between top management and ordinary workers. Corporations have become less committed to their work forces and their communities.

Institutions on all levels are deeply mistrusted by the public. However, part of that mistrust has developed precisely because both government and business have failed to offer broadly shared prosperity. Today, the ability of free-market democracies to deliver widely shared increases in prosperity is in question as never before.

So how do we create a stronger, fairer, and more sustainable economic model in which the many and not just the few benefit from rising prosperity now and into the future?

This is not just a question for governments but for companies and citizens as well.

My first contention HAS NOT CHANGED it is impossible to remove Greed but where we see profit for profit sake we should cap it.

We all know what is wrong, but just in case you are a Politician:  It is the GROWING GAP BETWEEN THE HAVE AND HAVE NOT’S ( NOT MONEY BUT INEQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY)

Confidence in government is at an all-time low, and consequently, the public resists intervention by a government it viewed as incapable of solving its problems. This forces families that could benefit from public support to face the challenges of the evolving economy on their own. It is a vicious cycle — and a cycle we can and must break by renewing confidence through a government that works effectively and efficiently for its citizens.

SO WHAT CAN BE DONE?

While some on the left seek to turn away from globalization and technology, that is not a realistic option. No country can prosper in isolation.

Those on the right who argue for a return to laissez-faire, trickle-down economics — cutting taxes at the top, stripping out regulation, and making deep cuts to public services — do not provide a viable alternative.

Developed countries cannot succeed through a race to the bottom in which companies simply compete on cost as workers see their job security erode and their living standards decline. When democratic governments and market systems cannot deliver prosperity to their citizens, the result is political alienation, a loss of social trust, and increasing conflict across the lines of race, class, and ethnicity.

HERE IS WHAT I SEE THAT NEEDS TO BE ADDRESSED.

1) There are still too many people who are unemployed.

2) Minimum wages have lost their real value.

3) Workers must benefit from increased productivity rather than seeing returns accrue primarily to shareholders.

4) Remove barriers to women’s labor-force participation, such as inflexible work environments and high-cost child care.

5) Focusing on early childhood education, increasing the quality of our schools, eliminating financial barriers to higher education, and providing support for apprenticeship programs are all critical to driving higher skill levels across economies in both tradable and non-tradable sectors.

6) Cities and regions must be given the tools to make their own local decisions to help drive growth.

7) Increasing numbers of workers find themselves in contractual relationships that do not guarantee hours worked or provide benefits such as paid vacation, sick days, or pension benefits. No hours contracts are slavery.

8) Large corporate attention has shifted to financial engineering, particularly with the goal of minimizing tax payments. Restoring the integrity of corporate taxation will require more than a simple reversal of the policies of the past 30 years. It will require governments to develop a taxation system that can withstand the pressures of a globalized economy, promote long-term investment, and provide a stable, fair, and predictable policy framework for businesses.

9) Create Profit-sharing and share-ownership schemes provide a direct way to ensure that employees have an incentive to help their company to succeed.

10) Raising skills levels.

 These challenges are formidable, but they must be met, and any politician worth his privileged position would do well to take note.

These are essential for democracy itself. Advocates and apologists for anti-democratic regimes argue that the democracies are no longer capable of managing their problems or creating a sense of social dynamism. For democracies to thrive, rising prosperity must be within reach of all citizens.

The profound technological changes that brought down the cost of many goods and services are also replacing traditional middle-income jobs. It is changing balance of economic power away from domestic workers and toward mobile, international corporations.

Internet and computer technology has made cross-border business organization less costly and more efficient, it has become easier for businesses to outsource or relocate all or part of their operations to countries where wages, labor, and environmental standards are low.

In addition to unskilled labor — which has, in some cases, been squeezed by globalization and off shoring –advances in robotics and artificial intelligence have put intermediate-skill jobs at risk in what economists call a hollowing out of the labor market.

This trend is set to continue with 3-D printers, Google’s driver less cars, and Amazon’s drones. This is creating an even greater premium on higher levels of skills and qualifications, making the returns from ideas, capital, and top-class qualifications greater and greater.

Employment is less likely to be stable or long term.

Powerful forces of globalization and technological change must be navigated or inequalities will continue to widen, and for many, precarious low-skill work will increasingly become the norm. The consequence is that growth will stall.

Finally, it is essential that markets work in the public interest and for the long term rather than focusing only on short-term. Infrastructure investments deteriorating facilities, unpredictable service disruptions, congestion, and higher costs to businessesj and households is the result.

In summary, declining growth, the effects of the financial crisis, and increasing inequality have combined to put substantial economic stress on middle-and low-income families across the developed world.

Poor policy choices have only made matters worse. Concerns about financial instability, immigration, and tax avoidance are not the causes of our problems they are fruits ripening on the tree.

To ensure that all of society’s citizens have a stake in prosperity, and therefore all of  citizens have a stake in the future we need new social and political institutions to make 21st century capitalism work for the many and not the few.

( If you are English reading this blog feel free to forward this post to your candidate in the forthcoming General Election.)

2015 will see the creation of new political parties organised in radically different ways, – See more at: http://www.nesta.org.uk/news/2015-predictions/democracy-makes-itself-home-online#sthash.vxQJ1BiK.dpuf

Five Star in Italy prides itself on its internet-based decision making structure, as do the Pirate Parties in Iceland, Germany and Sweden. Democracy OS in Argentina has designed a sophisticated way for all its members to propose ideas and shape them online. – See more at: http://www.nesta.org.uk/news/2015-predictions/democracy-makes-itself-home-online#sthash.vxQJ1BiK.dpuf

Democracy could be reenergised. There are other possible futures, of course. A sullen anti-political mood could fuel populist demagogues. But there is at least a good chance that those with their eyes on the future rather than the past will have the edge. – See more at: http://www.nesta.org.uk/news/2015-predictions/democracy-makes-itself-home-online#sthash.vxQJ1BiK.dpuf

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The global economy has fundamentally changed over the past 40 years.

As communism collapsed and countries gradually liberalized their economies, rapid reductions in poverty and increases in living standards have taken place in Asia and especially China, in South America, and in Eastern Europe, with growth increasingly taking off in Africa. Some of those countries that have produced economic growth have done so in a manner that has left most of their citizens no better off.

This is an economic problem that threatens to become a problem for the political systems of these nations — and for the idea of democracy itself.

Governments in developed countries must stay open to the world, seek new trade deals and regional partnerships, and continue their commitment to a dynamic market economy. While the economic mission of progressives is unchanging, the means of its achievement change from generation to generation as the economy evolves.

We need a smarter, and fairer society that returns to long-termism which will not only meet our fulfillment of environmental commitments, but will created a world worth living in.

Inclusive prosperity nurtures tolerance, harmony, social generosity, optimism, and international cooperation. Left to their own devices, unfettered markets and trickle-down economics will lead to increasing levels of inequality, stagnating wages, and a hollowing out of decent, middle-income jobs. This outcome is morally wrong, economically myopic, and at fundamental odds with a democracy in which everyone quite reason- ably asks for an equal chance to succeed.

understand and can respond to voters political systems restore their vitality and reclaim their ability to deliver on the promise of prosperity for all.

Knock, Knock, Who there? 2015

24 Wednesday Dec 2014

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Happy New Year to one and all.

As a species, we are social beings who live out our lives in the company of other humans. We organize ourselves into various kinds of social groupings, such as nomadic bands, villages, cities, and countries, in which we work, trade, play, reproduce, and interact in many other ways. Unlike other species, we combine socialization with deliberate changes in social behavior and organization over time.

Consequently, the patterns of human society differ from place to place and era to era and across cultures, making the social world a very complex and dynamic environment.

The ways in which people develop are shaped by social experience and circumstances within the context of their inherited genetic potential.

We are increasingly dependent on one another through international economic systems and shared environmental problems. The growing interdependence of world social, economic, and ecological systems makes it difficult to predict the consequences of social decisions. Changes anywhere in the world can have amplified effects elsewhere, with increased benefits to some people and increased costs to others.

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All year I have advocated that Greed is the curse of Capitalism. It is at the root cause of Inequality.

One hundred and six billion of us have being born since the dawn of the human species. Making the current population 6% of all the people who ever lived on the planet. ( 7,283,314749)  With 2.8 Billion of us living on less than two dollar a day, with over a billion not having access to healthy water, with 876 million of adults illiterate, with ½ a million murders a year, with 30,000 children under 5 die every day from avoidable diseases it’s no wonder we have terrorists.

Currently we have 20% of the global population with 90% of the wealth.

Christmas is over and all the words of peace to mankind have been sung once more, but the canvas of the World remains weeping. It is time to return dignity to the world. Which can only be achieved by capping greed to create a perpetual fund. ( see previous postings)

Here is the current painting.

A round revolving ball in the vastness of space teaming with life, with 1.35 billion of us spending 20 minutes each day of Facebook each month. The new slavery of our age leading us to the globalization of indifference, born out of ego selfishness, removing our sense of compassion and dignity.

A world on which we have 26 countries in a state of conflict , with 170 Militias, Guerrillas, Separatist, Anarchic, are all represented by a world of 31% Christians, 23% Muslims, 15% Hindus, 7% Buddhists, 6% Folk religionists, 1% Others and 0,02% Jews.

A Disposable world full of Ego Centrism in which man was probably happiest when he was swinging from tree to tree.

A world with 20/30 million in modern-day slavery ( A slave in 1850 in America cost the equivalent of $40,000 in to days money, to-day an average of $90.)

A world that has this much fresh water.  

Fresh groundwater and surface-water make up the bubble over Kentucky, which is about 252 miles in diameter. The sphere over Georgia reresents fresh-water lakes and rivers (about 34.9 miles in diameter).

This much gold. 171.300 tons.

Gold piled up on Wimbledon's centre court

Just enough oil to last the world 53.3 years at the current production rates.

Just enough gas in proven reserves to meet 58.6 years of global production at the end of 2010.

That will run out of phosphorus in 50 to 100 years unless new reserves of the element are found.

That has enough coal to meet 188 years of global production.

A world that when you take a deep breath the chances are, the air filling your lungs is far from pure. Even if you live in a clean, ecologically conscious area, you may be inhaling pollutants from faraway, less-pristine locales. Your hometown air may contain microscopic particles of mercury-coated coal dust from China, diesel from Europe, ozone from Los Angeles, or carbon monoxide from India—or possibly a cocktail of all of the above.

Where Scandium and terbium are just two of the 17 rare earth minerals that are used in everything from the powerful magnets in wind turbines to the electronic circuits in smartphones. The elements are not as rare as their name suggests but currently 97% of the world’s supply comes from China and they can restrict supplies at will. Exact reserves are not known.

Where we are told by the Artists not to don’t worry,( the Artists being our World Leaders places in power by us the people with black x’s in square boxes) because the Economy and World Trade, is turning people into merchandise for trade while depriving its victims of all dignity.

Where there is 75 trillion dollars in circulation. A billion Cars. With roughly 10/11 million standing soldiers between 10 countries.  While 86%-91% of the 8.7 million(± 1.3 million) species that we share the world with still await description before we are all swimming.
Photo: Woman wading through flooded Venice plaza

Where Scientific research indicates sea levels worldwide have been rising at a rate of 0.14 inches (3.5 millimeters) per year since the early 1990s.  The trend, linked to global warming, puts thousands of coastal cities, like Venice, Italy, (seen here during a historic flood in 2008), and even whole islands at risk of being claimed by the ocean.

A world where we now need more than ever to apply different brush strokes if the painting for 2015 is to have any chance of been appreciated in the future.

Day after day I follow news reports of the enormous suffering endured by many people in the Middle East. It is not enough to contain wars, or international terrorism, which displays deep disdain for human life and indiscriminately reaps innocent victims we must stop the bankrolling of these conflicts by the unchecked traffic in weapons.

There seem little point to continue to catalog the illnesses that are plaguing the world. You could continue to list all the shortcomings till the end of the earth.

Communications is about informing people – not collecting “hits.” In order to progress towards the future we need the past. However in doing so we need to move away from the present World model that is more prone to make demands than to serve humanity. 

We all know that the human family, must be grounded on respect, cooperation, solidarity and compassion. That it must be built on justice, socio-economic development, freedom, respect for fundamental human rights, and the participation of all in public affairs and the building of trust between people’s.

None of our present political systems are coming up to the mark ( Democracy, Republic , Monarchy, Communism , Dictatorship) because of Greed.

If we are to break out of the structures that hold us back from a recognition, we must share and share a like. Update our out of date World Organisations that are unable to function due to lack of funds, United Nations, the World Bank, the IMF, the World Health Organisation,that are run by our of date Government Systems (see post: Is Democracies outdated and Disfunctional)

If we are to reduce the Inequalities of the future a Global ethic is needed.

We all deserve a peaceful world order based on unity of purpose. Their dignity is your dignity.

As Pope said. ” It (the earth) is the greatest resource which God has given us and is at our disposal not to be disfigured, exploited, and degraded, but so that, in the enjoyment of its boundless beauty, we can live in this world with dignity.”

We need profound roots, sustainability, not a disposable society, which can only be achieved if we use the power of social media to effect change (see previous posts)

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So there you have it a master piece deserving of to be hung in the Louvre, beside the Mona Lisa.

If your have by any chance read this post, I am not interested in receiving your like tick. I am Interested in any suggestions as to how we might go about setting up a grass roots Organisation to apply pressurize where needed by using the power of Social Media ( Not a Petition site.) more a name and shame site.    Happy New Year.

 

 

Sovereign Wealth Funds. Alarm.

30 Sunday Nov 2014

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<img alt=”” src=”http://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/04/79/29/e0/1728.jpg”/>
This photo of 1728 is courtesy of TripAdvisor

Its back to my hobby-horse the ongoing Privatization of the World.

It is of course is happening in a clever way, with very careful paperwork, so we have the option of pretending that it’s not actually happening, right up until the bitter end.

I often wonder is it just me. You barley hear a mummer about it from any other quarter. Other than Ireland where the population has woken up to the Privatization of water.

Perhaps it’s that no one gives a tosser.

That our Governments are systematically divesting themselves of bits and pieces of their own sovereignty, by transfer of assets and service functions from public to private hands.

It’s taking place all over the world without really anyone noticing it happening — often not even the people are asked to vote formerly on the issue.

It is my contention that it is the quality of the state rather than the fact that assets are owned by the state that matters more. In developing countries with extensive market and information failures the state should play an important role in promoting equitable development over the long run not sell of their assets to the highest buyers.

At the political level privatization has been challenged by workers affected by attendant retrenchments and the restructuring of internal and external labor markets consequent upon privatization that has resulted in increased worker vulnerability, and by consumers who have often been negatively affected by increased prices based on cost recovery pricing regimes instituted as a consequence of privatization, or by reduction in service provision arising from “efficiency enhancing” measures as a consequence of privatization.

No one knows precisely how much money is held by SWFs but it is estimated that they currently own $3.5 trillion in assets, and within one decade they could balloon to $10–15 trillion. (equivalent to America’s gross domestic product, an amount larger than the current global stock of foreign reserves of the USA which is about $5 trillion.)

Imagine the biggest and most aggressive hedge fund on Wall Street, then imagine that same fund is fifty or sixty times bigger and outside the reach of any other major regulatory authority, and you’ve got a pretty good idea of what an SWF is.

The rise of sovereign wealth funds (SWF) as new power brokers in the world economy can no longer be looked at as a singular phenomenon but rather as part of what can be defined a new economic world order.

This new order has been enabled by several mega trends which operate in a self-reinforcing manner, among them the meteoric rise of developing Asia, accelerated globalization, the rapid flow of information and the sharp increase in the price of oil by a delta of over $100 per barrel in just six years which is enabling Russia and OPEC members to accumulate unprecedented wealth and elevate themselves to the position of supreme economic powers.

It will not be long before transactions involving investment by sovereign wealth funds, as with other types of foreign investment, may raise legitimate national security concerns.

Concerns are growing that the purpose of the investments might be to secure control of strategically important industries for political rather than financial gain.

They on the other hand see themselves as passive, long-term investors, driven solely by the need to make a good return on their country’s surplus cash.

There is a degree of looking through the wrong end of the telescope to all this.

Sovereign wealth funds have with total assets estimated at $5.4tn as of October 2013. The funds have gained more than $750bn in additional assets since 2012 of which only $60 billion has gone to recent bank bailouts.

They are rapidly becoming owners of big chunks of American,the UK and Europe infrastructures.

Unlike the central banks of most Western countries, whose main function is to accumulate reserves in an attempt to stabilize the domestic currency, most SWFs have a mission to invest aggressively and generate huge long-term returns.

The origin of these SWFs is not even relevant, necessarily.

What is relevant is that these funds are foreign.

They are state-owned investment pools that thanks to a remarkable series of events in the middle part of the last decade they are buying up your governments services such as water treatment, parking meters, toll highways, rail links, ports, public infrastructure projects, commercial real estate all delivering a lot of cash into the coffers of sovereign wealth funds like the Qatar Investment Authority, the Libyan Investment Authority, Saudi Arabia’s SAMA Foreign Holdings, and the UAE’s Abu Dhabi Investment Authority.

Some recent activity:

(The first was the announcement that the Qatari royal family is planning a large investment in the controversial £50billion HS2 rail link, focused on a major new station and housing scheme in central Birmingham.

Qatar Investment Authority, one of the world’s largest sovereign wealth funds, is soon to table a new bid to take over Songbird Estates which owns the iconic Canary Wharf tower in east London, one of the best-known modern symbols of British capitalism.  

Libya’s sovereign wealth fund is suing French bank Societe Generale in a British court for $1.5 billion for allegedly channeling bribes to allies of the son of slain dictator Muammar Qaddafi.  

Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Saturday the country’s sovereign wealth fund could reach $55 billion by March next year if oil prices kept high.

Iran earned $100 billion in oil revenue in 2011. Iran is both the world leader in Shariah Compliant Finance and the world’s most active state sponsor of Jihadist terrorism.

Deutsche Bahn Seeks Sovereign Funds for the state-owned railway, is seeking to sell shares to sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East and Asia during the initial public offering. )

What is more to the point, is we’re being colonized/Privatized.

Industry today may not be regarded as such an industry tomorrow, and vice versa.  Just look at the explosion of energy prices — thanks to a bubble that Western banks and perhaps some foreign SWFs had a big hand in creating.

Out side any regulation these funds are free to plunder the earth in the form of Hedge Funds( (which they have a bunch) with out anyone knowing who the funds investors are.

The point here is if these funds.

Are not regulated by the relevant international bodies determining which kinds of information about their balance sheets, management structures, investment objectives, portfolio breakdowns, and so forth should be supplied by sovereign wealth funds. The European Union could then put curbs on funds failing to comply with the standards for the publication of such information.

One way or the other they should be Capped ( See previous posts)

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We don’t live in a digital world – the washing machine has changed lives more than the internet.

23 Sunday Nov 2014

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We do however live in a Capitalist World.

Capitalism is woven into nearly every aspect of our lives, yet it’s rarely subject to substantive conversation.

If we’re to move forward as a society, capitalism needs to be up for serious discussion, honest evaluation and, ultimately, systemic change. Capitalism is often discussed—even dismantled—in academia, but not in terms that make sense to non-specialists.

If there is a problem with capitalism, it is with the greedy few who occasionally foul up the system for the rest of us. The 85 richest people in the world hold as much wealth as today’s “other half”—3.5 billion of the world’s 7 billion humans. Who thinks that’s a fair system? How can it be acceptable that anyone, let alone 2.4 billion people, lives on less than $2 a day?

With more free time, we could build a more robust democracy by engaging with the political issues that affect our lives and organizing more participatory structures to make decisions in our communities. If there’s anything threatening to capitalism, it’s that!

It’s convenient for capitalists to have everyone else thinking they don’t work hard enough and that any ill fortune is their own fault.

How well can capitalism be working when so many say it doesn’t? Capitalism can’t work for everyone. If it did, it wouldn’t be capitalism.”why do we settle for a system that fails so many?

So here is a hypothetical question.

If you were asked to explain Capitalism to an individual who had never experienced or heard of Capitalism what would you say it is.

Here are a few Quotes to get you started then have a look below at what I think.

Gustave Flaubert

“As humanity perfects itself, man becomes degraded. When everything is reduced to the mere counter-balancing of economic interests, what room will there be for virtue? When Nature has been so subjugated that she has lost all her original forms, where will that leave the plastic arts? And so on. In the mean time, things are going to get very murky.” ― Gustave Flaubert

Carl Sagan

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of thebamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. Thebamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”

Edward Abbey

“Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.” ― Edward Abbey, The Journey Home: Some Words in Defense of the American West

Michael Parenti

“The essence of capitalism is to turn nature into commodities and commodities into capital. The live green earth is transformed into dead gold bricks, with luxury items for the few and toxic slag heaps for the many. The glittering mansion overlooks a vast sprawl of shanty towns, wherein a desperate, demoralized humanity is kept in line with drugs, television, and armed force.” ― Michael Parenti,  Against Empire

Napoleon

“The hand that gives is among the hand that takes. Money has no fatherland, financiers are without patriotism and without decency, their sole object is gain.” ― Napoleon

George Carlin

“Capitalism tries for a delicate balance: It attempts to work things out so that everyone gets just enough stuff to keep them from getting violent and trying to take other people’s stuff.” ― George Carlin

Gustave Flaubert

“As humanity perfects itself, man becomes degraded. When everything is reduced to the mere counter-balancing of economic interests, what room will there be for virtue? When Nature has been so subjugated that she has lost all her original forms, where will that leave the plastic arts? And so on. In the mean time, things are going to get very murky.” ― Gustave Flaubert

Philip Slater

“Our economy is based on spending billions to persuade people that happiness is buying things, and then insisting that the only way to have a viable economy is to make things for people to buy so they’ll have jobs and get enough money to buy things.” ― Philip Slater

Russell Brand

“Perhaps if we could popularise through the techniques of branding and consumerism, a different idea, a different narrative, perhaps the world can change. After all it changes constantly and incessantly, it’s just the perceptions that we have are governed by people with self-interest and are not in alignment with the health and safety of us as individuals or as a planet.” ― Russell Brand

Jonathan Sacks

“To whom is an international corporation answerable? Often they do not employ workers. They outsource manufacturing to places far away. If wages rise in one place, they can, almost instantly, transfer production to somewhere else. If a tax regime in one country becomes burdensome, they can relocate to another. To whom, then, are they accountable? By whom are they controllable? For whom are they responsible? To which group of people other than shareholders do they owe loyalty? The extreme mobility, not only of capital but also of manufacturing and servicing, is in danger of creating institutions that have power without responsibility, as well as a social class, the global elite, that has no organic connection with any group except itself.” ― Jonathan Sacks

Daniel Pinchbeck

“The capitalist mind perceives the world purely in terms of material resources to be used for its benefit, to increase productivity and profit without thought of long-term consequence. If there is still a vague and oppressive sense of guilt, of wrongness and imbalance, this gnawing guilt spurs capitalism on to greater acts of consumption, more …  more violent attempts to subjugate nature, more totalizing efforts to create distractions. To the “rational materialist” mind, death is the end of everything; this thought feeds its rage against nature, which has placed it in this position of despair.” ― Daniel Pinchbeck

Barry Unsworth

“Money is sacred as everyone knows… So then must be the hunger for it and the means we use to obtain it. Once a man is in debt he becomes a flesh and blood form of money, a walking investment. You can do what you like with him, you can work him to death or you can sell him. This cannot be called cruelty or greed because we are seeking only to recover our investment and that is a sacred duty.” ― Barry Unsworth, Sacred Hunger

Chris Hedges

“Unfettered capitalism is a revolutionary force that consumes greater and greater numbers of human lives until it finally consumes itself.” ― Chris Hedges, The Death of the Liberal Class

My Thoughts:

In fact, the term capitalist, is a remnant of sloppy, hysterical, anti-commerce, 19th Century thinking that survives to this day.

I guess it all depends on what kind of capitalism we are talking about and the problem with capitalism is that it is rarely practiced in its entirely.

You might say it is a rat race for the worker who must live a life in which there is a real possibility that changes in consumer demand or in technology will eliminate his/her livelihood and in which his/her ability to find a new job is conditioned by his/her “ability to compete”.

There is not a single day that passes that I don’t hear some complaint about the state of capitalism. “What is wrong with capitalism today?” is dependent on who you ask.

Modern market capitalism has shifted recently with the emerging supremacy of money markets and the financial system over the actual trade of goods. The new capitalism” is based on mathematics rather than trade and its currently practiced is simply not sustainable.

We do not have global organizations capable of managing these tension points nor are societies willing to curb growth and consumerism.

Under capitalism insensitivity to human needs has developed. One of the fundamental faults of capitalism is the basic axiom that if everybody tries to accumulate as much property/money as possible the general interest of the people will be served.

For years now I have watched the gradual drift in the minds of the average person from an understanding of our political economic reality and the need for corrective actions.

The reality is fear and greed are part of the human condition and Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.

The mass media is becoming more and more an opiate, an aid for living the unexamined life.

The current world tensions are a result of a struggle for spheres of influence and trade—the socialist markets are essential not open to trade from capitalist countries.

So if I were to explain to days Capitalism I would tempted to say that the essence of capitalism is to turn nature into commodities and commodities into capital. The live green earth is transformed into dead gold bricks, with luxury items for the few and toxic slag heaps for the many.

But no economic order to date has so obviously displayed such an enormous productive capacity as has capitalism.  However whether it aids the poor in escaping their poverty or abets the forces that perpetrate that poverty is still to be seen as Capitalism is inherently exploitative in that it forces people to be “competitive” rather than “cooperative”.

As long as Capitalism exists, there will always be people who will be rich and those that are too poor. One longs for a kind of economic “peaceable kingdom”; such cannot exist under an economic system in which competition plays such a large role as it does in capitalism. For the most part, capitalism can be viewed as complex system based on inequality and monopoly.

In a true Capitalist market economy, we would not price fix, bail out banks, give subsidies, etc.

Peaceful citizens were classed as bloodsuckers, if they asked to be paid a living wage. When morality comes up against profit, it is seldom that profit loses.

In what they call the third world we have glittering mansion overlooking a vast sprawl of shanty towns, wherein a desperate, demoralized humanity is kept in line with drugs, television, and armed force. Let nothing interfere with economic growth, even though that growth is castrating truth, poisoning beauty, turning a continent into a shit-heap and riving an entire civilization insane.

The hand that gives is among the hand that takes.

Money has no fatherland, financiers are without patriotism and without decency, their sole object is gain.

Our political problems have deepened with the demise of unions as an effective political force, the continued growth in the belief in the desirability of pyramid economics and class structure (which has been sold by a media controlled by those at the top of the pyramid), and the dependence of our two-party system upon those at the top of the pyramid for funds to cover their election expenses.
Here’s no such thing as a ‘free’ market.
Globalisation isn’t making the world richer.
Poor countries are more entrepreneurial than rich ones.

Higher paid managers don’t produce better results.

We are quickly reaching the tipping point where growth in GDP in any particular country comes at the expense of growth in GDP of another.

What would replace it (capitalism)?

It’s too late to replaced it by any other system and extremely difficult to prompt any-other system but not too late to rectify its glaring weaknesses.

It’s not to late to suggest/generate ideas to create a better society where everybody is properly fed, clothed, and housed; where everyone worked and received a fair return for their work with none receiving too much; where intellectual development for all is encouraged; where businesses are the servant to man; where the production of war materials end; where the ending of all exploitation, including one region by another or one class by another; where and the ending of a press which is controlled by those who make up the ruling class.

To find the world that could exist after capitalism, we must look to the worlds already being created in the countless cracks of capitalist domination.

Switzerland is to debate the introduction of a living income for all its citizen’s rather than a living wage and social welfare. Perhaps the first step in the right direction. In the meantime Capitalism is still alive and well.

All we can do is to keep on hoping that maybe the corporate government administration and media are on the level with us.

Today’s economy profitability is important, but there are also a plethora of external and internal factors involved which determine the type of model that exists today.

(See Previous Posts. Create a World Aid Fund by capping Greed/profit with a Commission of 0.05%)

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The democratic crisis of capitalism: Can capitalism and democracy even coexist?

12 Wednesday Nov 2014

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This subject has vexed many a mind, and will continue to do so for yonks with no solution.

Capitalism is paraded as the indomitable system that brings prosperity and democracy, the system that would prevail unto the end of history.

Is there is no alternative to market society, or capitalism, and to democracy neither.?

If you’ve ever pondered the issues surrounding the tenuous relationship between democracy and capitalism, most likely, you’ve considered them as both foreign and abstract (much as the elite media often does).

Most of the world is capitalist, and most of the world is neither prosperous nor particularly democratic. In fact, we must question the very possibility of genuine democracy in a society in which capitalism is the basic economic system real democracy is absent in both.

Democracy is now more than ever under threat from a variety of forces originating in the transnational capitalist economy.

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Are, say, China and Russia authoritarian, capitalist or both at the same time? Can Middle Eastern countries use their sovereign wealth funds to build prosperous free-market economies while those nations also deny their citizens basic freedoms? Do transnational corporations that operate under the aegis of repressive regimes prove that capitalism can exist wholly without democracy?

The challenge of resolving these conflicting views is perhaps the most fundamental issue facing the world apart from Climate Change which they both created in the first place and now has the potential to destroy them both.

For a quarter of a century, we have tried the approach of polite incremental change, attempting to bend the physical needs of the planet to our economic model’s need for constant growth and new profit-making opportunities. The results have been disastrous, leaving us all in a great deal more danger than when the experiment began.

Free markets were supposed to lead to free societies. Instead, today’s supercharged global economy is eroding the power of the people in democracies around the globe. Welcome to a world where the bottom line trumps the common good and government takes a back seat to big business.

The savage global capitalism we have today is already entering into crises that will create enormous social and ecological damage, some of which is already obvious.  In the corporate world of “free-trade,” the number of billionaires is increasing faster than ever while the number of people living in poverty is growing at a faster rate than the world’s population.

Poverty spreads as wealth accumulates.

Finding new ways to privatize the commons and profit from disaster is what our current system is built to do; left to its own devices, it is capable of nothing else.

Taxpayer-sponsored bailouts of — and direct subsidies to — particular politically connected industries effectively employ our democracy’s public power to undermine capitalism’s notion of “creative destruction. Which leads me to wonder then, why aren’t people (like you?) who claim to align themselves with democratic ideas and ideals insisting on it at every turn and railing against all the non-democratic and anti-democratic systems and structures that stand so obviously behind this thin façade called social democracy?

In a democracy, the social contract is ours to forge and ours to live. Our freedom of thought and action to pursue happiness liberates us from a life of slavery to someone else’s ideals. But nothing comes for free, and to say yes to something we usually need to say no to something else. This leaves us with a few choices: what do we do as individuals–how can we become the change we wish to see in the world?

Democracy isn’t a difficult concept to grasp and it doesn’t require specialist knowledge or years of education to be practiced – in fact, illiterate and uneducated people can ‘do’ democracy just as well as the most scholarly…it’s a great leveler in that respect.

So why is that democracy must be diluted and subverted, smothered with disinformation and media puffery.

Perhaps it is because a  populace with high expectations about its standard of living and a keen sense of entitlement, pushing for continually better social conditions, is not the plutocracy’s notion of an ideal workforce and a properly pliant polity. Corporate investors prefer poor populations. The poorer you are, the harder you will work—for less. The poorer you are, the less equipped you are to defend yourself against the abuses of wealth.

If you want an example just look at what is happening in the USA where capitalism is wedded to democracy,

It costs approximately $1 billion to become president, $10 million to become a Senator, and $1 million to become a Member of the House.

These conditions have corrupted American democracy, turning it into a system of rule that favors the wealthy and marginalized ordinary citizens. This is why corporations are now citizens, money is political speech, limits on corporate spending are a form of censorship, democracy is a free market, and political equality and democratic integrity are unconstitutional constraints on money in politics.

Don’t tell me that this is not reflected in the European Union.

Taking a step nearer home we see another fine example in the recent referendum on Scottish Independence. Where the sense of Nationhood became blurred in the face of Capitalism. Hopefully it’s knock on effect will see the replacement of the first past the post system of election in the UK which is designed to blunt the impact of popular demands. Conservative forces continue to reject more equitable electoral features such as proportional representation. They continue to create barriers to voting such as electrical boundaries while rolling back democracy’s social gains, such as public education, affordable housing, health care, befits,  collective bargaining, a living wage and immigration.

We can have democracy with wealth concentrated in the hands of a few. You can have one or the other.

The case for free market capitalism is one of efficiency.

Interference is a burden and drag on performance that generates cost to all of us and thereby limits how well and how quickly we evolve.

Capitalism essence is the transformation of living nature into mountains of commodities and commodities into heaps of dead capital. When left entirely to its own devices, capitalism foist its diseconomies and toxicity upon the general public and upon the natural environment–and eventually begins to devour itself.

The immense inequality in economic power that exists in our capitalist society translates into a formidable inequality of political power, which makes it all the more difficult to impose democratic regulations.

We are subjected to power, as opposed to being the rightful and democratically empowered wielders of power… Are ‘modern societies’ necessarily democratic societies and capitalist (or: market) societies?

Take of instance the conflicts that have arisen in our societies in recent years—the backlash over globalization, the financial crisis, the European debt crisis, and many others—have parallels in history that led to global conflagration.

Worse still, the government bailouts are themselves being turned into an opportunity for pillage. Not only does the state fail to regulate, it becomes itself a source of plunder, pulling vast sums from the central bank money machine, leaving the taxpayers to bleed. We now have banks and their share holders anticipating fines, setting aside large sum.

Free-market corporate capitalism is by its nature a disaster waiting to happen.

The pressing questions are:

How or should we stop the capitalist system from devouring itself?

How can we promote a fair allocation of benefits and burdens.

How can we affect the changes in the social contract that will achieve the objective of social and economic fairness for which we can all subscribe?

How can we become the best we are capable of becoming and what changes to our economic system and our systems of governance are necessary to achieve that across society without undermining the real benefits to society of property rights and the freedom to contract?

How do we contract the in sustainability of the lack, or weakness, of comprehensive regulatory mechanisms the revival of the nation-state as the political form that created the historical possibility of inclusive collective self-determination.  While remembering that together with basic human rights, property rights and the freedom to contract have done more to advance mankind than any other force in history to date.

As you see it’s almost impossible to separate one from the other. Both are contaminated by each other.

We can choose to be audacious enough to take responsibility for the entire human family. We can choose to make our love for the world be what our lives are really about. Each of us now has the opportunity, the privilege, to make a difference in creating a world that works for all of us. It will require courage, audacity, and heart. It is much more radical than a revolution – it is the beginning of a transformation in the quality of life on our planet.

Capitalism excludes workers from deciding what is produced, how it is produced, where it is produced and how profits are to be used and distributed.

Good government must be able to create strategy for where our society should be heading and plans to get there for the common good of the people, future people, and the planet – all about true sustainability.

Private companies may fill a role to provide goods and services to fulfill that strategy within the plans.

So the question is.

Will the social progress of the twentieth century be preserved as we return to the wealth disparities of the eighteenth century? And will reform be impossible – is this tyrannical system now essentially permanent?

Imagine a country where the majority of the population reaps the majority of the benefits for their hard work, creative ingenuity, and collaborative efforts. Imagine a country where corporate losses aren’t socialized, while gains are captured by an exclusive minority. Imagine a country run as a democracy, from the bottom up, not a plutocracy from the top down.

It is my belief that no matter how we address the subject mans greed will never be removed.

There is only one solution and that is to tap into profit.

This can be done by creating a World Aid Commission  of 0.05% on all Foreign Exchange Transactions (Over $20,000) on all Foreign Wealth Funds Acquisitions and all High Frequency Transactions.

( Foreign Exchange Transactions are 3 Trillion a day.

Marauding Sovereign Wealth Funds are tapping directly into the money streams of the  world economy itself.

High frequency trading is secretive and mysterious. It rigs the markets in favor of the big guys with data cables. )

Such a Commission would create a perpetual fund of billions to tackle the world problems.

Will the Capitalistic world or any of our Democrat world leaders adopt such a commission. Of course not. So how can it be achieved?

When I started this blog it was my mission to use the power of Mobil/Smart phones to effect change. If we were to use our phones to send the United Nations millions of Twits/e mails requesting a people resolution to implement the Commission they would eventually have to table it as their communications could be jammed ever time we flooded their Organisation with the request.

The power of the mobile phone is only in its Democratic infancy.

You have the power to fire the shot heard ‘round the world.

This site might interest you: http://www.democracyatwork.info/

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Are you going to be in the new underclass.The pace of technological change outstrips job creation,

13 Monday Oct 2014

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Most computer scientists are busy making the technology happen rather than asking what the results will be,”

Tomorrow’s organizations may bear little resemblance to those we are familiar with.

A lot of things that were routine are becoming automated.

Technological advancement is rampant in every walk of life.

We’er seeing this with automated sales calls and administrative work that can all be done with software. For example Algorithms can easily identify safe borrowers — followed by receptionists, paralegals, retails salespeople and taxi drivers.

If that does not get the alarm bells ringing the first synthetic chromosome for a creature with complex cells has being designed on a computer and made from scratch in a laboratory. The day of designer plants an animal is not far off.

Recent advances in artificial intelligence have allowed robots to climb the corporate ladder.

So what do we have?

On one hand, you have the neoclassical economists saying some jobs will be destroyed, but others will be created, so there’s nothing to worry about.

On the other hand, you have what some people are calling the neo-luddites, who believe there’s something different about this technology.

How high can they go? Is there a corner office in R2-D2’s future?

Within 30 years, computers and machines will replace a fully half of the North American workforce and as demographic shifts, globalization and technology replace traditional work practices 47% of the World’s jobs will be automated in the next twenty odd years.

So what happens when labor is not human any longer but automated, as more and more jobs requiring medium levels of skill are automated away.

What going to happen is economic growth will accrue to an ever increasingly smaller group of highly payed people, with automation becoming self-perpetuating while skills are lost forever to invisible robots.

We probable see a new underclass with new means of social thought that might well see the demise of Capitalism itself.

This however is highly unlikely, because automation is rapidly becoming an integral part of the system. What we now call work has morphed to accommodate automation advancement.

Capitalism will be over the moon.  As the future of labour in the Capitalist world has always being to create profit by extracting what’s call value from workers. Another words paying the worker less than what their time is worth and gaining the difference as profit.  As John Tomlinson said in his book The Culture of Speed, The Coming of Immediacy, no idiom captures the spirit of Capitalism better than –

” Time is money”

So it stands to reason that if machines are producing stuff around the clock the underclasses will have to find new jobs that will offer no stability, less satisfaction, and no security of a standard of living.

At the very moment there are millions of part-time no hours contract workers called Parecariat ( These are workers who are no longer definable by fixed rules relative to the labor relation, to salary,to the length of the working day.

Capital no longer recruits people , but buys packets of time. This time is fractalized, that is reduced to minimal fragments that can be reassembled so to ensure minimum wages or salary.

The working day is now all day every day. Time is far more fluid concept than before.

All of this paint a pretty dismal picture and it will be unless we harness automation and divest its technological advancement from the motives of capitalism.

We must ensure that technology works for all of us and not just for the privileged few.

Technology at the moment is by its nature an ill-defined residue of hope and fear.

If we don’t want a world run by algorithms (that are raping us all every second of the day with high frequency trading,) and bill boards that respond to your anticipated needs from data supplied by your digital smart phone we must remain wary of interfacing too closely with machines.

We can stop the march of technological progress, but we can stop the downward pressure on wages stemming from automation, by guaranteed a minimum income that will mitigate the destructive impact of technology on labour.

The future has not been written, and issues will manifest themselves in different ways depending on the social, technological, economic and political changes in the world. These issues, however, will be important to any future in which organizations want to attract and retain the best talent.

The hire-to-retire cycle is being as you read this post retired.

What would my advise be?

Learn a Computer Language you are going to need to be able to talk to them.

     

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Capitalism is growing increasingly unfit for purpose.

09 Thursday Oct 2014

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The present global economy is caught in a catch-22 of its own making.

After the fall of communism, capitalism was left as the only show in town, and what a show it is turning out to be.

By the beginning of the 21st century the world’s environment was in critical decline.

Oceans are turning acidic from atmospheric CO2 threatening marine life, melting glaciers are flooding cities where soon little water will flow at all, species are disappearing from the Earth at a faster rate than during the dinosaur extinction 65 million years ago.

Much is being said about the importance of democracy and how it brings growth and prosperity, but the truth is that to date it has indeed enriched a few at the cost of the rest of us.

Economic growth these days is usually associated with technological changes, it is not for the benefit of the average person as is commonly believed. It is solely to create enough currency to keep the faulty global economy treading water so it doesn’t collapse.

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Politicians proudly report strong national economic growth statistics, perpetuating the illusion that this implies some kind of bonus for the average person, yet they systematically ignore ballooning national debt as though it is inconsequential.

The design of the global economy demands that by 2019 the economy will be twice the size it was in 2000.

At its present rate of growth, by 2059 the global economy will be ten times its 2000 size. But Earth cannot sustainable support a global economy the size it was in 2000. So in order to survive, the global economy is compelled to keep growing like a cancer, at an unsustainable rate that will kill its host.

This self-destructive design is a direct result of the flaw in the global money system which is guarded by Capitalistic profit to the dethronement of Values, causing vast inequalities which is the root cause of to days terrorism, and wars.

We we all know the scenario the more you grow the bigger the appetite till you either explode or there is nothing left to consume. Self destructive, not what they call sustainable growth.

The Capitalist economic plan we hear every day of growth, growth is running out fodder and nothing about the Internet, solar power, or 3D printing will change the fact that individuals have conflicting needs and desires and if it does not change courses soon, ( which it is incapable of doing so) it will leave all of us including the rich standing up to our necks in Shit.  ( See previous post on capturing greed at the heart of Capitalism)

The best stuff bubbles up from below, when will markets and technology be allowed to amplify the ideas of people and give voice and choice.

Real change requires that we address both the bottom-up and the top-down, that we design our efforts with beneficiaries front and center, and that we use evidence of real impact in the lives of the poor as the indicator of whether we’re doing it right.

But what do we see these days only an erosion of the public safety net, the increasing prevalence of low-wage employment, and decreases in low-wage earnings have combined to place low-income families under constant pressure as they struggle to work, to care for their families, and to maintain their access to public benefits.

Let’s assume, like most corporations and politicians do, that the world’s resources are endless and that no environmental threats exist. Even if that were the case, the global economy is self-destructive for an entirely different reason.

During the 20th century, subtle changes to global money systems turned currency from a sustainable means of exchange into one of the most destructive agents on Earth.

However, most of us were so busy struggling to get some money that this mutation of currency was mostly overlooked. The world is now obliged to pay back to banks more money than the banks ever create in the first place, an obviously impossible task.

Solutions exist, but the blindness that created the problem also stops the solutions from being seen.

Over the next 10 to 20 years, environmental destruction will escalate exponentially as we race towards the meltdown of civilization as we know it. Capital accumulation is driving ever-greater wealth inequality?

Ironically, the harder we try to alleviate this financial shortage, the faster we create it.

What is the solution?

Fundamental changes need to be made to align the global money system with reality. Money supply must be restructured into a sustainable means of exchange that serves countries rather than destroys civilizations.

The deadly aspect of our modern money system stems from the way money is now created.

Just look at the below example.

Modern money is created via credit  by the creation of debt.

If you borrow £100 from a bank, the £100 is not transferred to your account from existing currency held at the bank.

The £100 is created into existence by the loan.

You get £100 to spend, but you still owe the bank a £100 debt.

The money created is balanced out by the debt created.

As the loan is paid back to the bank, the repayments do not go into bank coffers but cancel out the original debt owed to the bank.

The repaid loan money is literally cancelled out of existence again.

So where do the banks get their profit from lending?

From the interest that is paid to the bank during the repayment of the loan.

The interest paid on loans is the fatal flaw in our modern currency systems.

Say during the term of the above loan, there is £200 generated in interest. This means that while the original hundred is created and then cancelled out, there is an extra £200 that must be found somewhere.

The only possible place this interest money can now be found is from circulating money generated by a different loan.

This, of course, means that even the capital of the second loan cannot be paid back, as there is now a shortfall of money in circulation.

The second loan amount – plus its interest – can only be repaid via money generated from yet further loans, and so on. (Quantitative Easing)

97% of the Money in the world is Debt, run by neoclassical economics which is divorced from reality. Giving us Socialism for the rich and Capitalism for the poor.   

Perhaps we could take a leaf from Muslim Banks.

Salam Islamic or sharia Banks offer interest free loan because the Bank gives loan through the method of buying and selling goods with an agreed margin which can be paid in installments

The question is where do we go next? ‘After Capitalism’  

The key to understanding development is to remain open to the true complexity of the global processes of innovation and diffusion and the myriad pathways through which politics, geography, economics, and culture can shape the flows of technologies around the world. 

An increase in the capacity of an economy to produce goods and services, compared from one period of time to another perhaps is not the best model, as we have ending up being governed by corporations debasing the value of currency.  

Automation is replacing (for lack of a better word) the working classes, The Internet and the resulting social media has caught all of our world organisations with their pant down. Antibiotics are being defeated, you have to live longer to qualify for a state pension, you are consistently pressurized to buy crap you don’t need, and our politicians don’t know where to turn next.

All of these developing problems will overthrow capitalism as the world’s dominant economic model.

The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: A modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. 

Our digital wallet will have to have a conscious if we are all not to end up hoodwinked into a lethargy of Sport, Celebrities cooks, and reality TV.

The age of Consequences has started.

What is left unsaid has, with the Internet no place to hide.  

Our inability to grasp the new world is coming to an end. Its goodbye to collective disillusionment and I don’t give a dam.

Its time to put a stop to Greed and distribute wealth fairly by Putting a 0.05% commission on all Sovereign Wealth Funds Acquisitions , on all High Frequency Stock Exchange Transaction and on all Currency transactions over $20,000. ( See previous Posts)   

            

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‘Who Do We Think We Are?’ Nationhood is a Changing.

13 Saturday Sep 2014

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Here we are once again writing about a subject that in this part of the world will be put to the test next week – When Scotland goes to the poll – In or out.

What exactly are the Scots being asked to determining.?  Are they being asked as who its citizens are whether modern or traditional, European or non-European.

Or are they having an independent Scotland’s moment, giving concrete form to the tricky question of ‘who are the Scots’?

Or !  If creativity is not grounded in the soul, then reality is reduced only to the quantifiable parameters of markets and money; and with that, politics gets reduced only to the question of whether Scotland will be better or worse off with or without England until the oil runs out.

Now let me say that no writer writes in a vacuum but in this case that is exactly what I am doing because I believe that a nation is a soul of forgotten voices, a spiritual principle.

But in reality nationhood is often defined in terms of commonness of culture, language, history, ethnicity, religion and spirit.

The terms nation, nationhood, nationality seem to have become distant at a time when globalization, multiculturalism, intercultural or cross-cultural communication define the way we live with respect to ourselves, the others and the environment on the whole. This becomes usually more emphatic in times of hardships for a country, especially during foreign invasion.

Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori once summoned together people of different age and background to defend one’s country and culture.

So lets ask the question.

In the world as we know it to-day what do you think constitutes a nation or nationhood.? ( If your brave enough lets hear your views)

The world today is demarcated by borders according to the positioning of sovereign states of nations. Despite this, this sense of commonness as defined above is hard to maintain in present day society, when social, economic, demographic, technological and other developments take place in an eye shut.

Thus, in the present society a new feeling of commonness appears to define nation, nationality and nationhood. It is the attempt to balance “civic citizenship” against “cultural citizenship”

Nations are not naturally occurring phenomenon and nationalism pursues a behavioral entity of the nation.

Nations are basically fabrications and constructions perceived in the minds of ‘man’. the nation is an ‘imagined political community.

Another words the nation is now an exchange of cultures, and the erasure of borders and boundaries have given way to a globalized world in which all cultures negotiate.

Cohesive elements are provided by language, religion, shared historical experiences, physical congruity and others.

Nations can exist with or without a distinct political identity, that a ‘nation’ is the product and is born out of the birth of ‘Capitalism’,especially ‘print capitalism’ that enables the dissemination, development and spread of the imagination and subjective awareness in raising the feelings of ‘togetherness’,‘belongingness’ and the inclusive ‘we’, in the bond of world consumerism.

This type of cultures have slowly eroded our Western and Eastern culture in an attempt to fused our culture, to give birth to hybrids and mutants.

We need to start by asking the much deeper question of what we think that life is all about. What is a human being? Are we just egos walking about on legs of meat, here today, gone tomorrow?

While many of the broader discussions of globalization and regionalisation convey an air of inevitability, most neither advocate nor address the vexed issues raised by the free flow of people.

What, then, does the Nation or Nationhood mean to ordinary people?

Nationalism’ is a sentiment of loyalty towards the nation, which is shared by people, inherited blinkers of race and religion, what we call ‘loyalty to truth and beauty, justice and freedom or is the project to make the political unit, the state (or polity) congruent with the cultural unit, the nation.

A good example is the Current state of affairs  in Syria, Iraq with a violent secessionist movements in the form of ISIS trying to create a Muslim State.

Instead of living in harmony as most imagined nations around the world, this Lot of barbaric wankers want to create a nation with its roots in fear, suspicion and hatred of the other.

While in Europe, North America, Soviet Union and the UK there is a growing backlash against immigration and multiculturalism.  Nationalism and its xenophobic correlates continue to flourish to no avail  because flows of transnational migration will unseated the nation-state as the dominant form of political organization in the world today due to Inequality and Poverty, and Greed.

To have common glories in the past and to have a common will in the present; to have performed great deeds together, to wish to perform still more – these are the essential conditions for being a people, a Nation.  Long live free Scotland.

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What Sovereign Wealth Funds Think Now: Its Land.

03 Wednesday Sep 2014

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From the beginning of capitalism the drive for profits has been the major force in dispossession peasant and small-scale farmers from the land and water.

While we are all consumed by our daily lives the armies of our greatest enemy Greed in the form of money never sleeps.

Now there are many ways to acquire land as Mr Putin see it and you might think that he is the greatest current threat with nuclear power.

You would be wrong in my opinion.

In more stressful times, expect these land deals to lead to unrest and lay the groundwork for wars and national boundary or ownership changes. Any nation faced with civil disobedience or unrest, for whatever reason, might be subject to regime changes which might quickly change foreign land ownership policy. Moreover, political instability elsewhere in the region is pushing oil prices up, thereby increasing and guaranteeing the main source of income of the oil-rich Persian Gulf states.

The greatest threat is the Privatization of our world resources for the sake of profit which is in the not so distant future is going to come back to haunt us all.

It is an existential struggle for the future of humanity.

Unless the resources of the earth can be utilized in an equitable and sustainable way, then civilization itself is under threat.

The main threat are called Sovereign Wealth Funds that are currently plundering the world. There are about 52 sovereign investors who collectively manage $5.7 trillion in assets

( I have addressed the problem in past posted if your are interested.)

Here I want to highlight two aspects of their current activities that we should all be made aware of.

The first is Land and water.

Land grabbing is directly intertwined with the growing scarcity of fresh water resources around the world.

More than 463 projects covering 116 million acres, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa were acquired in eight months during 2008-9.

Perhaps the most famous example of such privatization of water was the infamous purchase of Bolivia’s water supply by Bechtel and the Abengoa Corporation of Spain in the late 1990s

If one needed more evidence that financial and political elites were consolidating their ownership of global water resources, one needs look no further than the Guarani Aquifer in Paraguay.

One of the world’s largest fresh water aquifers, Guarani is estimated as being larger than the US states of Texas and California combined. Researchers have calculated that Guarani could provide fresh water for the world’s population for at least 200 years. It is precisely atop this aquifer that George Bush and the Bush family have purchased more than 100,000 acres, though many believe the purchase to in fact be much larger.

If ownership of water and the farmland of a nation doesn’t define a nation tell me what does.

It is difficult to obtain accurate figures for the amount of land in the global South that is under the control of foreign and local private capital as well as foreign sovereign wealth funds.

Sovereign wealth funds–charged with preserving the accumulated fortunes of their home nations–are well known for their opaque, tightly guarded investment decisions.

Sovereign wealth funds hold about $5 trillion in assets globally, and many, are food challenged, such as Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Abu Dhabi, Qatar, South Korea, and China.

With Climate change the rush for agricultural and water gold is in fully flight. Water “the petroleum for the next century” Future agricultural production will be stressed by climate change and competition for remaining oil and water supplies while population numbers grow will become more intensive.  

A disturbing trend in the water sector is accelerating worldwide. The new “water barons”  — are buying up water all over the world at unprecedented pace. Not only are the mega-banks investing heavily in water, the multimillionaire tycoons are also buying water. 

Unfortunately, the global water and infrastructure-privatization fever is unstoppable:

Here are a few facts that might make you think twice.

There is currently a consolidation of land and resources in ever fewer hands, while the mass of workers and peasants are made dependent on corporations and governments.

Hedge funds, big banks, sovereign wealth funds, are gobbling up the most fertile land around the world, leading many to wonder what the future of food production and land distribution will look like.

By 2020 more that 50 million people will be pushed into poverty because of high food prices, and this speculation will be if not already one of the main causes.

”Today’s emerging new farm owners are private equity fund managers, specialized farmland fund operators, hedge funds, pension funds,big banks and Sovereignty Wealth Funds.”

In Australia more than 800,000ha of prime and fertile land, from Moree in the north to Deniliquin in the south, is foreign owned, with Korea’s Ho Myoung Farm company the largest stakeholder with 500,000ha.  Hassad Australian, a company wholly owned by the Arab state of Qatar, has acquired 730,000ha of farm land in Australia, including 25,245ha in NSW.

There has been more than $1.5 billion in direct investment in Australian agricultural land over the last three years by GLOBAL fund managers and some of the world’s largest pension funds and of course Sovereign Wealth Funds.

The sovereign state of Qatari are on track to acquire a larger area more than the entire Arab state with plans to spend over $350 million on acquisitions. The Qatari government has leased large amounts of land in Kenya. They also have or are working on deals in Brazil, Argentina, Australia, Sudan, and the Ukraine.

They include: Two Swedish pension funds, Första AP-fonden and the Second Swedish National Pension Fund/AP2; the Dutch pension fund Algemene Pensioen Groep; Danish pension fund Danske; Swiss fund Adveq Real Assets Harvested Resources; Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund; and several from Canada including the British Columbia Investment Management Corporation, BNY Mellon, the Ontario Municipal Employee Retirement System, and Quebec’s CDPQ fund, Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec.

As of May 2012, it was estimated that between 32 and 82 million hectares (between approximately 80 and 200 million acres) of global farmland had been brought under foreign control, with the amount constantly increasing.Table A6: Top foreign investors in primary production land in regional NSW

Top Ten Land Grab Targets and Investor Countries

Target Countries
(millions of hectares)

Investor Countries
(millions of hectares)

South Sudan

4.1

United States

8.0

Papua New Guinea

3.9

Malaysia

3.5

Indonesia

3.5

Arab Emirates

2.8

DRC

2.7

UK

2.1

Mozambique

2.2

Singapore

1.9

Sudan

2.0

China

1.6

Liberia

1.4

Saudi Arabia

1.5

Argentina

1.3

South Sudan

1.4

Sierra Leone

1.2

China, Hong Kong

1.3

Madagascar

1.1

India

1.3

It is estimated that the amount of global farmland that has been acquired by foreign entities equals about 198 million acres.

In July 2013 the Colombian ambassador to the United States resigned over his participation in a legally questionable effort to help the U.S. corporation Cargill use shell companies to amass 130,000 acres of land.

Sovereign funds loaded with new capital will continue to pour into real estate and are actively seeking out foreign farmland to purchase.

In this age of global uncertainty in the area of food-producing and wealth preservation, productive farmland around the world has been placed into the spotlight by “guru investors,” wealth management funds, growing mega agri-industries, wealthy sovereign wealth funds.

The Saudi Kingdom is behind a seven-year project of acquiring 1.7 million irrigated rice acres in Senegal and Mali, enough to produce 7 million tonnes of rice. Proposals would allow Saudi business groups to take control of 70% of the rice-growing area of Senegal.

Saudi Arabia has farming interests in Egypt, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Syria, Turkey and the Ukraine.

South Koreans want to produce rice, corn, sugar, fish, and livestock in the Philippines.

Japan is believed to hold three times the amount of its own farmable land outside of its borders.

Argentina and Brazil have acquired land in Uruguay.

South Korea and Russia agreed to create a $500 million joint fund with their sovereign wealth funds, aimed at increasing cross-border investments in various companies and projects.

Egypt leases land in Uganda to produce rice, wheat and beef.

Nigeria is appealing to the Gulf nations to utilize its land. It has 175 million acres and is only farming half of that. It desires investment in that land, it desires employment opportunities, and it claims that it could provide 100% of the Gulf’s food needs.

Chinese investment in Kazakhstan reached $5 billion by the end of last year, slightly less than 4 percent of the country’s total foreign direct investment. They are buying land in Brazil for soybean cultivation, as part of a $3.4 billion plan to build oilseed and rice production bases overseas including bases for rapeseed in Canada and Australia, palm oil in Malaysia and rice in Cambodia. China is by far the largest investor, buying or leasing twice as much as anyone else.

In January 2012, China Investment Corporation has bought 8.68% stakes in Thames Water, the largest water utility in England, which serves parts of the Greater London area, Thames Valley, and Surrey, among other areas.

Foreign firms have invested in dairies, meat processing, crops and others areas in Serbia and other non-European Union members of the Balkans.

67% of Mideast SWFs plan to allocate more funds to Latin America, while half will do the same to Africa and 60% to India.

In November 2012, One of the world’s largest sovereign wealth funds, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA), also purchased 9.9% stake in Thames Water.

Food insecure nations such as the Gulf States, China, Japan, South Korea and Western Europe are all interested in increasing their farmland holdings.

Countries need to take control of their agriculture away from international and market forces and support the development of national food sovereignty based on family size farms.

And if all of that is not enough sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East expect to receive more funding this year, providing them with extra financial firepower to raise their investments into emerging markets and asset classes such as private equity and real estate. Slightly Ironically, with instability in the region, the oil prices go up and that gives the governments sometimes a little bit more room to maneuver,” 54% of Middle East SWFs expect an increase in new funding in 2014, higher than the 46% average for all funds.

As much as US$70 billion is up for grabs for global hedge funds looking to raise money in Asia over the next few years.

So the next time you walk into any Sainsbury’s across the UK, remember that Qatar is a major investor.

It owns 20 per cent of the London Stock Exchange and, at the other end of the scale, it owns  20 per cent of Camden market, the biggest grunge emporium in the country. Qatari LNG accounted for 85 per cent of Britain’s liquefied natural gas imports, providing power to homes across the land.

QATAR’S STAKE IN BRITAIN

The tiny Gulf state has snapped up a range of famous British assets, which include:

1. Harrods, the upmarket department store former owned by Mohamed al-Fayed.

2. The Shard, soon-to-be Europe’s tallest building.

3. No 1 Hyde Park, the world’s most expensive block of flats.

4. The London Stock Exchange, which they own a 20 per cent stake.

5. Camden Market, which they own a 20 per cent stake.

6. The Olympic Village, once the games are over.

7. Sainsbury’s and Barclays banks – major investors.

8. Liquefield Natural Gas, Britain’s biggest supplier.

It’s no wonder Scotland wants Independence before the Dragon comes.

ALT

The greater their investment, the greater our dependency. The greater the dependency, the greater the risks.

 

 

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