When people intentionally act to instill fear in or have control over others, it rewards them with a feeling of power. But what is the nature of this reward? If we investigate this question sufficiently, we can see that such "evil" behavior is not rooted in "malice" but ultimately stems from suffering and ignorance.
The ego's purpose is to provide safety and prosperity for itself (for the organism), and therefore it desires, among other things, predictability (certainty if possible). When the ego-construct feels powerful and in control over a situation or person, it feels a sense of security, rather than anxiety (fear of the unknown) in the face of an unpredictable situation or person. For the majority of people, it is fear (the most pernicious form of suffering) that drives such controlling behavior. They consciously or unconsciously seek to control in order to reduce their anxiety. Even when there is anger involved in the controlling behavior, fear is at its root.
However, for some people, ego can become warped over time such that the exercise of power, of control, is based on pleasure instead of fear. The more often, and more strongly, an ego feels rewarded (neurochemically) through its alleviation of anxiety through controlling behavior, the more the behavior becomes motivated by the reward itself. Seeking a neurochemical pleasure response becomes the underlying (if unconscious) motivation for power and control. This is also the case for abused people who become abusers and for the very small percentage of people who are genuine psychopaths/sociopaths.
For the majority of people, controlling behavior is based on fear, whereas, for the minority it is based on a desire for pleasure. Regardless, fear and desire are causes of suffering for the perpetrator, not just for their victims. Furthermore, it is only through ignorance that people engage in such behavior at all. For psychopaths/sociopaths, the ignorance is in the form of lacking empathy due to neurological deficits they have no personal capacity to overcome. For all others, the ignorance is a lack of conscious awareness of why they are behaving the way they are, and a lack of understanding that their desire for certainty or pleasure actually cause themselves suffering and that such desire can be safely given up to attain a greater peace and joy.
If we can have compassion for such people (while of course preventing them from causing additional harm), we can motivate them to change by helping them to see into the underlying nature of their behavior and help them realize the greater reward on the other side of their veil.
Showing posts with label power. Show all posts
Showing posts with label power. Show all posts
December 29, 2017
August 18, 2015
Reforming a Broken, Societally Self-Destructive Criminal "Justice" System
Hello Difference Makers,
Waking up the oblivious public to the disaster that is our mental health and criminal justice systems, and reforming them, has been near and dear to my heart since I was 10 years old, and even more so since living with severe mental illness for years as an adult and getting caught up in the criminal 'justice' system myself. I have always tried to make a difference in reforming society to actually live up to our values and ideals, with the little influence I have. If every adult citizen in America had the same intimate, insider's look at how screwed up both systems are, from start to finish, they would be massively and fundamentally overhauled immediately. The problem is the vast majority of Americans don't know any better or just don't give a shit, because "it's not their problem." Yet, crime and mental illness affect us all enormously, regardless of where you stand in society.
Award winning Producer, Director & Human Rights Activist Matthew Cooke is calling for your help to build a reform movement by supporting completion of the documentary, "SURVIVOR'S GUIDE TO PRISON".
This documentary will enlighten the general public as to the actual realities of our hypocritical, self-destructive 'hell-on-Earth' prison system ("glorified dog-kennels" is sadly accurate) and to the reality of our most EGREGIOUS FAILURES as a country in modern times:
-not living up to our responsibility to ensure the most basic of human rights for those we strip of all choice and freedoms (including assuring their safety, wellbeing, and dignity)
-not doing more to help victims of poverty, abuse, and mental illness, to prevent THOSE victims from creating victims of crime
-not upholding the moral high-ground we currently claim to live up to
-not having basic/natural compassion for our fellow, equally-fallible human beings, by not giving the incarcerated REAL support and opportunities to rehabilitate themselves through EFFECTIVE education, therapy, substance abuse, and other social programs (using money we save from reduced populations in our broken system of incarceration), not the half-assed, underfunded, misguided, or otherwise ineffective programs already in place
-in sum, not living up to our social responsibilities as individuals, communities, states, and country.
The documentary is "...a chilling exposé of the criminal justice system in America, told through the eyes of its victims and narrator Matthew Cooke. Executive produced by Adrian Grenier and Susan Sarandon, and featuring Harry Belafonte, Deepak Chopra, Russell Simmons, Michelle Alexander, Tom Morello, and Brandon Boyd.
"SURVIVOR'S GUIDE TO PRISON exposes the horror of the criminal justice system-- from the time you get arrested, to the time you are tried, to your incarceration, to (if applicable) the MOMENT you are released. We tell you what to do to survive... no guarantees.
"The 3rd act focuses on solutions & how we can survive prison as a country.
"Statistics:
-the Innocence Project estimates there could EASILY be anywhere from 40,000 to over 100,000 people in US prisons who never broke a law at all.
-77% of Americans going into state prisons return within 5 years.
-If you're an American, you're more likely to go to prison than
anywhere else in the world.
-More black men are in prison now than the total enslaved in 1850.
-1/3 of all the women in prison in the world, are in US prisons.
-The U.S. has the largest prison population on the planet ([>25% of the world's incarcerated;] larger than China)
-The US has more prisons than colleges and universities.
"Some people ask me, with all these famous people in the film, why can't THEY just pay for the movie? GREAT QUESTION! They are investing in the movie not JUST financially but with their time — which is also worth a LOT of money.
"Power in numbers speaks much louder than a handful of celebrities in the movement for deep political change. My ideal scenario would be 2 million people donating 5 cents each, because that would mean 2 million people were invested in changing this broken system. And that would make it happen.
"Anything you can afford - a dime, a dollar or more - represents your heart's participation in this movement to reform criminal justice.
"Your support isn't just about this movie. It's about a movement to radically reform the criminal justice system which so desperately needs our help.
"If we collectively inspire each other across political and cultural lines to free ourselves from the school to prison pipeline, get victims of crime the healing they need, give offenders the hope to actually turn their lives around, and rehabilitate we will have truly earned the title 'civilization'.
"If we want to break crime cycles in communities, we need prevention through investing in jobs & education. We need more restorative justice programs, which are proven to be some of the most impactful experiences with a 90% success rate in preventing people creating any more harm.
"But none of this information happens without us banding together, and it can start with this film.
"SOME OF THE ORGANIZATIONS THAT WE ARE AND WILL BE SUPPORTING:
-Prison University Project
-Law Enforcement Against Prohibition
-Amnesty International
-The Jeffrey Deskovic Foundation for Justice
-American Civil Liberties Union
-Innocence Project
-The Drug Policy Alliance
-The Dream Corps
-Homeboy Industries ["...provides hope, training, and support to formerly gang-involved and previously incarcerated men and women allowing them to redirect their lives and become contributing members of our community."]
"There are two ways to help:
1. Contribute - even small contributions raise their popularity and give them more visibility on the site.
2. Post to Facebook - in the end, the more people hear about them, the more likely they are to meet their target."
Thank you!
Matthew Lee Morgan
Waking up the oblivious public to the disaster that is our mental health and criminal justice systems, and reforming them, has been near and dear to my heart since I was 10 years old, and even more so since living with severe mental illness for years as an adult and getting caught up in the criminal 'justice' system myself. I have always tried to make a difference in reforming society to actually live up to our values and ideals, with the little influence I have. If every adult citizen in America had the same intimate, insider's look at how screwed up both systems are, from start to finish, they would be massively and fundamentally overhauled immediately. The problem is the vast majority of Americans don't know any better or just don't give a shit, because "it's not their problem." Yet, crime and mental illness affect us all enormously, regardless of where you stand in society.
Award winning Producer, Director & Human Rights Activist Matthew Cooke is calling for your help to build a reform movement by supporting completion of the documentary, "SURVIVOR'S GUIDE TO PRISON".
This documentary will enlighten the general public as to the actual realities of our hypocritical, self-destructive 'hell-on-Earth' prison system ("glorified dog-kennels" is sadly accurate) and to the reality of our most EGREGIOUS FAILURES as a country in modern times:
-not living up to our responsibility to ensure the most basic of human rights for those we strip of all choice and freedoms (including assuring their safety, wellbeing, and dignity)
-not doing more to help victims of poverty, abuse, and mental illness, to prevent THOSE victims from creating victims of crime
-not upholding the moral high-ground we currently claim to live up to
-not having basic/natural compassion for our fellow, equally-fallible human beings, by not giving the incarcerated REAL support and opportunities to rehabilitate themselves through EFFECTIVE education, therapy, substance abuse, and other social programs (using money we save from reduced populations in our broken system of incarceration), not the half-assed, underfunded, misguided, or otherwise ineffective programs already in place
-in sum, not living up to our social responsibilities as individuals, communities, states, and country.
The documentary is "...a chilling exposé of the criminal justice system in America, told through the eyes of its victims and narrator Matthew Cooke. Executive produced by Adrian Grenier and Susan Sarandon, and featuring Harry Belafonte, Deepak Chopra, Russell Simmons, Michelle Alexander, Tom Morello, and Brandon Boyd.
"SURVIVOR'S GUIDE TO PRISON exposes the horror of the criminal justice system-- from the time you get arrested, to the time you are tried, to your incarceration, to (if applicable) the MOMENT you are released. We tell you what to do to survive... no guarantees.
"The 3rd act focuses on solutions & how we can survive prison as a country.
"Statistics:
-the Innocence Project estimates there could EASILY be anywhere from 40,000 to over 100,000 people in US prisons who never broke a law at all.
-77% of Americans going into state prisons return within 5 years.
-If you're an American, you're more likely to go to prison than
anywhere else in the world.
-More black men are in prison now than the total enslaved in 1850.
-1/3 of all the women in prison in the world, are in US prisons.
-The U.S. has the largest prison population on the planet ([>25% of the world's incarcerated;] larger than China)
-The US has more prisons than colleges and universities.
"Some people ask me, with all these famous people in the film, why can't THEY just pay for the movie? GREAT QUESTION! They are investing in the movie not JUST financially but with their time — which is also worth a LOT of money.
"Power in numbers speaks much louder than a handful of celebrities in the movement for deep political change. My ideal scenario would be 2 million people donating 5 cents each, because that would mean 2 million people were invested in changing this broken system. And that would make it happen.
"Anything you can afford - a dime, a dollar or more - represents your heart's participation in this movement to reform criminal justice.
"Your support isn't just about this movie. It's about a movement to radically reform the criminal justice system which so desperately needs our help.
"If we collectively inspire each other across political and cultural lines to free ourselves from the school to prison pipeline, get victims of crime the healing they need, give offenders the hope to actually turn their lives around, and rehabilitate we will have truly earned the title 'civilization'.
"If we want to break crime cycles in communities, we need prevention through investing in jobs & education. We need more restorative justice programs, which are proven to be some of the most impactful experiences with a 90% success rate in preventing people creating any more harm.
"But none of this information happens without us banding together, and it can start with this film.
"SOME OF THE ORGANIZATIONS THAT WE ARE AND WILL BE SUPPORTING:
-Prison University Project
-Law Enforcement Against Prohibition
-Amnesty International
-The Jeffrey Deskovic Foundation for Justice
-American Civil Liberties Union
-Innocence Project
-The Drug Policy Alliance
-The Dream Corps
-Homeboy Industries ["...provides hope, training, and support to formerly gang-involved and previously incarcerated men and women allowing them to redirect their lives and become contributing members of our community."]
"There are two ways to help:
1. Contribute - even small contributions raise their popularity and give them more visibility on the site.
2. Post to Facebook - in the end, the more people hear about them, the more likely they are to meet their target."
Thank you!
Matthew Lee Morgan
March 22, 2015
A View on Exploitative Economics
[From someone's old Facebook post: https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=129518630489338 ]
Non-Exploitative Economics: Economic Rights, Economic Justice
For more than 300 years, economic decency, sanity and justice has been within our reach, yet we have failed to take it. This is an attempt to outline some of why our economic world is so unjust and so unsustainable, and to then show that we have some extraordinarily powerful tools at our disposal to change it. I will outline how we can make up for our past and finally create the vibrant and exciting human story that only an organization of the 99% can achieve.
The issues we face are fundamentally economic and nothing is more important in economics than money. It should be unsurprising, then, that we find the most powerful possibilities by looking at money itself. For more than 300 years, nations have lived with the existence of purely symbolic money. As a means of exchange, then, nothing more than ink printed on paper, or digits in a computer system, has served to facilitate the complex range of transactions required by modern societies. Many of you will already know that symbolic money is vulnerable and must be protected by a society, but is it worth protecting? The emergence of symbolic money, as a technological advance, is something that was and remains almost entirely missed by the vast majority of the world’s people. Quite simply, symbolic money offered humanity some extraordinarily powerful options which we are yet to grasp. By our own ignorance, we have allowed those who have understood and have seized that power, to wield that power over us. So let’s shed our ignorance and stand on an equal footing with the powerful, lest we remain ignorant and vulnerable to their abuses.
The most important thing we can say about today’s economics is that it’s fundamentally imperialistic/exploitative, operating by extracting vast amounts of wealth from those who produce/earn it, transferring it up the socio-economic pyramid towards an undeserving minority. Capitalism is already a dangerous animal, for it is an imperialistic economic system, being a system which allows the wealthy to earn wealth on wealth (I can assure you that kings and queens, the aristocracy and the propertied classes would advance no alternatives, so, unless you’re part of that 1%, I suggest you listen up). For every penny earned on wealth alone, that penny is being offered up by those who produce the value it is traded for. We must be vigilant, then, to ensure that we offer up our wealth only in faithful exchange and in a manner which conforms to basic justice. We certainly have the tools to achieve that, but if we find ourselves incapable of change, we’ll earn for ourselves continuing or worsening servitude to what appears to be an emerging global economic dictatorship. It’s about time we understood that we have the tools to stand up against the illusion of authority crafted by the controllers of money, when money has, for so long, been used to silence us and secure our impotent obedience.
Whilst we have long lived under economic structures which are designed to create and deliver upwards great wealth, the last 300 years has seen an amplification in this process, as the world’s economies have steadily been subsumed/conquered and laid under a system of (purely symbolic) ‘credit’ money (debt). The single outrage which defines human life on Earth today is the fact that all money has been privatized and is issued into existence as interest bearing debt to western financial interests. So all money is debt and bears its weight upon the world’s people. Although banking could be a legitimate business (and that’s very much what we can help to achieve here), private money powers are not doing the same job a publicly accountable authority would do. Today, banks will only create/release money into the economy as debt and only when it is profitable for them to do so. The vast majority of humanity suffers want (as much as 85% of all people know no comfort, only a struggle for survival) because most people have no way of making their existence profitable to western financial interests. Sadly, today’s banks are very much the outstretched fingers of the aristocracy and are the houses through which humanity’s indebtedness has been fashioned and exploited. In the wrong hands, the power to create and issue money has been the most powerful tool by which to conquer, to enslave and to harvest the productivity of working people that was ever conceived of; indeed, until we fix this aspect of our economics, money will continue to have a more profound and devastating impact on the world than any other weapon of war. Imagine, if you will, what kind of people are behind this operation. Whilst the developed nations of the world were better equipped to bear the weight of this draining systemic debt and usury than poorer nations, it is now becoming increasingly clear, even to westerners, that systemic debt and usury (which creates the conditions for its own exacerbation), is no basis for an economy/society.
Let’s look at some numbers. Whilst countless souls can thank the western imperial money system for the destitution and death that marks their existence on Earth, the comparatively privileged western worker is harvested for 80-90% or more of their earned wealth, with only those few, largely sub-standard public services given in return. Western workers will pay some 60-75% or more of their incomes in taxes alone, much of which can be traced back to the interest on borrowed money (don’t forget to add up all the taxes. Multiple sources for tax data on Google). On the money they do have left over, western workers are subject to near lifelong debt and unnecessary interest farming (to understand how banks create money, see ‘Modern Money Mechanics’ by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.) In addition, it has been estimated that around 50% of the cost of everything working people buy can be traced back to the interest on borrowed money (The Green Party, UK). Further still, we should add inflation; a difficult phenomenon to understand, but something which may be caused by the usury culture, monopolists’ price setting behavior, or the expansion of the money supply for parasitic money manipulations rather than investment in the productive economy.
We cannot let this global horror show continue and the growing movement of truth-seekers and Occupiers (and all those who support them) suggests that people are increasingly ready for change. If we were to decide upon a different foundation for our economies/societies, what might we choose? Well, the historical imbalance between a minority of wealthy people and the rest of humanity who are dependent/vulnerable/exploitable, is likely to be unavoidable to some extent, but what is not unavoidable is the peoples’ continuing subservience to powers that are unjust, predatory, parasitic and unserving to the point that they are undermining of the economy/society and our ability to live peacefully with others.
The alternative to privately issued and controlled money has long been argued to be full public/governmental control of money and banking. This article outlines the as yet unrecognized power of a third way, where the power to create, issue and control money is not left in the hands of concentrated private powers or concentrated State powers, but is taken up by all people. In effect, we can democratize the ‘money power’ and create a new, rights-based foundation for our economies. Money can come into existence not as debt to private banking interests, but on the back of inalienable rights to the money you can repay, interest free, for items of need like a home. Think about that; we have the power to say ‘no’ to the usurer/exploiter, who prints money into existence and then lives lavishly on our interest payments, and secure for ourselves the basic components of life unburdened. Other qualifying items of need might include education, healthcare, small and community businesses, transport etc. You decide. Wherever a society draws the line, an essentially protected zone is created, beyond which life and commerce can carry on according to rules that you lay down; will that be some form of capitalism, something more commensurate with common ownership or a meeting of the two? Either way, through economic rights, we can offer the world’s people and our societies/economies protection from the madness that is human economic relations.
I hope you can see that economic rights are not about free lunches, as what is borrowed is paid back. Indeed, the whole thrust of Non-Exploitative economics, or Economic Rights, is to reduce those community-draining free lunches our societies routinely offer up to the already vastly wealthy. By ending exploitation, we might be able to realize and enjoy our own and the economy’s capacity for full productivity. Today, not only is the debt that binds you to your desk predatory and parasitic, it is highly economically inefficient, for anything that binds you and forces you to compromise on your fullest potential runs counter to economic efficiency. Many of you will recognize that as a free-market argument, only this time, made for the benefit of working people. Of the 80-90+% of incomes currently harvested from working people, we will only need to pay that amount required to furnish us with a government and legitimate public goods/services. What will that cost, 30% of incomes? If you go from enjoying 10-20% of your income to enjoying 70% of it, that equates to a 3-7 fold increase in your real wealth. With this profound redress in the balance of economic power (and stride towards decency and justice in the world), working families can begin to shape their world according to their values. How would you use your economic power to shape your world once it has been returned to you? My experience suggests that people will invest in community enterprises and endeavors such as local permaculture and recreational/developmental activities for the young.
Understanding symbolic, social constructed money (the form it exists in today) grants us new possibilities about how we might live our lives; all of a sudden it really becomes a requirement that it be imbued with rights. In theory, there’s no incompatibility between economic rights and money backed by commodities such as gold, so don’t assume that economic rights are somehow opposed to ‘sound money’, but it appears to me that it would be far harder to implement and would, of course, rule out the noble initiative of allowing governments to spend debt- and interest-free money into the economy on valuable public projects like schools, hospitals, recycling/clean energy technologies etc. When we think deeply about money, the only thing we can really settle on is the idea that, as a tool, it should be employed for the greatest amount of good it can be employed for. Money spent freely into the economy by a publicly accountable authority, therefore, should be a very positive thing, but it is tempered by the fact that corrupt governments have used or abused this power for near limitless corruption, including waging aggressive wars of acquisition. When it comes to keeping governmental powers in line, I believe economic rights has yet one more powerful thing to offer; that is, if populations are enjoying interest-free loans for things like homes, parents and teachers will be teaching children precisely why. The power to create and issue money will therefore go from being the closely guarded secret used to drain working people and power the empire, to being the most important lessons we have in school. Economic rights will not only produce economically empowered families/communities, but also economically literate populations.
Non-Exploitative Economics: Economic Rights, Economic Justice
For more than 300 years, economic decency, sanity and justice has been within our reach, yet we have failed to take it. This is an attempt to outline some of why our economic world is so unjust and so unsustainable, and to then show that we have some extraordinarily powerful tools at our disposal to change it. I will outline how we can make up for our past and finally create the vibrant and exciting human story that only an organization of the 99% can achieve.
The issues we face are fundamentally economic and nothing is more important in economics than money. It should be unsurprising, then, that we find the most powerful possibilities by looking at money itself. For more than 300 years, nations have lived with the existence of purely symbolic money. As a means of exchange, then, nothing more than ink printed on paper, or digits in a computer system, has served to facilitate the complex range of transactions required by modern societies. Many of you will already know that symbolic money is vulnerable and must be protected by a society, but is it worth protecting? The emergence of symbolic money, as a technological advance, is something that was and remains almost entirely missed by the vast majority of the world’s people. Quite simply, symbolic money offered humanity some extraordinarily powerful options which we are yet to grasp. By our own ignorance, we have allowed those who have understood and have seized that power, to wield that power over us. So let’s shed our ignorance and stand on an equal footing with the powerful, lest we remain ignorant and vulnerable to their abuses.
The most important thing we can say about today’s economics is that it’s fundamentally imperialistic/exploitative, operating by extracting vast amounts of wealth from those who produce/earn it, transferring it up the socio-economic pyramid towards an undeserving minority. Capitalism is already a dangerous animal, for it is an imperialistic economic system, being a system which allows the wealthy to earn wealth on wealth (I can assure you that kings and queens, the aristocracy and the propertied classes would advance no alternatives, so, unless you’re part of that 1%, I suggest you listen up). For every penny earned on wealth alone, that penny is being offered up by those who produce the value it is traded for. We must be vigilant, then, to ensure that we offer up our wealth only in faithful exchange and in a manner which conforms to basic justice. We certainly have the tools to achieve that, but if we find ourselves incapable of change, we’ll earn for ourselves continuing or worsening servitude to what appears to be an emerging global economic dictatorship. It’s about time we understood that we have the tools to stand up against the illusion of authority crafted by the controllers of money, when money has, for so long, been used to silence us and secure our impotent obedience.
Whilst we have long lived under economic structures which are designed to create and deliver upwards great wealth, the last 300 years has seen an amplification in this process, as the world’s economies have steadily been subsumed/conquered and laid under a system of (purely symbolic) ‘credit’ money (debt). The single outrage which defines human life on Earth today is the fact that all money has been privatized and is issued into existence as interest bearing debt to western financial interests. So all money is debt and bears its weight upon the world’s people. Although banking could be a legitimate business (and that’s very much what we can help to achieve here), private money powers are not doing the same job a publicly accountable authority would do. Today, banks will only create/release money into the economy as debt and only when it is profitable for them to do so. The vast majority of humanity suffers want (as much as 85% of all people know no comfort, only a struggle for survival) because most people have no way of making their existence profitable to western financial interests. Sadly, today’s banks are very much the outstretched fingers of the aristocracy and are the houses through which humanity’s indebtedness has been fashioned and exploited. In the wrong hands, the power to create and issue money has been the most powerful tool by which to conquer, to enslave and to harvest the productivity of working people that was ever conceived of; indeed, until we fix this aspect of our economics, money will continue to have a more profound and devastating impact on the world than any other weapon of war. Imagine, if you will, what kind of people are behind this operation. Whilst the developed nations of the world were better equipped to bear the weight of this draining systemic debt and usury than poorer nations, it is now becoming increasingly clear, even to westerners, that systemic debt and usury (which creates the conditions for its own exacerbation), is no basis for an economy/society.
Let’s look at some numbers. Whilst countless souls can thank the western imperial money system for the destitution and death that marks their existence on Earth, the comparatively privileged western worker is harvested for 80-90% or more of their earned wealth, with only those few, largely sub-standard public services given in return. Western workers will pay some 60-75% or more of their incomes in taxes alone, much of which can be traced back to the interest on borrowed money (don’t forget to add up all the taxes. Multiple sources for tax data on Google). On the money they do have left over, western workers are subject to near lifelong debt and unnecessary interest farming (to understand how banks create money, see ‘Modern Money Mechanics’ by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.) In addition, it has been estimated that around 50% of the cost of everything working people buy can be traced back to the interest on borrowed money (The Green Party, UK). Further still, we should add inflation; a difficult phenomenon to understand, but something which may be caused by the usury culture, monopolists’ price setting behavior, or the expansion of the money supply for parasitic money manipulations rather than investment in the productive economy.
We cannot let this global horror show continue and the growing movement of truth-seekers and Occupiers (and all those who support them) suggests that people are increasingly ready for change. If we were to decide upon a different foundation for our economies/societies, what might we choose? Well, the historical imbalance between a minority of wealthy people and the rest of humanity who are dependent/vulnerable/exploitable, is likely to be unavoidable to some extent, but what is not unavoidable is the peoples’ continuing subservience to powers that are unjust, predatory, parasitic and unserving to the point that they are undermining of the economy/society and our ability to live peacefully with others.
The alternative to privately issued and controlled money has long been argued to be full public/governmental control of money and banking. This article outlines the as yet unrecognized power of a third way, where the power to create, issue and control money is not left in the hands of concentrated private powers or concentrated State powers, but is taken up by all people. In effect, we can democratize the ‘money power’ and create a new, rights-based foundation for our economies. Money can come into existence not as debt to private banking interests, but on the back of inalienable rights to the money you can repay, interest free, for items of need like a home. Think about that; we have the power to say ‘no’ to the usurer/exploiter, who prints money into existence and then lives lavishly on our interest payments, and secure for ourselves the basic components of life unburdened. Other qualifying items of need might include education, healthcare, small and community businesses, transport etc. You decide. Wherever a society draws the line, an essentially protected zone is created, beyond which life and commerce can carry on according to rules that you lay down; will that be some form of capitalism, something more commensurate with common ownership or a meeting of the two? Either way, through economic rights, we can offer the world’s people and our societies/economies protection from the madness that is human economic relations.
I hope you can see that economic rights are not about free lunches, as what is borrowed is paid back. Indeed, the whole thrust of Non-Exploitative economics, or Economic Rights, is to reduce those community-draining free lunches our societies routinely offer up to the already vastly wealthy. By ending exploitation, we might be able to realize and enjoy our own and the economy’s capacity for full productivity. Today, not only is the debt that binds you to your desk predatory and parasitic, it is highly economically inefficient, for anything that binds you and forces you to compromise on your fullest potential runs counter to economic efficiency. Many of you will recognize that as a free-market argument, only this time, made for the benefit of working people. Of the 80-90+% of incomes currently harvested from working people, we will only need to pay that amount required to furnish us with a government and legitimate public goods/services. What will that cost, 30% of incomes? If you go from enjoying 10-20% of your income to enjoying 70% of it, that equates to a 3-7 fold increase in your real wealth. With this profound redress in the balance of economic power (and stride towards decency and justice in the world), working families can begin to shape their world according to their values. How would you use your economic power to shape your world once it has been returned to you? My experience suggests that people will invest in community enterprises and endeavors such as local permaculture and recreational/developmental activities for the young.
Understanding symbolic, social constructed money (the form it exists in today) grants us new possibilities about how we might live our lives; all of a sudden it really becomes a requirement that it be imbued with rights. In theory, there’s no incompatibility between economic rights and money backed by commodities such as gold, so don’t assume that economic rights are somehow opposed to ‘sound money’, but it appears to me that it would be far harder to implement and would, of course, rule out the noble initiative of allowing governments to spend debt- and interest-free money into the economy on valuable public projects like schools, hospitals, recycling/clean energy technologies etc. When we think deeply about money, the only thing we can really settle on is the idea that, as a tool, it should be employed for the greatest amount of good it can be employed for. Money spent freely into the economy by a publicly accountable authority, therefore, should be a very positive thing, but it is tempered by the fact that corrupt governments have used or abused this power for near limitless corruption, including waging aggressive wars of acquisition. When it comes to keeping governmental powers in line, I believe economic rights has yet one more powerful thing to offer; that is, if populations are enjoying interest-free loans for things like homes, parents and teachers will be teaching children precisely why. The power to create and issue money will therefore go from being the closely guarded secret used to drain working people and power the empire, to being the most important lessons we have in school. Economic rights will not only produce economically empowered families/communities, but also economically literate populations.
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