Month: July 2020

The driving force behind most people’s action in the developed world can be money or happines most of the time. Sometimes fear for life or mild fear can play a role but money and happiness are the principle forces. Then if you make a pie chart you’ll find that it’s about 80% money and 20% happiness. We tend to forget our jobs because most of them are boring, unless we make a lot of money and they become stressfull.

This power of money worries me deeply. It is a strange thing, like a drug we need in order to survive. If we don’t make any money we will eventually become homeless and can’t maintain an image associated with constant income. This leads to social rejection and loss of opportunity. It is your choice, the stick or the carrot, and you better like that carrot!

There’s a large number of people that are just not managing to be happy, even though they work hard at jobs that make little money. They are stuck, like a slave in a plantation, with almost no choice, and little understanding of their options. You could call these people “Econobots” because their lives are dictated by the rules of the economy, by the opportunities to make money, the scraps thrown to them by the economy.

Another namen for an Econobot is worker. He/she is known. The minds of these people are profiled and programmed by the mass media. You don’t have to wonder what their talents are, they have to little and what talent they have is demoralized by them being seduced to trash themselves on TV shows. The Econobot is a robot that cares for nothing but his/her own lifestyle, which is one of barely hanging on.

I see it as a result of human competition for the same resource with machines. Humans and machines both use fossil fuels, which are distributed to people with money, and companies lobby to minimize the money allocated to making people happy in favour of subsidies to help them produce. This does translate in better prices for the people, but this dynamic never stops as long as machines and people both feed off a limited source of fossil fuels. Prices never come down to zero and all happiness is sacrificed.

Add to this banks that want to profit off the need for money. Their interest is to make everything as expensive as possible and make sure people have as little money as possible so they have to borrow. Then when people borrow to buy stuff the prices can skyrocket, so they have to borrow more. This is a way for banks to capture a market. You can’t buy a home without a mortgage. You could once, but banks drove up prices by borrowing to buyers and now you can forget about buying without a loan. Banks win!

Banks vying for money and companies vying for resources mean a normal worker is going to face high prices and low income. The perfect storm. On top of that companies want workers to prefer their products, so they program them continously through the media/internet. The Econobot is a suffering mule all because of the scarcity of resources and everyone trying to become happy.

Was this ever different? Yes. Land used to be cheaper. Banks didn’t own everything. There where different currencies. You can find those situations in ‘poor’ regions, where you can’t earn. So in a way there is an economic heat island effect at work where in one place people are stacked 100s of floors high while 10 km away from them empty fields lie fallow because banks priced them to expensively. You can’t spread out, all kinds of objections to that, nature etc. but if its about a new piece of highway nature comes second every time.

The Econobot will struggle on his/her second floor appartment with 2 kids and two temp jobs while the cost of living are pushed up by banks looking for investment opportunity. There is no chance these people will realize they are stuck in a system not designed to make them happy.

We think about food a lot. Eating wholesome and healthy food is a relaxing idea, associated with a desirable lifestyle. But perhaps this is not the best for our sense of surival or our bodies. Maybe incidental hunger is something we should embrace as a way to steer ourselves to the best ideas and behaviour.

Food in nature is scarce. If you go into any forest in Europe you’ll be having a hard time filling your stomach, even though it could be full of chestnut, walnut, berry and apple trees. The challenge to find food usually ends up with hunting and killing a herbivor. Except for during specific seasons our ancestor that was not farming was hungry a lot. Even when farming became a thing people could have bad harvests or run out of stored food. Famines are still a common thing in many regions where farming is not industrialized.

Today we know that there is a sugar lobby to addict us to sugar. We also know that putting sugar in your diet ruins your teeth and health, causes diebetes and heart disease. Suger is addictive, it reduces insulin sensitivity so that you feel hungry all the time. “We” know all this, but “We” is not everybody, and certainly not anyone with actual power to change the public diet. The number of ice cream parlors in Amsterdam is noticably increasing, which can mean more money laundering -or- a US drive to addict more people to suger in Europe.

For the brain hunger is important too. When we burn our fat we produce ketones that are good food for the brain. The brain is more flexible and learns better when it is hungry. Rationaly it makes sense because if you can’t replenish your energy stores (burning your fat) you need to start moving towards a place where you can, and find ways to do it. This of will drive iquisitiveness and learning.

It often seems that our diet is dictated by the wish to generate as much cashflow but also by shaping our attitudes. Coffee is a drug, it makes life feel better but it also narrows our attention (and in many cases causes brain inflammation that reduce our intelligence). Chocolate is said to make us more egotistic. Meat makes us more agressive and sugar makes us hyperactive, impulsive. In short, the standard diet may simply make us good consumers, and not good survivors.

Climate change is not slowing down, and its effects are now estimated to materialize much earlier. In 2024 some expect 1,5 degrees heating, and higher temperatures are considered locked in. Politics is to preoccupied with using fossil fuels (increasing economic activity) to stop using fossil fuels and to much advised by the fossil fuel lobby to plot a serious route out of dependency let alone one that deals with the dangerous temperatures.

This and coming years will be marked by large famines accross the globe. This will cost lives and wars. You can expect many asians to seek shelter in the west, not only those form Honk Kong, and if the west doesn’t want them this will cause conflict. Not to mention the Middle East that is already erupting in multiple small wars, Turkey/Lybia/Armenia/Syria/Azerbedjan etc. Where will this end?

As long as the minds in Europe control a large manufacturing base and energy supply (yes, oil, coal, gas) moves can be made. The minds however are slaves to ambitions that prohibit it from forcefully steering away from dangerous fuels. For that to happen these minds would have to be replaced, and it is highly unlikely (looking at the political direction of police brutality even in Europe, which is pro-fossil) this would ever happen without a fight.

People who understand the consequences of CO2 emissions are not the kind that force themselves into power. Vice versa, those that push themselves into power are not the kinde to stop for remote risks. With todays commercialized political campaigns you just can’t make it without embracing the fossil/banking system that is the problem. As a result a US style ‘democracy’ is fundamentally unable to fight climate change.

Perhaps the only option that could work is a total breakdown of the economic machine due to disruption of the fossil fuel supply. Say because Israel dropped a big bomb on Iran and no oil can flow from the Middle East, nor any ocean traffic through the Suez Canal. Or Turkey getting into a war with the surrounding countries. Then the well will run dry in about two weeks as was demonstrated in France during a strike of petrol tank truck drivers. Then the situation would be super problematic, and focus would be on restoring the supply asap, with the same pro-fossil goons at the helm.

So in this chaos these people would have to be replaced or one would have to admit you can NOT allow the supply to collapse, or not at least in ways that allow a fix. In the absence of fossil supply most of our planet would be thrown in the same poverty as that suffered by people not yet using fossil fuels. Growing food is already becoming a challenge, now ad to that the fact that soils are depleted from intensive use and only recover very slowely. You could not just plant and hope for a harvest as normal without the intensive treatment. It takes about 5 years to recover from it.

Already we are seeing a rise in government by criminals, which has to say something about the quality of the justice system and police force. Real criminals meanwhile have evolved into the stuff of nightmares. All this is because of poverty, and poverty will only make it worse. So as fossil fuel use collapses, and the supply chains related to it (plastics etc.) one would have to focus on renewable energy sources and battle off rising crime. What helps is that moving around will be harder (including moving drugs or humans), so crime may die down a bit or change character.

In this basically chaotic environment an effort would have to be staged of building massive solar and wind and battery capacity, of planting massive amounts of trees, of deploying technology to capture and sequester CO2 all around the world. How could that happen?

It seems that in defence of order one has a solid reason to build super large scale renewable energy projects. Simply to make it possible to respond in the case of a catastrophic disruption of the fossil energy supply. The response to global heating is really a one shot thing and a long term commitment. Work should be done today of creating places which will be safe and sufficient to live in for the next 500 years, instead of economically milking the underestimation of the threat.

Humanity needs to cut a few activities we love out of our schedules. Flying is one example, meat eating is another. There are many. For the opponents and deniers this constitute an attack on their individual freedom and lifestyle, something that is just not allowed. The word that applies there is ‘entitlement’ these people feel entitled to a cheap holiday or a heart attack diet.

With al the BLM distractions the climate deniers have it easy. They don’t even object that cutting emissions now will not fix the mess we are in. That would also mean they aknowledge the mess, which they would not want to do. Once you choose to lie, you can lie yourself a fantasy reason can’t find a way out of. The only truth remaining is death, and as we see with Covid19 in the USA, even death does not sway magical thinkers.

But truely, if you want to be fair just because you know it puts people at ease, how do you allocate damaging activities to people. For myself I made a rule around 2007 or so to not fly unless I have something serious to do at the other end, so only trips to congresses or for work. I broke that rule once 5 years ago to fly to Greece. Many other occasions tempted but I did not fly.

How do you calculate what damage is justified by anyone. How do we decide when we get the opportunity who gets to travel and who doesn’t. Its a stupid question, because it is imaginable that we all live without doing damage to the environment at all. We just need to spread out, a move banks don’t want us to make. Deserts can be greened no problem with solar and wind energy. Internet connects us all, transportation can be solar/electric. No reason to destroy the atmosphere, there never was.

But if we attempt to gage the damage of one persons actions we come up with very little benefit. If you give everyone a personal carbon budget you don’t help much because a lot of people won’t consume it, if you trade it that consumption will be enjoyed by richer people but prices of rights will drop and in the end all the budget of everybody will be consumed. This is what emissions right trade is causing today. Dirty stacks burn in the Ukraine, and clean countries sell the credits. It’s just a banking trick as all the other banking tricks we are stuck in.

The climate benefit of actions needs to be determined. If I consume 1 kWh serving this post to you and other readers, and you and other readers change behaviour and think about this topic and how to maximize actual climate impact of actions, that’s a 1kWh well spend. Could even be a solar kWh, which sounds better but of course then the importance of you reading this must outweigh the good that 1 kWh could have done elsewhere.

I’m trying to build a lightweight boat that can travel fast on solar. This could have benefits in terms of reducing emissions. I am trying to develop a substance that can turn CO2 into Methane or Ethanol. The energy spend there could reduce the climate problem. Most people just ‘do their jobs’ meaning they wait for the money, then go out and consider it fair if they just do whaterver the hell they want, after all their freedom was restricted, and now they are supposed to be free (so fuck vegetarians, get me a steak a beer and lets go to Greece!).

If I move to a desert and start planting trees my cost would be marginal, just food and water and medical insurance. But my benefit could be substantial, as nobody does what I do in that desert. Nature can heal itself but humans can do a lot to help. Right now humans should do everything it their power to help, without help it will not be fixed. But if I make that move, do I get credits? How much should I get? From whome. How do my actions translate into effect?

Maybe we should create a shadow accounting system that keeps track of actions that warrant climate credits. Then we need a political movement that will reward people with credits. So if you have climate credits you are given the best seats on the terras, the best rooms in hotels, the best food and service. This is because you do strangers a service. Where banks will force entrepeneurs to squeeze every cent out of customers as they take the better seat or get the better treatment, climate credits turn it around. It is more of an honour to host a guest who has so much compassion and care for the lives of every living thing.

The process involves creating a credit, then assigning it to people in a transparent way, and giving people that you assign it to attention, as to people who respect the credit. It must be a fungible asset, but buying or selling it is a no-no, it will destroy it instantly. This will create a positive incentive structure towards true climate responsibility. It can be made a rule that a person that earns an x number of climate credits will earn the right to pollute, or the right to travel in a non polluting but more expensive method.

I am terrified of ‘my’ economy. I am petrified by its inertia, its floodgates of fossil credit that are wide open and that are driving constant destruction. When I look in my fridge I see what I need, I am sheltered against rain and wind in my home, I can sleep in peace, I don’t get mugged when I leave my front door. If I get sick there are doctors that can treat me. But at what cost?

Econofobia : Fear of the fossil-credit economy under bank control

The economy promises me opportunities that allow me to earn a living, and for the most part it does that. If there are none (they are hoarded by intermidiaries so hard to say how much there are), I am given a stipend to live off to keep me fit for some opportunity. But the opportunities terrify me. What am I to do, mow grass with a diesel lawnmower? Stuff boxes with plastic bottles? Build a website to sell more lawnchairs out of China?

How do you live in an economy that destroys your future? There is barely anything I can do that does not deteriorate my fate. If I drive my car I ruin the atmosphere, if I eat fish I ruin the oceans, If I surf the internet datacenters will waste a lot of energy, just for my pleasure. Everything is financialized and banks are major funders of polluting and destructive projects, in fact they eagerly drive new ones. Shell is building a plastic factory, entire new cities are planned just to move concrete and make their developers rich. Even if I bake pancakes I fund pesticide companies and big agro. It’s a nightmare and it is next to impossible to escape.

The way out is not that difficult, it is just not financialized, it is not supported by banks. So you can’t get people to cooperate with you as you can’t borrow money to buy their cooperation. Banks constantly keep everyone on their toes so they try to make as much money as possible, as much profit as possible. All very damaging to the point that hope is quickly evaporating.

It seems a starting point to really get out of this rut is to organize and create some kind of trading union of sorts. Of course this is supposed to be with people who do not wish to participate in the dangerous economy as well, so these need to be landowenrs who can offset their cost with produce in a reliable way. People without debt who own their homes. It seems a basic condition is that you do not have financial liabilities or can neutralize them reliably.

Banks will immediately start to fight any substantial attempt to escape their reign. It seems unavoidable that ultimately the only recourse is to actually take land from existing nations in order to be a separate, non-bank encumbered one. We all know that this will be very hard to do. The alternative is to go to a place no bank is interested in. A place without any economic activity, and negotiate some kind of sovereignty there. The in between solution is to go to a region that is poor, but has renewable potential, and just be boring to banks.

Basic income is seen as a solution to economic disparities and poverty. Banks make companies compete, which then lobby for government support and take it from the groups with weak representation, the jobless, elderly, disabled and young. My dutch right wing government has taken money away from social services and culture, while big companies reap the benefit.

Holland has a basic income, it has WW and Bijstand, its money people get when they have worked or when they have nothing to fall back on. It’s not enough to rent a place in the city any longer, although you do get subsidy for that. The problem is rents are rising fast because banks lobbied for rules that made rental homes a good property for institutional investors. Because of that, and because banks obstruct building of affordable homes, people are suffering.

A basic income means you allocate part of the resources of the market towards an individual without any conditions attached. An important contaxtual parameter is the opportunity to earn by doing a job for anyone in a society. This opportunity is shrinking due to automation, it has for a century. Time and time again economists have lied and said ‘new jobs will be found’. It turns out, for the highly optimized core of industry jobs have disappeared and if they exist they have become less valuable. So the job pool is smaller and you’d earn less. New technology like AI is going to make that trend continue.

The basic mistake that I think is being made when people propose or fund basic income experiments (like the boss of Twitter did today). Is to think that you can start with money. Hand out money to people and it will be fine. No doubt if you hand out money to people (or social security) they will be fine — BUT — that money is still hunted as described in the first paragraph of this post. You give money without conditions, that money is not going to companies that can lobby to stop your basic income experiment. You’re not up against one company or corporation, against ALL of them. Strangely they do not want the money to pay more wages! Truth is the want the money to pay of debt and increase their competitive edge, a competition they are forced into by the same banks that put them into debt (but that’s another story)

So how do you do Basic Income right? You generate the necessary resources, you don’t just take from the market (by handing out cash), you bring something to the market. A basic income initiative should start with a project that produces a thing everybody can use, so they will all trade their products for it. The first and best thing that comes to mind is energy. You produce energy for the market to make products and render services. This may sound roundabout, but it is not. Because once you build a solar power plant that earns your basic income funds, nobody can touch them. No lobby can try to take them away (they can of course lobby to access the energy).

Jobs are changing and it is unavoidable that even task that are considered highly complex will be done my AI and computers. This is fine, this is the Roboeconomy, as long as people do not compete for the same resources with those automated machines. They do now, because both people and machines depend on fossil energy. Machines sometimes directly, people through the food production system and for all the products and services they use. If you compete with machines owned by a company that can lobby and change laws, you’re going to lose. The best thing is to get out of that race, by ensuring you either have energy to sell yourself, or are supported by a self sustaining production mechanism.

This way of thinking also applies to pensions, because there people are saving fossil credit (money) that for sure won’t be buying fossil fuels in 20 years time. Another way of looking at it is that if you walk the Earth, the Earth must provide your food, and this requires a piece of it to catch sunlight, use water and be fertile so plants can grow. Plant growth is energy production, conversion of solar energy. Now we trust enough plants are grown by a massively fossil fuel dependend industry. To cover our needs we need to ensure the energy is there, to either grow food (make ferilizer etc) or produce other things we need. This will be increasingly challenging because of climate change, but the sooner we look at our support system this way the bigger the chance we can revers or manage this threat.

In the news “Lagarde puts green policy top of agenda in ECB bond-buying”, she claims the ECB “wants to ‘explore every avenue’ in fight against climate change”. This is like a pig farmer claiming to only want to drive vegetarianism by selling its pigs. Banks drive fossil fuel consumption because money is carbon credit. We have written about this petrodollar nature of all present western currencies extensively. You can’t extend credit to start a building project if your credit does not buy diesel for trucks, cement for concrete, gas/coal for steel refining etc. etc. Money distributes fossil fuels to producers and consumers.

It has to be that way because there is no alternative yet. We mean no readily available store of energy that can be allocated and released to do work. This is because renewable energy storage is fought by banks who make patents disappear and who fund rediculously wastefull (Methane friendly) solutions like Hydrogen. Renewables need either to be able to be deployed more cheaply or find a way to store the energy more conveniently. This will all happen soon, no worries.

Reading Lagarde’s comment a different way it will make a bit more sense : She wants to control renewable energy production, so that banks can extend renewable energy credit. This is a risk, because banks are lazy and relationships play a large role, meaning lifestyles of people need to be maintained, which is the reason for the present inertia when it comes to banks and renewables. Always more obstacles, lobbied confusion, pro fossil decisions etc. etc. Banks want cashflow, fossil provides it! We wrote about how we need to separate out the trade of RE from that of fossil fuels and labour idealy, by introducing different currencies for each : The Euro, de Auro and the Joule.

We don’t want to see the continuation of an elitist banking system that has this crazy privilige to create fossil at will and determines our planets future by making excuses and exhagerating risks when it threatens cashflow. LIES are what makes banking possible, and you can see by the goons on the anti-social ‘right’ banks don’t give a damn who lies as long as they are left alone and fossil credit (where fossil fuels have the convenient quality of being highly stabile while stored) cashflow is king. Renewable credit is a more complicated issue and dropping RE energy prices mean that ownership of RE sources (which makes cashflow disappear) becomes more widespread.

So we are seeing a battle for sovereignty between banks and citizen/states. If the banks get their way all renewable energy sources will be grid tied, forced to follow the rules, the energy will be traded over markets where off shore wind drives down prices. The assault on land based privately owned renewable energy is clear and ongoing. Solar parks are chased away because they waste valuable land (which would otherwise remain unused), the opposition in the North of Holland is clearly motivated by the ambition of local politicians to be part of they fake gas friendly ‘hydrogen economy’, even the leftists there are for biomass. The battle is waged in a subtle way, for example by changing the fossil content of the energy supply (less fossil Joule/kWh because of the switch to gas and addition of Wind), homes are reappraised to be more energy efficient and adding solar panels does less to increase their energy performance rating.

The battle is between the freedom of the individual to not need money, and the bank that wants everybody to need money. The state is (at least in Holland) so clearly inflitrated by people who consider economics a healthy theory, who think money should be the measure of all things, in short the religion the USA has been indoctrinated into by Wallstreet, that there is little hope from there. Banks occupy most contries and they will never give in as long as their achilles heel, our need for their currency, remains intact.

So the title of this piece : Can Banks fight climate change? has to be answered with : NO. Not in their present form.

Now its stupid but let’s imagine banks having an epiphany and meeting up in Switzerland to discuss the situation, having the following conversation :

“Right we are on track to load the entire planet in debt, control it all”

“Yeah great, but my son is worried about the effects, why do we keep financing emissions and why after a century of wealth are we ourselves not even secure”

“That’s the system we run, one of equal chance and merit and opportunity, a competitive economy”

“Yes but not for us now right? We have control over the monopoly!”

“True but to ensure continuation we have to make ourselves vulnerable too”

“No we don’t actually, we control this monopoly, we don’t only have to follow the recipy (divide fund indebt control), we can build a parallel ecosystem, in fact, we should because in decade or so people will spread out”

“How so?”

“Because of internet and energy being available everywhere”

“Our plan was to lock people in cities where they will be kept dependend and generate cashflow. That will also allow for high efficiency while we monetize everything else (or it goes to shits due to climate change)”

“Or : We could front run this development by creating new cities where they are not viable now, more or less self sustaining, but modern and advanced, we can fund the detachement of existing cities from dependencies”

“And kill our business? We will be replaced by people who don’t doubt economics and don’t look for alternatives. In fact I now have a mind to replace you”

“If we did it, would your lifestyle change? If we just took regions and cities etc. of our books and put them in other books, with different principles, would you personally be hurt”

“No, why?”

“Have you ever cared about anything but your personal lifestyle? Didn’t that get you where you are now?”

“True”

“So why not do it? It’s an opportunity, we need to crack this world. Do you want to run city-gulags for the rest of your carreer, deal with assholes like Dick Benschop who seems to think he personally created all the oil for planes to burn no matter who gets Corona?”

“I guess we could keep a group of debt-cattle in cities to finance our lifestyles, and also have zones be exempt from our fossil-credit predation. It would still be better than have those become a threat. But there can be no examples. No city upon a hill.”

“Not for all maybe?”

What this amounts to is extraeconomic zones or roboeconomic zones we wrote about here. An extraeconomic zone is a zone that is prohibited from trading with the outside world. It has to be self sufficient. It can be a massive plantation or CO2 capture operation with farms etc. a bit like a Mars colony on Earth. But it can also be as solar drying house that needs no outside electricity or other resources, or a 100% renewable powered city that does not buy or sell electricity to the wider grid. The point of extraeconomic zones is that they generate resources (methane, plastic, biomass, fresh water) but don’t allow its consumption. If produced resources are consumed we call it a roboeconomic zone, which simply does not use any fossil or climate damaging resources.

As banks dominate right now, to the highest level of policy making they have to create room for the alternative. They are likely not to do that as you see form the discussion above, because bankers don’t care about their children. Its the cut-throat atmosphere banking creates that locks it into a super defensive posture, and this is what makes it vulnerable, in this case to the ravages of climate change. It needs to see it is an animal terrified by its own reflection. Some new neurons have to grow in the brains of Lagarde and others at the top that wonder if it would actually be bad to create a new track, which when populated and developed, stands to exist for as long as humanity will.

Renewables make it unnecessary to squeeze a tax out of people. You can be rich, wealthy, healthy and in control without a ‘consumer farm’ to generate cashflow. You can mitigate the threat by distributing the renewable based wealth and managing the sharing of technology between regions and commuities, all with the latest technology.

In 2005 verhuisde ik van Rotterdam naar Den Haag. Ik had een mooie baan in Rijswijk gevonden. De verhuurder wilde dat ik voor 2 jaar vast tekende. Ik dacht er niet bij na en zat goed. Toen ik een 1,5 jaar later wilde verhuizen kon dat niet, maar ik kon ook geen huis kopen omdat de BKR in die tijd nog een aantekening maakte als je een keer je mobiele abonnement was vergeten te betalen (dit kwam door de verhuizing). Anders had ik dit nooit hoeven schrijven (52.000 Euro/jaar in 2005 en prima aanbod woningen).

Nu ben ik nog steeds huurder, de BKR heeft er voor gezorgd dat ik de koop boot heb gemist, maar ik was er in de belegings hypotheek tijd ook geen fan van. Huren en sparen bracht meer op dan kopen en beleggen. Leek me allemaal zwendel en dat bleek later ook. Zoals ik het zie zijn de huizen prijzen opeenvolgend opgedreven door oa renteverlaging, verruimen van de hypotheek tot meer dan het bedrag (zodat je geen eigen geld hoefde te hebben), Nieuwe hypotheek vormen. Dit gaf mensen het idee dat een koophuis een soort golden ticket is, waar je altijd winst op maakt.

Deze belofte van stijgende huisprijzen wordt nu nog steeds met dezelfde niets ontzienendheid bevochten. Hoe? Bv. door huurhuizen duurder te maken. Dit was oa het werk van Stef Blok die het makkelijker maakte om institutioneel te beleggen in huurwoningen. Nu de banken het effect merken van het in de schulden steken van studenten zijn ze bezig om het toch mogelijk voor ze te maken om een hypotheek te nemen. Banken klagen ook over ouderen dat ze huizen bezet houden. Ze hebben er echter zelf voor gezorgd dat cooperaties minder kunnen bouwen met de verhuurdersheffing.

Het maakt ze niet uit dat er woning tekort is, dat is ook goed voor de waarde. Als je een goedkoop huis neerzet dan kan dat alleen als je de eigenaar verbiedt voor ‘marktconforme’ prijzen te verkopen. De ‘markt’ mag niet verwaterd worden door goedkope huizen! Er wordt continu slim gebruik gemaakt van een hele fundamentele cognitieve bias die we allemaal hebben : Acute Prijsconformatie. We zullen ons altijd conformeren aan een stijgende prijs als we de verkoper zijn. We zullen altijd ook 300.000 Euro vragen als het huis van de buren net voor 300.000 is verkocht. Dit doen we zelfs als er maar een heel klein beetje werkelijke prijsontdekking (handel) plaatsvind. Dit principe wordt alleen gebroken als we echt op stel en sprong moeten verkopen en de koper is alert en een doorzetter, want de bank wil een zo groot mogelijke hypotheek verstrekken! Het huis in kwestie is een kostenpost, dus hoe mensen er toe komen om er 300.000 voor te betalen is mij telkens weer een raadsel. Noem het speculatie, haast, gretigheid allemaal aangemoedigd door de leenheren.

Mijn huis is nu eigendom van iemand die er niet in kan gaan wonen. Dit is op zich al een verstoring van het principe van woningbezit

Al deze druk op prijzen heeft zijn effect op de huurmarkt. Daarin gebeurt nu iets zeer vreemds. De huren zijn verhoogd, met meer dan de inflatie. Ik ontving een brief van de beleggende verhuurder waarin stond dat als ik niet meeging in de voorgestelde verhoging ik meteen voor de rechter zou worden gesleept. Nu heb ik heel wat contracten onderhandeld en hierbij heb ik geleerd dat een contract een overeenkomst is waarbij een ‘equitable exchange’ plaats vind. Beide partijen zijn het er mee eens en geven door te tekenen aan dat ze met de voorwaarden akkoord zijn. De verhuurder heeft de huur verhoogd, maar geen enkele prestatie geleverd of beloofd. Kan dat eigenlijk wel? Heb ik me nu gewoon laten afzetten? Denkt deze verhuurder dit volgend jaar nog eens te kunnen doen? Een soort ‘new normal’ als het om huurverhoging gaat?

Mijn reactie is te zeggen “Ok, ik ben akkoord gegaan omdat er met een rechtzaak gedreigd werd, maar nu wil ik wel weten welke prestatie er is verricht om de hogere prijs te rechtvaardigen”. Als er geen antwoord is dan is dit de eerste en de laatste keer.

Ik weet wel wat het antwoord zal zijn, nl. Het pand brengt te weinig op. Ik mag zelf uit een aantal mogelijke upgrades kiezen, maar dan zal de huur natuurlijk ook omhoog gaan. Het liefst heeft de verhuurder dat ik verhuis want vandaag de dag zijn contracten van korte duur, dus zes maanden of een jaar zodat de huur sneller kan worden opgeschroeft en een minder verdienende huurder kan worden vervangen door een meer solide huurder. Die moet uiteindelijk wel een huis kopen natuurlijk maar tot die tijd betaalt hij/zij straks net zoveel als de hypotheek of zelfs meer.

Als elke handelaar eenzijdig de prijs kon aanpassen en zeggen dat dit was omdat hij/zij meer geld nodig had dan was er geen sprake meer van handel maar doorlopende struikroverij. Er moet mijns inziens een logica achter huurverhoging zitten en aangezien de huurder veranderingen aan de woning kan weigeren moet het ook zo zijn dat er zonder prestatie volgend jaar geen verdere verhoging boven de inflatie mogelijk is. De middenweg is wel een prestatie vragen, zoals bv. het vervangen van het (giftige en brandgevaarlijke) plafond. Het lijkt me echter dat verhuurders nu op een spoor van huurverhogingen worden gezet die bestaande contracten nogal vreemd is. Wordt vervolgd.

Pensioenen zijn een heikel thema. Een saai thema voor veel mensen. Er zijn pensioenfondsen met miljarden in kas, die een zn. ‘dekkingsgraad’ hebben waar ze kennelijk weinig aan kunnen doen. De pensioengerechtigde leeftijd schuift heen en weer. Zware beroepen mogen eerder stoppen etc. Wat ons betreft is dat ‘moving the deck chairs on the Titanic’ met een smeltende ijsberg in zicht.

Een pensioen is (in theorie) een spaarplan voor je oude dag. De overheid stelt het verplicht. Maar wat betekent dat in een fossiele ‘just in time’ economie waar alles op het laatste moment wordt geproduceerd? Het betekent dat je wordt gegarandeerd dat je met euro’s die je nu uit circulatie haalt over 20 jaar hetzelfde zult kunnen kopen als nu. De huur, brood, koffie, thee. Al die dingen.

Een heel belangrijke vraag is : “Worden die zaken met uw gespaarde en uitgekeerde geld geproduceerd?” Het antwoord is “Nee”. Ze worden tzt geproduceerd met de middelen die er dan zijn. Dwz als we fossiele energie gebruiken is het met olie of gas die dan uit de grond komt. Het brood wordt gebakken met graan dat dan verbouwd wordt. En de thee wordt geoogst en verscheept met de productie capaciteit die dan voorhanden is.

Als je voor je pensioen spaart hoop je dat er niks gebeurt met de productie capaciteit van de wereld, want als we morgen geen graan kunnen verbouwen kun je met je Euros nergens graan kopen. Het kan zomaar zijn dat niemand nog in je Euro’s geinteresseerd is, bv. omdat de graan producenten ze niet nodig hebben, of omdat ze ze niet willen verhandelen, dat is al verschillende keren gebeurt.

Helaas is de pensioen wereld een creatie van het fiancieel systeem, en dat kijkt alleen naar zichzelf, en is volgens ons bezig langzaam aan de pensioen zekerheid af te breken tot nul, zodat we tzt zeggen “Tja we hebben al onze spaarcentjes verloren, helaas, nu is het bikkelen”. Dit doen ze om de aftakeling van de marktproductie voor te zijn, en dat is terecht, ze zien ook wel dat het met de voedsel productie minder wordt etc. Echter, een inspanning om een veilige voorziening voor ouderen de creeren zou de nekslag zijn voor het bankwezen, het zou de overstap van fossiel naar duurzaam definitief maken, simpelweg omdat de schellen ons dan allemaal van de ogen zouden vallen.

Spaargeld is niks waard als de productie capaciteit niet wordt geborgd. Dat is iets dat de economie niet voor ons doet. Ze redeneert dat als er geld is mensen zullen gaan rennen. Dit klopt vandaag omdat je met geld benzine en diesel kunt kopen en gas en kolen waar onze productie machine op draait. Producenten in China die onze spullen maken hebben iets aan die Euro, omdat de energieproducenten waar ze van afhankelijk zijn die munt accepteren. Maar wat als deze producenten er niet meer zijn?

De huidge spelers in de economie, steeds prominenter merkbaar de banken, willen niet dat u hier aan denkt. Ze willen dat u vertrouwen houwt in geld en de ‘markt’. Het is beter om de realiteit te erkennen, nl dat sparen op deze manier een groot risico inhoudt, en fabeltjes over een waterstof economie enz. allemaal lokale tijdelijke weelde kunnen creeren maar niets waar u op uw oude dag iets aan zult hebben. Mensen met een oude dag zijn niet belangrijk voor de economie, dit zie je aan rechts beleid over de hele wereld.

De verstandig weg is om te kijken welke voorzieningen we moeten treffen om de komende generaties met pensioen te verzorgen. Dat zijn boerderijen, broodfabrieken, zorginstellingen met medische voorzieningen, kleding etc. Het is heel makkelijk : Identificeer de noodzakelijke kernproductie en koop die op, zorg dat die op duurzame energie kan functioneren. Als je dat doet dan dalen de kosten snel tot nul, en worden het als er geen vraag is uit de groep gepensioneerden een bron van inkomsten die vertaald kunnen worden in meer capaciteit. Een grote centrale in het Markermeer (Zie Markermeerzonnecentrale.nl ) zou een goede groeibasis zijn.

De economen hebben het vaak over ‘economische groei’ maar dan bedoelen ze toename in de cashflow van banken. Die neemt toe omdat meer mensen van fossiele energie (of centraal geproduceerde energiebronnen) afhankelijk worden en er dus constant geld moet stromen. Economische groei betekent niet dat de draagkracht van de economie toeneemt, want er is steeds fossiele input nodig. Valt die weg dan heb je helemaal niks. Het wordt tijd dat we dat risico als reel gaan beschouwen en de pensioenproductie inrichten.