We are going through an economic crisis, the UK just got downgraded. The word crisis is misleading because it suggests it will be over some time in the future. In fact we are seeing a transition from an economy cherishing it’s consumers to one that pickes a few consumers and puts the rest either to work or in poverty. It’s called a plutonomy, an elite economy. It is the only option if you don’t want to liberate everyone with renewables.
The economic crisis is a crisis of the belief system of economics, it’s delusional
Of course this is a process supported by one camp in a constant tug of war over the use and ownership of resources. It starts with control over resources, so France is in Mali, the US plans to be in Africa, the UK tried to get the Falklands (unsuccesfully). If you got fuel you can trade it for everything else, energy is the reason there is other stuff at all.
Economics doesn’t have another answer than cut back and hope people ignore the immense slaughter going on in terms of elderly unable to afford medicine, women driven into prostitution and crime etc. etc. We are told it’s because the people involved where greedy and deserved it, or that they are lazy anyway. People with entitlement arrangements. People already living on foodstamp rations. it is quite clear this means people die that would not have otherwise. Even in the most wealthy countries the elderly are put on trial and told to do with less. The reason is irrelevant, only by cutting back can the illusion be maintained that we could give more!
The way out is to do different things from what we do today. The mindset of the consumer is radically different from the mindset of the person that we use at the moment. We don’t need people that tell us it’s their right to have broadband, we need people that tell us we could do without money if we didn’t consume fossil fuels, if we produced more energy locally. The fossil fuel industry created massive areas where the sun and wind are only used for light and fresh air. Land is enormously unproductive. We have houses that for decades used massive amounts of gas, heat escaping through the roof to keep the money flowing. In the time that people burned wood houses would be better insulated, because you can burn wood only so fast or you’ll run out of trees.
Wgenknecht about the Goldman Sachs banking plutocracy.
Leaving this the way it is is unacceptable. The big misconception has three parts, One : Economics works. Two : The people that gave it to us feel they own it and want to take it back. Three : We have a choice. Economics doesn’t work in any way, the creators of the present organization of society don’t own it or have a right to destroy it again. We don’t have a choice.
The answer is to do more and do specific things we don’t do right now. But many people rather go back to their service job earning enough to be a consumer than focus on tasks that yield results. The difference is between people in a holiday camp and the organization. The mentality of life being a big party is maintained to make sure the people in the camp don’t associate with those running it, with the cleaners, the maintenance men.
The solution is ambiguous, because one could say we need to do more work, but at the same time we have renewable energy that can do work for us. You can own renewable energy, so if it does your work you don’t need to work. The whole reason we can have billions of useless consumers is that machines do so much work. This is also the reason some thing we don’t deserve it and it can be taken away from us : The owners of the machines misinterpret their machines productivity for their own.
So the answer is : People need to do more to directly take care of their own lives, and with the rise of renewables that burden can be shifted to machines. Or people should make sure they own the machines, land, factories and make sure there’s renewable energy to power them. Of course the big issue in the way is debt and banks. We don’t own most of what’s around us. Then there is ignorance on the options we have. But the basic building blocks for enduring wealth are widely advertized : Solar, wind, wave, geothermal. Insulation, agricultural science, robotics, semiconductor science. We only need to reorganize our activities.
Money is apart from a way to access fossil fuels an organizer of activity. We organize society by buying the goods and services it produces. We believe money is valuable which make us work for it. Right now money is drained from the economy to reduce consumption, at the same time some inflation is taking place. Both disable our ability to organize our activities. This paralysis is like a prison, and this is exactly what those managing the money want it to be. This is the effect those creating the plutonomy want to see.
There is a source of money we don’t yet aknowledge, a source that will have to be recognized at some point in the future, and that is renewable energy. Renewable energy sources produce energy, this energy needs to be traded to a user, the way to do this is for the owner of the source to sell credits, those credits are money. If you own a pizza place and you neighbour has solar panels (and storage), you can decide to buy KWh of electricity from him. You do that by trading his electricity credits for pizza credits (or a mix of other credits). At the time you need the electricity you pay the credits back to him and you can use the power. This is the way money works today, fundamentally linked to fossil energy.
Money gives access to fossil fuels, you pay for stuff so the producer can produce using fossil fuel. Therein lies the value of your money.
A town could function based on a large wind turbine and storage, with lots of activity. But all activity would be paced by the production of the wind turbine, nothing else. That limit would be clear in the amount of wind energy credits the turbine owner would sell (which could be the town council). Better still, if people in the town own the turbine, they could all get credits each month and use them to buy what they liked. The key is to understand productivity and (immediatley spendeable) money supply are linked, also in our present economy.
The transition from our current economic system to a better one exist in the recognition of local renewable energy credits. In the ability for every person to emit a credit. It consists of breaking down the banking franchise for creating credit based on the fossil fuel supply. Suddenly each person will be able to use all his/her abilities irrespective of what ‘the market’ desires. Suddenly local economies become fully viable and being more usefull once again means being more wealthy. Jobs don’t have to be created, you can create jobs by doing something of use to someone.
Of course there can be brands of credits, and quality control. Renewable energy is most valuable closest to the sources, this creates some complications and changes the nature of an economy because as more people own sources of energy. So wealth would be created in local communities rather than fall from the sky called the ‘global economy’. Qualtiy will be much more important in drawing outside interest. We written about it before, it seems ideally you’d end up in a world where no country or corporation can dominate, and there’s no reason to do so because energy will be abundant and wealth accesible by all. This sounds rather utopian I admit.
Jobs we need are jobs to get us there. Jobs that create renewable energy, jobs that teach us to detach from fossil fuels, jobs that teach us to deal with the changes. Farmers of land that is flooded due to climate change need to do something to be able to carry on, not leave their fields and hope stuff grows in the supermarket. It doesn’t! Our present government and economics is not interested in this scenario, it wants to create an elite that survives, because that’s easier and allows the power structure to continue to operate. It gives a high to be above the fray, to be part of this plutonomy. People like to aspire to it and associate with its cruelty. Better wake up and build the future.