The Ultimate Right - Is this our future?
>Date: Fri Jan 1 05:59:40 1999
>From: tomlunde@cmw.ca ("Thomas Lunde")
>The following is not a joke. Professor Ian Angell does exist. I
>heard him interviewed on CBC Radio about 4 years ago expressing much
>the same sort of views. I do not think, as some futurework
>participants suggested, that this is satire of the extreme right-wing
>position. I am something of an expert on satire, having done doctoral
>studies in 18th century lit, the golden age of English satire, and
>extreme though this is, it lacks the techniques that a writer like
>Swift uses to tip us off that his outrageous proposals are meant
>satirically. Science fiction fans will recognize that the brave new
>world welcomed by Professor Angell has some strong similarities to
>the dark "cyberbunk" vision created by sf writers like Sterling and
>Gibson--a world ruled by high tech corporations with their private
>security forces.
>Notice also that Angell agrees with American liberal futurologist
>Jeremy Rifkin that technology will eliminate vast numbers of jobs in
>the near future. The difference is that Angell would just let the
>displaced workers fall by the wayside while Rifkin wants to make
>provision for them.
JCT: Social Credit has a wonderful solution to the problem of
technology taking over from people. It is the National Dividend,
everyone's share of the robot production. As Major Douglas, the Social
Credit Engineer explained that As the lever of technology gets longer
and longer, the amount of work necessary to produce all we need is
reduced and liberation from work should not be called unemployment and
punished with poverty but should be called leisure and rewarded with a
share of that production through the National Dividend. After I
heard this, I never again feared robots taking away my employment as
long as I got my share of the robot's paycheck.
>I believe that if we do not roll back the right, this world will
>begin to manifest itself. It will never fully realize itself because
>it is bound to self-destruct through its inherent contradictions -
>with great suffering for all. The struggle will not stop with the
>defeat of Mike Harris, whose Whiz Kids are moving us along towards
>this world. We have to continue fighting against corporate rule to
>save ourselves and future generations from the neocon cyberpunk
>world, even to save naive right-wingers like Craig Chandler from the
>long term effects of their own policies. I will be posting this on
>my own website shortly with some more detailed comments. Victor Milne
JCT: When you consider all the deaths as a result of the Ontario
government's 20% cuts the unemployed and social service recipients and
to Health Care, it's obvious that their financial thinking is quite
insane.
>Welcome to the Brave New World
>Party Political broadcast on behalf of SPECTRE given to
>Alliance of Manufacturers & Exporters Canada
>on October 2, 1998
>by Ian O. Angell
>Professor of Computer Science, London School of Economics
>Personal advisor to Ernst Stavro Blofeld
>Introduction
>Welcome to the future. Welcome to a world as different from today, as
>today is from the pre-industrial age. Welcome to Spectre: We are NOT
>the Special Executive for Counter-Espionage, Terrorism, Revenge and
>Extortion. The James Bond myth, that the state is good and global
>corporations (we in Spectre) are bad, is blatant propaganda on behalf
Š>of the nation-state; a morality tale told by tax collectors.
>We're merely global capitalists, and we are tired of the vicious lies
>pouring out of the nation-state; lies that categorize global business
>as criminal, just because we refuse to kow-tow to mere politicians.
>The nation state is dead. James Bond, the patron saint of civil
>servants, the thug of state, is now just another dirty old man.
JCT: You're criminals because you put profits before the lives of
people you should be serving.
>Welcome to our Brave New World.
>But why new? New, because new technology is forcing new order upon an
>unsuspecting world. The future is being born on the so-called
>information superhighways, where everyone in the world (at least
>those who can afford it) can talk to everyone else. Anyone bypassed
>faces ruin. We're on the verge of a new revolution, an Information
>Revolution, that is taking us out of the Machine Age, into who knows
>what .... into that Brave New World.
JCT: With all that ruin, sounds like a Brave New Hell.
>But why Brave? Brave, because this is not a world for the timid. None
>but the brave will win here. The certainties of the twentieth century
>are collapsing. The twentieth century is over. It ended at the Berlin
>Wall in 1989. Everything is changing, and I really do mean
>everything: politics, economics, society as a whole. And I really do
>mean change; not the nice neat change that snake-oil salesmen peddle
>in their change management seminars; not nice tidy transition, but
>severe and total dislocation with the past.
JCT: Unless the Earth's peoples can get LETS accounts with which
to purchase life support first.
>Organizations, like Spectre do not identify with, are indifferent to,
>any particular country, and relocate (physically, fiscally or
>electronically) to where the profit is greatest and the regulation
>least. We think globally, because we communicate globally and because
>our shareholders, our executive, and our employees are spread out
>across the globe!
JCT: And moving their polluting operations to poorer
jurisdictions which must choose between jobs and poisoned environment
versus no jobs and no food in order to maximize profits is no excuse.
>We are virtual enterprises at the hub of loosely knit alliances, all
>linked together by global networks: electronic, transport and human.
>We assemble to take advantage of any temporary business opportunity;
>and then we separate, each company moving on to its next major deal.
>We are project-based, and developed around complex information
>systems.
JCT: That's right. You take advantage of the weak to maximize
your profits when it isn't necessary if you were to use LETS banking
rather than usury banking.
>The information system IS the virtual enterprise; it IS the
>headquarters; and it can be based virtually anywhere in Cyberspace.
>And while in cyberspace the apparent size of the firm can be
>amplified far beyond the physical reality. You are what you claim to
>be; you are what you can deliver via telecommunication networks.
>Global business will desert factory or office if the demands of
>workers are excessive just like Timex did when it abandoned its
>Dundee site. They sent in the helicopters and took what they wanted;
>they waved to the demonstrators fuming below, and left the local
>authority with useless real estate. We are changing the nature of
>work. With the networked portable computer and the mobile phone, we
>are turning office workers into road warriors, and squeezing 30% more
Š>work out of them. The virtual office is merely a mobile node in a
>telecommunications network. Cars, homes, airports, aeroplanes are now
>just extensions of the office.
JCT: That's right, you're squeezing the workers to the point
where we can estimate the deaths you've caused. This squeezing has
been going on throughout history but things are going to change.
>The all-knowing company (just-in-timeshare) information system will
>establish the exact location of each and every employee, and messages
>for her will be delivered directly, just-in-time, no matter where she
>is in the building, no matter where she is in the world. I say she,
>because the workplace (whatever that is) will be feminized. In the UK
>women already take up 44% of the jobs. Because of the changing nature
>of work, and the freedoms delivered by home-working, the Henley
>Centre predicts that women will take on 80% of all new jobs being
>created in the next decade.
>Companies will shed office space. Offices can be hired on short time
>scales perhaps within even just a few hours. Hotels, railway stations
>and airports are already supplying temporary office space. We in
>Spectre don't pay any rent at all. We hold our meetings in the lobby
>of the best hotel in town, and all for the price of afternoon tea.
>The demand for space is a tiny fraction of the supply: And so the
>value of commercial real estate will enter free-fall. There are going
>to be very bad times ahead for the owners of office blocks. So don't
>get tied into long-term office leases; there are bargains galore
>around the corner. Sell your property shares quickly before the
>meltdown.
>No office, means: no rent, heat and light, insurance, and the number
>of support jobs can be slashed: tea ladies, security men, cleaners,
>receptionists, canteen staff, porters, electricians, plumbers,
>carpenters, janitors. All the jobs that supported the workplace of
>the Machine Age are now endangered species in the Information Age.
>Companies will use fewer workers to cover the same work load.
JCT: And who is going to buy all your products when you've
eliminated so many pay-checks? Sure you'll have all the money but you
won't be able to consume it all yourselves, will you?
>Those lucky enough to be in work, will have to work harder, for more
>hours each week, for less pay, in less secure jobs: and they had damn
>well better be grateful for it. No longer tied to a single location,
>we are free to exploit the workers. Management can finally get its
>revenge and kill off those damn trades unions. We can really shaft
>troublesome workers. In Spectre we don't even look them in the eye.
>We fire them by E-mail.
JCT: Seems like you've got a more efficient kind of slavery
planned for us.
>For humanity is polarizing into two employment categories: the
>financial, intellectual, cultural and business elite (the knowledge
>workers) the Alphas; and the rest (the service workers). It is time
>to rid ourselves of the backward looking idea that work involves
>physical effort. Of course labour is needed - but there is a world
>full of labourers out there. It is that rare commodity - human
>intellect - that is the stuff of work in tomorrow's world.
>No company can survive without its Alphas, but it can replace service
>workers with robots or export the jobs anywhere on the globe.
>Offices, factories and headquarters will move from high cost areas to
>low cost. British Telecom Directory Enquiries for London is based in
>Scotland. Companies can just as easily move abroad. ICL, the British
>computer company, runs main-frame help line from Poona in India.
>Courage, British institution, makes all its toys in China. A host of
>countries are out there making you an offer you can't refuse.
Š JCT: Sounds like you've got everyone by the throat.
>Meanwhile, money, which is merely a means of facilitating economic
>transactions, has itself become electronic information. What
>constitutes money can no longer be monopolized by the state. Money
>does not have to be created legal tender by governments. Like law,
>language and morals it can emerge spontaneously. Such private money
>has often been preferred to government money, but government has
>usually soon suppressed it (Hayek). In the age of Internet can
>government keep suppressing it? Hayek's vision of the
>Denationalization of Money can now become a reality.
JCT: It already is. They haven't been able to suppress the LETS
private money systems so far and with many thousands around the world
and several governments already supporting them, there's the good
chance that this ugly corporate scenario doesn't have to continue.
>The real issue is not dollar bills, but Bill's [Gates] dollars; every
>corporation will issue its own electronic money. Such trends make
>taxation of profits and regulation of the process almost impossible.
>But a real competitive advantage for those who are willing to trade
>their expertise in this electronic market.
JCT: It does a lot more than that. It frees those corporations
from paying debt service and passing those costs along to use in their
prices. What he seems to think is another weapon in the hands of the
corporations, I see as their and our liberation from the corporate
tyranny expressed.
>We Alphas are the real generators of wealth. Our income will increase
>substantially. We will be made welcome anywhere in the world. Foreign
>entrepreneurial investors with 1 million at their disposal can bypass
>the usual entry rules into the UK.
JCT: Sorry, I think it's the farmers, engineers and manufacturing
workers and certainly not those sitting in the corporate boardrooms.
>But poor Britain has been very slow off the Mark, with the added
>embarrassment that none of the migrant rich want to live there. In
>the United States, there is a fast-track immigration policy for
>businessmen who can offer $1 million and employ 10 people. In 1993
>six hundred millionaires emigrated to America.
JCT: But once the shortage of money is solved, they'll have to be
a little more talented than mere possession of money.
>However, service workers are a net loss. There are a billion new
>workers in the global marketplace. It is no accident that most
>Western companies are instigating major downsizing, delayering and
>outsourcing programs.
>The motto for everyone is "add value or perish!"
>There is no room for sentimentality in this Brave New World.
JCT: There's plenty of room if you use LETS to love thy neighbor
rather than your wish to exploit your neighbor.
>Companies must ask, and answer, some very brutal questions concerning
>which workers are resources and which are liabilities. Acting in this
>way they are not being callous, unscrupulous, unprincipled or
>immoral. "Nature is not immoral, when it has no pity for the
>degenerate." (Nietzsche).
JCT: Yes but Nature is full of animals. I'm glad to think that
I've transcended this Law of the Jungle mentality and I'd bet that
when the world banking software is upgraded to LETS, Professor Angell
is going to feel pretty stupid for having expressed such heartless and
blood-thirsty views.
Š>Of course, out-of-touch politicians, both the knaves and the naive,
>incant the words - training - in New Technology and - jobs - through
>growth, pretending they can conjure up new jobs for the huge number
>of soon-to-be-unemployed - it's not that simple.
JCT: That's right, politicians who think this way are silly but
I'm not in the political section of the 1997-8 Guinness Book of World
Records for holding such silly views. Politicians like me hold the
view of the great Quebec Social Credit politician Real Caouette that:
"If you want more jobs, take out the bulldozer and put in 50 men with
shovels. You want more jobs? Take away their shovels and give them
spoons. It's not the jobs they want but the money necessary to feed
their families."
>For technology is the problem, not the solution.
JCT: Depends if you understand how the dividend works or not. In
Professor Angell's case, not.
>Productivity is delivered by a technology needing only a few machine
>minders growth comes from the intellect of knowledge workers, not
>from the labour of service and production workers.
JCT: And it certainly doesn't come from the owners and share-
holders. They're the greatest drones of all.
>States must learn that they are now just a form of commercial
>enterprise and they will have to be run like corporations.
>Governments, like all other organizations will have to survive
>economically on the efforts of an elite few and no nation-state has
>an automatic right to exist.
JCT: And very soon, they'll have to wise up like the corporations
and issue their own money rather than letting banks create and
borrowing it from them and then taxing us to pay them interest. My
party, the Abolitionist Party of Canada, is in favor of returning the
power to create money to the treasury and saving all that debt
service. If corporations can do it, any government can do it too.
>Now the Alpha chooses to give his loyalty freely and voluntarily;
>loyalty is no longer an accident of birth. It is individual, not
>tribal; contractual not judicial; it is made consciously on the basis
>of unashamed rational self-interest. If the state can't produce
>quality people products, in sufficient quantities, then it must buy
>it from abroad.
>Each state must scour the globe for elite knowledge workers, no
>matter what their age, sex, religion or race. Drag them off the
>planes if necessary. These entrepreneurs, who can flee, will be
>immune to taxation. Tax credits and tax holidays will be the name of
>the game everywhere.
JCT: Assuming governments remain in thrall to their usurers.
>Governments have no choice. They must submit to the will of global
>enterprise. The British government had to bribe the Chung Hwa Picture
>Tube Company with 80 million to open a factory in Scotland.
JCT: Just because he can't see doesn't mean governments will also
be unable to see. Several governments are already getting a glimpse of
the benefits of supporting community LETS and it's only a matter of
time until they see the benefit of using their own interest-free LETS
currency themselves.
>In order to attract the elite with their knowledge and money to
>enliven the economy, Alphas will be expected to be less taxed and not
>more! Arbitrage pressures, exploitation of price/tax/regulation
>differentials mean the end of progressive taxation. Companies can
>demand that its senior executives be given diplomatic status: no
Š>income tax! When Leona Helmsley said only the little people pay taxes
>she was making a prediction. Strapped for cash, governments will tax
>anything in solid form: we will see taxes on fuel, food and clothes.
>Property taxes will rise: in 1913 60% of US tax revenues came from
>property; today it is 10%; in 2013 will it be back at 60%?
JCT: So not only are the workers to be laid-off but they're also
supposed to be the ones paying the taxes while those who get all the
money are the ones who won't have to pay taxes. Sounds quite illogical
to me.
>But nobody wants more service workers; each state has a surplus of
>its own to support. Barriers will be thrown up everywhere to keep out
>alien service workers. It is already happening. In California,
>proposition 187 bars nearly two million illegal immigrants from
>schools, welfare services, and all but emergency health care.
>How long before there are differential rights, for differentiated
>citizens, identified in data base, and policed by smart cards? How
>long before the notion of Human Rights is as outdated as the Divine
>Right of Kings?
JCT: If guys like you stay in charge, I guess it won't be long at
all before Human Rights become outdated.
>The fact is - many too many are born.
JCT: Not in wealthy societies where birth rates always go down.
The trick is to create wealthy societies who can afford birth control.
>The state was devised for the superfluous ones.
JCT: The state was devised to give the money plates to the rich
and collect our taxes to pay the loansharks their usury.
>Mass-production methods needed an over-supply of humanity; the
>Machine Age spawned the nation-state, but with its demise what is to
>be done with the glut as we enter the Information age? Not only will
>state be pitted against state, but also against area, town against
>town, even suburb against suburb.
JCT: But economic warfare over insufficient money has been the
story of all our history, so far.
>Global corporations have shown that the nation-state is too small for
>the big things and too big for the small things. Nation-states will
>fragment. Rich areas will dump poor areas. The number of states in
>the United Nations will increase from its present number of 184 to
>over a thousand. Belgium will break up. So will Italy, Spain, France
>and Germany. and what about the United Kingdom(?) which has never
>been truly united. How soon before the rich South-East of England
>realize the benefits of discarding that black hole for taxes north
>of Watford?
JCT: As long as they all start up their own government LETS,
they'd all be better off. I always found it amusing that though Quebec
talks of separation, they also say they will stay in debt and continue
paying interest to the Bank of Canada. All kinds of independence but
not financial independence. If they were smart, they'd do the opposite
by creating the LETS Bank of Quebec and not separating.
>And what will replace the nation state? We Alphas, tired of
>supporting the ungrateful masses, are on the move to hot spots
>modeled along the lines of Hong Kong, Singapore, Liechtenstein. We
>are reinventing the medieval City State as the Smart City at the hub
>of global electronic and transport networks. An independent
>cosmopolitan City State of London makes real economic sense. Think
>of it! Home rule for London inside the M25 orbital motorway.
JCT: Seems like a futuristic movie I saw recently with a high-
Štech city surrounded by dirty starving slums. Oh, that's what most
large Third World cities already look like anyway.
>The Free City of London can be a tiger economy attracting in global
>corporations, but only if we chop off the dead hand of the Mother of
>Parliaments, the sleaze-machine of Westminster. If the House of
>Commons really wants to help London, then they should move to
>Birmingham.
JCT: If they really want to help London, they should upgrade the
Bank of England's software to LETS instead of just endorsing it for
the general population to set up on their own.
>The lights are going out for wide sectors of society, And for whole
>categories of employment. Involvement in the black economy, in
>essence an alternative economy, is the only option open to the losers
>who are surplus to requirements in the legitimate economy.
JCT: And fortunately, LETS is there to take up the slack by using
the Local Employment-Trading System to organize a System of Trading
Employment Locally. LETS is a do-it-yourself currency system that can
handle their re-employment as fast as Professor Angell lays them off.
>We're entering a new Dark Age: an age of hopelessness, an age of
>resentment, an age of Rage.
JCT: It's not new. It's been with us throughout history. It's
just new to the First World that's just starting to get a taste of
what the Third World has been going through.
>Redundancy Rage is appearing among the unemployed.
>Newly redundant workers attack senior management and their
>ex-colleagues in the workplace, on the street and in their homes. A
>certain Los Angeles company has had five senior executives murdered
>in the past two years. Grudge terror, whether the grudge is real or
>imagined, is reality: just think of the unabomber in the US and the
>Mardi Gras bombers' attacks on Barclays Bank in the UK.
JCT: Sort of like my Anti-Nuclear picket sign which read "Bankers
Finance War, Nuke the Banks." Seems like they're taking their rage out
on the wrong guys.
>Societies are re-stratifying; new elites are appearing. The rich are
>getting richer, and the poor poorer.
JCT: And interest is the banking software that takes from the
poor to make the rich richer. When LETS is finally installed, the rich
will lend their abundance to the poor.
>We are already witnessing the emergence of a rapidly expanding
>underclass. The streets of London are again littered with beggars.
>In the transition we can expect massive civil unrest and disorder.
>The soon-to-be-have-nots - have nothing to lose and will riot.
>This is what happened in France in the winter of 1995, when workers
>and students took to the streets in defense of their cradle-to-grave
>welfare system.
JCT: They may have taken to the streets but you can bet that they
didn't know what they were for, just what they're against. Just
because they haven't identified the problem yet doesn't mean they'll
be that way forever. The first LETS in France started in 1994 and now
there are over 300. See http://turmelpress.com/letssites.htm
>It happened in Belgium, South Korea and Germany. German coal miners
>re subsidized to the tune of 150,000DM each year! It can't go on.
>This is the economics of the madhouse, and the lunatics are in charge
>of the asylum.
JCT: Yes and you're one of the guys in charge.
Š
>These crazy politicians cannot indefinitely keep buying votes and
>still hope to fend off the inevitable. Real world crime is finding a
>counterpart in Cyberspace: computer variants of protection rackets,
>blackmail, murder, kidnapping, smuggling, counterfeiting, fraud,
>threatening behaviour, vandalism (fax graffiti) and pornography will
>inevitably appear.
JCT: Will? It's already here.
>Don't look to the police for help. With the lack of government
>resources, the main role for state police, perhaps the only role,
>will be the maintenance of civil order. Governments are control
>freaks, they will never give up pushing the population round. But
>because of the lack of revenue, other police duties, such as solving
>crime, which today you take for granted, will increasingly be
>outsourced.
JCT: But that is not how governments which have used LETS
currencies operate. Argentinian provinces started up their own local
currencies using small denomination of interest-free provincial bonds
back in 1985 which allowed them to look out for their citizens, not
fight them off. http://turmelpress.com/np2.htm
>Today in the US there are nearly three times as many private security
>guards as there are public police - even in the UK the figure is two
>to one. The eleventh biggest police force in the US is the New York
>Schools Authority.
>The natural order is reasserting itself: the police are not there to
>protect the masses, they are there to protect the property of the
>rich from the masses. Lack of government funding may mean the end of
>the Welfare State, but the rich will always find money for security.
>The security of Alphas is going to be big business, perhaps the only
>growth business in the Information Age. Whenever anyone asks me for
>career advice I always say: if you can't be a knowledge worker... be
>a policeman.
JCT: Prison guards will be in great demand in your Brave New
World.
>So this is not a time for despair, quite the opposite. It is a time
>of great opportunity for the few, a great opportunity for YOU. It is
>in such times that new empires are made - today that means new global
>business empires. For a few companies the future looks very bright.
JCT: Don't despair because it's a great opportunity for a few? I
despair because there's no opportunity for the many.
>Information technology has liberated the elite few, from the mind-set
>and the moralities of the tribe. We ignore tribal loyalties. There
>are enormous opportunities for those who have the vigour and
>vitality, the nerve, to break free of the limitations of tribal
>boundaries drawn from the past, and who have the vision to redraw
>their own orders, their own future.
JCT: It's called looking out for number one. Sounds like there's
no room for selfishness and love in your new world.
>It isn't going to be easy, and it isn't going to be nice. "I have
>often laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good because
>they had no claws" (Nietzsche). Societal evolution is not benign.
JCT: The point is that it can be. If we stop the system that
takes from the poor to give to rich. Notice that with LETS, we do not
take from the rich, we just borrow from the rich with the guarantee
that they can have it back as fast as they want it and can use it.
>Evolution is by nature red in tooth and claw; it spawns carnivores as
Š>well as herbivores. The carnivores of Spectre care nothing for
>democracy or the rules of parliament, that are representative of
>herbivores. Grass eaters beware, the jackals are circling, the hyenas
>are laughing. Specter's time has come. Why not join us?
JCT: No thanks. I'll reserve my claws for you jackals and
laughing hyenas. Specter's time is over.
>In this brutal and brutish world remember Baudelaires' words: "one is
>punished for being weak, not for being cruel."
>From your expressions I seem to have shocked many of you.
JCT: Is it any wonder? You represent a monstrous jungle
philosophy as inevitable. Of course, you probably don't know about
LETS or its potential for peace and prosperity for all. Of course, you
won't be able to exploit anyone anymore. Too bad.
>It's discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and
>how few by deceit. I'm discouraged, but not surprised.
JCT: I'm not shocked by the honesty, I'm shocked by the
depravity.
>But whether you like it on not, you are faced with a very simple
>choice: create your own future, or fall into somebody else's; take
>control of your own destiny, or be at the mercy of another's whim.
JCT: That's exactly what LETS allows us to do, to take control of
our own destiny without doing it over the carcasses of the weakers
members of the human family.
>Grab hold of the future. "The reasonable man adapts himself to the
>world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to
>himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
>(George Bernard Shaw).
JCT: We're trying to adapt the world to ourselves, but all of us
and I don't think that makes us unreasonable though all progess does
depend on our re-engineering the worlds to the needs of all mankind
and not only to the Alphas.
>SPECTRE is very unreasonable. And Spectre is going to win. Global
>business is not your enemy - populist governments are. Petty
>politicians are merely moving the deckchairs on the Titanic: we've
>already launched the lifeboats.
JCT: Sorry, but LETS have been called life-boats. What you
have described is a galley for slavers and slaves.
>Spectre is the government in waiting. We will create our own new
>world order. Don't think you can deny global business. For remember,
>those who are not with us are against us.
JCT: I'm against you but as long as the corporate world starts up
its own interest-free currency system, they'll be tamed whether they
know it or not.
>Take the advice of Niccolo Machiavelli. On his deathbed, a priest
>asked him
>:do you renounce the devil and all his works? Machiavelli replied
>:"This is no time to be making enemies."
JCT: And I'm sure he's getting along well with the one he feared
to make his enemy. Beware you don't join him.
>Don't make an enemy of global business. Why not join us? The choice
>is yours. Where will you fit in? will you fit in?
JCT: The Engineer will not be mastered by any system, The
Engineer will master the system. I don't want to fit into your system.
I want a system where I belong.
Š
>END OF TALK PROF. IAN O. ANGELL
>Oct. 2, 1998 to Alliance of Manufacturers & Exporters Canada
JCT: This is probably one of the most disgusting, defeatist
opinions I've ever read. I think you should call yourself an Omega
from the bottom of the swamp and leave the designation of Alpha to
those of us who have not accepted your Hell of a world but who will
re-engineer it into a Heaven of a world to the benefit of all mankind.
Thanks Thomas Lunde for posting this.
-------------------------------
The Ultimate Right - Is this our future? #2
>Date: Wed Dec 30 14:27:13 1998
>From: mmattos@pipcom.com (Mary Mattos)
>Subject: TURMEL - comments on Ontario Govt
>>JCT: When you consider all the deaths as a result of the Ontario
>>government's 20% cuts the unemployed and social service recipients
>>and to Health Care, it's obvious that their financial thinking is
>>quite insane.
>Do you have stats? I agree with you totally that the deaths are
>fallout from this Govt. I would be really interested in seeing the
>numbers relative to those of the preceding 15 years or so.
>I would include murder, suicide, freezing to death on the streets,
>neglect in waiting rooms at hospitals and clinics, etc., police
>shootings, ...
JCT: I don't have any numbers and I'd love to have them too.
They'd be very usefull. Yet I remember reading about a few cases of
people who died because the ambulance services had been cut back and
people who died before they could be operated on in hospital. I also
remember reading about 40 homeless found dead either in the Toronto
area or Ontario.
Regardless, when the Mike Harris cut welfare by 20% and most
people's fixed expenses like rent, electricity, telephone remained the
same, it amounted to more like a 40% cut in their life-support tickets
and I deduced there would be more children suffering malnutrition and
disease from lack of medicine. There would be more murders, suicides,
dead homeless, every type of death due to the lack of life-support
tickets.
I can just imagine Harris's alibi when he faces his judgment day:
"I had to cut their life-support tickets because we had to
balance our books."
Though I've heard it said "forgive them for they know not what
they are doing," it's pretty tough when we consider the results of
policies written by their hands. It does validate the notion that
people who study finance and economics are driven insane in this most
obvious way.
>doesn't have much to do with LETS at first glance, but these ARE the
>ills that LETS could help alleviate. Mary Mattos
JCT: That's right. A government LETS could open up all the
hospitals, put all the ambulances and their crews back on the roads
and get sufficient food and medicine to all children and their
parents. It's especially indicting of those politicians who were
elected after running against me and hearing me explain over and over
at our debates how the LETS anti-poverty system could save society's
needy. I wonder what their alibi's going to be:
"My opponent was wearing a white Engineer's hard-hat and
kept talking about a computer program so I didn't take him seriously.
As the passage in Ezekiel mentions, I fulfilled my duty by
alerting them to the solution to all this death by poverty so they
won't have much excuse for having all those people die while they were
Šin power.
What's amazing is that in every town and state everywhere around
the world are politicians doing exactly the same thing on the same
grounds of financial expediency.
>Date: Thu Dec 31 05:25:00 1998
>From: mblackmore@gn.apc.org (M.Blackmore)
>If this is true, it's scary. To say the least. I have no trouble
>believing that some consider themselves to be the ubermensch of the
>global glory to come... I seem to remember hearing that before.
JCT: I you think this is scary, you'll reel when you read some of
the information from David Astle's book "Babylonian Woe" about the
banking system in antiquity. It's more like the Debt Slavery system in
antiquity. After peoples are tricked into debt using themselves as
collateral for the mort-gage death-gambles and were then foreclosed
upon, they were usually worked to death in galleys or mines in just a
few years. One passage:
(Diodorus Siculus (A. Del Mar: A History of Precious Metals)
gives a striking picture of the horrors of marginal profit gold mining
as carried out with slave labor in ancient times in the Nubia in
B.C.50:
"There are thus infinite numbers thrown into these mines, all
bound in fetters, kept a work night and day, and so strictly
surrounded that there is no possibility of their effecting an escape.
They are guarded by mercenary soldiers of various barbarous nations,
whose language is foreign to them and to each other, so that there are
no means of forming conspiracies or of corrupting those who are set to
watch them. They are kept at incessant work by the rod of the overseer
who often lashes them severely. Not the least care is taken of the
bodies of these poor creatures; they have not a rag to cover their
nakedness; and whoever sees them must compassionate their melancholy
and deplorable condition, for though they may be sick maimed or lame,
no rest nor any intermission of labor is allowed them. Neither the
weakness of old age nor the infirmities of females excuse any from the
work, to which al are driven by blows and cudgels; until borne down by
the intolerable weight of their misery, many fall dead in the midst of
their insufferable labors. Deprived of all hope, these miserable
creatures expect each day to be worse than the last and long for death
to end their sufferings.")
Valdivia declared that every castellano of gold from Peru cost a
measure of human blood and tears. What was the cost to the Romans or
Greeks, it would be hard to say but a human life for every ounce would
probably be well within the mark.
Sounds a lot like the kind of world Prof. Angell would feel right
at home in.
Astle's book is by far the most informative book on money written
by someone who completely understood the money creative principles
behind LETS. It's the reason I think LETSers may appreciate it as much
as I do and also the reason people who don't understand LETS and think
that banks lend out their savers' money like piggy banks will find it
quite incomprehensible.
I've been working tirelessly at transcribing all the best
passages of his book and starting in early 1999, I will be publishing
it and a later analysis at lets@onelist.com.
Read in conjunction with what many people consider the greatest
history book of contemporary times, Tragedy and Hope by Carroll
Quigley, they provide an invaluable education in the history of debt
slavery banking and also the many historical examples of LETS style
banks used by the treauries of some rulers of antiquity.
Š>Can someone check out if Angell exists? If he is for real, and which
>groups he regularly has connections with?
JCT: I did a search and he's a professor at the London School of
Economics, training ground of many of the world's worst politicians.
Early in my political career, the leadership of Canada's three major
parties was riddled with their graduates including Liberal Pierre
Trudeau, Tory John Crosbie and New Democrat Ed Broadbent. It's no
wonder that no matter who gets in, policies never change and Prof.
Angell has given us a good idea of the type of thinking they have been
exposed to.
>And isn't it about time we started up cells to develop hit lists, and
>think about sytematically carrying them out?
JCT: Mohammed would certainly agree with waging war on them but
given we are so close to a technical solution, the mere upgrading of
the world's banking system to the LETS software, there's no reason to
not restrict our efforts to non-violent means. Remember that in his
own talk, he mentioned the large corporations starting up their own
LETS currencies even though he did not realize the ramifications of
it. We do though.
It's just like all the hue and cry over some of the large banks
in Canada merging and having too much power. I can only say that it
just means that there are less central computers that we have to get
at and look forward to the day when there is only one. So despite the
seeming threats, the solution despite all the appearances is inherent
in the technology.
>As he says, weakness is contemptible. Perhaps we ought to be doing a
>bit of cleaning out of the gene pool ourselves.
JCT: Let's not forget that he's coming from a class of people who
think their success is a function of their own worthiness without
realizing they have enjoyed the advantages of crooked system. Without
any idea of how the better system would operate, you never know if
he'd change his thinking once the ramifications of corporate LETS
eventually merging with local LETS become as apparent to him as they
are to me. There's a difference between advocating the law of the
jungle when you don't know there's a better way and when you find out
that there is.
I sent him a copy of my post so it might have gotten his
attention enough to search out information on LETS. Besides, with
so many LETS in the UK and so many recent national articles on it,
he'd have to be pretty unread not to have heard about it yet. It might
just alert him to its full potential and he might just change his very
dismal tune.
>Last thought:
>>But whether you like it on not, you are faced with a very simple
>>choice: create your own future, or fall into somebody else's; take
>>control of your own destiny, or be at the mercy of another's whim.
>Quite right. We've got to make sure it is us who do the creating....
JCT: My feeling exactly. LETS gives us the independent power to
create the world in the way we want it to be and we are doing just
that. Most LETSers don't realize the ramifications of what we're
doing but once LETS has saved the world from debt slavery, we'll all
be heroes.
-------------------------------
The Ultimate Right - Is this our future? #3
>Date: Fri Jan 1 00:32:05 1999
>From: marytheris@quebec-city.crosswinds.net ("Mary Therise Gleason")
>Subject: [SystemPolitics] Re: PROF. ANGELL'S JAMES BOND COMIC BOOK
Š>BRAVE NEW WORLD
>>From: "Thomas Lunde" <tomlunde@cmw.ca>
>>>From: Norman Samish <ncsamish@ieway.com>
>>>Prog. Angell's statement, if not satire, is apparently meant to
>>>shock his listeners.
>>In therapy, we call this mind reading. The assumption that you know
>>why another person is acting the way they are acting - in therapy,
>>it is found that this divorces you from reality - for you assume you
>>already know - therefore how can you learn if you already know. A
>>more correct response would be to take personal responsibility by
>>saying, "this shocked me".
>I didn't find Mr. Angell's statement "shocking". It was a very
>coherent and naked statement of common capitalist economist's views.
JCT: As did I. It's exactly the slave-driver mentality I'd expect
from people who have been on the gravy train and can't see any way for
everyone else to get on too. To them, it's fighting for a place on a
life-boat, a game to the death. Then again, that's exactly what "morg-
gage" means in French, "death-gamble." And it's exactly how interest
causes the economy to work where some survive and others get
foreclosed on.
>(Hayek is the only economist called by name, but the influence of
>others such as Friedman and Mencken is undeniable.) Angell's
>credentials as a professor of economics are somewhat suspect, given
>that his "sources" consist of Bartlett's quotations, James Bond
>films, and Hayek's "Denationalisation of Money" (which is prominent
>online with Libertarian, Objectivist, Extropian, Transhumanist, and
>other cultish evangelical groups).
JCT: Of course, people who start up their own LETS local
currencies are certainly engineering their own denationalized money so
though these economists have dreamed of such a thing, we're not in
the position to see it being done.
>I printed this essay up and showed it to some friends and family
>members. Their common reaction was that it was poorly written and
>reflected a low level of education.
JCT: I don't know why they would have felt that way. I certainly
took it to be the work of someone who was a winner in the death-gamble
game but who was heartless in his expectations of the future.
>For instance, the reference to SPECTRE and James Bond is about as
>obscure as they come. The organization SPECTRE was only referred to
>prominently in a handful of the early Bond movies. In subsequent
>films, the term SPECTRE was not allowed, due to a copyright dispute
>between Ian Fleming and Kevin McClory, who "co-wrote" THUNDERBALL.
>The subsequent name for the elusive criminal outfit trying to "Rule
>the World", was SMERSH, short for SMERt SHpionom, which roughly
>translates in Russian to "death to spies". This term also popped up
>in FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE, and other early Bond movies...
>Sources: http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/~prospero/bond/spectre.html
>http://www.faqs.org/faqs/james-bond/FAQ/
JCT: Yet the point is made that if there were a conspiracy to use
the financial system to rule the world, as SMERSH was a conspiracy to
rule the world with no particular mechanism as the tool, this is how
they would think. Just like war propaganda must dehumanize the enemy
in order to make the killing of that enemy psychologically easier to
accept, so too, the rich have to assume that the losers who will
continue to perish from famine and poverty are in some way subhuman.
It's the reasoning of every conqueror ever to genocide their victims
Šand the fact these conquerors genocide their victims by taking away
their life-support tickets with which to purchase food, it still needs
to be rationalized in the same way.
>>Norman wrote:
>>>It sounds correct in many ways, to me. It looks like the "Alphas"
>>>will have it OK but the "Betas," in oversupply, will not. (The
>>>Alphas are going to have to watch their step or the Betas may pull
>>>a French Revolution on them.
JCT: It's not that the Alphas "will have it OK" and the Betas
"will not" but that the Alphas "do have it OK" while the Betas now "do
not." This is going on and has throughout all our history. The winners
survive the death-gamble, the losers were foreclosed upon and worked
to death in a couple of years as galley slaves or mining slaves though
today, they are left to languish in poverty and misery with an iron
fist ready to smash them should they rebel in any way.
I am unaware that the French revolution benefited the poor in any
way though I have read that certain wealthy individuals who financed
it did okay.
>>>This is the "natural order" in progress right before our eyes!
>>This "natural order" that you speak of, could you write me a little
>>essay on it?
>He already stated it in terms put forth by Hobbes, Locke, and Paine,
>didn't he? Of course, he never actually quoted anyone or put anything
>in his own words, just expected all of us to have read the same books
>and made the same conclusions as he is predisposed to make...
JCT: But it is the natural order that has existed for so long.
It's only shocking to have it stated so straightforwardly.
>>Norman:
>>>It's clear you don't like this scenario- I can't say I do, but I
>>>feel powerless to prevent it. I'm not sure I'd want to prevent it
>>>if I had the power.
>>Thomas: Thank God you don't have the power Norman.
>Norman is clearly contradicting himself, or else he is simply a
>coward. How else can you say "I can't say I [like it]", but "I'm not
>sure I'd want to prevent it [if I could]"?
JCT: There's no reason to assume that because he doesn't know
what he would do if he had the power to do something that he is being
a coward. He's just being honest in admitting that short of having an
alternate answer, he's wondering if letting the law of the jungle go
on may be the best thing.
I can only hope that he looks into how a Global LETS could
provide for an abundant life for all Earth's inhabitants so that he
could answer, as I can, that if I had the power, I would give everyone
a LETS interest-free currency account so that those who have abundance
won't have too much and those who don't have abundance won't have too
little.
>>Norman wrote:
>>>Your proposals are to put a floor and a ceiling on income, thereby
>>>giving everyone more of an equal shot at being an Alpha than they
>>>currently have.
>>Thomas:
>>You are transposing. I said nothing about Alpha's a stupid
>>designation in my opinion. What I am saying is that there should be
>>a redistribution of wealth with a "right to life" principle that
Š>>allows "all" to have a minimal income and that to accomplish that I
>>see that a ceiling on wealth is one of the methodologies that could
>>help accomplish that.
JCT: I thought I offered an explanation of how LETS sets no
ceiling nor a floor on earnings though whatever is produced in
abundance is efficiently allocated to those who have need of it. In
this way, those who earn much have call on much but never more than
they can use while those who earn little may borrow from the central
storehouse and rarely have less tan they can use.
Unlike the Communist "From each according to his ability and to
each according to his need" which stultifies industrial effort by
taking away the reward for extra effort, lending the abundance keeps
the entrepreneurial spirit while evening out income spending, if not
earning, patterns.
>If, as Angell states, corporations can create their own electronic
>currency, and conduct encrypted transfers through anonymous channels,
>it might not be possible to accomplish upper limits on income and
>property accumulation (the Bill Gates scenario).
JCT: Which, of course, is no problem if we're using the LETS
money system software. What's wrong with Bill having 50 billion owed
to his account while the 49 billion, 999 million he can't spend this
year has been loaned to the needy whose accounts share the negative?
>In which case, outright seizure of control of the productive
>equipment (through revolution or by military force) would be the
>only way to avoid decimation of the human species en masse. When
>confronted with that realization, those "soon-to-be-have-nots" which
>Angell scornfully refers to will react rather harshly, I suspect.
>And private police forces aren't going to protect the greedy and
>their cronies/stoolies.
JCT: Of course, if one assumes that we don't use LETS to
efficiently share out the abundance, then violence is the only
recourse left for those who are supposed to die out anyway.
>>Norman wrote:
>>>There are fundamental problems with this approach:
>>>1) The Alphas will be the cream of the future society. These will
>>>be determined by brain power, not by limits on income or floors on
>>>income. To be "fair" you would have to guarantee everyone the same
>>>chance at being an Alpha. This cannot be done because Alpha-ism is
>>>genetic. They will rule the earth, and the betas should follow
>>>nature's way and die out.
>>Thomas:
>>Nice assumption. It is not brain power that they have but
>>truthlessness and the power to use it. Why should I want to set up
>>a system that would guarantee the increase of ruthlessness? What
>>you are talking about, in my opinion, is rule by the Mafia.
>Excellent point. Deep Pockets is as tyrannical as any fascist state
>that has ever existed. Unchecked, unaccountable power by corporations
>corrupts just as surely as does power in the hands of any other agent
>(including government).
JCT: And all forced to act this way by the threat of foreclosure
if they don't come up with both the principal and the interest when
they were all only originally loaned the principal. It's not called
death-gamble for nothing and even Keynes likened the mort-gage to
musical chairs where all know that when the music ends, someone is
eliminated. And even though it's only an accounting elimination, it
still adds up to no life-support tickets and hence no life-support.
And people will lie, steal, kill for life-support tickets when the
Šalternative is no life. Is it any wonder that usury, the destroyer of
civilizations, is condemned by all the great wise religious men no
matter how it is approved by the unwise economists who promote its
use. We've ignored their prohibitions at our peril.
>>Norman:
>>>2) With the weakening of governments that Prof. Angell predicts,
>>>how could governments, even if they wanted to, guarantee everyone
>>>an income floor and ceiling? That doesn't look feasible.
JCT: Of course, you'll have to examine how Global LETS would work
in order to answer the question. Otherwise, there is no answer to
death-gamble.
>>Thomas:
>>Governments are still the reflection of the people. When they
>>finally no longer reflect the will of the people, revolutions occur.
>>Governments change either from within - as in new leadership or from
>>without, external forces ie revolution, war, technical change or
>>disaster. There will always be governments because the ordering of
>>human affairs reguires some meta guidance. The challenge is to get
>>governments that govern for the betterment of all citizens - not
>>just a priveleged few.
>The wealthy IT elite of Angell's hellish world can only piggyback on
>the real economy (farming, health, transportation, production and
>service industries). As such, Angell's "Cowardly New World" is
>amenable to Revolution or the increased taxation and regulation of
>production and service industries, coupled with various forms of
>Guaranteed Income or Consumption Subsidy to provide Nourishment to
>the People who can't afford Alpha greed and ruthlessness.
JCT: And with the computer revolution, more and more susceptible
to a programming change at the banks central computers which would
restrict their computers to a pure service charge while abolishing the
interest charge, This was my request in my three applications to the
Supreme Court of Canada http://turmelpress.com/scc3.htm. To
simply restrict their computers to a service charge sufficient to pay
bank employees and abolish the interest charge. Fixing world poverty
and efficiently sharing out its abundance is but a software upgrade
away.
>Date: Sat Jan 2 08:50:51 1999
>From: tomlunde@cmw.ca ("Thomas Lunde")
>Subject: [SystemPolitics] An Interesting essay on Dr. Angell - repost
>I have looked through Angell's on-line papers listed at
>http://www.csrc.lse.ac.uk/Academic_Papers/List_of_Papers.htm
>and I see no reason to conclude that his speech to AMEC is a satire
>intended to derail the implementation of the Brave New World
>described in that speech.
>The speech certainly contains elements of satire and black humour and
>wide-ranging allusions to Nietzsche, Shaw, etc. The fact that Angell
>whimsically chooses to represent himself as the personal adviser to
>the fictional James Bond character Ernst Stavro Blofeld in no way
>proves that he is satirizing the amorality embodied in Blofeld. He
>can equally well be satirizing the timidity of his audience who want
>to have the power and wealth of Blofeld while still thinking of
>themselves as nice guys with a clean conscience.
JCT: It's true that the international bankers are considered the
captains of industry, society's elite even though they'd be the first
people Christ would go after with his whip when he came back. Of
course, when one considers those who have allocated the new credit to
war rather than production are responsible for the state of the world,
not only to they have nothing to be proud of but they actually should
Šfear facing their judgment day.
>The half dozen papers expound the same ideas as the AMEC speech, but
>the use of irony is either absent or very muted. On reading them my
>conclusion is that Angell really does, as a matter of conscious
>choice, espouse the Nietzschean view of morality as he asserts.
JCT: I didn't take it as a joke at all. It was too much the
heartless attitude of someone on the winning side.
>Unquestionably like the rest of us he is complex enough to have some
>feelings at odds with his creed, perhaps some niggling doubts, but
>this does not mean he is insincere about his stated position or
>covertly trying to undermine it.
JCT: Then again, he doesn't know the potential of LETS. Since
I've sent him copies of these posts relating to LETS, I wonder if
there's any chance of his changing his mind once he realizes there is
a way to provide a happy sharing world.
>Pointing to the fact that Angell is articulate, well-read and
>formidably intelligent does not constitute proof that he is at odds
>with his overt position. Undoubtedly the same qualities could be
>attributed to Nietzsche, but so far as I know, no one has ever
>suggested that Nietzsche was satirizing the views he expounded.
>Certainly that was not the conclusion of the Nazis who hailed
>Nietzsche as their intellectual progenitor.
>We always want to believe that the truly gifted and intelligent are
>on the side of the angels (which we take to be our own side), but it
>is not necessarily so. We should remember the caveat uttered by
>literary critic George Steiner over three decades ago:
>"We know now that a man can read Goethe or Rilke in the evening, that
>he can play Bach and Schubert, and go to his day's work at Auschwitz
>in the morning.
JCT: It's the guys whose day's work is foreclosing and evicting
widows and children who are the root of all the evil.
Job 20:19 says that "Heaven will expose his guilt,
The wicked does oppress and seizes homes he never built."
From http://turmelpress.com/pombible.htm
How do the wicked steal a house? The only people who seize houses
in a civilized society are usurers who usually use that society's laws
to steal it with. The wicked are not those who kill but those how kill
with usury.
>To say that he has read them without understanding or
>that his ear is gross, is cant. In what way does this knowledge bear
>on literature and society, on the hope, grown almost axiomatic from
>the time of Plato to that of Matthew Arnold, that culture is a
>humanizing force, that the energies of spirit are transferable to
>those of conduct? Moreover, it is not only the case that the
>established media of civilization--the universities, the arts, the
>book world--failed to offer adequate resistance to political
>bestiality; they often rose to welcome it and to give it ceremony and
>apologia." (Preface, Language and Silence, 1967)
JCT: How could they offer resistance when they couldn't even
diagnose the cancer that was killing society? They have whole
faculties of economics that rationalize the need for the cancer of
usury, the need for foreclosure on "obsolete" or "inefficient"
industry, as if it is possible for a farm to be obsolete or
inefficient to the point where we're better off without its
production.
>I do not think it would be wise to hail Professor Ian O. Angell as an
>ally of progressive forces. Nevertheless, I do think that he is
Š>remarkably clear-sighted up to a point. I believe that his Brave New
>World is a highly probable future, perhaps the most probable future,
>if we are unable to check the dominant trends of our time.
JCT: It's true that if we don't upgrade the banking software so
that our abundance supplies their want so that later their abundance
supplies our want, then we will face the future so described where
those with abundance get more while those without have it taken away
unto their death by poverty.
>I say "clear-sighted up to a point" because I believe that the Brave
>New World is flawed with inherent contradictions that would soon
>cause it to self-destruct--if it does not first cause the extinction
>of humanity (both winners and losers) through environmental disaster.
>Victor Milne
JCT: That's what I call one of the good points. The usurers are
just as threatened by ecological destruction as the majority. Their
children breathe the same acid rain, wipe their tushes with the same
dioxin-laced toilet paper, have as much to fear as everybody else.
When I heard of the young Rothschild scion committing suicide a few
years ago, I thought it might help them wise up to the danger that
afflicts us all.
>FIGHT THE BASTARDS! An anti-neoconservative website
>at http://www3.sympatico.ca/pat-vic/pat-vic/
>LONESOME ACRES RIDING STABLE
>at http://www3.sympatico.ca/pat-vic/
JCT: In the final analysis, we can't fight the bastards. They're
too rich and have bought too many governments. It will take the
cooperation of the Rockefeller and Rothschild banks if we're going to
get LETS accounts with which to purchase abundance of life-support to
all the needy around the world the fastest.
Isn't it kind of funny that the children of the guys responsible
for financing the planet into desperate shape it is in will probably
end up the heroes who order the currency software upgrade that does
save our world.
Sure, people who don't know about LETS can remain pessimistic
though once they understand LETS, it's hard not to be optimistic about
the planet's future.
-------------------------------
The Ultimate Right - Is this our future? #4
>Date: Fri Jan 22 03:01:46 1999
>From: mrs.gaze@hotPOP.com ("Silauren Gaze")
>Subject: Re: TURMEL: The Ultimate Right - Is this our future? #3
>To: SystemPolitics@onelist.com
>>JCT: To them, it's fighting for a place on a life-boat, a game to
>>the death. Then again, that's exactly what "morg- gage" means in
>>French, "death-gamble." And it's exactly how interest causes the
>>economy to work where some survive and others get foreclosed on.
>I finally got around to seeing James Cameron's "Titanic" a couple
>days ago, and this idea of "fighting for a place on a life-boat" took
>on a vivid meaning. Someone has either forgotten to put enough
>life-boats on our Spaceship Earth, or a minority is appropriating an
>excess for themselves, by denying others their basic necessities.
>I'm not into the dogma of scarcity (not enough for those present), so
>I'll guess Scenario Two.
JCT: It's not a question of forgetting to put on enough life-
boats. It's a question of mandating not enough life-boats. Musical
chairs is the perfect example of a mort-gage. The shortage of chairs
is built into the game on purpose to make it an elimination death-
gamble. It's not accidental, it's on purpose.
Š And whereas with enough at stake, people playing musical chairs
might shove each other and even throw elbows, but with the addition of
a chair, all such evil actions would disappear, so too, with life
itself at stake, people playing "mort-gage" with money might cheat,
steal, even kill each other but with the addition of sufficient money
or elimination of the extra debt, all such evil actions would also
disappear. That's why abolishing interest, the increase in debt
beyond the principal borrowed into circulation, would eliminate the
killer "death-gamble" mentality prevalent in the minds of mankind and
result in a paradigm shift from a Hell of a deadly war to a Heaven of
a production game.
>>JCT: Of course, people who start up their own LETS local currencies
>>are certainly engineering their own denationalized money so though
>>these economists have dreamed of such a thing, we're not in
>>the position to see it being done.
>Here I disagree. I think the poor could spontaneously create their
>own LETS, which would "transvalue" (to use Nietzsche's term) the
>culture of class which those elitists like Professor Angell seem to
>favor. In effect, the rich would be made poor, no one would do any
>work for their Mammon, and the people who actually DO presently
>produce the real wealth of the world (that Angell's IT elite leech
>off of) would finally be given their due credit. After all, what do
>bankers and investors contribute? Nothing. They would fail in a LETS
>arrangement, because LETS is closer to barter - you aren't allowed to
>make a profit or interest on investments or loans (there's no
>inflation). Please correct me if this interpretation of LETS is
>wrong.
JCT: No one says that because bankers and financiers offer
nothing productive to society today that when they lose the rake-off
that provides them their free ride that they will remain the drones
they now are. I would actually bet that most of the rich who do
nothing more interesting now than manage the growth of their bank
accounts will find actual production of things far more satisfying and
should enjoy a future without debt slaves around to mug them far
better than today's world.
The real problem is getting people to really believe that we have
the wherewithal to produce abundance for all. The majority have been
conditioned by money to believe that want and greed are part of the
human psyche even though the musical chairs paradigm shift does
explain how eliminating the extra debt which causes poverty would
correct those evil human characteristics.
>To me, it sounds like a wonderful idea, one that can arise
>spontaneously through communities and information networks. It would
>be a system where the values (prices) didn't fluctuate (You have
>referred to universal standards such as energy, hours of labor, etc).
JCT: Absolutely correct. Once currency is based on time, there
can be no inflation. An Hour today will always be worth an Hour
tomorrow even though tomorrow's Hour should be more productive due to
technological improvements and get you more stuff for your money.
>Nonetheless, SPECTRE and JAMES BOND are not generally recognized
>cultural icons. A lot of people have seen the movies and most people
>have heard Bond's name, but only a true devotee would understand the
>meaning of this reference. Mary's online sources explained it for me,
>but I had never heard of SPECTRE. Angell's constant quoting, mainly
>of Nietzsche, would set off warning bells for anyone student of, say,
>Nazi history. Nietzsche is frequently misinterpreted, or "spun" by
>tyrants and gluttons of the world to justify their materialism and
>greed.
>Recognized experts of Nietzsche's philosophy, on the other hand,
Š>(Hollingdale, Kaufmann) take the view that Nietzsche was putting
>forth an ideal far beyond domination or tyranny, when he spoke of the
>"superman" or "overman". This was a person who created their own
>values, and whose mindset had far advanced from the territorial
>materialistic stage.
>Prof. Angell must not have read, for instance, the passage of "Thus
>Spoke Zarathustra", at the end of Chapter 14 ("The Friend") where
>Nietzsche wrote:
>Oh! your poverty, ye men, and your sordidness of soul! As much as ye
>give to your friend, will I give even to my foe, and will not have
>become poorer thereby. There is comradeship: may there be friendship!
JCT: I wonder if an interest-free loan wouldn't have worked as
well as the gift though his meaning is still clear that greed pollutes
human relationships.
>>JCT: It's not that the Alphas "will have it OK" and the Betas "will
>>not" but that the Alphas "do have it OK" while the Betas now "do
>>not."
>This is a very good point. Angell's Brave New World is not really a
>prediction or a prophecy, so much as a statement of how the world
>already operates, and a rationalization for it. In fact, it seems
>like a rather clever piece of propaganda, because if the audience
>accepts that the world isn't ALREADY as it is predicted to soon
>become, they are all the more receptive (or, at least, apathetic) to
>a future which "becomes" that way. How better to reinforce conformity
>than to make the conformists think they're "on the verge" of
>something radically different and new?
JCT: Good point though I doubt Angel himself realizes that he's
describing the way it is.
>>This is going on and has throughout all our history. The winners
>>survive the death-gamble, the losers were foreclosed upon and worked
>>to death in a couple of years as galley slaves or mining slaves
>>though today, they are left to languish in poverty and misery with
>>an iron fist ready to smash them should they rebel in any way.
>There are ways the impoverished could free theirself of the piggyback
>system of wealth expressed by today's rich elite. Afterall, who's
>dependent on whom? Money is a fiction, a game the poor have been
>duped to play by the rich who hold all the cards. It's a confidence
>game. You would think that given all the bumps on the road
>experienced by the poor, they might have decided by now to try a
>different mode of conveyance, but propaganda like Angell's is
>effective in warding off revolutions so all the plans of those
>powers-that-be can come true.
JCT: The only different mode of conveyance possible is their own
money system which has just been delivered in the guise of the LETS
Local Employment-Trading System currencies spreading around the world.
They cannot survive without a money system and as long as they're
dependent on the old one, no other reform matters.
>>JCT: But it is the natural order that has existed for so long.
>>It's only shocking to have it stated so straightforwardly.
>Exactly. It isn't a prediction. It's propaganda to scare the poor
>people and inspire the rich to new levels of predation and greed.
>Where would the rich be without their moral leadership.
JCT: I guess it could be similar to the tycoon in Wall Street,
Gekko, whose message was "greed is good." Given these kinds of people
are not aware that there is a way to change it from an elimination
death-gamble to an non-elimination game of production, then looking
out for number one seems the only sane solution. As looking out for
number one is the only sane solution in playing musical chairs. Yet,
balancing chairs to players changes optimal strategy from this to
Šhelping one's neighbors just as balancing money to debt does the same
thing.
>>JCT: There's no reason to assume that because he doesn't know what
>>he would do if he had the power to do something that he is being a
>>coward. He's just being honest in admitting that short of having an
>>alternate answer, he's wondering if letting the law of the jungle
>>go on may be the best thing.
>The law of the jungle is a euphemism for apathy and do-nothing-ism.
>Which is a cop-out to avoid thinking and analyzing behavior from a
>context of moral values, results, etc.
JCT: As I said, as long as the imbalance between money and debt,
or chairs and players exists, Angell's "looking out for number one"
strategy is best. Yet, correcting the imbalance changes that.
><omit testimonial on LETS>
>>Unlike the Communist "From each according to his ability and to
>>each according to his need" which stultifies industrial effort by
>>taking away the reward for extra effort, lending the abundance keeps
>>the entrepreneurial spirit while evening out income spending, if not
>>earning, patterns.
>This assumes that humans are animal-like, and require a reward for
>performance and creativity. One of Nietzsche's points, I think, is
>that we overcome this kind of mentality (this kind of man), and we
>create our own rewards and values, instead of needing reinforcement
>and feedback from others (which ultimately perverts those values and
>reduces us to the level of the herd).
JCT: And yet reward for effort does stimulate maximum production.
I see nothing wrong with keeping incentives for effort and ingenuity
and I think the Biblical explanation of how a Christian community
works accepts that such incentives are okay. Remember that he who
gathers much keeps much but never too much while he who gathers
little may have little but never too little. So Christian economics
evidently does not frown on reward commensurate with effort and I see
no reason why I should either. For that reason, I approve of "what you
score is what you get."
>>>If, as Angell states, corporations can create their own electronic
>>>currency, and conduct encrypted transfers through anonymous
>>>channels, it might not be possible to accomplish upper limits on
>>>income and property accumulation (the Bill Gates scenario).
>>JCT: Which, of course, is no problem if we're using the LETS
>>money system software. What's wrong with Bill having 50 billion owed
>>to his account while the 49 billion, 999 million he can't spend this
>>year has been loaned to the needy whose accounts share the negative?
>What's wrong is that it defies the LETS criteria of everyone's labor
>being worth the same amount. Has Bill Gates put in 50 billion labor
>units, while the average person has only put in 25,000-35,000 (US
>currency)??? Income differentiation takes us away from the purity of
>barter into such wild fantasy worlds as Finance and Fiscal would
>dictate.
JCT: There is nothing wrong with the doctor charging 5 Hours per
hour while the bus driver charges 1 Hour per hour. There is nothing
wrong with being able to charge whatever the "free" market can bear.
That's what makes the production game exciting and as long as the
system lets you keep all that you need but simply prevents you from
hoarding what your cousin could use, then there's no reason that
everyone should get the same reward for the same time spent.
>The benefit of LETS is in maintaining a steady-state economy
>where no one can ever make a profit, or charge interest on any kind
>of loan, or create money from nothing through an accounting trick, or
Š>charge royalties on another's use of an idea (which is how
>Monopoly-King Gates made all his billions).
JCT: Sure LETS can maintain a steady state full-power economy but
that does not mean no one can make a profit. The ingenious inventor,
the great musician, the great artist, will all be able to make a
profit on their skills with no detriment to their neighbors. Yet, they
won't be able to charge receive even more than their surplus by
charging interest on loans. Yet, LETS does allow every account holder
to create his own money from nothing just as every American Indian
could create is own wampum from nothing since such LETS money and
wampum was but his IOU for time owed. And though it is an accounting
trick in that bankers have denied for millennia that they created
money when they made loans, it's not pretty well accepted even if
still greatly misunderstood. You just have to look at the Essence of
Money articles at http://turmelpress.com/lp.htm to see
Professor Flaherty claim repeatedly that new money comes into
existence without a source to grasp how even the highest educated have
been conditioned not to understand the logical truth. Even after
finally admitting the truth, within just a little while, he'd
forgotten it and was challenging the truth again.
>You can only realize value through what you produce directly, backed
>by actual results and uses, not through a "whatever-you-feel-like"
>arbitrary system as is currently employed.
JCT: And yet to make the current "whatever-you-feel-like" system
of values correspond to reality is as simple as using time as the
standard of value rather a nebulous variable called the dollar.
>One question: what does LETS do with people who can't repay their
>debts? Stop issuing credit? Hence, leaving them to die (another death
>gamble, it seems)? Please clarify. How long do you have to repay?
>What happens if you can't? etc.
JCT: Though it is very rare for the poor to repay their debts when
it is owed in currency of which they have little, it is very rare for
the poor not to repay their debts when it is owed in time of which
they have lots. So they have until they die to repay and if they're
not successful by the time they die, then their debt can be divided
among all the accounts on the database, a sort of "after-the-fact" and
"only-when-finally-necessary" charity.
>In light of the impact of technology, might it make sense that debts
>should actually shrink with time, according to real-world
>developments? For instance, if I want a house and today houses are
>made by human hands, but 5 years later they're assembled completely
>by machines...
JCT: That is exactly what I mean when I say that interest-free
currency buys you more over time which is much different from interest
which gets you more money which buys you less over time. What you
describe is the way it should work and the way it will work once people
have been cured of the impossible dream of getting more money for
their food and keyed on getting more food for their money.
>And on that note, much of the profits of banks come from these kind
>of arrangements: subverting the use of technology to its fullest
>potential, manufacturing scarcity to keep prices high and drive
>inflation onward and upward.
JCT: That's right. If you choose to follow our discussions about
Carroll Quigley's Tragedy and Hope at lets@onelist.com, you'll see how
they bankers have done just this in recent history. And our
discussions about David Astle's Babylonian Woe will show how they've
been doing this throughout all of history as well. It's quite fair to
say that bankers are responsible for having turned the Heaven of Eden
Šinto the Hell of Earth by the simple expedient of demanding the
repayment of 11 for every 10 they lent out thus creating a poverty of
money which has afflicted mankind with the death-gamble throughout all
history.
>>>and the betas should follow nature's way and die out.
>"should follow nature's way" seems to be advice, as opposed to a
>factual statement. That one could give another the advice to "die
>out" brings one's values and intelligence into question. No person
>will accept that advice, and it is foolishness to offer it. Humans
>can determine "nature's way". It is not preset, and it certainly
>isn't contained in the substance of one man's advice to his fellows.
JCT: I don't think this is advice to those who will die out but
advice to those who will help the losers die out and rationalize their
actions.
>But there is a deeper problem, in a system that creates inflation
>(through an endless growth philosophy), which amounts to an invisible
>tax which hurts all debtors and enriches all lenders equally, from
>the productive majority to the non-productive minority (bankers,
>investors, speculators, SHARKS).
JCT: Yet, the question of inflation is totally eliminated simply
by using a time-based currency. So it's not a very deep problem at
all.
>>It's not called death-gamble for nothing and even Keynes likened the
>>mort-gage to musical chairs where all know that when the music ends,
>>someone is eliminated. And even though it's only an accounting
>>elimination, it still adds up to no life-support tickets and hence
>>no life-support. And people will lie, steal, kill for life-support
>>tickets when the alternative is no life.
>So the rich will just move out to the suburbs, build a wall around
>themselves, and hire thugs to keep out the paupers (the castle to
>protect the tyrant from his victims, complete with moat and
>drawbridge...).
JCT: But balancing the money to the debt, like balancing the
chairs to the people, means they can still get rich and stay rich
without having to escape their poorer neighbors. So I'm not too
worried about the rich building walls when almost everyone will be
rich and even those who aren't rich will still be well off.
>>Is it any wonder that usury, the destroyer of
>>civilizations, is condemned by all the great wise religious men no
>>matter how it is approved by the unwise economists who promote its
>>use. We've ignored their prohibitions at our peril.
>One can conclude that Money is the only religion of Bankers and
>other Usurers. The poor share this religion. Since they have the
>majority position, it's conceivable that they might transvalue the
>morality of debt, interest, usury, slavery...and finally return to
>the purity of barter, aided by modern technology and a balanced
>ethical system.
JCT: Not only conceivable but inevitable. Last year in June, the
UK Government officially endorsed LETS. A few years ago, the
Australia's Parliament endorsed the LETS. The New Zealand welfare
office steers new recipients to their local LETS. Though they all
applaud what LETS is doing at the local level, none have had the
vision to see what it could do on the national level. Yet. They can't
stay slow forever.
>Isn't LETS a death-gamble? And doesn't it have the same Reciprocity
>driver which cripples the financial system and ensures its eventual
>failure?
Š JCT: No, if you look at how LETS works on Service Charge Island
in my http://turmelpress.com/bankmath.htm, you'll see that
the debt for currency issued by a LETS bank is always balanced by the
currency issued. A death-gamble is the elimination game created by the
insufficiency of principal to repay both the principal and the
interest demanded. The French for death is mort and for gamble is gage
so mort-gage really does mean death-gamble and operates just as a
musical chairs game. Since everyone sells their goods on Service
Charge Island using LETS, it does not cause a death gamble.
>Why should we have to pay back what's produced by technology
>and automation, and from building on the ideas passed down from our
>ancestors?
The Social Credit Engineer, Major Douglas, calls this the
increment of association and the question is quite valid. It is the
increment exemplified by the robot revolution that the dividend is
based on.
>Why can't we just have a society that uses those resources for the
>benefit of all, and isn't hung up on who is "owed" what? Why do we
>need the idea of DEBT, period? Debt and Money both hold us back.
JCT: There is nothing wrong with debt as long as it is balanced
by an equivalent amount of money. It's the exponential growth of debt
beyond the original principal of money that causes the deathgamble,
failure and foreclosure exhibited by the mort-gage banking system.
>Banks are an unnecessary institution, whether they charge interest or
>not. They don't produce anything. They don't create ideas or
>information which can be used to help people. They are just a
>high-tech global casino enterprise, making money off the devaluation,
>foreclosure, and collapse of other markets, countries, and regions.
JCT: Banks are a very necessary institution if interest-free.
They are the brain of the economic machine. Just like the hands and
the feet and the eyes and the ears and the mouth might say that the
brain doesn't actually do anything physical like they do, it is
necessary for the coordination of the whole. Money is necessary so
that a man who builds Jumbo jets can trade part of his work for the
work of the guy who makes donuts. There must be a way to liquify the
jumbo jet into tokens which can be traded so the donut maker can
eventually ride the jumbo jet. Just because the banks that do charge
interest have malfunctioned is no reason to assume that good LETS
banks do too.
>Date: Sat Jan 23 07:11:11 1999
>From: krazyal@prodigy.net ("alypius")
>-----Anyone who thinks Prof. Angell's (ironic name???) scenario re:
>the future is a joke, hoax, tongue-in-cheek, or that he surely isn't
>serious, needs to read THE SOVEREIGN INDIVIDUAL, by James Dale
>Davidson and Lord William Rees-Mogg. Predicting the future is
>notoriously difficult; nevertheless, this scenario, however
>unsettling, is very much plausible.
JCT: Predicting the future when it's so similar to the present
isn't all that hard. Just look at what well-to-do people do and how
they live and expect everyone else to live off their dividend in the
same with robots doing most of the manual labor.
>Whatever future actually materializes, increasing numbers of people
>anticipate that it will break continuity with the present age.
JCT: Though it will be the greatest paradigm shift in history, it
will simply be the same world except there won't be any oppressed
people in it. It's the reason that Christ, in his Parables of the
Talents and Minas described the Kingdom of Heaven as life on Earth.
Š
>Thus, many people speak of a post-modern age (ancient, medieval,
>modern, post-modern), a new age, the information age (as opposed to
>industrial age or even the iron age);
JCT: We can probably call it the debt freedom age as opposed to
the debt slavery age.
>many religious groups anticipate the soon end of the present world.
JCT: Actually, in the end days, Christ is supposed to come back
and install his system just as if from the clouds. And sure enough,
the day the large banks offer interest-free accounts to the world's
poor, to the starving child in an African desert, that interest-free
line of credit to purchase life support will seem as if delivered in
an instant right from the clouds. One instant, he was starving with no
hope in sight, the next, he had an interest-free credit card with
everyone advertising food and life-support for sale until he's old
enough to pay it back. Don't think the instant he gets his interest-
free life support credit line won't be like stepping from Hell into
Heaven and finally acknowledged as such. I've repeated over and over
that LETS is based on Christ's differential equation in Paul Corr II,
8:14 and I'm sure honoring him for his solution to debt slavery won't
be far behind global salvation from usurious debt slavery.
>There seems to be "something in the air," no one knows what it is,
>but everyone senses it. THE SOVEREIGN INDIVIDUAL presents one of the
>more well-though-out scenarios. However, it gives little weight to
>ecological limits or the multiple possibilities of eco-catastrophe.
>~krazyal
JCT: With sufficient funds, maximum clean industrial production
will finally be available to humankind and I have no doubt it should
prove well able to provide abundance for all. It's just too bad that
standing in our way are only the disbelievers who refuse to accept the
ease with which it can be engineered.
-------------------------------
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