In part one of this article, we considered the global economic poker-game, between the elite, where the stakes are devastating people’s lives and actively damaging the climate, all species and the ecosystem. That all conflicts are economic above and beyond sectarian and historical hostilities, which are used as distractions from the core agendas of controlling global market influence. All the players know incisively the bargaining chips they hold and how to use them.
Since the publishing of the first of these articles, some parties have called each other’s hands. But this title (and metaphor) is not entirely a sardonic satire on the approach to ecological and economic survival of the elite. It is universally agreed and evidentially established, any attempt to combat the methods of the neoliberal elite will meet with intensified Necroeconomic efforts and consequences. Right now, the best, most irresponsible and stupid academic specialists, money can buy, will be strategizing the potential of any limited nuclear strike. If this doesn’t auger in a third world war, it has already increased spending on militarism, threatening to thrust endless projectiles into the carbon-rich stratosphere.
Any existing peace in this situation will not come by force, but by whatever enemies remain sitting around the same table making economic deals. They prefer to end millions of children’s lives before this inevitability. Whatever the current pin-ponging rhetoric, the development on the ground and psychology of participants has been contrary to it, compounded by determined strategic actions by individual nations, to force everybody’s hands and destabilise the structure holding up this pack of cards. Some, understandably, will see the outcome as a global pogrom to resolve the population explosion and economic dependency, as long as the key players remain at the table. Quite depressing, yes?
But this is not the mentality of the vast majority of Earth’s occupants. This is not a fight between nations who largely share common principles and hopes – it is the political minority, with historic and personal agendas. 90% of conflict casualties are civilians. Isn’t that the most obscene indulgence of these narcissists? But they are only products of biased minority perspectives. Few if any voting systems around the world represent a majority of its population or even electorate.
Coring the apple
The global political and economic system, not many would argue against, is diseased to the core. Well, to treat the disease we know both its causes and symptoms. One way is to cut out the core, but is that realistic? This disease is a mental illness only. It is to do with the psychological dependency upon money, the pressure to enforce ideologies and to outdo your opponents from within and without – the economic Stockholm Syndrome we said requires outside intervention. With what?
Speaking at Stockholm Impact/week, on the subject of ‘An Introduction to the Metacrisis;’ Daniel Schmachtenberger concluded: “I think people should let themselves become depressed… if they’re not they are so schizmed inside, it’s hard to even think of people as humans. If you can know the reality of what’s happening (in factory farms, the child sex trade, the destruction of species)… recognize that you’re depressed, [because] you love animals… that are no different than your dog… you love kids, not just your own, and the kids that are in totally fucked situations are no different to your own and the kids that have no future chance of life are no different… because you know life is beautiful and sacred and the depression is recognizing the destruction of the sacred …as opposed to [saying] ‘I’ll wait until someone figures it out’ or ‘when I figure it out, even though I’m not allocating time to trying’… talk to others that are [working it out]… and realise that you’re at a time when there is a higher possible consequence to your action [and inaction] than there has ever been for humans. That there is an obligation and meaningfulness in that, which you don’t want to waste.”
So, what agency do we each have to alter the status quo? The key points needing urgent redress are: 1, economic survival and supremacy are the core motivators; 2, leaders are forced into being psychopathic, not controlling but being controlled by the monetary economy; 3, the global population feel powerless to act; 4, nothing will change Neoliberals unless we can make peaceful regenerative pursuits more profitable than arms, drugs, data-manipulation and government conformity. These form the elements of the rot spreading through the Earth’s core.
So, how do we core it? Twenty-eight COP summits have systematically worked against the urgency of climate recovery and species survival. What can mobilise the general public to form a fundamentally different and immediate colossal economy, more rapidly than anything the monetary economy currently supports, that enables decent people the world over to intercede and rid us of this psychopathic insanity, without giving them more incentive to destroy? Let’s state right here and now – EVERY HUMAN SOLUTION, PROCESS, TECHNOLOGY AND EXPERTISE WE NEED FOR OUR PLANET AND ITS OCCUPANTS EXISTS. We will need to rely on the phenomena of nature to do the rest, but we can give it the best environment we can, instead of hurling everything bad at it in vast quantities. Money is dis-incentivising and actively throttling these solutions. Not just the profitability of harmful industries, but tax-payer’s subsidies and investment.
Beyond the core
Many proposals advocate putting the monetary system in the hands of the general public, expounding common rights, morality, community banking and even the legality of public control of governmental decisions. This is why we have seen governmental erosion of public influence. The trend has been to make people uncaring, self-seeking as a survival trend and democratic right and pre-occupied, by diluting their means of achieving what they want or need in life. Making this a self-sacrificing treadmill. Even believing other innocent non-violent people far away or very close to home, are deserving of inhumane treatment, as another dilution of their facility. This is the direct activity of governments creating then having to accommodate the fall out of hostile fiscal policies.
Not all passively eat their delivered McDonalds, whilst allowing the distended diseased children’s stomachs on charity adverts and domestic child-care abuse cases wash across their eyes. There has been greater public outcry this century than in any other. From the ‘Arab Spring’ to 2020 (and increasing) there have been:
84 public revolts & uprisings
86 national anti-war, anti-austerity & human rights marches
38 national and international students rights protests
461 other national and international demonstrations over racism, sexism, anti-corruption, women’s rights, anti-occupation, pro-democracy, independence & climate action
535 riots
26 revolutions
TOTAL 1,230 movements of public outrage in 185 of the 192 nations of Earth’s population (as of the year 2000; now 234 individual countries and additional recent escalations of hostilities).
The above does not include all military and political conflicts, ethnic cleansing and genocides, (such as China v Taiwan & Nepal; civil wars as in Syria, Philippines, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan and the rest of the Sahel countries).
Why should the wealthy waste their assets, when they can get us all to do their dirty work for them, reducing material obligation and increasing profit from arms and drugs trades? Even the achievements of the Good Friday Peace Agreement – an established model for peace – was threatened, as a tabled sacrifice by Boris Johnson’s administration to ‘Get Brexit Done,’ concurrently proposing we rely on the Islamic Pound to form new alliances; having to settle on trade-relations with Japan and a new military presence in the South China Sea with the US and Australia to protect it. And now the Mediterranean, and now the Suez Canal, and now the Gulf of Aden and Gulf of Oman.
Cutting the fuel
1 – Our first step could be through monetary finance.
This is an immediate avenue we can consider, to send out a loud and clear economic message to at least signed-up democratic leaders, that we no longer support their illegal activities. This will not core the apple, but it will affect public banking and political influences immediately. (See ‘Necronomics 1:’ article by Clare Carlile, entitled: ‘Banks and Financial Institutions Benefitting from War,’ dealing with high-street banks investment in illegal armaments and war).
When UK high-street banks calculate finance-leveraging for fossil fuel investment, they calculate each domestic ‘Customer Lifetime Value’ (CLV). This averages $1.5m per person: (around $24,000 per annum).
So, wouldn’t they do the same for armaments? Would government do any less, with most councils holding some taxes in offshore accounts? “The answer to the question ‘When is it a crime to collect or pay tax?’ is ‘Whenever we know or suspect that some of our money may be used for a criminal purpose.’” Chris Coverdale: Probityco.com. To check which banks are CRIMINALLY backing genocides and war; and to switch to banks that do not – go to https://www.switchit.green/
International Criminal Court Act & International Criminal Court (Scotland) Act… make it a criminal offence in the UK for any person to engage in war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, or conduct ancillary to such crimes. The Accessories and Abettors Act ruled that: “Whosoever shall aid, abet, counsel, or procure the commission of any indictable offence… shall be liable to be tried, indicted, and punished as a principal offender.” International Humanitarian Law states: “The principle of distinction is set out in Article 48 and 52 of Additional Protocol 1 to the Geneva Conventions. The Conventions define who is a combatant and a military object that can be lawfully attacked. Direct attacks against civilians and/or civilian objects are categorised as war crimes. Additionally, any weapon which does not allow for a distinction between civilians/civilian objects and fighters/military objects is also prohibited under IHL.”
The context of above quotes and legal information regarding lawfully diverting tax used for war to peaceful amenities can be found at: https://www.conscienceonline.org.uk/ and https://www.probityco.com/
The only issue with reducing tax is that we make bigger enemies of government and the elite manipulating them, but at least we reduce their power. Even though the tax-payer is the unwilling backer, on top of crippling austerity and cost-of-living crisis, some will believe that conciliatory solutions are unrealistic with unreasonable people, so war and militarism should be supported. This only expands the issues mentioned above and the criminal perpetrators are counting on it. Bearing in mind, none of the most profitable businesses pay tax and most get tax concessions. But they do invest their profits in the most profitable industries.
Neoliberal Paradox
But wait – 1, neoliberalism reduced the formal labour workforce to only 12.5% of the global population. 2, the gig-economy makes up 25 to 40% of that workforce in the largest national economies. So, it begs the question, are monopoly producers and financiers the brightest sparks in the toolbox? No, they just happen to be the brightest at maximising company and shareholder profits, deflecting responsibility and keeping their jobs. This also goes for all governmental departments and United Nations divisions (who are good, motivated, concerned, inspirational people, generally). This has to illustrate another unaccounted-for aspect of the ‘Necronomy;’ the domestic policies of gentrification, monopoly, exclusivity and fiscal syphoning. Just how much potential economy are the elite slitting their own throats for? This we will illustrate.
To most, rising up has been tried and failed. So, what else have the general public already got that will re-incentivise the elite to drop the nihilistic Anthropocene they have created? What do the elite want?
Their neoliberal model is LESS RESPONSIBILITY FOR MORE PROFIT. This is the power the 99% has to relieve them of the current methods of obtaining it. This is the shock horror reality. Do we really think the elite feel secure, or are they driven by fear of losing the control they have? We have to factor in the delusion of monetary dominance, but the realistic question is: HOW CAN THE ELITE BE INCLUDED, WHILST PEACEFULLY TAKING BACK PUBLIC-CONTROL OF THE ECONOMY? Cutting out the core is a protracted bloody surgical procedure, and changing through current public political efforts is like our weakened immune system sending antibodies to ameliorate the symptoms. What we really need is a complete transfusion of the terminal bad blood. First, we create the desire for it and if that doesn’t work, it can be enforced. So, how do we inject the good blood, without it becoming contaminated?
Appropriating the 1%: THE NEW PARALLEL GLOBAL CITIZEN’S NON-MONETARY ECONOMY
Any proposal for a NEW GLOBAL CITIZEN’S ECONOMY has to be conciliatory and inclusive with positive outcomes for every individual, indiscriminately. This proposal is formed from a sixteen-year ongoing analysis, consulting over 70 academic authors and economists; over 70 alternative, complementary and crypto-currencies; 650 global networking organisations, trying to redress the effects of capitalism; anti-poverty movements; anti-capitalist movements; political public movements in the 21st century; numerous New Economic Method collectives; NGOs; charities and relief organisations; eco-campaign networks; self-sustainability communities and campaign organisations with memberships in their hundreds of millions. We outnumber the 1%.
No current ethical, socialist or libertarian economic proposal that promotes continued use of money, or monetary value, departs with what we have already seen fail, through previous regimes, including the pre-money and pre-capitalism eras and every varied political manifestation. The Green New Deal and Blue Economy have fallen on deaf ears. None of the reported 4000 alternative, complementary and crypto-currencies – neoliberalism necessitated – have succeeded in replacing money, so, where are we going wrong? A non-discriminatory economy, that Andrew Feinstein and others are suggesting, has to be something new that departs with the previous models of economy that have, throughout our entire human history, been prejudicial and preferential. That have led us to where we are now. Some realities to consider:
1 – Money hasn’t made the world go round for over a decade now – it is mostly digital accounting.
2 – Monetary price is a creation of fiction, off the top of traders’ heads, no longer governed by production costs but profit strategies for shareholders and market control.
3 – Alternative numeric systems exist, but have failed to alter money. Many mirror (or require) the monetary process and values, and some are pyramid schemes. Let’s avoid them.
The most successful NON-MONETARY economy is the Swiss WIR. A circular digital electronic ledgering system, where no physical currency changes hands. Just to get a sense of scale against the monetary economy, let’s illustrate this as a model…
STEP 1: Let’s say the global population has a non-monetary economy, like the Swiss WIR (CHW), and we are able to exchange this circular currency, as the WIR does, equalling one unit to the value of one Swiss Franc (CHF), or for the sake of argument, one US Dollar (USD).
STEP 2 – Let’s say that because it is digital and needs no pre-existing budgets, source, material assets or collateral, every individual automatically self-generates a Universal Basic Income as a foundation for living – by their daily activities or ‘abstract’ labour, (cleaning, cooking, practical maintenance, parenting, education, personal health, caring etc.) – with all other forms of FORMAL & INFORMAL WORK self-generating ADDITIONAL units. And let’s set it at the current MINIMUM UK WAGE FOR UNDER 18-year-olds (approx. $6 per hour for 8hrs work per day, for maybe 65 years of life). The equivalent in money in our example works out around $17,000 per annum for every living being, without additional formal employment. This is a worst-case scenario:
TOTAL monetary economy 2022 = $405T ($105T equity + $300T debt).
TOTAL PUBLIC ECONOMY EQUIVALENT = $140.16T EQUITY per annum, no debt.
We can begin to imagine what that would do for public-led direct democracy, global cooperation, peace, changing and enforcing law, human rights, public amenities, end to poverty and individual influence on social and environmental decisions. That’s not all…
STEP 3 – (optional), let’s decide, as a circular economy that, WITHOUT TAXATION (OR A WELFARE STATE, even dependents work to manage their illness and could even be assigned a supplement for health treatment), we can collectively leverage virtual investment, the way banks invest our domestic monetary savings.
Still working with the BASIC $17,000, per person… THE TOTAL ECONOMIC POWER OF THE CITIZEN’S VIRTUAL ECONOMY = AN EQUIVALENT OF $8,788T per year.
This is what it might look like if we return to our tower illustration: Not to scale, as the Parallel Non-Monetary Economy would not fit on the page. (Chinese TV tower on left).
Out with the old…
Our illustration still represents monetary terms and we need to get away from this, as it always corrupts. Why is this Parallel Non-Monetary Economy (PNME) any different to the way money operates and motivates? IT IS NOT MONEY – so economists must suspend all the education they have about monetary markets, relating any monetary functions and peripheral effects that this economy effectively bypasses. This is not simply hypothetical – you need to project how it will practically affect your daily activities, affordability, control of community interests, commodities, business and employment prospects etc. currently starved by global austerity and profit strategies. All these activities CURRENTLY CONSTITUTE A TIME / PHYSICAL / MONETARY COST TO INDIVIDUALS & THE ECONOMY. The PNME turns these costs to income.
The PNME does not work the way our illustration describes; it is way superior and more expansive than illustrated, which didn’t even factor-in formal employment earnings. It did not include the extensive role of compensation for past injustices, as a windfall for kick-starting individual and collective PNME accounts. This enables all operations to function without any need for credit or debt dependencies, removing power-differentials. It will result in far more economic power for the general public, IMPLEMENTABLE THE SECOND IT IS FORMED AND ADOPTED to IMMEDIATELY counter any damaging political and legal infringements of people’s rights to life. Simply by people going about their everyday activities and opening up their options for more fulfilling pursuits. Being able to legally hold abusers to account. It invests in people’s individual ingenuity and benevolent qualities.
Firstly: it has to be robustly maintained and legally owned by the global public community and as such, have decentralised security and automatic verification systems, backed by random rotating international oversight; to police its agreed laws, principles and caveats. Secondly: it will be a free self-generating system that CANNOT be controlled by anyone else, but will exclude:
1 – Any infringement of an individual’s right to generating the PNME.
2 – Any misuse for harmful industries and commercial / political aims, such as war, armaments, addictive drugs, fossil fuel use (beyond that necessary to transition to rapid green industry); mercantilism; political decisions that do not have public care at their core for all nations.
3 – Any industry that cannot demonstrate it is making rapid significant changes to green alternatives. (And much more).
But, this isn’t just another form of money. What else makes it unique?
…in with the new – DECOMMODIFICATION
To all appearances, it looks exactly like the way the monetary economy already operates – add / subtract accounting. The beauty of this simplicity is that nobody really needs to re-educate themselves as to the workings of this economy – they can just carry on doing daily activities but earning for it, weighing up their vastly expanded options. But what makes it fundamentally different to anything preceding it is that it is not a measure of ‘value.’ Like the Swiss WIR, while it remains static it does nothing. Only in the process of transaction does it have any power to unlock access to commodities, but the goods are not exchanged for it. The exchange is purely mathematical. The quantity of the goods and services it can acquire will be agreed upon by the international society, in consultation with various professions and expertise, or negotiated in some instances, like varying employment qualifications and localised demand or priority. So, we can think of bands, brackets, or levels. It doesn’t need to be a set figure for every distinct function, because this is not an association of value the way money is. If someone offers you a gift, do you immediately ask how much it’s worth, or base your response on it? It isn’t costing you anything. This is what will be fundamentally different to the scepticism of the monetary economy. But it is not a free lunch, it entails personal labour and ingenuity. The advantage of consistent PNME levels across the globe eliminates global inequity, economic migration and profit-maximising motives, whilst localised knowledge allows for diversity.
1 – Unlike the Swiss WIR, the PNME has NO VALUE, it does not mix with money or have any equivalent. Think of it as a numeric code, like a combination padlock, or entrance code, html, an activation code, or sports points system – basically numerical systems that bear NO relation to what they unlock, or acquire. It could be hieroglyphs, if we chose some form of encryption. What the numbers are and do will become almost irrelevant to the actions and choices they support. There is a distinct economic advantage to this. It is a parallel economy and parallels never meet. This means not only can the PNME unit be assigned different levels for access of different products, services and employment, IT CAN ALWAYS OUTPERFORM MONEY AND INCENTIVISE PRIORITY PUBLIC SERVICES where money can’t, MAKING THEM MORE PROFITABLE. How?
2 – It is key that the PNME does not threaten or require the dismantling of the monetary economy, but BOOSTS THE MONETARY ECONOMY FOR THE RIGHT REASONS, making it more profitable for every enterprise. Since the general public no longer need it and can access the same goods and services, costing only their self-generated daily units, which have no value, businesses adopting parallel PNME accounts can access goods and services without using their money. ACCESSING GOODS AND SERVICES FOR NO VALUE HAS AN EFFECT ON MONETARY ECONOMY ‘VALUES’ WITHOUT TOUCHING IT. And there will be added PNME premiums for businesses. We can only share the basic effects of the PNME in this article, but it will soon make money obsolete, even to the 1%.
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- Employers no longer pay wages – they are self-generated, making zero-cost EMPLOYMENT 100%
- The public no longer pay taxes and welfare state is eradicated; their work and personal pursuits contribute to environmental regeneration and social cohesion, rebuilding of communities and the environment, so, their earnings are a service to society. So is any PNME business.
- Participation in direct democracy – through local regional and national public assemblies – for any topic an individual is interested in earns PNME units.
- Current governments are no longer dependent upon corporate agendas, or competing for resource-based economic returns; they can redirect their energies into progressive actions; or the masses of legally empowered public citizens can remove/replace them with non-party direct representatives that have to cooperate to deliver public decisions. Most military expertise will go into more profitable logistical peace-initiatives.
- PNME accounting relieves monetary outlay and overheads making PNME industries almost cost-free, delivering more MONETARY So, if profit is the current controller, why not give neoliberal elites the most profitable industries to invest everything in – EXCEPT THEIR MONEY! MULTINATIONAL CORPORATIONS CAN RELINQUICH THE HARMFUL AND COSTLY INDUSTRIES THAT CONTROL THE GLOBAL ECONOMY, WHILE BOOSTING PROFITS WAY BEYOND WHAT MONEY CAN EVER GIVE THEM AND BECOME MAJOR PLAYERS IN THE MOST RAPID ENVIRONMENTAL INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION HUMAN HISTORY WILL EVER RECORD.
- The PNME will generate mass repatriation, restitution, re-building of all nations savaged by war and boost international relations. Removing the ‘protectionist’ violent competing for national / cultural identity, economy and resources.
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Prosperity will be limited only by the choice of individual and collective pursuits. The accounting will hardly figure in people’s minds, even as the act of exchange won’t, (as it doesn’t to the wealthiest 1%); the perceived ‘value’ of what is exchanged has practically dissolved, removing once and for all time the mentality of assigning imagined preferential values – which the monetary system is – to commodities.
Before you dismiss the above as ideological utopianism, recall the statement by Daniel Schmachtenberger, above. This is our moment of moments. It cannot be given to you. It needs to come from you. But once you can see this working, with your own eyes, it will be yours. You will see it everywhere, changing everything, and you will never be able to un-see it. Every nation should have a contingent examining and cooperating on these calculations and project the use of all the systems available, right under our noses, as well as the solutions millions of people have already created. The PNME needs to belong to everyone, not just a single entity or body.
Next steps
An eight-part interactive video-workshop is available to consider all these statements above, the mechanism; the process; the agencies; personal effects; effects to public services and prosperity; effect upon the monetary economy; effects to a green rapid eco-revolution: how and who can bring it about. The elite won’t change what works for them. We have to re-educate them what is in their “Neoliberal” best interests – for life.
‘The Parallel Non-Monetary (Eco)nomic Revolution of the 100%’
Intro; 1-8 modules; and ‘What is the PNME?’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e24VTG4NGQA&list=PLNo7acWESakwjYqGG5iPNOiATvs8m0I9L
More detailed analysis is in the book: ‘A Chance For Everyone: The Parallel Non-Monetary Economy’ (Kendal Eaton, Sounding Off UK Publications, 2020).
FREE DOWNLOAD VERSIONS / discussions / articles / video presentations / illustrated supplements: ‘Turning Costs to Income: the Parallel Non-Monetary Accounting System’ & ‘The Parallel Economy: Past, Present & Future’ / hardcopy links: achanceforeveryone.com
Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/641184856394195
To collaborate or book an interactive workshop for a group, please email: [email protected]
Kendal Eaton
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