The Gulf Oil Spill

I have a theory about monetary value. The need for a system that recognizes that which is priceless, that which holds infinite value. That which no money can buy nor pay for. The Gulf oil spill is a very real example. We try to put a price on the cost of this spill. Sure, there are the economic impacts of the loss of business and perhaps of fisheries. This is a real cost that will affect peoples real lives. 

BP may land up paying billions of dollars in damages, but will this replace the ocean? Will this buy us new plankton, new dolphins, fish, whales and most importantly a clean ocean? It most certainly won't. It can not do this, it is an impossibility. Once you pollute something like that it is polluted, no amount of money can fix this. Once the air is polluted that is it, it is dirty. Once the eco-system is destroyed a value that never was recognized in the monetary system is lost. Something priceless has been lost. 

Money has no ability to accept this. It can not deal with that which holds infinite value because infinity is about abundance while money is about scarcity. The two work in direct opposition to each other. This is why we allow drilling in the bottom of the gulf because we actually have not priced in the value of the clean water. If we were to do this, it holds the potential of destroying the very pricing mechanism that enables the drilling of oil.

At the end of the day BP will pay huge fines and then go back to drilling. But, something will have been lost. We will try and put a price on it but in the end it won't even come close to the true value of this disaster.

It is time to recognize that there is value in the abundance of a clean and healthy eco-system. That this value is infinite and that our monetary system fails at taking this into consideration. It is time to innovate and develop a monetary system that knows how to recognize the value of things that are priceless. 

How do we do this? I wanna know! It is something that I puzzle over daily while knowing it is critical to our future as a healthy species. Infinite value and abundance.

Democratizing Money - My Thesis Proposal for my Mphil at UCT

Democratizing Money - Saul Wainwright MA Proposal

Introduction

I am trying to write a thesis. I am trying to sort out my many ideas around money. I have never chosen simple ideas, I never see it as simple, perhaps that is a weakness in my thinking. But, as a political-economist I can not ignore the complex social and historical specificity of all institutional developments. I am exploring money, I want to understand money as something that has been constructed to serve a specific purpose. To do this I have to place it into a specific political history. Money, today's money, is built around a set of particular political-economic needs. I will continue to explore these ideas in the coming weeks and months while writing.

This was a small introduction that I wrote a few weeks ago. It is very loose and will most likely change radically in its final drafts but I think it gives a good launching pad into my work. My first chapter of my thesis is looking at the USA and the way in which the creation of the US constitution reworked the very ideas of democracy away from its original concept of direct towards what can barely be considered democratic - namely a form of representative democracy. Which is essentially built on the idea that our rights as individuals and communities is some how alienable - that we can give them to some one else who can then represent us in some sort of abstract way. This shift in thinking about democracy is not my idea, it is an idea that has been well developed by other academics. My point is to highlight this so that I can then illuminate the way in which money has been theorized and presented within this form of democracy and show how the democratization of money has been built around an effort to support what is known as a capitalist democracy. Ultimately this will allow me to ask what it actually means to democratize money - a claim that many advocates of community currencies make.

Here is the intro as written thus far:

The Finance Lab

I cam across The Finance Lab prospectus today while sitting in my
office (actually a friends apartment). This got me sooo excited. This
is exactly the idea that I recently proposed to a contact at Global
Business Network and am still hoping to continue the conversation.

I hope that I can get my skills into these sorts of discussions. I
hope that I can find a place for me in something like this lab or
something similar and be part of a team of people thinking,
theorizing and putting into action the resulting policy ideas that
lead to innovation and change in our financial system.

I think I can do this. It is all slowly coming together - my deep
interest in political economics, economic development, environment
and sustainability, scenario planning and most importantly financial
systems.

Please let there be an awesome job for me in this space that allows
me to utilize my creativity, my intellectual knowledge and my
passion :-)

Political-Economy or Political Economy

I saw Yaj Chetty's article in the Business section of the CT earlier in the week. He writes very well and manages to convey some of the big issues in our monetary system in clear and concise way. I am surprised that I never came across his work before. Always amazes me no matter how much time you research a field there are always people that don't make it onto your radar!

The one issue that I am noticing in many of the discussions of money, including Yaj's, is the lack of talking about it in a political-economic framework. This split between economics and politics persists in this way. The relationship that money has to a political system is undervalued or under-recognized. What does it mean to change our monetary system? Is this just an economic question? Or just a social rights question? What does it mean for our political system and how can we change the one without the other shifting? I think this kind of thinking dominates because we think we have perfected the political system and all that we need to do now is change the economic system. I think this is us falling into the exact same trap that this split has been set up to do - were we can debate economics as if it is a separate field, something that free-market ideologues have done really well at. Often the way that democracy is talked about reminds me of Fukuyama's famous article, The End of History, where he talks about our having reached the pinnacle of our economic framework. Is this really the best democracy we can design? 

I think this of course raises a much more complex question about what democracy means, what our current democracy does and how it came into existence. There is no way to really separate our monetary system and our political system. Our political system has in many ways been designed to support and reinforce our monetary system. Tweaks have been made that allow the monetary system to operate. This is where the real challenge comes, this is where the real political question rises. How do we create, theorize, advocate a new political system that enables a change in our monetary system? Can we really continue to live in a representative democracy that has been developed to enable capitalist economics with a decentralized non-sovereign monetary system? 

I am not sure that we can. I don't know what to propose yet in terms of what that would look like. But, my hunch is it is along the lines of network ideas - ideas of deliberative democracy via networks and that the economic system and monetary system will replicate this. This is where we have to head, the ending of this limited idea of space and sovereignty, of nationalism and hierarchy. These kinds of shifts are essential to our diversity and complexity of a global humanity.

Conspiratorial Politicization of Money

One of the challenges in my research was raised in a recent email conversation with a fellow researcher, Noel Longhurst.

He asked me the following, "I agree with you about the politics of money and definitely think that it is an area that is rich for further exploration. However, there is another angle to this and that is that fact that elements of the monetary reform movement engage in a different kind of politics. I am thinking here of conspiracy theories / New World Order / anti-Semitism. Such politics form part of the real and everyday lived politics of monetary reform and can do great damage to the wider cause of politicizing money. I wonder whether you have considered how such politics fit into your work? Or how they might be relevant?"

This is a very important and legitimate question and the danger of this kind of politicization of money is apparent. Though, my effort is not to politicize money but rather to show its historical politicization. Money is, has been, and always will be, a political question. What is true is that some of the most vocal critiques of our current monetary system center around a view that there is a massive conspiracy underway that enables this elite group of bankers to control the global monetary system. The most popular or widely disseminated interpretation is found in the pseudo documentary Zeitgeist. And, similar critiques are bantered around on the Facebook and the web more generally.

As with all conspiracy theories there is an element of truth. Yes, a group of bankers along with government leaders have come together several times over at least the past 100 years to cobble together monetary systems that guaranteed the continued existence of the type of banking and political system that they dominate. This is no surprise and in my book certainly doesn't qualify as a conspiracy.

However, what is never asked is the context of these moments. My research is an attempt to contextualize these moments. Giving attention to the political-economic ideas that were available, and the particular issues that they were attempting to solve.

Next Economy Dialogue - Colin Boyles Editorial

Colin Boyle's article in the Next Economy Dialogue series in the Cape Times is exactly the kind of analysis that I find to be rather boring. It is not that the writer is wrong, or that he is not intelligent or even a good writer. I just find it boring. Once again it is someone talking and thinking inside the box. Yes, we often hear about this idea of thinking outside of the box. You hear this a lot in Business Schools or other sorts of creative entrepreneurial conversations. And, there is much validity. I think it is just about the size of the box. I think often people think outside the box, but that box is inside another box much like those Russian dolls that you can keep pulling out a smaller and smaller doll.

So, the central assumption in much of the type of analyses that Boyle presented is that the box is actually fine - the basic size and the sides of the box are correct and naturally given (not socially constructed), therefore barely up for debate. This type of analysis has increasingly become the norm since the fall of the communist experiment in the majority of the world. Let me note here right now that whatever I have to say I am not a communist, and I don't think I am a socialist, in fact maybe I am a capitalist! The point is that I try to interrogate the dominant way of thinking about our economy in the hopes of finding a viable solution that is not based on the same fundamental assumptions that so much analysis takes for granted. 

Back to Boyle, for him what needs to be fixed is the way that the inside of this box is laid out; move this, change that, tweak this and then ultimatley we will free the true and natural economy. And in this case it is quite obviously the capitalist economy which will naturally and "magically" unleash a barrage of job creation and wealth. The solution is just less regulation, more alignment with the private sector and greater business/state cohesion. Perhaps some of these elements are needed, but the assumption is that capitalism and its underpinnings will a) provide these solutions and b) that it is a sustainable and long-term viable path to explore.