Crises of Capitalism - Animated David Harvey

This is a great 11 minute video of David Harvey's recent talk at RSA in London. David is a great Marxist analyst and has written several books about capitalism and finance. I have to admit that I have not had a chance to read his books cover to cover, only snippets and listened to some of his talks. There are a couple quotes that I find to be fantastic.

The first one goes, "The whole history of capitalism has been about financial innovation, which has the effect of empowering the financiers.” This is a powerful quote for me. It really gets at my inner inspiration and is what drives me to explore the side of our political-economy that deals with this question. In my research I am attempting to highlight this financial innovation by showing how very clear political decisions were taken that would make money compatible with capitalism within the confines of an American style democracy that entrenches the rights of private property.

This thinking falls heavily on Geoffrey Ingham's understanding of money as having its own forces of production. David Harvey is essentially highlighting the same fact, as I am, by trying to highlight some of the historical evidence for understanding money in this way. Money needs to be seen as something that has been built and constructed so as to make it compatible with the functioning capitalist democracies of today (here I am borrowing a term from E.M. Wood).

I believe this is a powerful intervention that is been pushed by those that are exploring Community Currencies and other forms of alternative money. This brings me to the second quote, "We have a duty to change our mode of thinking". Here Harvey is throwing down a particular challenge to academics. He is telling us we have to bring a fresh perspective to our way of analyzing our political-economy.

I know that I am doing this. I know this because most people reject my thinking and assume that there is no real relevance to a discussion of money in terms of building a viable post-capitalist ecologically minded political-economy. My sense, and I think Harvey would agree (though I have not had the chance to ask him personally) that this is a good site for exploration. As Harvey points out, since the 1950's the US and the Bank of England have been siding with the financiers over manufacturing. This highlights clearly the way in which money has its own forces of production and is a tool in and of itself that is most clearly entrenched in our political system.

We have to understand money in a new way. We need to bring a fresh perspective to it. Both in terms of understanding how it got to the position it now holds, how changing it in meaningful ways challenges the entire conception of our current political-economy, and that it is not something that is a result of the economy but is constitutive of the sort of political-economy that we chose in the 18th century to entrench into today's capitalist-democracy.

I believe that the most important direction we can move our monetary system towards is one that is not focused on accumulation of money as a form of wealth, one that has a pricing mechanism that can respond to both abandunce in terms of supply and infinite value in terms of price. These are the innovations we need to think about incorporating into our financial system. Until then we will continue to battle a system that is both controlled, focused on scarcity and has two opposing forces 1) accumulation 2) velocity (aka movement) of money.

Here is the video.

This is the animated video:



And this is the full lecture video:

Oh Thesis Question!!

I am in that time - that time of trying to survive and navigate the thesis proposal. I have a good idea of the arena I want to explore - value and money. Specifically the role that alternative currencies can play in promoting a broader spectrum of values - most notably issues of scarcity and competition.

These are two of the elements that I consider to be critical to the belief mechanisms that help to drive modern capitalism and the connected negative consequences of that system. The question then is how do you create a system that recognizes concepts of abundance and cooperation? My answer has come to rest on notions of money - and on ideas of creating alternative currencies that place or rather respond to values of abundance and cooperation in a positive way.

I believe that a currency that operates under the rules of 1) Zero Interest 2) A separation of medium-of-exchange and store-of-value 3) that has a demurrage, will bring us closer to meeting the goals of reducing environmental destruction, reducing growing inequalities (which is driven by hoarding of money) and of reducing the need for competition (and therefore commodification) while helping to promote the ability of communities that currently lack a medium-of-exchange to generate their local economies (and here I am referring to communities in Africa).

I place my energy behind the creation of alternative currencies because I believe this has two impacts on society 1) It allows us, as a society, to recognize our power over the economy and that money is our creation, not some God given right of the state or even a natural byproduct 2) It allows us to explore value systems and forces us to talk and debate about what are the most critical things that our money needs to value.

In this way I turn to the rise of mobile technology in Africa and the pioneering ideas of Michael Linton who talks about the value of technology in the spread and creation of alternative currencies. Much of his thinking is detailed by Keith Hart who talks about the changing subject/object relationship that is produced through the virtualization of money.

As I am sure, and hope you can see, I have built my thinking into a pretty cohesive flow. The big question is where do I ask my question and at what point do I place that question? I am not interested in the quantitative element of this discussion, I think Friedrich von Hayek said it best in his book "Denationalisation of Money",

"Though the popular tendency in economics is to accept only statistaically testable theories...they have acquired a quite undeserved reputation." (p. 48)

He then goes on to say,

"To introduce sharp distinctions which do not exist in the real world in order to make a subject susceptible to mathematical treatment is not to make it more scientific but "rather less so." (p 48)

It is with this in mind that I look to explore these questions through a much more philosophical and theoretical lens. I believe that these questions are not mathematical but are far more social and political.

I am trying to find a professor at University of Cape Town that is wiling to work with me in exploring these ideas and helping me to formulate my theoretical framework. I have, as of today, still not found that individual. I will continue to push forward.

Our Oceans are in Trouble

I have been reading a special report on the Oceans that was recently published in The Economist that has made me sick to my stomach.

It talks about how our fish stocks are almost wiped out, that the oceans are becoming acid changing the entire composition of the oceans behavior. The profusion of massive dead zones throughout the oceans with algae and red tides. The possibility of most shell fish dying off, nuclear waste, pesticides and other heavy metals flooding into the oceans. The destruction of almost all coral reefs.

This is not a singular issue. It is not just a problem of too much CO2 but is rather a product of the type of economic structure we have in place. An economy that truly places no value on the abundant natural resources. They are viewed as holding no value so therefore no cost is associated with their destruction until it is potentially too late.

It is time to rethink this economic structure. Not tomorrow. But TODAY!! It is time to create a value structure that recognizes the value held in our global common goods; that abundance is a valuable element in the economy and needs to be integrated into the pricing system. We can not ignore this any longer.

Or, within our lifetimes there will be no more sharks, tuna, coral reefs, whales or oceans safe to swim in. It brings tears to my eyes and we the people, the citizens and stewards of this system need to wake up and take responsibility. Change is hard but it is a necessary and constant part of life.

I believe the most important thing we can do is come up with an economic structure that places value on abundance over scarcity, on cooperation over competition, on flow over accumulation. This, people, is a task for our generation and we must, we have to, step up and take responsibility now!!

Shaping Tomorrow

I just re-read a post that I made on a online group that I belong to called Shaping Tomorrow which is a group of futurists. I thought it spoke to my passion and the overall image that I am getting of our economy and the points at which I think we need to put some pressure in the hope of effecting change.

I think the fundamental question is why is the system rewarding excessive consumption, massive flows of money and huge deficits and debts? How did this come about and what drove this process? American's are certainly the "largest" consumers but there are many other consumers in the world. I know I was shocked when I went to Asia and saw the massive malls and the huge desire to consume and posses stuff - it is not only an American phenomenon we are just the leaders.

The economy rewards the creation of useless products - trinkets, environmentally destructive extraction and production technologies, and "over-spending". Why?

Our economy grows when we "consume" and shrinks when we don't. It is what drives us - it is like having a constant carrot and stick scenario in our collective conscience. The reality is the economy is not something that operates without humans - however it can create and incentivize certain human behaviours leading often to problematic outcomes. This is why Stiglitz is one of my favorite economists because he realizes that the economy is actually part of us - rather then us as part of the economy.

We need to seriously reevaluate the values and behaviours our economic system incentivizes and work at changing that. I think it is pretty simple - value abundant clean resources, value industries and products that are zero waste and zero negative environmental costs, value human sustenance through cooperation, remove scarcity as the central driving factor of the pricing mechanism and create a pricing system that assigns increased value to increased abundance of life sustaining resources.

Just some thoughts!!