economics « Critical Mass

What moviemaker’s blog would be complete without at least one post reading a meaning no-one else sees into some movie?

Just in case you missed the block capital letters in the title of this post, I am about to share my interpretation of the environmental meta-narrative in Rian Johnson’s new film, Looper, and that will involve mentioning key plot points as well as the ending. If you have not seen this film, do not read this post until you have. It’s a movie worth seeing with fresh eyes. Don’t let me ruin it for you.

If you’re still reading this post, that means you’ve seen the movie, so I won’t recap the story for you. I’ll cut to the chase.

During the film, you may have caught many references that implied a period of instability prior to the 2040s setting of the film. The present day of the film is rife with neo-Western lawlessness, the Hobbesian war of “all against all”. A man shoots another man in the back for stealing his suitcase. Hoodlums run riot with guns. The line between law enforcement and the criminal element is non-existent, one behaving as an extension of the other.

The primacy of precious metals as currency points to some sort of economic collapse. The repeated mention of Mandarin being the language of the future, paper money being emblazoned with Mao, the sage advice that China rather than France is the place to go – these story elements tell us that the economic collapse was followed by the rise of China.

Cars, with few exceptions, are either battered ‘old world’ cars with solar panels or electric cars. The homestead on which Emily Blunt lives operates on solar power, which features heavily in the background of most of the exterior shots. Her crop, sugar cane, means biofuel. Her flying field sprayer points to small-scale domestic agriculture as a target market of innovation. At one point, when faced with the suggestion that they should burn her crop to get a clear view of who might be coming, she says that even if the crop is failing, it still contains the seeds for next year. No Monsanto terminator crop, then. Also, a telling statement that what we have now is worth something for the future and should not simply be defensively liquidated. All this points to the fact that the present day in Looper is a post-peak oil world. This is important, because peak oil entwines the environmental and economic elements of society. The morality play at hand here can be read ecologically or financially, socially or politically – by arguing that this is a post-peak world, I am saying that all of these are present intentionally as a holistic image of a near-future global situation.

So what of the characters? The four primary characters can be split into simple categories:

The ‘old’ generation: Bruce Willis, representing the Boomer generation.

The ‘present’ generation: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, representing those of us between the ages of 20 and 40, a group in which I include myself.

The ‘next’ generation: The boy, representing those currently too young to have political or social sway but still held hostage by the behaviour of the other two generations, in one scene literally.

These three make a trinity very obviously akin to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit – the child’s telekinesis provides his character with an otherly nature that fits this interpretation. The conversation between Willis and Levitt in the diner is a father/son argument if ever there was. The idea that they are the same person strengthens my theory that they represent the cyclical destructive habits that one generation learns from the other.

This leaves Emily Blunt’s character: Mother Nature. Gaia, if you’re a fan of James Lovelock. She nurtures her child, the ‘next’ generation, in the face of the chaos and violence wrought by man. She is fierce and protective but not cruel. She is, eventually, held hostage by both the ‘present’ (Jesse, the hitman sent to find Levitt) and the ‘old’ (Willis playing out the Terminator/Sarah Connor dynamic). She makes peace with Levitt once he recognises how she and her child should be treated.

So how does this analysis frame Looper as an environmental morality play? Here goes…

The ‘present’ generation is engaged in a cyclical, self-defeating hedonistic exercise dressed up as a fulfilling life, mainly geared towards either repeating or clearing up the mistakes made by their forebears, the ‘old’ generation. The ‘old’ generation have rules that make this cycle of behaviour both inevitable and pointless – old criminals are sent back to be killed by their younger selves. The serpent devours its own tail. Administrating this closed loop is an ‘old’ generation puppet, who governs the ‘present’ generation with brutal control. Are we not currently ruled by the ‘old’, mainly through fear and brutality?

The addiction to ‘dropping’ (using a drug dripped into the eyes) can be read as any number of particular behaviours – fossil fuel usage, drug abuse itself – which quite literally cloud one’s sight, make one unfit for much other than alternating bouts of anti-social and hedonistic activity, lead to dependence and harsh withdrawal in the event of the drug’s unavailability. One could even read this as a representation of anti-depressants and more broadly the use of psychoactive prescription medications to allow people to be happy, or at least not catatonically depressed, by their senseless and unsatisfying existence.

All of the violence committed by the ‘present’ generation only afford them, eventually, a 30-year retirement as a member of the ‘old’ generation, in which they can do whatever they want with themselves, spending the money they accumulated off the back of the ‘present’ generation. The fact that both ‘worker’ and ‘retiree’ are the same person makes the metaphor all the more telling. Eventually, the ‘old’ man is sent back to be killed by his ‘present’ self – the loop is closed, the retirement account is spent/annulled, another worker retires to take his place. The serpent devours its own tail.

Enter Mother Nature, guardian of a child who in the future will wreak a horrible revenge on the ‘old’ generation by revolution, forcing them out of the picture altogether. Why? Because of what was done to it by that generation. By brutality, short-sightedness, selfishness and greed. The ‘present’ generation is in a curious position of simultaneously working for the ‘next’ and ‘old’ generations; do we not work for our children and our parents?

What is the ‘old’ generation’s reaction to this upstart ‘next’ generation? To destroy it in order to preserve the things the ‘old’ generation enjoys; Willis wants his life back, his wife back, his peaceful retirement back. To achieve this, the ‘old’ generation attacks not just the ‘next’ but also the ‘present’ generation, but there is a bitter twist to this: in the loop of time, the death of the present generation destroys the old generation but still leaves the next generation alive with what’s left of Mother Nature.

The only way that the ‘present’ generation can save the ‘next’ generation is by destroying itself, and by extension the ‘old’, in order to leave room for the new. Mother Nature can only watch as this all-too-human drama unfolds. She is held hostage, threatened, occasionally in jeopardy, but ultimately it is the human who is extinguished by human activity – Mother Nature survives. The ‘present’ generation is forced right to the brink, only making the decision of self-sacrifice when faced with watching the ‘old’ generation and ‘old’ ways obliterating any hope the ‘next’ generation has of doing things differently, of evolving. Levitt’s character, to atone for his earlier feckless selfishness, has to break the loop of repetitive and destructive foolishness against Mother Nature and the ‘next’ generation, and in so doing, he is redeemed.

All of the social, political, economic and environmental upheaval around us is right there on the screen. The age of austerity, trading the future of an entire generation for the retirement accounts of a few. The consumption of resources now that can never be used again. The bizarre trap our present generation feels, on the one hand knowing that to keep more for the next generation we have to take from our parents and grandparents, on the other hand slowly realising that whatever choice we make, it is us today, here and now, who will have to make do with less or even nothing at all.

So, Mr. Rian Johnson, my compliments to you, sir. Either intentionally or not, you have crafted a morality tale for the peak oil age, one where we live inside a time loop, visiting the sins of the father unto the son, robbing Peter to pay Paul, running in circles until we go extinct. It ain’t hopeful, but dammit, it’s good cinema.

And that’s the movie you didn’t see. Thanks for reading.

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

What makes this movement so special and, from my perspective, so poignant, is that there are no enemies here.

Some of you will have been beaten or arrested by the police. Non-protesters may have had personal property damaged during the course of these events. The police may have had abuse or worse hurled at them for what they are doing in seeking to control the direction of these protests. Those of you who have been hurt have not been hurt by your enemies. You have been hurt by your brothers, your sisters and those who one day will be your strongest allies. Why do I see it that way?

The law is such that the police will enforce it as ordered regardless of its substance. In instances when the police have used heavy-handed tactics, they have done so because they are upholding the law as it has been explained to them and along the lines by which they have been instructed to do so. This is not a semantic point, but a very important key to our future as social beings on this beautiful planet of ours. A change in the law will change the behaviour of the police.

The police force is exactly that – it is a force, a tool which does the bidding of the hand which wields it. I may personally disagree with a great deal of the laws currently on the books, and I may wholeheartedly disagree with the manner in which those laws are sometimes enforced, but the police are not the enemy. They are our brothers and sisters, born into a way of life they did not build, conducting their life in accordance with the information they have been given over the course of their lifetime. With whom does the blame lie if they have been given the wrong information, or told to enforce unjust laws? Is it the fault of a child who has never been taught language that he cannot speak? In all of this action and rhetoric, the true tragedy is that we are falling prey to the exact divisive strategy which has allowed us to be governed so unjustly for so long.

When the laws are changed to better suit the idea of justice and governance that befits us as an intelligent life form, the police will be on the front line of keeping those laws intact. The neutrality of the police may be a most incomprehensible thing to those witnessing violence as a result of it, but that neutrality is also to our advantage.

Police men and women who will use baton and pepper spray to subdue those allegedly violating public order will steadfastly turn those weapons on whomever is designated an opponent to public order, no matter how it is defined. If this is the case, as I believe it to be, then we have no enemy in the police. They are human beings, just like us, and the structure which they are a part of has convinced them that we must be watched and subdued.

The police in Britain and across Europe have undergone some of the most stringent cutbacks in wages, man-hours and employment numbers. These protests stand, among other things, for equitable wages in return for fulfilling work. These police men and women are the people we are fighting for. They just don’t know it yet, and if they do, they have pressures of their own to account for their silence as they wait patiently for the law to allow them to act in accordance with their beliefs.

Whether or not people should follow orders they disagree with is by the by. It is both dishonest and unfair to expect them to behave differently to how we think we would in their place, because we are not in their place. They are not our enemy. There is no “they”. There is only “us”.

So this is the crucial aspect of this movement that must be shouted from the rooftops. Any human of flesh and blood who resides within a society whose laws and financial system bind them is one of us, because that is who we are and that is what we represent. One who has no enemy also is no enemy. This is the way in which peace can be built on the foundation of compassion.

This movement is exactly that – a movement. Like a nuclear chain reaction, movement can become a revolution over time if a critical mass is reached. If enough of us really begin to see each other for the commonly bound humans that we are rather than the social roles into which we are divided, then the rest falls into place.

The media calling for an agenda, for a plan, misses the necessary process of a movement:

– We become aware of something wrong, so we move towards where we think the answers may be.

– We find over time that we are moving in concert with others like us, and in that shared understanding of seeking answers, we begin to help each other to formulate the right questions.

Looking for answers is not an egotistical activity. Anybody who can help us in our search is an ally, anyone who hinders us in our search simply has not yet found the drive within themselves to begin looking. This is how we move together; this is what a social movement is. This is not about the selfish imposition of a certain preference on others who do not share that preference. This is about openly stating what can be factually supported, regardless of how much the media choose to leave out or ignore, regardless of how current comforts mollify people into defensive acceptance of the status quo. Again, they are not the enemy. They are us, and they will figure it out one day.

True revolution begins in the mind. If we learn the ways of the oppressors only to replicate those ways when we have replaced them, then we have achieved nothing. The only true revolution begins with the realisation that we are all one. Beneath political and social definitions and dynamics, there is no oppressor and oppressed. There are only vulnerable, fearful people manipulated by deeply rooted buttons which those who wish to retain power know how to push.

I am one of those vulnerable, fearful people, but I am trying my best to awaken my mind, to awaken the wellspring of compassion within me which fears no-one because by fearing, I avoid understanding and empathising. I try to acknowledge what my buttons are and observe how they are pushed by others, by information, by activity. Only then can I see how close to everyone else I am, because we are all just as vulnerable and just as fearful as I am, since we are all biologically the same and exist within localised modulations of a single social structure.

Those who currently wield power and influence, who line their pockets, manipulate markets and governments in order to extend their power and undermine opposition – they are also not the enemy. They too are us, but they are confused. They have become confused by the very system which they are struggling to maintain as it wheezes and grinds to a halt around them. They think their power is real. They think their money is real. They think that by defending their claim to power, they can hold onto their money, which in an evidently circular manner, is also the fictitious source of their fictitious power.

Any threat to power can be very frightening. This is why ideas are the commodity most tightly regulated in our cultures. Our modern global system is built on piles of abstractions and unquestioned assumptions. To maintain the structure of this ideology, built as it is on quicksand, only a superficial amount of idea variation is tolerated before the protectors of the structure crack down.

People march all the time, for St. Patrick’s Day, Thanksgiving, Gay Pride. They protest against war, they petition embassies and picket the White House. But none of these variations comes close to the sea change in structural thinking that this movement can bring about if it is preserved, if it maintains integrity and does not collapse in on itself or become what it offers to replace.

If the purpose of this movement is to simply replace the current way of doing things with a structurally identical but ideologically different way of doing things, this movement will fail because it will find itself fighting against ideas which oppose it, just as revolutionaries have throughout the ages.

We must structurally alter the manner in which we govern and inhabit this planet as a species. Doing it for Jesus instead of Yahweh, or Allah instead of Jesus, or science instead of religion, or money instead of science – these are all the same thing. We have always done the same thing, and we all know the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

In this way, it is not the wealth of a small number of people which is the problem, nor is it the tax avoidance of large companies. These things are examples of the hypocrisy that our system engenders, but they are not the enemy. Getting bogged down in this level of discourse automatically plays to the system of averages and financial valuation which has confused so many of us for so long. Believing that justice is a simple matter of us getting our hands on what other people have is exactly the kind of thinking that got us to this point in the first place.

Capitalism is not the problem. All economic systems are capitalist systems because capitalism is simply the use and management of capital, most commonly referred to as surplus wealth. Whoever told you that capitalism is somehow different from other economic systems does not understand economics.

The deeply extractive, materially fixated, morally bankrupt, ecologically and socially destructive number games which are played world wide right now are simply a washed-out perversion of an underlying economic truth which has been lost over time, namely that people require access to goods and services in complex societies and the easiest manner in which to distribute those goods and services is by the use of a common means of exchange which frees the labourer from needing to find a supplier who wants the thing he produces. I can buy shoes with money instead of trying to find a cobbler who needs cucumbers or hats. This is a social service which is necessary for any society functioning above a certain threshold of size and complexity.

The fact that money has been turned from a service into a thing, and in so doing has been concentrated in very few hands which seek to perpetuate their control of that money and the system which allocates it does not constitute a proof that money is somehow evil or unnecessary. Like all gods, money gets a bad rap for what fundamentalists do in its name.

People have the highest degree of learned behaviour of any animal which has been studied, and as such, we respond very quickly and unwittingly to social and structural expectations. We thank someone for a meal we didn’t enjoy, we get a job at a faceless big box store and begin using the words “we have” to describe the selection of goods on offer. We identify with structures and social norms, and it is those things which must change if there are to be really meaningful alterations to mankind’s trajectory going forward.

It can no longer be a social norm that goods arrive before us with no provenance and no moral association other than our desire for them. It can no longer be morally (let alone intellectually) justifiable to bang on about economic growth in the OECD nations when the major purpose of growth is to support the growing debts we accumulate through a persistence in allowing money to be created as a debt-bearing thing rather than circulated as a debt-free service.

The strict extractive system which is currently in place in the OECD nations, centred on taxing the people in order to service debt generated wilfully, will never resolve inequity either at home or abroad. The emphasis placed on work (particularly non-productive work) is a by-product of a system which requires work in order to meet the basic needs of life.

From birth, we are told we live on someone else’s property, eating someone else’s food, wearing someone else’s clothes. There is no birthright for the modern citizen. We were told that democracy meant no taxation without representation, but what we have is no representation without taxation.

Brothers and sisters, in the streets and squares, in the offices and apartments, in the banks and agencies, in the police and military, we have a lot of hard work to do. We can only succeed if we do it together, with compassion for one another. With the world’s population hitting 7 billion at the end of this month, there has never been a clearer sign that we sink or swim together on this pale blue dot. The immaturity of ego, which wants for itself and cares nothing for external consequences, must grow to a mature and compassionate understanding of our responsibilities to each other and to the planet.

Asking for what the wealthy have is irrelevant. We should have something far greater in our sights: a real birthright for every living thing on this planet, in balance, understanding and peace.

I’ve been watching as the Occupy Wall Street movement in New York City gains momentum. Worldwide, similar movements centred on similar flash points of discontent have been bubbling up. I attended the first day of the Occupy London protest, and I filmed some footage I have compiled into a short film which is embedded below and also available here to download for free under a Creative Commons license. If you find something of value in it, please feel free to download and share it as widely as you see fit, with attribution as appropriate.

I have wanted to write something about this situation but I couldn’t come up with the right idea for how to approach this very important issue from an honest place. However, after seeing this video of USMC Sgt. Shamar Thomas berating the NYPD for their behaviour, and after seeing and speaking with the police and protesters here in London about why they are doing what they are doing, I feel the best way to address this from my perspective is as an open letter. I hope that I have done justice to the principles of all the people involved in these recent events.

It is the way of all movements, no matter how well-intentioned, to pass over time into self-serving corruption. Many years ago it was realised that without a common medium of exchange, the melon farmer would only be able to get shoes from a cobbler who wanted melons. Over time this basic concept of money as a necessary service for the functioning of society has too passed into self-serving corruption.

Here in the UK, at the Conservative Party Conference, Prime Minister David Cameron states that the only way out of a debt crisis is to pay off our debts. According to his speechwriters, the way for the UK to prosper is for households to pay off their credit cards and their overdrafts. How inspiring a message to the people – in this time of austerity and crisis, of uncertainty, the best idea our government has is that you should pay off debts to people who pay themselves in excess of 200 times the average national wage.

In Greece, another general strike is crippling the country. Riot police in faceless helmets stride the battlefield of central Athens, gassing and clubbing people who are their fellows in defence of an establishment which is cutting police wages and benefits as well.

The howling winds have quieted for the moment in Portugal and Italy, as Greece is watched closely by bankers and governments alike for signs of what is to come.

Meanwhile, for the first time in at least a generation, protesters have gathered in and around Wall Street, fed up with the blatant unwillingness of their government to crack down on the financial terrorism which is sweeping the globe from the nerve centre of lower Manhattan. This terrorism, at the root, is based on a Big Lie.

The clue to the Big Lie is in David Cameron’s speech just as it is in the false concern of the troika now watching Greece implode. The Big Lie is this: the debt can be repaid. Everything else about this situation, from the endless talk of bailouts and tranches to the austerity measures and “fiscal responsibility” of government ministers, is skin on baloney.

Austerity will never work. Bailouts and tranches will never work. Less benefits, less welfare, lower or later pensions will never work. The debt can never be repaid.

Since the ability to do work in this kind of system is based on the availability of money, and since money comes into existence through the creation of debt, there is less and less money in the system as the debt is repaid, meaning the only way to get more money into the system is to take out more debt. David Cameron has either been very badly advised or he is fronting for the worst kind of criminal fraud.

There are many ways in which financial wizards can explain this, but underneath the abstractions and models of the economic jiggery-pokery is the heart of the Big Lie:

– Money is created as debt by the banks.

– The money which is created is only the principal of the loan and not the interest owed on the debt.

– Therefore there will never be, under these conditions, enough money in the system to pay off the debt.

The bank creates £100 when I promise to pay it back at 5%, but in order to pay back £105, I have to get the extra £5 from somewhere else, because the bank did not create it. That £5 can only be gotten at the expense of someone else who also needs it. As I struggle to get that £5 at the expense of my fellows in society, the bank sits back and waits for the interest. Their only competition, at the upper level of this game, is not for money but for how much more money they can make than the other banks. In the trenches, it is me who is struggling to make money or not. The bank will never have that struggle under the current system. Why? The banks have an enforcer.

Who bestrides the world, making it safe for capital and enterprise, ensuring financial stability? The IMF. The IMF’s highest decision-making body is the Board of Governors. The Board of Governors is comprised of representatives from all the member-states, usually either the finance minister or the governor of the central bank. So as the IMF imposes rules and conditions on Greece, Evangelos Venizelos, the Greek finance minister sits on the governing board of the IMF, ringing in the changes. Where does the IMF get its funding from? The member-states. So Greece is paying for the IMF to impose rules on it, and the finance minister of Greece is voting for the rules against the will of the people. This privilege cost Greece €1.3 billion last year alone.

In the UK, Parliament just voted to almost double the British contribution to the IMF. Why are the people of the world paying for the privilege of having rules imposed on them by an unelected extranational body? This article from an Irish perspective has some good commentary on this.

If this seems like a dizzying game of three-card monte, good. It is. Like three-card monte, the game is rigged.

On Wall Street right now, there are people trying to force the reforming of the government whose founding document guarantees the people the right to remove a government that has failed them. In Europe, the public is groaning under the weight of the unpayable debt mountain they have been forced to shoulder. There is talk of the euro fracturing as a currency or even the EU splitting up. There is the usual murmur about “instability”, “capital flight” and even war. However far-fetched these events may seem in our modern milieu, they are all possible and in some cases inevitable if the Big Lie is not publicly exposed and eradicated.

The only way to do that is to demolish the founding principle of the Big Lie, which is that money is a thing. Money is not a thing. It does not exist. It cannot be created, or destroyed, in any truly meaningful sense. Money is a service. It is a proxy for the energy involved in doing work.

The melon farmer needs shoes even if the cobbler doesn’t want melons. As long as the money holds commonly agreed value as a medium of exchange, the service of money can be provided. The cobbler knows that he can exchange the money for a hat even if the hatter doesn’t want shoes, and so forth. This is what money is for – it is a public service, not a thing to be created from nothing and accumulated by the few.

As long as money is a thing, it will be created by those who wish to manipulate it and accumulated by those who wish to use it to give them power over those with less of it. The time has come for money to be reinstated as a public service, a commonly agreed medium of exchange coined and circulated by the elected representatives of the people in order to facilitate the true productive work and wellbeing of the people themselves.

Let the banks and the politicians who shill for them pass into irrelevance and obsolescence. We do not need their games or their rationalisations. We must repudiate the Big Lie if we are to survive as a society of free individuals in community with shared aspirations. Otherwise, we will suffer the depredations of war and fear until we are all slaves to the debt which cannot be repaid, to the thing which is not a thing, to the substance and consequence of the Big Lie.

In Africa there is a proverb: “When two elephants fight, it is the grass which gets trampled.”

It is time for the grass to fight back.

I’ve just uploaded a new podcast with the guys from Positive Money.

The Magic Box of Money Creation with Ben Curtis and Ben Dyson of Positive Money by Critical Mass Podcasts

Talking to them about money creation really got me thinking about the predicament we find ourselves in these days. For a society such as ours, money is the enabler of activity, the lubricant, the expedient, the salve, the reward, the goal. It seems utterly mad that so few of us would really know where it comes from, how it comes into being and what kind of pressure that places on our system.

I spoke at a conference a couple of weeks ago and they asked me to hang around for the round table discussion after my presentation. I joined the table which was discussing population growth. The head of the table was pressing for us to come to an agreement that we could present in the closing remarks. His main interest seemed to be in asserting that Britain was filled to capacity with a population of 63 million and that therefore projected gains from immigration which would take us to 70 million over the next decade or so were bad.

A general air of discomfort descended over our table, no doubt helped by the posh Middle England/ NIMBY-ness of our discussion leader. I’m not one for political correctness but it did feel that his statement about immigration was at best disingenuous. Several people in the group raised perfectly valid points about the manner in which we in the UK live and consume and were summarily dismissed.

I decided to take a shot at explaining that from my perspective, complaining about immigration and population pressure was not going to be constructive unless we looked at the economic and social system that makes those things inevitable. I began to talk about the manner in which money is created, which automatically demands growth to service debt, which demands more work and more workers at all times. I wanted to get across what I consider to be the key point of the issue, which is that we have built a pyramid scheme instead of a sustainable economy. A pyramid scheme requires an ever-increasing supply of new participants in order to function. If you have an economic system that categorically cannot function without a constant influx of new people, you will never reconcile the pressures caused by more people without fixing the system that demands their presence. In a modern, complex world, that system is driven at the root by the way we create and distribute money.

The head of our discussion interrupted me to say that I was going off topic into conspiracy theories, that we were talking about people, not economics. When I attempted to stress the connection between the two, he told me that I was “getting on [an] economics hobby horse again” and changed the subject. This man was a well-to-do, well-respected retired journalist of over thirty years experience. He was at a conference intimately targeted at environmental issues and without reservation I am sure that his heart was in the right place. However, if (a) people feel that money is irrelevant to environmental damage and population growth or that those who see the connection are peddling conspiracy theories, and (b) those people are the good guys, then (c): Houston, we have a problem.

I hope you enjoy the podcast. Please check out what Ben Curtis and Ben Dyson are doing with the Positive Money project – it’s one of the most constructive things happening in Britain right now and they make killer videos too.

Tag Archives: economics

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