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The rock-bottom basis of any economy
Hear hear! What an interesting topic of discussion...
Postcard From the End of America: Oakland - by Linh Dinh
http://dissidentvoice.org/2013/04/postcard-from-the-end-of-america-oakla...
coming soon to a city near you...
Thanks NDPP, Dinh reads like a modern day Steinbeck. I feel sorry for Americans. They deserve better than this.
I agree Fidelio..
Postcard From the End of America: Scranton - by Linh Dinh
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article34980.htm
"...Unlike our ruling class, we can't just wreck this dear ship, then step off it laughing..."
Social Justice and the Economic Crisis: The Austerity Agenda Targets the Disabled - by John Clarke
http://www.globalresearch.ca/austerity-agenda-targets-the-disabled/5335080
"The attack on income support has been central to the process of imposing austerity on working-class populations because of the connection between the adequacy of such programs and the bargaining power of unemployed workers and unions..."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/11/neoliberalism-hijack...
Neoliberalism has hijacked our vocabulary: 'Customer'; 'growth'; 'investment'. We should scrutinise the everyday language that shapes how we think about the economy...we need to bring economic vocabulary back into political contention, and to question the very way we think about the economy in the first place. For something new to be imagined, let alone to be born, our current economic "common sense" needs to be challenged root and branch.
If "economy" = activities humans pursue for material well-being,
Then the rock-bottom basis of any economy is human energy, ie, biological human energy.
And there is only one place to get this energy: food.
Of course one needs water to grow the food, and to stay hydrated. But at the end of the line of any series
of transactions, the thing that makes it all roll is the fact that people have to eat. There was never a "gold standard" underpinning economies; it has always been the "food standard."
The name of the modern game is power duping people to jump through hoops for a little snack.
Or tokens that can be exchanged for a snack.
Fiat currencies are little more than promissory notes (the metal and paper itself might be useful for something).
The basis of a global economic collapse? More and more, we will find that there are more promissory
notes than real value.
The real value is frying dry in the hot sun, and being emptied from oceans,
and poisoned in vast expanses of what were once pristine watersheds.
Money cannot be eaten.
And I hope the wrinkles get ironed out of the babble "system upgrade."
Lots of sidescroll needed, and other big formatting problems...