CCMJ, AND ITS FOCUS IN THE LONDON GLOBAL OPEN TABLE,
support exploration of
SOME FUNDAMENTALS OF CREATIVITY IN THE GLOBAL HOUSEHOLD
Associates know of, and participate in, work on all these issues:
1.Interest and Inflation Free Money
2.Land, resources and location value
3.Factors of production – land, labour and capital
4.Citizens Income/Dividend
5.Exponential function
6.Alternative currencies
Expanded understanding;
Interest free new money created as a public utility – thus tackling embedded structured exploitation [in its monetary form ‘usury’]
- Land and its resources accepted as gift, requiring the reinstatement of the Commons and the maintenance of our replenishing contract [recognising the Covenant/Contract discerned both in nature and some enduring wisdom in the Abrahamic scriptures].
- Rent as public revenue to be returned to the community as the outcome of inevitably interdependent productive contributions – challenging the misguided but resolutely defended laws of property; and renewing our understanding of the nature of trusteeship, stewardship and co-operation.
- Debt cancellation to end intolerable exploitation, which now divides rich and poor in a ratio of 1:99%. Closely linked to the Jubilee theme and the agencies pursuing it.
- Credit is made available and lent under the audited discipline of its ability to nurture replenishable productive creativity in goods and services, recoverable subsequently in a vibrant economy.
- The means for basic livelihood provided for all, as a platform for the development of each person’s unique potential while exciting mutual respect for given talents of immense variety – call it Citizens’ Income, Universal Basic Income or Social Dividend
- Encouraging local currencies as a means of renewing localised mutuality so essential to viable communities.
- All adding up to replenishment of the earth and its manifold resources by global house-keeping as the predicate to economic thought and design
WHAT IF
I spent many hours contemplating ‘what if’ scenarios, imagining the sights, sounds and surroundings after a financial meltdown to ascertain its domino effects. This reflection was as an imaginative time traveller venturing into the future where the human race has made the choice to incorporate the matters above. I saw a beautiful people who want for nothing and are fed and clothed by the invisible benefactor working with the laws of nature.
The indicators above lead us to explore the relationship between banks and the public in our time. Decades of apparent prosperity through credit creation have left us utterly indebted as individuals and nations. The banking system has mutated from servant to master, feeding off the public, aided and abetted by a monopolistic elite willing to spend today at the expense of tomorrow. On a macro scale our currencies have been devalued and diluted by a similar process through the euphemistically termed Quantitative Easing. This is the slow-burn theft of prosperity from the next generation, forced to pay higher prices with diminished benefits that were squandered by their forebears. The very process of saving the banks that caused the chaos has left a gargantuan tax burden. One consequence of this, unintended or otherwise, is that we are now witnessing an unprecedented witch hunt on wealthy individuals by tax authorities the world over, while powerful corporations remain pretty much unscathed.
We are frequently assured that we have to save financial institutions to save the economy, to provide new loans for entrepreneurs and individuals. It is now abundantly clear that even healthy businesses and responsible citizens are unable to borrow for day-to-day finance. Why would a bank go through the risk and hassle of lending money when they can speculate with it or buy up the government debt for a risk-free return? The funds have been swallowed up by the black hole of an over-leveraged financial system, allowing obscene bonuses to be dished out among the elite of these institutions. No doubt most ordinary banking staff have been subjected to infantile pronouncements about cutting the cloth while enduring pay freezes or redundancy. The billions created by Quantitative Easing have been used to prop up markets and manipulate bond prices; it never made its way into the mainstream economy and likely never will. The debts and compounding interest payments will remain in the public domain for decades.
Can you imagine and then work for a magical revelation where the time traveller shakes people from their slumber and fights alone against incredible odds. He doesn’t advocate the bashing of unsuspecting bankers – many are thoroughly decent people trapped in a culture of socially acceptable cheating’ [Harrison]. There must come a point when the public mood turns to disgust over what has transpired. The Occupy Movement is a now widely dispersed movement to challenge the injustice of the world’s greatest legalised heist but hasn’t yet worked out what the way forward. Our UK ‘Critical Thinking’ group from the ‘Free University’ are doing stalwart work on foundations of diligent research.
The real threat to vested-interest institutions comes when an insider proposes an alternative. The supposed stalwarts of capitalism are actually a cartel that detests competition but the time and mood is ripe for the public and for nations to be freed from the intolerable burden of debt servitude on a national on personal level. Paradoxically the best example of liberation from liabilities and inflation coupled with interest-free prosperity occurred in Guernsey two centuries ago; the very place that is now vilified by inefficient, high tax jurisdictions today. This will be covered reported in another paper being prepared and called The Guernsey Experiment. The task of our imagining and then of our action lies in offering a viable choice based on the matters that head this page. That, after all, is what a genuinely free market is meant to be about.
And remember ‘the imagination is not in the mind – the mind is in the imagination’
Start imagining……… and then do not cease from appropriate action.
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