The Person as a Slave or the World Conspiracy of Folly

THE PERSON AS A SLAVE
OR THE WORLD CONSPIRACY OF FOLLY

By Norbert

[This article published on March 29, 2004 is translated from the German on the World Wide Web, http://www.feldpolitik.de/feldblog/item.php?I=116.]

The person is noble, helpful and good. But is the world ready? Wrong question! The question must be: Is the person ready?

A good argumentation begins best with a contradiction that shakes the synapses and makes possible a neologism. Contradictions are usually funny. It is seldom the contradiction itself that is funny; rather it is the situation where it is recognized. When a contradiction brings one into a dilemma, one becomes a slave of the dilemma.

A dilemma is a plight or predicament that demands a decision between two equally (un)favorable possibilities (wissen.de).

As one example, economic crises are bloody nuisances. Everyone knows this. While there are profiteers from economic crises (for example the bankruptcy management industry), in general no single person wants economic crises. Nevertheless these crises occur! This is surprising because the economy only consists of people! Without people, there is also no economy. An economy only exists because people form an economy. Thus the will of people makes possible the economy!

Ponder this little contradiction: The economy is only formed by the will of people while economic crises occur that aren’t desired by any single person.

This discovery could be amusing. If one isn’t entirely humorless, one could smile about this. The significance of this discovery has not been understood. This often happens. People read, hear or see something but don’t try to grasp its importance. For example, when two experts are asked on television and both give contradictory information, this means one of the two must be wrong. Thus one of the two is the idiot and one should honestly ask whether he could be an expert. While that constantly happens, the consumer gets over asking about the meaning or significance of the information.

What does it mean that the economy is only formed by the will of people while evading the will of people through crises? It means that human will alone does not govern the economy. This discovery has several consequences, for instance the question who governs the economy if not people? Is it perhaps the economy itself that lives its own life? Is so, on what basis and according to what rules? Or has the person long lost control?

The scandalous question is then posed: How can it be that an instrument made by human beings – the economy – can turn against the will of its creator? How can the person put up with this?

The most brilliant film of the turn of the millennia – Matrix – could be recalled here. Humanity is not free. This is suggested in the film. They are only a people of slaves in a matrix. If we return to the economy that refused to obey our will, we suddenly notice: If we do not govern the economy, the economy governs us! (Do you suddenly have a lump in your throat?)

Look around and you will find evidence for this thesis. When they have escaped childhood, people are thrust into the everyday world of work. They must be trained even if the training sites do not correspond at all to their ideas or desires. They must work a 40-hour week, rise in the morning and sink unsatisfied into bed at night. They must abandon old friendships since they have moved to other cities. They spend more time with the television although they know that time with friends at parties or in the open air is much more fun. The job, the little cog in the economy, keeps them on the go, exhausts them and throws them away. They (nearly all of them) much prefer vacation to work and are annoyed when the vacation is over. Nevertheless work is the center of their lives. Thus they do things most of the time they really don’t want to do. These things are only unloved necessities.

How free is the person? The person of “western civilization” is a slave, a slave to the economy that sets the bar or rhythm orienting everything. Even if your financial claims are trifling, either you take a 40-hour job or you refuse it. Another person has already been found!

Still there is hope, hope that concerns everyone, not only western civilization. Globalization is the work that frees the rest of the world from freedom and orders them into the great machine of the economy, the former human instrument that has obviously developed its own life.

Globalization is a slogan for the strategic orientation of international corporations and financial markets. Increased competitive chances are gained by exploiting the possible cost- and positional advantages in the different countries (wissen.de).

“New markets” is shouted. We need new markets! We? Wait a moment, my market is saturated! If you want to chase new markets, chase them without me! Think ye marionettes! The economy is omnipresent. Try to live one day without an economy! No electricity! No shopping! No telephone! No Internet! No housing! Do you want to withdraw from the economy? Make a quiet attempt…

Morpheus: Do you believe in fate, Neo?

Neo: No.

Morpheus: Why not?

Neo: I don’t like the notion that my life is not under my control.

Morpheus: I know exactly what you mean. I will tell you why you are here. You are here because you know something, something that you feel but cannot explain. You feel all life long that something is not right with the world. You don’t know what but it is something like a splinter in hour head that makes you mad or crazy. This feeling has led you to me. Do you know what I am talking about?

Neo: Are you talking about the Matrix?

Morpheus: Do you want to know what the matrix is? The matrix is omnipresent. The matrix surrounds us and is here in this room. You see it when you look out the window or turn on the television. You can feel it when you go to work. You can feel it in the church or when you pay your taxes. The matrix is a dream world that deludes you and diverts you from the truth,

Neo: What truth?

Morpheus: You are a slave, Neo. Like everyone, you were born in slavery and live in a prison that you cannot touch or smell, a prison for your intelligence or power4s of understanding. Unfortunately explaining the matrix to anyone is hard. Everyone must experience it him- or herself. This is your last chance. Afterwards there is no way back. Swallow the blue capsule. Everything depends on this. You grow up in your bed and believe what you want to believe. Swallow the red capsule and you will be in wonderland. I will lead you into the depths of the burrow.
(Matrix transcript)

You are a slave, dear reader! You are a slave of yourself because you have decided for this economy. With this economy, you have decided for economic crises. You must have intended this. Otherwise it wouldn’t have happened. There is an error in the system…

Systems are nothing but complex themes that follow certain rules. Thus rules in this system provoke crises when our economic system is subject to a growth pressure or regularly falls into crises. The problem is that the combination of different rules starts a certain process, not one rule. This makes causal knowledge more difficult, let alone repair. One could then speak of a self-dynamic of a system – of the life of our economy even if the goal of the system master-builder contradicts the real goal toward which the system heads. This means: The person must be clear whether what he expects from the economy contradicts what the economy brings. This is hard. Suddenly the person must make a decision, a decision between infinitely many options, not only a decision between two options. Here are a few options:

The economy should

· make the planet into concrete and let all living beings become stone.
· make the rich richer and the poor poorer.
· offer more riches of variety through unforeseeable crises.
· free people from personally responsible conduct through firm rules.
· implant war as a rule.
· promote the intelligence of (domestic) dogs.
· obey the one who can lie the loudest.
Dear Neo, you understand: The problem is the decision (don’t look so often at the matrix film and speak only in quotations!).

The economy is the center of our life and penetrates everything. Our life is fully economized from birth to buying the coffin (cheaper at Ralph’s). This is also the reason why most ideologies like “communism” and “capitalism” always turn around the organization of the economy. The economy is the core of society. Whoever changes the economy changes society!

Whoever doesn’t want to change this economy has decided to be a slave! Whoever wants to change it must know the goals of his instrument, the economy. When the goals are first identified, the rules to be “re-adjusted”, added or abolished can be analyzed. Rules that contradict or counteract the goal must be closely reevaluated. This doesn’t mean they are obsolete. Some rules work indirectly against the rule. The interactions between rules should not be underrated. This is also true in today’s economic system!

People with program knowledge have a simple challenge. Systems are constantly re-programmed always (!) with view to a goal! Sometimes a function is added. Sometimes a whole new program is written when the goal can only be realized that way. Programmers envision how they would re-program individual rules of the economic system, perhaps a new tax system (new rulers for taxation), a new money system, a new property system, a new retraining system or a new working hours system. No one can begin to program before deciding on the goal that his system should serve. Sometimes one decides throwing away the old system and beginning from the first could be useful. This decision will be easier when the old system collapses in its system-imminent contradictions (prophesy: soon! The question is: What is to be done?).

The person is noble, helpful and good. Supporting this beginning could be the goal of our economic system. But is the world ready? Wrong question! The question must be: Is the person ready?



THE CAPITAL PARASITE IN THE PROFIT TRAP

By Norbert

[This essay is translated from the German on the World Wide Web, http://www.feldpolitik.de/feldblog/item.php?I=109.]

Once upon a time there was a planet on which many domesticated apes lived…

One day – the bipeds always exchanged shoes for hen’s eggs and butter for knives – the idea of money was invented. This was not a bad idea since the domesticated apes no longer had to find hen breeders who needed shoes. With the help of money, one could sell one’s shoes and get eggs. Thus the apes began to specialize. In the course of time, they were rather good at being specialists. Some specialized in the production of memory chips although these were completely useless by themselves. Combinations with other things made useful things out of memory chips. Others perfected the lies and were politicians. Still others practiced monkey behavioral research and invented advertising.

Thus everyone does things that others can use.. Some turned to politicians who invented new rules so everyone had to work from early to late and not get foolish ideas.

The money was constantly underway. The apes went shopping and money flowed to their bosses. The bosses paid their specially trained employees and encouraged them to go shopping so money returned to the bosses again. Thus money sloshed around here and there. Having much money represented independence.

A new principle was established in the course of time. This principle slipped in through the back door, disseminated by specialists who called themselves managers and others called economists. Anyone who didn’t accept this principle was usually decried as a communist or another disparaging epithet. This was the profit principle: Whoever has much gets even more simply because he “invests” what he has and therefore receives a profit.

The basic idea didn’t sound so bad: Earning money without lifting a finger! How ingenious! The apes made their calculations without the system theory. Then the money no longer sloshed around between customers and bosses but to the top bosses, the owners. More and more accumulated because the profit principle said: Whoever has much gets more. Whoever gets more will get even more later.

What happened and why it happened didn’t occur to the apes. Two classes formed: the “social parasites” and the “capital parasites”. In the monkeys’ usage, only the former were known and rather unloved because these “social parasites” obviously did not go to work. However since the apes didn’t want to entirely lose their ape nature, they supported the unemployed unwillingly because no one willingly shares anything. Although the unemployed usually had no chance of finding work, they were still always regarded as crooked. The other class was cleverer. The capital parasites buy specialists from advertising and politics and spread the profit-principle as a “divine principle”. This implied: The profit-principle always existed, will always exist and is good, better and best. Every divine principle has a taboo, the taboo against doubting or questioning it. So the apes regarded it as completely normal that the capital parasites received more and more for idling away their time and were even thankful to them. However the social parasite was exposed to increasingly vehement hostility, above all because the increasingly scarce jobs were still claimed by them.


Only a few asked: Why don’t we let the many fellow-apes become co-workers? Why do those with much get even more? However they all saw that a crisis was occurring. The longer the economy ran, the harder it was to realize economic growth. This is quite normal. Still the capital parasites proclaim through advertising and politics that eternal growth is possible. Since specialization was very far advanced, the apes believed this. Ultimately the others were the experts for the economy, not they themselves.

The reason for the crisis was obvious but no one wanted to see. Those who had much got more and more. Less and less sloshed back and forth between businesses and customers. The economy suffered in an increasing shortage of money and indebtedness since more and more apes had to go to the capital parasites to borrow costly money. The money crunch insured that industrialists threw away more and more employees and thus produced more and more “social parasites while the capital parasites stood around and cried: “Away with people. Our profits are too small!” The profit-principle was a divine principle!

Whoever is very specialized sometimes loses sight of the big picture. Capital parasites are absolutely specialized on short-term moneymaking. They ignore that the more they get the less stays in the economy. Therefore the economy has problems. While the claims of capital parasites become greater and greater, what the economy (employees and industrialists) can share becomes smaller and smaller. This depresses profits…

Oh, holy profit-principle, the profit falls! Oh, hard times! The capital parasites no longer hand over their accumulation. What is mine is mine! Thus the money crunch intensified and more and more employees were forced to be social parasites and more and more entrepreneurs were drowning apes.

This is life on the planet of the domesticated apes. The crisis will not be remedied because the growth lubricant – money – becomes increasingly scarce. This situation strikes the capital parasite severely. He falls in the profit trap. He has much money but fewer and fewer goods are produced. He can buy less and less so his money becomes worth less and less. The apes have a word for this: inflation! They have experience with inflation. Then they simply start all over again. New money is printed and the same mistakes are usually made again.

If they don’t perish in a nuclear war or in a climatic collapse, they hop and skip around their god, the great mammon, without knowing how it really functions. They draw up strange rules and joyfully spend their lives in the everyday. What a strange planet!

[Daniel Rotzinger’s comment: Matthew 6,24. No one can serve two masters for either he will hate the one and love the other or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon. Mammon stands for the love of money! We are experiencing the death throes of capitalism. Everything will be better…]

[Martin Banger’s comment: Since money becomes scarcer, one gains more money than before from the ardently desired commodity. This is called deflation. In an inflation, the economy still functions: everyone tries to be free of his money as fast as possible.

In the last great inflation, people brought laundry baskets of money to the baker. Such pictures illustrate very crassly association with money in inflationary times.

Now in deflation, all the warehouses are full. The only problem is that no one buys. Firstly, money is scarce. Secondly, the goods tomorrow could be cheaper (which unfortunately is only true for the refrigerator, not for the food to fill the refrigerator).

For large capital, this means going on a hunt. With few exceptions, land- and property prices are at a low. A struggle around patent-rights and rights of sale ensues.

After the next great war, no one cares a straw any more that firm XY possesses rights to sell water for North Africa or family ZW owns half of East Germany.]

[Martin Wirtz’s comment: Yes, first there is a deflation. Since everything becomes less expensive, labor also becomes cheaper. But since labor becomes cheaper, incomes also logically fall. This has negative effects on the indebted private households since their income declines and their debts (obligations) are “upgraded”.

These households with “upgraded” debts become insolvent – because they can no longer repay their debts with declining incomes. Demand for goods breaks down. The economy shrivels.

In this situation, capital cannot find any investment possibilities any more in the domestic market – since less is produced on account of falling demand and the profits (interest rates) sink. Therefore capital will leave the country to realize higher yields elsewhere. This is called “globalization”.

Now the domestic market adjusts to the diminishing money supply and the declining sales. There is less money in the domestic market and less is produced.

In this situation, the economy may recover. The capital that migrated abroad to realize higher profits can be enticed back again (The same thing happens abroad as in the domestic market: capital doesn’t find any investment possibilities any more).

What then happens? Through the great amount of capital that flows back into the country, a severe inflation occurs because the returning capital comes to a market where production cannot be increased fast enough.