Sunday, November 30, 2008

The “Power” that binds us

As pointed out before, money is the root of all social ills; the fundamental driving force for greed, corruption, crime and self-preservation all in the name of profit. Money is not a resource nor does it represent one. We have been conditioned to accept it as such and therefore blinded for what it actually is; a tool of control, enslaving society with dept.

But who is in control of all this money? You, me, the government? Nay, for the true identity that enslaves us all are the 1% of the world population that has 40% of the world’s entire wealth. Keeping the status quo, self-preservation and increasing their profit is their only agenda. The people that represent the multinational corporations that serves only their self interest where the main motive like any other business is to make profit. As you can see, if profit is what drives them, then how can they truly act morally and ethically, for these two, more often than enough, will act as a hindrance to profit.

Case in point, a drug company in the US positively absolutely knew they had a medication that was infected with the AIDS virus, and subsequently took it off the US shelf. However, they decided to dump it in Europe, Asia and Latin America. Both the US government and the FDA allowed it to happen resulting in thousand of hemophiliacs dying from the AIDS virus, all because the company wanted to turn their mistake into profit.

“You get up on your little 21 inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America, there is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbine, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today.What do you think the Russians talk about in their counsels of state- Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, min and max solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments just like we do. We no longer live in a world of Nations and Ideologies, Mr. Biel. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business Mr. Biel.” - Character Arthur Jensen from the movie Network

The world is run by a hand-full of big business, controlling and determining what we need and want, how to behave, how we live our lives. Consequently, any individual or groups that challenge their superiority are deemed to be “Terrorist”. By the way ‘Al-Qaida’ is actually a name of a computer database of the U.S.-supported Mujahedeen in the 1980’s. A database.

These corporations will do anything to exert dominance to societies even withholding new technology that may improve our energy needs because they haven’t thought of a way of making profit out of them. Alternative energy solutions advocated by them, such as hydrogen, biomass and even nuclear are not sufficient, dangerous and exist only to perpetuate the profit-structure that the industry has created.

In fact beyond the propaganda and self-serving solutions put forth by these companies we will find other source of clean abundant and renewable energy for generating power, if it weren’t suppressed. For example solar derived from the sun has such abundance that one hour of sunlight at high noon contains more energy than what the entire world consumes in a year. If we could harness just 0.01% of this we would never need to use oil, gas or anything else.

Wind power on the other hand has long been condemned as weak and location driven therefore impractical. However, the US department of energy admitted in 2007 that if wind harvested is just three of the America’s 50 states, could power the entire nation.

The mediums of tidal and wave power is relatively unknown. Turbines installed in the ocean could capture movements of tidal shifts that could generate power. In UK, 42 sites have been noted to be viable and 34% of the UK’s energy could come from this medium alone.

Wave energy is produce from the surface motions of the oceans which is estimated to have a global potential of up to 80,000 terawatts-hours a year. That could be translated into 50% of the entire planets energy consumptions.

It’s important to note that tidal, wave, solar and wind don’t need prerequisite energy to harness, unlike coal, oil, gas, biomass, and hydrogen. The combination of these 4 mediums could potentially power the world forever.

However there is one clean renewable energy source that trumps all of them: Geothermal Power.

Geothermal energy employ the use of what’s called “heat mining”, and together with a simple process using water, is able to generate huge amounts of clean energy. In 2006, MIT reported that there is currently about 13,000 zettajoule of energy available in the earth with possibly 2,000 zettajoule being easily tapable with improved technology. To put that into perspective, the entire consumption of all the countries in the world is only about 0.5 zettajoule per year. Only half a zettajoule. That means about 4,000 years of planetary power could be harnesses from this medium alone. And when we understand that the earth’s heat generation is constantly renewed, this energy is really limitless therefore could be used forever.

In fact, between advanced battery storage, and geothermal energy; there would be no reason to ever burn fossil fuels ever again. And we could do this now, if we were not held back by the paralyzing profit structure.

(Article abstracted and paraphrased from the Zeitgeist: Addendum documentary available on YouTube, Google video, bit-torrent and can be ordered from their website: http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/)

Monday, November 24, 2008

Modern Money Mechanics or Modern Day Slavery

The Monetary System in its simplest terms is money for labour, and goods and services rendered. We revolve around this simple transaction everyday. Not knowing the inherent dept that we incur while performing it. I won’t bore you with the explanation of how money is created, but in general terms: Government need money so they issue bond for the amount needed to Central banks or the US Federal Reserve. The Central bank buys them and then prints money to be given to the Government. Once received, the Government would then deposit the money into their banks and thus becoming legal tender. Now this is an overly simplistic depiction of money creation for which in reality nothing physical is exchange, only digitally. However in our country’s case it differs slightly, it would be our financial institution who issues the money, but nonetheless the concept is the same.

But the danger with this system is that it has what’s called, inflation; $1.00 in the 1913 would cost $21.60 now, that’s a 96% devaluation since then. Of course any form 1 student studying economics would know this, but have anyone ever questioned it? Inflation is actually interest. Interest that’s owed back to the financial institution.

Due to inflation the Government will never repay the money it owes because in order to repay it, more money is needed therefore more dept, increasing with it the inflation. It’s a never ending circle of loans and dept repayments.

“If there were no debts in our money system, there wouldn’t be any money.” - Marriner Eccies

The same thing happens to an individual. The money you have is virtually owed to someone, somewhere. You in turn have to continue working to pay for it. Meaning, even if you don’t take out a personal loan per se, you would still need to work to receive money. Once you have money you can then pay for the goods and services offered by both the private and public sector. If you indeed you take out a loan, you then have to be content with your meaningless job in order to repay it. Either way, working for money is inevitable.

Private British and American banking interests, stated: “…slavery is but the owning of labor and carries with it the care of the laborers, while the European plan… Is that capital shall control labor by controlling wages.”- Peter Joseph.

In other words, physical slavery requires people to be housed and fed while economic slavery requires people to feed and house themselves. This is a most ingenious plan to ever be conceived and the heart of it is an invisible war against the population. Debt is the weapon of choice use to conquer and enslave societies, with interest being its main ammunition.

“There are two ways to conquer and enslave a nation. One is by the sword. The other is by debt” - John Adams, 1735-1826

Also inherent in this Monetary System is Corruption. When some company dumps toxic waste into the environment, we automatically consider it as corrupt behavior. But when let say Hua Ho moves in next door to a convenient store therefore forcing the store to close down due to lack of business, a gray area emerge, for what exactly is Hua Ho doing wrong? Even more subtle is the replacement of a person by some automation, we simply see this as progression or improvement rather than what’s motivating it – Profit; faster creation, faster sales, lower cost = higher profit. We don’t see the inherent corrupt inhumanity of such action for which the motives are the same – profit.

What exactly drives this Monetary-Profit based system? Some have argued the notion of efficiency and sustainability is what drives it. Is it? No product created in this system have ever been efficient or sustainable, otherwise there wouldn’t be a multi-million dollar service industry for automobiles. Or the electronic consumer products that will be obsolete within 6 months with an average life span of 2 years. Surely it’s not efficiency or sustainability. So is it abundance? Not according to the laws of supply and demand where abundance is a negative thing. For abundance will devalue the products like gold, diamonds, oil, gas, timber, exotic goods and animals, and others. So in actual fact, efficiency, sustainability and abundance are enemies of profit. Scarcity is what drives it.

In our country the system of money or monetary system is fundamentally as the same the world over. With this system we can never truly trust anyone as people are always looking to make more money to cover dept or/and make profit. In a world where 34,000 children die every single day from poverty and preventable diseases, and, where 50% of the world’s population lives on less than 2 dollars a day… One thing is clear. Something is very wrong. And, whether we are aware of it or not, the lifeblood of all of our established institutions, and thus society itself, is money. Corruption is also apparent and with 1% of the world’s population owns 40% of the wealth; they are the true rulers of us all.

Jacque Fresco said:
“The major difference between a resource based economy and a monetary system is that a resource based economy is really concerned with people and their well-being, where the monetary system has become so distorted that the concerns of the people are really secondary, if they’re there at all. The products that are turned out are for: How much money you can get. If there is a problem in society, and you can’t earn money from that solving that problem, than it won’t be done.

The resource based economy is really not close to anything that’s been tried. And with all our technology today we can create abundance. It could be used to improve everyone’s lifestyle. Abundance all over the world if we use our technology wisely and maintain the environment.”

More on this later…

(Article abstracted and paraphrased from the Zeitgeist: Addendum documentary available on YouTube, Google video, bit-torrent and can be ordered from their website: http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/)

Note: I don’t want to sound like a 1st year grad regurgitating works of others without having my own thoughts thus sounding unoriginal. But I like this theory, it sheds some light in an otherwise darkening world where power, greed, corruption and profit drives every facet of human behavior. The Venus project proposal although far fetch and sounds a little bit too good to be true, should nevertheless be considered and studied further. Areas of entertainment, sports, excitement, and others haven’t been fully explained. The notion of incentives though available in their proposal, still lacks the fundamental mechanism that drives us on to live our lives. Maybe that’s because we are so accustomed to our way of living that the thought of not doing something not even remotely similar to what we are doing now, is somewhat inconceivable and scary. But I for one am open to a new change, cause change for the better, is better than our monotonous numb existence and apparently futile lives we live. Human well-being and human decency is forgone for the sake of profiteering and where civil liberty is truly lost.

Sunday, November 23, 2008

The future is what we make it

This post does not concern only our country but the world in general. What I’m saying that this is not the final solution to solve our current dilemma but it sure looks like a better one. Maybe we could consider it before dismissing it as new age ludicrous theory or a new form of communism; think critically and analyze.

The monetary system we live in at the moment was a great idea some thirty or fifty years ago. But now it’s becoming unsustainable. Crime, greed, poverty, terrorism are all product of this system.

The problem with the current monetary system is we continuously have to look and make profit at the expense of human wellbeing, if it was even considered in the first place.

Technology is the key. It is the one thing that changed and improved our lives, not money or politicians. Technology is the one that can make someone see again, able to communicate over long distance, feed the world, house everyone not politicians; they are not trained to do so. Politicians can only pass laws and create policy. How to feed the world? How to get rid of poverty? How to house people? How to have sustainable clean energy? Are all technical problems and therefore need technical solutions not political.

If we pose those questions to a politician, he/she would say how much would it cost? The real question should be do we have the resources? And yes we do. But in monetary system we don’t because we need profit and resources are valued by its scarcity. Oil production is cut to drive the prices high, diamonds are burned to maintain its value, gold is less and less mined, all these in order to maintain the status-quo.

There so many renewable source of clean energy out there and we not using it. Solar, wind, waves, and perpetual motion are all viable source of clean energy. But there is also one energy source that trumps them all and that is Geothermal Energy. Scientist says that there is currently 20,000zl of energy available and with improved technology we can now tap about 2,000zl. To put that into prospective, the entire world’s energy consumption is only 0.5zl; we probably don’t need burn anymore fossil fuel for the rest of our lives. These clean energy sources also don’t need prerequisite energy source to extract them. Unlike crude oil, gas or cold; it’s already there to be tapped into.

We have the technology now to take advantage of these resources if it weren’t for corrupt governments and big industries lobbyist suppressing it. All they do is corrupt the system for profit; therefore a new Resource Based Economy is ideal for our today’s society where we can achieve equilibrium between technology, humans, and nature (Read: Venus Project).

We will then look back at our current system in the future and laugh at how primitive we really were.

(Points taken and paraphrase from Zeitgeist: Addendum documentary available on YouTube, Google video, bit-torrent and can be ordered from their website: http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/)

Note: I’m not advocating it, I’m merely rising awareness of it viability. We need further research. Like Jacque Fresco said “It’s not perfect but its just better”.