How Strong Is Your Outrage?

TODO
Lost my initial stream of thought...
But it was about the issue of "Abundance".
Vemma Igland versus K'than Elein and Seffry Jachs

I believe Seffry Jachs’ analysis was fundamentally sound. We do live in an era of economic output abundance, with two massive problems:

1. We are producing too much crap no one needs to live a decent life, and this is exceeding planetary ecosystem boundaries. Some form of ecological collapse is bound to occur if we just blindly run ahead at the present rate of stupid crappy production of crappy things.
2. The political system presents massive obstacles for the fair distribution of the economic output, leaving millions of unnecessary “have nots”. The “have nots” can be easily reduced to zero.

How easily? Operationally easy is what I mean.

But to implement these easy simple operations requires political power, and this is what we do not have. We dirtbags that is.

To be clear, implementing these operation easy solutions would be pretty disruptive. To the upper and middle class. It is the Brazilian Lula effect:

Mr Homoeconomicus: “Too many poor dishevelled unsightly people with darker skin than ours are using our airports now. Lula must go.”

You all know full well why millions of joules worth of crappy stuff is produced each year. Mindless pursuit of profit. It is not even “Capitalism”. Pure capitalism has to reinvest the profit, otherwise the firm gets out-competed or the private currency fails to circulate and this pure system without government breaks down. We do not have such a system, never have, and never will have. Human communities have always had monetary authorities, at least as long as written records are known. Over 6000 years.

It doesn’t mean the MMT system (which has existed for over 6000 years) is the best currency system possible. I rather prefer the Gesell system myself. But that is beside the point, since if policy makers understand the scorekeeping system – whatever it is — then moral economics can take over and we simply do not need to have poverty and involuntary unemployment. These things can be eliminated. Disease and crop failures cannot be eliminated. But poverty can be, almost overnight.

Disease, polluted water, crop failures, are not the cause of today’s poverty and unemployment. If this is what Seffry Jachs and K’than Elien are saying, then I agree with them.

Someone tell the UN SDG people! Most of the UN SDG efforts are ill-focused. They only need to educate governments. It is an education problem, perhaps for 16 out of the 17 SDG goals. Perhaps all of them (I can make the case for all of them).

This is spiritual economics. Once you understand the monetary system inside out, then the real problems become plainly entirely moral and spiritual. Education in this respect, in this context, is a deeply spiritual endeavour, not merely utilitarian.

Yes, we should adopt a Gesell Currency, but it doe snot matter if we don’t. It would be a fine tuning, not a necessity. Unless you ca think of some way it can be a moral imperative? I can’t. Maybe you can, so good for you, and I’d support you.

OK, but why can we not organize society to ge this requisite educaiton into the mids of the politicians and policy analysts?

I think you all know the answer!

It is because politicians and civil servants falsely believe their salary is dependent upon political donors and tax payers, the most influential of whom are oligarchs. SO they are all essentially, whether in ignorance or not, working for the oligarchs. Not our brightest people, and certainly not our most inwardly beautiful and spiritual people… these oligarchs and plutocrats. In fact they are almost to a person pretty darn evil and heinous.

Which raises the question, since out government is largely controlled by these objectively evil people:

Is the NZ government legitimate?

Increasingly I think not, I think the answer is our government is so oppressive now, that it is no longer legitimate, if it ever was. During the post-war era, maybe there was a period of incipient democracy of a sort and so the government back then was sufficiently legitimate. I think that is no longer the case today.

Yeah, but it is tricky.

This does not warrant pitchforks and kalashnikov’s. Because ignorance cannot be fought with bullets and knives.

This is beside the fact I abhor violence in any case, it is never the solution. If you think taking up metallic arms against the state is a good solution,

(a) you are stupid, and have failed to game out the real consequences.
(the oligarchs have these things… [images of police]
(b) you have miss-diagnosed the real problem, so would be attempting to administer a failed solution.

Most people in government, in civil service are not evil. They are ignorant. Their evil is rather banal: they think they are already smart people, and so fail to bother to learn.

It is possible to counter such banal evil with a smile and an offer of bread & coffee. Everyone go and invite a local friendly neighbourhood neoliberal to lunch.

Don’t say this to them out loud, but here is the motivation:

For heavens sake Mr and Mrs Neoliberal middle class domesticated fool: your ignorance is bordering on obscenity. So stop that!

If they refuse to hear you out in civil polite conversation, then you can think about the pitchfork… or quantum eraser. Get back to me on that one, I’m still working on it.

Sincere effort at education is a nice form of one-on-one violence. The violence is done to the ignorant person’s thoughts. It might also raise their blood pressure momentarily, but that can be dealt with pharmaceutically at relatively low cost. The police cannot do a thing about this, even if they do drive our education underground.

(Here I am thinking of the Baháʼí people in Iran who were still running childrens schools underground, at risk of being arrested and tortured — this was under both the former Shah’s pogrom and the current reign of the Ayatollah’s by the way. Not all Islam by mere name is Peace. Same as no all Christianity is Christian… et cetera, et cetera.)

Education and work are our most powerful weapons against all forms of oppression. Sprinkle education liberally. Withhold your labour from those who will exploit, give your labour to those who need you.

Don’t complain to me the method is too slow. What do you think we are, miracle workers?