It was Micheal Rowbotham's book, The Grip of Death: A Study of Modern Money, Debt Slavery and Destructive Economics, which opened my eyes to how our world is run by debt. It also inspired the founders of Positive money. It may seem very basic now compared to MMT, but is it a very readable and gripping book.
It paints a world which could be so different to the one we have now, a world where work is leisure and a pleasure. One where the happy whistling postman goes to work and earns enough to live a fairly reasonable standard of living. A world where where there is a well funded National Health Service so there is not need to worry about that. A world where everyone gets a reasonable government pension at the end. A world of just maybe three to four days a week at work. A world where you could take a few months or few years off work and not lose your home so you could go back to university or technical college and retrain for a new job if you hated your present one, or just fancied a change, and not get financially penalised. Or you could take a few months off to do DIY on your home or to spend time with the new baby. Need I go on.
What we have instead is a hell hole instead of 24/7 non stop work with everyone going ten to a dozen. The world's resources being removed by machinery going non stop every hour of the day and night. Cargo ships on the oceans passing each other by carrying similar goods for export in foreign markets so fridges made in Germany end up in Britain and fridges made in Britain end up in Germany. What a waste, and capitalism says it prides itself on efficiency?
Amazon has delivery drivers shooting all over London delivering products within 24 hours, but to compete all the other companies, like John Lewis, are doing the same so congestion and air pollution is rapidly rising again. More waste, but years ago only The Royal Mail was allowed to deliver small parcels to domestic customers leading to great efficiency and better use of scarce resources. Life was calmer.
This video is made from a 1999 video tape so quality is low but it remains interesting. I know you will find much to fault with it but I bet you will find it fascinating too. This is part 1 and the other parts follow.
No comments:
Post a Comment