Systems and Paranoid Thinking

Bruce Buchanan

Rational means, including systems methods, may be put to perverse purposes.

Most people have a justified fear of arbitrarily imposed systems. What lies behind the smoke and mirrors of public life? The glimpses that appear from time to time are often appalling.

The CNN legal affairs commentator, Greta van Susteren, recently interviewed James Bamford, author of an account of activities contemplated by the US Joint Chiefs in the early 1960s as part of a strategy to incite popular hostility to the regime in Cuba.� As part of a plan, the evidence shows, consideration was given to covert actions by US government agents, acting as provocateurs to create terror within the US by assassination of US citizens, as part of a US military plan to mobilize public opinion for a war against Cuba. While nothing apparently came of this, the kind of thinking that lies behind such a conception of security will always be there to haunt us.

In his following short article he contrasts the �rights of money versus the Rights of living people�, and in �life after capitalism� he argues that the policies we need to adopt to build our societies are almost the exact opposite of those being followed at present, and describes the �power shift� from �people� to �global finance�, represented by the banks and MNCs.

Nearly all the writers advocate reversal of the trend to �globalisation�; a return to local self-reliance, with minimal long-distance trade. They fail, however, to recognise the financial imperative, generated by debt-finance, to strive to export to survive.

Essential for sustainability, the theme is repeated, is fair distribution of wealth and social involvement in policy decisions. It is recognised that this must mean drastic change, and James Robertson proposes changes to tax and benefits�from tax on labour to tax on land and natural resources, with benefits in the form of Citizens� Incomes. His book, Creating New Money: a Monetary Reform for the Information Age, co-authored with Joseph Huber and reviewed here by David Cronin, proposes �seigniorage� reform, with the government creating all new national money and spending it into circulation. He and the reviewer stress the benefit of the seigniorage this would restore to government coffers, but fail to appreciate its far greater significance, as the means to eliminate all the accumulated debts, private and public, which so constrain and distort the economy and society; to eliminate the resulting debt-slavery and facilitate all the reforms seen as essential by the authors in this book, including initial funding of CI; but once the transition period was over, and these debts cancelled, the need for money should diminish, so no further seigniorage should be forthcoming. At this point, James� proposed taxes on land and resources become vital, not only for resource conservation but for social justice and the further funding of CI.

Cronin wonders if the technologies of the Information Age would make this reform inoperable. However, the reform is concerned only with national money�legal tender, acceptable for payment of taxes and settlement of debts. The co-existence of other forms of money should not affect this.

Lothar Mayer wants two forms of money, with a �restricted budget� for basics, but unlimited for luxuries, with no convertibility between the two forms.

Lothar Luken reviews Richard Douthwaite�s The Ecology of Money, in which he analyses the effects of different kinds of money on the economy, society and the environment, and proposes a mix of four kinds: a LETS type, locally; national/regional money; a �store of value� type for savings; and ebcus (energy-backed currency units) for international trading. This last is the subject, in part, of Aubrey Meyer�s article, what next for slowing climate change?

All the authors and reviewers make valuable contributions to the ongoing debate. It isa to be hoped that they will all read and learn from each others� contributions!

Just one carp: too many still see �job creation� as a role for the �economy�. Rosheen Callender is a welcome exception. She reviews �Sharing the Work, Sparing the Planet, by Anders Hayden. Both argue for �WTR��work-time reduction�to free people for self-chosen/more socially valuable activities.

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�Brian Leslie