Day 171: Life-Force and Expression in Equal Money Capitalism

Also see the following blogs on more points within EMC:

Day 162: EQUAL MONEY CAPITALISM - The Way Forward
Day 163: Equal Money Capitalism - Redefining Profit
Day 164: Equal Money Capitalism - Preparing the Road for Change
Day 165: Equal Profit Share and Equal Money Capitalism
Day 166: Corporate Social Responsibility in Equal Money Capitalism
Day 167: Harmony and Equilibrium within Equal Money Capitalism
Day 168: The Future of Integrity with Equal Money Capitalism
Day 169: Equal Living within Equal Money Capitalism
Day 170: Companies and Industries in EMC

Life-Force instead of Market-Force

Price is no longer going to be based on what the market dictates – there will be no more “market” force within Equal Money Capitalism – what will drive and regulate the economy, is the Life-force.

The Life-Force says that the Market-Force never looked after the life force – and therefore, you have lives that suffer. Thus we move to a Life-force that is based on ‘Capital’ as the People and not a Market-force which is based on ‘things’ and ‘products’ – Life becomes prior: the economy should be about sustaining Life effectively, not ‘selling stuff for the sake of money’.

AS such the market should not dictate – the value of each person’s Life must dictate the price of the product. It’s completely different. And that’s real ‘fair-trade’.

Expression and Creative Licensing

This will be more a ‘hobby’ point. For those people whose only income is derived from such activities, they’d have to be part of a greater collective like a Cultural Centre where many points of expression are explored and presented, where the general public can come and check it out and participate in community projects. It will be a place of coming together, having fun events, meeting people – socialising, which are all things people really enjoy.

In essence it’s about self-expression. You want the freedom to express. You will have the freedom to express and you will have the support that will give you the freedom to express. The concept of ‘ownership’ is only relevant to those points that are necessary to make your life function, like a house, a car – things like that. The other things are not really an ownership, because there’s nothing new. You’re simply expressing something that already exists. You are using notes in a particular sequence -- which forms a melody. The melody already existed - it’s just a coincidence that you’re the one that came up with that particular melody. The same goes for the lyrics of a song: the words you use for a song already exist, it’s just coincidence that you come up with it or another person comes up with it – it’s equally possible.

So it’s not about ownership there, or about having a copyright, or controlling it. That’s exactly the point we want to move away from – control. So that people can express themselves, if they like it.

Related articles

• Day 162: EQUAL MONEY CAPITALISM - The Way Forward
• Day 259: Give Happiness, Get Happiness
• Day 165: Equal Profit Share and Equal Money Capitalism
• Day 163: Equal Money Capitalism - Redefining Profit
• Day 167: Harmony and Equilibrium within Equal Money Capitalism

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Day 131: The Justice System – also a Scam?

Foreign Farmers Undermine Food Security in Zambia

Unlike in many countries, where large-scale farming companies dominate the agricultural landscape – it is smallholder farmers who constitute most of the farming activity in Zambia.

Many foreign and local companies are now involved in land-grabs, where large stretches of land are taken to develop their plants and factories.

On this land, live many people – who all depend on the land they have to survive, to grow food, to send their children to school. The problem is that most of these people do not hold official title deeds of the land – so legally speaking, they do not own the land: they are squatters.

So when these companies move in and take the land, things like this happen:

“They (the South African agribusiness) came with guns and threatened to shoot anyone who resisted moving out. They burnt all our household properties without any notice. We were almost 200 households. They burnt my food barns, clothes, blankets, bedding, television set – they even burnt my fields”

Before colonization, the common way of land tenure was through customs. You get a piece of land, you work it, you “own” it. Only after colonization, was statutory tenure introduced , where the whole legal technicalities and you having a particular piece of paper saying you own the land became a requirement.

So, imagine you are one of these Zambian farmers. You live on a piece of land, you grow and eat your own food for most of your life, and then someone comes chasing you off with guns and burns your shit down because you don’t have a paper that proofs that this land belongs to you. You live in a rural area, you are poor – the process of acquiring such a legal document can cost up to $2000 and take anything from 2 months to 10 years. There’s not much choice now is there? You’d have to basically sell your land to come up with the money to get a paper that says you own the land – but by then of course it’s already too late.

Zambia’s situation is not a very pleasant one, 59% of the people live below the poverty line, and 65% of the people live in rural areas. The dislocation of these farmers does not just destroy their personal lives, but will also generate consequence for the whole of the population, as food security turns into insecurity.

If we look at the definition of ‘justice’ we get:

1. Just behavior or treatment.
2. The quality of being fair and reasonable.

The situation described above is not fair nor reasonable – these people’s lives are completely disregarded in the favour of those who can afford to acquire legal documents. This in itself shows that the Justice/Legal System is corrupt – as one has to bribe their way in to be able to be part of the legal system.

This is completely unacceptable and goes contrary to everything justice as a principle is supposed to stand for.

It is time, once more, to critically investigate the nature of our reality and what we participate in.

In an Equal Money System, no such phenomenon will have space to take place – as all will be IN FACT equal, and not have to buy their way in. You are here on Earth, you should not have to ‘earn’ your living or prove that you are worthy of existing based on your economic and legal status. Investigate Equal Money – the only valid alternative to transform our world of abuse and corruption to a world that is Best for All Life.

Related articles

• Foreign farmers undermine food security in Zambia

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Day 67: The Functions of Money

Money as a Medium of Exchange

In a barter economy, one can only trade goods for other goods. If you want/require something like for instances clothes, and you only have wheat yourself which you cultivate, you need to find someone who can supply you with clothes and at the same time demands wheat.
For a trade to take place, a double coincidence of wants needs to be in place. Trading goods for goods can be limiting as one might have to first trade wheat with someone who has carrots, trade the carrots with someone else for spinach, and then go back to the person with the clothes because spinach is something he/she's willing to trade for clothes.

This type of inefficiency led people in even early primitive communities to come up with some form of money (for instance obsidian) to facilitate the exchange of goods. The advantage of a monetary economy is that the requirement of the double coincidence of wants falls away. As long as the wheat farmer can find someone who wants to buy his wheat, he can buy clothes with the money received for the wheat.
Money then serves as an intermediary to facilitate the process of exchange, making it more efficient.

Money from this perspective is anything that is generally accepted as payment for goods or services or that is accepted in settlement of debt.

What makes money "special" is that it is accepted as payment because people believe that it will be accepted as payment by other people. In England in the 12th century for instance, they came up with 'tally sticks' as a medium of exchange, which was basically a piece /stick of wood with notches in it. The use and exchange of money is thus completely dependent on its acceptance and belief of people as it being 'money' and it being 'valid'/'valuable' -- and so is completely based upon agreement.

Money does not have to be 'backed up' by anything such as gold or silver -- as again gold and silver are simply materials which we've decided to give value -- but that doesn't make them valuable in fact. Backing up money with 'gold' or 'silver' is then simply 'backing up money with another form of money' and does not make the money more 'real' / 'valuable' / 'better'.

Money as a Unit of Account

A unit of account is an agreed measure for expressing the prices of goods and services. In a money economy the prices of goods and services are expressed in monetary terms and so money also functions as a unit of account. The accounting function of money is secondary to that of the function as a medium of exchange.

Also note that money can lose its usefulness as a unit of account when going through a period of inflation, as when prices increase but your income/savings stay the same = you get less for the same amount of money.

Money as a Store of Value

Money also functions as a store of value. The most common form of holding wealth is money, as it is something which you can easily exchange for something else at any point in time.

There are other forms of storing value, such as property, stocks, shares etc. Of all the different forms of stores of value, money is the most 'liquid' one (since its easily exchangeable).

Holding / storing wealth in the form of money over long periods overtime also has very definitive disadvantages. Overtime, inflation progresses and your money will slowly but surely lose some of its value overtime (and will diminish a lot in periods of hyperinflation). In short, during inflation your money does not retain its value.
 n the long run, one is better off storing one's wealth in the form of property, Art, precious metals, etc. As prices increases, the prices of your Art pieces will also increase, and so will retain its value better than money in its simple form.

Money's function as a store of value also implies that it can be used as a standard of deferred payment. This practically means that money also works as the measure of value for future payments.

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