Les artikkelen kommentaren er knyttet til her.
- Douglas Rushkoff on Corporations, Money and the Middle Ages: http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/douglas-rushkoff-on-corporations-money-and-the-middle-ages/2014/06/09
- Douglas Rushkoff on debt, outsourcing and suburban isolation: http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/douglas-rushkoff-on-debt-outsourcing-and-suburban-isolation/2014/06/11
- Douglas Rushkoff on the space between samples, derivatives and the way out: http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/douglas-rushkoff-on-the-space-between-samples-derivatives-and-the-way-out/2014/06/13
Hele dette intervjuet burde vært oversatt til norsk, men jeg håper i det minste å kunne komme tilbake med en liten introduksjon.
I følge dette intervjuet var ikke kapitalismen, slik Bauwens hevder, et frigjøringsprosjekt overhodet. Kapitalismen var derimot, med sine røtter i renessansen, et FRIRØVINGSPROSJEKT fra starten av. Det var tida før renessansen, senmiddelalderen, som kan sees som et frigjøringsprosjekt. Mon tro om ikke senmiddelalderen representerer det ypperste av hva Charles Siegel definerer som klassisk liberalisme: http://www.preservenet.com/classicalliberalism/index.html
Men den blomstrende senmiddelalderen var ikke definert av kapitalisme, som baserer seg på akkumulasjon og sentralvalutaer, men av det stikk motsatte, demurrage og lokale valutaer. De fleste kjenner vel til suksesshistorien til den østerriske byen Wörgl, som suksessfult benyttet demurrage under den store depresjonen. At det var det samme systemet som gjorde senmiddelalderen til en slik blomstringstid, kjente jeg ikke til. Her var de lokale valutaene knyttet opp mot korn.
Om demurrage er noe for vår tid vet jeg ikke. Blir overskuddet benyttet til å bygge tilsvarende prosjekter som i senmiddelalderen, med hovedvekt på katedraler, åpenbaringer av skjønnhet skapt av lokale materialer og håndverkere, tror jeg absolutt det. Blir det derimot benyttet til konsumerisme, et kjennetegn ved vår tid, er jeg mer betenkt.
Kapitalismen var en motreaksjon til den trusselen demurrage og lokale valutaer utgjorde for sentralmakten, som derfor forbød lokale valutaer og knyttet valutaen opp mot gull istedenfor korn (og evt. andre naturalia), som knyttet pengesystemet opp mot økosystemene.
I dag har kapitalismen forlatt gullstandarden og knyttet pengeverdien opp mot en fullstendig abstrakt verdi, pengefølelsen: http://www.resilience.org/stories/2013-12-11/can-bytes-save-the-future-the-money-value-delusion
Korporasjonenes makt er en direkte følge av de frøene som ble sådd under renessansen, de nyter en særlig fordel av dagens pengesystem, den absolutte motsats til pengesystemet benyttet i senmiddelalderen, lokale valutaer knyttet opp mot lokale økosystemtjenester.
Det er tre artikler jeg gjerne skulle skrevet ut fra intervjuet med Rushkoff, aller helst etter å ha lest hans bok Life Inc:
- Kapitalismen, et frirøvingsprosjekt
- Den blomstrende senmiddelalderen: en tid av demurrage og lokale valutaer
- Vi i villa
De to første er jeg takknemlig hvis noen andre med større innsikt i tematikken kan skrive.
Uansett, jeg holder fast ved at den nyvunne kunnskapen om handikapprinsippet må ha enorme konsekvenser for utformingen av samfunnsstrukturene. En av mine mest prioriterte artikler er derfor:
- Med penger eller inngruppa som limet i store samfunn?
Dette som et svar på artikkelen Penger er limet i store samfunn: http://www.forskning.no/artikler/2013/august/365811
Et slikt samfunn kan vi ikke ha!
Her er et utdrag fra intervjuet med Rushkoff:
"DR: So for about three centuries, the middle and merchant classes were doing really well. Towns that had been in shambles since the fall of the Roman Empire and had lived under strict feudalism were finally coming into their own. This all hinged on the use of local currencies — grain receipts — through which people transacted. They were what we would now call “demurrage” currencies that were earned into existence. Towns ended up creating more value than they knew what to do with. They started investing in their infrastructure and their windmills and their water wheels; and also in their future in the form of cathedrals and other tourist attractions.
PN: They didn’t get money from Rome to fund their cathedrals?
DR: They did not. The Vatican and central Rome did not build the cathedrals. The funds came from local currency, which was very different than money as we use it now. It was based on grain, which lost value over time. The grain would slowly rot or get eaten by rats or cost money to store, so the money needed to be spent as quickly as possible before it became devalued. And when people spend and spend and spend a lot of money, you end up with an economy that grows very quickly.
Now unlike a capitalist economy where money is hoarded, with local currency, money is moving. The same dollar can end up being the salary for three people rather than just one. There was so much money circulating that they had to figure out what to do with it, how to reinvest it. Saving money was not an option, you couldn’t just stick it in the bank and have it grow because it would not grow there, it would shrink. So they paid the workers really well and they shortened the work week to four and in some cases three days per week. And they invested in the future by way of infrastructure — they started to build cathedrals. They couldn’t build them all at once, but they took the long view — with three generations of investment they could build an entire cathedral, and their great-grandchildren could live in a rich town! That’s how the great cathedrals were built, like Chartres. Some historians actually term the late Middle Ages “The Age of Cathedrals.”
They were the best-fed people in the history of Europe; women in England were taller than they are today, and men were taller than they have been at any point in time until the 1970s or 80s (with the recent growth spurt largely the result of hormones in the food supply). Life expectancy of course was still lower; they lacked modern medicine, but people were actually healthier and stronger and better back then, in ways that we don’t admit.
That was right before the corporation and the original chartered monopolies were created, before central currency was created and local currencies were outlawed. When everything gets moved into the center, things began to change.
PN: It seems like the Dark Ages were not perhaps so “dark.”
DR: Yes, I think that’s disinformation. I’m not usually a conspiracy theorist about these things, but I think the reason why we celebrate the Renaissance as a high point of western culture is really a marketing campaign. It was a way for Renaissance monarchs and nation-states, and the industrial age powers that followed, to recast the end of one of the most vibrant human civilizations we’ve had, as a dark, plague-ridden, horrible time.
Historically, the plague arrived after the invention of the chartered corporation, and after central currency was mandated. Central currency became law, and 40 years later you get the plague. People got that poor that quickly. They were no longer allowed to use the land. It shifted from an abundance model to a scarcity model; from an economy based on annual grain production to one based on gold released by the king.
That’s a totally different way of understanding money. Land was no longer a thing the peasants could grow stuff on, land became an investment, land became an asset class for the wealthy. Once it became an asset class they started Partitioning and Enclosure, which meant people weren’t allowed to grow stuff on it, so subsistence farming was no longer a viable lifestyle. If you can’t do subsistence farming you must find a job, so then you go into the city and volunteer to do unskilled labor in a proto-factory for some guy who wants the least-skilled, cheapest labor possible. You move your whole family to where the work is, into the squalor, where conditions are overcrowded and impoverished — the perfect breeding ground for plague and death."
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