Capitalism is a low-end consumer product on which we are dependent
Davy Hoyau
Money as the main effect of formalizing the feeling of belonging to a global collective. Wherever you go, having money justifies access to all goods and services. The value of money lies in the fact that everyone has the assurance that everyone will accept this money. If it was not accepted, for example because of the instability of its value or a preference for another process, its interest would drastically decrease, and one would have the impression of being robbed in exchange for partially useless money.
Its circulation occurs in the opposite direction to the circulation of goods and services. If we can track how money flows, we can’t really look at how goods and services flow.
Money is supposed to reflect the value of a good or service in the alder of the value of money itself, i.e. in the background according to the combined quantity and quality of the goods and services. Value is a mental emanation of actual and projected costs, including depreciation and anticipation of future costs, in addition to the benefit of social acceptance of a cost charge that is intended to serve transactions that have nothing to do with the good or service.
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Those who try to remedy the chaos of this world most often manage to think that the common denominator of injustices and the irrationality of a social organization solely oriented towards the generation of “wealth”, which ultimately only goes into the pockets of about ten masters of the world, is money.
From this point on, many alternative solutions are trying to exist, such as local currencies, unconditional basic income, or simply building a society of free access, based on the equitable sharing of all costs. But this starting point is not enough to achieve the desirable result, which itself is barely clearly stated.
Thus, the two starting points for a reflection on systemic reform are its processes and its raison d’être. In other words, everything remains to be done.
The raison d’être of a social system is the same as that produced by nature in its optimal functioning, that is, to achieve harmony. Translating this harmony into concrete facts is relatively difficult but not impossible. It is a notion that is simply a matter of mathematics. First of all, harmony must be defined as the state of a system that functions perfectly when it functions normally, with the least effort, so that it has enough amplitude to increase or decrease the impact of its “normal” functioning, in order to regulate itself.
This idea is pleasant when compared to the current social system, whose “normal” functioning consists in operating to the maximum of its capacities at all times, without any room for manoeuvre to regulate what is desirable and what is not. The ideal functioning of capitalism, not only never comes, but also, in this period of our time, constantly moves away, while everyone works hard without any consideration for ecology or other issues that become subsidiary such as human rights. And despite efforts that go very far in terms of speed and accuracy of cash flows, the promise of capitalism is only becoming increasingly unfeasible. That’s because we’re making a methodological error.
This promise, we must name it, consists in obtaining a fair distribution of wealth so that everyone has conventional access to the best that our times can offer them. It consists of a continuous increase in the quality and quantity of goods, so that costs can tend towards a kind of free, or at least very easy, acquisition of goods or services. Finally, the gratuity sought by those who want to banish money and design a generous world is almost the same as that of a world where goods and services are abundant. The difference with a generous world, where the gift gives an unusual right to other gifts, lies in the social bond that unites the “contractors” who, if the system takes care of their accounting in their place, there is still a sense of gratitude between them, and this feeling is really effective on a large scale. It is therefore a question of dissociating what unites people in a system, by putting on the one hand the recognition for the wealth created, and on the other hand the management system, but not the management system itself. In the end, it is a question of doing the opposite of capitalism, which constantly increases the value of everything, by adding quality and quantity, it is a question of reducing their value to the point of making them commonplace. In the end, it is a question of refuting the adage that “rarity makes value”, and replacing it with the idea that what makes value is the fact that a good or service is accessible to the greatest number of people.
But this abundance, and this continuous increase in quality, is not on the horizon. On the contrary, it must be made clear that keeping a large part of the world’s population in poverty and war is the only thing that allows another half to live with the minimum. Similarly, the quality of goods and services is not increasing as much as it could, so the gap between the privileged and the poor leads instead to an overall decline in quality and a decline in the availability of goods and services, including those that were originally abundant such as water and food. And soon oxygen, perhaps, by shaving down the lung forests.
The dream that is sold by capitalism is a fool’s trap, because it takes a fool to believe that wealth and the omega point of the purpose of life on earth. And that to achieve this impossible dream, that poor countries envy the rich countries of the North, people are ready to sacrifice everything of relative value, their fertile lands and primary forests, to obtain symbolic material goods that are perishable and polluting, after devaluing everything that makes up their true wealth, both cultural and ecological, in short everything that could be useful for their future, that they are ready to sell them off in exchange for a perishable illusion.
No, we have to get back to the basics and understand what money is, its role and nature. It is a theme I developed in my book, the reading of which does not lose its charm over the years, even if the idea (which is the purpose of this article) is difficult to translate into a few words, yet it is of a harsh simplicity.
To the question “what is money”? (it is only one end through which we can enter into this questioning) the answer will lead us to admit that it is only a postulate.
In reality, money is only the acceptance of money, by mentally estimating a good, and for purely practical reasons in order to reference and account for the existing, to formalize the value of these goods and services with a score, located on a single scale ranging from zero to infinity. Under these conditions, how is it possible to account for everything that can make the value of a property, on the one hand in the eyes of the contractors, but also in the eyes of the whole community? It is clearly impossible for the contractors of a transaction to be held responsible for the value of that transaction for all the chains of consequences that are involved in a particular good or service. That’s why it’s so easy to sell spreads made with the blood of orangutans and oil obtained by sacrificing fertile land. Thus, the chain of causalities that produces a good should also be taken into account in building the value of the good. This is what initiatives that try to boycott products are trying to do timidly.
If we take the question from another angle, from the point of view of the super-rich, the ten masters of the world who own fifty percent of it, neither money nor any goods or services have the slightest value in their eyes, so neither does their destruction. They can go anywhere in the world and have absolutely anything they want, despite their crimes, knowing that even law, morality, or social movements can at one level or another be bought, in one way or another. This is what happens with massive media propaganda that keeps lying and distorting reality in order to mentally bribe people, and lead them to a ruin whose most often they are eager to be accomplices. It can even be said that over-richness is a factor of impoverishment on a global scale, without even venturing into the obvious question of what should be a matter of public property rather than private law.
To come back to the basics, the main interest of money is to have a knowledge of the transactions that take place, their location, their frequency, and the destination reserved for the goods and services that are produced. If the use of goods and services were oriented towards an overall increase in wealth, goods would tend towards abundance. Devalued assets that continue to be in circulation should be recorded as having economic value, a factor of large-scale enrichment. Similarly, the quality of goods and services should be promoted and considered as such a factor of global enrichment and economy of scale. There should be no limitation, due to a lack of money, on producing goods, services and facilities and machine tools that are as reliable and efficient as possible, since this is a primary factor of global wealth, and the cause of drastic savings in human energy and costs. On the other hand, products of too low a quality, allowing access to perishable goods, represent a cost of scale that is phenomenal. This is how poverty sustains poverty.
I am trying to convey a very simple idea that everyone should have in mind when we talk about money, and through that about the social system as a whole, including all the damage and chaos that emerges. This is because goods and services are exchanged for goods and services, and these exchanges should be promoted if they contribute to global enrichment and curbed if they upset it. Above all, to be fair, these exchanges need to do without being evaluated in a monetary way, to be evaluated on several distinct scales, so that we do not have to translate an emotional value or a moral dispute into a sum of money, but that instead we observe a concrete and above all evaluable chain of consequences.
There is even a simpler idea in the end, which is that goods and services only have the value that other existing goods and services give them. In reality, there would be no need for money if goods and services could be estimated according to any scale or score system that is specific to them and compatible. Worse still, the use of money, which is itself a good AND a service, which has intrinsic value, which hinders or facilitates transactions in the interests of wealth holders, is the most counterproductive idea there is. Worse still (bis), the use of money, because of its functioning and the berlues it causes, which are expressed by a contempt for global wealth in favour of private and stupidly selfish wealth, constitutes a cost and a dry loss in the value of existing goods and services. In fact, it is as if to exchange an apple for an orange, we had to call on a banker to make a currency, which itself generates profits, to allow this simple exchange, so that each of the contracting parties would have to add half an apple and half an orange to their transaction so that the other would receive his property, the banker picking up the crumbs.
And it is as if, in addition, this extremely wealthy banker were to decide the prices himself, thanks to the sum of half apples and half oranges that he confiscated and which would have the effect of devaluing existing assets, for his sole benefit.
And it is as if, in addition, this extremely wealthy banker were to decide the prices himself, thanks to the sum of half apples and half oranges that he confiscated and which would have the effect of devaluing existing assets, for his sole benefit.
I try to express how absurd it is to use a complex system for a simple transaction, and at the same time the idea that this complex system is based on an erroneous simplification of trade issues. Indeed, I did not even need to take into consideration for my example the fact that, at the same time, human labour, natural resources, and the banker’s service were confusedly counted on the same scale, and that both goods, services and natural resources are all treated only as goods, and even humans as commodities (1).
If services are treated as goods, then their quality takes second place to the quantity of possible services. Thus, competition must be based on a rationale, which itself represents an additional cost. If money is considered to be property, its fetishised possession constitutes a loss to the economy as a whole. And even goods are not considered as goods insofar as their quality is intrinsic, but as potential money, so manufacturers prefer to focus on what they can bring in rather than on their quality. In the end, every industry is a system designed to sell anything as long as it brings in money, but what they produce, its quality and their responsibility for the consequences, are the least of their concerns. While prices are always calculated to be maximum, quality is always calculated to be minimal.
In fact (to deepen this last idea) if prices were multiplied by ten, ten times fewer people would have access to the goods, but what sales yield would only decrease by a few percent. Conversely, if prices were really “at their lowest”, quantities would have to increase exponentially so that turnover would only increase by a few percent. Thus prices are calculated to be the best ratio between quantities and profits, and at the slightest anomaly in the production system, if famine were to dominate and costs soar, losses for industrialists would be only minimal. We can even see that overconsumption is only motivated by a few more small points in profits.
I have long been advocating the establishment of three separate monetary circuits for goods, services and natural and structural resources, so as to force the emergence of valuation systems that are specific to them, incompatible with each other, and so that human beings are no longer considered as commodities but as producers of commodities, whose goods they produce cannot be used against them, making their production unwanted, thus plunging them into poverty.
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The solution I described in my book (2) is based on a few assumptions that are slightly different from those of money. First, as we have seen, the distinction between what is human labour and the goods they produce, as well as, third, the natural resources and facilities from which they benefit. But that is not enough. The question of a management of scale capable of producing global wealth from which everyone would benefit indirectly must result in a qualitative growth of goods and services. To do this (which I discussed in my book), we need a database that accurately records the path taken by all goods and services in the production chain. We need to have an overview of the causal chains, and therefore, as I promote, we need a blockchain of each of the existing physical atoms. The effect of this blockchain would be that money would not flow in the opposite direction to the transfer of goods and services, but with them. Thus, calculated by the machine, each asset would have a value automatically assigned in real time based on all the data on the existing system. The aim would obviously be to depreciate the goods so that they fall into free use, in order to forge a margin of manoeuvre that would allow for an increase in the quality of the new goods created.
Only comprehensive management can overcome the issue of finding the rightness of the correct valuation of goods and services. Thus, the objects themselves would be the money that circulates, and as a logical consequence, their value, depending on their quality, would be constantly increased by focusing primarily on the goods themselves, their utility, and their contribution to the whole economy on a large scale.
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I invite those who produce wealth from which they never benefit, those who inherit the most difficult and poorly paid jobs, those whose jobs have been confiscated, those who have not loved or wanted to pursue their studies, those who have been injured in life, those who have been forgotten by statistics, those who seek refuge, and in general those for whom the word justice has a meaning that resembles a desire, which the soul has only hopes to hold on to, to define itself as the fifth circle of the world’s most numerous residents, the 99%.
If the social system is a logical and functional heresy, it is because this state of affairs in which humanity is immersed is desired and maintained by higher circles. The proletarians of all countries are condemned to follow a path that annoys them; the middle classes and “small millionaires” have been rewarded for blindly serving a system whose consequences escape them. The servants of the oligarchies, the media and medium-sized industrialists, deliberately follow policies that they know serve only their short-term interests to the detriment of their own in the long term. Finally, the elites of this world, who form a delimited state with its own values and language, are the owners, and decide on what exists according to their real or imaginary interests.
All this only exists as long as peoples are not (yet) rationally organized within popular institutions explicitly oriented towards achieving an economy of scale and an equitable redistribution of wealth. Capitalism is just a low-end supermarket product, but for it not to be indispensable, and for us to be dependent on it, we must become self-determined, self-sufficient, and self-managed.
(1) La sombre voie du néolibéralisme vers le fascisme, par Chris Hedges
fr version : medium.com
