The world is still recovering very slowly, along with the dismal 5% that superannuation is paying at the moment (even banks can afford 5% on some Savings Accounts) but some of us still seem to be optimistic about the future. Maybe it’s because some pundits including myself believe that Capitalism as we know it is dead and that something else, maybe Co-operatism or Localism will take its place.
Capitalism is dead? Yes. Capitalism used to be the closest we will ever come to perpetual motion. That elusive invention that will keep going without the use of any external force. It did exist but the financial sector decided that it was not making fast or vast profits and replaced it with a thing called the Market Economy, not based on the traditional market as we know it but upon the New York Stock Exchange where imaginary money is perpetually heading into Banks. This force then evolved into a device used by all Stock Exchanges to make money from money and to force the making of widgets to become a by-product that money would buy and not what the country should produce.
Let me try to explain it in a different way. The concept of capitalism being perpetual motion came from the fact that people wanted to buy widgets to improve their life. So they got a job which paid a wage which allowed them to buy widgets. When widgets were bought they had to be replaced in the shop so more were made for selling and so it all went in circles seemingly forever. To encourage people to make improved things like iWidgets every time something was made or sold it was for a profit. This profit was also used to buy designer widgets for people with more money than you or I were earning making these things in the first place. People were even gainfully employed getting widgets going again when they broke down. And so goods, services and money went around and around, making work for people so they couldn’t sit around on their arse all day watching cooking shows, and life in the 20th Century was good and productive and everyone was happy.
Then along came the Creative Accountants. Too many widgets were being repaired and people were not consuming enough widgets. Lets invent the 5 year lifespan so every five years they will have to be replaced, then we’ll be able to make things so cheap they’ll be cheaper to replace than to repair. The chemical and oil companies kept inventing new materials they wanted us to make widgets from so they began building widgets out of things that could not be repaired at all but could be ‘recycled’. This meant that instead of repairing widgets we recycled them and so perpetual motion began to morph, not into more jobs, but into cheaper and cheaper disposable widgets. The end result of this was there were many holes in our planet that we could fill up with all this thrown-away stuff and it would smooth earth out so that it could all have a level playing field.
As a result of widgets becoming cheaper some people began to make much bigger profits and paid themselves more money than they were worth. Now these rich vagina’s wanted even more money so they could be richer than Gina Reinhardt and become a God themselves.
Eventually even the 5 year plan failed to make big enough profits Apple and Microsoft (two evil widget makers) invented the idea of ‘upgrading’ and produced new models every six months to keep us buying new things and sending the old to the recycle bin just to keep ahead of the iWidgets owned by our friends.
All this frantic activity appeared not to be duplicated in the bedroom which produced a dismal outlook for the future as busy consumers had no time to have, raise or educate children. So the Government following the advice of big business began importing more people so that our economy could grow and more money could be made. Making money was good and making more money was even more gooder.
This new economic system has not produced a level playing field but has piled all the money at one end where rich people spend it on redesigned houses and fannies while at the other end they sleep on the street in redesigned boxes and sell their fannies. This is not good. Co-operatism must be the end result, either that or we Putin everything back into a socialist state where the poor stay poor and the rich get a bullet between the eyes.
