After pasting in all those embedded videos of ‘Money as Debt’ I read up on the author and learned that he responded to some criticism of the film by making an improved sequel. Seems to be a little longer – it’s in eight 10-minute parts instead of five – so I will just paste the first part; the next part should appear for you to click on each time when you reach the end.
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Tags: banking, Credit Crunch, economics, monetary reform, Money, Money as Debt, propaganda
December 9, 2010 at 10:16 pm |
Democracies are terrible choices for government. Always doomed to spiral into madness – be it anarchy or despotism. Republics are the sane choice.
The UK has an unfortunate compromise situation (and when looking at history it is understandable how it arrived there as it never had a “whole cloth” scenario to work with), but it really isn’t that bad as these things go. Especially since most Western political systems have been largely wrested from the people long ago and put firmly into the pocket of the banks and big money lobbyists. The fact that the Lords end up as a sane and moral balance to the now wild excesses of the elected officials shows how sorry a state things are in. This too will degrade with time. Lords are made now largely as an escape route for MPs in hot water or as a retirement package for those that have the most cronies to pull strings.
December 8, 2010 at 7:27 pm |
Dear Partha, your post is not as tangential as you think. Our House of Lord reflects the growth of wealth over debt. Many of the hereditary peers funded their life style by mortgaging their assets, land,livestock and property. They remain in the House of Lords but now impoverished live cheek by jowl with the ennobled merchants and bankers who took them to the cleaners. So the HoL is not so archaic as you imagine. It perfectly reflects the transformation of our society over the last 700 years.
December 9, 2010 at 3:53 pm |
Hi Barry. I follow you too, but again only sort of …
I suppose the fact that the peerage is less loaded now than earlier, and not purely hereditary, makes it a tad less elitist. But surely that’s just a detail?
My surprise is that the rest of you, who are not Lords (I really can’t bring myself to use that word without feeling surrealish, forgive me again!), allow yourself to be governed, in part at least, by a set of non-representative people (for better or for worse). And my surprise is primarily because it is the UK we’re talking of, a nation not without faults obviously, but with a robust base and solid tradition of education and political awareness (to my mind).
Have you never had a republicanish movement, a serious party line, that seeks to do away with this institution, like Australia (and even Canada) have anti-monrarchy movements? [And in your case it would be a far more relevant and important issue, since monarchy is after all no more than symbolic, unless the Upper House.]
(No criticism intended, by the way! Basis the point-a-finger-and-four-point-back-at-you principle!
Just wondering. And continuing to wonder.)
December 9, 2010 at 7:56 pm |
I don’t know who is more correct but it seems to me that foreigners admire the British system and natives are disenchanted with it. The way you talk, it’s like you think that there should be a sense of sacred political ideals, but that’s not a living feeling within British people. Most Brits would say, “ach they are all criminals and hypocrites.”
If the poor have it relatively good in Britain I think it’s more due to sheer wealth (and the fruits of past empire) than due to social justice. The Romans created an unprecedented level of rule of law, public works, and social security yet this was all enabled by plunder and exploitation, and the final acts of Roman history revealed that the whole thing was corrupt and unsustainable at heart.
That is how people feel about Britain. There’s a sense that all the order and politeness is not much more than a veneer and a strategic device rather than a heartfelt creed.
December 8, 2010 at 6:28 pm |
Hi. Absolutely at a tangent to this particular post of yours (and no, afraid I haven’t watched the videos): but I was wondering about something that’s part of your British life, and I didn’t get a remotely satisafactory answer from a co-national of yours who I happened to be discussing this with earlier today.
Got to thinking about this while reading about the Royal Engagment — in Title Case — which papers in my part of the world seem to be writing about quite a lot about.
I can understand your (that is, Britain’s) not doing away with your monarchy thing. It’s rather harmless after all (even though a reminder of things not quite as harmless in times past) — charming and old-world, tradition, et cetera, but wholly ineffectual and therefore harmless.
What I was wondering about is your House of Lords. That is one unbelievable institution! How is it that you guys (who, after all, did pioneer the concept of real, functioning democracy in the modern world — the old Greek and Indian experiments were only sporadic experiments, no more, and in any case ancient) continue to labour under this atrocious system that actually has not insubstantial political power, and is comprised solely of, well, “Lords”? Even today?
Sorry to bust in with my own agenda and question, very much at a tangent to what you’re trying to talk about in your post here, but do you have a take on this? Not so much on the insupportibility of the HoL, which I expect almost everybody will agree on, but on the fact that it’s still there at all? I find it very difficult to understand.
December 8, 2010 at 7:19 pm |
Weirdly, they often end up blocking nefarious bills that the government try to put through. Seriously. They can bring a farsighted expert attitude that is not so caught up in emphemeral party-political struggles. The hereditary aspect has been mitigated somewhat over the last decade or so – there’re fewer aristocrats now.
If we had a real democracy maybe I would object more to this undemocratic device. But, you know, you vote for Idiot A or Idiot B then they do whatever the hell they like.
December 9, 2010 at 3:38 pm |
I follow you … sort of …
The Lords (sounds hilarious, or at least surreal, saying that word, forgive me) end of doing some good. Right. That sounds a bit like the benevolent-dictator argument (the best government is that of a truly benevolent dicator). Many Singapore nationals swear by that dictum, and not without (some) reason. Absolutely correct, too, as long as it lasts. Wouldn’t you say that position is unstable, to say the least?
I empathise with your other point too. Representative government rarely results in representative governance. Still, if you can’t have it all, would you still want to turn away from what little you do have and can have?
Sorry, I still don’t understand. Your points are correct from your perspective, and you may as an individual think thus, and justifiably too: but would a whole nation of educated and politically aware citizens (as the UK definitely is, to my mind) countenance such an obvious aberration in the democratic ideal? (Which they do, in this case, and that is what surprises me.)
December 4, 2010 at 6:32 pm |
It’s a great series. The graphics are a nice touch and help things along. The website is quite goodo. I know Bill Still promotes these on his site too, along with his own work.