Moneyed Society: The Current Grand Global Affliction

“For the love of money is the root of all evils, and some in their desire for it have strayed from the faith and have pierced themselves with many pains.” - 1 Timothy 6:10

War. Theft. Inflation. Bankruptcy. Unemployment. Poverty. Unjustified punishment. Corruption. Fraud. Shortage. Famine. Taxes. Death. Extinction. You are likely concerned about some, if not all, of these problems. They have continued for years – decades – centuries – millennia. The world has about ½ a billion underweight people despite having enough food to feed 11 billion people. Even the United States of America, one of the richest countries in the world per person, has over ½ a million homeless people despite having over 11 million vacant homes. People are not the only organisms suffering; over 1 million species are going extinct: doomed to be gone from our world at this rate. Something has gone horribly wrong. 

Indeed, it is only ONE thing: exchange, the establishment of debt through trade as measured by money. 

You see, when you need something in modern society, you usually must trade for it. If you cannot give that compensation in money, a desired object, or a promise thereof, you do not receive no matter how much you might need what you seek. In many cases, such as housing, health care, and highest education, prices tend to overwhelm consumers. Oddly enough, the need for money itself is a redundant feedback loop: you need money because your suppliers need money because THEIR suppliers need money and so on. There must be a reason for this insane flow.

When money or a promise to pay back is given to a modern business, that business has profits – also known as surplus value or proceeds – between the money/debt of what it got (or will get) from the consumer and what it gave (or will give) to its suppliers in order to provide/operate. Those proceeds are sometimes spent on building/investing in the physical assets (e.g. land, buildings, and machines) to produce more, but they can also be returned to the people who bought/financed the business. This is the core of capitalism, listed in the order of a Statement of Cash Flows. These financiers – also known as bourgeoisie or shareholders – buy businesses to create a mandate that the business must keep making proceeds to eventually give back to financiers as profit greater than what they put in. This means that every capitalist business tries to make as much profit as possible for the foreseeable future, getting the highest number of revenues from consumers minus expenses to suppliers possible. This habit makes businesses, consumers, and their suppliers disagree and create all kinds of conflict.

Think of a starving person. Unable or not allowed to reach a farm, they went to a marketplace and could not get food. Maybe natural events have caused a famine. Maybe the government has blocked that person’s racial or religious group from reaching food. Or maybe the very suppliers of food decided that the best way to maximize proceeds is to leave them out. Their prices have inflated so much that although people like the one in question are unable to afford the new prices, the consumers who do pay so much more that sales numbers remain much higher than the costs of production. Sad and desperate, the starving people seek any way to fix this problem. They might harass, steal, or even kill to stay alive and well. Because they feel insecure, they listen to any loud speaker who strongly casts blame: “That leader is at fault!” “That cultural group is at fault!” “That nation is at fault!” Hatred booms, and desperate people fight other people who might also suffer from all this.

When businesses operate for as much profit as possible, they could not care less about the resulting wreckage. We are threatened by the war industry that gets payments from hatred-fueled governments over and over again. The largest of these nations not only blow-up other countries, leaving doomed wastelands, but also stockpile nuclear weapons can do vastly more damage if unleashed. Oil, coal, and natural gas corporations also demolish the earth by yanking out valuable fossil fuels. Then, ecosystems full of animals and plants in those extraction sites collapse, consumers keep using old modes of commuting and warmth instead of better, healthier alternatives, and worst of all: the burned fuels make sun rays keep heating our planet in the chaotic, climate-changing greenhouse effect. Pollution in general is more lucrative from continued sales than recycling and resource conservation, so it continues. 2 industries of greedy businesses alone crumble our world and endanger us so much that we might all die off in a century if some miracle of biology happens.

Of course, smaller problems come from our capitalist economy based on increasing revenues and/or reducing expenses. Wages and salaries lack raises because they are not the ruling investors’ bottom line. People avoid low-paying jobs because inflated costs of housing and health care leave them bankrupt otherwise. Commuting distances stretch so much, cars fill entire streets because their sales make more money than bus tickets, train fares, and government spending. Work and driving take entire days because companies avoid paying additional full salaries. And politicians worsen or barely reduce these problems because the rich people behind all this fund their election campaigns. There is only one way to end this global cancer, and that is by everyone stopping proceeds, relieving debt, and going moneyless for good.

Contributors of the Moneyless Society (MoSo) advocacy charity have written other essays decrying the different kinds of pain debt dumps on us. MoSo Founder Matthew Holten has also written a book explaining the systems theory behind the failures of the monetary system and structures that can replace it after it is repealed by a critical mass of people. Dedicated members Amanda Smith and Zachary Marlow engage brilliant people in MoSo podcast episodes and a documentary in progress as of Winter 2023. I recommend you learn from as many of these as you wish.

The Case for Freedomism (11/13/22 Draft)

According to the Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary as of 2022, “freedom” is primarily defined as “the quality or state of being free: such as the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action”. Freedom is often praised in the United States of America and similar countries, but most of us lack a type of freedom: the freedom to obtain.  “Free” is primarily defined by Merriam-Webster as “not costing or charging anything”. Most products are not free to obtain in capitalist countries; these include food, water, shelter, health care, and electricity. The artificial need to trade – usually with currency – for these necessary goods and services and others is fundamental to capitalism. One receives and is usually indebted until payment, but what if that was not the case?

Conservative ideology frowns upon the provision of free products, but the benefits outweigh the lone negative of possible laziness. Even then, that negative can be resolved by reorienting the common motivation to work from the need to make a living to the need to help others live/thrive. Why not help others when your own survival is already maintained? Beyond that issue, plenty of benefits come from the wide-reaching removal of debt/trade:

No More Inflation: Monetary inflation beyond money supply changes comes from market equilibrium based on maximizing profit. When demand rises and/or supply sinks, businesses raise prices in order to earn the most money possible after paying for production, delivery, and other costs. If currency is no longer exchanged, no prices can be increased for that: neither in oil, food, higher education, nor housing.

No More Poverty: Poverty is an issue related to inflation. While inflation is the economic problem all conservative movements target, poverty is the economic problem all progressive movements target. Too many people do not receive enough money to afford healthy lives, let alone save and invest. This would not be a problem in the absence of prices altogether.

No More Inequality: Wealth inequality relates to the impossibility of profit in the absence of debt and is the primary concern of socialists. If no surplus value – as measured by the money in profits – can be taken away from the working/proletarian class whose efforts brought products to consumers, the rich/investor/bourgeois class cannot gather more and more wealth. Without that accumulation and the corruption investors establish to keep winning, their employees would finally be able to control decision making at work and on public policy.

No More Bankruptcy: Without the need for repayment of debts, no debt can overwhelm the assets anyone owns and induce devastating bankruptcy. This applies to student debt, mortgages, medical bills, and governmental shortfalls. Yes, even federal debt would be null and void.

Almost No More Violence: The most common forms of violence – including international wars, police attacks on USA First Amendment rights, gang warfare, and robberies – are centered around gaining and keeping resources. Without assets to be gained from trade, almost no one would threaten or attack others over territory or goods but would share instead. People would also not attack out of desperation from destitution and might not even attack out of revenge in a world without artificial scarcity.

As you can see, the elimination of indebtedness opens up opportunities for people to get what they need with neither extra necessity, coercion, nor constraint. If practically everything does not cost nor charge anything – when everything is free, we’ll have freedom. This principle is the fundamental notion of what I call “freedomism”: the dominion of “free” begetting “freedom”. Reaching this state of society is difficult, but general strikes within real/fixed property, workers’ and tenants’ unions/cooperatives, and viral outreach can help us achieve true freedom. Money, debt, and profiteering are artificial/fake/fiat and therefore removable. Yes, freedomism is synonymous with com*unism. These ideas primarily come from Karl Marx and Peter Kropotkin: Wage Labor and Capital and The Conquest of Bread. A better world is possible through a mass movement.

Some Quotes

“We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of [brotherhood].” - Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., “I Have A Dream” (speech)

“Well, ratification would be a system in which there are two positions presented to me - the voter. I get into the polling booth, and I push one or the other depending on which of those positions I want. That’s a very limited form of democracy. A real, really meaningful democracy would mean that I play a role in forming those decisions - in creating those decisions, that those positions reflect my active, creative participation. Not just me, but everyone (would); that’s real democracy. We’re very far from that.” - Noam Chomsky, excerpt from “Noam Chomsky on Democracy” [0:28] (video)

“THE LEADERLESS REVOLUTION is not about demanding the violent overthrow of government, or anything else. Everything worth changing can be changed without resorting to violence; this should be a gentle revolution, using force more lasting and convincing than any violence - our own actions and convictions. The most extreme cases of savage repression [may] justify violence, and then only rarely, and only after all nonlethal alternatives including isolation, boycott and sabotage have been exhausted.” - Carne Ross, “The Leaderless Revolution” [page xxiv] (book)

“We must for the emancipation from oppression, not* on behalf of the oppressed, but* BY the oppressed, and apply this concept throughout every aspect of life. We must replace the politics of monologue with the politics of dialogue. We must create a generalized anti-authoritarian culture of resistance, transform the way we conceive of ourselves, and build a mass popular understanding, experience, and support of a new way of life to such an extent that it culminates in a social revolution. That is how we arrive at a free society.” - host of Libertarian Socialist Rants, excerpt from “Achieving An Anarchist Society” [18:48] (video) 

 * I’d prefer a “not only... but also” usage here.

“We have seen above, that the first step in the revolution by the working class, is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to establish democracy.” - Frederick Engels and Karl Marx, “The Communist Manifesto, Authorized English Translation” [page 30] (book) - “Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionizing the mode of production.” [same page]

As soon-to-be-President Trump said, I wanna be associated with interesting quotes. The difference being that I don’t want to a “lion” nor a “sheep”. I want to be a human - or if you want an analogue, a plant that maintains the quality of the soil of nearby plants while fulfilling its own needs.

In case you were wondering, this title is a reference to the “some pig” message from Charlotte’s Web.

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and Happy 2017.

Well, this sums it up. Call me crazy if you want. After all, regarding this Utopian ideology, IT'S JUST A THEORY. A REVOLUTIONARY THEORY.‪  Oh, and don't worry. I'll limit these to no more than once a day.

Response to the "Occult Digest" Found in Richter's Special Collections

In October 1925, an issue of Occult Digest was written by Jackie Gleason (or documented as such). Gleason, as an actor and comedian, knew much about leisure at the time. He named the Occult Digest "The One Daringly Different Magazine" and "a monthly for everybody". It was very popular at the time, and Henry LeFebvre's description of leisure in his Critique of Everyday Life can explain that with the concept of surrealism.

"In our era, one of the most recent forms which criticism of everyday life has taken is criticism of the real by the surreal" (LeFebvre 29). The surreal is a main element of leisure, as LeFebvre explains. In the Occult Digest, hypnotists and chiropractors take the form of the surreal, referred to as paranormal (quite a synonym to surreal). The central image of it depicted ugly people (presumably witches) taking a beautiful woman with her baby (the two symbolizing reality, or what people are used to). This act is a physical representation of the surreal criticizing the real. As a criticism of everyday life, these hideous, wrinkled people of the surreal replace the new-age practitioners of reality.

"Playground of the USA" Response

("Quotes indicate thesis or key words.")

Gregory Bush's essay looks closely at what Miami has become. His thesis seems to be "Even more than the rest of Florida, the Miami area had become the nation's most notoriously wide open leisure capital." Before introducing the main topic, he explains how Julia Tuttle and Henry Flagler initiated Miami's vital railroad connection to other states.

To describe Miami, Bush uses the word "spectacle." Spectacle, as he defines it, involves displays that are out of the ordinary, which Miami automatically had with its palm trees and warm beaches. Eventually, "urban boosters" took over the spectacle of Florida and other Southern states to benefit from the "tourism" in the regions. From Biscayne Bay to the Everglades, "visitors" poured in from across the nation.

Carl Fisher was just one of the many entrepreneurs who transformed Miami with hotels and other buildings, though some were destroyed by hurricanes. Another influential man was George Merrick, whose "City Beautiful" movement gave Coral Gables its "Venetian-style" canals and the Venetian Pool. I have seen these as well as the Biltmore Hotel with my grandmother and mother, and the whole area is spectacular.

However, some spectacles were ignored, like the public parks that became, as Henry LeFebvre would have called them, prodigal monstrosities. The many people who were transfixed by the spectacle had problems. For example, divorce rates were among the highest in the nation, which the 1941 film Moon Over Miami illustrated.

Lefebre Response (ENG 106)

Part of Lefebre's Critique of Everyday Life is named Work and Leisure in Everyday Life. However, the 5 or so pages dedicated to this topic are mainly focused on leisure. Work is mentioned, but just as the thesis to which leisure is the antithesis and everyday life is the synthesis.

Leisure is designated to be the opposite of work, with escapism emphasized. If someone goes to a factory every day, they will be more likely to sit around with a crowd (like for a movie or music concert) than go on a jog for leisure. Leisure activities have now become something monetized. Large group meetings of sorts often include a payment of some sort.

With "leisure machines" like television and radio around (though they might be more inclined towards "private life" because only one or a few people share a TV/radio), leisure has become increasingly passive, rather than active for sedentary workers. Not only that, but also leisure occasionally becomes the entirety of everyday life. Philosophers like Karl Marx question this transition of everyday life to more private and lonesome matters, like staying in one position in a factory.

Revised Comparison Thesis (ENG 106)

Despite both being in the Miami area, the Sunset Place AMC Theater and the Lincoln Road Regal Theater have different visual styles.

Comparison Draft 1 (ENG 106)

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Comparison at the Movies (1st Draft)

            Quite a few cinemas are in the Miami area. Three of them are near each other but are much different from each other. These three differ in aesthetic and functional ways.

            The smallest of them is the Cocowalk cinema. Is has only a few rooms, and the seating is relatively limited. However, it is right in the middle of Coconut Grove and near many shops and restaurants.

            The AMC Theater in Sunset Place is very popular for teenagers. Students from the University of Miami and the local high school go to Sunset Place’s shops as well as the cinema. The Theater has two-dozen movie rooms. Both the concession stands and the rooms are larger than those in Cocowalk. The AMC Theater even has an arcade and big “coming soon” movie posters. Like the Cocowalk one, this cinema has dimly lit hallways with black carpeting on the floors.

            On Lincoln Road in Miami Beach, Regal Cinema has a much has a much different setting than the others. Its surroundings are an open-air road with shops on both sides. In the cinema, the aesthetics are unique compared to the others. The floors are finished concrete, the place is three stories tall, and one side of it has a glass wall overlooking the outdoor mall. Regal has fewer movie rooms than AMC, but the AMC does not have multiple stories despite being on the third floor of Sunset Place. The rooms are similar in size, as are the concession stands. Regal Cinema’s main room encompasses the entrances to the movie rooms as well as the concession stands and ticket booths; the movie rooms are in fours on each floor. In contrast, AMC does not have the ticket booths inside and branches out with two strings of movie rooms.

For English 106 (Miami Show Intro Thesis)

Miami Vice uses wild colors to add to the setting's spectacle as do CSI Miami's special effects.