March 28th, 2009 by admin

Richard C. Cook’s book on Monetary Reform is available to buy online here. In it he proposes a comprehensive series of measures that would transform the debt-based monetary system into one based on the productive values of the physical economy.

Richard is member of the US basic income guarantee network and you can also read a recent article on “Bailout for the People” here.

On that note, look at this pie chart comparing the recent US bail out vs other big government spending, courtesy of voltagecreative.com - perhaps a basic income guarantee is affordable after all?

February 28th, 2009 by admin

I think most of us interpret the word ‘freedom’ in a similar way. Most of us realise that freedom means both rights and responsibilities. Many of us understand that there are different levels to freedom, too. When people agree about something, freedom expands. But it also calls for increased responsibility. In many areas in our society we sign papers to regulate and validate an agreement. This signed paper is the proof that freedom is based on fair rules. But is it? There are many situations where the signatories are very unequal. For example: Parents who can save their kid’s life by signing a loan would probably do it, even if they knew they would have problems with paying the loan back. Governments in different countries sign loan papers that make some people unbelievably rich and the already poor, much poorer. There are people who are tortured, who would probably sign a confession in order to stop the torture. These examples are easy to understand for most of us.

But we also have examples that are highly topical and much harder to understand. In the financial crisis we see today, lots of people must have signed lots of papers and now can’t fulfill their responsibility. An unbelievable amount of money won’t reach its destination, or the amount just isn’t enough for some reason. Of course most of the agreements concerning the failed investments with high profit margins are covered up so it’s not a crime, even though morally most of us think that it is a crime, especially when some of those responsible get very high salaries, big bonuses, golden parachutes and a pension that could feed an ordinary family for generations. And these ordinary families whose work is what our economy is based on - real work, production and services - are now seeing their pension go down the drain. Is that freedom?

Sure… voters used their free will to vote for politicians who are now bailing out the banks. That’s called democracy. Democracy is supposed to be freedom but I’m 100% positive that if the same voters could vote for or against a bailout, the outcome would be not to bailout. So how does the freedom work where decisions are made on the highest level in our society? Is this what is called democracy?

Another perennial hot issue is poverty and starvation. Based on a United Nations report released in 2003 and reported by BBC News, about 25,000 people die each day from starvation. This was before the current food crisis. Why don’t we bail them out? Because it’s in another nation, another part in the world? Or is it because we, the rich countries, exploited their land, forests and water and made it worthless for growing crops? I wonder how starving people interpret the word freedom. One thing is totally clear for me: The freedom one can have is vastly different, depending on who you are and what you do. I’m amazed how much effort we put in to maintain a very bad system.

But on the other hand… we have made the system so complex that if you’re in it, trying to look at it, you will find no end to the complexity.

Let’s try to make it easier! We, the humans have a lot of needs. If we have money we can satisfy most of our needs since we use money to buy products and services. We all know now how money can lose its value very quickly. When that happens we need more money in order to maintain the previous standard of living. To maintain the money system itself, we also need money - actually an enormous amount of it. But how true is this? And if you believe it’s true - how good is it? What makes it good - our living standard? Money in the bank can’t help you. It seems as we actually believe that money can do things.

Put any amount of money on a table and ask it to do something for you. Nothing will happen.

Any product or service is made by hands, minds and materials. They are the real resources. We don’t need money - we need people. By looking at our system that way we realise that people are the real resources, including the unemployed. Today we let them be a burden instead. How clever is that? What we need is to organise those resources. That’s exactly what capitalism has done, too. The thing is that it’s so badly organised that too many people just work to administrate or invest money.  If we see people as productive forces instead, working to improve our livelihoods  - would that be freedom?

Organisations or charities fundraise on a daily basis in order to help in different areas. It tells me some important things. 1: There are needs to be met. 2: Some have a lot, and some have so much less that they need help.

But most of all it tells me that our system has failed to be good and just. The solution is not to pump in new money to bailout and maintain a bad system. The solution is to redesign it and with it our mind set.

Guest Blogger: junivers

February 3rd, 2009 by admin

Things are moving on quickly. Currently testing our own donations button. While indiegogo will only process USD, and take a fee, most of our expenses will be in GBP, so we’re gladly accepting direct donations via paypal on futureblog.net. More information on the Donate to the Film page. We’ve also uploaded a 1 min teaser trailer via vimeo and added a email subscription feature. Hoping to add other features soon. Let us know if you have any suggestions.

January 27th, 2009 by admin

New Year, New Sleeve, thanks to an upgrade to wordpress 2.7. We’re currently starting to assemble edit Future For Sale, while still raising financing. We’ve created a fundraising page on indiegogo.com, if you would like to contribute to the next stage of the project. We’re still fleshing out the profile and the perks, so please contact us if anything is unclear.

When we started to develop this film in  2007, we didn’t know the extent of the financial collapse which was going to happen around the world, although for anyone following the news you knew something big was brewing.

We’re working hard to complete the film this year, so please watch this space.

Sonja

September 16th, 2008 by admin

Check out new articles by Richard Cook on the Mortgage meltdown here.

Richard C. Cook is a former U.S. federal government analyst, whose career included service with the U.S. Civil Service Commission, the Food and Drug Administration, the Carter White House, NASA, and the U.S. Treasury Department. His articles on economics, politics, and space policy have appeared in numerous websites and print magazines. His book on monetary reform, entitled We Hold These Truths: The Hope of Monetary Reform, will soon be published. He is the author of Challenger Revealed: An Insider’s Account of How the Reagan Administration Caused the Greatest Tragedy of the Space Age.

April 14th, 2008 by Maja

Do we change from within or from outside factors? Is change possible from within the system or is a new system needed? If we choose to work from within the system, do we work from the roots or from the top? Or perhaps; from all these angles at the same time?

All these big questions sometimes make me feel like a change is impossible, but then meeting ordinary people living this economic crisis, it is clear that the existing system is not sustainable. Witnessing the fine line between prosperity and poverty, and seeing what multi-national companies are doing to the third world, people at home, and the environment, keeps reminding me of the necessity to change this system quickly, and not spend all energy debating over whether it’s possible or not.

It is a man-made economic system after all, and trading methods have changed before to suit the times, so surely they can change again to suit our present situation. Perhaps it is the free market ideology that is a failed utopia?

 We all know we are in a globally fragile state, and historically this is when extremist forces have got to power. Trying to conserve a no longer suitable system will be detrimental to everyone and heighten existing conflicts.

There is a real need to educate and supply ideas to the public, which give hope for a better future, and inspire solutions. It is up to all of us to decide if we want it.

mb

April 2nd, 2008 by Maja

For a long time I was looking for solutions to problems we have in our society within the established ideologies and political parties. But even though this political activism taught me a lot about current issues, and gave me various groups to “belong” to, I was always frustrated over how much energy had to be expended on playing the political game. In a way we had to be more concerned about who solved the problem, than solving it. But if we didn’t play this game, we wouldn’t get the political power to do anything.

These were and still are the rules of politics - play it, or do your own thing on the side, in silence.

Of course campaigning is very important in terms of raising awareness and give the public a choice as to what method, from what party, they would prefer. To give the public this choice is one of the fundamental functions in a democracy. But when this campaigning is not about finding the best method for the greatest number of people, by honestly and openly presenting a solution to the public, but about scoring political points through word-twisting, how can the public make a well informed choice? The public can’t be experts in everything and if they don’t know what they are actually choosing, how is this a democracy?

I feel ashamed for politicians when they are trying to belittle each other, and frustrated when they actively and obviously distract from their opponents’ points. Still, I understand how they have become dependent on this to stay on the political scene and achieve anything at all.

Now I’m not looking to any political party to offer “the solution” anymore. The icebergs wont hold back for the next election, and this political game is not working fast or well enough these days.

I know I’m not the only one who feels this way, and I’m sometimes scared I belong to a generation that is about to give up. That we are once and for all resigned to capitalism and egoism because we don’t think we have any real choice. While progress is increasingly measured in minutes on screen, and the feeling of freedom and meaning can be attained chemically, are we distracting ourselves from any existential crisis this development perhaps should infuse, or any real resistance it could inspire?

I’m also scared that the political power has been moved so far away from people’s everyday realities and grown so large, that most political activists will be pushed to challenge it with violence. I’m scared of how this violence is used as an excuse for the authorities to refuse listening to opposing views, making them even more desperate and violent.

Is this a time when we can’t actually change the workings of our society, or is it an era when we don’t feel as though we can? Did the “modernists”, the generation that is now disappearing, have a way to process the world that we “post-modernists” could learn something from? Further, is there perhaps a new language of resistance that is not seen through the normal political channels but on platforms not immediately apparent to most of us?

What’s our relationship to our future? Does the concept of a better future still exist?

mb

April 2nd, 2008 by admin

It is hard to picture a total social and environmental breakdown and it’s easy and comfortable to dismiss these kinds of predictions. But on the 13 of June 2007 it was ‘made official’: the Crash of the U.S. Economy had begun. In a column titled “The Takeover Boom, About to Go Bust” in The Washington Post, one of the foremost house organs of the U.S. monetary elite, economic writers Steven Pearlstein and Robert Samuelson writes:

“It is impossible to predict when the magic moment will be reached and everyone finally realizes that the prices being paid for these companies, and the debt taken on to support the acquisitions, are unsustainable. When that happens, it won’t be pretty”.

Escalating international tension, crisis, war…

At the same time researchers at NASA and Columbia University determined that man-made greenhouse gases have brought the earth’s climate precariously close to a major “Tipping Point” that would have dangerous and far-reaching consequences for the Global Biosphere and its human inhabitants.

Similar reports are being published all over the world…

This increasing dystopian outlook of the future and the need to be rescued seems to concern the public more and more, making way for documentaries such as Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth and TV series such as Tim Kring’s Heroes.

There is one problem with documentaries such as The Inconvenient Truth: they don’t offer any real solutions, and deep down we all know that to save the cheerleader is never going to be enough to save the world.

While some of the “younger generation” have become activists in the anti-globalisation movement, the vast majority has been called the MTV generation – fluent in popular culture but largely a-political. But perhaps the personal focus, the obsession with style and surface doesn’t mean that people have stopped caring, maybe it was just a shift of language, but a transformation of sorts? Does popular culture hold the key to our beliefs and attitudes, and can it even unlock people’s consciousness, if packaged seductively? If people have lost faith in politicians and traditional political filmmaking, what do they believe in?

Future For Sale will try to focus on solutions already available but at a first glance might appear as science fiction. Futurists have always had a close connection to this genre since it is a way to plant ideas into the public consciousness. But it is rare to see new films depicting a better future, currently a pessimistic view of the future seems to be more popular. Perhaps filmmakers also have to take the responsibility to be a part of this search?

Many “futurists” have changed the focus of their work, however. If futurism is a movement, then one can argue that its tone has largely changed from ideology to business. Two of the main goals set up by the European Futurists Conference Lucerne, for example, are directly related to support European businesses, and to create an understanding of the future of business, politics and society - in that order.

Does restricting the visions to a future within the monetary based economy mean that the great visionaries of our time become important tools for the big companies?

Does futurism become pointless if the monetary system is a problem in itself in order to progress? Or can we create a sustainable change within it?

April 1st, 2008 by admin

Finding a way to marry our current economic system with humanistic and environmental concerns seems to be the challenge of our time, but is this perhaps an inherent contradiction?

In human history “the survival of the fittest” has been a matter of competing over available resources. In modern times this competition has been structured into a regulated global economic system, an attempt to create a more “civilized” world. Today our economy still reflects this competition.

With modern technology we have the ability to produce in abundance. According to both Amnesty International and the UN we are already producing more food than is needed to feed the world. We also have the scientific knowledge to maintain this level of production using new methods and materials that wouldn’t damage the eco-system or rely on depleting resources. Still, millions of people are starving and we keep over-exploiting un-renewables such as oil, gas and coal at a much faster rate than the planet can sustain. Somehow, this unequal distribution of goods and unsustainable management of scarce resources, constitutes a “thriving economy”.

Our system is dependent on constant growth, which has led to over-production and dwindling resources. At the same time we need to waste the surplus in order to sustain value, to balance supply and demand in order to keep our economy – not our environment - “healthy”.

People are beginning to ask the question whether our basic model of “competition” and perpetual growth is still valid and necessary. What was once “modern” suddenly doesn’t seem so “civilized” anymore.

Through the intelligent application of new technologies we have a possibility to re-structure our economic system more equitably, in alignment with what the planet can actually supply. It has become a matter of choice; collaboration or competition. We could choose to feed everyone. It could be a seismic cultural shift.

But instead it is argued that our culture and our technological advancements are motivated by the economic competition. There is a big fear that we would not have the incentive to work and invent if we didn’t have the need to earn money. But the competition for profit also creates the incentive for crime and corruption and there are many people already working for no profit, usually people who passionately love their jobs or can afford to do what they want. Have we become dependent on someone else motivating us to get out of bed?

What would happen to a culture where everyone actually had a free choice over how to live their lives?

March 31st, 2008 by Maja

Once I met a futurist.

When I was a child I had one wish above all. It was always on top of any wish list, attached to every wish-bone or shooting star: peace on earth between humans, animals and nature. It left me with a burning mission; to make it happen. I collected all my pocket money to ‘buy’ tiny pieces of rain forest to protect it from the big companies who wanted to exploit it. Later I understood that these companies would always have more money and therefore more power than me, that my 50p a week meant nothing in the grand scheme of things.

I started to doubt my ability to change the world and more and more started to live with the same dystopian view of the future that surrounded me in and out of Scotland. To save the world is something you wish for when you are five, not something you work towards a whole lifetime. But then I met someone who had.

Filming my last short film Ottica Zero, I met Jacque Fresco, a 92-year old futurist, architect, inventor and socio-engineer.

Jacque has devoted his entire life to making the world a better place - without putting himself above anyone else or compromising his ideas for commercial interests, personal fame or status. He is a role model I would have loved to have as a child and an inspiration I am glad to have found now.

His ideas also address the two issues that have concerned me the most over the last few years: the first is the ongoing consequences of capitalism, affecting gender politics, world wide inequality, the aspirations and fears of everyday people, to the extreme detriment of our environment; the second is the issue of fundamentalism in a global society. How can we allow tolerance of all religions and value systems without a “clash of civilizations”?

What Jacque presents is a way to address these questions, not providing an ultimate solution in my opinion since I don’t think we can ever conceive of perfection, but a very interesting one that is making far more sense than how we manage our societies today. Jacque’s and his partner Roxanne Meadow’s Venus Project in particular, provides a fantastic metaphor for our collective power, and is a timeless reminder of our potential to change. Jacque has been daring to not only dream about improving the world, but actively inventing solutions to do so - his entire life. He is an uncompromising futurist-idealist of the kind we rarely find within our post-modern skepticism.

He questions why, even when we do have the resources to feed everyone, the technology to create clean energy, and the ability to supply everyone with creative, free and comfortable lives, we choose not to, a question I think we all could do with asking.

Jacque’s view of the future is neither dystopian nor utopian; he calls it a “a practical scientific solution, an unsentimental and non-judgmental collection of facts.”

“It is not enough to point out the short comings of the present day world without offering positive and attainable alternatives.” Jacque Fresco

I believe that Jacque’s ideas now more than ever tap into our desire to create a “fairer,” post-consumer world, where we are beginning to understand that our individual actions have an impact on other people, even if they live far away from us, and that we actually will have to change the way we live to preserve our planet.