Credit rating agencies rate countries based on IMF / World Bank data if they don’t focus on corporate priorities, they’re downgraded and capital flows out of their country. And states know that policies that don’t stimulate growth and favour the corporate sector will cause ‘capital flight’ and their country will fall down the global rankings. So who’s driving it? I don’t really have to answer that, do I? Actually, maybe I do – because it’s not ‘the Illuminati’ or ‘the Jews’ or Bill Gates or ‘Wall Street’ – not any particular individuals or groups at all, in fact, but a symbiotic, state-corporate coalition that rewards giantism and market dominance and forces people into corporate ‘ bullshit jobs’ where they have to push innovation in the quest for profits, but will become redundant soon anyway, due to automation. I don’t remember asking for any of this, and I never meet anyone who genuinely wants it. Personally, I’ll take that – but I see it as ‘stepping aside’ – I don’t feel at all ‘behind’ the technophiles and the marketers – quite the opposite. Those of us who feel uneasy (or sickened) by this are assaulted by ubiquitous advertising warning us that we have to face up to and get ready for this reality, or be ‘left behind’. The world of tech is of course at the forefront of these developments, and the hype is that ‘the old’ – like bank branches, cash and anything small-scale or non-digital, must be replaced by the new, and that we’ll be doing a favour for the millions of ‘unbanked’ in the world by helping to ‘bank’ them (and, I guess, to Amazon, Microsoft, Google and generally corporatise them too). Digital money exists distantly, in the hands of giant financial institutions that are building alliances with giant corporations to oversee and control every aspect of our lives. Unfortunately, that leads to a world of massive power concentration. He points out that convenience breeds dependence – but that dependence seems to be a price worth paying for most people.
THE CLOUD MONEY SOFTWARE
What makes this book so interesting to me is that those alternatives are precisely what we’re promoting at Lowimpact, from growing your own veg, fixing things and installing renewables to co-ops, free software and farmers’ markets – as well as alternative monetary systems – but always via real people, in ways that keep wealth in real communities.
The state and corporate sector are busy making sure that people are locked into this supersystem, and that alternatives are made more and more difficult. Scott bemoans the loss of things like dropping a coin into a busker’s hat and honesty boxes on roadside fruit and veg stalls, replaced by the growth of a global network of corporations and digital payments that superficially looks like competition between different corporations, but is actually a giant supersystem geared for surveillance, data capture and concentration of wealth and power. “Under the hood (of digital money) we find a convoluted transnational payments circuitry, tied together by institutions you cannot see, but who can see you.” DystopiaĬloud Money is the digital money that is being used deliberately to drive out cash, and to make our every transaction known to corporations and the state. I’ve been following campaigner and former broker Brett Scott’s excellent articles and videos about money at Altered States of Monetary Consciousness, and I read his Heretic’s Guide to Global Finance: Hacking the Future of Money, (highly recommended if you want to find out more about the workings of and actors in the financial sector) – so I’ve been looking forward to reading this.
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