So I was asked what's wrong with the world...

ya a friend asked me my opinion and I was supprised to find myself answering like I would have 10 years ago based on the Frankfurt school diagnosis of capitalism... but what was odd is that I felt a return to myself and a reconnection with humanity and the world...

now was that because what I am about to say is true, or because I have been repressing the side of myself which agrees with this? That is for the reader to decide...

The problem is to do with "Value" (very Robert Pirsig - 'Zen and the Art of Motor Cycle Maintenance').

We do not question the notion of inherent value normally. An apple is an apple, and it is "good" to eat. A friend is valuable, a person in their own right, intrinsically valuable. Indeed harder to see, but so is everyone.

However in Capitalism value is decided differently, it is a democratic result of supply and demand. High demand for a scarce in a population leads to a high value, and vice-versa is also true.

Now there are exceptions to this in luxury goods which proves my point. When Bells and Teachers whiskey were in tight competition I heard that Bells finally got some uniqueness by raising its price, thereby giving it the feeling of a more superior drink. This is the problem with capitalism - the price alone has begun to value things.

A good deal is where we get something that is valuable, for a sum of money that we consider to be less valuable. Where money is determined by how hard we need to work to get hold of it. With money printing presses, lotteries, bank interest, rents, globalised export of difficult labours, machines and a host of "easy" monies the value of money is degraded and so everything looks like good value.... in theory...

Problem Capitalism thinks only in terms of money. Companies win or die based upon cash flows. Bosses and investors are concerned with financial return on investmenst not on what the company actually does for the world.

Productivity in a world governed by capitalists is determined by financial products, not by actual "goods" generated for sale.

As a result industry is stripped down to generate cheap goods (bads?) as efficiently as possible with the highest profit margins.

I always considered this short sighted because money is only useful when you buy something with it, and when everything you buy is "bads" then you devalue your own holdings.

However money does something else, it buys people, and holds together a structure of power. Capitalists become rich not so that they can buy more, but to earn them a stake in a system of power that is structured upon money.

Thus there is no respect for the product, and therefore no respect for value. In the days when money and power were separate this problem did not exist. Power was gained by blood right and from the Monarch. They had a small army, lived in a castle and took taxes from the land around them. If you argued they emprisoned you. That was power. Money was gained in gold from work, craft, skill and trade.

Today if you are rich, you are powerful. Thus money has become power itself, and its role as a measurer of exchange value has been lost.

In this way money has become power, and so power is confused with value also. I have written at length the illusion of it all. When on a desert island try and eat your money or your power!

In making this criticism I found my heart again, because things and mankind cannot be viewed through monetary transactions. People are valuable whether they are unemployed and poor, or employed and rich or any combination of these. Money simply does not enter into the pciture at all. A good, well made product is just this even if a buyer cannot be found. A writer of books and music doesn't aim for an audience as much as satisfy their own instinct for quality.

One would hope that an audience had a taste for quality, that a million pound advertising campaign would not sway the voter or the purchaser, that people would act only upon what is valuable and not valuable and let money and coersion have not a part to play.

I do not write what I write here "for" an audience! What an absurd thought. Of course it must have an audience - I assume I'm not the only one who writes and reads - but I don't write it solely "for" the reader. It is written because it seeks to be written, because it has value of its own, because it wishes to exist.

I don't expect the truth of this to depend upon a democratic vote (either a poll or upon sales). If there is value to what is written here it should speak in its own terms, not be translated into power or money or accolade. An here the ouroboros stirs in his lair beneath the sea.

And so this true for all things, especially people. But the kids today find it hard to find a place in
this world - requiring the respect of fellow peers, the respect of the academic institutions, th respect of their parents, the respect of the authorities and the law : all these things before they can exist. And worse the respect of themselves. How is this to be measured in a world of possession, money and establishment structures!

Little chance of an apple even being an apple in todays world! Imagine the paperwork required to pass an apple as a true apple. The quality control, the standards, the institutes and government legislations, the copyrights, the stamps of approval, the industry to generate a supply of bona-fide "approved" apples. Time was when it was just an apple!

What chance then for the people of this world! And we wonder why there are problems in our "societies" (which don't exist anyway).