The Free Market Has Soon Turned 99 % Of Us Into Miserables

The Free Market has soon turned 99 % of us into Miserables.

by H.Anderberg.

Copyright © Håkan Anderberg, May 2012.

Published at Smashwords

All rights reserved. Copying for personal and educational purpose allowed.

This is a translation made by the Author. If anybody feels that they want to participate as proofreader of the book, you are mostly welcome to participate.

Please contact on this e-mail: hakan_anderberg@hotmail.com

Introduction.

What really made me understand how bad it is in the world of today, a decade in to the 21st century, was when I read a book which was written in the end of the 19th century – Les Miserables by Victor Hugo.

The first time I heard the word Miserables was in Brazil. I asked several times, I remember, and at last I got the explanation – it was the step below poverty. Where you lose your value as a human and you loose the hope to become a human being again.

Maybe our thoughts goes to the people that in different ways have been stricken by catastrophes and therefore fallen into that – state. But it wasn’t them that came to my mind when I read Les Miserables, it was not them I saw so clearly in front of me, described by Victor Hugo. It was our social outcasts in the western societies, mentally handicapped, homeless people, and drug-damaged people. Them the representatives of our society had stripped of their human dignity and condemned to become Les Miserables, because they didn’t fit into the system.

Nothing has happened since the mid 19th century if we see to them who are below the last step on the social ladder. They are not chained as galley slaves though, but they are in anyhow without human dignity in our society in the 21st century! After almost 200 years nothing has happened for them down under.

I am also talking about Sweden who until now has had a social security system at least for them who knows their legal rights, but it is getting worse. It hasn’t been that bad since the 40-ties that it is today. In the 60- and 70-ties we didn’t have homeless people. They showed up when our economy was on all its cylinders, at that time the Evening news start to run their 5-minute feature on economy. They showed the Stockholm Stock Market Exchange and got ordinary people to put their savings into shares. Then the homeless people start showing up. What was it that kicked the poor down from the last step, to a life as Miserables in Sweden? The land of Utopia to many people in the world.

At the same time the workers union stopped talking about 6-hour workday and a few years later the information were that everybody have to work more than 8 hours a day in the near future. From the same channels we were told how good everything was going for Sweden.

I didn’t understand a lot from the contradictory data and probably didn’t care a lot either. I had enough of my own efforts to get as much as possible of the existing cake, especially the black one. I lived outside the community and after the motto Guard yourself and don’t care about what others do and it functioned well – some years.

It works out fine as long as you only have to think about yourself but when there all of a sudden is a child in the house which one day shall manage by itself? When you have responsibility for somebody else then you change thinking and discover that it is almost impossible to get back into the society. It means unemployment, down low on the social ladder for long time, infinitely long time. Then thoughts start coming about how bad everything seams to function even in our little duck pond Sweden, at least for some? Many questions accumulate and all of them seemed to be without honest direct and simple answers.

In the end it was too much unemployment and since I had taken full responsibility for my son I gave him the confidence to take the last steps by himself. I went travelling to find out why it is like it is and this is my answer.

Over time I have understood that nobody of our prominent persons in the society should be able to write this book because it would make them impossible in the roles they are playing in the society.

Adam Curtis, freelance journalist from England which mainly has been working with BBC England and Noam Chomsky, professor in linguistics at MIT, USA, are my main sources to this book, together with Erich Fromm, social psychologist and humanistic philosopher.

Instead of lining up these people’s background and references I do recommend the reader to investigate the credibility on internet.

None of them has ever been involved with conspiracy theories. Chomsky have been looking into some conspiracies and reached the conclusion that since you never will find an answer it is a waste of time.

Chapter 1. We and the World.

First we must have the understanding that humans has a higher value and that this value is equal to each human being – independent of ability. Only to be born as a human being means that we have the same right as anybody else to participate, at the same degree, in decisions that affect our person. Otherwise certain persons would have a higher value than others and then there is no more to say. Then it is ok with slave societies. Period.

The only politic I considered as reasonable is that decisions in a democratic way are made at the lowest level meaning where you work and liveAall institutions have to show that they are necessary for the society. That is my political agenda and my policy might be that – small is best.

We might think that you have to be a professor to reveal or understand how the world’s powerful men control us – the mass. To a certain extent I accept that, but after these knowledgeable persons has shown us their logical explanation, with reference to where they got the data, then it is enough to have normal intelligence to understand if it is right. People’s intuitions about fundamental things are normally just on the spot. People has for example for hundreds of years felt that an equal society is the best for us. People are clever, friendly and have a lot of intuition when they are left without being manipulated.

The economical systems of John Maynard Keynes and Milton Friedman are totally contradictive. Keynes system gives the politicians the power to control the capital and he was the first to test his system which had great success during the 50- and 60-ties, those years that is called the golden age of the capitalism. Most systems has its flaws, also this system, but it kept the world economies going from the end of the 40-ties until the beginning of the 70-ties, without any major crises.

Friedman theory is to take away all form of economic restrictions, so-called laissez-faire-economy, and today it is this theory that controls the world’s economy. A country today is more than ever depending on what is happening in the world. Therefore you must look on the whole world to understand what is happening in one country. Economically almost all countries today are depending on the markets reactions.

The change started 1971 when Nixon deregulated the so-called Bretton Woods system by decontrol the currency and at the same time took away the gold standard. Multinational companies grew to enormous giants and can today be compared with many countries in size. This and other measures caused what we today call the globalization.

(1) 1970 when the Bretton Woods system regulated the economy 90 % was trade with goods and 10 % speculations. 1990 these numbers had been reversed and only a few years later, 1994, 95 % was pure speculation and 5 % on trading goods.

We have in most countries today, lost the possibility to rule over our economy and that goes for all countries in the world – also USA. Decisions that give advantage to the citizens are considered as inflationary which immediately forces the market to redraw its investments from that country. Taxation of companies gives the same reaction.

It is not out of evilness but it is economically right to do so in the system we have. The system that is the cause to food crises in the southern hemisphere and financial crises in the northern hemisphere. It is called The Free Market by most of us.

So were to begin to logical explain how we ended up in the mess we are in today? I think that it gives a rather good image to look into the development during the 20th century. Three major factors are significant for the development of the democracy during this century, namely:

1. In the beginning of the 20th century the right to establish in more or less any industry is widely extended. The guilds have more or less disappeared.

2. The Corporations grows both in power and in amount.

3. The private corporations want to get rid of as many restrictions as possible that can inhibit their development. That means that they start campaigns to impact the average citizens in several ways to give them consent to weaken the democratic control of the companies. The knowledge from Freud’s scientific research is used to fabricate information that brainwash the people and get them to do what the corporations want. Newspapers became an important tool which later was taken over by radio, TV, the film industry etc.

During the latest centuries, since the capitalistic system was introduced, there has been a constant struggle between those which works and them who owns about whom is going to determine the distribution of the wealth in the society. Those with capital in the society do everything to become richer. Moral and conscience was adjusted to what they were doing, to protect their assets. They paid as low price as possible for the labour which led to that workers were living on the limit of starvation, and under the limit. Diseases, infant mortality and hunger became everyday life for hundreds of years.

Subsequently and slowly the workers won different rights that were built on the strongest of weapons and the powerless’ only weapon – the truth. The weapon that the child carry and we take away from them, when we deprogram them from a natural critical thinking, when we teach them that you don’t have to always tell the truth. With honesty as a fundament a society were founded that was built on dignity.

The rich and primarily our middle class could never have done this since they are prepared to sell themselves to any price if they and their assets are protected. Their moral is to get more cunning and more inventive to protect their Precious.

Here is an example how those forces works and at the same time we will get an explanation what the word liberal stands for. This word has today a double meaning. The classic liberalism (when the word was used the first time) stood for people’s right to have control over his work and to decide over his way of living without interference from outside. The word totally dissociates from wage slavery and as clearly from capitalistic thinking. A word that signifies freedom to determine over ones life and also means tolerant, open, freethinking and generous is dangerous for them who want to control society. That’s why they change the meaning of the word to signify the opposite. Since they control the press and media they can succeed in impacting the significance of the word. Today the word liberalism means a system who wants control over the production by controlling the work and the workers in a super capitalistic system. But in US it means the worst socialist society you can imagine, much worse than the horrible communism. So they killed the word, liberal, which was founded by John Locke, and was used to write The Declaration of Independence in United States of America.

They do this to confuse ordinary people who struggle to learn the fundaments of what different words stand for. They do it so people will put their votes in the wrong ballot box. They who want to vote for a liberal party because it gives the workers more freedom to rule over their lives will put their vote for a party which is the most conservative.

Adam Smith was a classic liberalist. Noam Chomsky says in his book Class Warfare following:

"People read snippets of Adam Smith, the few phrases they teach in school. Everybody reads the first paragraph of The Wealth of Nations where he talks about how wonderful the division of labor is. But not many people get to the point hundreds of pages later, where he says that division of labor will destroy human beings and turn them into creatures as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human being to be. And therefore in any civilized society the government is going to have to take some measures to prevent division of labor from proceeding to its limits."

Adam Smith made a solid work, Wealth of the Nations, were he describes how an economical system can come in balance. Corporations in the meaning of today were only in its infancy at the time of Adam Smith and he was strongly critical to what he saw coming. He was especially critical to the Business Men. Adam Smith criticized England in a harsh way for what they did and had been doing in India and he saw the liberations of the colonies way before anybody else. He is described together with von Humboldt by Noam Chomsky in the book Secrets, Lies and Democracy as socialist-anarchist that is strongly against what capitalism stands for. Smith couldn’t have made any anti-capitalistic statement at his time since the capitalism only was in the forestage of its development.

Milton Friedman took this system, 200 years later, and did the same thing what had been done to the word liberal. He remakes the system so the corporations was given unrestricted power and the workers became totally powerless’. The first he cooperated with was dictator Pinochet in Chile. A couple of years later Friedman received the Nobel Prize Award, the same year he helped Argentines new dictators to implement the system. Country after country which has by any reason got into chaos were forced to assimilate Friedman’s theories and today we are all slaves under the system, called The Free Market. The method to implement it with has been described by the Canadian journalist and author Naomi Klein in her book The Shock Doctrine.

The 18th and 19th centuries are interesting from several points of views. The textile industry in England which needs wool to its industry make people loose their land – which they have lived on since ancient times. They are bunched together around the factories were child labor is considered as natural.

One surprise is that from 1815-1914 there were no wars in Europe between the big nations – those nations we read about in school (which was more or less about wars). The nations that normally tried to exterminate each others succeeded to negotiate to peace when it was heating up in the politics during 100 years? The 20th century will give back far more than the missed wars in the 19th century though.

A major part of us with the attitude that people do not have the same value has often big economical assets. Their meetings with like-minded is not advertised. Secret decisions and implementations in the signs of surprises is regular, everything to protect and increase their capital. New polls and referendums are forced through year after year – until the propositions at last are accepted by the workers. Then the lid is put on and it will be impossible to have a new vote or a change. The worker is by his nature honest and believes in the equality of man, so he accepts the fact that he was tricked to put his vote in the wrong ballot.

To protect the capital or assets can mean any irregularities, just look into our history. There are no limitations since they disappear at the same moment we adopted the view that humans do not have the same value. After that it is only differences of degrees and they change over time when the surroundings allow or demand it.

There is a logic explanation how the people got the view that people have different value. They have to protect their capital and has time after time being forced to give up their moral in different ways. In the end their conscience will challenge this behavior and then there are only two answers. Either that I am wrong, or that there is something wrong with the one that I have been using for my purpose. If I admit that it is me that is wrong then I will improve and the behavior will disappear. If not, I have to say that it is them that are stupid, lower class people or something similar to defend my actions. I will use them for my own purpose and that shows my disrespect of equality between people.

In a similar way is the racist created. At some occasion he have, unintentionally maybe, violated a person or a group of people and instead of changing behavior he chooses to continue the violations (to prove that he was not wrong the first time). When the bad conscience comes up he gives an explanation built on, that it is the others that are wrong. They deserve the treatment he has given them since they have a lower value because of what they are. Chomsky expresses it in this way:

In a situation of occupation or domination, the occupier, the dominant power, has to justify what it's doing. There is only one way to do it -- become a racist. You have to blame the victim. Once you become a raving racist in self-defense, you've lost your capacity to understand what's happening.

In some mysterious way, Sweden wasn’t run over 1992 when the economical crash left the country open for rape. The Socialdemocratic Party which took over soon after the crash was still weak after the lost of their ideological leader and Prime Minister Olof Palme, who was shot a few years before. The Conservative and Liberal Parties would probably embrace the neoliberalism but were severally maimed after they lost the political power in a humiliating way. Göran Persson, the new Socialdemocratic Prime Minister, pallor illuminated the TV screen when he announced that the one who is in debt is not free. He had return from Wall Street and their unofficial partner IMF to ask for a loan to cover the debt on 1000 billion SEK (110 billion euro). What maybe saved us was that Wall Street was fully occupied to plan how they were going to empty Russia on all its wealth.

The economists knew that it wouldn’t be easy to defeat the Swedish worker unions and they could not afford any prestigious losses before the slaughtering of the Russian Bear. The unions were probably the only organisations who were strong at this time, despite the huge unemployment that had been created. Nothing scares the capitalists more than organised workers. They know that the risk is big that they might loose everything they own. Sweden had during a half century been the country in the world that the hawks in the US economy wanted to crush – especially during the time of Palme – because of the good example Sweden was to other countries. Sweden had the most equal society in the world and their Prime Minister (Olof Palme) took the right to make statements to the world about American foreign politics, about the wars.

The Union has had their defects and sure a lot can be said about Malm at LO and Hoffa at the Transport union but it must not come to be a cause to leave the union, in particular with the Chicago Boys waiting around the corner. The first thing they try to eliminate in all countries that they will implement the free market system in is the power of the unions. Without the union the workers have no organisation which can negotiate and bring forward their rightful demands. For sure there are some unnecessary people at the union cabinets that cost a lot of money from the hard labored salaries that is paid from to the union every month. The only thing and the right thing to do is to participate in the internal work of the union and make a change from inside. But never leave, that will everybody bitterly regret one day. Now in 2012 when we see the numbers of member decreasing we must ask and try to understand what is behind. The Union is our last, and today it is a fact that there are no other outposts to keep up our right to everybody’s equal value.

Opposite to the Bretton Wood system Milton Friedman’s Free Market have had three (3) major crises and more than hundred smaller financial crises since the 80-ties. If we look on all the suffering the Russian, Chinese, Latin-Americans and Europeans has been forced to go through at the implementation of the free forces of the market then you wonder how long this madness will go on.

The answer isn’t very hard to find and Angela Merkel touched the subject in a weak moment when the EMU crises was on the agenda. What she said was we will have a fund that our member countries can lend from and when the money is spent the corporations has to take the rest.

It is always the people that have to pay, first when the taxes are rising to support the companies in different ways and after that through increasing tax even more to pay the debts that have been created by the companies that utilized the system to enrich themselves until it collapsed. As long as the politicians can take the workers tax money and give them to big business we will become poorer and poorer, but in the end there will be no more to take and then, if not before, the house of cards will fall together.

A good example is that the taxes in Sweden have paid the national debt from the crise -92. We rescued the banks first by giving them money – not lending. We gave them money since they had so high debts already that they couldn’t sign for any more loans.

So we rescued the banks and at the same time we let the banks keep the rights to require payment from the costumers that couldn’t pay their loans in the chaos after the financial crash -92.

The banks were first paid by the people because the people could not pay their loans and after that the people still had to pay the loans. The banks got paid twice and consequently the people paid their debt twice. The right ting would be that the unpaid loans went into the Treasury of the country or that the debts just were removed from payment.

The most people had basically been tricked to lend money from the bank since it was the only way to keep the banks going before everything collapsed. They literally dragged people from the street into the bank to lend money to them, without or with very low security. At the same time with the help of more or less criminal economists they emptied companies that were not active from investment funds. It could never been done without the involvement of the major banks.

One year after the Big economical crise 2008 Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett publish the book – The Spirit Level. They show that economically equal society has higher health and less social problems than societies that have unequal distribution of income.

(2)"The Annual Review of Sociology 2009 the authors reports that statistics that show violence, homicide, obesity, imprisonment, drug- and alcohol abuse, teenage births, etc increases