Work, money, society.

Image from Banksy

What does work means ?

For thousands of years, the main activity of hunters gatherers has been building shelters for the group and going to hunt with bows and lances, cooking preys on the fire maintained by the clan. This live may be seen idyllic but the life expectancy was 25 years, which is showing us how hard it was.

For few centuries, the biggest hope of serfs has been to get a small piece of land (1000 m²), a hutch without water and electricity and to own one cow. This dream is still available for 2 000 to 3 000 euro if you get the administrative authorizations to live without hygiene.

Wars between princes lead to destruction of harvests, destruction of harvest to starvation, starvation to epidemics. Few good years happened into this infernal cycles.
Life expectancy : 45 years.

Hopefully capitalism arrived, steam engine then our beloved oil. Jean-Marc Jancovici is explaining that oil is bringing to each of us the equivalent of 400 slaves.
Life expectancy : 55 years at the end of second world war.

Progress of agriculture, hygiene and no wars and massive exterminations raised the life expectancy to 82 years, today, in Europe and USA.

What to do for 82 years ?

Our hunters-gatherers ancestors would not have asked such a question ! Neither our farmer ancestors ! Not enough time !

We have a new problem to solve. Unfortunately, maybe it will not stand for a long time. What to do with our time ? Common sense is suggesting that we should focus on renewing our 400 slaves which are getting extincted rapidly.

We should stop using coal, gas and oil which are responsible for climatic changes. Only the level of disaster cannot be computed.

Which society do we want ?

The presidential election should be a privileged moment to discuss about it. Unfortunately, the differences in education, ways of thinking, available time and differences between objectives make the debate unfruitful.

So we speak about fuzzy words : basic income, work.

For me, money is a mean to get something. Money was created by princes to collect taxes. Let have a look at the very interesting Money& society MOOC about it. Today, Euro is created by banks from a disastrous debt system. The more we get debts, the better it is, until the bubble bursts. This mechanic is pseudo chaotic and nobody manage it well, but few ones certainly get richer and richer. Knowledge about what is a currency and the different process to create it is vastly ignored by the majority of people who are in charge of voting for a new president.

2012, French people vote against the financial system, 2017 they are ready to vote for a former banker ? They can do it ! Not speaking about the USA election !!

Without understanding what is money and what is work, you can going on discussing about basic income, what its costs is, but the discussion is shifting to misunderstanding.

So this is the one who is able to catch the trust of people who is elected. Independently of the logic of the arguments. The complexity of the problem makes it not understandable for the majority of the voters.

Few years ago, people trusted experts. There never was a consensus about economy. Economy study the means you need to get the society you want. The models of society vary from people to people.

Absence of consensus to go in one direction lets the discussion as a theory. Practicing is not possible without a majority.

I wish you good luck to face the up coming shakes.