Time for Change (Bregtje van der Haak, VPRO Backlight 2010)

Meet the new revolutionaries of the Do-It-Yourself cultures in Barcelona, Tallin and Jakarta. They are modern day heroes. They do not wait for political parties or institutions to change their world; they simply do it themselves, by creating new local currencies, by working in social networks or by simply robbing the banks and redistributing their money.

The world economy is in crisis and public trust in financial institutions has hit rock bottom. As commercial banks were bailed out with billions of taxpayers money and continued to practice their old vices, many people lost faith in bank managers and politicians. They got angry at the speculative financial system that brings extreme wealth to a few and instability and unemployment to many.

Could this dissatisfaction lead to social change? Can we imagine viable alternatives? Backlight goes on a worldwide search, with sociologist Manuel Castells and philosopher Peter Sloterdijk.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• Economy
• Crisis
• alternatives
• globalization
• sloterdijk
• castells
• duran
• islamic banking
• anger
• protest
• onnepanki
• dinar
• dirham
• money
• trading
• indonesia
• estonia
• barcelona
• banks
• finance
• activist
• activism
• talinn
• birgit tollman
• zaim saidi
• bank of happiness
• jakarta

[wozzek22]

IGNORE THE RATS; live your own life, avoid fascists, boycott the fascist media, never, ever vote for Despicable or Repulsive wing of the same party (in the U.S.), refuse to pay taxes, avoid banks, vote independent, green, whatever but not the main criminal party, create parallel world and if the rats come knocking at your door do what anyone would do with a rat in your home!

[TheBrotherMouzone]

Read Ron Paul's "Revolution" to understand the real roots of our problems. Central banks and paper money is the real root of man kind's misery today. It is the root cause of wars, because without paper money, governments would not have any money to wage wars!

[SpiritLadyArtist]

Google Resource based economy and technological unemployment.

[SpiritLadyArtist]

@jamesbuckie1 Correct but we are at the end of the money society due to technological unemployment. Jobs are never ever coming back.

[SpiritLadyArtist]

@TheBrotherMouzone RP misses one big thing which is a fatal flaw of his. It will just go down faster if he gets in. It is called technological unemployment. I told my son to still go to work when the money system fails as it is going to even if RP got it and he will do it in even faster than it already is dying. We are at the end of the money society ready for the next stage of humanity's development.

[stap0510]

Everybody responding to TheBrotherMouzone:

Always the same collectivist pavlov response.

The problem is legislation from and enforced by government.

The obvious solution is not in more government.

[jamesbuckie1]

@TheBrotherMouzone yeah but Ron Paul's answer is even more laissez-faire neoliberalism, which is just the opposite of what we need. A democratic government needs to be in control of it's economy if possible!

[burningmindsvideos]

@TheBrotherMouzone The problem is capital and its inherent tendency to destruction

[burningmindsvideos]

@TheBrotherMouzone Sorry, but i strongly disagree. As Zizek put it: "in our postmodern age, what we witness as the gradual dissipation of the very materiality of the fetish. With the prospect of electronic money, money loses its material presence and turns into a purely virtual entity(...)this dematerialization, however, only strengthens its hold: money (...) thus turns into an invisible, and for that very reason all-powerful, spectral frame which dominates our lives." (The plague of Fantasies)

[Rom1970]

Capitalism IS fascism..Unfortunately it seems more of my fellow Americans will have to suffer before we all realize this ...Only then will we Americans finally consider a more humane system that considers all our common humanity and respects our environment ,the only home we have..Only when we all realize that we only have each other and that the idea of "every man for himself " mentality is fundamentally flawed and will only continue to cause more harm than good..Only then will we change .

[jmburkow]

@wozzek22 Your logic reeks of speciesism. You are offering us a way out of one form of domination (political, state, ideological), by relying on the logic of another form of domination (control the environment, kill lesser life forms, etc.). In the parallel world you speak of, the rat must not be seen as some kind of vermin that provides endless analogies and metaphors for knee-jerk reactions. You should, instead, speak about socialism(s), revolts, alternative communities, anti-oppresion.