 We now have Robin Upton talking about the plutocracy and Let's have a warm welcome for Robin. Thanks. Thank you I'm speaking on a brief history of plutocracy. Now that just that first word plutocracy means rule by the rich That's something that I'm glad to say has become more in focus. Thanks to Occupy. So This is a very general talk I've got 20,000 years of world history to put into 20 slides so I'm focusing especially on Europe because that's quite important in development of plutocracy and This is the public story of money that if you study economics you've heard I mean, I didn't study economics much as little as I could could help I don't think I could have made this talk if I had been told this is how economics is So money so what it means if you if you know economics that if you don't know economics It's not that's not a hindrance that might even be a help to understand this Money is a medium of exchange store of value measure of productivity is always taught as like okay This is economics and that's politics and that's something separate and law But I'm here to suggest that perhaps there's a private story of money that it's means of extracting tribute It's a means whereby a small number of people who run the show get all the other suckers to work for them It's unsafe store of value If you've worked you think okay, if I worked eight hours a day, I could get more than if I worked four hours a day Yeah, probably true. What about somebody who earns 50 times as much as you? He's not working 400 hours a day he's working for the right people and it's certainly not independent of the legal and political systems and I'm here to try to get rid of some of the misinformation So we're going right back to when people want to gather us now these colors are constant through this presentation So green is food. This is the order that they appear people are first bothered with food and then there's violence black Labor orders and money and these are kind of a pair that go together if somebody's giving you orders modern day, they're probably also giving you money to make sure that you follow the orders so People originally effectively know social classes everybody's main focus is okay How do we get food and then they all share the food that they've got so that is the story for a very long time There's a limit to how large these kind of family type tribes get when they get beyond a certain number They tend to split and then you have another tribe that runs around and we'll get on to that later But that's the first Social differentiation when you're having more and more of these tribes in a limited area Not all this but sometimes things get a bit violent people say look that we were here first this food belongs to us clear off so the hunters Probably the men they were became warriors and okay They did a bit of food, but they got more and more specialized to defend against the guys next door and Still for most of the history people are basically farmers So how does this change this changes with agriculture? agriculture is a big thing because okay now people can grow food and That is very important for possessions if you are hunter-gatherer your property is basically what you can carry around If you're doing agriculture, then you can live in the same place so you can have a house That's nice. So few people I put to call them artisans. They're making houses They may be making weapons for the warriors making chicken runs whatever they're making so we have a class of laborers Still the farmers they're feeding everybody the laborers They're providing goods for everybody and the warriors hunters. They are defending against the guys next door So this is about 10,000 BC more or less. So the next great innovation occurs. Whoops six months later 9900 99 when the harvest comes the old ethic of the hunter-gatherers. Hey lots of food great Let's have a party you clear the place out of food, and then you go somewhere else Well, you can't do that if you're cultivating the land you get a bumper harvest lots of food. That's great Some of the guys are thinking hey No, I think we better keep this because it might be a few months until we get some more food here so you need a new ethic and Okay, that's our first Rulers we've got rules about when you can eat and when you can't eat so you can eat if you're busy planting and planning ahead Now these are not Distant rulers on high. This is the most respected people and probably the elder men saying things like okay. Yeah, let's let's plan this plant this and Then we've got orders now. They're giving orders to these guys If they're the older men, they're not physically going to be stopping everybody from eating But you have a granary maybe in the city because you're your city's become possible because of increased population Then you have maybe a couple of guards with some spears outside the granary This is notice what's happening here They are now ready to do violence to the farmers or to the artisans because they're following these rules so This allows the population size to increase Now I said about the limit to group size This is okay. I put hundred and fifty that is done bars number He was an anthropologist who studied primates in Africa looked at chimpanzees and gorillas and their social groupings and said, okay Well homo sapiens they have a bigger brain. They can remember more names and faces And if you've got got a few friends sure you don't you don't have trouble to remember them and remember if somebody owes You won you're not gonna forget that if you've got half a dozen friends If you've got a hundred and fifty friends, it gets harder if you've got five hundred friends, then you're losing the View-visit you're losing the view. Okay. Who is the guy who's cheating me? Who's the guy who I have to to pay back for last time? So what do you do because they had large? Populations together they came up with a new technology the local currency. That's called a human human Economy here. Now. This is not actually money as such. Don't think this they invented money Money was shells or beads or feathers This was typically it was something that you would put on your person to make you more beautiful more respectable And it was standardized in a community But it is a very important step in the foundation of plutocracy Because now we have a physical object and somebody's got a lot of them They are a wealthy person. Maybe they're just wearing lots of feathers on their head But this is something that you can say, okay, I have a lot of this and he doesn't so he's a poor person I'm a rich person. These guys are not in charge. This isn't a plutocracy yet, but that's a vital step So the next step is these are the same groups as we had before I've changed as I put a crown on the top of the ruler because quite often they put a crown they used to cover themselves with gold as a kind of a hint to how you should treat them and They said, okay We're going to invent a better technology because if you have to roam an empire You can't run that with beads and feathers and shells and that was all Specific to a small community if you've got an empire You better have a large-scale community and in Europe the one that they hit upon was this system of metal discs That maybe you're familiar with They said to the goldsmiths I want you to make all this gold discs and make sure that you stamp my face on so everybody knows whose empire This is in case there's any dispute So this the goldsmiths would provide money to the king he give that to The soldiers now everybody wants those discs Because it's important for taxes The king says okay the rules is you have to give me so and so many discs in the occupied lands And everybody's want to help feed these armies. This is essential to maintaining the armies So now you can have standardized trade and travel. This is how the empires were forged and the next step I'm zapping quite fast into known history here 1694 very important date in the development of plutocracy because this is the first successful central bank there was one before that it wasn't very successful this one was and This was because this is basically thought up by the bankers The king was having trouble collect collecting new loans from the nobles the rich people He had been a bit slack on repaying them So they're thinking well, maybe we don't lend to the king because we might need it back But the bankers came up with a brilliant suggestion a brilliant from their point of view The legalization of the fractional reserve now I should explain what the fractional reserve is the goldsmiths Would take your gold and give you a little piece of paper and say that this was could be exchanged for the gold so they are issuing this is the the origins of paper money in Europe and The fractional reserve came about because they figured out that they could issue this paper Then it would work like gold in the marketplace somebody would not actually come and cash the gold all the time They would just carry the paper around because it was easier Then they thought okay So what about if we made some more paper without having any gold? That could be good because they can lend this out and that in interest is legal at this stage So this is what a lot of bankers did I mean it's basically fraud if you said this paper is good as gold and you can swap it any time you like Well, if you're issuing more paper than you've got gold You can get into trouble like that But these guys said okay, King. How about We'll make a thing called the Bank of England. It's a private company. It'll have shares and so on and it will have a monopoly over issuing of money in England So that only our bits of paper will be special and you will say that they are acceptable as taxes That's key because then everybody wants them and even the people who don't pay taxes They know that a lot of people need them. So it's like, okay, I'll take this So that's what the bankers did. What did they get out of it? Well, they did put in some gold There was supposed to be a limit on the amount of paper that they could make Maybe ten times the amount of gold that they had that was that's the fraction and they kept a proportion of it in reserve But they can basically create as much money as they like And then they say okay to the king. What do you get out of it? Well anytime you need money come to us We'll lend it to you at eight percent. I think it was So this is the origin of the national debt the national debt is not owned for owed from one country to the next It's owed by the rulers to the guys who are running the central bank so This was never actually paid back. It's still not paid back and then the bankers thought okay We came up with that scheme and and he okayed it. I mean, you know, he's the king. You can't argue with the king He says hey, you're the bankers. I'm tired of you. I'm gonna repossess you and okay We'll cut your heads off as well He's the king. He's got the army on his side. How do you how do you go against that? but There's some kind of contradiction here because they are providing him with money So shouldn't they be actually setting the terms? Well, that's what they thought How come he gets to order us around because we're the guys with the money This this should work another way and they they managed to figure out how to do it because They organized internationally Inside of one country that you can't argue with the king. What is the king afraid of? He's afraid of guys coming with and rolling him over because they've got more guns than him So there this is the most important step that was okay hundreds of years ago, but it has great implications today Because the king was really at some point no longer in charge They were in charge because of their international organization So how did that actually work? Well, it's been called The Rothschild formula because there was a banker in the 18th century Maya Amschel Rothschild He was quite wealthy and he had five sons He said okay, you go to England you to France you to Italy you to Austria You can stay here when I'm gone. You can run it in Germany and there was five bankers in this family and They each one of them became very wealthy the Bank of England Central Bank franchise model they came standard throughout Europe and that puts us in a situation where? Okay, then they the nations are busy fighting each other and How do they fight each other with money? They borrow armies they borrow it Maybe from somebody in the country, but also from foreign foreign bankers So there's basically one group of bankers who control who gets to borrow money from them and who doesn't so They are of course closely connected to the arms dealers You don't actually fight a war with money, but they manage that but there's one group and they said okay If you want to borrow money from me, of course, you're gonna have to sign about when you're going to pay it back but You're also going to have to agree That if you actually defeat this this king that you're fighting you're going to make sure that Those loans get paid back as well Because I don't want to I'm gonna lose out otherwise. I'm not gonna find you so that you can beat him And if I don't get paid back So whoever actually won these wars Because of this condition Not the bankers got to I mean it happens nowadays that there's wars going on Bankers can lend to both sides. They say okay. I think I think he's this guy's getting a bit weak Maybe we better make him lend him some more money. So How does this divide and conquer system actually break down if? One king got to rule the whole show if he maybe was in charge of Europe Then he said hey, why do I need these bankers anyway? Forget those treaties But this is a bit of a dangerous prospect for the bankers So does that give you another perspective on why they were always fighting these wars and nobody was actually completely winning? Well, I never heard anything about this when I was studying history and was it they all talk about Protestants against the Catholics or these other differences and yeah, maybe that was important But was also important that somebody was was making money from all these walls You know nothing puts people into debt the way that war puts you into debt Not only that you have to buy new weapons and so on but people were doing things like knocking down castles and blowing up bridges And yeah, that's a good way to make somebody poor to make them need to borrow money so They worked out. Okay, they're getting extremely rich from this process of basically helping themselves to What what the national treasury because it's all legal, you know The king agrees that he's going to pay 8% on this money that he borrowed So in the 19th century, they have lots of money and yet they probably had wild parties and built themselves big estates But there's a limit and they know that this money is some kind of a fiction Because they are in charge of it and they can just make this paper out of nothing. So what do they want? They're looking for power How do they get power? Well, they already have quite a good influence over the national governments So they are in a good position to say, okay Well these corporations, you know, they had corporations, but they were originally very few in number They were marginal and you needed to maybe get a law passed to even even start one up. That's a bit of a hassle so There what we see in the 19th century is that Corporations become more and more dominant and the legal systems are getting changed So that it gets easier and easier to create these corporations and originally you maybe start a corporation That does one thing it builds a railway or a canal or something and then after 10 years 20 years It's done. It's finished. It's dissolved and there's strict limitations on what they can do Well, this goes to the wall in the 19th century especially in the US you have this lovely bill of rights about the What the person has legally empowered to do and those same because you get this idea that okay Well, the corporation is legally should be a person The corporation say, okay, I've got a right to privacy. I've got a right to all these things that people used to have rights to so They build up a large Infrastructure that I mean we for we do we just think this is the way that life is But it was it was an innovation at a time that there's a large top-down Hierarchies where you have to do what that what the boss says and who gets to run these well who gets to own them Oh the super rich that's handy So now you've got this we've got the machinery is there for mass production What do you need? You need a lot of people at the bottom level people who say yes boss. Yes boss, of course well in the land of independent farmers Like the US used to be People went to the US because they didn't want to take orders. Why would they want to be in corporations? This is where mass compulsion schooling comes in now Maybe you think Schooling is about helping the poor to become educated and to get free I don't think so actually it was a project of the rich Industrialists I mean the first lesson that you learn in school is shut up I'm the teacher you got to be here on time and don't run around and do things you want to do do what I say So economic literacy is a particular unfavorite of mine. You know literacy is about okay You can learn to read books you can go ahead find out what you want to find Economic literacy is completely different Economic literacy says that your economic little literate if you know that people should be self-interested And if you're not self-interested then you're kind of irrational So it's it's basically brainwashing you to think in a certain way that specific way That means that you do a cost-benefit analysis on everything Now that sounds again like common sense in a certain perspective But if there's a group of people who have an unlimited amount of money because they control the money system They're in a good position to manipulate the cost-benefit analysis. Here's another angle on economics That if you learned economics, maybe you thought okay, if you want to borrow money as an individual Then you get some money from the banks do some business pay it back with interest because of course banks need interest They've got to make a profit So that is the micro level. I'm encouraging you to look at it on the macro level We humanity borrow money from banks certain amount. We have to give it back with interest Where does the interest come from? We are not allowed to make our own money You know, there's all these laws about forgery and so on and oh well Then I guess it got to come from the banks, hasn't it? So we get a bundle banks next year if they're feeling if they're feeling like they're kind to us Thanks, boss. So basically you're getting more and more in debt The economics the microeconomics says if you're a good businessman, you can make some profit. Okay, great I don't care who's good at business and who's not It's not possible for everybody to pay back those loans to the bank and the bank can control this they have a little dial Called the interest rates and if they increase interest rate if they don't give new loans More and more people will go under So it's a divide and conquer mechanism against the people. I'm claiming that this is tribute This is the equivalent of in the in the Viking days the Vikings would come to your village and say I want some gold Otherwise, we're going to come back and we'll destroy your village They go that was quite effective at getting gold But it was also effective at annoying people. They didn't like it Well, this is what we have now in the money system But if you're economically literate, you know that that's that's the way that it's supposed to be Because you've been trained to see it from a certain perspective and okay, people are getting in more and more debt What is this money system that has got people's loyalty originally? It was a personal gift from you to somebody else a token of how much you appreciated them and That became standardized in these larger groups. Then we have the metal discs. That was very large Range then okay, we gave up a bit about the metal. It's becomes fiat money paper money. This is Becoming very very anonymous. You know if you if you run the show, you can say, okay Let's create another 700 billion bailout dollars. Whatever on the computer. Who knows? And then you get on to financial vehicles derivatives or credit that default swaps all kind of funky stuff like that and there's a lot of war going on about not Because the guys who run the show are saying no, this is absolutely has to be the case There's other people saying look we haven't got a house. We didn't do anything wrong. That's like well this is the system and Assumption is always that it cannot be changed Globalization is another case in point. It's presented like well This is kind of the way that the world is that this has to be this has to be and all these kind of boring You're not told much about well, I was not told much about this in school these international bodies They're super national really I mean who runs the IMF who's running the WTO? I don't know these things Maybe I'm just terribly under informed But you don't hear about this very much But this allows national governments to say, okay Well, we have to keep this kind of terms of we have signed up to this I would love to to do these things that the people want but there's a higher authority That is in no way Represented and the logic is basically the same that okay, it's we have to run things by the market and Who actually set up the market? Oh the money masters who are they? Oh, I don't know They didn't I didn't learn about them on the television. Why not because oh, they're the rich they own the television So that is you for for most people You're getting fed by these corporations. They're giving you orders. They're giving you money and you're working for them and Then there's the enforcers What was the last time that European armies were used to fight other European armies? It was not that recently We've seen things like the whole pepper spray incident and they are basically there to keep you under control And of course they're controlled by the politicians now That is the limit of the picture as it's presented on the corporate media in fact Of course the politicians are highly responsive to the donations or the lobbying or whatever you call it But the the corporations also we've seen it huge corporations like General Motors They're going out of business because they don't get some money somebody else AIG whatever they're getting all sorts of money Who makes those decisions? Isn't that important? Well, human beings are making those decisions They don't perhaps advertise the fact they'd like you to think well, that's the economic fact of life But suggest I didn't think it is So I I hope that you have clear that it's a means of extracting tribute basically I didn't talk about whether it's a safe store of value But if they double the money supply your thousand dollars in the bank, that's still worth a thousand dollars But if all the prices have doubled half your savings have gone who got that? Oh, well who got the extra money that they made? Oh, maybe they didn't ask you about that So it's a measure of how close you are to where the free money appears out of nowhere that they don't like to talk Certainly, it's intimately connected to the I mean the the euro who created the euro That was a project of the Bilderberg group So if you don't know who the Bilderberg group are you might want to Google on it because the euro's kind of important But yeah strange that we didn't hear much about it My claim is this that as people discover that the money system is actually not a fact of life that it was thought up That it has okay for a long time It's been running but it serves of interest of a very few people Most people are increasingly getting stolen getting robbed by the system that we have the ability to make up a new system And that's that's what I've been doing for the last few years. What would I recommend that you do? Don't fight these guys. I mean that that's what they do Just walk away from them as best that you can work out how to survive Without using money and there are people who do that even in Germany Where I live in Bangladesh three quarters of people feed themselves from their own their own labor Doesn't become quite yeah I quite easily to imagine that that okay the money system collapses. Whatever the rice is still growing in the fields You will not get a lot of warning from the collapse of the money system and I'm going to have a workshop Bo for that's just around the corner and If there's any time I would welcome your questions Thank you. I think we do have time for a short question. So please raise your hand if you have one right here in the front row I'll get the mic to you Just a quick question. What's the percentage of hunger in Bangladesh and what's the percentage of hunger in Germany? That's that's a complicated one. I would say physical hunger. There are more hungry people in Bangladesh Spiritual intellectual every other kind of hunger. There are a lot of people who are not happy here On that note, thank you everybody for attending. Thank you very much Robin Workshop in about half an hour. So if you're interested join it. Thank you very much again