Als goede burger en arbeider (ok, zzp’er), besloot ik gisteren naar een 1 Mei demonstratie te gaan. Demonstreren voor betere arbeidsvoorwaarden en tegen dat de armen de crisis mogen betalen. Met prachtig weer, wat eten en drinken en m’n camera ging ik naar Utrecht.
Ik ben geen voorstander van representatieve democratie, er is niemand behalve mijzelf die mij kan representeren (wat voor mij ook al een knap staaltje is ;). Ook geloof ik niet in single-issue-partijen binnen dit stelsel. En toch stem ik de piraten partij. Immers, alle van de overige partijen hebben minimaal 1 standpunt waar ik dermate sterk tegen ben, is het niet op heb gebied van Privacy of Eigendomsrecht dan is het wel op een groen, migratie of educatie gebied.
Entree single-issue-partijen.
Natuurlijk gaat regeren om meer dan alleen een paar issues, en heb je bij een single-issue-partij compleet geen idee hoe deze daar mee om gaan. Echter bij de andere partijen weet je dat ze fout gaat op minimaal een aantal punten, en dan weet je niet welke punten ze laten varen bij de coalitie-vorming. Zoals ik al aangaf, niemand dus zeker niet iemand uit een partij kan mij representeren, dus kies je voor issues, en de piraten-partij (danwel evt nog partij voor de dieren) is de partij met de minst aantel issues waar ik op tegen ben.
Waarom uberhaubt stemmen?
Goed punt, als je niet gelooft in een democratie, danwel een representatieve democratie, waarom zou je er dan aan mee doen? waarom niet blanco stemmen als stem tegen de democatie?
Blanco stemmen valt amper op, het is alsof je een demonstratie loopt met tientallen en niemand die er om geeft. Daarnaast is het een simpele actie om te stemmen, en ik geloof wel in multi-vector-machtsgebruik, hoe minimaal de macht ook is. Zolang de moeite maar in proportie staat met het effect. In het geval van stemmen is het effect laag, maar de hoeveelheid moeite ook.
Onze democratie is wellicht rot, bad-by-design, oneerlijk en zat meer, en je zou kunnen beargumenteren dat men politiek-actiever zou zijn als je in een politiestaat zit. Maar dit is waar nu mee te maken hebben, en stemmen en het beinvloeden van de partijen zijn wel degelijk nog machtsmiddelen die enig impact kunnen hebben. En dan is het gewoon afwegen hoeveel moeite het kost tenopzichte van de resultaat en of je die moeite er dan in wil steken.
En stemmen is simpel, zeker met potlood en papier. Daarom stem dit keer de PiratenPartij (of misschien wel de PVDD)
Two books from Ursula k. Le Guin.
The Dispossed
Published in 1974, A marvelous work about 2 planets, about anarchy, it’s workings and it’s contrast and conflict with an older capitalistic world.
The story is cut in half, devided even and uneven chapters. On following a man who leaves the anarchistic homeworld founded almost 200 years ago after a revolution to visit the old capitalistic world where his people came from, and the other describing the world it’s workings and it’s faults and how the man came to the choice of traveling.
The book describes quite well how a anarchistic world could work, and what one of it’s major pitfalls could be. It also sets a situation where a world like this could come to exist, a revolution, a conflict and a compromise. And showing how anarchy although ideal, is and can be in conflict with many other structures.
A great work, very well written and capturing, I could hardly put it down.
Voices
A more recent work by Le Guin, published in 2006.
Voices describes a fictional world, set on the coastline somewhere on a planet, in a country where books are valued greatly, a culture with many gods which are loved closely, but feared by none. A common and free society where knowledge is held in high regard.
Until the Alds, They come in fear of demons, obeying their single god from a world where books are evil and demonic, women are little more then slaves, worse off then their horses. They destroy all the books, forbid reading, rape the women on the streats and are after something in the city.
The describes the horrible conflict about 17 years later, that still goes on. The oppression of the Alds on the Ansul. About how a young girl lives in it, as a daughter and servant of the oldest house of Ansul. How things finally change.
It’s a story about religion, about politics, about knowledge and about freedom. LeGuin seems clearly inspired by east and middle asian conflicts in this book, both cultures have a clear resemblance to existing cultures, and perhaps so does the conflict. She describes the conflict, and provides a possible solution, but as in the book. The interpretation is still up to the reader.
Another great work I think, very easy to read, read it in 3 days. I found the value added to commerce orriented society a bit downputting, but it’s not the Dispossed. And as a descriptive story, it’s certainly more realistic that way.
Both books I recommend to anyone, go read! :)
Uitgegeven in 1983 door een onbekende uitgever is ‘Kuifje in El Salvador’. Een politieke parodie grotendeels opgebouwd uit originele werken van Hergé.
Het stripwerk is een politieke boodschap tegen de onderdrukking in El Salvador. Kuifje en Haddock brengen onbedoeld een lading wapens naar El Salvador waardoor ze daar in de locale strijd verwikkeld worden. Het verhaal speelt zich voornamelijk af rond Kapitein Haddock. waar Kuifje de rol speelt van sceptische meewerker met de staat (opzoek naar een of ander zegel), Raakt Haddock in contact en begaan met de lokale bevolking.
Hierbij de ‘kleine’ png bestanden in zip-file:
Torrent met groot formaat png bestanden.
http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/5067314 (currently offline)
Bladerend door een oud kookboek kwam ik het volgende tegen:
Philips advertentie (klik om te lezen)
Een oude Philips advertentie. Grappig en fout, daarnaast tekenend voor hoe toen het beeld van de vrouw was. Geeft ook wel aan hoe weinig vooruitstrevend commercie is/was op het gebied van politiek.
Quote:
“Het is met grote en gerechtvaardigde trots, dat iedere huisvrouw de keuken aan haar gasten toont. Het fornuis, de potten en pannen, kortom de gehele inventaris is een deel van haar geluk, dat ze voor geen geld zou willen missen.”
Nu ben ik ook wel blij met een goede keuken hoor, niks mis met lekker koken. Maar om het nu meteen een deel van je geluk te noemen. ‘t Heeft wel een ‘heerlijk ouderwetse’ uitstraling. Erg typerend, voor tijden die gelukkig voorbij zijn. :)
Children of mother earth by Thea Beckman (german title: Kinder der Mutter Erde).
Children of Mother Earth is a political analasis written as a captivating story for children (12+). Thea Beckman uses a post-postapocaliptic setting to highlight certain fundamental aspects in a culture very much like our own, while at the same time providing an alternative.
The story itself is set in a sub-tropical utopian country where once greenland was, here lives a culture which is gorverned by women. A place where life is simple but good. In what was once europe however, the people have developed a dictatorial military state ruled by men. This state in it’s ever lasting desire to conquer more land sends a small mission to discover the old greenland they found on old maps. This ship of exploration&war comes in contact with the utopian world. There are many cultural differences and things seem peaceful in the beginning.
Thea Beckman doesn’t use much of one storyline, or maybe it’s more of a complex storyline. As is with most things, many things that happen have impact on many other things and Beckman uses this in her story. The visit of the new people have huge impact and creates a logical cultural tension&confusion which she describes very well. But in the mean time, there is also an impact and a change within the culture. And one highlights the other. All in all, it’s more a detailed description of an event where 2 cultures collide than just a story. But still packed in an exciting form suitable for anyone with a brain, young or old.
I think it is a great book, and I plan on reading the other 2 books aswell.
Sadly this book is not available in english as it was written in dutch and only translated to german. If you have any questions regarding translations or translation-rights, please contact the publisher: Lemniscaat
Today I visited the new hackerspace in Amsterdam on the ceintuubaan. Looks cool and has a nice location.
Front the Ceintuurbaan 215
More images and text on: hackerspace.nl
And more info on the SLUG Website
I like re-inventing wheels, and doing research a little less. Re-Inventing wheels gives someone the possibility to look at a certain concept from his personal view, without infecting himself too much with existing research. Besides that it’s quite educational and just plain fun. :)
After contemplating the idea arround money last time, I decided to do a little research into time-sharing systems and ideas (as some also referred me to). My sugestion of using time as a currency had, as I already hinted on, some complications.
My time as a someone with certain skills has different value for different people. For instance, one might not want to ‘hire’ me as a carpenter, since I’ll be a lot slower then anyone with experient or schooling. This results in that the value people have for someones time is related to their skills/experience and the task at hand. Now this might not be a big problem, as finding someone with the right skills might not be too hard. It’s a matter of matching up people with tasks.
A bigger problem though is, how I value my time for someone. I might love to help out a good friend of mine with some work, but I’d rather not spend much time for/with the anoying prick arround the corner. This results in me giving a certain value to the ‘credits’ I would get for my time. Which since they are personal and depending on complex variables (social groups, my mood, the weather, etc), become rather hard to predict.
Which brings us to a general problem with currency/money.
Unless you can find a currency which is based on something that has a static value for -anyone-, value is going to be personal and fluctuating. Even with food or nutrients this problem remains, we might -need- a minial set of specific basic nutrients to survive. But what we want is a lot more complex, I like food, I like to differentiate it, try different forms of it. This results in a complext carier for a currency. Just as bad/good as any other.
In a way our current monetary system is a religous one, we believe it has a -certain- value, and this is why it has one. Kind of like douglas adams ‘artifical god‘. We value items and services, and in a way this is what money represents. But how we value these, or how much value we accredit them, differs. It changes per subject, per person and over time. This makes it very hard to predict or define what the value of the currency is, kind of like predicting the future. And although people have tried this, I don’t think anyone succeeded yet.
It comes down to predicting what each individual wants, how much they want it, and how that is going to change. And this for everyone who is using the currency. Now one could create a ‘hack’ arround this by making a lot of assumptions. Taking into account some group dynamics, general marketing effects, one could asume their will be some big groups which would atleast somewhat agree on how much they would like a certain thing. And since things take time to move arround in large groups, with enough information of where things are flowing between what, one could even make some predictions on how it’s going to change.
So yeah, it gets pretty vague, but it’s something. Ofcourse respect for any individual in a scheme like this is out of the question, unless you start grouping individualists into sets with certain common trades. If you can’t dump down, or simplify the information, you’ve got nothing.
Now some would asume from this, ok so money is essentially worthless, if it has any value it’s highly irregular and unpredictable. So why not just get rid it?
Money does have certain important, or atleast very usefull trades or properties. Because it abstracts the values we have for things, it makes it possible to devide, share and save it. It becomes easier to calculate things on, to share resources or goals. Getting someone to make you a meal with exotic ingredients (like a nice curry), gets a lot easier with money. Or even just making it yourself. I’d need rice, which comes from asia, paprika, potatoes, other nice veggies and some spices. Ofcourse ecologically one would want ‘local food’, but rice doesn’t grow here very well, and I like curries. Money makes it easier to share the transport of rice and veggies with other people, without me knowing them (although I might not mind that). It makes it easier to calculate the transport costs, costs for people involved in producing the products and probably more things, into one price, one value. Even though this ‘value’ might be incorrect, it is a value, where else there would be none. It makes it more concrete for me on how to get a nice curry. I have an idea on what the value of my time is to atleast certain people, and I can have an idea what part of that value can be traded to get a nice curry.
The problem with this ofcourse is, that these ‘values’ can be hopelessly incorrect. The question then is, does that matter?
I think it would depends on someones goal. If your goal is getting efficient trade systems for specific groups of people, probably not. If you want want a fair world, it would matter a lot. Then you want to value people’s work and lives correctly. And that is what it comes down to.
The problem with fairness though, is that money is a highly inadequate tool, which is most likely to express the value incorrectly. The ‘problem’ then is, that trade becomes a highly personal ordeal. Which becomes impossible to abstract. Any abstraction would actually de-personalise the transaction, making the value-judgement less precise. And any transaction would represent a social properties, afterall, personal relations gets highly mixed up in value assesments.
Now the final question that remains for me is, how do I get myself a ‘fair’ curry? I supose one not all that horrible solution would be befriending myself with a captain who would take me to india where I can befriend this chef who would be willing to make me a nice curry. Maybe not very ‘time efficient’, but I don’t think I would mind. :)
A little while back, on holiday, a friend of mine mentioned he was working on a money trading application. At some point I got interested in the technical side of it (p2p money, and I like it anonymous). Wrote a small draft idea about it, but then I also got to think about the more conceptual concepts of money.
What is it, what should it adhere to, how should it function…
So what is money? Money isn’t a coin, a piece of paper or even a piece of gold. Money is an abstract, a representation. Like the word ‘tree’ is an abstract, describing or representing a group of items with certain characteristics. So also is money an abstract and it represents something, or some things.
Originally it represented gold, or actually, gold was used as an abstract for goods and services, this because gold has a scarcity and with it some intrinsic value which apeared relativly stable. This was then followed by pieces of metal and paper that represented gold. That is, you would place your trust in a specific bank to provide with a certain ammount of gold if you’de show certain pieces of metal or paper with their specific markings on them.
At this point, you’re still basicly trading physical goods (items) with either other physical goods or services. It is still tangible, you have ‘something’, something still potentially usefull. Although already switching more to, you have trust in someone that you have something, but none the less a ‘something’.
At some point in time, this also changed. Now money represents the value of all ‘tradeable goods and services’. Which is a lot less tangible, more abstract. You now trust a bank (or actually a country) that the money has a certain -abstract- value. You might be able to get some gold for it, but that value is no longer static, it moves on it’s own like any other item. You might get a certain ammount of service for it. You might. People trust their bank/country (the people who make it) in that the pieces of paper and metal will keep a certain value. Something predictable.
This is where it kinda goes wrong, well maybe not wrong, but it certainly gets complex. Money was a representation of a physical thing, quite countable. Now it should represent something that is a lot harder to keep track of or to imagine. Kinda like calling everything green a tree, even that plastic handbag and the eyes of your girlfriend. It gets very abstract, in an artistic sense, far from reality. that is, hard to visualize. Like modern art.
Now people associate money with power and it starts to get a value of it’s own through proxy, as it no longer has an intrinsic value. Now the link with power is ofcourse a lot older than this change, even gold represented power in a way. It’s representation for goods and services meant that if you had money, you could trade it for food which would help you survive, or get people to fight other people for you, or just maintain a piece of land. This is all because people receive money, in the expectation of getting anything of value in return. A flexible tool, a powerful tool.
So money represents power, or actually no. It still only represents goods and services. Power is more of an absolute, if I have the power to bake an egg, I can, nothing to stop me. How much or what money exactly represents is a lot harder to predict. based on my location a euro can be worth anything from nothing to food for a day. A fortune for some. In time it also fluctuates, usually it gets worth less. But by what ammount is hard to tell, afteral who did predict this crisis? The dollar got worth a lot less during the run for oil, but it increased afterwards. Afterall, ‘all tradable goods and services’ is an obscurely wide abstract. There’s too much to count and what value you add to a service or a product can change by the minute. Food for instance has a greater value before dinner then after. You’re a lot less likely to buy a snack before dinner then after. Your mood also plays a role, the weather plays a role, popularity aswell (and with that the whole of complex social dynamics). Nobody really knows how much my euro is worth, besides what -they- are willing to do or trade for it.
To me, this makes it hard to crasp, and I doubt I’m alone. I know some that say it’s the cause of the entire economical crash, I might not disagree.
But if it’s so undefinable, why not redefine it? Make it simple again. Easier said than done. Going back to gold doesn’t make much sense, although gold is scarce it is little useful, it has value for some people and for some goals, but still quite specific. I personally have no use for any. So if you want to let money represent something more specific, let it be something that has value for anyone and everyone. As far as physical items go, people need food. Or to be more precise, we need certain nutrients. It’s one option, but not a simple one I think.
Something else everyone needs and has a pretty much set ammount in, is time. It’s certainly not tangible, but still fairly good to grasp and measure. Each person generally gets the same ammount at birth, which makes it rather fair. You also start looking at a less propery, more service oriented concept. Which has something to be said for when you want to discuss property. Skill is still a usefull investment, since you can do more in less time. So skill keeps it worth, so do most products, since about any product requires some time, either to collect it, dig for it, shape it, or what not. If you can’t sell your time, you can use it to produce your own food and enrich your life. If you can sell it, you can’t use that time anymore, but for the credits you get in return, you can get someone else to spend time for you. It still requires trust, but not trust in a bank or a country, but in specific individuals, who you needed to trust anyway.
Money is an abstract, and like with all abstract, they lose their value when they cannot provide an image in your head.
As posted earlier in dutch, I’ve been reading the book ‘We Are Iran’ (in dutch). By now I’ve almost finished the book. I am quite happy that I have read it, it showed me new things from Iran and Islam, the combination, but also as separate concepts. Things about the history or Persia, but mainly the people that live there now and their thoughts about the current regime.
I find it hard to put a discription on the book, or find more things to cite from it. The book tells a story showing bloggers, some posts are like ‘proper’ newsarticles from regular journalists, some tell personal stories about experiences about home and others vent their personaly opinions on demonstrations or current events.
The stories gave me an insight to at least a subset of the Iranian people and a hint of it’s history. A new perspective on and maybe respect for a country so sadly abused.
The critical views on the Islam by some bloggers, with comments from the writer. Showed me side of Islam, I’m happy to see exists. People who can believe in an religion, while not needing to force it upon others.
This also made me realise more: “One cannot understand Islam by only reading it’s holy book, just as one cannot understand christianity by only reading theirs.” The same would account for any other religion I think.
Some would I supose, gladly define religions by the books it brings. But I think people give their own definition to what they read, and more often than not associate themselves through the people, not the literature.
The book gave me a new interest in Iran as a country, and a people. Somewhat sad I can’t read farsi, so I could read/track some of the blogs themselves. The latest blog entries in the book are from 2005, and many blogs cited have since disapeared already.
In 3 years many things can and will change, so I hoped to find some more information on this topic after I’ve read it. So today was a lucky day in that respect: the BBC posted an article on the subject, it gives a bit of an update on the situation arround the bloggers, without much details. But good to see that it hasn’t been crushed yet. You can find the article here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7782771.stm
I still got a few pages to read, but I think it’s a good book. If you care to look for it here are the ISBN numbers: English; ISBN-13: 978-1933368054 or Dutch; ISBN: 9789029078535
More information on Iranian blogs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_Blogs
