Rob: Just yesterday I interviewed James Risen, he's got a major new book out "Pay any price" and he describes, how now everything is getting privatized, the army is getting privatized. The way they were able to reduce causalities for soldiers in Iraq was to have tens of thousands of private contractors there and that privatization takes away from the commons, it takes away from our resources, adds to expenses and gives these Corporations more power. So it seems to me. Part of the goal was to do resource privatization and start keeping things"
HNH: I would say that there is a real problem there because a lot of people think that, "ok lets do away with private property and all let's just have Co-ops." If you really look at what's being going on Co-ops have been groups of producers or groups of consumer who have tried to band together to get a better deal out of the Global Economy, but they've ended up having to compete with these giants, and so, very often they've grown far too big and they have also had to lower their quality of they do. So the key that's absolutely essential in all of this is understanding scale-- that privatizing downwards in to smaller community based businesses even regional or even to some extent national businesses with certain industries producing things in an industrial manner makes sense. It does not make sense in agriculture basically for basic needs food clothing shelter industrial production is destructive.
Rob: Well I have to tell you I have come up with this theory since I watched your video and I have been doing this bottom-up radio show and writing a book on bottom up and I read Schumarcher's " Small is Beautiful " and I caught up with a theory that we really need to fund and support new innovations in how key businesses small. Right now the idea is you got a big business, you got to make it successful then its acquired by another business or you start acquiring a lot of other businesses. That goes along with my De-Billionairization project that I and Tom Hartmann and number of others have been talking about-- the no Billionaires goal of getting rid of existence of Billionaires by preventing them from having that much and not allowing them to pass it on to children and dynasties
HNH: This is a good idea but I worry this misses the real structural problems, so that the real structural problem is how he is doing this and being able to do this and that has been again through this, Global Trade its been through this subsidies for taxes and the regulations that our Societies and Governments have put in place. So that to me is the key and we have to focus on those structures rather than thinking that just taxing individuals. Even a Tobin tax, Global Tobin Tax for me is not the answer.
Rob: I don't understand the word "Tobin" how do you spell that
HNH: You haven't heard of that, but that's been quite widespread in the Anti-Globalization Movement. Tobin is a French Economist and his idea was that for financial global speculation there would be a tax. And for me it's a bit like saying let Giant Corporations, in effect, Rape and Pillage, but let's just tax it. No it is a bit like saying that a murderer can carry out these violent activities but we can get some money off those activities. No, we need rules let's say we don't want murder, we don't want rape and pillage, we are going to have system where the rules are such that you cannot do this. And you see what is really important about this is it is almost like the operating a system or whatever we want to put in place. We don't need to have a top heavy centralized state running the economy, which was part of the problem of Communism and to some extent even in socialist Sweden, the system was too top heavy. We need to de-centralize, but we can't de-centralize political power if we don't de-centralize economic power and activity. So the key is exactly what you said earlier is how we do keep businesses small. It wouldn't be difficult at all practically, it's just that we have to have the political will to do it. Wouldn't be difficult at all and all kinds of other things that need to be banned.
Rob: I have mentioned this before in our conversations, Public Banking at a local level, for cities, states and sounties. That's one way, dramatically, to take economics and develop them and strengthen them at a local level. I am a strong believer and that could be a central part of this whole concept.
HNH: Absolutely-- centrally important. I have some colleagues focusing exclusively on the banking system and for me having seen this whole social transformation, what is happening to food systems, what is happening to psychological well being and so on. It pretty clear that we can't just look at banking in isolation as it has been a part this system, where the de-regulations of freedom of Banks basically to deceive the public, meaning that's what they have been doing from the beginning, really is pretending that they are actually holding well for us when they are not. We have given them the freedom to create wealth that they then sell to us as debt. While most people believe that the prices in the market place really do somehow reflect, supply and demand or scarcity of resources, it's totally a myth. The prices in the market today are a function of political choices. What we regulate, what we tax, what we subsidize and that includes in banking. We cannot have democracy if basically banks whose names we don't even know are determining our interactions with one another and our use of natural resources.
We should mention Ellen Brown who is very good in this area and also I don't know if you Michele Chossudovsky in Canada, he has done quite a lot of writing on the Banking system. People should know that the BIS (Bank of International Settlements) is the most powerful Bank in the world and most people haven't even heard of it.
Rob: What is it called?
HNH: Bank of International Settlements, in Switzerland
Rob: What is it?
HNH: That sort of gives the Marching orders to different federal banks
Rob: Tell me more, I have never heard of it.
HNH: We are not wanting to get to specialized because we believe that this holistic systemic understanding is what can bring-- basically is what we believe in is what I call big picture activism. Big Picture Activism comes out of seeing these connections, so that we can really encourage people who are focused just on banking or focused just on global warming, focused just on unemployment and poverty and some people are focused just on whales and dolphins or just on Amazon or just on the Great Barrier Reef, there are, thank God millions if not billions of people engage in protecting something in this wonderful world of ours. There are so many wonderful people trying their best to do something to make the world a better place. Even those wealthy people who fund a new department in the university, where there are millions and billions of dollars going essentially to make the world a better place. We believe that with Big Picture Analysis they would be willing and able to link hands with the movement that has as its goal an economic transition from Global to local. A Global to local Transition, in other words one that encourages nations worldwide, regions worldwide to make that transition. Because it is in the interest of all of us to do that. So that's again with Banking the details and some of those details I have to say also that hard to understand, no one really understands fully the impact of or even the functioning of these Hedge funds and Derivative, but what we do know is that it's a Bank of International Settlements is getting far too much".
Rob: I have to a brag a little bit here, My son in the mid twenties wrote his first article on Hedge Funds being Ponzi schemes and it's had over 70,000 reads over different places over the web and 50,000 of them on the Opednews. Hedge Funds, many people say they should be made legal, but that's just one piece of the Global picture that you are talking about.
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