FRAC 19 - Character as Currency: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 15:22, 21 September 2019


FRAC Podcast 19 "Character as Currency"



Live	Friday September 6, 2019
Time	16:00 CT 22:00 CEST 06:00 AEST
Length	4:52:32
Host	Geris
Production	Gaia
Guests	Fliegenfuerst, Gaia

Listen	FRAC 19 - "Character as Currency"
Discuss	Fakeologist Discord
Series	FRAC

FRAC 18.8	FRAC 19.7

FRAC Podcast 19 (FRiday Audio Chat), or "Character as Currency" was the 19th episode in the FRAC podcast series, hosted by Fakeologist.com member Geris, with guests Gaia and Fliegenfuerst. The podcast aired live on Friday September 6, 2019 for 4:52:32.^{[R 1]}

Summary

FRAC 19

Asocial credit scheming - Character as Currency
Geris solo

ODDTV - 1985 - G.I. Joe - 30 sec
China’s "Social Credit System" Has Caused More Than Just Public Shaming (HBO) - 5 min
Company aims to monetise China’s social credit system - 5 min

Gaia

Tim Kelly - M. King Hubbard - Peak Oil - Environmentalism -> Social Credit - 4.5 min
John Adams, Chris Kendall, Jay Dyer 2 - 10 min
ODDTV - 1987 - Ghostbusters - 30 sec

Fliegenfuerst

John Adams, Chris Kendall, Jay Dyer 1 - 10 min
Nosedive - Airport scene - 3 min
Black Mirror - Nose Dive SPOILERS - 10 min

Background

Anno 2019, we still live in a world where "money" (whatever it is) is currency. But, we are slowly but steadily devolving into a world where your character, your persona, your behavior becomes your currency.

This scary asocial credit scenario is likely to be implemented in the not-so-near-but-still-foreseeable future.

History

The name "Social Credit" has been used in the past openly and unashamed. Some examples follow below. The original ideas however of "social credit" are understandable and less bad than the alternatives in the devastation after the 1929 Stock Market Crash...

The ideas were shaped by C.H. Douglas:

C.H. Douglas

Founder of Social Credit theorem
Influential in Commonwealth countries

"Douglas collected data from more than a hundred large British businesses and found that in every case, except that of companies becoming bankrupt, the sums paid out in salaries, wages and dividends were always less than the total costs of goods and services produced each week: the workers were not paid enough to buy back what they had made. He published his observations and conclusions in an article in the magazine English Review where he suggested: "That we are living under a system of accountancy which renders the delivery of the nation's goods and services to itself a technical impossibility." The reason, Douglas concluded, was that the economic system was organized to maximize profits for those with economic power by creating unnecessary scarcity. Between 1916 and 1920, he developed his economic ideas, publishing two books in 1920, Economic Democracy and Credit-Power and Democracy, followed in 1924 by Social Credit.
Freeing workers from this system by bringing purchasing power in line with production became the basis of Douglas's reform ideas that became known as Social Credit.
There were two main elements to Douglas's reform program:

a National Dividend to distribute money (debt-free credit) equally to all citizens, over and above their earnings, to help bridge the gap between purchasing power and prices

also a price adjustment mechanism, called the Just Price, which would forestall any possibility of inflation. The Just Price would effectively reduce retail prices by a percentage that reflected the physical efficiency of the production system. Douglas observed that the cost of production is consumption; meaning the exact physical cost of production is the total resources consumed in the production process. As the physical efficiency of production increases the Just Price mechanism will reduce the price of products for the consumer. The consumers will be able to purchase as much of what the producers produce that they want and automatically control what continues to be produced by their consumption of it. Individual freedom, primary economic freedom, was the central goal of Douglas's reform." - C.H. Douglas^{[M 1]}

United Kingdom

"Notable supporters of Social Credit or "monetary reform" in Britain in the 1920s and 1930s included A. V. Roe the aircraft manufacturer, Frederick Soddy the scientist, Henry Williamson the famous author of Tarka the Otter[8][circular reference], Major-General J.F.C. Fuller the military historian and occultist[circular reference], and Sir Oswald Mosley...
The party published the newspaper Attack and was linked to a small number of incidents in which green-painted bricks were thrown through windows, including at 11 Downing Street, the official residence of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The leadership stated that they had formed the party after a series of independent candidates, espousing various forms of Social Credit, had sought election and they feared that this proliferation of interpretations could lead to the ideological message being confused and weakened.
The party stood a single candidate in the 1935 general election, Wilfred Townend, who polled 11% of the vote in Leeds South. Despite this lack of success, Hargrave was invited by William Aberhart to take an advisory post in the Government of the Province of Alberta, Canada, that had been formed by the Social Credit Party of Alberta. There were an additional two Independent candidates who stood advocating a National Dividend; Reginald Kenney in Bradford North and H.C. Bell in Birmingham Erdington.
The party began to decline when political uniforms were banned by the Public Order Act 1936. Its activities were curtailed during World War II, and attempts to rebuild afterwards around a campaign against bread rationing had little success. Hargrave stood again in the 1950 general election, but after he gained only 551 votes, the party disbanded itself in 1951.
In 1976, C. J. Hunt, treasurer of the Social Credit Political League, formed a new party under the old name. This short-lived group was based in Bradford, West Yorkshire, where it was active in local politics.
In the early part of its existence Lord Tavistock had been """loosely associated""" with the party although he would later lend his support to the British People's Party, as a result of which that group espoused elements of Social Credit." - History of the Social Credit Party of Great Britain and Northern Ireland^{[M 2]}

"The Kindred of the Kibbo Kift was a camping, hiking and handicraft group with ambitions to bring world peace. It was the first of three movements in England associated with the charismatic artist and writer John Hargrave (1894–1982). The Kindred was founded in 1920 (pre-1929 Stock Market Crash). Some members continued into Hargrave's Green Shirt Movement for Social Credit, which was established in 1931–32, and which became in 1935 the Social Credit Party of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. This was wound up in 1951 (just before the EEC, predecessor of the EU).
Hargrave claimed all three organisations to be part of one mission, telling his followers after the last title-change: 'We are the Green Shirts – indeed we are the Kindred – calling ourselves the Social Credit Party of Great Britain officially, but knowing full well who and what we are. "Whelm on me ye Resurrected Men!" – I give you that outcry of the Kin in 1927.'
The mission was the belief that Kibbo Kift training would produce a core of healthy and creative individuals through whom the human race would evolve into a society without war, poverty and wasted lives. The Kibbo Kift held that individual character strengthened by mental discipline was the key to the future, not mass movements based on groups defined by class, race or nation states." - History of Kibbo Kift^{[M 3]}

Australia

"The Douglas Credit Party was an Australian political party based on the Social Credit theory of monetary reform, first set out by C. H. Douglas. It gained its strongest result in Queensland in 1935, when it gained 7.02% of first preferences under the leadership of the psychiatrist Dr Julius Streeter [think Julius Streicher, real name (((Abraham Goldberg)))]. Streeter had returned to Australia in 1919 as a war hero after being a surgeon in the Battle of Ypres where he was injured by mustard gas.
The Australian followers of Social Credit were ambivalent about direct political action. Some felt the existing form of democracy, with its emphasis on parties of the "left and right", to be inimical to genuine representation of the people. A number of Social Crediters felt that parliamentarians should have a first loyalty to their constituents and not a greater loyalty to a particular party organisation. However, some followers entered directly into the political party fray, and others sought to influence the policies of existing political parties, especially the Australian Labor Party (ALP). However, not all supporters of the movement were involved with Labor. Charles North, the state president of the Western Australia branch of the movement during the 1930s, was a Nationalist Party member of the Western Australian Legislative Assembly.
At the height of the economic depression in the 1930s, advocates of Social Credit theory were successful in gaining majority conference support within the ALP for financial reform along the lines of that proposed by Social Credit theory. However, the policy was never put into practice by subsequent Labor governments. The party's strongest federal result was at the 1934 election, at which it gained 4.69% of the national lower house vote. The party did not win seats in either election. After Streeter's death in 1946, the party went into a terminal decline.
During the 1960s, there were several attempts in Queensland, South Australia and New South Wales to revive the political fortunes of Social Credit. In South Australia, the "Liberty League" contested a few seats in federal elections but failed to gain many votes. At the 1961 federal election, three candidates – William Ward, Albert Lee and Kenneth Whiteman – unsuccessfully stood for the Senate in New South Wales. They polled about 15,000 primary votes across the State. Some support was gained in a few New South Wales federal electorates, notably the Labor-held seat of East Sydney and a few strong Labor seats in the Hunter Valley.
Also at the 1961 federal election, several candidates contested the poll under the banner of the Australian National Party. The party was short-lived and some of its members joined the ranks of a revived Social Credit Movement of Australia (Queensland), which contested nine seats at the 1963 Queensland State election with only meagre results. Its strongest support was in the Maryborough area of central Queensland.
A single Social Credit candidate stood in the 1969 federal election in the Sydney seat of Banks, but gained little support. At the 1974 federal election, another attempt was made in NSW to win a seat in the Senate, but again the votes gained were minimal.
For some decades until the late 1960s, the late Mrs J Elvin operated, on a voluntary basis, a Social Credit bookroom in George Street, Sydney. A small monthly newsletter was also produced and circulated via this centre.
The ongoing influence of Social Credit ideas was also revealed in the heyday of the One Nation Party in the late 1990s, with that party's promotion of a National Credit Authority. A Social Credit Secretariat in Queensland continues to promote Social Credit via the internet." - History of the Douglas Credit Party^{[M 4]}

"The Australian League of Rights is a far-right political organisation in Australia. It was founded by Eric Butler in South Australia in 1946, and organised nationally in 1960, with principles based on the economic theory of Social Credit expounded by C. H. Douglas. The league describes itself as upholding the virtues of freedom, with stated values of "loyalty to God, Queen and Country".
From the start, the league has described itself as being based on the principles of Christianity. It is anti-communist [?????] and anti-World Government [???????????????????]. Its leaders argue in favour of capitalism, by promoting the inviolability of private property and individual enterprise. They are monarchist and opposed to Australian republicanism and see strong relations with Great Britain as fundamental to Australian identity.
The league has been described as neo-Nazi in various sources although at least one writer differentiated it from neo-Nazi groups saying that unlike such groups, the League "under the leadership of Eric Butler, sought to maintain a veneer of respectability..." while using its publications to promote "the crudest forms of anti-Semitism... Butler's The International Jew presented the argument that "Hitler's policy was a Jewish policy".
In Faces of hate: hate crime in Australia David Greason wrote: "The League is not Nazi, yet its propaganda themes are similar in many ways to those used in Nazi Germany 60 years ago. The League refuses to acknowledge any similarities with neo-Nazi organisations, and either points to its philosophical opposition to the centralisation of power, or claims that neo-Nazi organisations are created by powerful Jewish organisations to discredit patriotic groups. In fact, the League has always had a relationship of sorts with such groups. They read the same books, cite the same authorities, and blame the same scapegoats. The nuances of any anti-centralist philosophy are invariably lost on the average neo-Nazi"" - History of the Australian League of Rights^{[M 5]}

New Zealand

"The New Zealand Social Credit Party (sometimes called "Socred") was a political party which served as the country's "third party" from the 1950s through into the 1980s. The party held a number of seats in the New Zealand House of Representatives, although never more than two at a time. It has since renamed itself the New Zealand Democratic Party, and was for a time part of the Alliance. The party was based on the ideas of [a]social credit, an economic theory established by C. H. Douglas. Social Credit movements also existed in Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom although the relationship between those movements and the New Zealand movement was not always good." - History of the New Zealand Social Credit Party^{[M 6]}

Canada

"The Social Credit Party of Canada (French: Parti Crédit social du Canada), colloquially known as the Socreds, was a conservative-populist political party in Canada that promoted social credit theories of monetary reform. It was the federal wing of the Canadian social credit movement.
In its early years, the Socreds gained a reputation for """anti-Semitism""". It was said[who?] that Blackmore and Low "frequently gave public aid and comfort to anti-Semitism" In 1945, Solon Low """alleged""" there was a conspiracy of Jewish bankers behind the world's problems, and in 1947, Norman Jaques, the Socred Member of Parliament for Wetaskiwin, read excerpts of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion into the parliamentary Hansard. Low repudiated """anti-Semitism""" in 1957 following a trip to Israel after which he made speeches supporting the Jewish state. After World War II made anti-Semitism less fashionable, the party began purging itself of anti-Semitic influences, leading Quebec social crediter Louis Even and his followers to leave the party in 1947.
The Canada Party, founded by former Social Credit candidate Joseph Thauberger, also ran candidates in the 1993 election on a platform of monetary reform influenced by social credit. Many of its members also belonged to the social credit influenced Committee on Monetary and Economic Reform (COMER). In 1997, the Canada Party merged with the left economic nationalist Canadian Action Party which, while not a social credit party per se, adopted a monetary reform policy that is heavily influenced by COMER and the Canada Party." - History of the Social Credit Party of Canada^{[M 7]}

Regional parties

Canadian social credit movement
Social Credit Party of Alberta
Social Credit Party of British Columbia
Ralliement créditiste du Québec
Manitoba Social Credit Party
Social Credit Party of Saskatchewan
Social Credit Party of Ontario

China

"Confucianism and thousands of years of feudalism sculpted the structure of hierarchy before the arrival of communism in China. For instance, Confucianism classified careers into four levels: educated and/or officials; farmers; workers/craftsmen; and merchants. The Communist government launched various movements to eradicate this hierarchical culture.
Given the familiarity with social hierarchy, hierarchy built on inequality in the SCS may not be a significant shock for Chinese people. If Beijing can assert the credibility of the SCS, some may see the SCS as an opportunity to climb up the social ladder and access financial and practical perks.

The opacity of the scoring system may also cause distrust and discontent in the long run. According to Engelmann and colleagues, although the measures for penalty are relatively clear, criteria for incentives are obscure. Kostka’s survey-based research shows that the approval of the SCS is highly influenced by the transparency of the scoring system. The lack of transparency, coupled with the allegations of black market activity for boosting credits may challenge the legitimacy of the system and cause public dissatisfaction."^{[R 2]}

Society becomes a virtual prison

"‘Society becomes a virtual prison’
Partially borne out of the lack of credit history and social trust, the broader SCS is aiming to monitor the behaviour of all of China’s citizens nationwide by 2020. It has so far been rolled out as a series of pilot projects across the nation and in various provinces.
One private credit system using data from Alibaba rates people not only on their financial capacity but also on their consumer choices. The example Sesame Credit technology director Li Yingyun gave Chinese media is that a person who buys nappies regularly is responsible, while someone who plays video games all day would be considered lazy.
Being placed on a local blacklist can also place citizens under wide-ranging national restrictions.
More than 18 million people have been banned from flying, and 5.5 million are unable to buy high-speed rail tickets, according to China’s enforcement information disclosure website.
Delia Lin, a senior lecturer in Chinese studies at the University of Melbourne’s Asia Institute, said the “deadbeat map” marked an unsurprising escalation under China’s developing social credit system.
“This is inconceivable in the Western society, because this is absolutely a violation of a person’s privacy,” Dr Lin said.
But the courts are treating it as a public service, she said, by warning potential victims to avoid making loans to unreliable people.
Some Weibo users welcomed the app and wanted it rolled out across China to deal with those who shirked on repayments.
Dr Lin said the widespread use of WeChat in China and the potential for a nationwide “deadbeat map” could change the social mentality.
“This is dangerous – it encourages people to take the law into their own hands,” she said.
“It encourages people to treat those people as sub-human.”
Dr Lin said while the blacklist was meant to identify only those who were capable of repaying debts and refused to, she was sceptical about how that system worked.
“The people who cannot pay their debt because they are too poor, then who will be subject to this kind surveillance and this kind of public shaming,” she said.
“Basically, society becomes a virtual prison – instead of going to jail, those people’s personal lives, and even their children’s personal lives, are being affected.”
Shame as alternative justice China’s highest court last year encouraged lower courts to find new and creative ways to punish people who borrowed beyond their means.
In eastern China’s Anhui province, debtors’ photographs, names, ID numbers and the amount they owed flashed across billboards and giant screens in public squares on International Workers’ Day last May.
In south-western Sichuan, one cinema screened a so-called “reel of shame” showing the details of business executives who defaulted on their debts as a preview to the main feature.
In some parts of China, courts have also worked with tech companies to develop a special ringtone – if you ring a number linked to a dishonest debtor, you’ll be warned with a siren and told to be careful in your business dealings with them.
Peter Cai, a non-resident fellow at the Lowy Institute, said in China, the ability of courts to enforce judgments was “pretty weak”.
“A lot of the court judgments are not enforced,” he said.
“By going through social media channels … you try to shame people into actually paying their debt.”
But Mr Cai pointed out that reports of China’s social credit system often portrayed it as more advanced and widespread than it really was, but it sometimes doubled as a “public education tool”.
“They try to shame the offender and also use it as a bit of a deterrent device to try to shape the social behaviour,” he said."^{[R 3]}

Documentation

The following links give background to the topic of FRAC 19.

Download all interesting content before the next virtual book burnings

Reading

Listening

Watching

References

Research

Mainstream

[FRAC19-1] FRAC 19 - 4:52:32

[InterpretChina-9] 2019-03-18 - China’s Social Credit System: the black market and inequalities

[NewDailyChina-10] 2019-01-24 - China tests opening up social credit scores with debt map

[WikiDouglas-2] Wiki - C.H. Douglas

[WikiSCPBrit-3] Wiki - Social Credit Party of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

[WikiKibbo-4] Wiki - Kibbo Kift

[WikiSCPAUS-5] Wiki - Douglas Credit Party

[WikiSCPAUS2-6] Wiki - Australian League of Rights

[WikiSCPNZ-7] Wiki - New Zealand Social Credit Party

[WikiSCPCAN-8] Wiki - Social Credit Party of Canada

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FRAC 19 - Character as Currency: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 15:22, 21 September 2019

Contents

Summary