La Resistencia

En el nada aburrido texto de Brendan Kiley "Anarchy is Boring" se explica cómo un grupo de gente vive los ideales anarquistas, "resistiendo al capitalismo" y a la vez integrados en el sistema.

Traduzco liberalmente los párrafos que lo explican:

Su estrategia revolucionaria consiste en gestionar las cuentas de la comunidad de forma que "resiste al capitalismo". 

Funciona así: la comunidad garantiza las necesidades esenciales de comida, alojamiento, transporte, y seguro médico. Se proveen las necesidades básicas de todos, una idea radical para la mayoría de la gente. 

A cambio, los residentes 'pagan' un cierto número de 'horas' al mes, empleadas en una variedad de labores dentro y fuera de la casa, incluyendo ayuda social en el vecindario. También se pagan 'horas' con dinero, y aquí está la idea clave: esta comunidad valora por igual las horas de trabajo de todos. Si una persona gana 10 dólares por hora y otra 50 y ambas han de pagar 10 horas al mes de alquiler, entonces la primera persona paga 100 y la segunda 500. 

Esta comunidad calcula su presupuesto -- lo que necesitan y lo que se puede aportar -- basándose en reuniones de decisión consensuada y en un programa de ordenador abierto llamado "The Gizmo" que ha escrito uno de los residentes. 

"El trabajo ahí fuera" - dice Addy señalando a la ventana, "está valorado de manera arbitraria, pero nosotros lo traemos aquí dentro y lo hacemos igual... Conscientes de que participamos en el capitalismo, pero también de que nos estamos resistiendo de un modo concreto."

El original:

[...] Her revolutionary strategy is helping to manage the household finances in a way that, in her words, "resists capitalism." 

It works like this: The household guarantees basic needs with collective food, shelter, transportation (cars, bikes, bus passes), and health insurance. "You meet everybody's basic needs," Addy says. "That's a radical idea to most people." 

In return, residents "pay" a certain number of "hours" each month, spent in a combination of working around the house, doing social- justice work outside the house, and paying down with money. Here's the key part: EGFS values everyone's hours equally. Let's say I make $10 an hour at my job, you make $50 an hour at your job, and we both want to pay down 10 hours of our rent one month: I pay $100 and you pay $500. Addy and the household figure out their budget—what the household needs, what resources people have to give—with consensus-based meetings and an open-source computer program called "the Gizmo" that was written by one of the residents. 

"Labor out there," she says, gesturing out the front window, "is assigned an arbitrary value—but we bring it in here and we make it equal... knowing we're participating in capitalism, but knowing we're resisting capitalism in a concrete way." 

El texto completo merece la pena leerlo en http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/anarchy-is-boring/Content?oid=13597692

Qué temen los super ricos

"Golem XIV" ofrece una brillante explicación de por qué estamos siendo forzados a pagar las impagables deudas de la banca privada.

Mi conclusión:

Si se dejan de salvar los bancos, los super ricos perderían la inmensa mayoría de su desproporcionada riqueza y poder.

Lo gracioso es que ocurrirá tarde o temprano porque el agujero negro de la banca es muchas veces mayor que el total de la economía mundial. Y por mucho que abusen de su poder para seguir alimentándolo a costa de todo y de todos, deuda que no se puede pagar, no se pagará.

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Why are we bailing out the banks? Part One. The Simple Answer

[...] 

What these two graphs tell us is that if the big banks had been wound up 80% of Americans would have lost almost nothing. Whereas the top 5% would have lost the vast bulk of their wealth and therefore their power. 

It will be countered that we would have all lost  from the decline in our pensions. True. But there is still no getting away from the above charts. The wealthy have most of the pensions. In fact they own most of the pension companies. The poorer you are the less pension you have to lose. Many of those at the  bottom have no pension at all. That is what these charts say. 

But wait, as the saying goes, there is more. In America there is about $1.6 trillion in printed dollars and deposits for which currency backing exists. That is state printed, state backed money. This is the stuff that you and I get paid in and have in our bank account.  However there is another $5.4 trillion in unbacked ‘money substitutes’ and somewhere around $53 Trillion in credit. For credit read debt backed assets and derivatives of all sorts. These are the forms of ‘money’, electronic, banking money in which the wealthy have most of their wealth. These are also what would be wiped out if the banks were not continually bailed out but were to be wound down instead. 

This is what frightens them and what has dictated that the banks be bailed out. Unlike us in the 80%, the financial class hold most of their wealth in financial and ‘paper’ debt-backed form. If the present crop of huge banks were to be wound up, what would virtually disappear would be that thunder cloud of debt/credit-held, derivative wealth. 

[...]