What has happened so far: After their unexpected encounter on a dark, cold night in Toronto, Cheeky C and Great G decided to embark on a journey, each unknowingly with different destinations in mind. Cheeky C wants to discover her identity and purpose, while Great G aims to realize a vision of global health through the world of finance. The next day, they wander through Toronto, hoping to find initial clues. Bewildered, Cheeky C begins to question things that seem natural to us. At the lakeshore of Lake Ontario, she learns some facts about the power of banks and money that she had never considered before…
Great G swallows the last bite of her Beaver Tail and folds the oily, red-white paper slowly into a small paper ship. She continues. ‘And now, Cheeky C, bear with me, the crucial point comes. The economic system radically changed in the 19th century. The ‘old’ system was transformed into a ‘new’ system. The leading classes’ visionary end – or ‘utopia’, as Polanyi names it – was the self-regulating market, a system that must work without any interference.’
The elderly woman’s hands complete the transformation of a Beaver Tail wrapping into a paper ship. ‘Ironically, large-scale interference was needed to establish and maintain the system within society. This new system was thoroughly artificial and mechanic. The Crown safeguarded the radical change in production and economic principles by legislation, which successfully slowed the transformative process and gave society time to adjust.[1] Transactions were no longer a reciprocal ‘give and take’; instead, they required money. Everything, even human life and land, was treated as a commodity. As a soulless thing to buy, own and sell – to make money.’
Compassionate sadness overshadows Great G’s wrinkled face. ‘Similarly, soulless, the economy and countless jobs have become in some cases, leaving people’s souls longing in desire for something they don’t even know what it is. This has dramatically intensified over the last decades. Nowadays, many people lack spirituality and meaning in new job positions that are created constantly but are actually useless. Anthropologist David Graber calls these “bullshit jobs”.[2] These are jobs that provide no value for society, such as administrators, consultants, telemarketers, corporate lawyers, service personnel, etc. People who make a lot of money but no meaning – unlike care workers, nurses, cleaners, etc. who are essential for society but receive low payment disproportional to their actual value.[3] Or unlike people who earn a lot of money but also bear a great responsibility, as it happens in leadership positions. So, in many kinds of jobs, your mental health is threatened to deteriorate nowadays. Either you lack true happiness, connection, and meaning – or financial and social security. At the same time, the system promotes the perfect delusion of happiness through spending money, possessing, and consuming things in the outside world. I wasn’t aware of this myself for a long, long time in my past…’
In both kinds of jobs, your mental health is threatened to deteriorate, as you either lack true happiness, connection, and meaning – or financial and social security.
Great G stands up and walks down the stairs to the lake’s surface. Cheeky C follows her, listening attentively with her small ears. ‘Why do you know all this? Why are you telling me all this?’, she asks.
Great G grins. ‘Well, every great grandmother has some good night horror stories to tell. Watch out when you choose your job later…’
She looks down at the paper boat in her hands where her high age has left its speckled traces on her skin. ‘But back to money and its function and power in our society. It wasn’t always as mentally toxic as nowadays. Its function and power changed fundamentally, with the latter forcefully expanded over time. Let me show you how.’
Great G pauses for a second and concentrates, her gaze fixed on the distant coastline, distant as the course of a history long before they both were born. ‘Of course, there was some form of money before industrialization in the 19th century. Merchants in ancient and medieval Europe, ancient China, India, and the Islamic world had established financial systems for international trade for a few hundred years already.[4] They needed some form of commonly acknowledged and used means of payment, a currency, to make trade and payment transactions across borders easier and faster for all.’
She looks into Cheeky C’s eyes which gaze up to her with the innocent thirst for knowledge of a child. ‘But in the world’s populations, money was never used to that widespread and total extent like it was the case after industrialization and the transformation of the economic system. Most important is the role of states. When states were formed, they raised taxes – money that people on a state’s territory have to pay to their governments. This forced people to use money – and to earn money. And, consequently, to work for someone who could pay them money as salary.’
Great G kneels down and puts the small paper ship on the lake’s surface. She pushes it slightly forward, and it starts to move away from her, ‘sailing’ slowly to the open water. ‘Colonization was one factor that spread the market economy and the increasing use of money. Sickened by the fever of nationalism, important European states such as Great Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Germany raced into fierce competition against each other.[5] Who can be the greatest nation, the wealthiest, the most armed? Resources at home were not enough to still the hunger for growth. Thus, governments turned abroad and commissioned expensive expeditions into unmapped parts of the world, justified by the conviction that they would bring the light of civilization to the wild barbarians beyond the European continent. In the name of their monarchs, explorers convinced locals to sign contracts they couldn’t read, contracts to unknowingly sell their land to the Europeans, as it happened in Africa, for example.’[6]
Great G splashes water and creates waves with her hands, pushing the paper boat forward toward Lake Ontario’s open water. ‘The European governments invested heavily in their colonies to build up infrastructure for big European companies that were allowed to enter the territory and extract resources. The foreign European administrations and firms radically transformed the local economy. And as the rulers in Europe demanded taxes in the form of money from their colonies at some point, the colonialized populations were forced to accept and use money as a means of payment in their economy as well.
The boat slowly ‘sails’ away from them, shakily. ‘Take, for example, Congo, colonized by Belgium in the late 19th century. I use this example because there is a great book about the development of the country from pre-colonial times until 2008. It’s called “Congo, The epic history of a people”, written by David van Reybrouck. If you ever want to find out how one country can experience a military uprising, a mass exodus of Belgians, a Belgian invasion, a UN intervention, a constitutional crisis, and two secessions in only five months after gaining independence in 1960, you should read this book.[7] Anyways, from the thrilling, insightful, and often horrifying action movie called history, back to the actual question, the power of banks and money…’
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Sources:
[1] cf. Polanyi, Karl. (1957) [1944]. The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time. Boston: Beacon, p. 38.
[2] See Graeber, David. 2018. Bullshit jobs: A Theory. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster.
[3] Cf. Illing, Sean. 2019. “Bullshit jobs: why they exist and why you might have one.” Vox. Available online from: https://www.vox.com/2018/5/8/17308744/bullshit-jobs-book-david-graeber-occupy-wall-street-karl-marx.
[4] See Pamuk, Sevket. 2000. A monetary history of the Ottoman Empire. Cambridge University Press.
[5] See Van Reybrouck, David. 2014. Congo, The epic history of a people. Sam Garrett. London: Fourth Estate.
[6] See ebd.
[7] See ebd., p. 333.
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