Dear friends

Patrick Mbindyo wrote:

the discussion on stress is very interesting. i quite
envy the fact that most in the listserve are able to
think about the environment,  beaches, and stuff!!!
I might take up Dr. Bowman's suggestion and one day
hire a 4 by 4 and drive into the bush for a week or
two!

for me, the answer to work related stress is very
simple: i just think of what i would do if i was
jobless! 

or simply shut off the TV and play snakes and ladders
or monopoly with my family...

Patrick 
Nairobi.

    ----------------------------------------------------------------------

Ah, ha! - the Monopoly board game was invented  to demonstrate how a 
market-based economy works. (see the Wikipedia entry for more)

(Note that the Monopoly game only uses the land/rent part of the 
complete capitalist market economy, and not the credit/interest and 
knowledge/dividends parts, but that's sufficient to learn something.)

So:

A number of aspects are relevant - in the end, the game stops because 
the market mechanism concentrates all the money in one set of hands - 
and can only restart if the money is 'taken' back to the bank, and then 
redistributed to the 'players'.

(Or, as used to happen, when we played at home, where my son Robert 
seemed to always win - he started handing the money out, to keep the 
game going - blood, genes, self-interest, a born co-operatve socialist, 
or what!).

And, overall, this concentrating effect relates to the following general 
equation that a fellow list-member asked me to explain (and to which I 
offered a poor explanation, I think):

        Raw materials   +   Energy   --->   Wealth   +  Pollution

The point is that money seems to have two circulation mechanisms in 
capitalism: the 'circulation to meet needs' circuit (ie for most of us, 
what comes in, goes out in fairly quick time), and the 
'accumulation/savings/for-investment' circuit (which, under capitalism, 
this wealth-creation stuff feeds).

Now, since profits and excess 'earnings' over need (ie rent, interest, 
dividends, and higher than needed/average 'earnings') gradually remove 
money from the needs circulation side, and into the ever voracious 
'investment/parasitically driving the above equation' circulation side - 
faster and faster moving, pollution and more pollution generating,

 . . . then . . .

 eventually, just as with the Monopoly board game, things come to al 
halt and people starve and the planet gets trashed to hell (as JK 
Galbraith - on the money side - so eloquently describes and re-describes 
in his books - see his 'Money, from whence it came, to where it goes' - 
a very hard book to find!).

(interestingly - sic - this explanation of two circulating pools - along 
with a third called charity which I think is unnecessary, but worth 
pondering  - is in today's receive Quaker Socialist Newsletter - how 
synchronous!)

So, the trick (before we abolish money altogether) is to ensure that the 
outflow from the needs circuit to the profit/investment circuit is 
looped back as quickly as possible - and that the needs circuit provides 
equally for all (and all with due reverence to the sustainability 
requirement).

Which capitalism can't do.

And that's the subject of a forthcoming one, or so.

Love

john

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