{"id":212,"date":"2011-10-21T12:21:38","date_gmt":"2011-10-21T16:21:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cstuart.ca\/?p=212"},"modified":"2011-10-26T11:24:41","modified_gmt":"2011-10-26T15:24:41","slug":"monbiot-has-it-right-jubilee-or-debt-strike","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cstuart.ca\/?p=212","title":{"rendered":"Monbiot has it right – Jubilee or Debt Strike"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don’t always agree with him, especially on nuclear energy,\u00a0 but a recent article by George Monbiot<\/a> has confirmed what some of us have been saying for a long time:\u00a0 the current situation in our economy and collective lives is much worse than we want to acknowledge.\u00a0 The only realistic way out of it is a massive write-off of debt, otherwise known as a “Jubilee”.\u00a0\u00a0 David Graeber in his recent provocative book Debt: The First Five Thousand Years<\/em><\/a> comes to much the same conclusion from an anthropological perspective.<\/p>\n

It is very unlikely that the current crop of neo-liberal politicians, including especially Canadian ones, will have the courage to say this and lead.\u00a0 It may be more realistic to think about a debt (payment) strike.\u00a0\u00a0 This would\u00a0 require large numbers of people refusing to pay debts, especially interest payments on debt, (student loans for example) to be effective. Or perhaps the recent proposal by the European Indignados\/Occupy movement to close our accounts<\/em> in banks and move money to credit unions on November 5th is a good place to start.\u00a0\u00a0 None of this will be easy or comfortable, but the alternative is to let the bubble enlarge, force further austerity and poverty on the majority and let the wealthy walk away when it all bursts and crashes in on us.<\/p>\n

There are many\u00a0 alternatives being developed and practiced in the food sovereignty movement, in living with the land and indigenous values, in open source technologies,\u00a0 in urban homesteading,\u00a0 in advocates for justice and rights, in labour action etc: the list is long and we should be hopeful; the seeds are there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don’t always agree with him, especially on nuclear energy,\u00a0 but a recent article by George Monbiot has confirmed what some of us have been saying for a long time:\u00a0 the current situation in our economy and collective lives is much worse than we want to acknowledge.\u00a0 The only realistic way out of it is… Continue reading Monbiot has it right – Jubilee or Debt Strike<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6uTkF-3q","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cstuart.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cstuart.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cstuart.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cstuart.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cstuart.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=212"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/cstuart.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":252,"href":"https:\/\/cstuart.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212\/revisions\/252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cstuart.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cstuart.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cstuart.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}