I'll be honest, I haven't watched Demolition Man in years. I think maybe ten years at least.
But, I watched that movie a dozen times or more when it was still relevant in pop culture, maybe because the movie was a more realistic representation of the future, or maybe because it was just a damn good movie for its time.
Probably both.
The reason why I suddenly remembered this movie, and now want to write about its significance to our present day, is because I was watching a video on YouTube from @themoneygps and something that was said got me to thinking about where society is really headed in the coming decades.
I have a dilemma. well.. more like I'm divided about the path I am choosing to walk in life, and how the thought of disconnecting from the current monetary system becomes more and more appealing. I'm not talking about going off the grid necessarily, I'm talking living outside the monetary system.
By why?
Why is that thought becoming more appealing to me? My life isn't getting more difficult, and to be quite honest I would love to live to be 150 years old and witness what this thing is that the human race is collectively building right now, and what it will become. That sounds extremely nerdy, but we all have our Achilles Heel, and technology is mine.
Demolition man in its time seemed so futuristic, that at the time I figured I'd never live long enough to see some of that technology become a reality. Well, it seems like I was wrong, because all of the technology in Demolition Man, at least most of it, is at our doorstep and being worked on.
Of course, there is one thing in the movie that couldn't possibly come true. Taco Bell being the only surviving restaurant is crazy. right? One fart for yes, two sharts for no.
But beyond the technology, there is a message that is being conveyed in the setting and the plot that seem far more sinister to me now, then I ever felt back then.
In Demolition Man, we are introduced to two different worlds. There's the perfect society above ground that uses technology to sanitize every aspect of life, and below ground are the people who don't want to be part of a technocratic system, but to live their own lives as they see fit. They even have a vendor that sells rat burgers.
But unlike when I was younger, I'm a lot more skeptical about how this poor vs. rich thing would really play out. In fairness, the movie ends on a good tone, but I think what bothers me is that the movie sends a more subtle message to the viewer, where the idea of not being a part of "the system" means living in filth and eating rat burgers. Without saying it out loud, the movie carries a subplot that suggests to the viewer that while it might be nice to exit the system and live a far less stressful life, you can't take anything with you and must live like a schizophrenic bum.
On the other hand, the director of Demolition Man may have been trying to portray those outside of the system as being desperate enough to take back the city above and take out the technocratic dictator. If those outside of the system were living fine and not struggling, the plot of the movie would make no sense.
There's probably nothing conspiratorial about the movie or its plot and setting, but when I thought about the idea of slowing down and living a more simple life, Demolition Man was the first thing I thought about and how bad life would be if I wasn't part of "the system," but halfway through that thought I caught myself and realized I was regurgitating some kind of mental programming, because those aren't my own thoughts.
But really, the theme itself of the poor living below ground in filth so they don't have to be part of a technocratic society isn't unique to Demolition Man. One of my favorite TV shows, Futurama, has the very same idea going, with Old New York being underground in the sewers where the mutants live, and all the privileged people with no physical defects live their life in New New York above ground in a highly advanced technological society.
I quite honestly don't know where this concept originated. Even the concepts of heaven and hell follow the same idea. Human beings have been using the threat of exclusion to control populations of people since the beginning of recorded history, and likely long before that.
But one of the other reasons I thought about Demolition Man was because there is a strong possibility that future generations of people may in fact choose to exit the system and live in planned communities. It has happened before in the past, just ask Amish people what they think of your nifty smart phone and your fancy credit cards.
And now that I am writing this post, it dawns on me that that is really why I would rather stay in the system, because the system isn't created by some lofty big wig in government, it is developed through trial and error by the people who participate in "the system." My ancestors, your ancestors, everyone has ancestors who were part of the machine that helped to progress the system, and expand that system where it works to reach others in the world that are starving or without other essentials.
Collectively, if the system of systems that we live in is shaped by the hands of the people, then the system will work for the people. But in the past twenty years or so, the system has been high-jacked by the financial world, who are no longer concerned with sustainability or preserving the environment, or keeping something as necessary as rivers and lakes from becoming toxic to us. These are the forces that are not concerned if your drinking water is full of toxins, because they want to sell you bottled water that tastes like bottled sterility. Why? who really knows. I don't think looking for conspiracies here is warranted, its just how capitalism functions. Given time, everything becomes a product to sell and buy, even the air we breath. Taxes, interest rates, debt... all systems of manipulation, and all being abused so that more and more people are getting burned out.
I know I'm burned out, and that's really at the heart of the problem. A lot of people are burned out. It's one thing to work and work and work and make progress, because that is a system that everyone can get behind. But that brings up the question, why is the current system failing so horribly?
We all have concepts that we hold in high regard, and for me the concept of Sustainability is one that I hold up high. To me, any other approach to society, the system, and life in general seems absolutely insane. I can understand that it's difficult for people to think about things in terms of a thousand years, let alone a million years, but that fact seems to be what demotivates people to think about sustainability. Why keep the planet clean when you're not going to be alive to enjoy it in a hundred years?
And what's scary is there are parents and grandparents in positions of economic power that think exactly in that way, ignoring what will happen to their great great grandchildren. They just don't care, or care to think that far ahead. Or maybe they're religious and think a sky spirit or a god of some kind is ruining the crops and causing climate catastrophe. Either way, these are the people in charge, and it is the cold and technocratic approach that most leaders around the world are taking that may see an unexpected revolution that at face value seems like a new generation of Amish-like communities that will spring up, and exit the system, but if such a movement does occur it will be for very different reasons.
For the Amish, it was theology that made them exit the system, rather than any noble cause. I think there is a real chance of a mass exit occurring in the West as the central banking financial system hemorrhages and dies a little more each day. But the exit won't be like the Amish did, in my opinion, if there is one.
The biggest problem we face in the modern age is centralization. Namely, financial centralization.
Before central banks, each bank was issuing it's own monetary notes. A silver dollar was made from an ounce of silver, and an ounce of silver was worth a dollar. A tenth of an ounce of silver was worth ten cents, or as the worthless copper/nickel coin of today is called, a Dime. An ounce of gold was worth 20 dollars, and a 20 dollar note could be redeemed for an ounce of gold at the bank that originally issued the note.
This system of private banks worked well until, as usual, bankers got greedy and governments got loose with regulations, and soon enough the private banks in America were issuing notes for gold they didn't have in reserve, also known as fractional reserve banking. Back then they weren't going crazy about it either, they were just stretching their reserves a little, and it still blew up in their face.
Just as the big banks in England together formed the first Central Bank in the world, the big banks in the USA quickly followed suit once a lot of the private banks had been disposed of. It was deemed reckless to issue out credit without having a central bank to control the supply of money. This meant that instead of private banks holding gold and lending out notes and silver coins, the central bank would take care of that, and issue money backed by the pooled gold and silver reserves, while the private banks could focus solely on the issuance of credit and managing money.
The thing is, in 2019, we look back on that and realize that the limitations that private banks had back then would not exist today, because most money is digital, and over 99% of the digital money in the system is not issued by the central bank, but is issued as credit by private banks with interest attached, and the credit weaves its way through the economy as it gets spent. If you were to try and draw flow chart for a single dollar in the system, it would be tangled in a million places with every other dollar in the system.
My point is, the power to print money was taken away from private banks because of greed and corruption, and centralized so that the issuance of money could be controlled in an absolute fashion, and the issuance of credit through fractional reserve lending could continue. The bankers loved this. Once they had gotten a taste of fractional reserve banking, there was no going back and a central bank was the only way they could keep pumping their private credit into the system.
Of course, that credit being pumped into the system ends up either getting paid off, or defaulted on, and in many cases you get toxic debt that is gumming up the system, and so all the machinery has to be put into maintenance mode (figuratively speaking), and a recession must occur to flush the system of all the toxic debt.
The central bank in the meantime waits patiently on the sidelines, waiting for the debt to flush out of the system before dropping interest rates and printing new money.
But printing new money is also becoming obsolete, and this is yet another failure of the system.
Back 100 years ago, there was no digital cash. Sure there was credit, but it was often illiquid and tied up in loans and other debt. Because there was no digital money, it was assumed by central banks that 2% of the money supply would either get lost, destroyed or hoarded permanently, and so the central banking model suggests that the money supply be inflated by 2% per year to ensure there is enough liquidity, and in turn to keep the velocity of money going steady and changing hands often.
That was then.
In 2019, the idea that the central bank needs to inflate the money supply by 2% per year seems insane, because you can't lose what isn't used in this case. There is still physical cash out there, but very little of it is used. The US Dollar is used in physical cash form less in the USA than internationally. Island resorts, crime syndicates, and other offshore activity is what the US Dollar in cash form is used for the most. After all, when was the last time an employee was paid by their employer in cash, and declared it on their income taxes?
And I think that ties back into my rambling about Demolition Man. The USA officially has around 3% unemployment, yet the workplace participation numbers have been dropping across all states since 1999, and its not a small drop either. Its a difference of 75% of young adults entering the workforce, vs 10-15% today. That tells me that something is going on in the underworld, so to speak, and there is already a revolution occurring where young people are working under the table for cash, instead of being an above the board citizen that pays their taxes.
But they're not living in the sewers below ground, and they haven't even exited the system. They still vote. In 2016 you know who they voted for without me having to say it, because the US 2016 election was literally all about those who like being in the current system vs. those who want out of the system. That's all there is to it. All the political bickering and fighting on social media is just an extension of that struggle.
And so, the Federal Reserve in the US, as well as central banks from around the world have begun coordinating the move to blockade the revolution, and among other things make physical currency obsolete within the next decade, and make all transactions digital.
Here in Canada, we already have this. It's called interac e-transfer, and for personal banking its free to use. We've had it for what seems like forever, at least a couple decades, although it only became free about a year ago, as it used to cost $1.50 per transaction. I don't know what people have in the USA or elsewhere, but I'm certain if a country doesn't have something like our e-transfer system, then they probably soon will.
The other thing we have here, which I'm certain everyone else has is the ability to deposit a cheque using your cellphone and its camera(s) through your mobile bank app. Super handy, I think the last time I actually took a personal cheque to the bank to deposit it was a least 3 or 4 years ago.
It's clear I'm not irked by this move towards digital money, but there's a good reason why. In fact, I'm writing this blog on a platform that utilizes a digital currency that is not directly regulated or controlled by any government, aside from the elected body of Steem Witnesses that every Steem user can and should vote for. But that's besides the point.
Steem, Bitcoin, Ripple... okay maybe not ripple, but most cryptocurrencies are a way to exit that system once governments make the final move on cash and coin and eliminate physical money. To be fair, I mean the physical paper and coins that central banks issue, and not real money in the form of gold, silver, etc..., unless they do another gold and silver confiscation like in the 1930's. That is a real possibility, I wouldn't discount there being an effort to make precious metals worthless for the working class, but I doubt that would ever succeed. And besides, you can't counterfeit crypto, which is probably why central banks are also moving towards adoption and creation of their own cryptocurrencies.
I'm getting tired and the old brain is out of juice for now. I think I covered the points I wanted to in this blog, although I'm scared to proofread what I've just wrote because its probably all over the place.
Thanks for reading and take care. comments and shares are always welcome, and if you disagree with my opinions here don't be afraid to voice those disagreements. I'm just some guy you've never met, free writing on the internet about what's on my mind, but hopefully I've entertained or helped someone in the process. It certainly helps me with clearing my mind. Stay safe.
I believe that ideas travel from person to person, and cannot be owned