Just Wondering About The Re-Evolution....




Re-Evolution 13 : Makeshift 2013

Just Wondering About The Re-Evolution

Thinking about the idea of 'capitalism', it is difficult to imagine that it won't always be around? It is like the telephone, how many would have predicted, other than the most visionary sci-fi writer, that one day we would walk around making calls on cordless cell phones from absolutely anywhere in the world?

I don't know why, but it came as a surprise to me that capitalism has been around for a really long time. The label 'capitalism' emerges around the 1860's, though the word, apparently, was used around 1848 - 1849 but only became currency in the 1860's.

Some believe capitalism per se, as a system, emerged as long as 500 years ago.

Of course, as a system of market exchange and profit making it has evolved, so when we speak about 'capitalism' we are actually referring to a group of 'capitalisms' as it has changed over time.

But that is the important point, it is only a people manufactured system so it can be sculpted, changed and altered as it unravels - yes we are a long way from the stream engine and, interestingly, within touching distance of the cashless society. Mobile phones, for example, are already taking trade from games consoles ( a relatively new technology). Amazing to think, that in some locations, and with technology adjusted mobile phones, you can even buy a cup of coffee without cash or credit card.

This had me thinking that what we are experiencing in the USA and the UK and, in fact, across the globe, is the beginnings of a readjustment and not, the much trumpeted, recovery smug politicians are always telling us about.

Two things immediately strike me.

One : Huge companies once employed giant workforces, now gigantuan businesses by market capitalisation don't always employ giant workforces. Google, for example, is worth $373.64 billion but only employs some 46,000 souls while General Motors (market capitalisation $56.8 billion) who have had such a traumatic times since the recession of 2008, still employs over 170,000 people. Apple, another example, with a market capitalisation $503.93b only employs 80,000, while the Ford motor company still employs some 213,000 but only has a market capitalisation of $60.38 billion. Blackberry had a market capitalisation of around $80 billion back in 2008, as of September 2013 it is now worth $4.3 billion. In September 2013 they laid off 4,500 from 12,700 and once employed 20,000.

Two : The configuration of the labour market in advanced western economies is also changing (re-adjusting). More and more people are working on temporary, freelance, sub-contract, part-time or zero hours agreements and less are now plugged into traditional contracts which covered holidays, sickness and pensions. There is an increasing mantra in these developed societies that continually explain that welfare, healthcare and pensions are no longer affordable. Cutting across this, the traditional job is disappearing and with it the former certainties of millions of middle class workers. New technological advances ( as always), demographics and leverage are all regurgitated by lacklustre governments as the reason for these automatic and very necessary re-alignments.

Both the above, need, of course, to be examined closer to discover if we are really entering a re-evolution, which I think we are. But time is against me as I sit with a primo Americano in Costa Coffee at Central 12, Southport.

The young girl who served me earlier approaches.
"Excuse me sir" she says in a high pitched voice. "Just to let you know because of re-adjustment, from next week a Primo Americano will now cost two hubcaps, but if you paint the front of my house you can have two Lattes and one Ristretto."

"I need me bedroom wallpapered," an old lady to my rights states. "It's worth an Americano Grande and a raspberry and almond slice for you to do it."
"I can fix your car for a couple of Expressos!" A middle-aged man shouts his offer as he jumps to his feet.
"I have three Batman comics from the 1970's, for anyone who will buy me a Cortado!" a young lady with a child in her arms calls out as she clmabers to her feet.
The room falls momentarily silent before people are leaping to their feet and shouting at each other across the room.
"Two Cortados!"

Later the Financial Times made interesting reading. Batman comics of the 1970's had moved up to two Cortados and a Cappuccino, while wallpapering a front room was now worth two Grande Americanos and a raspberry and almond slice...mmmmmm.  Hub caps, unfortunately, had passed their peak and fell by two Lattes....

(Written in Costa Coffee, Central 12 ,Southport, December 30, 2013.  Wishing you all the very best for 2014)

  　

Christmas Apple, Nike and Starbucks Are Alright Tonight




Sovereighn Entities

 

What are corporate entities?

Empires, artificial, evolving, organic, creatures, a hybrid of the two? probably, but, in essence, huge monlothic centres of the global economy. Gargantuan, predatory, mammoth-sized beasts that roam the dark, capitalist forest in search of consumers to gobble up - how very Roald Dahl.

They are banks, retailers, manufacturing plants, financial services companies, multi-disciplined units, anything that makes money for its shareholders. In fact the root of the word comes from the Latin corporatus, to form into a body.

We recognise them as logos, slogans, expensive mind-catching ads that drill deep into our psyche and force, often involuntary, movements from wallet to them.

Brands like Apple Inc - with the original sin logo of the bite out of the apple - Nike with the iconic throwaway Swoosh and 'Just Do it' ; Starbucks and their sexy, secutive mermaid and backward linkage to Herman Mellville's Moby Dick classic and their 'Share the warmth' 2013 Christmas campaign - homelessness ends here! Nice thought Mr Schultz.

These are all representative symbols of the corporation's identity that circumscribe corporate personality, character and qualities. They identify with us, rather than the other way around and lock us in to a world which we 'imagine' is the way we would want things to be, the way, indeed, things, accoding to our brand of the moment, should be. It is illusory but extremely potent, hitting us in our memory banks and our vision of what might be or could have been or what should be.

The corporations live with us in our micro-universe, touching our hearts with £7 million ( $11.4, € 8.3 million) persuasive, animated, sentimental bear and hare advertisements. Mini movies that resonate and represent, somehow, a perfect, sickly reality that we (somehow) feel we should all strive for. They always have that Hollywood happy ending!

I must say I have never, ever, experienced a happy Disneyesque Christmas as portrayed on TV, but like everyone, everywhere would love to enjoy one! A Christmas where my working life and the financial realities of just breathing are a million miles from my thoughts ( as if!). Who doesn't count the cost in the New Year?

Happy New Year, hey wait a second, wait a second, just got my Sickly Sweet Happy Bank statement - the bank that always says YES and does all these wonderful things for people, nothing is ever any problems to us Sir, it says on the ads - Anyway I have just received my bank statement, this can't be right...what's this extra charge for? And this one?

Sickly Sweet Bank of Neverland : we will always be there for you.

Nevertheless, we are locked into happy fast food, family orientated vignettes that tell us 'We're loving it', where the family drool over exciting foodstuffs and grandpa falls asleep ( which is cute). Smiling-faced kids and their open toothy mouths prepare to bite into large, juicy-looking burgers ( we never actually see them eat the food, or if they do it seems as if they are chewing cotton wool they are enjoying the food so much, mmmm!).

Yet, while we are being fed all this honey-sweet hedonism, large numbers of the 700,000 fast food workers who operate at over 14,000 McDonald's restaurant in America are signing up for the new Service Employees International Union.

In the USA alone the industry employs something like 4 million people so the union has a huge potential catchment, and already claims 2.1 million members.

But before Americans can say 'what's that got to do with me or the price of my burger, man?' - it is worth reminding ourselves that around $7 billion to $8 billion ( £4.3/4.9 billion, €5.1/5.8 billion) of their money was paid into public assistance for fast food worker's and their families between 2007 and 2011. So, the average American citizen is basically, subsidising huge companies like McDonald's who pulled in $1.5 billion (£1 billion, €1.1 billion) in profits in the third quarter of this year and realised overall revenues of $27.5 billion (£16.8 billion, €20 billion) in 2012 ( thank you for your support people of America).

Part of the reason the mad admen of gargantuan corporate entities can pull off such wonderful campaigns - cue music, something to bring a tear Bright Eyes? Walking In The Air? with appropriate animated movie about little furry animals and big soppy bearesque creatures tugging at the wallet...sorry..heart strings...

Did I say wallet? Can't believe I said that!

(Written in Kimbles, St Enoch Centre Glasgow and Starbucks, West Nile Street, Friday 13, 2013. My next act is to contact Howard Schultz and ask him about his Share the Warmth Starbucks campaign.)

The Money Parade/Cybereconomicpunkland

Mona Lisa White Rabbit Blue : Makeshift Studios 2012

The Money Parade/Cybereconomicpunkland
Money is, actually – nod your head knowingly – worthless. It is, after all, cheap paper, though, we, as sentient individuals, invest it with meaning. Hence it possesses power and a double angle as a means of exchange and as a measure of value.

It also replaces the old barter system where, for fixing a leaky roof on your neighbour's mud hut we receive in return a bottle of, on offer, merlot from the local supermarket. (Note : we are stretching things here a little as the barter system was used in a time before Tesco/Walmart – though it may yet return!!)

Coinage jingles in our pockets, dollars, pounds sterling and euros fit neatly and snugly into our expensive designer label leather wallets – if we are lucky to have any cash and our wallets are not fake Guci as opposed to the real Gucci.

We purchase goods and services and pay with paper and coins as an intermediary resource for buying and – again if we are lucky – receive change in return, which then joins the coins in our pockets or the bills in our Guci or Gucci wallets.

We might feel a glow and stand back and admire our trading activities, chasing ‘designer’ brands at the centre of some screenpaly fantasy – I am sure you have seen the clever marketing and adverts, like we are seeking the proverbial crock of…gold…at the end of the consumer rainbow. Or, alternatively, if we are impoverished and poor we might dabble in the world of hand made fakes and counterfeits from under the table of the Saturday afternoon stallholder at open markets (no imaginary fantasy ad worlds or subliminal marketing needed here only real fake Guci).

A cul-de-sac of the massive underground or shadow economy which eventually finds its way back into the mainstream economy and, as commentators are quick to point out, helps keep the 'visible', regular economy from dipping under the financial waterline. Think about it, but please don't mention to George Osborne or Angela Merkel!

This world is often the habitat of those who are finding it very difficult to make ends meet, but it is only one small corner of that massive underground economy.

In difficult times people find it extremely difficult to find and maintain full-time, permanent, well-paid employment with, as we have hinted at before, substantial hours, and access to pension rights, sickness and holiday benefits. Often, such people are trapped in a system that they feel doesn't work for them and turn to work which might be cash in hand with no questions asked, no income reported or taxes paid - very ironic.

According to economist Edgar Feige of the University of Wisconsin, the shadow economy in the USA has doubled since 2009 and is now estimated to be worth $2 trillion (that is a heck of a lot of lost tax from the system). In real terms this amounts to something like 8 per cent of US GDP.

We also find that the loss of revenues to the US government is considerable and increasing. In 2001 it was estimated that $375 billion was lost in taxes unpaid by those working in the shadow economy, while over $500 billion was lost in 2012 because of unreported wages.

I find this fascinating. It is an area of the economy which kicks in with, is entertwined with and works alongside the mainstream economy and an area rarely visited. It is a bit like the interface between the contemporary economic universe and the digital, wired cybereconomicpunkland, that place we have yet to reach but are rapidly approaching - lower the undercarriage.

A truly huge and burgeoning and fertile landscape for exploration...but that's for another day...

The Dark Knight of the Dark Night





Everything, it seems to me, is all about exchange. As kids we used to swap (a form of exchange or barter) comic books. Those in most demand were usually Superman editions, with Batman a close second. Green Lantern and The Flash were also popular but never quite had the value of the 'big' two.




Batman And Gotham Are Alright Tonight : Makeshift Studios 2013



On one famous occasion, let's call it legendary, I promoted a particular DC Comic, a Superman title which had the superhero battling Lex Luther for supremacy. Luther, however, had managed to get his grubby hands on some
Kryptonite and, for once, had the upper hand - could this be the end for Superman, aka Clark Kent...

I hyped this comic to try and attract as much interest and hence value as possible (hype : a form of advertising or promotion of a product or service). I spread a rumour that the Superman comic, I had in my possession, held the key to the secrets of life and the universe - I sort of mimicked Utopia* before it was ever conceived or shown on television. The hype brought a great deal of interest from other kids in the neighbourhood and at school. This put me in a strong position, I had managed to generate demand while the supply was low forcing my asking price up.

To be frank with you I was always a Dark Knight guy, I always preferred Batman and one of the bidders had a particular edition I was desperate to get my hands on, so I made the deal with Alex. For my DC Superman edition he gave me three Supermans, THE Batman title I wanted, a Green Lantern and The Flash. It was a black ball of a deal, I had become the Gordon Gekko of the Ganja Academy (Grange Academy - my old school).

Now let's consider this, remember also that Superman was top currency for this particular comic book market that we all operated in. So, while Batman wasn't bad and Green Lantern and The Flash were of lesser value per unit, the capture of three Superman titles in one closure was sheer brilliance. If there had been such a thing, I would have been a comic books trader for Goldman Sachs.

What we were actually doing was exchange, and exchange is all about people with products and services to sell interacting with people looking to buy products and services. Once, of course, you have buyers and sellers you have a market which, in turn generates demand and supply. The higher the demand and the lower the supply the greater the price, or the lower the demand and the higher the supply the less value the product or service has.

All things being pretty much equal, sellers look for an edge and this is where the water turns dark. To grab the cut edge of an advantage from competitors sellers employ marketing, which is really all about making people aware of the unique selling point of the unit being sold. Branded goods, slogans - just do it, the power of dreams, - and advertising are all designed to provide an advantage to the said product or service.

What we have is a layering effect, a matrix of economic variables, needs, wants and desires underpinning exchange. Exchange giving rise to buyers and sellers, demand and supply, markets, brands, slogans, advertising. You could add other cut across generators of interest like corporate social responsibility and trends, perhaps even graffadi and/or guerilla marketing, dare I say it : hype?

At the pinnacle of this economic interconnectedness, of course, we find our fascinating friend risk.

The guy who bought the comic book from me for, I have to confess, a grossly overinflated price - helped by hype and rumours - also bought risk. The risk that the comic didn't meet his expectations -  the expectation that great secrets were contained within its pages.  It is a bit like buying a bunch of shares at a certain price in the expectation that the price will go up and you can sell at a profit.  Of course, there is no guarantee that the price will increase, things can go wrong, so you always put yourself at risk.

Risk, in turn, is an amazing concept which drives super-complicated financial vehicles like derivatives and a whole array of gambling models - insurance companies (and presumably reinsurance firms), are really nothing but super sophisticated betting shops!  They work out the odds in their favour and you place your bet.

A few weeks later I caught sight of Alex approaching me. I panicked, tried to escape, but too late he had seen me.

Hi! He called out. I smiled in a sort of feeling-very-guilty kind of rigid grimace.
You were right, he nodded.
Right?
The coded messages in that comic book are amazing.
Coded messages? I sounded vague.
The secrets of life and the universe!

I wanted to tell him right there and then I had made the whole thing up to 'cheat' him out of his currency, but I couldn't stop him talking about the comic book, the symbols in the artwork and coded messages in the text.

He had, he told me as he walked off and winked, discovered all the truths he had ever wanted to know.
You have? I frowned and watched him go...
Yes, he called back, and they were all in that comic you sold me!

They were!?

*Utopia is a Channel Four TV series where a group of geeky Graphic comic book collectors come into possession of a particular edition which is supposed to have coded messages in the text.  This leads to the collectors being hunted by a ruthless, sinister gang for the secrets of the comic.

Random Acts of Kindness On A Glasgow Street (1.6 Million Nights at a Marriot Hotel)

The metaphor seemed a good one.

The economic crisis of 2008 was the greenback landscape for a great, modern, holy war between the high priests and priestesses of Wall Street, The City of London, the global economy and the tented heretics of reform. The great cathedrals of finance were under attack. The houses of the Archbishops of Goldman Sachs,UBS, J.P.Morgan Stanley, Lloyds TSB, Lehman Brothers, HBOS, Northern Rock, HSBC and RBS.

Tribes clashing on the 'warfield' of monetary righteousness, their banners euro blue, cash green and saintly gold flapping in the breeze. Each calling the other infidel, locked in the first financial crusade of the 21st century.




Capitalismo : Makeshift Studios 2013

The train was heading for Central Station, Glasgow, returning north from Southampton. I spent four happy years at the University of Glasgow, hanging around the local bookshops and bars on Byers Road, it would be good to be back home.

I was pouring over research, notes and interview quotes for a piece I was writing on Occupy.

I highlight 'Henry Waxman' in pale blue marker pen, the colour of Manchester City football tops, and then type onto my laptop.

Head of Lehman Brothers, Dick Fuld, had his salary and bonuses questioned by Henry Waxman, Republican, 30th district of California, at a House of Representatives' Committee On Oversight and Government Reform, October 6, 2008.

"Your company is now bankrupt, our economy is in crisis, but you get to keep $480million (£276million)?" Waxman said perplexed.

At Glasgow Central station I cross the concourse and take the side entrance out onto Union Street.

Waiting for a break in the traffic I walk toward Gordon Street, where I approach a woman and ask for directions to The Tinderbox Cafe on Ingram Street.

The woman looks up at me and nods thoughtfully.

"Aye, ah ken where ye mean, Merchant City, aye" She stares ahead. "C'moan, I'll show you."

I follow, we exchange pleasantries, speak about how bitterly cold it is for this time of year, and I remember what a beautiful city this is.

"I have a meeting and I am late," I hurriedly explain. "This is really good of you."
"It's no far," she reassures me. "Near tae a Tesco...Tesco Express ah think it is."

As we cross Buchanan Street to Royal Exchange Square, the woman halts by a homeless man, his red, frozen hands wrapped around an empty, paper Starbucks cup ( I always find it ironic that the receptacle of choice is always a Starbucks cup! It kind of symbolises a surreal world).

I move to walk on, but notice that the woman has stopped, and is stooping toward the man, placing two pound coins in his cup and talking to him.

"God bless ye darling," He says, and I pick out the features of his well-defined face. Thin, angular, mid-twentyish, the tortured lines of an extremly difficult life already etched around his eyes and across his brow.

"You look frozen," She frowns.
"I've been oot aw night," the young man replies.
"Couldn't you get into a hostel?" I offer feebly.
"They're all full," He looks up at me and shrugs, "There is a recession on."
'Yes, but this is 2013', I catch myself thinking.

It's then the woman removes her gloves, pulls them off determinedly and gives them to the homeless man.

"Aw naw missus" the young man protests.
"Ah've goat children," she says simply. "It could be anyone of us, besides, ah've goat plenty mair pairs at home".

The gloves look tight, but the man manages to force his frozen hands into them.

"Aw, that's really good of you. I am on the hoosing list, bit that could take weeks, months..." he adds preoccupied with the gloves.
"That's a lot of cold nights in the open." The woman confides as we start to walk again. "Ah would have given him mair but ah lost ma job in April and, well, things are tight."

We parted by The Tinderbox Cafe, I thanked her, she turned and walked back the way she came.

Later, working on my laptop, I realised I didn't have the woman's name. I sighed, googled the Marriot Hotel on Westminster Road Bridge, London, and discovered that a room for one night will cost £166.

Dick Fuld's $480 million (£276 million), I roughly calculate, would have bought the homeless man 4,500 years at the Marriot Hotel, or 1.6 million nights. At a nice little bed and breakfast just south of Fort William, the frozen man would have had a roof over his head for 30,000 years...

With Dick Fuld's salary and bonus, our friend could have bought 35 million copies of Ryu Murakami's novel Audition, or 138, 693, 467 McDonald's Happy Meals.

I could imagine the young homeless man, bleary-eyed, his hair sticky and shining, mulling over the menu above the head of the gaily coloured server, his baseball cap adorned with three shiny stars.

"Erm...right, can I have 138 million, 693 thousand, and 467 Happy Meals please"
"Coming right up sir!" The server would smile his teeth whiter than white and sparkling.

The homeless man would rub his gloved hands together and think 'I'm really lovin' it'.

Arms full of Happy Meals, he might have had the afterthought, 'With Fuld's cash I could have bought 1.5 million prints of Philip Jacques de Loutherbourg's painting Battle Between Richard 1 Lionheart 1157-99 and Saladin 1137-93.'

A Zero History Of The WORLD

How far have we come?  Well, we can communicate with almost anyone, anywhere, in the world as we journey. Smartphones, laptops and tablets have taken us out into the great wide yonder of the cyberspace universe, where we can browse endless information and make contact with the rest of the planet. An incredible social media mash up. 

Amazing to think that we can do all this as we walk down Oxford Street, sit in Starbucks on Broadway or travel to Newcastle from Edinburgh on a high speed East Coast train.



Sergio, Kangaroo and Rabbit By The Light Of A Blue Moon - Makeshift Studios 2013



All of which impacts with the way we live our lives and work. Forces for good? I certainly hope so.

Let me take you back to July 2011, I was working on a story for the financial section of The Mail On Sunday - a UK national with a circulation of around 6 million.

The idea of social media and how we interconnect has always fascinated me and had me thinking that these clusters of 'connectedness' (for want of a better word - and please have teeth firmly in mouth before attempting to repeat) are like villages, or little towns or even giant cities.  Each with its own 'population' of followers.

Social media, of course, is a way by which people can stay in touch, excellent for those who live some distance apart from family and friends. Also brilliant for linking people with similar interests, pastimes, hobbies and/or resonating business interests.

Working on the 'social' media story I had discovered a US - based company who found celebrities with city-sized followings and paid them handsomely to advertise products on behalf of multi-nationals. This particular business was built around Twitter and celebrities were paid per tweet for advertising branded products to their fanbase.  But, and here's the trick, the celebs didn't even have to write the tweet!

How it worked was amazingly simple. The company Ad.ly (based in Beverley Hills) would engage a celebrity, say Snoop Dogg (3.6 million followers in 2011) or Kim Kardashian ( 8 million in 2011), pay him/her several thousand dollars to use his/her Twitter account and then write tweets on behalf of the brand.  These tweets would then be sent to the celebrity's followers to endorse products. The tweets were written by the company's copywriters but styled to fit the persona of the selected celebrity. 

All the celebs had to do was sit in their backyard sunbathing and drinking cocktails while their fame sold the goods of selected brands, and pushed large sums of cash into their bank accounts - happy days.

In truth, this was really no different to a celebrity appearing in a television commercial, or ad campaign, but people seemed genuinely shocked that 'social' media was being used to exploit the general public in this way.

Maybe we all just thought, naively as it turns out, that this type of social media (in this case Twitter) would only be used for the betterment and interconnectedness of humankind, and not incorporated into a capital generating innovation...yeah right...

What next? Fictitious superheroes specially designed and trendy enough to attract millions of followers.  These comic book characters could then tweet thinly veiled brand endorsements to their fanbase. 

Actually, this would be an economically more viable solution for selling products to large numbers of people.  No self-obsessed celebs to cater for or pay exorbitant amounts of cash for sitting in the sunshine.  Just Superblondehairguy or girl, drawn to the ideals of perfection (never aging - Superman's hair is still blue-black, no grey - nor ever needing any plastics, botox or flamethrower treatments to recapture that youthful sparkle).  Maybe, SBHG/G, could even release a music single, album...to generate interest...  

I like the cyberpunk angle to this.   Mmmmm....anyone got Richard Branson's phone number?  Anyone?


(Anyone, wishing a copy of the original Mail On Sunday article please let me know and I will send you the link - you will see my email address at the top right hand corner of this page.)