Just Buy. 

It is kind of ironic and even hypocritical to try to write about consumerism and planned obsolescence. It is really easy to criticize the system in which we are immersed in, however, to act according to your critical ideas is a whole other thing. We've been taught that the only way to achieve happiness is through consuming and through buying as much as we can. Even though it seems that some individuals are trying to change this mental paradigm in order to create a better society for the next generations, we are somehow really far from this. And this is because it is really complicated to eliminate on pillar of our system. We always end up falling in the same speech, we are supposed to resist and only buy what we need in order to stop feeding the system. But after leaving the room we immediately go out to the mall and buy things that in simple words are just a bunch of garbage with a nice design. How are we supposed to end this vicious cycle if consumerism is part of who we are as a society?
The Light Bulb Conspiracy is a 2010 documentary that illustrates how rotten the companies that control the global economy are. It shows how they design products in order to fail after a certain period of time. Through this method the can obtain more profit, while companies that create long-lasting products are condemned to fail under these big corporations. The movie shows how some objects as simple as light bulbs can elicit the origins and ideas behind this sick plan to dominate our pockets called planned obsolescence. Light Bulbs were created by the end of the XIX century, and during the beginning of the XX century companies began to produce them for commercial purposes. The interesting thing is that these first light bulbs had an average duration that goes over the light bulbs's duration we are using today. One can ask, how is this possible if there has been a lot of technological advances in the last 100 years? The answer is quite simple: Planned obsolescence and ambition.
The corporations that were producing these long-lasting light bubs found out that after a certain period of time their sales dropped. They reached the conclusion that the reason for this was the fact that consumers did not need more than one light bulb for many years, and they could keep on using the same one for decades. This served the purpose of supplying well-manufactured goods to the public, however, their most valued goal was not being accomplished. They needed money and needed it quickly and in big amounts. Their solution was to lower the quality of their artifacts and sell goods that had a determined life-span. Even though this seems like a plain and simple rob, people accepted it, and the first world-wide mafia was created.
Nowadays, planned obsolescence is not only common but it is the pattern and almost the rule. Even though many had tried to make it an obligation, laws that permit it had not been passed, showing some sort of hope for the future of our economy. The problem with planned obsolescence is that it creates a lot of problems, including social problems such as dependence, cultural problems like unlimited consumerism and economic inequalities, economic problems such as speculation and instability, and environmental problems like contamination and pollution. Why can the world see this? Are we blinded? The truth is that the world is lazy, and they, or we, do not care about anything important as long as we have our iPods and our Starbucks' coffee. The only thing we can hope for is that in the next decades people find out that apple's apple is not to be eaten, and that the boxes in our attics can make or roofs collapse over our heads. 

Image taken from the web page www.whyamericanssuck.blogspot.com

Dannoritzer, Cosima. "The Light Bulb Conspiracy." (2010). Arte France, Televisión Española, Televisió de Catalunya. Film

The Classical Scenario: The Fall of an Empire.

All throughout history, empires had fall and decline. Our books are filled with the stories of mighty kingdoms that seemed unstoppable and had characteristics that lead people to believe that those kingdoms and empires were created by God itself. However, the closer they got to their maximum development, the closer they were to their imminent fall. Examples include the Mesopotamian empire, the Chinese, the Greek, the Roman, the Egyptian, etc. And, If there is a fact that we can't ignore is that History repeats itself, and if we do not learn from it, we are condemned to repeat the same mistakes that our ancestors made. This rule is also applicable to today's world. Even though it does not seem like the world is divided among empires that constantly fight each other, there are some economical and political empires that are definitively clashing in order to gain control of resources and profit of the entire world. And in order to survive and struggle to obtain a better and fairer world, it is important for us to understand what the heck is happening. 

The idea that the system we are immersed in is close to its end its an idea that may seem a little bit incongruous. However, many individuals who have witnessed the mistakes and errors of this system are starting to question it. This questions all end up in the same kind of answers. Everything points to the conclusion that we need reforms. But before coming up with a possible solution, we need to understand the crisis itself, because understanding something means to be liberated from it.

Four Horsemen is a 2012 documentary that tries to depict the economical crisis that leads to the creation of social and cultural problems in the XXI century. The documentary assures that today's system is directly heading towards an imminent end. It provides evidence to support this claim such as the fact that the problem of the system is located at its core; it is a vicious structure. The system is centered in the banking system, meaning that every movement of the financial world is based on the movement of the banks. The reality is that the government has lost it's power, the ones that control our world are the ones who sit everyday behind a desk in the top of a building in Wall Street. The banking system has created a moral code that glorifies it, and therefore, not only economically but socially and culturally banks are the strongest empires that the world has seen since the beginning of the existence of the human race. Since 1971, the world's strongest economical structures, including the U.S (thanks to Nixon)  are part of a system called FIAT, which literally means "Let it be so." Speculation  is the central belief of the investments and transactions all around the world, and speculation create speculation bubbles, which lead to the constant increase of the gap between the rich and the poor. The world is fooled by the capitalist idea that everything is okay as long as we keep buying stuff, because having things implies being happy. More and more citizens seem to ignore the fact that 97% of the world's money is debt. This leads to inflation, increase in the price of mortgages, taxes, interests, devaluation, and the rise of the false belief that unregulated finances are the best way to find a way out of this chaos.

Even though that when money finally finds its way down to the bottom of the social pyramid it has lost its purchase power, the solution for this is not the redistribution of wealth. The system needs to crash in oreder to rise form its ashes. Only rich companies and enterprises have the right to delimit and come up with the governmental resolutions to be made, and this system is not a democratic one, it's a plurtocratic one. Once example that definitively proofs this idea is the 2008 bailout in the U.S. 

If the system fails, there are two possible outcomes. The first one is a total chaos, the end of an organized era and the beginning of Anarchy. Obviously, this is the last thing we want, to be forced to see who is the strongest person and who can survive this apocalyptic scenario. The second outcome is the understanding that change is the reason for a better tomorrow, that capitalism is not the ultimate truth, and that if something fails, then something better is coming around the corner. However, for that to happen, we first need to remember that we are humans and that we need each other in order to thrive. Unfortunately, we are really far away from that.    

Image taken from the web page foxbusiness.com

Ashcroft, Ross. "Four Horsemen." (2012). Motherlode. Film. 

Colombia's Monetary System: From Gold to the Dollar.  

The first thing I realized when I was trying to find out how does the money emission system in Colombia works is that the information is really hidden in the web. Not even the web site of the Banco de la República gives the entire information of how the system of monetary creation in Colombia works. According to this site, Colombia's monetary system has fluctuated along the eras. The system has changed according to the needs of the country. During the first years after the Colombian independence, Colombia managed to create an equivalence to the Spanish coin, and therefore it depended on the exchange value that the Spanish coin had at a determined time. The system continued for some more decades, changing the reference coin every time. The Colombian peso also used as reference the French franc and the British pound. Later, the peso used as reference the amount of gold that the Banco de la República had, in order to decrease the probability of inflation. This new coin was called the Peso de Oro (Golden Peso).

This system worked perfectly during the first decades of its usage. However, this system was not useful when it came to global economics. As the planet's economy changed depending on the international supply/demand system, Colombia was getting behind in this ambit. During that time the country  needed to protect the value of its major product: Coffee. Therefore, during the presidency of Pedro Nel Opina (1922-1926), the government hired some economic specialists to advice the country about what monetary system the country should adopt. The Kemmerer mission recommended the abandonment of the gold exchange system and the adoption of the dollar-peso exchange system. Colombia officially abandoned the gold exchange system in 1931 as the result of the proclamation of the 1638 decree. The most important recommendation of the Kemmerer mission was the creation of an organism that could managed the monetary mechanics in the country. The Banco de la República was officially created in 1923.

But the central bank of Colombia changed its policies according to the ages and the different monetary movements of the world. By adopting the dollar exchange rate, Colombia officially became a dependence of the economic dynamics of the U.S. In this way, Colombia only creates money when the economic growth of the country allows it. Partially, it slows the devaluation of the peso, but does not stops it. In this way, Colombia's central bank differs from the Federal Reserve of the U.S, because the creation of money is directly proportional to the economic growth of the country, rather than the reserve of it. However, Colombia's growth depends on the value of the dollar, therefore, they share some traits including the devaluation and the decrease of the acquisitive value. Colombia, therefore, is part of a system designed to fail. 

Image taken from the web site dinero.com

n.a. "Emisión de Dinero." Biblioteca Virtual Luis Ángel Arango. n.p. (2011). Web. <http://www.banrepcultural.org/blaavirtual/ayudadetareas/economia/econo83.htm> April 3, 2014. 

n.a. "Politica Monetaria." Banco de la República: Banco Central de Colombia. n.p. (2013). Web. <http://www.banrep.gov.co/es/politica-monetaria> April 3, 2014. 

Money: The Biggest Religion of Our Era. 

What is money and where does it comes from? These two questions seem easy to answer, but, do we really understand how money mechanics work? Zeitgeist Addemdum is a 2008 documentary that explains how the U.S creates and distributes money all around its territory. The ultimate truth that this documentary uncovers is that the whole monetary system is in crisis. Why? Because it creates money out of thin air. Out of thin air? Yes, U.S economic system is designed to create money out of very minimum reserves in order to "satisfy" the economic needs of its citizens. But this system only creates more and more problems, not only in the economic ambit but in the social and cultural sectors. When the government considers that there is a need for more money, it ask the Federal Reserve to create more of it. You may wonder, What do they need to have in order to create more money? Have some sort of equivalency of it in gold or some other material? Well, the answer is no. They only need to have a reserve of 10% of the total amount of money desired. Then, money is created.

But so far money is no more than a simple number in a computer screen. In fact, only 3% of all of the U.S is actual printed paper. The governments sends this money to a determined bank. So far, the government acquires a debt with the Federal Reserve that it promise to pay, not only entirely, but with interests. We'll get back to this topic. When the bank obtains this recently created money, that bank is able to lend tons and tons of money. Law allows banks to only keep 10% of their total capital and lend all of the rest. The problem of this is that banks take the money they actually have and use it as the 10% the need to keep in reserve. Therefore, every time someone borrows money from a bank, more of it is created out of thin air. Citizens do exactly the same as the government does. They promise to pay their debt entirely plus some interests. And they the move their money from one bank onto the next one and the cycle repeats. In the end money is nothing more than your debt, or someone's debt, or the bank's debt, or the government's debt. Money is debt. Every time more capital is created, the debt of the U.S government grows. The first and direct effect of this is inflation. This system is inflationary. As more money is created, the acquisitive power of it decreases. If you cannot buy the same amount of things with the same amount of money as time goes by, then depreciation happens.

But the real issue is the social dilemma created out of it. If there is only a certain amount of money in the U.S, how can interests be payed? Interests are the direct implication for citizens in this system. By increasing debt, this system is able to control the most important aspects of its citizens' lives. Individuals work for obtaining more money to pay their debts that continuously increase. This is a system of modern form of slavery. Our needs depend on whether we have the money, or ability to acquire more debt, in order to contribute to this incredible unfair system in which only a few ones receive all of the benefits from it. Poor individuals continue to get poorer and poorer as rich individuals get richer. We are no longer individuals, we are interests and money that moves around the world. This system is designed to eliminate all of our humanity, focusing on the better, faster, now. In the end, one day, we will realize that money does not really exists, that money can not be eaten or cultivated. That day, however, will be the brightest day for humanity.

Graph taken from the web page electromontis.net

Joseph, Peter. "Zeitgeist Addendum." (2008) Gentle Machine Productions. Film.