From:	Self (peterbi@global.co.za)
To:	Ralph Begleiter (globalview@cnn.com)
Subject:	The End Of Work
Reply-to:	peterbi@global.co.za
Date:	Mon, 10 Feb 1997 05:01:06 +2:00

Good morning Global View

I was enthralled by your interview with Jeremy Rifkin. Thank you for a truly remarkable programme.

I was encouraged to hear someone renowned saying exactly what I have been saying, although I am more inclined to lay blame than he appeared to be.

We are standing on the precipice of a new world revolution, which will pit the populace against Big Business. It appears that Big Business is attempting, short-sightedly, to corner the market on the world's financial resources.

Countries such as South Africa are already feeling the effects of dropping workforces and rising crime rates.

Much of the blame for this state of affairs can be laid, directly, at the door of the “unholy alliance” between Big Business and politicians “on the take.” Donations to political campaigns do not, prima facie, constitute bribery, but are they very different when the outcome is that the “lower classes” find their standards of living deteriorating even further.

Mr Rifkin raises the issue, in my view correctly, of whether the political systems of the world have the courage to anticipate where this spiral is headed.

My question to him, to CNN, and to other viewers worldwide is : Where is this vicious cycle headed, and will the authorities do something about stopping it before another global war becomes necessary to keep the “fires of industry” burning?

Are we not headed, headlong, in a direction where a war becomes the more likely as the spending power of the populace becomes so depleted that the fall-off in economic activity will close down more and more businesses, until we are left with a scenario where the only choice left to the vast underprivileged masses of the world will be to take what they need by force, from those who currently “have”?

For me the saddest item of this sorry saga is that the educational institutions have, for two to four decades, fallen more and more into the trap of producing the corps required by Big Business, rather than concentrate on teaching students the humanities, exactly the value base we will need to extricate ourselves from the worldwide phenomenon which Mr Rifkin described.

One way which I contend that the trend of “flow of wealth” can be stopped, possibly reversed, would be if the governments of the world sealed a pact whereby the businesses (and their shareholders) which have systematically depleted the planet's natural resources, in the search for maximum profits, were made to return the value of those resources to the nations from which they were taken.

This may stand the present capitalist society on its head, but something drastic is required if we are to avoid a global holocaust, in my opinion.

I would like to hear the views of other ordinary folk, like me, from around the world.

Sincerely.

Peter Ben-Israel
Johannesburg
South Africa

The above email was sent to Mr Begleiter and quoted from in his follow-up programme.

The current (as I write) fall in prices on Stock Exchanges the world over, is probably the best news I've had in ages!

I believe that, only, a total collapse of the present financial systems will forestall the “need” for Big Business to push the planet to a global war. We are in desperate need of a revolution; the only way to keep it “peaceful” is if ‘market forces’ are perceived to have been the underlying cause.

Sound like “Half Asleep In Frog Pajamas” (Tom Robbins)?

Perhaps, but that isn't where I got my ideas from. My C V – Resumé makes it quite clear that I have been very involved in the workings of stock and share markets, over a number of years. It was this experience that left me disillusioned . . . . more correctly stated: it left me with an unshaken belief that Stock Exchanges are “the illusion”!

Their prices, supposedly the ‘value’ placed upon a share, are equally illusory. They are NOT underpinned by ACTUAL, i.e. ‘real’, money. The prices are an expectation (usually set and driven by the big players) of, quite simply, what the market will bear.

They are RIGGED, often!

Simply put: Stock Exchanges are a mechanism by which the “haves” with large financial resources (usually assurance/insurance companies, banking groups, pension/provident funds, etc.) manage the transfer of “wealth” FROM THE LITTLE PLAYER (the man-in-the-street dabbling in the market with his scant resources) into their own pockets!

Why?

Because the big league players can afford to ride out any crash in the market; purely and simply because of the weight of money in their possession. They just move into another area of “investment”, such as fixed property, money market instruments, etc. Their latest creation, “futures” and “options” are a form of gambling, because they got bored waiting for the market “cycles” to take place.

Think about it.

By the very nature of any Stock Exchange, every deal needs to have a “winner” and a “loser”!

Striking a deal on an Exchange has not added any value to the overall “wealth” of the planet, has it?

I invite you to guess who, over a period of years, the only “losers” are?

John and Mary Citizen, is who . . . .