Gli Hackers e il futuro della moneta: Intervista con Brett Scott di Obsolete Capitalism (traduzione Ettore Lancellotti)

Gli Hackers e il futuro della moneta. 

Intervista con Brett Scott

di Obsolete Capitalism

Traduzione di Ettore Lancellotti

OC: Cominciamo dal concetto di ‘democrazia integrale”. In campo economico possiamo definire la filosofia dell’hacker come un tentativo di ‘democrazia totale’? Considerando che oggi i soldi non appartengono più alle persone ma alle banche nazionali, ossia al potere politico, le incursioni dell’hacker nei sistemi finanziari possono rappresentare un nuovo trasferimento di potere in favore degli attivisti ovvero della gente?

BS: La filosofia dell’hacker è soprattutto uno sguardo su una complessa rete di strutture di potere connesse tra loro. E’ uno sguardo che si prende la libertà di esplorare questi sistemi, di scombinare i loro collegamenti e poi tentare di ripristinarli. Tende ad avere uno sguardo che conferisce potere perché, primo, cerca di smembrare questa rete in parti più piccole e comprensibili e, secondo, di promuovere un atteggiamento ribelle e creativo pronto a giocare con quelle parti. In tal senso può diventare qualcosa di democratico, anche se non credo che da solo abbia il potere di cambiare l’intero sistema finanziario. Per quanto riguarda i soldi, le banche sono le maggiori creatrici di valuta, però sì, lo spirito dell’hacker incoraggia la gente a sporcarsi le mani e sperimentare con nuove forme di valuta.

OC: ‘Hacking the future of money’ è il sottotitolo del tuo libro. Cominciando da cosa sta già succedendo, quale sarà il futuro della moneta, e quali saranno i principali obbiettivi o azioni del mondo degli hacker?

BS: Alcune persone credono che il sottotitolo si riferisca solo alle nuove forme di moneta, ma ‘il futuro della moneta’ si riferisce anche ai mutamenti negli strumenti finanziari, e nei modi in cui utilizziamo la normale valuta. Non pretendo di offrire una singola visione di cosa ne sarà del futuro, però vedo che le persone stanno diventando meno diffidenti verso la sperimentazione di nuove alternative. Però non penso ad un obiettivo conclusivo, come se lo scopo fosse raggiungere un sistema finanziario definitivo che sostituisca quello attuale. Il punto è essere capaci di adattarsi, cambiare e costruire qualcosa di diverso e al contempo preservare la giustizia sociale e la stabilità ecologica. 

OC: Crede davvero che l’alterazione nella moneta sia possibile nella filosofia dell’hacker? E se si, come potremmo definire il concetto di ‘alterazione della moneta’?

BS: Sì, credo che la tecnologia abbia aperto nuove frontiere per forme di decentralizzazione che prima non esistevano, e questo presenta opportunità interessanti. Tuttavia, solo perché qualcosa è aperto e decentralizzato, non vuole dire che sia migliore e libero da interessi politici (qui è dove l’illusione utopico-libertaria sbaglia), quindi ogni sviluppo tecnologico va accompagnato da un’analisi politica su chi ne beneficia e chi ne rimane svantaggiato, e dal come affrontare questa questione.

OC: Tanto è stato detto su Bitcoin (il tema del giorno). Alcuni interventi sono stati molto criticati, come quello di Beat Weber, il quale sosteneva che Bitcoin sia la moneta perfetta del turbo-capitalismo poiché rappresenta la moneta globale di un ipotetico mondo libero dal concetto di nazione, come prescrive il neo-liberismo. Cosa ne pensa di Bitcoin? E la sua valutazione è parzialmente cambiata dopo aver ascoltato gli svantaggi e vantaggi discussi dai partecipanti al dibattito di MoneyLab?

BS: Ho sempre pensato che Bitcoin fosse interessante per come ha aperto la mente delle persone sulla possibilità di creare valuta di scambio. Invece, se questa valuta di scambio sia una cosa positiva o negativa è una questione diversa. Trovo alcuni elementi dello spirito di Bitcoin abbastanza discutibili, ma allo stesso tempo non mi piace essere una di quelle persone che si chiudono di fronte ad un’innovazione solo perché attrae anche libertari di destra. Conservo un interesse attivo nel modo in cui si può prendere la logica di Bitcoin, modificarla, e crearne una versione nuova e più interessante.

OC: MoneyLab, il simposio organizzato dall’INC, è appena finito: quali novità, temi o interventi la hanno impressionata di più qui ad Amsterdam? Possiamo cominciare a sperare in un mondo o in un futuro senza moneta?

BS: Amo l’intreccio di arte, tecnologia, economia e filosofia, e MoneyLab è stato il primo simposio dove ho visto una miscela coerente di questi elementi. Per quanto riguarda un futuro senza moneta, non sono sicuro. Non assumo dogmaticamente che un mondo senza moneta sia in qualche modo migliore di uno con. Tutti i sistemi hanno al loro interno dei compromessi, dunque sono interessato a continuare ad esplorarli e studiarli meglio.

Ps+NB: From Brett's Suitpossum blog (Free Download - Go for it!)

My 2013 book - the Heretic's Guide to Global Finance: Hacking the Future of Money- has found its way onto Aaaaarg.org, and also onto a Belgian activist's dropbox, where it is easily downloadable (she was kind enough to send me an email saying that she was "sad to know that it is not being distributed under an open license, since it would benefit many people who cannot afford to buy it").

I'm not against pirating, provided it's going to help humanity, and I hope my book can do that in some small way. I can't speak for my publishers Pluto Press, but they are swashbucklers who publish the likes of Chomsky, so I'm sure they're not surprised. Besides, the book is about HACKING THE GLOBAL FINANCIAL SECTOR! so screw it, let's let it circulate globally! For those who don't know, it's endorsed by Cambridge economics professor Ha-Joon Chang and Bill McKibben of 350.org and has received some great reviews (check out GoodReads reviews here and Amazon reviews here). You can see details, endorsements and reviews on this page.

Brett Scott's Interview + Applying the Hacker Ethic to the Financial System @ Moneylab (21March2014)

MoneyLab - Brett Scott - Applying the Hacker Ethic to the Financial System from network cultures on Vimeo.

MoneyLab: Coining Alternatives Session 2: Dismantling Global Finance Brett Scott (UK): Applying the Hacker Ethic to the Financial System Conference Day 1 (21 March 2014) Our perception of high finance frequently bears a resemblance to our perception of high technology. We often view it as a black box that we interact with without really knowing how it works. This in turn disempowers ordinary people relative to financial professionals, disconnects us from the investment process, and contributes to a pervasive sense of alienation from the money we use every day. In this talk Brett Scott will sketch out why hacker philosophy can be a useful framework with which to approach the financial sector, and will share examples from his experience working both within the financial sector and with financial campaign groups.

>> Brett Scott (UK)

Brett Scott is the author of The Heretic’s Guide to Global Finance: Hacking the Future of Money. He has worked with groups like Move Your Money UK, ActionAid and the World Development Movement, and is setting up the London School of Financial Activism. He has written for publications such as The Guardian, The Ecologist, Wired Magazine and Aeon, and has appeared on the BBC, Arte TV and other media outlets. He is also a fellow of the Finance Innovation Lab.

Hacking the Future of Money: An Interview with Brett Scott

• Obsolete Capitalism: On integral democracy. With regard to the economy field can we define the hacker philosophy an attempt of "full democracy"? If we consider that today the issue of money no longer belongs to the people but to the power of central banks, that is to say the political power, does the action of the hackers in finance mean a new transfer of power to the activists and therefore to the people?

Brett Scott: Hacker philosophy is mostly just an outlook towards complex interconnected systems. It’s an outlook that takes pleasure in exploring such systems, messing around with their connections and attempting to rewire them. It tends to be an empowering outlook because it firstly seeks to break complex systems down into understandable parts, and secondly fosters a rebellious, creative attitude towards experimenting with those parts. In that sense it can have democratic implications, but I don’t claim that this alone would change the whole financial system. In terms of money, commercial banks are the major creators of money, but yes, the hacker ethic encourages people to engage in DIY experimentation with new forms of money.

• OC: "Hacking the future of money" is the subtitle of your book. Starting from what is already happening, what will the future of money and the main topics or the main actions of hacking be?

BC: Some people think the subtitle just refers to new forms of money, but ‘the future of money’ can also refer to changes to financial instruments, and how we use normal money. I don’t claim to offer a single vision of what that future will be, but I know that people are getting more confident in experimenting with alternatives. I don’t really think in terms of end-states of being, as if the point was to create some final financial system to replace the current system - the point is to be able to adapt and change and build diversity whilst fostering social justice and ecological stability.

• OC: Do you really believe that ”money alteration" will be possible through the hacker philosophy? And if so, what do you think “altering the currency” could mean ?

BC: As mentioned, hacker philosophy is just an outlook that lends itseld towards rebellious creativity. It’s not really a concrete methodology, so I don’t claim that one needs to adopt the mindset of a hacker to make interesting alterations to money. In terms of what alteration means, you can change the geographic  scale of money (e.g. local vs. global), the speed (e.g. fast vs. slow), the intended use (e.g. gift currencies), the way it is created (e.g. commodity money vs. credit money) and many other factors.

• OC: The global monetary system is moving towards a greater openness and a clear decentralization, being now a closed system only focused on the hierarchical logic of the market and finance. Is this a positive signal or is it the usual "libertarian-utopian” dream that will break on reality?

BC: I do think technology has opened up possibilities for forms of decentralisation that previously didn’t exist, and that presents interesting opportunities. Just because something is open and decentralised though, doesn’t make it positive and free of politics (that’s where the libertarian-utopian dream always goes wrong), so any technological changes need to be accompanied by political analysis of who benefits and who loses, and how to deal with that process.

• OC: Much has been talked about Bitcoin (the topic of the day). Some interventions have been very critical including that of Beat Weber, arguing that Bitcoin is the perfect currency of turbo-capitalism because it represents the global currency of a free-nation world as required by neoliberalism. What do you think of Bitcoin and has your judgment partially changed after having listened to the pros and cons of the participants in the debate @ Moneylab?

I’ve always found Bitcoin interesting for how it has opened up people’s awareness to the possibility of creating change. In terms of whether that change is positive or negative is a separate issue. I find elements of the philsophy behind Bitcoin pretty questionable, but I also don’t like to be one of those people that just closes myself down to an innovation because it also happens to attract right-wing libertarians. I retain an active interest in how one can take the Bitcoin concept, alter it and create new and more interesting versions of it.

• OC: Moneylab, the symposium organised  by Institute of Network Cultures, has just finished: which news, themes or interventions have impressed you most in Amsterdam? Can we start hoping in a "non-monetary" world or future?

I love the intersection between art-technology-economy-philosophy, and MoneyLab was the first symposium where I’ve seen a really coherent mix of those. In terms of a non-monetary future, I’m not sure. I don’t dogmatically assume that a non-monetary world would somehow be better than a monetary one - all systems have tradeoffs built into them, so I’m just interested in continuing to explore those and to learn more about them.

Brett Scott: Applying the Hacker Ethic to the Financial System (a short excerpt) @ MONEYLAB, Amsterdam, 21st March 2014

Brett Scott @ MONEYLAB Amsterdam 21st March 2014 from LETIZIA RUSTICHELLI on Vimeo.

Sincere thanks to Geert Lovink and his team @ INC/Amsterdam for the wonderful experience of MONEYLAB

Brett Scott: Riches beyond belief If you want to know what money is, don’t ask a banker. Take a leap of faith and start your own currency @ Aeon mag, 28 August 2013

Brett Scott: 
Riches beyond belief If you want to know what money is, don’t ask a banker. Take a leap of faith and start your own currency 
@ Aeon mag, 28 August 2013

"I don’t have much money. Then again, I couldn’t say exactly how much I do have. In the Co‑operative Bank’s IT system is a database entry that says I have £97 in electronic money. In my wallet I have three £10 notes, pieces of paper with pictures of the Queen on them, issued by the Bank of England, promising me £30. I have six pieces of metal, too — copper-nickel alloy and nickel-plated steel, to be exact — valued at 59 pence in total. So that’s £127.59.

My wallet also contains a £5 Brixton Pound note — a local currency found only in the south London neighbourhood where I live — which I got as change from a local bar called Kaff. On my mobile phone is a series of text messages telling me that I have B£39.61 on my online Brixton Pound account. This is electronic money stored in a database, sent to me by local residents to pay for copies of a book I wrote. If I open my computer, there is a programme called MultiBit that connects to a distributed computer file called the blockchain. It contains a record that says I have 3.8462 BTC — or bitcoins: I earned them selling the book to people in Israel, the USA, Sweden, the Netherlands, Switzerland and New Zealand via an exchange called BitPay.

That’s not all. I have a Totnes Pound, 20 South African rand, and a couple of hours saved up on a timebanking platform. It’s possible that I have other money, too — but that depends on what you mean by ‘money’. The authorities have their own view of what counts as legal tender, or ‘real’ money but, even so, the definition has been controversial since antiquity. One of the most interesting sections in the British Museum is a display of counterfeit coins — not ‘real’ according to the powers that be, but frequently real enough to the people who used them.

I, too, was once a counterfeit of sorts. A left-wing chancer with a background in anthropology, I immersed myself for two years in the financial sector, styling myself as whatever a derivatives broker is supposed to be. I wanted to uncover what exactly goes on in networks of power, to experience those dynamics first-hand, like a kind of gonzo journalist. For the most part, the work involved trying to peddle giant bets — known as swaps and options contracts — to various investors, banks and corporations. In the process of doing it, though, I stopped being a counterfeit and started becoming a real broker, internalising the cultural codes of high finance. I was thrown out in 2010, and ever since then I’ve been fascinated with developing other ways in which one might go about exploring, rewiring and playing with the financial system.

How can a piece of paper store 10 pounds of value? What are pounds anyway?

The trouble is, while my experiences in mainstream finance taught me a lot about what the industry does, they only gave me glimpses into the nature of the mysterious stuff it does it with. The financial system exists, above all, to mediate flows of money, not to question what money is. Investment banks create financial instruments that steer money from one place to another, with built-in sub-conduits to siphon it back — extractive devices used by investors. To draw an analogy with computer coding, we might say that financial instruments are analogous to ‘high-level’ programming languages such as Java or Ruby: they let you string commands together in order to perform certain actions. You want to get resources from A to B over time? Well, we can program a financial instrument to do that for you.

By contrast, money itself is more like a low-level programming language, very hard to see or to understand but closer to gritty reality. It’s like your computer’s machine code, interfacing with the hardware: even the experts take it for granted. You might need to explain to someone what a bond is, but nobody is ever ‘taught’ what money is. We just see it in action and learn how to use it. Indeed, the only way you ever tend to get a glimpse of it is in relief, by contrast with another programming language — or when you’re forced to build it again from scratch." (.....)

Read full Scott's article @ Aeon mag

Pic: Ruben Sprich.
Members of CHF 2,500 Monthly for Everyone open rolls of 5 cent coins in the vault of the old Schweizerische Volksbank. The committee dumped 8 million 5c coins in Basel's Federal Square to launch their campaign for all adults to receive an unconditional state income of CHF 2,500 a month

Open Source Finance: What would it look like? @ Open Data Institute, London, 11th October

Open Data Institute
65 Clifton St, Londra, Greater London EC2A 4JE, Regno Unito

Friday lunchtime lectures at the Open Data Institute.

You bring your lunch, we provide tea & coffee, an interesting talk, and enough time to get back to your desk.  

For our 11th October lecture... Open Source Finance: What would it look like?

The first of two lectures examining opening up financial data.

The financial sector is a notoriously closed and opaque system, with barriers to entry at many different levels. What elements, technologies and players are required to open it up, and what would the result look like?

Brett Scott, author of The Heretic's Guide to Global Finance: Hacking the Future of Money sketches out some ideas from the cutting edge of open source finance.

Twitter: #odifridays

Read more

BRETT SCOTT - THE HERETIC'S GUIDE TO GLOBAL FINANCE. HACKING THE FUTURE OF MONEY - PLUTO PRESS, 2013

Popular anger against the financial system has never been higher, yet the practical workings of the system remain opaque to many people. The Heretic's Guide to Global Finance aims to bridge the gap between protest slogans and practical proposals for reform.

Brett Scott is a campaigner and former derivatives broker who has a unique understanding of life inside and outside the financial sector. He builds up a framework for approaching it based on the three principles of 'Exploring', 'Jamming' and 'Building', offering a practical guide for those who wish to deepen their understanding of, and access to, the inner workings of financial institutions.

Scott covers aspects frequently overlooked, such as the cultural dimensions of the financial system, and considers major issues such as agricultural speculation, carbon markets and tar-sands financing. Crucially, it also showcases the growing alternative finance movement, showing how everyday people can get involved in building a new, democratic, financial system.

About The Author

Brett Scott is a campaigner and former broker who has worked on climate change, food security and ethical banking campaigns. He is a Fellow at the Finance Innovation Lab and has written for the Guardian, Ecologist, openDemocracy and New Internationalist. He blogs at http://suitpossum.blogspot.it

From the Introduction: