Stop GDP with Martin Whitlock
Upstream
Upstream
4.9 • 2.1K Ratings
🗓️ 16 May 2016
⏱️ 58 minutes
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Summary
In this interview we spoke with Martin Whitlock, co-founder of Stop-GDP.org and author of Human Politics : Human Value: Towards a society for people as we really are (not as governments, economists and big corporations would like us to be). We spoke about how GDP is a scam and how the money economy is a terrible idea.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, Hello and today I'm in conversation with Martin Whitlock, a writer and |
| 0:28.3 | and campaigner, the co-founder of Stop GDP and the author of Human Politics, Human Value, |
| 0:37.6 | towards a society for people as we really are, |
| 0:41.1 | not as governments, economists, and big corporations would like us to be. Welcome Martin. |
| 0:57.0 | Thank you very much, Ella. |
| 0:59.0 | Martin, would you start by just telling us a little bit more about yourself and how you came to do the work that you do? |
| 1:05.0 | Well about myself I've done all sorts of things in education in business and also in a lot of building work actually as it happens which is sort of relevant |
| 1:16.1 | to this because building work is all about solving problems and I see economics as |
| 1:19.2 | fundamentally about solving problems politics also. So I came to this, I think, because I was so |
| 1:25.8 | frustrated. And actually I think I have been, since I was really quite young, I |
| 1:30.8 | think even as a teenager growing up, thought this is just crazy why is the world |
| 1:35.3 | Organized in such a way that it's so hard to do the sort of things that you want to do to live the sort of life which you could easily lead if things were organised better. |
| 1:44.6 | Why is that made so difficult for us? |
| 1:46.1 | Why are we so focused on creating complexity in our lives when actually people's wants are comparatively straightforward, comparatively simple in terms |
| 1:56.1 | of their relationships, in terms of their families, in terms of their communities, in terms of the things |
| 2:00.7 | they need to consume or want to consume, is to consume. It's not that complicated and we have made it unbelievably complicated and that was clear to me from an early |
| 2:08.0 | age and I felt most of my life in the spaces between all the other things I was doing puzzling about that. |
| 2:14.0 | And finally I decided, I forgot, I forgot to get something done on paper about this. |
| 2:18.0 | It's interesting that you mentioned that you're a builder, because I have a friend who was interested in economics and politics and actually gave that up to become a |
| 2:27.1 | carpenter because they said I can actually see the progress of the work that I'm doing and actually |
| 2:31.6 | start and stop. |
| 2:32.6 | So have you found now that you've kind of entered into this work that you're able to solve |
... |
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