Bernard Lietaer - The Future of Money - Full Book

'From the standpoint of` the market, the ever-swelling ranks of the [unemployed] face a fate worse than colonialism: economic irrelevance ... We don't need what they have and they can't buy what we sell.' This is how Nathan Gardels, editor of New Perspectives Quarterly, summarises the linkage between unemployment and economic exclusion. It translates into the increasing realisation by those concerned that there is no room for them in this society that they don't belong here.

When this happens to an individual, he or she usually becomes depressed (is it a coincidence that the many industrialised countries have declared depression a national epidemic?). When it happens to a group (as is typically the case for the younger generation where unemployment is always higher than in the population at large), it is normally expressed as anger. Such anger accumulates until it explodes into a violent rage lashing out randomly at society at large, or at some specific scapegoats.

Violence Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527) thought that: 'It is necessary and useful that the laws of a republic give to the masses a legal way to express their anger. When this isn't available, extraordinary outlets manifest. And there is no doubt that such events produce more harm than anything else.’ Indeed, violence is usually the expression of frustration and impotence.

In a suburb of Lyon, France, a police car runs over and kills a teenager. Such a regrettable accident would normally make the news only in the local papers. But this was Vaux-en-Velain, a depressed working-class neighbour- hood where unemployment among the young is particularly high. Hundreds of young people took to the streets, clashed first with the police, then with the CRS (the special