Letters from Vienna #131
Oligarchy and the Fifteen Minute City
There is a global oligarch problem
“In America, we have an oligarch problem, and it’s much bigger than the oligarch problem that Putin faced when he became president in 2000,” Mike Whitney writes[1]. “The entire West is now in the grips of billionaire elites who have a stranglehold on the media, the political establishment and all of our important institutions. In recent years we have seen these oligarchs expand their influence from markets, finance and trade to politics, social issues and even public health. The impact this group has had on these other areas of interest, has been nothing short of breathtaking. Establishment elites and their media not only stood foursquare behind Russiagate, the Trump impeachment, the BLM riots and the January 6 fiasco, they also had a hand in the Covid hysteria and the host of repressive measures that were imposed in the name of public health. What we’d like to know is to what extent this group is actively involved in the shaping of other events that are aimed at transforming the American Republic into a more authoritarian system?”
“In other words, are the mandated injections, the forced lockdowns, the aggressive government-implemented censorship, the dubious presidential elections, the burning of food processing plants, the derailing of trains, the attacks on the power grid, the BLM-Antifa riots, the drag queen shows for schoolchildren, the maniacal focus on gender issues, and glitzy public show-trials merely random incidents occurring spontaneously during a period of great social change or are they, in fact, evidence of a stealthily orchestrated operation conducted by agents of the state acting on behalf of their elite benefactors? We already know that the FBI, the DOJ and the intel agencies were directly involved in Russiagate –which was a covert attack on the sitting president of the United States. So, the question is not “whether” these agencies are actively involved in other acts of treachery but, rather, to what extent these acts impact the lives of ordinary Americans, our politics and the country?”
One of those Whitney quotes is the brilliant Kurt Nimmo:
“Klaus Schwab, a student of the war criminal Henry Kissinger, is a mentor to power-hungry and narcissistic sociopaths. The WEF “Great Reset” is designed to turn the world into an impoverished social concentration camp, where destitute serfs “own nothing” and this, in true Orwellian fashion, will set them free.”
“It’s not mentioned that the Schwab control freak system will shut down any opposition to unelected WEF apparatchiks. If you rent everything—your home, car, food, computer, etc.—that rental “privilege” can be taken away.”
“I challenge people to investigate the WEF’s Global Redesign Initiative. According to the Transnational Institute in the Netherlands, this “initiative” proposes a transition away from intergovernmental decision-making towards a system of multi-stakeholder governance.”
“In other words, by stealth, they are marginalising a recognised model where we vote in governments who then negotiate treaties which are then ratified by our elected representatives with a model where a self-selected group of ‘stakeholders’ make decisions on our behalf. (Emphasis added.)”
“In other words, large transnational corporate “stakeholders” will be deciding where you live, what you eat (insects and weeds) how you reproduce (or not reproduce; children produce carbon emissions), and what you can “rent” from them, or not be allowed to rent if you complain about an unelected globalist “economic” cartel driving humanity into serfdom, worldwide poverty, and depopulation.”[2]
The 15-Minute City
On the face of it the 15-Minute City seems like an interesting notion: “Everyone living in a city should have access to essential urban services within a 15-minute walk or bike” we are told. “The 15-Minute City Project is designed to help access-focused urban transformations be what we need them to be: ambitious, inclusive, measurable and effectively implemented.”[3]
The WEF expands on the concept: “Urbanism trends come and go but the “15-minute city” framing of walkable, mixed-use urban development is a lot more than a fad. The historical roots of the 15-minute city are connected deeply with the current moment—one we will be living with for a long time to come. As climate change and global conflict cause shocks and stresses at faster intervals and increasing severity, the 15-minute city will become even more critical.”[4]
And the 15-Minute City has able propagandists too, such as Oliver Wainwright: “There’s an international socialist conspiracy afoot,” he recently wrote[5] “and it wants to make it easier to walk to the shops. Fringe forces of the far left are plotting to take away our freedom to be stuck in traffic jams, to crawl along clogged ring roads and trawl the streets in search of a parking spot. The liberty of the rush-hour commute, the sanctity of the out-of-town shopping centre and the righteousness of the suburban food desert is under threat as never before. The name of this chilling global movement? The “15-minute city”.”
Yet, the brutal lockdowns and the even more brutal and sometimes bloody oppression of all dissent has shown us the true face of the oligarchs. As I’ve written before: we live in an oligarchy and not a “capitalist system” (see letter #85). Above all else: researchers such as Rosa Koire[6] and commentators such as “Redacted” have made us acutely aware of the dangers involved.[7] Under the guise of benign “ecologically friendly” policies, mankind is set to be enslaved in Auschwitz style fashion.
Ironically there have been many ideas emphasizing local empowerment, perhaps the most important of which was the “Woergl experiment”:
“In order to stabilize the new Austrian currency – the Schilling – the Federal Government reduced the amount of Schillings in circulation, thereby reducing consumption even further. In Woergl as well as other cities, a number of publicly financed projects had to be stopped.”
“When (railroad engineer Michael) Unterguggenberger decided to introduce his shrewd idea, he also convinced the local council to go ahead. After all: what was there to lose? For years, Unterguggenberger had pondered over the question of how to get money circulating again without borrowing it from the banks and without putting an additional burden on the citizens of his town.”
“His idea: the town would have to issue its own “money”, to pay for needed construction works and for workers to be able to buy the goods they need. Unterguggenberger did not call the documents he would use “money”, he called them “Arbeitsbestätigungsscheine” – work certificates to which specific values were assigned.”
“However, that alone would not guarantee that the “certificates” would circulate. So, he added an intriguing feature: everyone who wanted to keep a certificate past the end of any given month had to place a stamp on the certificate that could be bought for 1% of the certificate’s value. So, in other words: to maintain the value of a 5 Schilling certificate, one would have to place a 5 Groschen stamp on it every month. Suddenly, money had become like iron: it rusted.”[8]
Also of interest, though by no means as significant, are the ideas of Rob Hopkins.[9]
The important point is to realize that not merely out liberties, our very existence is threatened by the kleptocratic and psychopathic oligarchs, and that it’s time to localize and decentralize in order to survive.
What is needed is new thinking, borrowing ideas from the past, such as those of Tolstoy (see letter #128) or Unterguggenberger, but applied in a fresh fashion. There is little point lamenting the crimes of the oligarchs, such as the Genocide by Jab, the industrial scale kidnapping, abuse and murder of children or the creation of wars for profit, such as in the Ukraine. What are needed are intelligent, practical and durable solutions.
[1] https://www.unz.com/mwhitney/the-plan-to-wreck-america/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
[3] https://www.15minutecity.com/about
[4] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/03/15-minute-city-stickiness/
[5] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/feb/16/15-minute-city-planning-theory-conspiracists
[8] https://www.austrianinformation.org/summer-2012/2012/8/21/austrian-places-the-woergl-experiment.html
The 15' Gulag. Or do you prefer Ghetto 15? You won't be able to spend your CBDC outside your 'Revier'.
Unterguggenberger's ideas were are articulated in a truly decentralized, community-centered way by EF Schumacher, and are still practiced by the Schumacher Center of Great Barrington, Mass.
https://centerforneweconomics.org/about/