Economists from Belgium

"Europe is an economic giant, a political dwarf, and a military worm."

"The journey was a real triumph. To the Congolese, he almost seemed like an extraterrestrial apparition. The reception was very warm and soon Boudewijn was nicknamed "Bwana Kitoko", "beautiful young man". The young king had a very good feeling about his first Congo experience. Some say it was the first time he laughed in public."

"I think King Baudouin was not dissatisfied with the disappearance of the man who broke off the 80-year-old relations between Belgium and Congo."

"The Belgian government's apologies to Lumumba's family are beside the point. According to the current foreign minister, Louis Michel, the then government should have insisted on a fair trial for Lumumba. But there was no government in Congo then, only chaos. The army mutinied through the provinces, Belgian troops were no longer there, only United Nations soldiers. They should have performed."

"During the Cold War, a division arose between Western and Communist countries. The countries that had just become independent after colonial times had to be kept on friendly terms. That is why Belgium offered development aid to those countries. The government also supported the work of the missionaries who were active in Congo, Rwanda and Burundi, among others."

"Governments of developing countries sometimes proposed projects that did not directly benefit the population, but did benefit the government; the so-called 'white elephants'. For example, they wanted to build highways and build large buildings, while we thought it was better to focus on good education."

"It is difficult to stop aid for human rights violations without the population suffering. That is why we continued to offer help through reliable NGOs. Preference was given to Belgian NGOs, because the domestic NGOs were often under the influence of the Congolese government. The importance of human rights has only increased, partly due to the introduction of the International Criminal Court, which tackles violations of human rights."

"The population of the African continent is expected to grow from 1 to 4 billion people in the next 100 years. This will cause a huge influx of refugees. When you are poor and get older, you need many children to support yourself. The best means of contraception is an increase in prosperity. If we invest enough in Africa now, we can slow down population growth and Africans don't have to come here to survive. Thus charity is also in one's own interest."

"China is operating in Congo in a brutal way that smacks of slavery. Congolese work in mines for very low wages. China is not concerned with sustainability and often commits a predatory economy. The country also does not respect human rights. Still, the developing country's government is letting itself be wrapped up, because the Chinese don't make moral demands like the West does. China works with a closed stock exchange in Congo. For example, they build 20 schools in exchange for being able to operate 10 copper mines for 1 year. But that is often peasant deception: the value of the school buildings is sometimes only 10% of the value of the extracted raw materials."

"If there is one well-established truth in political economy, it is this:"

"There are two ways of considering society. According to some, the development of human associations is not subject to providential, unchangeable laws. Rather, these associations, having originally been organized in a purely artificial manner by primeval legislators, can later be modified or remade by other legislators, in step with the progress of social science. In this system the government plays a preeminent role, because it is upon it, the custodian of the principle of authority, that the daily task of modifying and remaking society devolves. According to others, on the contrary, society is a purely natural fact. Like the earth on which it stands, society moves in accordance with general, preexisting laws. In this system, there is no such thing, strictly speaking, as social science; there is only economic science, which studies the natural organism of society and shows how this organism functions."

"Man experiences a multitude of needs, on whose satisfaction his happiness depends, and whose non-satisfaction entails suffering. Alone and isolated, he could only provide in an incomplete, insufficient manner for these incessant needs. The instinct of sociability brings him together with similar persons, and drives him into communication with them. Therefore, impelled by the self-interest of the individuals thus brought together, a certain division of labor is established, necessarily followed by exchanges. In brief, we see an organization emerge, by means of which man can more completely satisfy his needs than he could living in isolation. This natural organization is called society. The object of society is therefore the most complete satisfaction of man's needs. The division of labor and exchange are the means by which this is accomplished."

"Everywhere, men resign themselves to the most extreme sacrifices rather than do without government and hence security, without realizing that in so doing, they misjudge their alternatives."

"Suppose that a man found his person and his means of survival incessantly menaced […]Even though this man might be asked to surrender a very considerable portion of his time and of his labor to someone who takes it upon himself to guarantee the peaceful possession of his person and his goods, wouldn't it be to his advantage to conclude this bargain?Still, it would obviously be no less in his self-interest to procure his security at the lowest price possible."

"In all cases, for all commodities that serve to provide for the tangible or intangible needs of the consumer, it is in the consumer's best interest that labor and trade remain free, because the freedom of labor and of trade have as their necessary and permanent result the maximum reduction of price."

"The interests of the consumer of any commodity whatsoever should always prevail over the interests of the producer."

"The production of security should, in the interests of the consumers of this intangible commodity, remain subject to the law of free competition. … [N]o government should have the right to prevent another government from going into competition with it, or to require consumers of security to come exclusively to it for this commodity."

"The production of security should, in the interests of the consumers of this intangible commodity, remain subject to the law of free competition."

"No government should have the right to prevent another government from going into competition with it, or to require consumers of security to come exclusively to it for this commodity."

"But why should there be an exception relative to security? What special reason is there that the production of security cannot be relegated to free competition? Why should it be subjected to a different principle and organized according to a different system?"

"It offends reason to believe that a well-established natural law can admit of exceptions. A natural law must hold everywhere and always, or be invalid. I cannot believe, for example, that the universal law of gravitation, which governs the physical world, is ever suspended in any instance or at any point of the universe. Now I consider economic laws comparable to natural laws, and I have just as much faith in the principle of the division of labor as I have in the universal law of gravitation. I believe that while these principles can be disturbed, they admit of no exceptions."

"In the entire world, there is not a single establishment of the security industry that is not based on monopoly or on communism. […] Political economy has disapproved equally of monopoly and communism in the various branches of human activity, wherever it has found them. Is it not then strange and unreasonable that it accepts them in the security industry?"

"If the roused and insurgent consumers secure the means of production of the salt industry, in all probability they will confiscate this industry for their own profit, and their first thought will be, not to relegate it to free competition, but rather to exploit it, in common, for their own account. They will then name a director or a directive committee to operate the saltworks, to whom they will allocate the funds necessary to defray the costs of salt production. Then, since the experience of the past will have made them suspicious and distrustful, since they will be afraid that the director named by them will seize production for his own benefit, and simply reconstitute by open or hidden means the old monopoly for his own profit, they will elect delegates, representatives entrusted with appropriating the funds necessary for production, with watching over their use, and with making sure that the salt produced is equally distributed to those entitled to it. The production of salt will be organized in this manner.This form of the organization of production has been named communism.When this organization is applied to a single commodity, the communism is said to be partial.When it is applied to all commodities, the communism is said to be complete.But whether communism is partial or complete, political economy is no more tolerant of it than it is of monopoly, of which it is merely an extension."

"Whether communism is partial or complete, political economy is no more tolerant of it than it is of monopoly, of which it is merely an extension."

"Everywhere, when societies originate, we see the strongest, most warlike races seizing the exclusive government of the society. Everywhere we see these races seizing a monopoly on security within certain more or less extensive boundaries, depending on their number and strength.And, this monopoly being, by its very nature, extraordinarily profitable, everywhere we see the races invested with the monopoly on security devoting themselves to bitter struggles, in order to add to the extent of their market, the number of their forced consumers, and hence the amount of their gains.War has been the necessary and inevitable consequence of the establishment of a monopoly on security.Another inevitable consequence has been that this monopoly has engendered all other monopolies."

"Under the rule of free competition, war between the producers of security entirely loses its justification. Why would they make war? To conquer consumers? But the consumers would not allow themselves to be conquered. They would be careful not to allow themselves to be protected by men who would unscrupulously attack the persons and property of their rivals. If some audacious conqueror tried to become dictator, they would immediately call to their aid all the free consumers menaced by this aggression, and they would treat him as he deserved. Just as war is the natural consequence of monopoly, peace is the natural consequence of liberty."

"Either communistic production is superior to free production, or it is not.If it is, then it must be for all things, not just for security.If not, progress requires that it be replaced by free production.Complete communism or complete liberty: that is the alternative!"

"If one takes the thought into one's head that the leaders of the people do not receive their inspirations directly from providence itself, that they obey purely human impulses, the prestige that surrounds them will disappear. One will irreverently resist their sovereign decisions, as one resists anything man-made whose utility has not been clearly demonstrated."

"Because one fine day they took it into their heads to question and to reason, and in questioning, in reasoning, they discovered that their governors governed them no better than they, simpl[e] mortals out of communication with Providence, could have done themselves.It was free inquiry that demonetized the fiction of divine right, to the point where the subjects of monarchs or of aristocracies based on divine right obey them only insofar as they think it in their own self-interest to obey them."

"The moral foundation of authority is neither as solid nor as wide, under a regime of monopoly or of communism, as it could be under a regime of liberty."

"The moral authority of governors rests, in reality, on the self-interest of the governed. The latter having a natural tendency to resist anything harmful to their self-interest, unacknowledged authority would continually require the help of physical force."

"This option the consumer retains of being able to buy security wherever he pleases brings about a constant emulation among all the producers, each producer striving to maintain or augment his clientele with the attraction of cheapness or of faster, more complete and better justice.If, on the contrary, the consumer is not free to buy security wherever he pleases, you forthwith see open up a large profession dedicated to arbitrariness and bad management. Justice becomes slow and costly, the police vexatious, individual liberty is no longer respected, the price of security is abusively inflated and inequitably apportioned, according to the power and influence of this or that class of consumers. The protectors engage in bitter struggles to wrest customers from one another. In a word, all the abuses inherent in monopoly or in communism crop up."

"A careful examination of the facts will decide the problem of government more and more in favor of liberty, just as it does all other economic problems. We are convinced, so far as we are concerned, that one day societies will be established to agitate for the freedom of government, as they have already been established on behalf of the freedom of commerce.And we do not hesitate to add that after this reform has been achieved, and all artificial obstacles to the free action of the natural laws that govern the economic world have disappeared, the situation of the various members of society will become the best possible."

"M. de Molinari had a very true and penetrating perception of events."

"Only his early death had prevented Frédéric Bastiat from writing a treatise on “social harmonies” — as a follow-up work on his Economic Harmonies (1850). But his follower Gustave de Molinari published a great number of monographs dealing with virtually all of the contemporary social and political problems of France, as well as with fundamental problems of social interpretation and with the sociology of religion. His writings had a decisive impact on one of the greatest champions of the new marginal-utility approach. The Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto was a disciple of Léon Walras and a great admirer of Gustave de Molinari. Right from his first systematic exposition of economic science in Cours d'Economie Politique (1896), Pareto applied Walrasian techniques of analysis to Molinarian themes. He applied marginal-utility theory and the theory of general equilibrium to explain spoliation, aristocracy and the circulation of elites, economic interests and class struggle, and the relationship between doctrines and social science."

"The most "extreme" and consistent, as well as the longest-lived and most prolific of the French laissez-faire economists was the Belgian-born Gustave de Molinari (1819–1912), who edited the Journal des Economistes for several decades."

"The initial article of the young Molinari, here translated for the first time as "The Production of Security," was the first presentation anywhere in human history of what is now called "anarcho-capitalism" or "free market anarchism." Molinari did not use the terminology, and probably would have balked at the name. In contrast to all previous individualistic and near-anarchistic thinkers, such as La Boétie, Hodgskin or the young Fichte, Molinari did not base the brunt of his argument on a moral opposition to the State. While an ardent individualist, Molinari grounded his argument on free-market, laissez-faire economics, and proceeded logically to ask the question: If the free market can and should supply all other goods and services, why not also the services of protection?"

"The dean of the laissez-faire French economists in the last decades of the nineteenth century and virtually until his death in 1911 was the Belgian-born Gustave de Molinari. Molinari is most famous for his doctrine of “competing governments” — he has been called “the first anarcho-capitalist” — and while he allegedly modified his position in later years, there is no doubt that he was always an unbending advocate of laissez-faire."

"Money is like an iron ring we've put through our noses. We've forgotten that we designed it, and it's now leading us around. I think it's time to figure out where we want to go--in my opinion toward sustainability and community--and then design a money system that gets us there."

"While economic textbooks claim that people and corporations are competing for markets and resources... in reality they are competing for money - using markets and resources to do so. So designing new money systems really amounts to redesigning the target that orients much human effort."

"Greed and competition are not a result of immutable human temperament... greed and fear of scarcity are in fact being continuously created and amplified as a direct result of the kind of money we are using. For example, we can produce more than enough food to feed everybody, and there is definitely enough work for everybody in the world, but there is clearly not enough money to pay for it all. The scarcity is in our national currencies. In fact, the job of central banks is to create and maintain that currency scarcity. The direct consequence is that we have to fight with each other in order to survive."

"Money is created when banks lend it into existence. When a bank provides you with a $100,000 mortgage, it creates only the principal, which you spend and which then circulates in the economy. The bank expects you to pay back $200,000 over the next 20 years, but it doesn't create the second $100,000 - the interest. Instead, the bank sends you out into the tough world to battle against everybody else to bring back the second $100,000."

"Your money's value is determined by a global casino of unprecedented proportions: $2 trillion are traded per day in foreign exchange markets, 100 times more than the trading volume of all the stockmarkets of the world combined. Only 2% of these foreign exchange transactions relate to the "real" economy reflecting movements of real goods and services in the world, and 98% are purely speculative. This global casino is triggering the foreign exchange crises which shook Mexico in 1994-5, Asia in 1997 and Russia in 1998. These emergencies are the dislocation symptoms of the old Industrial Age money system."

"Economic injustice is one of the most intractable problems that humanity has had because, actually economic justice has never really existed in most societies... in a long history of mankind, 5,000 years. There have been a couple of exceptions where I believe it has happened... and we can see why they were exceptions. That's what's going to get interesting. So here's my plan, first i'm going to give you the context..."

"Deep in our hearts, we all want to leave a better world for our children and we cherish the hope that we may experience this for ourselves in our own lifetime. However, there is growing concern that many of the challenges we now face are unrelenting and more and more people question our ability to address them effectively. Indeed, despite some breakthroughs and the valiant efforts in the public and private sectors, the challenges to our planet and society are growing both in scope and severity with each passing decade."

"In this new Millennium, we are being challenged by four megatrends that are converging upon us over the next twenty years, namely:"

"Why have our efforts, the countless billions of pounds and dollars spent all over the world, the many treaties enacted and initiatives taken, not stopped the destruction of our environment, nor effectively addressed a myriad of social issues? Is it possible that our attentions and efforts are misdirected? Or are the challenges and issues facing our world today being fueled by an even deeper systematic problem? The short answer to this last question is yes."

"The Future of Money is a compendium report about solutions already implemented by thousands of people around the world, who have had the courage to first identify, then directly address the underlying mechanism of their problems. Their initiatives to date are small-scale, but I see them as seedlings which - if allowed to grow - have the potential to provide effective and permanent solutions by which conditions for mankind and other living systems may improve dramatically within our own lifetimes."

"Money or lack thereof, is a fundamental component of our lives. It is not, however, just the lack of money that is precipitating present trends or preventing us from addressing current challenges. Rather, it is the limited functionality of our money and monetary system that is a major force behind our present disorders. Many of the problems we face, and the solutions we seek, reside within the architecture of our current monetary system and in our understanding of, and our agreements around, money."

"We allocate a great portion of our physical, emotional, and mental energy to getting, keeping, and spending money - but how many of us really know what money is or where it comes from? Money is created when banks lend it into existence."

"In pre-Victorian England the world was oblivious of pollution, greenhouse effects and overpopulation. Nationalism, competition, endless growth and colonisation were encouraged. These values are what shaped the monetary and banking systems we inherited."

"However, is this what best serves our world today? I submit that those aspects of our monetary system that met the objectives of another time and age are now inadequate for the challenges facing us during an Information Age. This is particularly true in light of the fact that working solutions are already underway, with thousands of communities around the world taking their own money initiatives. They are creating new wealth, while solving social problems without taxation or regulation. They are empowering self-organising communities, while increasing overall economic and social stability. Finally, they enable the creation of very necessary social capital without attaching the established capital formation process."

"There are three reasons why I believe the current, ongoing monetary initiatives have a better chance of success than ever before: First and foremost, these money innovations are not attacking the official money system. What they do instead is complement the conventional money system, providing new tools that can operate in parallel with it, without replacing it. That is why I call them 'complementary currencies', and not, 'alternative' ones."

"This is not a book on economics or economic theory. I am not an economist. My expertise lies in international finance and money systems. This is why I have adopted here a whole systems approach to money. Whole systems take into account a broader, more comprehensive arena than economics does; it integrates not only economic interactions but also their most important side effects. This includes specifically in our case the effects of different money systems on the quality of human interactions, on society at large, and on ecological systems. In essence, money is a lifeblood flowing through ourselves, our society, our global human community, and should be acknowledged and treated consciously."

"Part One of The Future of Money elucidates the mysteries of the current official currency system. Part Two widens the view to encompass and feature newly emerging money systems. Therefore, this book deals with money in the world outside of us, describing how different money systems shape society."

"When we think about money, we tend to take for granted its basic characteristics, which have remained unchanged for centuries. We are not likely to visit the hidden assumptions embedded in our familiar money system, and we are even less likely to re-examine them in search of solutions."

"Part One brings our hidden assumptions about money to the surface. In doing so, it also brings to light new potentials for our interactions with money. It is not about how to make, invest or spend money. There are already plenty of books about all of that. It is about the concept of money, and how different money systems shape different societies."

"People concerned with sustainability in general – with issues like climate change, environmental degradation, food and water shortages, population growth and energy use – tend not to worry about the money system. Nor do they tend to look for solutions that involve monetary innovations. Even those economists who are also concerned about sustainability in principle are seldom aware that our money system systematically encourages unsustainable behaviour patterns that may end up threatening human survival on this planet."

"This Report shows that the current money system is both a crucial part of the overall sustainability ‘problem’ and a vital part of any solution. It makes clear that awareness of this ‘Missing Link’ is an absolute imperative for economists, environmentalists and anyone else trying to address sustainability at a national, regional or global level. Aiming for sustainability without restructuring our money system is a naive approach, doomed to failure."

"The money system is bad for social and environmental sustainability. But this Report also proves – perhaps more surprisingly – that the money system is bad for the money system itself. Unless we fundamentally restructure it, we cannot achieve monetary stability. Indeed, this Report also demonstrates that monetary stability itself is possible if, and only if, we apply systemic biomimicry – that is to say, if we complement the prevailing monetary monopoly with what we call a ‘monetary ecosystem’."

"Dealing with the Eurozone Crisis... Another Way? As we go to press, the Greek electorate – after two years of drastic austerity measures – has voted clearly against the cuts, the bailout and the political mainstream. Chaos in the eurozone seems one step closer. So we take this opportunity to outline how just one of the proposals from this book can be applied now, in Greece, Spain or any other country facing this kind of crisis. It’s a solution that mainstream financiers and media avoid discussing, but it’s elegant and simple. It would work, and the necessary (Open Source) software is available now. Current monetary orthodoxy says that 100% of the Greek (or any other) economy must be either ‘in’ or ‘out’ of the eurozone. Everybody knows that either option will entail even higher unemployment and yet more misery. But it doesn’t have to be that way! The core principle of complementary currencies, as set out here, is that they run alongside the main currency, increasing resilience and flexibility for the entire socio-economic system."

"Here’s our systemic solution in a nutshell:"

"Greece continues to use the euro for all international business: tourism, shipping, exports and imports, etc. Taxes are levied in euros on profits made in these activities, and used to service the country’s national debt."

"In addition, any Greek city/region wanting to participate can issue its own local currency (generically called ‘Civics’ in the case study in chapter VIII). Civics are used to pay for important local, social and environmental programs. In our example, 1 Civic is issued to anyone who completes 1 hour of approved service to the community. Projects for which Civics are paid should be decided democratically and locally."

"The issuing city/region requires payment from each household of, say, 10 Civics/quarter..."

"In his book The Future of Money, Lietaer points out - as the government did yesterday - that in situations like ours everything grinds to a halt for want of money. But he also explains that there is no reason why this money should take the form of sterling or be issued by the banks. Money consists only of "an agreement within a community to use something as a medium of exchange." The medium of exchange could be anything, as long as everyone who uses it trusts that everyone else will recognize its value. During the Great Depression, businesses in the United States issued rabbit tails, seashells and wooden discs as currency, as well as all manner of papers and metal tokens. In 1971, Jaime Lerner, the mayor of Curitiba in Brazil, kick-started the economy of the city and solved two major social problems by issuing currency in the form of bus tokens. People earned them by picking and sorting litter: thus cleaning the streets and acquiring the means to commute to work. Schemes like this helped Curitiba become one of the most prosperous cities in Brazil."

"I have been reading the literature on sustainability for 40 years. I have attended hundreds of conferences on the same theme over that period. However, before I first encountered Bernard’s work, I had never heard anyone describe the financial system as a cause of our society’s headlong rush to collapse. Quite the contrary: there is a widespread effort to identify how minor changes in the financial system could move global society over to a path that leads to sustainability..."

"We will never create sustainability while immersed in the present financial system. There is no tax, or interest rate, or disclosure requirement that can overcome the many ways the current money system blocks sustainability. I used not to think this. Indeed, I did not think about the money system at all. I took it for granted as a neutral and inevitable aspect of human society. But since beginning to read Bernard’s analyses I have a very different view. He is not alone. For example Thomas Greco has written on this topic. But the depth of Bernard’s practical experience, theoretical understanding, and historical perspectives on the financial system leave him without peer."

"Dr. Bernard Lietaer, Co-creator of the Euro and a pioneer in community currencies, joined the Bancor Protocol Foundation last year and will advise the project. Both he and the Bancor team have been outspoken on the potential of community currencies to combat global poverty using a bottom-up approach to sustainable economic development. The efforts come as a number of groups aim to use blockchain and smart contracts to build the next generation of aid and impact investing tools."

"Today we mourn the passing of Bernard Lietaer, one of the greatest monetary innovators of our time & President of the Bancor Foundation. Bernard was a financial justice warrior. He will be truly missed... A student at MIT in the late 1960s, Lietaer conducted an in-depth study on floating exchange rates. While working in the central banking sector, he was involved with the development of the European Currency Unit, which was a precursor to the Euro. His innovative ideas about money and how it could be changed to work for people were developed well before the blockchain was invented. He had long seen the potential in decentralized financial systems and how they could tackle issues with fiat currency monopolies."

"Bernard was an international expert in the design and implementation of currency systems. He studied and worked in the field of money for more than 30 years in an unusually broad range of capacities including as a Central Banker, a fund manager, a university professor, and a consultant to governments in numerous countries, multinational corporations, and community organizations. He co-designed and implemented the convergence mechanism to the single European currency system (the Euro) and served as president of the Electronic Payment System at the National Bank of Belgium (the Belgian Central Bank). He co-founded and managed GaiaCorp, a top performing currency fund whose profits funded investments in environmental projects. A former professor of International Finance at the University of Louvain, he has also taught at Sonoma State University and Naropa University. He was currently a Research Fellow at the Center for Sustainable Resources of the University of California at Berkeley. He was also a member of the Club of Rome, a Fellow of the World Academy of Arts and Sciences, the World Business Academy, and the European Academy of Sciences and Arts."

"No, but i do note that every minute of your life the state is around the corner, you only get into your car, you have to put on your seatbelt, decree of the state, you can only drive 120 km per hour, decree of the state, but you can pay 33% VAT, at the petrol pump you can pay 80% to the state, on every cigarette you have again state, I smoke 7 packs a day so I maintain the state."

"The time is not far off when a complete Herge page will cost 10 or 20 million francs."

"The fact is that the implementation of the Truman doctrine elevated the United States, in a first phase, during the Cold War, to the police of Western Europe, in a second phase, after the Fall of the Wall, to the police of the whole world, - a police escaping any parliamentary control. So is this the global power that George W. Bush and his think tanks were so proud of?"

"Launching the Marshall Plan was certainly not as philanthropic as it was presented. The reconstruction aid was first and foremost inspired by the fear that without it, another war with the Soviet bloc would be inevitable. Moreover, the Americans knew only too well that in Western Europe the reconversion from a war economy to a normal economy was still in full swing, so Europe did have to import massively from the United States, which of course greatly benefited the US trade balance."

"How many times did we hear statements along the lines of: "Scientific research showed that ..." or "It has been scientifically proven that ..." In doing so, people assume that science is always true. But how reliable is science? A lot of what we call science, and we accept as true, is neither true nor false, and belongs to metaphysics. For a short time (following the publication of Wittgenstein's Tractatus), it looked like we could make a razor-sharp distinction between reliable scientific statements and unreliable metaphysical statements. But Wittgenstein himself challenged that distinction with the posthumous publication of his Philosophical Investigations. Still later, (predominantly French) postmodern philosophy picked up the proposition that there is less truth contained in general science than in a simple literary poem. The days of reliable general theories seemed hopelessly over. Is that so? Has cognitive thinking become impossible? The following is a reflection. The era we live in, at least in the Western world, is called postmodernity. It is characterised by great uncertainty and a sense of increasing insecurity. Uncertainty surrounds unanswered questions related to the future of the planet, to the sustainability of energy supplies, to job security, to family stability, to declining social control, to the increase in the number of asylum seekers, to the existence of a god, and so on. Insecurity is linked to war, to terrorism, to crime. The idea is to study all these phenomena scientifically. But how sure am I that science is still reliable?"

"The higher the degree of postmodernity, the more citizens have to lose and the greater the uncertainty regarding their future (will I still be able to pay off my mortgage tomorrow, pay my rent, will my wife or husband not run off with someone else, will I still get a decent pension, will I still give my children and grandchildren an ecologically liveable world). Also, the greater the degree of postmodernity the greater the spending on the military, police and judiciary to fight crime, terrorism, or war)."

"Postmodernity is a way of life that has spread throughout post-industrial western society in Europe, North America, Japan and Australia at least since 1980. It is characterised by families getting smaller and smaller, by a sharp rise in divorce rates and fewer marriages, by more and more out-of-wedlock births, by a meteoric rise in computer and internet use, by a sharp rise in drug use, by more and more time spent on gaming, by a false sense of increasing freedom, by a rise in wealth, and so on."

"Postmodernity is, for the time being, the most recent form of society to manifest itself at the time of the anomic technical division of labour. It is the successor to modernity which was itself the successor to traditional society. Postmodernity should not be confused with postmodernism, which was a period code in art, also a (sad) way of philosophical thinking that spread mainly between 1970 and 1995 in France - an idiotic way of thinking that suggested that in science, general theories are no longer possible and that there is more cognitive truth hidden in a poem than in the complete Standard Model of Physics. Postmodern philosophy, viewed with some recul, has been a feat of pompous nonsense, if only because it denied that in human science general theories are impossible, as if the seminal work of Jürgen Habermas and Niklas Luhmann had no cognitive significance."

"Under the influence of Marxism, a sixth form of division of labour also emerged in world history, the nomic technical division of labour. It was first introduced in the Soviet Union in 1917 and disappeared with the fall of the Wall in 1989. Working people were led to believe that it was a form of nomic division of labour that had arisen spontaneously and was not enforced by the government. But in reality, it was not communism; on the contrary, it was state capitalism. On paper, communism still prevails in the People's Republic of China, but only because paper is very willing there (no wonder, since paper was invented in China precisely). Hard forms of communism continued for a short time after the Fall of the Wall in Cuba and Albania, but have since disappeared there too. Only in totally isolated North Korea has the nomic technical division of labour persisted to this day. It certainly did not lead to a death of the state, as Marx predicted, but to a crushing state apparatus controlled by the unscrupulous power clique around the revered Leader."

"I have been driving 300 kilometres per hour all my life and now I meet an accident at 30 per hour. Surely that is godawful."

"I smoke a lot, yes. The proverbial Turk could take a punt on it. Et alors? I am not afraid of dying. If I have to, I have to."

"Vive la république d’Europe!"

"I have been an asshole, but an interesting one. I have made horrendous mistakes and made wrong decisions."

"I am still in debt to the taxman. A little. 17.5 billion."

"I did the math once: I must have smoked about 3.8 million cigarettes in my lifetime. I easily smoked eight packs a day, one cigarette after another. That's more than two hundred cigarettes a day."

"I know that in my life I have bought 128 or 138 Ferraris, a lot of paintings, 7 castles I have never seen, 2 planes and an $89 million yacht."

"I am no longer afraid of death. A longing for death even arises. Still, I would like to be able to say before the end of the year: enough is enough."

"If a woman showing her ass and tits is already a Public Figure, it has come a long way."

"I want to talk about it with people who know something about it. You are politicians, you know nothing."

"I did learn in the meantime that there are two categories of people: those who are for me and those who are against me. I don't think there is a middle species."

"I always start from a truth that I dress up and sugarcoat. For example, if I've been to a restaurant and it was quite expensive, I say, 'The four of us went for dinner and we consumed a hundred thousand francs.'"

"When the taxman had taxed everything, I was forced to drive a Rolls. It was terrible. Such a raggedy car that broke down every five minutes. I could barely manage 200 kilometres per hour with it. I eventually sold it, because I would rather walk than drive that Rolls."

"I regret everything. But if I had done things differently, it would never have been as compelling."