Who Wants to Be a Bitcoin Millionaire? is an BBC1 Panorama documentary by Spencer Kelly, which is an exercise in dumbing down the population, regarding monetary extortion & despotic power centralisation by the establishment. These slides are a response, in the form of an introduction to the launch of a series of working papers, aimed at enabling ordinary people to think clearly; and better perceive and understand how to heal the root causes of political economy dysfunction.

1. We don't know what money is,
nor how money works
"Pounds, euros, dollars, they're all currencies
that we know and we recognise.
Now we might think that we could do with a bit
more of them,
but at least we know what money is, and how
money works.
We keep it in banks and we spend it.".
The opening delusional statement by Spencer Kelly,
the reporter for the Panorama programme documentary
"Who Wants to Be a Bitcoin Millionaire?"
First aired 11 February 2018, at 8:30 pm on
BBC1
Can be watched at:
[1]
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09s3wbt
[2] https://youtu.be/g7Mpi3h8ilo

2. If you don’t know the difference
between currency and money,
● You don’t know what
money is, and
● You don’t know how it
works
"Pounds, euros, dollars,
they're all currencies …
… we know what money is,
and how money works.”

3. If you conflate currency with what is supposed to be a
monetary unit of account (“pounds, euros and dollars”);
● You are cognitively enslaved by a mode of
centralised despotic power,
● Funded by the economic parasitism of the
banking-financial market nexus, which is
● Enforced by the captured institution of State
"Pounds, euros, dollars,
they're all currencies …”
Corrupted
monetary
units of account
Circulating tokens
of off-ledger
purchasing power

4. Now, it is clear that the decline of a language
must ultimately have political and economic
causes . . .
It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our
thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of
our language makes it easier for us to have
foolish thoughts.
The point is that the process is reversible. . . . If one gets rid of these
habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first
step toward political regeneration.
– George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language” (1946)

5. VERDICT: a “dumbing down” documentary
Who wants to be a Bitcoin Millionaire?
Dumbing down is the deliberate
[or unconscious]
oversimplification of intellectual
content in education, literature,
and cinema, news, video games
and culture.
- Wikipedia

6. Obscurantism is the practice of deliberately preventing the facts of some
subject matter from becoming known. In restricting knowledge to an élite
ruling class of "the few", obscurantism is fundamentally anti-democratic,
because its component anti-intellectualism and elitism exclude the people as
intellectually unworthy of knowing the facts and truth about the government
of their City-State. - Wikipedia

11. ???
WANTED: a documentary filmmaker
who can investigate these questions:
● What is money?
● What is currency?
● What is the distinction between money
and currency?
○ Are they just synonyms of each
other?
Question
set: 1

12. ???
WANTED: a documentary filmmaker
who can investigate these questions:
● What is cash?
● How is cash related to currency?
● How is cash related to money?
● What is “de-cashing” of the monetary
system?
○ What are its implications for
citizens?
Question
set: 2

13. ???
WANTED: a documentary filmmaker
who can investigate these questions:
● What is economy?
○ What is the real economy?
○ What is the economy of
financial markets?
● What is banking?
● What is finance?
● What is the operational relationship
between finance and the
banking-financial market nexus?
Question
set: 3

14. ???
WANTED: a documentary filmmaker
who can investigate these questions:
● What is the operational relationship
between the real economy and the
banking-financial market nexus?
○ What is the role of the State in
the functioning of this nexus?
Question
set: 4

15. ???
WANTED: a documentary filmmaker
who can investigate these questions:
● Is there an alternative economic
liquidity system for mobilising and
coordinating real economy production
and distribution?
● If so, what role could autonomous
distributed ledger technologies have?
○ What alternatives to Bitcoin
and its clones could be used?
Question
set: 5

16. ???
WANTED: a documentary filmmaker
who can investigate these questions:
What impact would an alternative economic liquidity
system have upon the following dimensions of human life:
● The economic dimension of human livelihood
● The political dimension of human obligations and
rights
● The cultural dimension of developing human
potential
○ Including obligations regarding the
stewardship of Nature and Community
Question
set: 6

17. DEVELOPING A CULTURE OF DISRUPTIVE THINKING
TO REGENERATE
THE POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC DIMENSIONS OF HUMAN LIFE
A working paper series to present regenerative economic thinking
in progress, in order to
● disseminate disruptive ideas, and
● elicit comments and collaboration from academics,
professionals, public servants, and especially Civil Society
stakeholders.
Watch this space ! =
https://goo.gl/WNTCxy

18. This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Author: Raymond Aitken
Contact via Twitter:
@raymondaitken