Can you tell us
about your background working in Finance and how did you come with the idea of
writing The Heretic’s Guide to Global
Finance – Hacking the Future of Money book?
In 2008 I undertook a somewhat subversive
anthropological adventure into the financial sector in London. I ended up
working for two years as a derivatives broker. Derivatives are large financial
bets, and brokers spend all their time trying to convince large corporations
and banks to use them. I learned a lot about the financial system and since
leaving have continued to explore various aspects of the system. In the wake of
the Occupy protests I was asked by Pluto Press to write a guide for activists
on how the financial sector works, and how one can go about improving it.
The book is divided
in 3 parts: Exploring, Jamming and
Building. Could you summarize –very briefly- what can be found in each
section?
Exploring is all about helping the reader get
a sense for the financial system, sketching out who the main players are, what
they do, and what the main financial instruments are. It encourages an ethos of
exploration – if you want to take on any system of power, you have to immerse
yourself in it.
Jamming is all about how you can mess with
that system. Much like a hacker can jam various pieces of technology, so the
financial hacker can use various financial instruments or institutions in a
rebellious way. I suggest various fun things to do in this section, like
designing your own hedge funds of dissent.
Building is about creating alternatives to
mainstream finance. It’s got a lot of the spirit of the do-it-yourself
movement. I go into various areas of social and environmental innovation, and
look at interesting areas like alternative currencies, co-operative and
peer-to-peer systems.
What are the most inspiring individuals or organizations -Finance oriented-
that had made a positive impact on you?
My old history lecturer Julian
Cobbing was an important spark in getting me to question existing economic institutions,
and also Professor Ha-Joon Chang, who was also a teacher of mine. Throughout
the years I've met lots of inspiring people - too many to list here - but often
they're not necessarily directly involved in the financial sector. Like there's
this great guy called Seb Paquet in Canada who writes about culturehacking, and
then my friend Eli who designs interesting currency experiments and generally
has interesting things to say about economic systems - the people I most tend
to enjoy are those who are not dogmatic, but who have a rebellious curiousity
about the world. In terms of organisations there are loads of great ones -
recently I've been enjoying the financial work done by 350.org,
Rainforest Action Network, Shareaction, MoveYourMoneyUk, and MarketForces in
Australia.
What is Culture-Hacking and how can be
implemented in Finance?
Culturehacking, to me, is the process of immersing
yourself into a culture with a view to discovering its internal dynamics, but
doing so with a rebellious outlook. Culturehacking in essence is activist
anthropology, where the aim is to use the knowledge gained to disrupt some
system of power. So, for example, you might undertake culturehacking missions
into the oil industry, or the weapons industry. The culturehack may be the use
of aspects of such a culture to further a radical cause.
Can you tell us how
can an Activist Stockbrokerage be
built?
Well it’s never been done, but I suggest in the
book that an activist stockbrokerage could be built in stages. It would be much
like a normal stockbrokerage – which facilitates access to shares, provides
research on companies, and builds relationships with investors and companies –
but would have an explicit disruptive intent. It could facilitate activist
access to company shares, undertake research for them, and help to forge
alliances between activists and progressive investors.
Can you give us a
couple of examples of Green Finance/Environmental
Finance?
Abundance Generation is a peer-to-peer platform
whereby you can lend directly to renewable energy projects in the UK. It helps
to steer money into projects with a positive environmental outcome, but it also
empowers ordinary people to gain control their own finances and to have greater
power over where their money goes.
Another example of such ‘ecological-democratic
finance’ is the Brixton Energy Community Share program which was used to raise
money for solar power in South London. The local community funds their own
solar power through buying ownership via the shares. Again, here you have
positive self-directed funding on the part of a community.
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