Sachi Alexander-Annan
In his final chapter, entitled DIY Finance, Scott culminates The Heretic’s Guide to Finance with an outline of the pre-existing and potential alternatives to dominant financial practice. In doing so, he attempts to convince his readers that creating a financial system that is dominated less by the elite and more by ‘ordinary people’, is possible, if only individuals sought to envisage such alternatives with more tenacity and activism. The problem with finance, and financial institutions, today is that they are predicated on a system that was conceived of for, and by, a small group of elite individuals with specific interests. Scott suggests that alternatives to this dominant structure, such as co-operatives and sharing economies are possible, yet, the only thing standing in the way of building a system comprised of alternate practice is a lack of widespread, grassroots, ingenuity to support it.
He critiques mainstream financial institutions for their impersonal and impenetrable design principles, using the Barclay’s online platform as an example of how financial institutions work on the back of an “inequality of information” between themselves and the individual making use of their services. Bankers and financiers are encouraged to believe in the power of neoclassical economics and as such see no need to challenge or rework the financial system as it stands. The consensus that ‘everything works as well and efficiently as it can’ has remained unchallenged en-masse for too long, and it is this problem that Scott seeks to address.
He compares the process of setting up an alternative bank to a piece of “financial installation art” that requires slow and steady implementation. Suggesting that in order for such alternatives to succeed, the ‘artist’ requires an ability to firstly deconstruct, and look beyond the existing system and structures, as well as to construct the vision they see in order to translate it into a new structure. One such example Scott provides of a ‘new’ way of financial operating is that of Metrobank, set up with the intention of re-introducing personal customer service into the world of banking and ensuring that the ‘ease of entry and ease of exit’ really does apply- which is certainly not the case within mainstream ‘big’ banks.
Scott continues by outlining a number of small, community driven, activist, projects that have sprung up over recent years to highlight that another way of doing finance is indeed possible. Furthermore he suggests that once alternative banks have been established, such as the Ecology Building Society that lends money to sustainable housing projects, other individuals seeking to establish alternative banks can use the same platform in order to do so. He refers to this system as a “plug-and-play network of pop-up banks” that share the same IT and clearing systems in order to create a “decentralised yet centrally regulated system”. To efficiently challenge the mainstream, these alternative finance platforms have to propose messages that are contrary and radical. Scott suggests ‘design principles’ such as- simplicity of design, optimisation over maximisation and reconnection between the platform operator and the user as a means of challenging the current system.
A key message within the chapter, much like throughout Scott’s book, is to remember that money holds no use value outside of the process of exchange. In other words, money is given value solely because we know that other individuals will accept it when an exchange of human reciprocity takes place. He refuses to use the word ‘money’ in his own daily life in order to avoid it sounding like a ‘thing-in-itself’, and instead refers to it as ‘COGAS-UK’, an acronym for the ‘Claim on Goods And Services’ within the UK. With this in mind, claims on goods and services need not be conducted in the impersonal and elitist way that they are widely carried out. Instead, the future of financial activity could be one rooted in Mutual Credit Systems or Co-operatives for example, created out of a desire to benefit all that use the service and not just those who are acting from a position of privilege within the dominant global financial system.
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