THE FUTURE OF MONEY Bernard A. Lietaer - library.uniteddiversity ...

'From the standpoint of` the market, the ever-swelling ranks of the
[unemployed] face a fate worse than colonialism: economic
irrelevance ... We don't need what they have and they can't buy what
we sell.' This is how Nathan Gardels, editor of New Perspectives
Quarterly, summarises the linkage between unemployment and
economic exclusion. It translates into the increasing realisation by
those concerned that there is no room for them in this society that
they don't belong here.
When this happens to an individual, he or she usually becomes
depressed (is it a coincidence that the many industrialised countries
have declared depression a national epidemic?). When it happens to
a group (as is typically the case for the younger generation where
unemployment is always higher than in the population at large), it is
normally expressed as anger. Such anger accumulates until it
explodes into a violent rage lashing out randomly at society at large,
or at some specific scapegoats.
Violence
Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527) thought that: 'It is necessary and
useful that the laws of a republic give to the masses a legal way to
express their anger. When this isn't available, extraordinary outlets
manifest. And there is no doubt that such events produce more harm
than anything else.’ Indeed, violence is usually the expression of
frustration and impotence.
In a suburb of Lyon, France, a police car runs over and kills a
teenager. Such a regrettable accident would normally make the news
only in the local papers. But this was Vaux-en-Velain, a depressed
working-class neighbour- hood where unemployment among the
young is particularly high. Hundreds of young people took to the
streets, clashed first with the police, then with the CRS (the special