Open letter to:
Ministry of General Affairs
Attn. Prime Minister J.P. Balkenende
PO Box 20001
2500 EA The Hague
The Netherlands
1 May, 2006
Cc. Tax and Customs Administration, Almelo office, the Netherlands
Your Reference: 64.57.502.
Re: An end to economic apartheid.
Dear Mr Balkenende,
In order to be at all credible to everyone including myself, as of 10 May 2006 I am ceasing to collect interest (De Hutte Holding BV), on the one hand, and to pay interest (EURL Petit Château Roquetaillade – Aveyron), on the other. From a business economics point of view, these two companies constitute one big masquerade, but funnily enough, this masquerade is the nucleus of a challenging marriage between philosophy and entrepreneurship. The fact that the two aforementioned companies cease to collect and pay interest means that I refuse to continue to pay taxes on Hutte Holding BV’s income from interest as of 10 May, 2006. The date 10 May is not coincidental. It is the day that France commemorates the abolition of slavery for the first time. In my opinion, this is still a very live issue when we carefully examine the black hole of our present political and economic way of thinking and acting. Naturally, I am prepared to defend the above decisions in a court of law. Mr Balkenende, could it be that our greatest fear to overcome in this world that has for centuries been dominated by religious, ethnic, political and economic competition is the fear to be perfectly equal, human among humans?
I have included a film about two incredibly courageous people who were originally political competitors, but who were brave enough to find a collective solution because they saw it was for the greater good. May they be an example to us on our road to peace, liberty and justice for all. Not an easy road to take, but one that requires each of us – no matter what role life has allotted us, poor or rich, big or small – to provide a constructive contribution to the liberty of every living thing. I have also enclosed an attempt to substantiate the call for an end to economic apartheid. Society is one and indivisible, an enterprise of the people, for the people, by the people.
Sincerely,
De Hutte Holding BV & EURL Petit Château Roquetaillade –Aveyron
Peter Hoopman Peter Hoopman
c/o Roquetaillade Roquetaillade
12490 MONTJAUX 12490 MONTJAUX
France France
www.leleurre.com www.petit-chateau-roquetaillade.com
APPENDIX I DVD Mandela and de Klerck
APPENDIX II Attempt to substantiate the call for an end to economic apartheid
- Our potential wealth lies in the freedom that we create for ourselves and others -
This is the destiny and contribution of every human being, regardless of race, religion, age or nationality.
Appendix II
An attempt to substantiate the call for an end to economic apartheid.
Peter Hoopman
Roquetaillade, 29 April, 2006
‘There is another fine mess you got me into.’
The end of the world is near. CNN allows representatives of several different religions the opportunity to address humanity. A minister is first: ‘We have sinned. It is not in our power to prevent the end from coming. The North Pole and the South Pole are melting and the water will soon reach us. We have only two weeks to review our sins and prepare ourselves for the hereafter.’ The priest says: ‘The hour is dark but we can look forward to eternal life. And we can pay off our debts to one another and prepare for divine eternity.’ Next is the Imam: ‘We are now paying the collective price for that which the lawless and decadent western world has poured forth on us.’ Last of all is the rabbi, who comes storming in, throws his coat over the chair, rolls up his sleeves and says: ‘People, we have very little time. We have two weeks to learn how to survive under water.’
Mainly copied from Dutch newspaper Trouw.
Attempt to substantiate the call for an end to economic apartheid
- The economy is nothing other than a form of social communication and therefore the most important building block of democracy. A lasting reform will only be possible when we show the courage and the will to democratise the economy.
- Competition makes citizens, the business world and politicians dependant on the government that ‘takes care of’ everything after the fact and in doing so undermines the sovereignty of the individual, the business world, democracy, the constitutional state and the role of the government itself.
- The government and the business world have become alienated from day-to-day reality because they see profit as an important economic principle and translate it into bureaucratic terms, which has unconsciously turned bureaucracy into a smothering goal in itself instead of an efficient means.
- Institutions (government, justice and parliament) that see competition as a basic building-block of society will, in the course of time, no longer be able to differentiate between a mafia organisation and the public interest. Society will start to compete with government.
- Once, we agreed that money has an intrinsic value (interest). Over time we have started to believe this as well as the accompanying patterns and conditioning. This has brought about a very flat, two-dimensional approach to society where people have subordinated themselves to ‘the system/mechanism’ in the fashion of 1984, Modern Times and The Matrix.
- Polemics and ‘disease’ can often be very ‘profitable’ from an ‘economic’ point of view. In terms of political economy, however, it is in many cases a matter of wasted energy that virtually nips the ‘real’ supply and demand through open and free communication in the bud because the ‘economic’ interests in keeping society ill and the polemic ‘alive’ are too great.
- In business, economic sciences, religion and politics, we have begun to find it ‘economical’ to make people dependent on us.
Hey, darn it, our drinking water is becoming polluted… But thank goodness it’s ‘good’ for the economy, because now we need someone to clean it up, and what’s more, it increases something’s or someone’s profits from it because pollution leads to shortages.
In the late 1980s, a thematic meeting was organised at the agricultural college in Deventer about the manure problem that had arisen in the Netherlands. Local farmers were invited to give their opinion from a practical point of view. At the end of the afternoon, one of the farmers who was apparently fed up with the discussion, got up and said: ‘Just let us make money, dammit, then we can use the money to solve the problem!’ At that time I couldn’t imagine that he really meant it or that he could be so ‘stupid’. It wasn’t until years later that I overcame my own stupidity by realising that that farmer had perfectly summed up our political-economic system and our economic thoughts and actions: growth and profit first and we’ll see from there.
29 May, 2005 was the day the outcome of the referendum on the European constitution in France was made public. The political winners and losers met for a televised debate. This debate was the perfect illustration of the poverty and bankruptcy of the current political thinking where the belief in ‘winning’ and ‘losing’ has won over the realisation that we are human among humans and that we are both collectively and individually responsible for it.
March-April, 2006 – France takes to the streets to protest en masse. Citizens and governments have become competitors and both fight for their survival without being able to hear or see one another, because in a world that believes in competition everyone’s individual survival is at risk.
Today, economic apartheid (competition) has been institutionalised virtually everywhere in the global village. It has ultimately sown distrust and has not only alienated people from one another, but also from politics and the business world, rendering democracy powerless. We rack up debts upon debts and speculate endlessly without having roots in society, which results in a negative symbiosis of dependency, blackmail and hypocrisy. If we want to go back to being human among humans, we will have to rid our economic communication of the corruption that we have bestowed upon it: interest on money. The funny thing is that not much will change in practice; we will continue growing our food, building our houses, educating our children, based on a healthy sense of ambition and pride, but without it being at someone else’s expense. We will then create the opportunity to rediscover one another and open doors that have always been shut by relearning to communicate with one another on the same level and to realise that humanity and nature are one and indivisible in their infinite diversity. The business world should again become the strong backbone of an open, dynamic and healthy democracy which restores faith in society, based on partage, sincerity, equality and co-operation.