SiTU ACADEMY

lesson 4

“In 1962 you could by a car for 5555 guilders. This was a special action by Ford and you had a very nice Cortina for it. A collectors item at this moment after half a century.

In current European currency this car would cost you 2525 euro. In fact, at this moment the cheapest car you can buy, will cost you about 10.000 euro. In guilders f. 22.600. Prices have gone up more than 300%. And this is happening in a lifetime.”

Master Klaas Piters was just teaching at the Academy for half a year or so. He was an archeologist and therefore he liked digging Digging for the facts. The young students had no idea about things like this. Schoolsystems were programmed to promote an illusion.

That why lessons like this were important. It made them think, while for the older adepts things were put into perspective.

“I once met an old man, a traveller with an enormous knowledge about local history and folklore. But several times he pointed out the importance of “intrinsic value”. How valuable is an object, really. In the same period when you could buy a brand new Ford for 5555 guilders, you could build a nice house for 25.000 guilders. In euro this would be about 10.000 euro. This, well kept house, will cost you now, say 250.000 euro. In guilders,” Master Klaas used the holoscreen and figures, graphics and images appeared. All students had a laptop, connected to the holoscreen. For further study. “this building will cost you at the moment 550.000 guilders. More than half a million!”

Although he had told this before, everytime he felt the shock of his audience. “Good,”, he thought, “Pieces are falling in to place.”

“But you might say: “I can do without a car and I can do without an own house. That's true. Renting may be safer, because the prices may come down. Slowly at first, but faster in the future.

But let's take food for example. In the sixties you could by a king-size cucumber for 25 cents in guilders. At this moment cucumbers go for about 1 euro, for a cucumber half the size. This simple lettuce cost you 4 times more than 15 years ago.

That's what is happening, when you are selling your own big cucumbers on the world-market and feed your people, whith cheap products from Spain, Brasil and China. That's why the problem of traffick-jams is economically very urgent (the flow of goods, even if we are talking stones or plants) has to be solved at any cost. First to give the carowners the feeling that they are free and day and night big trucks are transporting our products all over Europe. In the meantime a colossal Spanish truck, gets stuck in our city-centre, because he has to deliver cucumbers at a local grocery-store. The Elite calls this economy, I call this destruction and waste. And we have not talked about energy-consumption at all.”