I'm not used to blogging my opinions, but I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore (to coin a phrase).
When the Congress votes down a measure that ninety percent of the public favors, then it's time to take a hard look at whether Congress represents us anymore. After that look, we find that not only does it not represent us, but also it's been hijacked by a bunch of fundamentalist extremist tyrants (remind you of anybody?) who would rather that the work of doing what's best for the country simply grind to a halt. Let me say it again: Congress does not represent the people of the United States who elected them.
Therefore, we need to begin talking of revolution. Read the Declaration of Independence again. The gist is that we as a people should not and will not tolerate being ruled by tyrants, and a tyranny is what the Congress has become.
The revolution that I favor is the abandonment of Representative Democracy (RD) in favor of Direct Democracy (DD). The reason that we have RD in the first place is that in the 18th century traveling to where the governing was done was not possible, unless one had the willingness and the means to do government full-time. That time is over. We now have the means to implement DD in our lifetime. What is required is to design a system secure enough that no tyrant can seize control of it.
It's time for all of us to do the research on what ideas people who have been thinking about this for a long time have been discussing. I invite you to start with Wikipedia ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy ), but there are other sites that are equally informative. Switzerland already has DD in place, and we could undoubtedly learn much from studying their history with the idea.
It's not likely to be easy to get this done. History tells us over and over that entrenched power structures are resistant to change: Congress is not likely to vote to abolish itself. Therefore, I'm calling for a new Constitutional Convention to take place in cyberspace where all can participate. I think Memorial day would be an excellent time to start. Perhaps we can find a way to vote ourselves into power on oh, say, the Fourth of July!
Sunday, May 5, 2013
Sunday, April 14, 2013
Political Views
I've been bothered by the answer I gave to the Political Views section of my Facebook profile. At first I called myself a Pacifist, but I couldn't get to the belief that violence is never an option. Sometimes you might have to defend yourself. I changed the answer to Anarcho-Syndicalist, but that wasn't quite right either, since it still seemed to involve money as an underlying factor.
Then I realized/remembered that political views can't really be separated from economic views, so since there doesn't appear to be any category that I fit into, I supposed that I'd have to create one. I thought perhaps the term "Communitarian" would be close, but I found out that it already exists as a kind of political philosophy. So I've settled on Paraeconomian.because what's being discussed here is best described as Beyond ("Para") Economy in the common use of the term. It isn't really beyond, since if I haven't mis-remembered my Ancient Greek studies, "oikos" (the root of "Economy") means "house", so literally "Economy" means "study of household affairs".
If we extend "household" in the manner of Marshall McLuhan, the larger unit would be community. Operating without money would necessitate a deep involvement in a community, since any enterprise beyond a one-person one would necessitate involving other people who, of course, are not getting paid. The only way they will work for you without compensation is if they know and respect you as part of the community. They trust that you will help them later when they need it.
Communities used to be defined by geographical area in pre-petroleum days. Likely you knew all your neighbors, most of them being within a day's ride by horse or coach. Nowadays communities are mingled geographically because of transportation and communications technologies commonly available. I suspect that as petroleum becomes scarcer and vastly more expensive, communities will have two aspects: a more contracted geographical one and a more expanded electronic one. I'm presuming here that in the future it will become vastly more efficient to move information electronically than to move people physically.
As an individual, then, you're going to need two reputations: a local physical one and a wide-area info-tech one. Given that they are not entirely separate, the best recipe for success would depend on ensuring that those two reputations do not conflict.
Then I realized/remembered that political views can't really be separated from economic views, so since there doesn't appear to be any category that I fit into, I supposed that I'd have to create one. I thought perhaps the term "Communitarian" would be close, but I found out that it already exists as a kind of political philosophy. So I've settled on Paraeconomian.because what's being discussed here is best described as Beyond ("Para") Economy in the common use of the term. It isn't really beyond, since if I haven't mis-remembered my Ancient Greek studies, "oikos" (the root of "Economy") means "house", so literally "Economy" means "study of household affairs".
If we extend "household" in the manner of Marshall McLuhan, the larger unit would be community. Operating without money would necessitate a deep involvement in a community, since any enterprise beyond a one-person one would necessitate involving other people who, of course, are not getting paid. The only way they will work for you without compensation is if they know and respect you as part of the community. They trust that you will help them later when they need it.
Communities used to be defined by geographical area in pre-petroleum days. Likely you knew all your neighbors, most of them being within a day's ride by horse or coach. Nowadays communities are mingled geographically because of transportation and communications technologies commonly available. I suspect that as petroleum becomes scarcer and vastly more expensive, communities will have two aspects: a more contracted geographical one and a more expanded electronic one. I'm presuming here that in the future it will become vastly more efficient to move information electronically than to move people physically.
As an individual, then, you're going to need two reputations: a local physical one and a wide-area info-tech one. Given that they are not entirely separate, the best recipe for success would depend on ensuring that those two reputations do not conflict.
Monday, December 17, 2012
Necessities
Let's start looking at some specific things that would need to be addressed immediately if money would disappear. Here are the basics:
We can learn from history here if we look back at what happened during the French Revolution. One of the immediate effects of life in the Paris Commune was that all the food was used up pretty quickly, and nobody had planned for how to deal with the food distribution system collapsing. So starvation ensued, leading predictably to panic, finger-pointing, and frequent use of the guillotine. It was not pretty, and the Revolution started to unravel immediately.
At one point farmers were offered script (revolutionary currency) in exchange for grain. They were smart enough to realize that the stuff might shortly be worth nothing, and they held back their grain. People starved, and grain rotted.
Here's what will get the problem solved quickly. Organize a group of merchants such that everything a farmer could possibly need or want would be available through the group, then offer to let the farmer and any of his family or workers take whatever they might need from the merchants for a year in exchange for the farmer's crop. The merchants can distribute the crops through their stores, or each merchant can trade it to other merchants. Next year they can negotiate a new agreement. This largely solves the distribution problem by keeping the trades local, which saves fuel and keeps the goods fresher.
A variation with greater efficiency would be that merchants would merge, creating locally-supplied general stores. These would be replacing today's Big Box stores, which exist only because of the price advantages of scaling up.
Once again, we have eliminated all the bureaucracy and red tape of trying to ensure that everybody in the transaction gets an equal share down to the penny. We just throw away the yardstick with the understanding that if you contribute what you can, you will get what you need. We've also avoided the need for some kind of State distribution (and more bureaucracy) by keeping the agreements local.
- Food
- Clothing
- Shelter
We can learn from history here if we look back at what happened during the French Revolution. One of the immediate effects of life in the Paris Commune was that all the food was used up pretty quickly, and nobody had planned for how to deal with the food distribution system collapsing. So starvation ensued, leading predictably to panic, finger-pointing, and frequent use of the guillotine. It was not pretty, and the Revolution started to unravel immediately.
At one point farmers were offered script (revolutionary currency) in exchange for grain. They were smart enough to realize that the stuff might shortly be worth nothing, and they held back their grain. People starved, and grain rotted.
Here's what will get the problem solved quickly. Organize a group of merchants such that everything a farmer could possibly need or want would be available through the group, then offer to let the farmer and any of his family or workers take whatever they might need from the merchants for a year in exchange for the farmer's crop. The merchants can distribute the crops through their stores, or each merchant can trade it to other merchants. Next year they can negotiate a new agreement. This largely solves the distribution problem by keeping the trades local, which saves fuel and keeps the goods fresher.
A variation with greater efficiency would be that merchants would merge, creating locally-supplied general stores. These would be replacing today's Big Box stores, which exist only because of the price advantages of scaling up.
Once again, we have eliminated all the bureaucracy and red tape of trying to ensure that everybody in the transaction gets an equal share down to the penny. We just throw away the yardstick with the understanding that if you contribute what you can, you will get what you need. We've also avoided the need for some kind of State distribution (and more bureaucracy) by keeping the agreements local.
Friday, March 30, 2012
Who Will Clean the Toilets?
One of the objections frequently leveled against the proposal for the absence of money is that no one will do any work. The assumption here is that humans are basically lazy and that, if basic needs are met, we'll all just lounge around in our underwear drinking beer and watching sports TV. Okay, that's the men. Probably the women would just shop for useless junk and watch soap operas, if we're going to deal in ugly stereotypes.
But have you ever asked someone (or been asked yourself), "If money were no problem, what would you really like to be doing with your time?" Most folks will tell you that they'd like to be doing something useful or creative. I submit to you that in reality, people want to make a difference. They want to set a good example for their children. They want to be respected by their families, friends, and neighbors. And they want to respect themselves. I think that this is where the key lies.
Everybody knows that there are jobs that need to be done, even though they are or seem unpleasant. I doubt that cleaning the bathroom, especially the toilet, is anyone's favorite task, but the idea of being stuck with doing it for a living is even more repugnant. We see someone in a job like that, and we have the urge to pretend that we don't see them; we run the other way. On the other hand, if we know that someone is cleaning toilets for a day at a homeless shelter, we call it community service and have the urge to thank them. So it's really about the stuckness, the wage-slavery of it, not about the task itself. And the saddest part is that the person with the job is probably making minimum wage for it. In a compassionate economy, that person would be paid more than a CEO.
So could you do it a couple hours a week or one day a month? Sure you could, with the added bonus that your friends and family would admire you for it. So if we as a community understand this cluster of ideas, the expectation could grow that a person's reputation is built on what one is willing to contribute to the community. And Reputation is crucial to our argument. The reasons for this will become clear in a post in the near future. Stay tuned!
But have you ever asked someone (or been asked yourself), "If money were no problem, what would you really like to be doing with your time?" Most folks will tell you that they'd like to be doing something useful or creative. I submit to you that in reality, people want to make a difference. They want to set a good example for their children. They want to be respected by their families, friends, and neighbors. And they want to respect themselves. I think that this is where the key lies.
Everybody knows that there are jobs that need to be done, even though they are or seem unpleasant. I doubt that cleaning the bathroom, especially the toilet, is anyone's favorite task, but the idea of being stuck with doing it for a living is even more repugnant. We see someone in a job like that, and we have the urge to pretend that we don't see them; we run the other way. On the other hand, if we know that someone is cleaning toilets for a day at a homeless shelter, we call it community service and have the urge to thank them. So it's really about the stuckness, the wage-slavery of it, not about the task itself. And the saddest part is that the person with the job is probably making minimum wage for it. In a compassionate economy, that person would be paid more than a CEO.
So could you do it a couple hours a week or one day a month? Sure you could, with the added bonus that your friends and family would admire you for it. So if we as a community understand this cluster of ideas, the expectation could grow that a person's reputation is built on what one is willing to contribute to the community. And Reputation is crucial to our argument. The reasons for this will become clear in a post in the near future. Stay tuned!
Saturday, March 24, 2012
Childhood's End
The long childhood of the human species is coming to an end. Childhood is wonderful, but it ends when we are old enough and smart enough to realize the sacrifices and the pain that our parents have experienced in order to support our growth. We have taken, taken, taken without thought of return. The same is true of the economic and financial system in which we are immersed. We have taken, taken, taken without thought of the cost to the support provided freely by the Earth, by the Nature in which we are immersed.
Like children, we have ignored what Earth is giving up in order to support our economic growth. Did you know that up until recently the costs of the raw materials taken from the earth, including the cost of repairing any damage done as a consequence of extracting them, did not appear in the equations of economists? It's pretty ease to make an economic entity look profitable if you ignore most of its costs.
For a long time, we also have paid no heed to the privations of others who provide goods and services that support the American Dream. Slowly the awareness has grown, starting with the Labor movement, whose struggles made it possible for workers to have a decent life. Lately awareness is growing of the deplorable conditions endured by workers in other countries, just as, closer to home, the living standards won by the labor unions are being systematically chipped away and dismantled. All of this is done in the name of "competitiveness". I read somewhere recently that not only have wages not kept pace with the inexorable rise of prices, but "real income", which I believe just means "adjusted for inflation", has not increased at all since the 1970s. Is anyone surprised that the economy is collapsing? Nobody can afford anything, and yet we now pay for almost everything, including stuff that used to be free (or nearly free) a generation ago (e.g. drinking water).
So to make it possible to continue squeaking by, we increase our burden of debt, and now we can buy even less stuff because part of our costs now is the expense of debt service. Have you ever given any thought as to why religions throughout history have condemned the charging of interest on debt? You can only lend money if you have more money than you need. The rich lend the money, and the rich collect the interest. The borrowers have to show a profit from what they borrowed, or they lose on both ends. If they profit, they still have to pay the interest. So the rich always get richer, and the poor are always debt slaves.
One grows up and eventually develops compassion for and understanding of one's parents. The species grows up when it develops compassion for and understanding of all the forces and entities that have supported us as we grew, principally the environment and the poor. It's telling that those whose vision does not extend past the end of their wallets almost universally refuse to give back to either one.
But time is running out. Soon the cost of exploiting raw materials from the environment and the cost of further growing the poor population will become so high that the economy will collapse. What do people do when disaster strikes? Where do they go when there's nowhere else to go? They turn to family, friends, and neighbors, to community self-help. Therein lies the beginnings of the solution.
Start now. Find out what the neighbors know how to do, and let them know what you know how to do. Along the way, you'll probably learn what special needs are around you. Maybe you can help with those. Maybe you know someone else who could help also. Don't be sucked in by trying to get a "fair exchange." Giving freely builds your personal capital, you might need help later that you can't foresee now.
The fact that we don't already do this speaks volumes. We haven't needed to. We pay for everything. Wonder why you don't know your neighbors?
Like children, we have ignored what Earth is giving up in order to support our economic growth. Did you know that up until recently the costs of the raw materials taken from the earth, including the cost of repairing any damage done as a consequence of extracting them, did not appear in the equations of economists? It's pretty ease to make an economic entity look profitable if you ignore most of its costs.
For a long time, we also have paid no heed to the privations of others who provide goods and services that support the American Dream. Slowly the awareness has grown, starting with the Labor movement, whose struggles made it possible for workers to have a decent life. Lately awareness is growing of the deplorable conditions endured by workers in other countries, just as, closer to home, the living standards won by the labor unions are being systematically chipped away and dismantled. All of this is done in the name of "competitiveness". I read somewhere recently that not only have wages not kept pace with the inexorable rise of prices, but "real income", which I believe just means "adjusted for inflation", has not increased at all since the 1970s. Is anyone surprised that the economy is collapsing? Nobody can afford anything, and yet we now pay for almost everything, including stuff that used to be free (or nearly free) a generation ago (e.g. drinking water).
So to make it possible to continue squeaking by, we increase our burden of debt, and now we can buy even less stuff because part of our costs now is the expense of debt service. Have you ever given any thought as to why religions throughout history have condemned the charging of interest on debt? You can only lend money if you have more money than you need. The rich lend the money, and the rich collect the interest. The borrowers have to show a profit from what they borrowed, or they lose on both ends. If they profit, they still have to pay the interest. So the rich always get richer, and the poor are always debt slaves.
One grows up and eventually develops compassion for and understanding of one's parents. The species grows up when it develops compassion for and understanding of all the forces and entities that have supported us as we grew, principally the environment and the poor. It's telling that those whose vision does not extend past the end of their wallets almost universally refuse to give back to either one.
But time is running out. Soon the cost of exploiting raw materials from the environment and the cost of further growing the poor population will become so high that the economy will collapse. What do people do when disaster strikes? Where do they go when there's nowhere else to go? They turn to family, friends, and neighbors, to community self-help. Therein lies the beginnings of the solution.
Start now. Find out what the neighbors know how to do, and let them know what you know how to do. Along the way, you'll probably learn what special needs are around you. Maybe you can help with those. Maybe you know someone else who could help also. Don't be sucked in by trying to get a "fair exchange." Giving freely builds your personal capital, you might need help later that you can't foresee now.
The fact that we don't already do this speaks volumes. We haven't needed to. We pay for everything. Wonder why you don't know your neighbors?
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Moneyless Education
Consider the possible changes in the educational system that would be possible, nay, inevitable, if there were no money involved. Currently, there are two major motivations for getting an education: the first is to go deeper into something you are interested in or passionate about, and the second is to prepare yourself for a career, i.e., to make the most money possible. As an artist with lots of scientific curiosity, I can personally attest to the power of the first motivation.
In my youth in the 1960s, I and most of my peers felt that elementary school was for acquiring basic skills, and secondary school (through college) was for a "well-rounded" education. Unless you were planning to go to graduate school and pursue a career in academia, education was definitely not job training. The well-roundedness was for creating a cultured person who could thrive in many fields.
Typically, one's parents thought differently. Their fear was that by pursuing these largely useless fields, their children would be consigning themselves to lives of poverty (or teaching, which amounts to a slightly better-respected brand of poverty) and that they had better be planning for what their lifelong careers would be.
Both camps were secretly afraid of getting the wrong sort of education and ending up in a job one hated, because it was too expensive to go back and do it over. This is an instance of financial constraints channeling lives willy-nilly. If you were in a job you hated, you probably would not advance along the career track and would live a life of mediocrity and quiet desperation. And for many people, that describes their lives today. But times were changing, and many others have had several careers as their interests have changed, or what they originally pursued turned out to be a dying field.
It's pretty easy to see the underlying financial motives behind these paradigms, but what if money were not part of the equation?
First of all, it's obvious that kids are learning machines. They start out curious about everything, and usually as they grow older, become focused on just a few subjects. But then the pressure begins from parents, teachers, and society in general to pick their field, get the right education, get on the career track, and live happily ever after.
The problem is that not everybody (and probably nobody) successfully makes this choice right out of high school, because the fact is that people frequently continue to change interests as they go through life. The most courageous find ways to change careers; the rest have hobbies. Once again, the problem is money. Remember that I said that it's too expensive to do your education over? Another problem with a career change is that because you have attained a certain standard of living, you now have to make a certain amount of money to maintain it, and changing careers would probably mean that you're going to have to start over at the bottom rung of the ladder with a major pay cut and a drastically reduced standard of living. If you have kids to support, that may be impossible altogether. Career and child raising are, unfortunately, joined at the hip.
Without money constraints, all those linkages and inter-dependencies are broken. The concentrated curriculum is no longer necessary. On-the-job training starts to make sense again. Has anyone else noticed that being a graduate assistant looks an awful lot like an apprenticeship? Apprenticeship works fabulously even today. It's just that if you're wearing a suit, we now call it "Mentorship".
The basics of education could be limited to ways to interface the learning machines (kids or adults) to the media of information transmission. It looks like we're back to the Three Rs. Probably should have never left in the first place. After that the learners just follow their curiosity until it's time for apprenticeship where some guidance is added into the mix. That model should work all the way from agriculture to brain surgery and everything in between.
In my youth in the 1960s, I and most of my peers felt that elementary school was for acquiring basic skills, and secondary school (through college) was for a "well-rounded" education. Unless you were planning to go to graduate school and pursue a career in academia, education was definitely not job training. The well-roundedness was for creating a cultured person who could thrive in many fields.
Typically, one's parents thought differently. Their fear was that by pursuing these largely useless fields, their children would be consigning themselves to lives of poverty (or teaching, which amounts to a slightly better-respected brand of poverty) and that they had better be planning for what their lifelong careers would be.
Both camps were secretly afraid of getting the wrong sort of education and ending up in a job one hated, because it was too expensive to go back and do it over. This is an instance of financial constraints channeling lives willy-nilly. If you were in a job you hated, you probably would not advance along the career track and would live a life of mediocrity and quiet desperation. And for many people, that describes their lives today. But times were changing, and many others have had several careers as their interests have changed, or what they originally pursued turned out to be a dying field.
It's pretty easy to see the underlying financial motives behind these paradigms, but what if money were not part of the equation?
First of all, it's obvious that kids are learning machines. They start out curious about everything, and usually as they grow older, become focused on just a few subjects. But then the pressure begins from parents, teachers, and society in general to pick their field, get the right education, get on the career track, and live happily ever after.
The problem is that not everybody (and probably nobody) successfully makes this choice right out of high school, because the fact is that people frequently continue to change interests as they go through life. The most courageous find ways to change careers; the rest have hobbies. Once again, the problem is money. Remember that I said that it's too expensive to do your education over? Another problem with a career change is that because you have attained a certain standard of living, you now have to make a certain amount of money to maintain it, and changing careers would probably mean that you're going to have to start over at the bottom rung of the ladder with a major pay cut and a drastically reduced standard of living. If you have kids to support, that may be impossible altogether. Career and child raising are, unfortunately, joined at the hip.
Without money constraints, all those linkages and inter-dependencies are broken. The concentrated curriculum is no longer necessary. On-the-job training starts to make sense again. Has anyone else noticed that being a graduate assistant looks an awful lot like an apprenticeship? Apprenticeship works fabulously even today. It's just that if you're wearing a suit, we now call it "Mentorship".
The basics of education could be limited to ways to interface the learning machines (kids or adults) to the media of information transmission. It looks like we're back to the Three Rs. Probably should have never left in the first place. After that the learners just follow their curiosity until it's time for apprenticeship where some guidance is added into the mix. That model should work all the way from agriculture to brain surgery and everything in between.
Saturday, March 10, 2012
Return to the Village
Once you detach yourself from the fear that money might disappear and view it as a positive development, all sorts of interesting possibilities open up. I love to start with the idea that all of a sudden everyone wakes up one morning to find that the entire financial system has collapsed. All the money is gone. Say some supersonic computer virus swept through the world's banking network and blew away every bit of financial data. All the backup files, too. All too easy, but don't even think about it, okay?
What if someone had the presence of mind and the media power to put out the following idea:
"Folks, let's start with the basics. If you have a roof over your head, that's now your house. All debts are wiped free. If you had a job, you probably should show up for work, even though there's no money to pay you. The new currency is now Your Own Reputation, fueled by your willingness to contribute your time and energy to the community. What you gain for your Reputation is that your family, friends, and acquaintances are going to take care of you because you are taking care of them.
"Jerry Potsdam, manager of the Super Mega Grocery Mart branch down the street, has a whole store full of food that she can't sell, because no one has money to pay for it, so rather than have it all just sit there or go bad, she gives whatever is needed to anyone whom she or any store employee recognizes or to anyone THOSE people will vouch for. Instant foodstuffs network! The employees keep right on stocking the shelves and unloading the trucks, which keep showing up with more food because the food providers keep loading the trucks, and that's because they keep growing it, and that's because they're still being provided with the wherewithal to grow the food.
"And the people who provide the wherewithal do so because they know they can come in to their local grocery store and get the food they need. Can you see that this only works if everybody understands that their effort is needed? That applies to everyone who was unemployed when the bottom fell out. You don't need a "job"! Just contribute to the well-being of your family, friends and neighbors. Your reputation and willingness will ensure that folks will make sure you have what you need.
"Now notice that reputation can be gained by any useful activity, so what if you hate your job and would rather be home taking care of the kids? Stay home and take care of the kids! That's providing value to the community. Even more value if you take care of the neighbors' kids (and they take care of yours) as needed.
"Old Granny Parker can't pay for Meals on Wheels any more, but they keep showing up anyway. She makes sweaters and gives them to the Meals on Wheels people and the neighbors on the block. Pretty soon the neighbors find out that she can't get to the yarn store any more, so they take her there or just go get her some yarn. Then when everybody on the block has a Granny Parker sweater, the folks in the next block find out about her. Somebody over there fixes her dishwasher (that's what his company does). A local nurse from over at the hospital hears about her because her neighbor has a new Granny Parker sweater."
I'll be here all week....
What if someone had the presence of mind and the media power to put out the following idea:
"Folks, let's start with the basics. If you have a roof over your head, that's now your house. All debts are wiped free. If you had a job, you probably should show up for work, even though there's no money to pay you. The new currency is now Your Own Reputation, fueled by your willingness to contribute your time and energy to the community. What you gain for your Reputation is that your family, friends, and acquaintances are going to take care of you because you are taking care of them.
"Jerry Potsdam, manager of the Super Mega Grocery Mart branch down the street, has a whole store full of food that she can't sell, because no one has money to pay for it, so rather than have it all just sit there or go bad, she gives whatever is needed to anyone whom she or any store employee recognizes or to anyone THOSE people will vouch for. Instant foodstuffs network! The employees keep right on stocking the shelves and unloading the trucks, which keep showing up with more food because the food providers keep loading the trucks, and that's because they keep growing it, and that's because they're still being provided with the wherewithal to grow the food.
"And the people who provide the wherewithal do so because they know they can come in to their local grocery store and get the food they need. Can you see that this only works if everybody understands that their effort is needed? That applies to everyone who was unemployed when the bottom fell out. You don't need a "job"! Just contribute to the well-being of your family, friends and neighbors. Your reputation and willingness will ensure that folks will make sure you have what you need.
"Now notice that reputation can be gained by any useful activity, so what if you hate your job and would rather be home taking care of the kids? Stay home and take care of the kids! That's providing value to the community. Even more value if you take care of the neighbors' kids (and they take care of yours) as needed.
"Old Granny Parker can't pay for Meals on Wheels any more, but they keep showing up anyway. She makes sweaters and gives them to the Meals on Wheels people and the neighbors on the block. Pretty soon the neighbors find out that she can't get to the yarn store any more, so they take her there or just go get her some yarn. Then when everybody on the block has a Granny Parker sweater, the folks in the next block find out about her. Somebody over there fixes her dishwasher (that's what his company does). A local nurse from over at the hospital hears about her because her neighbor has a new Granny Parker sweater."
I'll be here all week....
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
It's Not Marxism
This is not Socialism, because there is no common property. Just because an idea is similar to a Marxist one doesn't make it Marxist. The new definition of property in a money-less society would not revolve around "Can you afford it?", but rather "Can you accept responsibility for it." I'm not interested in hearing how it won't work. We're going to have to drop the cynicism and make it work if we want to survive. The situation is much more dire than anyone imagines right now, and it's not going to be solved by people pushing numbers around in some computer. What is needed is an evolutionary leap, and it going to have to happen soon, otherwise we are going to be in the absurd situation of people starving to death outside food stores with shelves stocked with food that nobody can afford to buy.
The whole concept of money is based on scarcity and making sure that everybody gets his or her "fair share". Perhaps that worked in small prehistoric communities, but it's easy to see that it has not scaled up well, give the vast disparity between the haves and the have-nots.
The objection has been raised that people want to be led. Yes, people want to be led, and the mistake that is being made at present is that it's all being done by power. Power creates fear and resistance to power, neither of which is conducive to the change of perspective that's needed here. Most of history, especially in the 20th Century bears that out. If the 99% movement is to succeed, it will have to be led by imitation. A case can be easily made that the most profound changes in the 20th Century were led by Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King. If we are to avoid cataclysm, it stands to reason that this new Renaissance (widely predicted by diverse members of the spiritual and religious communities) is much more likely to succeed if it emerges from the heart.
The whole concept of money is based on scarcity and making sure that everybody gets his or her "fair share". Perhaps that worked in small prehistoric communities, but it's easy to see that it has not scaled up well, give the vast disparity between the haves and the have-nots.
The objection has been raised that people want to be led. Yes, people want to be led, and the mistake that is being made at present is that it's all being done by power. Power creates fear and resistance to power, neither of which is conducive to the change of perspective that's needed here. Most of history, especially in the 20th Century bears that out. If the 99% movement is to succeed, it will have to be led by imitation. A case can be easily made that the most profound changes in the 20th Century were led by Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King. If we are to avoid cataclysm, it stands to reason that this new Renaissance (widely predicted by diverse members of the spiritual and religious communities) is much more likely to succeed if it emerges from the heart.
Monday, November 7, 2011
The 99% Solution
Well, friends, I stopped talking about this world economic situation for over a year while I looked for a different solution. I'm sorry to admit that I didn't find one. Given the way things are shaping up in the EU and the speed that things are approaching meltdown around the world, my guess is that one big default is all it's going to take to trigger a collapse that cannot be controlled. It's possible that the EU can survive if Germany bails out Greece, but Italy is very close to default as well, and there isn't enough money in the EU's coffers to bail them out.
Desperate times call for desperate measures. So here's what we will have to do. The first thing that has to happen is that we have to simultaneously, worldwide, realize that money is a FICTION. It's a representation of value, not value itself. Value is not the same thing as cost. Cost is value measured, traditionally in money. We've been doing that since the Babylonians, so long that we have forgotten that cost and value are different, Value is only what a thing can be used for, even if that is merely to find pleasure in it or in its beauty. So here's the solution. It's very simple--only three steps.
Obviously the financial institutions and those who work in them will have nothing to do. Great! Volunteer somewhere. Everyone else should continue on as if nothing had happened. At the grocery, people will still come for food and leave with it. But nothing will be exchanged for it. Everything is free. Trucks will arrive with more food. Gasoline will be pumped into the trucks' tanks. Refineries will still make the gas, oil companies will pick it up and deliver it where it is needed.
Farmers will still grow food and deliver it to the markets through whatever distribution networks exist. Hospitals will continue to deliver health care. Everything will continue as before, except that everyone will be giving away their labor, and everyone will receive what they need.
Whatever you have or live in or wear or drive will be yours to keep or give away as you see fit. If you need a new car, refrigerator, suit, pair of shoes, or house, it will be given to you. BUT...
The most important thing to understand is that we are all in this together, and it is your responsibility to receive only what you need and no more than you need! Hoarding makes no sense anyway unless something is no longer being produced.
The word "afford" has to simply vanish. It especially means that we all need to take responsibility for those who previously were in need because they could not "afford" what they needed. We must all see to it that everybody gets what they need.
But with this great shift there is great responsibility. People must work just as they did before if this new economy is going to succeed. Your value as a person will be measured by the extent to which you contribute, not the amount of "stuff" you have piled up around you.
Much will have to be negotiated; we understand that. But the world cannot simply grind to a halt because we won't exchange the value of our labor for the value of goods and services we need (and want) because currency isn't involved in that exchange.
We can turn crisis into opportunity and opportunity into Utopia, if we just realize what we are actually dealing with.
Desperate times call for desperate measures. So here's what we will have to do. The first thing that has to happen is that we have to simultaneously, worldwide, realize that money is a FICTION. It's a representation of value, not value itself. Value is not the same thing as cost. Cost is value measured, traditionally in money. We've been doing that since the Babylonians, so long that we have forgotten that cost and value are different, Value is only what a thing can be used for, even if that is merely to find pleasure in it or in its beauty. So here's the solution. It's very simple--only three steps.
- Abolish all currencies and all debt.
- Keep doing the work you have been doing.
- Take care of everyone who needs it.
Obviously the financial institutions and those who work in them will have nothing to do. Great! Volunteer somewhere. Everyone else should continue on as if nothing had happened. At the grocery, people will still come for food and leave with it. But nothing will be exchanged for it. Everything is free. Trucks will arrive with more food. Gasoline will be pumped into the trucks' tanks. Refineries will still make the gas, oil companies will pick it up and deliver it where it is needed.
Farmers will still grow food and deliver it to the markets through whatever distribution networks exist. Hospitals will continue to deliver health care. Everything will continue as before, except that everyone will be giving away their labor, and everyone will receive what they need.
Whatever you have or live in or wear or drive will be yours to keep or give away as you see fit. If you need a new car, refrigerator, suit, pair of shoes, or house, it will be given to you. BUT...
The most important thing to understand is that we are all in this together, and it is your responsibility to receive only what you need and no more than you need! Hoarding makes no sense anyway unless something is no longer being produced.
The word "afford" has to simply vanish. It especially means that we all need to take responsibility for those who previously were in need because they could not "afford" what they needed. We must all see to it that everybody gets what they need.
But with this great shift there is great responsibility. People must work just as they did before if this new economy is going to succeed. Your value as a person will be measured by the extent to which you contribute, not the amount of "stuff" you have piled up around you.
Much will have to be negotiated; we understand that. But the world cannot simply grind to a halt because we won't exchange the value of our labor for the value of goods and services we need (and want) because currency isn't involved in that exchange.
We can turn crisis into opportunity and opportunity into Utopia, if we just realize what we are actually dealing with.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Value Cells and Networks: How to Transform an Economic System
Value Cells and Cell Networks
I’ve been rattling on for a couple of years about the fact that I did not have any idea how the transition to the Post-Financial world could be achieved peacefully. That alone made it easy to label this set of ideas as pure fantasy. Herewith, a modest proposal for how the change might done, and how we can start on it now.
The first concept to understand here is the Value Cell.
The cell, of course, is one of the primary building blocks of life. It’s a simple concept really: a bag that separates the material inside from whatever is on the outside. It’s also interesting from a systems point of view.
Without going into General Systems Theory too deeply, we can conceptualize a System as having three main components: Inputs, Processes, and Outputs. A System, then, takes inputs and processes them into outputs. The beauty of this approach is that it allows you to view the Processes as Black Boxes. That is, at the top level we can ignore the details of the processing and just look at the inputs and outputs . Later we can look inside the Process and figure out what systems are inside that. The Systems approach, allows you to analyze something complex into easier-to-understand layers.
So from that very general context, let’s define a Value Cell (VCell) as something that outputs Value. A Value could consist of goods or services, anything from pies to lawn service to brain surgery. Now, out in the larger world, interesting things start happening when we consider interactions with other cells. The output from one cell may then serve as the input to another one. Then the value that the second one outputs may be the input to a third. After that, perhaps the outputs of the first and third cells might be the inputs to a fourth, which might be used by two other cells as inputs, etc, etc.
Let’s imagine a restaurant as a cell. The inputs are raw foodstuffs and the outputs are meals. Customers come in and pay for the meals and leave. They’ve exchanged one value (money) for another value (meals). Now notice something over there at the table by the kitchen door. Employees are eating, too, but they don’t pay money for their food. Instead they exchange one value (labor) for another value(meals). So the processes inside a cell may be (and usually are) different from how the cell interacts with the outside.
Now let’s stretch the idea a little. Let’s imagine a hospital. Again, “customers” exchange value (money) for value (health services) and employees get these services for free. Because this hospital has no preventive care services, they enter into a partnership with a clinic that outputs preventive care. As part of the agreement, the hospital workers get free preventive care and the preventive care workers get free hospital services. The hospital makes a similar deal with a physical therapy service, and now each of the three services gets free treatment from the other two. Now we have a Value Cell Network (VCN).
The services don’t even have to be closely related. For instance, an auto repair shop enters into an agreement with a cleaning service: the shop gets free cleaning, the cleaning service people get free auto care. Such a network could expand indefinitely. That’s a Post-Financial Economy (PFE).
Because of our habitual Malthusian attitude that there isn’t enough to go around, the tendency, even in a PFE, is to try to make sure that we’re always getting a “profitable deal” with these network agreements. Likely as not, such an agreement will fall apart or never get made in the first place due to perceived inequities. If instead we adopt a Fullerian view that the problem isn’t scarcity, it’s distribution (and nobody is saying that that’s going to be easy), then we can relax a little bit.
Let’s take a look at another example. In this case, it’s a VCell called the Piano Rehabilitation Hospital (PRH) that’s already beginning operations. The premise of the VCell is to take in ailing pianos, nurse them back to health and either return them to their owners or, if the piano is acquired by the PRH, distribute (output) them at the end. Here again there are two forms of distribution. Inside the VCell or VCN, they are distributed to the workers; outside the VCell or VCN they are sold for cash. As yet, the VCell has no network connections. Now let’s say Annie wants to have a piano for herself and her kids to play. She comes to the PRH, looks over the selection and finds one she likes. “How much is that piano there”, she asks.
“It’s $850 cash”, says the helpful salesperson, “Or you can trade labor for it.”
“How much labor?” asks Annie.
“We don’t measure it in hours,” says the salesperson, “Let me explain by showing you around.”
The salesperson takes Annie on a tour of the place. At first glance, walking through the shop, it looks like a regular repair shop, but since it’s Monday morning, there’s a meeting going on, and no one is working on the pianos at the moment. The salesperson opens a door to a brightly-lit room where all the workers are sitting around a conference table. One worker is standing at a whiteboard explaining some numbers.
The salesperson introduces Annie, and the workers greet her warmly and show her to a seat. The woman at the whiteboard, Judy, continues her presentation.
“Last week we finished six pianos and sold two. We took in $1800 for those two. We have three bills that need to be paid totaling $475, so that leaves $1325 for distribution. Also, I’m going to propose that Walter here has worked here long enough to earn his piano. What do you all think?”
The workers discuss Walter’s contributions during the time he has been there and agree that it seems enough for him to have earned the piano they have set aside for him. You see, Walter is on a different compensation plan from all the rest of the workers. He’s not on profit-sharing, he’s been accumulating value towards a piano. Nobody quantifies this, no hours worked valued against the piano. The decision is made by his co-workers that he’s contributed enough.
Judy asks, “How about it, Walter, will you be staying with us after the piano’s delivered?”
“Yes,” replies Walter, “I’ve really enjoyed working here, so I’d like to stay.”
“Great!” says Judy. “If everyone agrees, we’ll convert Walter’s plan to profit-sharing.”
There is applause for Walter, and the meeting breaks up. Judy walks Annie into the office.
“Does everyone working here start out working for a piano?” asks Annie as they are sitting down.
“No. That’s just one option. Jake is a saxophone player and doesn’t even want a piano, but he likes the work and the compensation plan and the company, so he’s been here for five years now.”
“How does the compensation plan work?”
“It’s pretty simple, actually. After the outside expenses are taken care of, the profits from any sales are distributed evenly to the workers.”
“Evenly? So I could come in for 10 minutes one day, turn a couple of screws, and qualify for profit sharing when the week’s done?”
“Not exactly. If you don’t spend much time here, the workers won’t vote you in for the week. It’s cumulative, though. If you could only work a couple hours a week, you would get voted a share every month or so. But most of the benefit to working here is going to be the VCN. Right now we’re finishing up exchange deals with the hospital, a hardware store, and our cleaning service.”
To be continued….
I hope from this you can see the possibility for enterprises that can bridge between the FW and the PFE, then adapt smoothly to the new way of doing things.
Monday, August 9, 2010
The Post-Financial World: The Next Step in the Evolution of Consciousness
Let's assume for a moment that the idea of a finite ecosystem has finally sunk all the way in. Right now the majority of humanity acknowledges the idea that all of life is an interconnected web, but we put that on a shelf with the rest of our ideas that we don't fully process, that we don't envision how it would apply to us.
Interconnection means that we're not really separate from "others" as our eyes would have us believe. In fact, there are no "others" in any independent sense. Separateness is an illusion, a fiction that we've adopted because it's useful at a stage in the evolution of self-awareness. Knowledge of our interconnectedness points beyond "Us versus Them" to a place where we realize that there is no "Them". There is only "Us". You can find plenty of evidence for that if you approach the facts with an open mind.
1. Your body is a colony of cells, billions of specialized little entities acting in concert in the common enterprise you call "you."
2. Likewise, this thing called our self (small "s") is a colony of ideas (mostly non-original), emotions and behaviors (mostly learned along our life-story's timeline). It appears in the space of pure awareness that we think (because of the evidence of our very limited senses) is a "person" living inside this bag of flesh and bone. The word "person', by the way, comes from the Greek word (transliterated) "personna" which literally means a "mask". It originally meant a theatrical mask with sort of built-in megaphone that the sound ("sonna") came through ("per"). We are not this "personna", this thing that sound (and a lot of other stuff) comes through. We are the pure awareness that's watching this whole performance of the "self". More properly, we are this pure awareness that everything arises in.
3. Again, our history of sensory experiences convinces us that this awareness is inside our heads. The Ghost in the Machine. Very Existential. But how do we know when somebody is staring at us from behind our backs? How do we finish each others sentences when we are in intimate relationships? The world is full of little clues pointing to boundlessness if we are simply willing to suspend our previous notions and really look at what's actually going on.
Now, if we're really not as separate as we appear, how does it make any sense to act as though we were? It takes a lot of energy to hang on to separateness. Here's another clue: we'd much rather relax with our "friends" than defend ourselves against our fears, which we externalize as "other people" who are "strangers." We don't want anything bad to happen to our "friends", the people we have stuff "in common" with. We're not so sure about those "strangers", though! And the "stranger" they are, the more defended we feel, that is until we find out that the "strangers" are really no different from "us" in any fundamental way. We all want to be happy. We all want to feel safe. We all want our kids to be happy and safe. That's just for starters.
Fear and anger (which usually seems to be a defense against fears that we don't want to acknowledge) are the primary causes of feeling separate. When we don't feel so separate, we relax. Hmmm. What could that mean?
So what if we all "got it"? What if we all started treating everybody else as though they were, if not ourselves, at least our family? Probably in the course of this evolutionary change, everybody is not going to wake up one morning with this realization firmly lodged in awareness. I'm guessing it will take some time, but that a tipping point will be reached where consciousness of interconnectedness will outweigh the illusion of separateness. What do you suppose will happen then? My guess is that we'll start taking care of each other as though we were all family members, then as though we were all each other's children. Not that hard to imagine, is it? It's just the logical conclusion of ecology, of the obvious interconnectedness of all life. In fact, it has to extend to what we perceive now as "non-living matter", which supports the seemingly fragile web of life. Mistreat the non-living matter until it stops supporting life, and life disappears. Be grateful for the rocks holding up your house. If they weren't there, you wouldn't be either.
Another thing that the illusion of separateness and the subsequent fear produces is the idea that there Isn't Enough. That idea was formalized by the pioneering economist, Adam Smith (1723? - 1790). Better information convinced another pioneer, R. Buckminster Fuller (1895 - 1983), that the problem wasn't scarcity, it was distribution. A really good introduction to his ideas and the facts that he backs them up with is a little book called "Operating Manual for the Spaceship Earth". Ought to be required reading for everybody.
So if there really is enough, and we start to understand that we need to take care of our world (every body and every thing), wouldn't our first impulse be to try to solve the distribution problems and make sure that everybody gets taken care of? Does that seem so illogical? Right now we're so conditioned by our belief in scarcity that we fear that by helping others, there won't be enough for "ourselves". If there's enough for everybody, wouldn't that fear atrophy away?
Let's take another look at money in this context. We know that it's a convenient way to trade goods and services, but in previous posts, we've made the case that with a scarcity mindset, it's also a convenient way to hoard. Hoarding is a response to perceived scarcity. But if everybody has enough and everybody is taking care of each other, hoarding doesn't make sense. Neither does piling up lots of money. If you translate vast wealth into vast amounts of stuff, you may not have a scarcity problem, but you definitely have a storage problem. Now suppose what you're hoarding is perishable. You either have to defend your wealth, maybe by refrigerating it (which chips away at your wealth), or you watch it perish. The better part of wisdom in a post-financial world would be to acquire only what you actually need and can take care of. We said before that ownership may come to mean not what you've paid for but what you can accept responsibility for.
Interconnection means that we're not really separate from "others" as our eyes would have us believe. In fact, there are no "others" in any independent sense. Separateness is an illusion, a fiction that we've adopted because it's useful at a stage in the evolution of self-awareness. Knowledge of our interconnectedness points beyond "Us versus Them" to a place where we realize that there is no "Them". There is only "Us". You can find plenty of evidence for that if you approach the facts with an open mind.
1. Your body is a colony of cells, billions of specialized little entities acting in concert in the common enterprise you call "you."
2. Likewise, this thing called our self (small "s") is a colony of ideas (mostly non-original), emotions and behaviors (mostly learned along our life-story's timeline). It appears in the space of pure awareness that we think (because of the evidence of our very limited senses) is a "person" living inside this bag of flesh and bone. The word "person', by the way, comes from the Greek word (transliterated) "personna" which literally means a "mask". It originally meant a theatrical mask with sort of built-in megaphone that the sound ("sonna") came through ("per"). We are not this "personna", this thing that sound (and a lot of other stuff) comes through. We are the pure awareness that's watching this whole performance of the "self". More properly, we are this pure awareness that everything arises in.
3. Again, our history of sensory experiences convinces us that this awareness is inside our heads. The Ghost in the Machine. Very Existential. But how do we know when somebody is staring at us from behind our backs? How do we finish each others sentences when we are in intimate relationships? The world is full of little clues pointing to boundlessness if we are simply willing to suspend our previous notions and really look at what's actually going on.
Now, if we're really not as separate as we appear, how does it make any sense to act as though we were? It takes a lot of energy to hang on to separateness. Here's another clue: we'd much rather relax with our "friends" than defend ourselves against our fears, which we externalize as "other people" who are "strangers." We don't want anything bad to happen to our "friends", the people we have stuff "in common" with. We're not so sure about those "strangers", though! And the "stranger" they are, the more defended we feel, that is until we find out that the "strangers" are really no different from "us" in any fundamental way. We all want to be happy. We all want to feel safe. We all want our kids to be happy and safe. That's just for starters.
Fear and anger (which usually seems to be a defense against fears that we don't want to acknowledge) are the primary causes of feeling separate. When we don't feel so separate, we relax. Hmmm. What could that mean?
So what if we all "got it"? What if we all started treating everybody else as though they were, if not ourselves, at least our family? Probably in the course of this evolutionary change, everybody is not going to wake up one morning with this realization firmly lodged in awareness. I'm guessing it will take some time, but that a tipping point will be reached where consciousness of interconnectedness will outweigh the illusion of separateness. What do you suppose will happen then? My guess is that we'll start taking care of each other as though we were all family members, then as though we were all each other's children. Not that hard to imagine, is it? It's just the logical conclusion of ecology, of the obvious interconnectedness of all life. In fact, it has to extend to what we perceive now as "non-living matter", which supports the seemingly fragile web of life. Mistreat the non-living matter until it stops supporting life, and life disappears. Be grateful for the rocks holding up your house. If they weren't there, you wouldn't be either.
Another thing that the illusion of separateness and the subsequent fear produces is the idea that there Isn't Enough. That idea was formalized by the pioneering economist, Adam Smith (1723? - 1790). Better information convinced another pioneer, R. Buckminster Fuller (1895 - 1983), that the problem wasn't scarcity, it was distribution. A really good introduction to his ideas and the facts that he backs them up with is a little book called "Operating Manual for the Spaceship Earth". Ought to be required reading for everybody.
So if there really is enough, and we start to understand that we need to take care of our world (every body and every thing), wouldn't our first impulse be to try to solve the distribution problems and make sure that everybody gets taken care of? Does that seem so illogical? Right now we're so conditioned by our belief in scarcity that we fear that by helping others, there won't be enough for "ourselves". If there's enough for everybody, wouldn't that fear atrophy away?
Let's take another look at money in this context. We know that it's a convenient way to trade goods and services, but in previous posts, we've made the case that with a scarcity mindset, it's also a convenient way to hoard. Hoarding is a response to perceived scarcity. But if everybody has enough and everybody is taking care of each other, hoarding doesn't make sense. Neither does piling up lots of money. If you translate vast wealth into vast amounts of stuff, you may not have a scarcity problem, but you definitely have a storage problem. Now suppose what you're hoarding is perishable. You either have to defend your wealth, maybe by refrigerating it (which chips away at your wealth), or you watch it perish. The better part of wisdom in a post-financial world would be to acquire only what you actually need and can take care of. We said before that ownership may come to mean not what you've paid for but what you can accept responsibility for.
Saturday, June 19, 2010
A Radical Statement
I'm going to make a rather radical statement, so brace yourself.
The reason that Socialism has failed to take hold is because Marx didn't go far enough: his theory did not include the abandonment of money.
I haven't finished reading Marx's Capital yet (it's a very tough read), but there is one other book published in the US that's a lot easier to understand and that takes into account subsequent developments. It's Socialism by Michael Harrington. In fact, it's the only book I could find on Amazon that looked at Socialism in a positive way. Still, the thing is much more complicated to implement if you don't abandon money first.
The two most important maxims in canonical socialism seem to be "The workers control the means of production" and "To each according to his/her needs; from each according to his/her abilities". Of course that's a VAST oversimplification.
Let's look at the first statement. If money is not in the picture and we start from the very basic, pre-technological level, the Workers ARE the means of production. The next level up would be the technology the workers create: one's own tools. The next level up would be machinery, specialized tools or general-purpose ones like computers that would need to be made by specialists. This level is the stumbling block that makes any transition to socialism difficult and why most radical socialists advocate seizing these means of production. Of course, this sort of strategy tends to provoke backlashes. They represent a large investment, whether one sees that as money or as time. In a capitalist system, normally the owners of the company, whether it's privately or publicly held, would be those owners, would view those items as their exclusive property, and would have a considerable stake in retaining ownership.
In some cooperatives, these assets are actually owned by the workers, and it should be noted that usually these owner/workers have strong motivation for the company to succeed as a result--stronger, in fact, than wage-earners, whose only interest in the company's success may be only so that they can keep their jobs.
It's possible, therefore, to envision the beginnings of a money-less society as modeled on the communes that began in the 60s and 70s in this country. Enterprises could be built up by people cohabitating while contributing their skills and assets to the project. The assets would be held in common, but anyone wishing to return to the money economy would be compensated on exit, if those assets are retained by the project. That's only a germ of an idea, but if enterprises could be started this way, a money-less society could be created (without "seizing" anything) in our midst by linking these projects together.
No capitalists were harmed during the making of this society :)
The reason that Socialism has failed to take hold is because Marx didn't go far enough: his theory did not include the abandonment of money.
I haven't finished reading Marx's Capital yet (it's a very tough read), but there is one other book published in the US that's a lot easier to understand and that takes into account subsequent developments. It's Socialism by Michael Harrington. In fact, it's the only book I could find on Amazon that looked at Socialism in a positive way. Still, the thing is much more complicated to implement if you don't abandon money first.
The two most important maxims in canonical socialism seem to be "The workers control the means of production" and "To each according to his/her needs; from each according to his/her abilities". Of course that's a VAST oversimplification.
Let's look at the first statement. If money is not in the picture and we start from the very basic, pre-technological level, the Workers ARE the means of production. The next level up would be the technology the workers create: one's own tools. The next level up would be machinery, specialized tools or general-purpose ones like computers that would need to be made by specialists. This level is the stumbling block that makes any transition to socialism difficult and why most radical socialists advocate seizing these means of production. Of course, this sort of strategy tends to provoke backlashes. They represent a large investment, whether one sees that as money or as time. In a capitalist system, normally the owners of the company, whether it's privately or publicly held, would be those owners, would view those items as their exclusive property, and would have a considerable stake in retaining ownership.
In some cooperatives, these assets are actually owned by the workers, and it should be noted that usually these owner/workers have strong motivation for the company to succeed as a result--stronger, in fact, than wage-earners, whose only interest in the company's success may be only so that they can keep their jobs.
It's possible, therefore, to envision the beginnings of a money-less society as modeled on the communes that began in the 60s and 70s in this country. Enterprises could be built up by people cohabitating while contributing their skills and assets to the project. The assets would be held in common, but anyone wishing to return to the money economy would be compensated on exit, if those assets are retained by the project. That's only a germ of an idea, but if enterprises could be started this way, a money-less society could be created (without "seizing" anything) in our midst by linking these projects together.
No capitalists were harmed during the making of this society :)
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Article on Allvoices.com
I just posted an introductory article on AllVoices.com about this topic. Here's the link:
http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/6008379-abolish-money-movement-reporting-from-the-front .
I don't think we can overstate our case by limiting it to this blog. Don't you agree?
http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/6008379-abolish-money-movement-reporting-from-the-front .
I don't think we can overstate our case by limiting it to this blog. Don't you agree?
Friday, May 28, 2010
Why Not Barter?
Often when people argue for the abolition of money, they suggest replacing it with barter. The trouble is, barter is based on the same mindset as money: Make Sure You Get Your Fair Share. That is Separation (non-Community) Thinking. What's really being said is "I'm afraid I won't get my fair share, and I'll starve/freeze/insert-fear-here, and I'll DIE!"
Much better is Pay It Forward.
1. Do something for the community or just a member of it.
2. Don't worry about getting paid back.
3. If you need help, ask for it.
That's a summary of the entire Everything Free philosophy, if you will. If you do it enough, as and when you're able, the movement will spread. If we all take care of each other, our real needs will be met.
Other disadvantages of barter include the fact that it's taxable. Any quid pro quo can be assigned a monetary value by the government, and, presto changeo, the receiver got some Income based on what he gave as barter for it!
Barter systems require a lot of tracking--Fair Share Thinking. If you can stop worrying about the Value of what you give because you're certain that you will be taken care of and that you'll get what you need, then fear disappears and community-based giving replaces it.
Much better is Pay It Forward.
1. Do something for the community or just a member of it.
2. Don't worry about getting paid back.
3. If you need help, ask for it.
That's a summary of the entire Everything Free philosophy, if you will. If you do it enough, as and when you're able, the movement will spread. If we all take care of each other, our real needs will be met.
Other disadvantages of barter include the fact that it's taxable. Any quid pro quo can be assigned a monetary value by the government, and, presto changeo, the receiver got some Income based on what he gave as barter for it!
Barter systems require a lot of tracking--Fair Share Thinking. If you can stop worrying about the Value of what you give because you're certain that you will be taken care of and that you'll get what you need, then fear disappears and community-based giving replaces it.
Nourishment and Protection
I've had some questions from readers about how to make this work. I don't have all the answers, so I'd love to hear from other folks that might have ideas, but there is one thing I know will be an absolute requirement: we have to understand that the entire process runs on Caring.
We have to understand that we really are all in this together. If currency collapses to the point where nobody can afford to buy anything, we'll be forced to start taking care of each other anyway. Why not start now?
A long time ago someone noticed that there are three basic needs: Food, Clothing, and Shelter. I would add medical care to this, but if you think about it, it really falls under the heading of Shelter. In fact, those categories would be better understood if generalized a bit. Let's call them Nourishment and Protection.
If we don't have to earn money, then we don't need "jobs". So if your job involves something that doesn't directly produce something in the above two categories, it probably involves filling up the economy with more non-essential products in order to keep people working, earning, and consuming. You might want to align yourself with one of the two essential needs.
Think about what's included in the two general categories. For instance, Recreation is a form of Nourishment. So are Art, Exercise, Counseling, Education, Entertainment, and many others. Please feel free to suggest some of them.
We have to understand that we really are all in this together. If currency collapses to the point where nobody can afford to buy anything, we'll be forced to start taking care of each other anyway. Why not start now?
A long time ago someone noticed that there are three basic needs: Food, Clothing, and Shelter. I would add medical care to this, but if you think about it, it really falls under the heading of Shelter. In fact, those categories would be better understood if generalized a bit. Let's call them Nourishment and Protection.
If we don't have to earn money, then we don't need "jobs". So if your job involves something that doesn't directly produce something in the above two categories, it probably involves filling up the economy with more non-essential products in order to keep people working, earning, and consuming. You might want to align yourself with one of the two essential needs.
Think about what's included in the two general categories. For instance, Recreation is a form of Nourishment. So are Art, Exercise, Counseling, Education, Entertainment, and many others. Please feel free to suggest some of them.
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Million Dollar Watch
A few years ago we had the good fortune to find ourselves in London, and my wife wanted to go to Harrod's, the famous department store. Once in there we wandered off in different directions, and I, having no particular destination in mind, wandered into the jewelry section. Now I do have a weakness for watches, mostly because I'm a tool and gadget guy, and there are now watches that can do everything but make toast. And they can be very beautiful objects as well.
Harrod's had some gorgeous stuff, but almost immediately I got hit with sticker shock. Knowing that I wouldn't be buying anything, I decided to find the most expensive watch in the place. I did. With the help of my trusty calculator, I soon figured out that it was selling for a cool million bucks. Okay, it was pretty. Lots of diamonds and such. But I started to wonder what anybody would want with a million-dollar watch.
I came up with two reasons: 1) it was beautiful, and 2) "because I can afford it and you can't". There it was: another example of how money informs our lives. Wealth is another way of saying, "I'm better than you.". In a world without money and where we're devoted to working do ensure that everybody has enough, such a watch might still exist, but the value would come from somewhere else, and its message would be different.
Things like diamonds that are scarce and beautiful would still be valued higher than, say, beautiful pieces of quartz, which are relatively plentiful and perhaps less prized as beautiful.
Now let's say that I've been able, in the absence of money, to persuade some people to undertake the nasty and dangerous business of mining diamonds, perhaps by making it a lot less nasty and dangerous, but that's another whole set of ideas, so I digressed. At any rate, I now have a quantity of beautiful diamonds and am now in the enviable position of choosing who would be best to receive them. Am I just going to stand on a street corner and hand them out to passers-by? There's nothing to stop me, but if I value them for their beauty and rarity, I'm probably not. I'm going to think about giving them to someone who can enhance their beauty. I'm going to be thinking about people like jewelry makers and watch makers. In fact, I'm probably going to try to get them into the hands of the best ones I know, people who do high-quality work. If I've still got a lot of ego, it'll be about bragging rights: "I'm a regular supplier of diamonds to Madam Whoever, the finest watch-maker in the area." How big the "area" is will be directly proportional to the size of my ego.
If I don't have such an ego, I'm stll going to be trying to get them to high-quality workers who will enhance their beauty so I and others can appreciate it.
So value doesn't disappear along with money, it's just that it's no longer hiding behind the smoke screen of money. It's out in the open pointing to its true sources, beauty and rarity. Surprised?
Harrod's had some gorgeous stuff, but almost immediately I got hit with sticker shock. Knowing that I wouldn't be buying anything, I decided to find the most expensive watch in the place. I did. With the help of my trusty calculator, I soon figured out that it was selling for a cool million bucks. Okay, it was pretty. Lots of diamonds and such. But I started to wonder what anybody would want with a million-dollar watch.
I came up with two reasons: 1) it was beautiful, and 2) "because I can afford it and you can't". There it was: another example of how money informs our lives. Wealth is another way of saying, "I'm better than you.". In a world without money and where we're devoted to working do ensure that everybody has enough, such a watch might still exist, but the value would come from somewhere else, and its message would be different.
Things like diamonds that are scarce and beautiful would still be valued higher than, say, beautiful pieces of quartz, which are relatively plentiful and perhaps less prized as beautiful.
Now let's say that I've been able, in the absence of money, to persuade some people to undertake the nasty and dangerous business of mining diamonds, perhaps by making it a lot less nasty and dangerous, but that's another whole set of ideas, so I digressed. At any rate, I now have a quantity of beautiful diamonds and am now in the enviable position of choosing who would be best to receive them. Am I just going to stand on a street corner and hand them out to passers-by? There's nothing to stop me, but if I value them for their beauty and rarity, I'm probably not. I'm going to think about giving them to someone who can enhance their beauty. I'm going to be thinking about people like jewelry makers and watch makers. In fact, I'm probably going to try to get them into the hands of the best ones I know, people who do high-quality work. If I've still got a lot of ego, it'll be about bragging rights: "I'm a regular supplier of diamonds to Madam Whoever, the finest watch-maker in the area." How big the "area" is will be directly proportional to the size of my ego.
If I don't have such an ego, I'm stll going to be trying to get them to high-quality workers who will enhance their beauty so I and others can appreciate it.
So value doesn't disappear along with money, it's just that it's no longer hiding behind the smoke screen of money. It's out in the open pointing to its true sources, beauty and rarity. Surprised?
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Suppose President Beetlebaum held a press conference and said, "Here's the deal. We'll abolish the currency if each one of you will do the following: stay where you are and keep doing whatever work you're doing for the moment--that is unless you're in the financial sector. Those folks can take the week off, since you have nothing to do. If everybody continues to do their jobs, then everybody will be taken care of. If you need food, go to the store, and they'll give you what you need, but please take only what you need. If you work in a food store, your job becomes making sure that people can get what they need. And since there's no money, everything is free!
"If we all take care of each other, everything will work out. Please understand that no one is going to take anything away from you. You now own your house or apartment. Of course, your belongings are still yours."
So here you are, out of work and trained as a stockbroker. What do you do? Well, let's see. You don't have to work, but you have no worries about losing your house or anything else, for that matter. Here in your high-rise New York apartment, you've got a room that you use for your hobby, which is restoring old clocks. So you work on those for a couple of days and since you're not pressed for time, you finish one of the clocks. What to do with it? You can't sell it, so you have three choices: you can keep it, you can trade it for something, or you can give it away. For now, you can't decide. Then you remember your mentor, Sam, who runs a clock shop in Brooklyn, who has been generous with his time and taught you a lot. You decide to go see him and show him the clock.
So you get on the train with the clock and get off in Brooklyn down the street from the clock shop. When you walk in, the owner greets you from behind the desk. You notice that the shop is only about half-full of clocks. Sam says, "A lot of people have come in wanting clocks, so I've been giving them away, but some other folks have also been dropping off clocks. Some are for repair, but some are unwanted. In fact I've got so many that it'll take me a long time to fix them all. Do you want to help?" And you hang your clock in an empty space on Sam's wall.
Suddenly, you're doing what you've been wanting to do for years, what you thought you'd maybe do in retirement to supplement your Social Security. You thought you'd have to move out of New York, back to Poughkeepsie where it's cheaper to live. Now you're doing it with your mentor, living where you like, and having a lot of fun doing it. Your blood pressure drops forty points, and you stop taking that anti-anxiety medicine. Life just got a whole lot better!
"If we all take care of each other, everything will work out. Please understand that no one is going to take anything away from you. You now own your house or apartment. Of course, your belongings are still yours."
So here you are, out of work and trained as a stockbroker. What do you do? Well, let's see. You don't have to work, but you have no worries about losing your house or anything else, for that matter. Here in your high-rise New York apartment, you've got a room that you use for your hobby, which is restoring old clocks. So you work on those for a couple of days and since you're not pressed for time, you finish one of the clocks. What to do with it? You can't sell it, so you have three choices: you can keep it, you can trade it for something, or you can give it away. For now, you can't decide. Then you remember your mentor, Sam, who runs a clock shop in Brooklyn, who has been generous with his time and taught you a lot. You decide to go see him and show him the clock.
So you get on the train with the clock and get off in Brooklyn down the street from the clock shop. When you walk in, the owner greets you from behind the desk. You notice that the shop is only about half-full of clocks. Sam says, "A lot of people have come in wanting clocks, so I've been giving them away, but some other folks have also been dropping off clocks. Some are for repair, but some are unwanted. In fact I've got so many that it'll take me a long time to fix them all. Do you want to help?" And you hang your clock in an empty space on Sam's wall.
Suddenly, you're doing what you've been wanting to do for years, what you thought you'd maybe do in retirement to supplement your Social Security. You thought you'd have to move out of New York, back to Poughkeepsie where it's cheaper to live. Now you're doing it with your mentor, living where you like, and having a lot of fun doing it. Your blood pressure drops forty points, and you stop taking that anti-anxiety medicine. Life just got a whole lot better!
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Malthus Was Wrong
I actually wrote the text below a couple of years ago, but it's never been published until now.
Malthus Was Wrong
The major reason that we're in the fix we're in is that many years ago a man named Malthus looked around and said, "There's not enough." And he made such a convincing case for it that the world economy dances to his tune to this very day. What's more, nearly every facet of our lives is informed by this idea, and we're almost totally unconscious of it. And it demonstrably wrong.
Buckminster Fuller's argument throughout most of his life was that we really do have enough, we're just being horribly inefficient about using it.
I don't think that, as it says in the Bible, "Love of money is the root of all evil", but so much of our self-worth is tied up with how financially successful we perceive ourselves to be that it might as well be true.
If money were abolished (or preferably, simply atrophied away to nothing), perhaps we would be less eager to measure other people's worth at all. If I'm not your competition or your friend or your lover, what's left? What's my role? Perhaps the mere existence of roles and our perceived need to assign other people to them is conditioned by our sense of lack and insufficiency. Perhaps the disappearance of roles would facilitate the disappearance of our defensiveness and fear and allow us to be together simply enjoying whatever is present in the moment. Imagine no longer wasting mental and emotional energy on preparation for defending ourselves against the possible hostile actions of others, actions that almost never happen even in our present world anyway.
So what has to change for a money-less world (or at least world-view) to take hold? First we need to realize our interdependency. No one can do entirely for him/herself and expect to rise above mere survival. Specialization, as we have learned throughout history, allows us to be more efficient and to emphasize quality, But a competitive economy works at cross purposes to quality. Such an economy rewards mass production of cheap products at low prices. Quality is the luxury of the rich.
If we realize our interdependency, then the next logical step is to realize the need to be in service to that. If I understand that whatever I do or produce ultimately reflects back to me, then I must create for others what I would want for myself. From a purely pragmatic point of view, if I contribute to fulfilling the needs of others, then others will want to fulfill my needs. Reputation will mean something, and quality work will be in demand. If I produce quality chairs, then soon I will not be able to keep up with demand. I will also have incentive to help upgrade the skills of lesser crafts people, and if they wish to improve the quality of their work, they will be seeking me out. Thus quality constantly increases.
The major reason that we're in the fix we're in is that many years ago a man named Malthus looked around and said, "There's not enough." And he made such a convincing case for it that the world economy dances to his tune to this very day. What's more, nearly every facet of our lives is informed by this idea, and we're almost totally unconscious of it. And it demonstrably wrong.
Buckminster Fuller's argument throughout most of his life was that we really do have enough, we're just being horribly inefficient about using it.
I don't think that, as it says in the Bible, "Love of money is the root of all evil", but so much of our self-worth is tied up with how financially successful we perceive ourselves to be that it might as well be true.
If money were abolished (or preferably, simply atrophied away to nothing), perhaps we would be less eager to measure other people's worth at all. If I'm not your competition or your friend or your lover, what's left? What's my role? Perhaps the mere existence of roles and our perceived need to assign other people to them is conditioned by our sense of lack and insufficiency. Perhaps the disappearance of roles would facilitate the disappearance of our defensiveness and fear and allow us to be together simply enjoying whatever is present in the moment. Imagine no longer wasting mental and emotional energy on preparation for defending ourselves against the possible hostile actions of others, actions that almost never happen even in our present world anyway.
So what has to change for a money-less world (or at least world-view) to take hold? First we need to realize our interdependency. No one can do entirely for him/herself and expect to rise above mere survival. Specialization, as we have learned throughout history, allows us to be more efficient and to emphasize quality, But a competitive economy works at cross purposes to quality. Such an economy rewards mass production of cheap products at low prices. Quality is the luxury of the rich.
If we realize our interdependency, then the next logical step is to realize the need to be in service to that. If I understand that whatever I do or produce ultimately reflects back to me, then I must create for others what I would want for myself. From a purely pragmatic point of view, if I contribute to fulfilling the needs of others, then others will want to fulfill my needs. Reputation will mean something, and quality work will be in demand. If I produce quality chairs, then soon I will not be able to keep up with demand. I will also have incentive to help upgrade the skills of lesser crafts people, and if they wish to improve the quality of their work, they will be seeking me out. Thus quality constantly increases.
Saturday, December 19, 2009
But I Digress
If some of the previous posts seem to be off-topic, my apologies. All will be clear anon.
So what might a world without money look like? For it to work we'd all have to start taking care of each other, mindful that we ARE our brothers' keepers. Remember in the Bible what the first incidence of competition was like? That's right, it was Cain and Abel. To refresh your memory, Cain is a herdsman and Abel is a farmer. They both offer some of their produce to God, but God likes Abel's stuff best. (What does that say about the merits of vegetarianism?) So Cain gets jealous, kills Abel and tries to hide the body. God shows up and says, "So, Cain, where's your brother?" Cain says, "I dunno. Am I my brother's keeper?" And God says, "You bet your sweet bippy you are! And I'm gonna make the rest of your life miserable as a result!"
Okay, so I paraphrased a bit.
You might say that we invented money so that we could get away with not taking care of each other, and by that I mean that we were trying to assure that individual transactions were "fair". First of all, "fair" is dualistic. "That person over there should get as much value as I do over here." Now that there's self-and-other in play, the next step is fear: "What if he's got more than me? How will I survive?" From there we move right into greed: "I need to make sure that I get more than him so that I'll be safe."
So now fair was not fair enough, and we ought to be making a "profit" on every transaction. You can see where that led. Some folks have been able to get away with not delivering full value for the money, so some folks got richer and most other folks got poorer, because it's too arduous to try to figure out if every transaction is fair.
What if we suddenly all remembered that we are all connected, all in this together? Now it makes sense that Jesus passed out only two commandments, and the second was "Love thy neighbor as thyself". Because he is! You want to take care of yourself, don't you? Well?
If we were devoted to taking care of others-as-self, we'd make sure that everybody we encountered was doing okay, had enough. And we would trust that we would be treated the same. How would we do that? By giving away the fruits of our labor and receiving freely-given fruits of other peoples labor. Economists will gleefully point out that barter is clumsy: a bushel of apples doesn't equal a banjo. (I have friends who would say that the person who got the apples got the better deal, but that's another story.)
But we're not talking about barter here. There's a principle here, and it is "to each according to their needs; from each according to their abilities." I can hear the cries of "Socialism!!" all the way over here. More about that in another post. For now imagine that currency suddenly disappears and that we smart enough to keep on doing exactly what we've been doing all along. Truckers drive trucks, therapists do therapy, presidents preside, etc. The difference is that when we go to the store to get something, it's free. Need flour? It's free. Need a new car? It's free. Need to fly to Timbuktu? It's free. Need lumber to do your carpentry? It's free.
Now somebody is going to object, "But people will just quit working and hoard stuff!" Not if they're conscious of non-separation they're not, and it's going to take everybody remembering that for this society to even start. That's what the Shift is all about. You'd feel bad if you weren't contributing something, and you'd feel bad if you were taking more than you need and that some folks might not get their needs met as a result. So contributing your energy will be what gives you satisfaction in life. Love feel much better than guilt or smugness.
Let's look at some side affects: doctors would doctor because they love doing it, and insurance companies would disappear. Farmers would farm because they want to, and they would be able to revive small farming because the "economics of scale" would disappear. Small crafts people would be able to replace factories, because quality would replace cheapness. Banks will disappear with the rest of the financial industry. I'll be doing a lot of posts on what will change, but feel free to chime in here anytime....
Now the objection will be raised "What about all those factory jobs that will be lost?" Jobs? There's no such thing as a job anymore. Wow! Think about that! You can spend your time doing something you love and giving it away. What's going to be rewarded here is quality, and you can't produce quality if you don't love what you're doing. So how are you going to build houses? You get a contractor (who by the way gets immense satisfaction from what s/he does) to round up all the needed workers and gets them to commit to building a house for you. Now you really appreciate all the great work this person has done for you, so you recommend him or her to all your friends that need housing. Word gets around that he delivers quality (because all his workers love what they do), and suddenly the contractor has plenty of steady work for the whole crew.
So what about the chores that nobody wants to do? Hard manual labor, jobs with a high distaste factor, like cleaning toilets? Who's going to love those jobs? Will the entire infrastructure collapse?
Stay tuned....
So what might a world without money look like? For it to work we'd all have to start taking care of each other, mindful that we ARE our brothers' keepers. Remember in the Bible what the first incidence of competition was like? That's right, it was Cain and Abel. To refresh your memory, Cain is a herdsman and Abel is a farmer. They both offer some of their produce to God, but God likes Abel's stuff best. (What does that say about the merits of vegetarianism?) So Cain gets jealous, kills Abel and tries to hide the body. God shows up and says, "So, Cain, where's your brother?" Cain says, "I dunno. Am I my brother's keeper?" And God says, "You bet your sweet bippy you are! And I'm gonna make the rest of your life miserable as a result!"
Okay, so I paraphrased a bit.
You might say that we invented money so that we could get away with not taking care of each other, and by that I mean that we were trying to assure that individual transactions were "fair". First of all, "fair" is dualistic. "That person over there should get as much value as I do over here." Now that there's self-and-other in play, the next step is fear: "What if he's got more than me? How will I survive?" From there we move right into greed: "I need to make sure that I get more than him so that I'll be safe."
So now fair was not fair enough, and we ought to be making a "profit" on every transaction. You can see where that led. Some folks have been able to get away with not delivering full value for the money, so some folks got richer and most other folks got poorer, because it's too arduous to try to figure out if every transaction is fair.
What if we suddenly all remembered that we are all connected, all in this together? Now it makes sense that Jesus passed out only two commandments, and the second was "Love thy neighbor as thyself". Because he is! You want to take care of yourself, don't you? Well?
If we were devoted to taking care of others-as-self, we'd make sure that everybody we encountered was doing okay, had enough. And we would trust that we would be treated the same. How would we do that? By giving away the fruits of our labor and receiving freely-given fruits of other peoples labor. Economists will gleefully point out that barter is clumsy: a bushel of apples doesn't equal a banjo. (I have friends who would say that the person who got the apples got the better deal, but that's another story.)
But we're not talking about barter here. There's a principle here, and it is "to each according to their needs; from each according to their abilities." I can hear the cries of "Socialism!!" all the way over here. More about that in another post. For now imagine that currency suddenly disappears and that we smart enough to keep on doing exactly what we've been doing all along. Truckers drive trucks, therapists do therapy, presidents preside, etc. The difference is that when we go to the store to get something, it's free. Need flour? It's free. Need a new car? It's free. Need to fly to Timbuktu? It's free. Need lumber to do your carpentry? It's free.
Now somebody is going to object, "But people will just quit working and hoard stuff!" Not if they're conscious of non-separation they're not, and it's going to take everybody remembering that for this society to even start. That's what the Shift is all about. You'd feel bad if you weren't contributing something, and you'd feel bad if you were taking more than you need and that some folks might not get their needs met as a result. So contributing your energy will be what gives you satisfaction in life. Love feel much better than guilt or smugness.
Let's look at some side affects: doctors would doctor because they love doing it, and insurance companies would disappear. Farmers would farm because they want to, and they would be able to revive small farming because the "economics of scale" would disappear. Small crafts people would be able to replace factories, because quality would replace cheapness. Banks will disappear with the rest of the financial industry. I'll be doing a lot of posts on what will change, but feel free to chime in here anytime....
Now the objection will be raised "What about all those factory jobs that will be lost?" Jobs? There's no such thing as a job anymore. Wow! Think about that! You can spend your time doing something you love and giving it away. What's going to be rewarded here is quality, and you can't produce quality if you don't love what you're doing. So how are you going to build houses? You get a contractor (who by the way gets immense satisfaction from what s/he does) to round up all the needed workers and gets them to commit to building a house for you. Now you really appreciate all the great work this person has done for you, so you recommend him or her to all your friends that need housing. Word gets around that he delivers quality (because all his workers love what they do), and suddenly the contractor has plenty of steady work for the whole crew.
So what about the chores that nobody wants to do? Hard manual labor, jobs with a high distaste factor, like cleaning toilets? Who's going to love those jobs? Will the entire infrastructure collapse?
Stay tuned....
Two Hoaxes
As a species mankind has been the victim of two all-pervading hoaxes.
The first is the hoax of the personal self, and the second, derived from the first, is the hoax of death.
The first is the result of an honest mistake. Our senses, limited as they are, are producing a lie. I seem to be over here, doing whatever with this body that I seem to control. The "doing" produces the illusion of time and space, when in reality there is only Here and Now. I thought "I" just did something, when in reality that something is already a memory which presents itself to the pure awareness that is the only "thing" Here Now. Even the thought of "awareness" is an object of awareness, not awareness itself at all. Just a thought, just an object of awareness, fundamentally no different from a pretty girl in view, although much more attractive. I say that because we glom (for lack of a better word) onto our thoughts and sense data without the least hesitation, unlike what we go through regarding the girl.
So we, in affect, construct this world, this alleged reality because we have similar senses and therefore agree (sometimes) on what they are presenting. But we know, for instance, that there are radio waves, gamma rays, ultra violet and infrared light, and who knows what else penetrating or bouncing off every cell in our bodies all the time. Yet we choose to pretend that what we see is all there is, just as we choose to pretend that there is some entity called a "self" that no one has ever seen or produced for viewing under any form of light, yet that somehow has independent existence. It's a agreement that we've created based on the assumption that that apparent entity over there seems to behave as we do. Another term for it is "consensus reality".
We operate in this consensus reality for some "time", and then we "die", or so we believe. We base this assumption on the memory of witnessing some other entity stop functioning in an integrated manner and not reverse that state. Yet we make the assumption that this entity has experienced something. But if it experienced something it would not be dead. We have some anecdotal evidence of near-death
experiences, but we have no evidence of anybody experiencing death.
And how do we explain dreamless sleep or anesthesia? If you've ever had a tooth extracted under sodium pentothal the experience from the inside resembles a time discontinuity. The doctor sticks a needle in your arm, you pass out almost instantaneously, and then you are awake (notice I didn't say "You wake up"). The usual comment is "So, when are you guys gonna get started?", and the usual response is, "We've already finished." From the point of view of consciousness, no time passed between being out cold and being awake. Now if you look carefully, that's the only true point of view. Everything else is inference or speculation, in other words, an idea.
If we apply that same test to death, it has to look like, "You approach loss of consciousness you are awake somewhere." No discontinuity. We can speculate to the end of time what happens after "death", but from the point of consciousness, there is no death. If there is experience there is consciousness. Period. So awareness always is. Always.
The first is the hoax of the personal self, and the second, derived from the first, is the hoax of death.
The first is the result of an honest mistake. Our senses, limited as they are, are producing a lie. I seem to be over here, doing whatever with this body that I seem to control. The "doing" produces the illusion of time and space, when in reality there is only Here and Now. I thought "I" just did something, when in reality that something is already a memory which presents itself to the pure awareness that is the only "thing" Here Now. Even the thought of "awareness" is an object of awareness, not awareness itself at all. Just a thought, just an object of awareness, fundamentally no different from a pretty girl in view, although much more attractive. I say that because we glom (for lack of a better word) onto our thoughts and sense data without the least hesitation, unlike what we go through regarding the girl.
So we, in affect, construct this world, this alleged reality because we have similar senses and therefore agree (sometimes) on what they are presenting. But we know, for instance, that there are radio waves, gamma rays, ultra violet and infrared light, and who knows what else penetrating or bouncing off every cell in our bodies all the time. Yet we choose to pretend that what we see is all there is, just as we choose to pretend that there is some entity called a "self" that no one has ever seen or produced for viewing under any form of light, yet that somehow has independent existence. It's a agreement that we've created based on the assumption that that apparent entity over there seems to behave as we do. Another term for it is "consensus reality".
We operate in this consensus reality for some "time", and then we "die", or so we believe. We base this assumption on the memory of witnessing some other entity stop functioning in an integrated manner and not reverse that state. Yet we make the assumption that this entity has experienced something. But if it experienced something it would not be dead. We have some anecdotal evidence of near-death
experiences, but we have no evidence of anybody experiencing death.
And how do we explain dreamless sleep or anesthesia? If you've ever had a tooth extracted under sodium pentothal the experience from the inside resembles a time discontinuity. The doctor sticks a needle in your arm, you pass out almost instantaneously, and then you are awake (notice I didn't say "You wake up"). The usual comment is "So, when are you guys gonna get started?", and the usual response is, "We've already finished." From the point of view of consciousness, no time passed between being out cold and being awake. Now if you look carefully, that's the only true point of view. Everything else is inference or speculation, in other words, an idea.
If we apply that same test to death, it has to look like, "You approach loss of consciousness you are awake somewhere." No discontinuity. We can speculate to the end of time what happens after "death", but from the point of consciousness, there is no death. If there is experience there is consciousness. Period. So awareness always is. Always.
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