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.
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
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.
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