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!

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?

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.

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....

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 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.

1. Abolish all currencies and all debt.
2. Keep doing the work you have been doing.
3. 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.

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.