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Someone said money is humanity's most successful story; that is certainly true as it has become the dominant factor in economic life, an economic life that has been commodified to the point that it alienates most of us from our rich historical communities, from our very humanity. The financial system has become disfunctional because all of our governing institutions have been captured by the winners of the game. The story their minions tell makes them the heros whose super-profits are justified by their super-productivity when the only thing super is their ability garner excessive rents and redefine these rents as productivity. They have successfully installed their story throughout mainstream media and as economic orthodoxy; an ideology looking for a theory based on that story. We need a new story of money including the entire ontology of value, production and giving credit where credit is due.
I don't what to spend a lot of time on the old story except to highlight where it needs to change. What I want to do is to begin to describe the outline of a new story that we will need to tell together. The story is based on newthe new ontologies, we will find we need to use different words, sometimes old words bent to new interpretations, sometimes brand new words the way the word autopoeisis was invented to describe living systems as self-sustaining networks. Everyone knows the old stories so well that they are part of us in the way they are part of our current language; the language we strive to shift. Our designs for transitional currency systems will need to build on metaphorical connections to the old story, and at the same time have the properties of the new currencies begin to install the new story.story in our daily. We didn't get the system we have by asking people if they wanted to use money, it shows up in certain ways historically and then begins to evolve its own story. The new currencies will have to compliment and eventually replace the old, but we will need to concentrate on complimenting for a long while. The future is difficult to predict, but replacement leading a currency free future may be in the cards.
Commons Capital Formation
Well designed commons based production spaces will need to be naturally self-sustaining, but we will have to prove that in practice. What is the best governance structure for a production common? We will need to try many approaches and learn from existing institutions that already are stewarding the healthy commons based spaces. The case has been made that all state funded research should be managed in common by experts for the benefit of all. Too many market based producers are allowed to simply exploit publicly funded work without contributing substantially to the future of the work they profit richly from.
We need something like stock in the commons, but not stock because the form of ownership is different. Would you want the people who funded a public park to get special access? Not in most cases, but maybe if you fund public infrastructure for a discount on future use fees. Exactly this sort of thing is getting proposed for block-chain currencies. Also, some commons ownership currencies would have no trade of use value, instead it may convey some socially necessary status; a legacy for the future, thanks for gifts received from the commons or a generous reputation.
Currencies for Contributions
We want to distinguish between the work of building the commons, adding knowledge and capacities, from operating shared infrastructure. The latter is part of production and the flows of production will need to support it as part of ongoing costs of production. The former
Production Currencies
Any currencies used to measure production, allocate costs and revenues, track and validate assets, and provide for the execution of transactions in supply chains and similar financial structures to support networked distributed production. There will be no limit to the flexibility as they will be matched to their networks, products and producers. In many cases, it will be a simple matter of assessing fees from a fee schedule to fund operation and provide a surplus to either redeem ownership tokens for reinvestment or to directly reinvest in this and other commons based organizations to fund their grown.
Currencies for Governance
It all comes full circle; the need for renewal in the commons of democracy is a driving motivation for this work, and now we come to the process of governing the commons itself. If it is a simple matter of deciding and evolving the fee structure and distributing the surplus, then they systems of governance can be simple; support a few proxy votes each year to approve changes and rarely any controversy. Not every commons will be that simple, ranging from the equivalent of small to medium size compaties right up to the scale nations and multi-nationals.
Each commons that we attempt to build is an experiment in collaborative systems and social organization, and we can accumulate them in knowledge bases and actualize them in networks of practice where they can evolve and extend the effectiveness of the whole network.
I don't what to spend a lot of time on the old story except to highlight where it needs to change. What I want to do is to begin to describe the outline of a new story that we will need to tell together. The story is based on new
Commons Capital Formation
Well designed commons based production spaces will need to be naturally self-sustaining, but we will have to prove that in practice. What is the best governance structure for a production common? We will need to try many approaches and learn from existing institutions that already are stewarding the healthy commons based spaces. The case has been made that all state funded research should be managed in common by experts for the benefit of all. Too many market based producers are allowed to simply exploit publicly funded work without contributing substantially to the future of the work they profit richly from.
We need something like stock in the commons, but not stock because the form of ownership is different. Would you want the people who funded a public park to get special access? Not in most cases, but maybe if you fund public infrastructure for a discount on future use fees. Exactly this sort of thing is getting proposed for block-chain currencies. Also, some commons ownership currencies would have no trade of use value, instead it may convey some socially necessary status; a legacy for the future, thanks for gifts received from the commons or a generous reputation.
Currencies for Contributions
We want to distinguish between the work of building the commons, adding knowledge and capacities, from operating shared infrastructure. The latter is part of production and the flows of production will need to support it as part of ongoing costs of production. The former
Production Currencies
Any currencies used to measure production, allocate costs and revenues, track and validate assets, and provide for the execution of transactions in supply chains and similar financial structures to support networked distributed production. There will be no limit to the flexibility as they will be matched to their networks, products and producers. In many cases, it will be a simple matter of assessing fees from a fee schedule to fund operation and provide a surplus to either redeem ownership tokens for reinvestment or to directly reinvest in this and other commons based organizations to fund their grown.
Currencies for Governance
It all comes full circle; the need for renewal in the commons of democracy is a driving motivation for this work, and now we come to the process of governing the commons itself. If it is a simple matter of deciding and evolving the fee structure and distributing the surplus, then they systems of governance can be simple; support a few proxy votes each year to approve changes and rarely any controversy. Not every commons will be that simple, ranging from the equivalent of small to medium size compaties right up to the scale nations and multi-nationals.
Each commons that we attempt to build is an experiment in collaborative systems and social organization, and we can accumulate them in knowledge bases and actualize them in networks of practice where they can evolve and extend the effectiveness of the whole network.