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Someone said money is humanity's most successful story; that is certainly true in that it is 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 ownership, and giving credit where credit is due.
I don't want to spend a lot of time on the old story except to highlight where it needs to change.WhatNot Ito wantignore history, it will be important that we draw from our collective heritage to dounderstand isthe good and the bad of money systems to begininform design. At the same time, we need a new story thatand we will need to tellcreate together.a story that works for all. The story is based on new ontologies, we will find we need to use different words, sometimes old words bent to new interpretations, sometimes brand new words. The way thea new wordword, autopoeisisautopoeisis, was needed 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 westriveneed to shift.shift such that a new story unfolds. 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 can begin to install the new story in our daily.daily lives. 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. Well, probably not currency free, maybe it is just invisible, built into each interaction that is economic in that it connects to the systems of production and consuption; just the accounting part of the economic life of families and clans. Economics in the original sense of the Greek root as it relates to households which were by implication at the center of ancient family life and its continuity as a unit. We need to better understand that a modern development, the independent self-sufficient individual is more myth than reality.
I doubt many really want to go back to past social arrangements where individuals have far less freedom to express their individual choice and creativity, but we must realize that we still need each other. Human beings don't make sense as isolated individuals, we are more social in more ways that any other species. Our language no doubt evolved under social pressures of our pre-human ancestors having shifted to economic lives that require cooperation. We needed to cooperate to raise young who were dependent for much longer and needed richer diets to complete their development. We need to be able to use the power we get from acting collectively with the creativity available from much more individual freedom.
Commons Capital Formation
A better understanding of the history of money and capital formation will help us evolve new institutions that better serve productivity than accumulated power. In spite of all the rhetoric, the capitalist system as implemented does not produce a just system with equality of opportunity where the greatest merrit and productivity is rewarded with the greatest share of collective production. This rhetoric is used to justify the unbalanced outcomes politically, and therefore it really matters deeply that we begin to shift to a better model. Simply shifting to a commons based banking system may be the best way to frame this change. Each commons would implement a branch of a central mutual credit/savings bank that would provide all the financial services for the commons. Each commons would develop currencies and governance structures appropriate to its production and delivery operations and through governance would regulate money supplies and investments for the good of their producers.
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 is best thought of as part of capital formation, and therefore we need to recognize the deeply creative and community serving work of all the contributors giving particular recognition to the work found to be most valuable. These may be the contributions that enabled great efficiency and effectiveness of the producing peers, but they may also be what most pleased us, or what was virtuous in other ways valued by some or all.
One aspect of the new money is the digital trail that it leaves. A current state of a block-chain ledger inplicitely includes the entire chain which is a history of all the transactions it holds. The money we know is immediately alienated from its source in each transaction, the history is only important to the extent that transactions are not complete, you have credits and debits with many agents until the accounts are all settled and closed, but each step if formal and final, admitting no further negotiations or settlements.
While some may think to turn to digital currencies of anonymity and even secrecy, in our context the trail of breadcrumbs means that the flows we participate in are never really alienated from their sources. We I give a gift and make a contribution the results in transactions added to block chains, it is permanently associated with my digital identity and by implication to my human agency. In the future the appreciation and accumulated value connected to my early contributions never end, and my identity and reputation forever linked to my contributions.
We can design our capital currencies more like loans than outright gifts. If you issued these currencies with an expiration when they are redeemed like a bond, but maybe there is no interest, or negative interest. Similarly, direct contributors might receive an income so that they can support themselves and their families that in current terms is "pay" for those contributions, but it would not alienate them from their contributions. Unlike patents and copyrights that are both limited and often alienated from the actual creative workers, the accumulated credit is neither when we recognized for contributions to the commons.
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 want to spend a lot of time on the old story except to highlight where it needs to change.
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
The future is difficult to predict, but replacement leading a currency free future may be in the cards. Well, probably not currency free, maybe it is just invisible, built into each interaction that is economic in that it connects to the systems of production and consuption; just the accounting part of the economic life of families and clans. Economics in the original sense of the Greek root as it relates to households which were by implication at the center of ancient family life and its continuity as a unit. We need to better understand that a modern development, the independent self-sufficient individual is more myth than reality.
I doubt many really want to go back to past social arrangements where individuals have far less freedom to express their individual choice and creativity, but we must realize that we still need each other. Human beings don't make sense as isolated individuals, we are more social in more ways that any other species. Our language no doubt evolved under social pressures of our pre-human ancestors having shifted to economic lives that require cooperation. We needed to cooperate to raise young who were dependent for much longer and needed richer diets to complete their development. We need to be able to use the power we get from acting collectively with the creativity available from much more individual freedom.
Commons Capital Formation
A better understanding of the history of money and capital formation will help us evolve new institutions that better serve productivity than accumulated power. In spite of all the rhetoric, the capitalist system as implemented does not produce a just system with equality of opportunity where the greatest merrit and productivity is rewarded with the greatest share of collective production. This rhetoric is used to justify the unbalanced outcomes politically, and therefore it really matters deeply that we begin to shift to a better model. Simply shifting to a commons based banking system may be the best way to frame this change. Each commons would implement a branch of a central mutual credit/savings bank that would provide all the financial services for the commons. Each commons would develop currencies and governance structures appropriate to its production and delivery operations and through governance would regulate money supplies and investments for the good of their producers.
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 is best thought of as part of capital formation, and therefore we need to recognize the deeply creative and community serving work of all the contributors giving particular recognition to the work found to be most valuable. These may be the contributions that enabled great efficiency and effectiveness of the producing peers, but they may also be what most pleased us, or what was virtuous in other ways valued by some or all.
One aspect of the new money is the digital trail that it leaves. A current state of a block-chain ledger inplicitely includes the entire chain which is a history of all the transactions it holds. The money we know is immediately alienated from its source in each transaction, the history is only important to the extent that transactions are not complete, you have credits and debits with many agents until the accounts are all settled and closed, but each step if formal and final, admitting no further negotiations or settlements.
While some may think to turn to digital currencies of anonymity and even secrecy, in our context the trail of breadcrumbs means that the flows we participate in are never really alienated from their sources. We I give a gift and make a contribution the results in transactions added to block chains, it is permanently associated with my digital identity and by implication to my human agency. In the future the appreciation and accumulated value connected to my early contributions never end, and my identity and reputation forever linked to my contributions.
We can design our capital currencies more like loans than outright gifts. If you issued these currencies with an expiration when they are redeemed like a bond, but maybe there is no interest, or negative interest. Similarly, direct contributors might receive an income so that they can support themselves and their families that in current terms is "pay" for those contributions, but it would not alienate them from their contributions. Unlike patents and copyrights that are both limited and often alienated from the actual creative workers, the accumulated credit is neither when we recognized for contributions to the commons.
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.