the emergence of the new money system
i just painted the above painting (in brazil/buzios/local friend), this powerpoint gives a quick overview: explanation of the painting
here is the theory behind the emergence of the new money system:
I believe the fundamental implication chain with regards to our current global crises is:
awareness => behaviour => system
Obviously our current system is depleting our planet. Many people try and revert this depleting with little succes. Yet others build alternatives to our current system but they have not yet reverted our crises either. I believe we should start at the level of awareness. This is where eg former World Bank representative Herman Wijffels (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Wijffels) has devoted his pension to.
Fortunately awareness is evolving and hence behaviour is changing. Now which system will fit this new behaviour? I believe our consciousness is currently evolving from self consciousness to unity consciousness, see eg Charles Eistenstein (http://charleseisenstein.net) and Ken Wilbur (http://www.kenwilber.com), the latter speaks of integral consiousness.
Under the influence of this evolution of consciousness our behaviour evolves from “What’s in it for me?” to “What’s in it for us?”. In the following we will use a framework to operationalise the notion of economic behaviour and from there deduce that our behaviour evolves from swapping to sharing and moreover our current money system decomposes into two systems, one for coordination (of tasks) and one for (canalisation of) trust. This decomposition process can be observed in the real world as we speak.
In order to operationalise the notion of economic behaviour we introduce the following framework: we consider:
1. the resources of our planet (both in raw and produced form)
2. our labour that we use to transform these resources and
3. the goals that we achieve in doing so.
Using this framework we define economy as the translation of goals into transformations. This translation basically answers two questions:
1. Who does what?
2. Who takes what?
Now we can operationalise the aforementioned behaviours as sets of answers to these two questions, viz:
Self consciousness implies that you answer these two questions from the perspective of your own interest, hence “What’s in it for me?” can be operationalised as the following set of two answers:
1. I do the least
2. I take the most
Unity consciousness implies that you answer these two questions from the perspective of our common interest, hence “What’s in it for us?” can be operationalised as the following set of two answers:
1. I do what we need
2. I take what I need
Note that our planet has enough for everybodies needs (see Gandhi: The world has enough for everyone’s need, but not enough for everyone’s greed). So if everybody does what he can then together we do at least what is needed, hence the latter set of answers is equivalent to:
1. I do what I can
2. I take what I need
This aforism was first formulated by Louis Blanc in 1851 (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_chacun_selon_ses_moyens,_%C3%A0_chacun_selon_ses_besoins).
Now if you take as much as you can then scarcity will arise and the notion of ownership will be necessary to distribute goods whereas if you take what you need there will be abundance and such a notion is obsolete. This implies that “What’s in it for me?” evokes swapping whereas “What’s in it for us?” evokes sharing.
Finally we come to the decomposition of our current money system. Now the two questions “Who does what?” and “Who takes what?” can each be broken up into two parts, viz: what is possible to do/take and what do we allow each other to do/take. So to run an economy you need two functionalities: possibilities are fit together through coordination (of tasks) and permissions are organised through (canalisation of) trust.
Now when we swap we actually say that we don’t trust each other: when I give you something I don’t trust that I will ever get something when I need it so I want something in return right now. Usually we use money to accomplish this. In this way our current money system realises both functionalities concurrently: calculations using the (exchange) value of money permits us to take coordination decisions and when we swap money we don’t have to trust each other, instead we trust the (exchange) value of money.
But how would we realise these two functionalities when we act as one? Because we are with more than one person this means that our unity is acting distributedly through it’s members. Each one of us does and takes what (s)he finds to do and take. To organise this distributed behaviour coordination information is needed. But we don’t need to (exchange) valuate the coordinated actions for we trust each other that each of us acts as being part of our unity.
Finally to make this new system work for normal people that don’t trust each other completely (yet) a second layer is needed to mitigate still missing trust.
Once again: in case trust completely fails these two systems collapse into one single system: our current money system. The many alternatives to our current system currently emerging thoughout our world can be seen as manifestations of these two new systems.
Addendum
It is pivotal to remark that although the new money system is a real system which people will use much like internet banking nowadays, this system eventually is the expression of our new behaviour. Those that don’t trust their fellow are confined to using the current money system. For those that dare to trust their fellow a whole new world opens. And yes, not everybody is to be trusted, so from this perspective the prison works both ways: it is both me not being able to reach out to you as a human but it is also my security safeguarding me from your seisure. And once again: your seisure is my interpretation of your behaviour.