BCB discussions in Seattle
Geoff Chesshire
Thankyou for all your work organizing the barcamp. I'm sorry I didn't
make it to Seattle. I am enjoying the posted notes from the discussions,
however. The one that really caught my eye is:
> Day2Session1M - Building/designing a bank from scratch/disintemediation
> in banking
> - Broaden dramatically what is going into the accounting picture
> (economic, social, environmental)
This happens to be the focus of my work over the past three years. What I
have learned is that we are missing a huge opportunity by conflating
credit (reputation) with money (exchange medium/measure). The missed
opportunity is the ability to recognize the value of all that we receive
without payment, without which we would have nothing to exchange, no
economy and no life. A more general notion of "currency" is any
medium/measure for recognizing flow of value. Money is not the only kind
of currency, as exchange is not the only kind of flow. Likewise, a more
general notion of "credit" is reputation for actually doing good, for
contributing to the vitality of the systems in which we participate.
Credit is not merely capacity for debt-service. For example, the sun does
not receive payment in exchange for the energy it provides to the earth.
However, it has such a solid reputation for reliably providing this energy
that we take it completely for granted. Plants do not receive payment for
photosynthesis, which provides us with food, clothing, shelter, fuel and
much more. However, they have a reputation for providing incredible
abundance and diversity of valuable products. Likewise the animals, and
even people working under miserable conditions. Community organizations
and volunteers typically do not receive payment for their many essential
services, certainly not commensurate with the value of these services.
Family members do not receive payment for household work; neither is the
value of this work recognized as contributing to the economy. The
solution to the problem of how to recognize these flows of value is not
more creative use of exchange accounting, because this would entail
further enclosure of the commons and strengthening of disastrous
hierarchical systems of domination. The solution is to give recognition,
reputation and credit for all of this unrecognized flow of value. Credit
establishes the capacity of people and businesses to participate in the
economy. However, more fundamentally and additionally, this recognition
establishes the reputation of all of the participants (not just people and
businesses) for their contributions to the economy, not only to the
production/consumption economy of market exchange, but additionally to the
natural economies of family, community, bioregion and planet. This is how
we can begin to recognize these living systems as valuable both in their
own right and for their service to us. This is how we can learn to
contribute to the health of these systems, instead of merely exploiting
them as externalities. To account for these contributions, the key is to
develop quantitative measures of system health, and to recognize the
extent to which various kinds participation in the system contribute to
these measures. We need to think about what makes life worth living, and
start using measures that correlate with vitality, diversity, resilience,
abundance, joy, etc. We need to stop using economic measures that promote
scarcity, exploitation and fear. Ecology is real economy, minus the
hubris of our species.
Thanks,
Geoff Chesshire
Frederic Baud
Thank you for your post here!
I'm very excited by the notion of community currencies and hope to see
a lot of experiments going forward. But I'm still undecided if it is
the actual solution to make more efficient, or further enable non-
monetary exchanges.
In fact, a lot of the non-monetary exchanges may be governed by human
traits like empathy or sense of fairness. And while everyone is ready
to forgo $10 to prevent something bad happening to a fellow human, or
forgo $10 to prevent a crook receiving a $100; it is also true that we
always feel better providing bread than cash to a beggar; and directly
punishing the crook than forgoing the $10.
My point in that it is not certain that some non-monetary exchanges
may actually benefit from a form of currency and are not better
governed by mechanism of reciprocity and delegated trust.
But, once again, I'm very excited by the subject and eager to learn
through experience.
Cheers,
Frederic
PS: I'm voluntarily not discussing here the problem of externalities
that is the subject of an entire branch of economics.
Sam Rose
might be a way for new types of economies to experience rapid uptake.
My view is that these networked economies lack people who play the
role of "boundary spanner", doing the hard work of connecting the
established hierarchically-organized economies with the emerging
networked economies. I believe that this can open up huge amounts of
the world to some rapid growth, that can be based on knowledge
commons, and sustainability-oriented industries, products, services,
etc.
It is my belief that a new type of "venture capitalist" will emerge,
or is emerging now. This new type of "venture capitalist" will really
be a boundary spanner and a wealth bulding facilitator, who will
acknowledge the forces that are accumulating in the world such as:
"the growth of world population, of greenhouse gas concentrations
and the accelerating rate of climate change, the running down of oil
and natural gas reserves, growing shortages of fresh water for
agriculture, industry and domestic use, or the increasing difficulty
in controlling epidemic diseases -we are facing a mounting global
crisis that will peak in less than a generation, around the year
2030" http://books.google.com/books?id=NjCGbmrf7MUC&dq=2030+Spike+Colin+Mason
Cooperative Wealth building facilitators (we need a shorter name for
these people) will seek to build different types of wealth in
cooperative ways, and will work towards positive externalities. These
positive externalities will be important. They'll be viewable, and
measurable. The new types of venture capitalists will work with
Commons based Free/Open Knowledge, and will create and orchestrate
international process networks to carry out their development. Their
opportunities are, and will be in reversing the problems listed
above,and inhelping the rest of the world advance and develop in
sustainable ways.
I believe that some of the first ways that these Cooperative Wealth
building facilitators will raise capital is through the employment of
alternative curency. I think that one of the reasons alternative
currency has struggled is because there have been no "boundary
spanners" to connect the economies and currencies in useful ways. So,
the value of he currencies are limited. Plus, Fred makes a good point,
which I will add on to by stating that not all types of value can be
reduced to a "price". "Price" can somtimes compress the value people
are working with, and obscure it.