If you want to get to the heart of any matter, you have to keep asking the question: ” … and where does that come from? “, until you get back to the source of things, and there’s no longer another deeper answer to the question.
In terms of economics, what is its foundation?
Well if we begin by looking at the etymology of the word economics itself, in its most generic sense, economics is merely the accounting of things: where they are, where they’ve been, what they’re doing, how they’re changing, and where they’re going. In other words, it doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with property, trade, currency, nor profit.
The problem with our modern civilisation is that people have forgotten how to think, and they’re utterly brainwashed into accepting the notion that we cannot have a world without property ownership, and they’re utterly ( and irrationally ) afraid of such a notion … which is pretty fucking gutless when you think about it, to be so afraid of an idea that you won’t even discuss it long enough to understand what it is you think you’re afraid of, and instead you’re actually just afraid of a delusion that doesn’t have a real existence outside of your own mind. The fact that you might share such a delusion with a majority of others is immaterial, and has no bearing on whether or not it is true or false.
Reality is not the subject of majority or popularity.
the foundation:
If we wish to isolate the origins of our present economic paradigm, we can see the following:
- Property leads to trade
- Trade leads to currency
- Currency leads to commodification
- Commodification leads to exploitation and capitalism
So can we justify these statements? Yes … easily.
If one only has property, it is unlikely you will have all the types of property you require, and so to avoid conflict, one trades different types of property.
But trade of property is inconvenient, and is made easier with an intermediary, so we develop currency to replace trade of goods and services.
Once you have currency it is natural that everything becomes commodified in order to attain currency with which to attain the goods and services you desire.
Once you have commodification, anything that can be exploited will be exploited.
To deny the above reasoning is to deny reality.
the root:
BUT … is there something even more fundamental in this than property? Once again the answer is yes.
The whole notion of property is a consequence of the biological imperative of survival via storage – ie: we produce or attain more than we need in order to have reserves, thus both to cope with hard times and to achieve greater strength.
HOWEVER … just because something originates from a natural survival behaviour, doesn’t mean it is any longer a sensible approach; in fact quite to the contrary, our collective economic social psychology has become a psychosis, and quite deleterious to our survival, not to mention extremely inefficient and wasteful.
I could forgive our species its insanity, if we were still a pre-technological civilisation, or only recently become technological … but the fact is we haven’t needed this notion of property for more than 300 years, yet we think we have, because we’re suckered by the self fulfilling prophesy of our own insane economic behaviour.
the problem / theorem:
Today we have the capacity to do even more than we could have done 300 years ago, and yet what we are doing with our potential is using it to be even more stupid and insane than ever before … but the opportunity is here to drop all that bullshit, and to drop it faster than we’ve ever changed anything in the history of our species.
The problem though is that people are still seeing the solution in terms of the problem … they’re expecting to “fix” instead of replace capitalism entirely.
But there’s no fixing what isn’t broken. Capitalism isn’t broken, it’s flawed … if it were not flawed, it would have seen all this coming, and would have dealt with it in advance – ie: prevention is always better than a cure, and a cure is always better than treatment … yet capitalism focuses only on treatment ( if anything at all ), and often it actually creates the disease and then fakes treatment, while simultaneously attacking and blocking both cure and prevention.
This is not a rational system.
The fundamental economic theorem of capitalism, is derived from commodification, currency, trade, property, and a survival instinct – which says: go exploit everything you can, and take no responsibility for consequences if you can get away with it … it is entirely predatory and parasitic in nature.
Now go have a look in nature, and have a look at what you see … the majority of species are neither parasitic nor predatory, for such behavioural traits are not in any way “superior”, to the contrary they’re self-defeating, and they exist only by the grace of ecosystems that rely on a vast biodiversity of symbiotic relationships for their strength.
Did you ever wonder why we don’t live on a planet full of nothing but parasites or predators? It’s quite simple: because any such species capable of dominating, eventually wipes itself out.
This is basically what is wrong with capitalism, and you’re watching as it wipes everything out – the final thing it will wipe out is itself, and we can either watch this happen, or kill it early.
alternatives:
So you might be asking, is there a different economic paradigm by which we can operate? Well yes there is, of course … in fact there are many such possibilities … but the problem is that not all of them have much chance of saving us from our present predicament.
Many proposals put out there are based on a “best case scenario” approach, where the proponents of the proposal are trying to build a consensus, an evolved awareness, and a community of selflessness and cooperation … the problem here being that it’s beyond optimism into utter foolishness to expect human beings to agree to things, or to expect them to evolve. History should teach you that a very real possibility exists that we will never achieve agreement, and logic should teach you that not only shouldn’t it be necessary, but that it’s actually an undesirable outcome anyway.
Many other proposals have the problem that they’re just way too vague or simplistic to account for every possible need of civilisation from the individual to the global collective and every scale and scope in between … in fact I’d argue this is actually the majority of proposals out there.
People like simplicity, but that’s largely because they’re lazy, brainwashed, and insecure … they want to feel special, as if they’re part of the solution, which means they need to understand the solution, and which in turn means the solution ( for them ) must be simple and aligned with their existing beliefs ( which they’re internally unable or unwilling to challenge ), otherwise they won’t support it, even at the expense of further species extinction, pollution, and ecological destruction.
I personally find these things to be disheartening, because I know that at least a dozen people could have chosen to help me in my work, but they decided not to … and the reason they gave was because apparently I’m arrogant. This accusation was made in all cases by people whom ironically thought that their own 5 hours to 5 years of “thinking” ( ie – referencing their existing beliefs ), is equivalent to my 30 years of contemplation, extrapolation, experimentation, research & development obsession … and that I should put their work up on a pedestal right next to my own, even though theirs was horseshit that I’d heard dozens of times before by people just as dullwitted and unimaginative as themselves, but apparently I’m not allowed to be annoyed by hearing the same bullshit over and over again for decades running, because that would be arrogant.
To those people, I have one message. Fuck you. In the time since you turned your backs on me, another few hundred species or few thousand species of living organisms have gone extinct, and a great many trillions of animals have been killed, along with the billions of people whom have suffered unnecessarily, and the millions whom have died … all because you couldn’t handle being told you’re wrong.
But yeah, I’m the arrogant one because I told you.
the solution:
The solution is to depart entirely from the fundamental economic paradigm of property in all its forms, and to simultaneously depart from the social construct of authoritarian hierarchical power.
You cannot have a world in which people reach their potential if some central authority is there dictating what they will do, and what opportunities they will have, and for every person whom does not reach their potential, you increase the probability of failure for society, that some problem or another will not be adequately dealt with … then for every problem that is not adequately dealt with – at every level from the individual to the collective – you increase the probability that another problem will not be adequately dealt with.
Therefore we presently live in a world in which we maximise the probability that problems will not be adequately dealt with.
This is a mathematical certainty, therefore a valid solution MUST turn around this probability matrix.
I’m not going to advocate for anyone else’s proposal, except to say this: while I acknowledge the flaws in the proposals put forward by others, I also acknowledge the limited domains in which they may have some success and value, and the purpose of the Open Empire Foundation framework IS NOT to be “the one and only solution” ( as was assumed by the same idiots who called me arrogant, despite the fact not one of them asked a single question to validate this assumption on their part ), but to provide the framework through which each can actually achieve its potential and provide the greatest evolutionary feedback both to itself, and to every other project and problem tackled within the total scope of that framework.
example – the venus project & the zeitgeist movement:
So for example, I think The Venus Project and The Zeitgeist Movement have many flawed assumptions between them … BUT … I also acknowledge they also have a great deal of value, and while I wouldn’t trust either of them to construct a viable Resources Based Economy based on what I’ve heard of the technical specifics of their proposals, what I would certainly trust is for them to put to good use the framework I’ve designed high includes a far better Resources Based Economy system design.
Am I arrogant for calling it better? No, just confident, and I’ve earned every single bit of that confidence a thousand times over.
details:
As you can read on other pages and in other articles, it all comes down to motivating people to act WITH care, instead of expecting them to act FROM care; because if people don’t care, you might never be able to change that, maybe they never will – but what you can do, is to change how and why they go about things nonetheless, and without requiring any authoritarian hierarchy or power structures to enforce it.
What we are talking about here is a truly self-regulating and self-evolving system.
Ultimately people want access to 2 types of resources:
- Abundant: supply exceeds demand, and;
- Scarce: demand exceeds supply.
Conflict occurs over resource scarcity, that is its fundamental cause, and we will never eradicate all scarcity, nor eradicate all conflict, but we can at least eradicate the unnecessary conflict, and minimise the rest.
So a valid solution to changing the fundamental economic theorem, is to replace property acquisition and exploitation, with influencing ( but not controlling ) access to scarce resources, via motivating people to reduce deleterious and increase beneficial ecological and social consequences.
- Where capitalism increases scarcity, the OEF vision reduces scarcity.
- Where capitalism motivates exploitation without responsibility for consequences, the OEF vision ensures responsibility, and thus alleviates the injustice and damage caused by exploitation.
- Where capitalism causes unnecessary competition, redundancy and waste, the OEF sees competition as something to be used only as a source of entertainment, sees redundancy only as a strategic answer to systems failure or overload ( ie – backup ), and sees waste only as a source of resource recycling.
conclusion:
The OEF vision neither dictates nor assumes specifics about any sub-project undertaken in the framework.
It doesn’t for example believe ( like TVP & TZM ) that automation is the source of solution to anything, nor does it not believe such a thing, it has no opinion either way ( except via analysis of specific claims – and in which case, I’m pretty sure the conclusion of the system would be that automation serves some useful purpose, but it is not a final solution to work-slavery ).
This whole thing is just about replacing that fundamental economic theorem – including the transitional strategy of doing so – creating a distributed / decentralised ( and eventually open-source ) Project Collaboration Development & Resource Allocation Framework, which is capable of defending itself against all attempted attacks and control, and which makes this new paradigm available to all other groups and individuals, so they can develop, test, and eventually implement any proposals of their own for specific purposes … whether that happens to be building an eco-city, regenerating a wetland habitat, designing a boat, making a film, or anything else.
No matter your goal, whether you care about the planet, other species, or not, the OEF framework is designed to let you achieve your goals, so long as you understand that you’re taking on responsibility for the consequences of what those goals are, and how you go about achieving them … but it is designed to make the process easier, because you no longer need a day job or to work for several decades nor enter into debt, in order to gain the resources to begin work … all you need is an idea, and the desire to do it.
This is the new paradigm:
- Anarchic society
- Responsibility for consequences
- Free access to abundant resources
- Reduction of scarcity
- Access to scarce resources via quantifiable merit, or your capacity to convince suppliers to go against the advisory, and to take responsibility themselves for the consequences of doing so.
Also published on Medium.