What happens to greed?

There’s a lot of valid questions I’ve been asked about my work and the vision it expresses, although these questions are usually asked in a very poor – even invalid – format, so I have to reinterpret the question, in order to help the querent understand their own question, and therefore understand the answer.

This question about greed usually isn’t posed as a question, but instead as an assertion, usually in a format something like:

“oh but that will never work, people are naturally greedy”

… the problem with this assertion ( aside from being wrong ), is that it assumes ( for some stupid reason ) that after 30 years of thinking, it never occurred to me to deal with the bleeding obvious fact that SOME people are greedy.

So, let’s ask the real question:

What happens to greed in an economic paradigm that has no property?

transition:

First let’s deal with the transitional arrangements where both the new paradigm and the old are running concurrently.

Since not all goods and services can yet be provided without currency via the new system, projects undertaken effectively export to the capitalist economy, but the means of profit sharing are very different.

1. there are no permanent shareholders in anything;
2. there are no direct shareholders;
3. ALL forms of investment ( including work ) earn a profit share;
4. thus projects attract investment from the status quo;
5. ALL profit sharing is by merit algorithm;
6. ALL profit sharing from inputs degrades over time.

In other words: greed is utilised during transition, but it is redirected, because if you want a greater share in the output, you must earn merit according to the mechanics of the profit sharing algorithm.

Your greed will be rewarded if you – as a worker on a project:

• contribute significant inputs to the end goals and outputs of the project;
• reduce deleterious consequences of your actions ( in ecological and social terms ) while contributing to a project;
• increase the beneficial consequences of your actions ( in ecological and social terms ) while contributing to a project;
• voluntarily take a salary reduction – ie: you’re rewarded for risk and delayed gratification on any salary sacrifice;
• allow the project to utilise any personal assets and resources in addition to your skills;
• provide consistent ongoing input to a project, thus increasing your proportional influence over time versus other project inputs – ie: built in superannuation, when you quit work, your influence continues but degrades over time, thus you want to contribute the most significant inputs as possible before you leave working on a project, so that your ongoing impact ( therefore ongoing income ) will take longer to degrade.

Meanwhile the greed of investors into a project are rewarded:

• IF they can agree to receiving their ROI expectations in a different form than usual;
• IF they can agree to a built in exit strategy, which decreases the probability of getting stuck in any investment;
• IF they can agree to investing only by proxy via the ethical investment hedge fund;
• THEN they can share in the profits of projects that require money to get started.

You might ask, why would an investor invest in a project where they have to not only wait until salaries are paid ( fairly ), but then also share additional profits with every single project contributor no matter how small (?) – the answer is this:

1. the only reason they’re being offered any chance to invest at all, is because of the existence and dominance of the status quo;
2. there’s plenty of flaws in all their existing investment models, and they often lose money ( and lots of it );
3. this form of project management, profit sharing, and investment strategy has many advantages over the way they do it now;
4. their usual investment strategies are often totally unsustainable, and it’s only a matter of time before they fail;
5. whereas this mechanism has built in project loyalty and motivation for project staff;
6. this mechanism ( and related strategies I’m keeping secret ) achieves efficiency unattainable under regular corporate models;
7. the algorithm for profit sharing is fair and competitive, without the need to negotiate;
8. the built in exit strategy means that your investment pays out and degrades faster ( versus indefinite/perpetual investment ), so you’re less likely to lose, and project staff are motivated to return your investment profits ASAP, as this increases their own share ( since their efforts – unlike your one time financial input – are ongoing );
9. the built in exit strategy also means that your money is freed up to look at the next investment opportunity sooner, thus more projects get done, more projects expand, the system evolves faster from feedback input, therefore projects learn from each other faster, and risks on all projects are reduced faster.

In other words: as an investor, you don’t ever own a piece of any project, but your money – via the ethical investment hedge fund interface – goes into projects to help them get started, or progress to new phases; risk is always minimised on every phase of every project; staff are highly motivated; your returns come back ( maybe ) smaller, but definitely faster ( on average ), and with less risk ( reducing further over time ).

So you’re motivated by the same greed, but you’re saved from being an idiot and allowing your greed to screw up the project, or the planet you live on … and if that’s not the kind of investment you want, that’s fine, there will be plenty of investors whom aren’t fucking brainless, and your money won’t be missed, but you’ll feel like the fucking idiot you are later, when you see that it’s working while the status quo continues to die a slow death.

beyond transition:

Beyond the transition it’s a different story.

As the new economic paradigm continues to evolve and grow, more things can be produced by it, with greater abundance, less ecological and social harm done, and thus ever reducing scarcity – so the status quo becomes increasingly redundant.

People can now get most if not all of their needs without working, and therefore the only reason a person works is if:

• they love doing something, and it’s not “work” to them, or if they just feel like contributing;
• they have need of something that is ( for whatever reason ) still scarce in the quantity and timeframe of their requirement;

… so work is done to earn merit for access to that which is scarce.

Now, would greed come into this? Maybe. For example: someone could be a bit of a glutton for chocolate, and so they greedily want more than they really need – in which case, they’ll be motivated to contribute significant value to gain access – HOWEVER: since it would constitute a negative social outcome for another person to be deprived, in order to appease such greed, their access would be limited by the need for others to also access, and thus if chocolate is scarce, their greed will motivate them to solve that scarcity issue, or to find someone else to solve it.

Considering that a solution to such a chocolate shortage could have negative ecological consequences, those trying to solve the problem will also have to figure out how to solve it without causing ecological harm.

Now you might think this causes an impasse, as everything has consequences … but think about it like this:

1. at present, under the status quo of capitalism, we throw out vast quantities of food ( including chocolate );
2. our current consumption rate is based on marketing the shit out of it, to sell as much as possible;
3. gluttony is at least in part therefore a consequence of capitalism’s excessive marketing;
4. people’s unfulfilled lives under capitalism also leads to excessive eating;

… so there’s good reason already to think that consumption would go down.

Now add to that:

• massive monoculture agribusiness destroys the soil biome and takes extra resources for every kilogram of food produced;
• permaculture based farming could provide better and more sustainable crop yields, with healthier soils;
• not wasting so much real estate on all the pointless infrastructure of capitalism frees up fertile land;
• heaps of people ( given the option ) will just enjoy a simple community life, instead of consumer capitalism;

… so consumption and demand go down, with more efficient and sustainable production, plus freed up resources no longer being wasted, polluted, and destroyed – so it’s highly unlikely something like chocolate would be scarce, and if you want to be a gluttonous pig, and if you’re happy to wear the consequences of being one, well I guess there’s nothing stopping you.

second example:

Since the chocolate analogy might not work for some people’s rationale about greed, let’s look at a completely different scenario.

Ok, imagine if you will the kind of sociopath currently in charge of the world … the kind of idiot who gets a gold plated and diamond studded Lamborghini – what’s their motivation for getting involved, given their excessive greed ( including perhaps the need to hold other humans as slaves )? So this is right up the other extreme end of the spectrum from our chocolate lover.

Firstly, they’re not going to have much say in the matter, because their world is not sustainable, and is going to die one way or the other whether they like it or not – for the simple reason that the laws of nature don’t care what any of us want, nature just bowls on regardless like the juggernaut it is … going against the natural way of things can be done temporarily, but it requires resource expenditure to maintain, and the further from the way nature is moving you drag something, the more intense the resource expenditure required ( hence unsustainability ).

Secondly, if they try to take someone slave, then finding them out and stopping them, and rescuing such slaves, has a high value of merit associated with it … and if you doubt that, think of it like this:

• IF every human brain is the equivalent of millions of supercomputers;
• THEN what is the quantifiable value of freeing such a being from enslavement?

Now … if they just want to have a gold and diamond car, well … since gold no longer holds monetary value, there’s no point stockpiling it anymore, so the gold of the world is freed up for practical purposes, which will include everything from adornment to electronics, and possibly even agriculture; if it is determined that gold in the soil is a trace nutrient, or where its electrical properties are shown to have benefit for plant health, by simply being present in the soil – ie: lending valence electrons for groundwater ionisation chemistry.

In such a scenario, it would seem to me that it’s entirely possible for someone to have a gold and diamond car, but they’d have to show merit for access to all the materials and labour to put it together, and my suspicion is that ( being the kind of lazy parasitic selfish cunt they most likely are ), they probably won’t have any skills or knowledge valuable enough to earn such merit, since they’ve never actually had any life experience in doing anything of any fucking use to anyone before – or at least, not of any use to a sane person. So fuck them.

But really the bigger question in all this, is why the fuck do you care so much about the needs of greedy people? WTF is wrong with you even asking this?