You left out Antwerp between Genoa and Amsterdam but I do appreciate your thinking on a post capitalist society. However, I think you would benefit from an understanding of monetary science. The first and most deadly capitalist monopoly is that of the monetary system. A private monetary system based on usury, issuing money as debt, is what Dante considered the anti-art, an extraordinarily efficient form of violence by which you do the most damage with the least effort. Such a system concentrates wealth systematically, requires constant growth, engenders predatory competition to pay the interest on the debt and is a major sin, if you’ll pardon the reference, that is the progenitor of the 7 deadly sins: Wrath, Greed, Sloth, Pride, Lust, Envy and Gluttony. The values that a monetary system is based on will become the dominant values of the society.

So, I am on board with a post capitalist society but I disagree that “exchange” is the problem but rather it is the exchange system that is the problem. In fact the belief that there is no need for an exchange system is the flaw in “socialist economics.” I would say socialism isn’t an economic system so much as it is a shift in priorities for government spending. I think the central issue is private vs public control of the money supply. Our private money system is based on personal gain, creating the Economics of Greed while a public money system issuing money as an asset to be spent into the economy on the general welfare of society creates the Economics of Care. This has profound psychological consequences helpful in creating the society you envision. I agree that municipalities may be the locus of change and the Worgl Story should offer lessons on how it could work but we will first have to get a big international banking ape off our backs. As in the Chicago Plan private money creation must be banned or the monopolists will get the upper hand again. They control every nation’s monetary system. I also think the terms of dialogue for political economy have been mal-defined so I put it this way: Capitalism — private control of the money supply, Democracy — public control of the money supply. I believe the two competing economic systems are not Capitalism vs Socialism, but Capitalism vs Democracy.