About That Hole..
This is a Facebook post I sent to Norwich Sharing City, who are aiming to up their game on sharing, whilst using, amongst other inspirations, ‘Doughnut Economics’:
“Below is a very fair article about Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics.
In it, Chris Smaje, addressing the hole in the doughnut perhaps, tells us that: “Raworth says little Herman Daly didn’t say, and say better (if a little more technically), in his 1977 classic Steady-State Economics. In that book, Daly distinguished between the three concepts of ‘service’ (human flourishing, the final benefit of economic activity), ‘throughput’ (the entropic physical flow of resources, particularly non-renewable resources) and ‘stock’ (all the things that are moved in the economy). Perhaps Raworth’s ‘doughnut’ concept is more memorable, but it’s less precise, and it doesn’t much help elucidate the point that some things deliver more service per stock than others.”
Raworths’ example of the ‘success’ of digital commons is possibly one of her more questionable findings. ‘Shared, free stuff’ has to come from somewhere and somewhere probably shouldn’t be working for free! Sharing, it turns out, might require redesigns at a systemic level, but that requires a more rigorous knowledge of the systemics currently at play. ‘Having less’ is usually a recipe for xenophobia and war, for example, as Smaje points out…
Most interesting about the work of Raworth, Smaje and Herman Daly (who really should be more credited by Raworth) is the single most overlooked system in all economic theory, not least, because it presents the biggest barrier to our ability to share: the money system.
In ‘Share?’ I tried to commute ‘service, throughput and stock’ to ‘people, systems and stuff’, suggesting that the system redesign needs to happen at two specific levels: the first being at the level of rights. To share better, we have to redesign property rights from out of their (Lockean) mire. The second, in a market society, is at the level of the market itself. Economics has literally forgotten about the money system. Money, in its lack of design (it’s just a story) creates systemic imperatives (to growth for example) without ever having actually been intentionally designed. For example, the lack of basic specification of a standard unit of currency value (any currency) means we have no basis for valuing anything in numbers — and all we use are numbers — right? Secondly, the utter, proven and undisputed fallacy in all systems design thinking that a valid measure of anything can be ‘put into circulation’ and treated as an object of trade in itself, subject to fluctuation, whilst still offering any valid measure of anything is clear nonsense. Money, whether we like it or not, is widely used as ‘store, measure and means of exchange’. Until we have clarity about ownership and (money) exchange then, we cannot share anything effectively.
What to do? Well, first understand the problem and then fix it. It isn’t so difficult. Going to the moon was far more tricky.
The #culturebanked project is addressing these 2 questions directly. First, by working with the Kendraio Foundation to build interfaces for better rights management and second, we’re working with the Money Systems Transparency Alliance to create money systems education ‘plug-ins’ for any organisation that wants to take sharing seriously.
Give us a call if you’d like to take a course or get involved — and that offer extends particularly to Kate herself and any other brave economist willing to consider the things they might have overlooked.
And, obviously, please do also get in touch to let us know if there’s something we’ve overlooked!
Meantime, please #share (this) please, do be brave and if you can….”
