How to Shift From Financial Economics to Resource Based Economics
Transition away from monetary economics to a resource based economy will be a multi-step process. It will require a significant shift in the way we think about our planet and the interconnected relationships we as a species have with it, life in general and each other. This can be facilitated, in part, by expanding our understandings of the natural world and the information planetary and human sciences have to share with us. As an example the study of genetics is leading to an understanding that behaviour is not hard wired, the environment we are raised in and experience through life has a profound effect on all of us at a genetic level. Our social and physical environment is playing a key role in both activating and deactivating genes, this is known as an epigenetic influence or influence on top of genes.
To properly understand both how we can, and why we should, alter our social model will require at the very least a rudimentary interest in what the sciences have to teach us about ourselves and our home world.
As our understandings broaden socially it is likely we will see the immense benefit in altering our model of economics to come into line with planetary limits and human needs. As this happens we will be able to implement a plan for change which will make the transition as smooth as possible, a plan that might look something like this.
Step One: Efficiencies Test
A transition from a system of distribution facilitated by any form of monetary means will require assessment of efficiencies. In order to understand and gauge the efficiency of any behaviour we will also need to collect data in relation to resource availability. Once we have an awareness of resource availability, including resource regeneration, we can test use vs. outcomes and establish an efficiency for each use of any resource.
As an example we can look at oil based plastics. We know these plastics are a petroleum product derived from oil. Oil is created when organisms such as algae and zooplankton die and are buried under sedimentary rock, being subjected to intense pressure and heat. The process takes millions of years. As such a plastic fork, with its limited life span and environmentally damaging properties is likely to score a negative integer on an efficiency scale. Meaning the continued production of such an item is highly likely to be seen as undesirable and a waste of resources.
The efficiency test is not about a pass or fail, but rather a way of determining a ranking by product of what is and is not efficient. As a simple example the plastic fork would probably score poorly against a metal fork.
Step Two: Identify Needs
Identify all human needs for life in the 21st century. These may include water sanitation, food, shelter, health, communication etc. etc. Grade these needs based on life sequence value, that is to say what are the people in any particular area in greatest need of at the current time in relation to maintaining life. In one area this may be housing, while in another it is water sanitation. This process should include public polling to identify and understand what is desired by people and establish minimum required production levels.
Step Three: Collaborative Design and Production Principles
Here we create a database of companies/organisations which are designing and/or producing items that have either proved to be the most efficient in the product range or are absolute needs. Generate design protocols which prioritise the need for ease of maintenance, upgrade-ability, recycle-ability, durability optimised against use, and aesthetic manipulation where applicable. Include automation companies which can assess and develop production sites for optimised efficiency.
Maintain an open source platform to allow designers to submit ideas and criticisms at a global level, facilitating continual product improvement and creating an atmosphere of global collaboration.
Step Four: Identify Product Termination
Upon completing an initial efficiencies test, assessing needs and developing collaborative design/production principles, we can determine what products are no longer needed, based on inefficiencies, product duplication and obsolescence. That plastic fork would be a very likely candidate for product termination. Just to be abundantly clear here, this is not about saying, for instance, we are not going to make phones anymore. It would be more about saying, all these complete crap phones, we won’t bother making them anymore.
Step Five: Prioritise Production
Plan out what areas of production to focus our efforts on automating, with the aim of providing the product at no financial cost to everyone. We may find the construction of vertical farms and free distribution of the cultivated produce would be a good place to start in certain regions, while housing may be the best starting point in other areas, as an example.
These previous five steps can all take place concurrently without any changes being made to our current social paradigm. They are all planing steps which facilitate step 6 by providing us with the basic knowledge of our actions the consequences and our potential capabilities.
Step Six: Educate/Inform
Initiate a campaign aimed at making people aware of our social potential and explaining how we plan to get there from here. Adopt complete transparency in the way decisions are arrived at and strive to address questions and concerns as they arise. Maintain a platform which will allow people to get involved and help with the entire process. Establish a system of open learning, so anyone with interest can have access to free education and expand their own understandings in subjects which interest them.
Step Seven: Adopt Universal Basic Income
At this stage we would have completed efficiency tests and planned out how we would prioritise industries and products for both automation and cessation of production. It is now vital to provide for people as employment roles diminish, to this end a universal basic income should be implemented which will allow people to meet their needs in a decaying financial system.
A Universal Basic Income is an unconditional cash payment to all adults, regardless of financial standing or employment status, sufficient to meet all basic needs.
Why is adopting a Universal Basic Income Important to this process?
We should all recognise that the structure of our global society is based predominantly on our current model of economics. We go to school to acquire an education, which is supposed to help us gain employment in an area of interest, so we can generate an income and pay for day to day life. That is the basic premise of our current work to pay to live capitalist economies.
Of course capitalism is supposed to do other things as well, such as raise the standard of living of society in general and drive innovation. To be sure in retrospect it has, capitalism has certainly played a role in elevating our species in many social areas and is certainly not inherently evil or a step in the ladder of social progress that we should have avoided or could have done without.
However we must also be prepared to recognise the limitations of our current economic process, understand its fundamental impacts and be open to change in order to continue to improve society, as opposed to stagnating in a system based on the personal comfort of our current social position. We can all see our environment is being degraded, species are dying off, resources are being extracted and used at an unsustainable rate, unemployment is rising, poverty is becoming ubiquitous in certain regions of the world, migration is dramatically increasing and our lonely planet is being turned into a floating dump in the cosmic sea.
These are some of the impacts of a pay-to-work-to-live system of economics, because of course, to keep enough people employed to maintain the system requires an ever increasing amount of production and consumption in the market. As the Bush administration knew full well:
“As we work with congress in the coming year to chart a new course in Iraq and strengthen our military to meet the challenges of the 21st century, we must also work together to achieve important goals for the American people here at home. This work begins with keeping our economy growing.
As we approach the end of 2006, the American economy continues to post strong gains. The most recent jobs report shows that our economy created 132,000 more jobs in November alone, and we’ve now added more than 7 million jobs since August of 2003. The unemployment rate has remained low at 4.5 percent. The recent report on retail sales shows a strong beginning to the holiday shopping season across the country. And I encourage you all to go shopping more.”
43rd President of the United States George Walker Bush
This is the crux of the capitalist system, get people shopping and keep people shopping in any way you can. If it means getting the commander in chief of your country to stand up on television and encourage everyone to do so then so be it. If it means producing things that are designed to break inside a given time frame, or to produce advertising which will cause people to feel incomplete or less than others without a given product, well that works too. Be damned the environment and life which it supports.
While we have not reached the carrying capacity of our planet, we have reached the carrying capacity of our economy on this planet, in fact we have surpassed that capacity some decades ago. However even as we come to recognise this as a society, even if we woke up in the morning and everyone magically understood this, a transition out of this type of model and into something else would likely be a decade long process.
Everything we currently have is provided based on the system of going to work to earn a living, our advanced medical care, transportation, communication, entertainment, everything. Any system wide evolution is going to take time and certain areas of that system will change before others. We can’t simply end money and expect doctors to keep going to work for the best part of their days based on little more than a moral obligation, as many others become freed from laborious tasks and have more free time to enjoy.
We are all a part of this social condition which has described to us that we need to work to pay to live, there is no way to escape that condition in the short term. This is why a Universal Basic Income will play such an important role in a transition process. Money will be used through any transition, that is why it is called a transition and not a stop dead rainbow farting unicorn utopian social reversal. Besides it’s so much easier to say transition, albeit not as fun.
Honestly it would be so much better to have the unicorn thing, to wake up and the magic change fairies had visited and resolved everything for us would be grand, but it won’t be happening. No matter how much time we spend sitting in the sun thinking good thoughts about everything and humming. In the end change will require work, and as a result of our social condition, money. Thus as work becomes increasingly more scarce as there inevitably become less jobs to do, a Universal Basic Income will help to maintain this system until it naturally becomes obsolete.
A Universal Basic Income is not a fixture or an end game outcome, it is just another segment on the path we will walk along as we continue to evolve socially.
Step Eight: Establish Resource Recycling Collection Points
Create locations where old, damaged, unused products can be returned so they can be stripped down and reusable resources harvested for newer products. All the plastic forks of the world could be returned and melted back down and used to create something useful. As we become aware of the amount of complete garbage we have produced it is highly likely current recycle facilities will be overwhelmed. Multiple new sites will in all probability be needed to cope with the influx in recycling demand over the short to medium term.
Step Nine: Initiate Production Based on Localised Priority
Implement production with the intention of meeting the needs of people in the local area while making people aware they can, if they choose, help with the transition process as they are freed from jobs which are no longer required. An individual working at a plastic fork factory, for instance, may choose to help with a factory fit out or planning. As each stage is brought to fruition we move on to the next product in the list of product prioritisation associated with the specific area. At the same time we will be terminating the production of products made obsolete by this process.
Step Ten: Clean Up Our Mess
This step could run concurrently to steps eight and nine, being amplified as people are freed from monotonous, laborious and unfulfilling jobs and community participation allows it. Our planet has become a floating tip in the cosmic sea for all our unused and cast away objects, the cleaning of our natural environment is likely to become a point of interest for many in society.
In Conclusion
All joking about the plastic fork aside, even those who crusade for the illusion of choice must recognise there is a range of totally substandard products across society serving little more purpose than allowing this consumption driven model of anti-economics to continue to limp along. People going into a dollar shop, for instance, making a conscious choice to buy a cheap screwdriver would be sparsely represented across society. It is far more likely these items are being bought out of necessity, as they are all that can be afforded by the restriction of the monetary economic system. Given the free choice between a cheaply manufactured screwdriver which would inevitably break and a screwdriver manufactured to the highest standard which would not need to be replaced, it can be expected most would choose the latter.
However there are also products of ego appeal, which people associate with displaying success and power. Look at me in my Ferrari 1689 GTBS 50 cylinder quadruple turbo special series, how cool am I? This needs to be appreciated for what it is, a psychological disorder which is generated by a social environment pitting us against one another as we all strive to “get ahead” in our “rat race” to the grave. Of course he who dies with the most, best, biggest toys… Dies just like everyone else, taking nothing with them.
The point of transitioning to a fundamentally different economy is not to provide everyone with adequate or middle of the road products, it is not about making everyone the same, or driving society backwards. It is about embracing our ability to create abundance, acknowledging our highly wasteful practices and focusing our abilities on producing products of a quality many are yet to understand we are capable of.
If we take the time to step back and critically assess what we are doing, it does not take very long to come to the conclusion we are floundering as a species, trapped in a social model which will not allow us to achieve to the level we are capable of. Indeed we find abundance and efficiency, which would elevate our entire species to the highest levels of equality, sustainability and peace are in fact the antithesis of capitalism.
