Don’t Go Back to Normal

An opportunity to turn things around has been laid on our doorstep
[Note, this and other articles in this publication, have been made possible by a writing grant from Perspectiva.}

In the midst of the Coronavirus outbreak, we have the chance to learn about how society maintains itself in the face of systemic vulnerability. Most of the emphasis is on making sure the system is stable enough to help us get through it. And of course, this is a big concern. But I want to highlight the opposite.

We are in a situation where people are staying home, away from school away from work. And what do you notice? The government has the resources to print money to keep the economy going. We don’t really have to be in a growth production-consumption cycle to maintain the flow of currency, goods and services. All we need is to decide on a new agreement.

We can agree that currency is a tool to mediate the flow of goods and services. We can agree that currency should be equitably distributed — at least when it comes to essential goods and currency. We can agree that we can distribute currency independent of the interest-debt-tax-investment-speculation economy — the type of economy that is extractive and predatory.

We can easily imagine currency to function in this way. Governments print currency for every person according to some valuation of essential goods and services. These can be thought of as “citizen coupons.” Essentially, it would be a debit card whose balance was maintained by government guaranteed income. Because the amounts would be regulated, this means it would control inflation of essential goods and services, and incentivize people to produce them at lower costs. Since large-scale practices such as industrial farming, institutional education and highly regulated health services (read: protected monopolies) are more costly than smart, local distributed systems, eventually there would be a draw down of these approaches, and a catalyzation of alternatives.

Large scale investment programs, in infrastructure and the like, would involve a second kind of currency. This would run on “securities and bonds” (S&B) operated by the fed (securitization) and government (bonds).

This dual-engine approach is what people refer to when they call for “separating wall street from main street.”

Main street income (citizen currency) CC would neither be taxed, not be able to accrue interest. The goods and services purchased with CC would also be tax free. Small businesses could apply for loans through the S&B system, and individual investors could invest there. Businesses would pay an income tax on business profits, and investors would pay an income tax on investment profits.

As a consequence, the mad race to destroying the planet, through absurdly complex systems designed to concentrate wealth in the hands of the few at the expense of the whole, would grind to a halt. People would turn toward communitas, and the earth would breathe itself into new life — something that is happening already in the face of the virus, and at a remarkable and encouraging pace!