I went to Thailand and saw the Asoke communities that our friend Linda had tried to tell me about. One of the most interesting philosophies I viewed in practice there was that earning personal (spiritual) merit by doing good things in the community and in the world is more valuable to each individual than earning profit.

After all, it's the personal merit we earn - the good spirit in which we lived and how we are remembered by others - that lingers in the community (and possibly stays with us) after we are physically gone. When we limit our personal motives to earning profit, we leave too much out of the equation that can lead to happiness in life.

I don't think this means that profit needs to be completely driven out of the equation, but we need to readjust our perceptions of what we need, what is enough, and what is too much.

In Thailand, Linda also shared a video with me that another of our friends, Gayle had posted somewhere here but that I'd not been able to see on my Ugandan bandwidth. http://www.storyofstuff.com/ really drives it all home for me, in terms of rethinking our world and our individual roles in it.

In the Open Money discussion a commenter brought up the communities advocated by Vladimir Megre.

I am not familiar with Megre's work but these are intentional communities experimenting with different ways to share value. I particularly like the Asoke model because it demonstrates that we can produce abundance.

Every community on earth is looking for ways to start an upward spiral in their community whether they call it that or not. Every community has unused human potential and unused biological potential. We call those poverty and environmental degradation and treat them as a problem instead of an asset.

When something is abundant, like labor in Africa, it has no market value. Does that mean that people who are surplus to the market have no gift – in terms of the story? Of course not, it means that we cannot value that gift in market money. What is it that we would like to be abundant? Food, clothing, shelter, education and health care. If those things are abundant do they then have no value? Of course not, but we will need a different way to measure contributions to the production of that abundance. And if one community – some where – can figure that out, then other communities can start working on their own version – and humans will be writing the story of how we came to live in peace and plenty.

In the Global Mind Shift discussion, a commenter asked:

I totally like the idea of the story, but I don't quite get what this conversation is trying to do. Is this a place to respond to and build on the ideas in the story? Is it a place to continue building a story like the one you have written so far? Is it a place to build a story with characters and plot that explores some of the concepts that you are trying to get at?

I think we could approach it from any of the three directions you suggest. I am certain that there are better story tellers than I am. I have been thinking about the world as a pattern of flows for some 25 years and I need readers to question the way I describe those patterns so as to reach a common language about them. I am thinking about another of couple of chapters along the lines of what is already there - about limitations of the market - and another on the fact that no one else is going to do it for us.

More importantly, I am looking for a way that people begin to act on our power to create a future of peace and plenty.

A commenter in the Open Money discussion said:

We have the problem and a vision of the antidote. Now we need some experimental verification...

Yes, we can design solutions here in cyberspace - but implementation will be groups of people agreeing to participate locally. I'm hoping we can spread the story far enough that people who are already doing the local organizing become involved - and maybe we can set up a competition of sorts to be the first to solve the problem.

In the Open Money Discussion a commenter said:

"I read part of the 'Understanding System function' and enjoy the simplicity on how it is presented. The short pieces of dialogue are very easy read and easy to understand. I loved the part of the gift and the bridges."

and gave me some pointers on making a good story. I responded:

I also hope that you and others will feel free to suggest or make changes - or republish the story in your own words. It is my hope that this story is told and retold until it becomes Our story.

I think it would be a good idea to give the teacher and the student names - preferably names that evoke a tradition of inclusiveness or community pulling together for mutual benefit. I added some notes for what I think goes into chapters 5 and 6. I see chapter 7 as:

And so the student went forth into her community, armed with the knowledge of how the system functions, in search of wisdom . . .

A commenter in the Global Mind Shift discussion said:

I feel that I disagree with you to the extent that you try and incorporate the conventional monetary economy into a vision of the future. I feel that it is too destructive, on the planet and on people. It dehumanizes trade, making it anonymous, removing soul or responsibility to another person - as something becomes more anonymous it becomes more dangerous."

and my initial response was:

Yes, I understand the sentiment - but focusing on what is bad about the way money works only increases the resistance to change from the majority in the world who see only the objects of their desire and believe that money is the only way to obtain what they desire.

but after thinking about that I wrote:

I have been thinking about my last response - and find that I have adjusted it in the way that I often do because I know that my correspondent does not know the whole story . Since you do know the whole story - I should have responded in its terms:

All that we know is a set of bridges over which we exchange gifts. It does no good to try to decide what bridges are good and what bridges are bad - each bridge exists because of the choice of the parties to the exchange and every one gets to make their own choices. So, there is no good or bad - only choices and consequences.

One of the benefits of the financial system has to do with the availability of all those source materials - allowing us many more options in how we choose to share our gift. Without the existence of financial resources we would be severely restricted in the type of living resources we could create for our communities.

It is not necessary to end the financial system to build better communities. Each of us maintains lots of bridges to businesses - as owners, employees and customers - to our religious organizations - to our countries - to our clubs and social organizations - it will be no big deal to extend a few more bridges to our neighbors. Perhaps some of the old bridges will fall away - but remember, there is more in the world with each new bridge we create and there is less in the world with each bridge that is lost. See Systems to Complement the Market .

In another discussion the following issues were raised and addressed:

I read David's dialectic on bridges and the value of labor. It very much reminds me of bartering.

by using the words dialectic and bartering you categorize what I am saying into that which you already know. I am not offended by that - but the reason that I used the name Self-help corporation is to try to get people to think outside the box. The purpose of an SHC is not an alternative currency supplement to the existing market economy - which is designed to maximize the efficiency of financial resources. It is a different kind of organization designed to maximize the utilization of labor - and as such, it has the capacity to produce an abundance of basic goods and services - and anyone in the community could earn a share of that abundance - and still hold a job in the market economy. That is converting financial resources back into living resources - in an organization owned by all those in the community that contribute to the organization.

The sticky part in all of this is power. Even now there is a tension between proponents of different organizational or economic models. Resolving this tension is a very important and challenging task. Where does the buck stop on a global level?

This type of community organization can bring the power of choice back to the community level. Humans will still need a mechanism to make choices on a planetary level - but, if every community were self-sufficient in food, clothing, shelter, education and health care, there are fewer choices that need to be made at that level and more choices that will be made at the community level.

At the community level, I would think that we would want to use the best information -> knowledge -> wisdom available. I do not like consensus models or extreme democracy for the reason that it produces decisions from the lowest common knowledge - and because most people cannot be troubled to educate themselves about the issues involved in a decision. For that reason, I like the corporate model, in which the community - based on the number of shares that they own - elects a board of directors - to oversee the best talent that can be found - to oversee the operation for the purpose of:

The more favors you give and receive, the more you get to know your neighbors and the higher your quality of life. We only need a way to keeps track of those favors, creating an incentive to do more of them, and accumulate tools and assets to make those favors easy to perform (convert financial resources into living resources).

“. . . I must totally and completely reject your case against "consensus models or extreme democracy". These things, to me, are vital to have a vibrant community that is responsible and moral.”

“I can see the point to your argument, David, but the truth is no matter how clear these ideas and concepts are to you and a handful of other thinkers, they will remain marginalized until they can be expressed in even plainer, simpler language. Could you sum up your whole idea in twenty eight ordinary words or less?”

28 ordinary words or less . . . perhaps the key to this controversy is in a different way of looking at the forces at work in the world. We already have extreme democracy in the sense that all political and economic power already resides in the individual. The most powerful organizations in the world only exist because people choose to interact with them . . .

and I am already past 30 . . .

See Business as Bridges

but the solution is not to take power away from someone else and the problem is not that someone else has power . . .

the solution is to give less power away and exercise more power for ourselves . . . and that includes being smart about how we organize ourselves . . . have you ever been to a Homeowners Association Meeting? . . . why do I care who they hire to mow the lawn? . . . and can the lawn wait to be mowed until we reach consensus . . . all I need is the power to vote the board members off if they do something wrong . . .

“David, what exactly do you mean by "what holds us back is the belief that someone else is responsible"?”

“How can we view poverty and environmental degradation as assets?”

This is the part of the story where we are all richer if each of us can express our gift and we are all poorer when any of us cannot express our gift . . .

The market cannot produce an abundance of basic goods and services because - as a thing becomes abundant - its market price drops below the cost of production . . .

But if you and I join forces to produce an abundance of something, we can do that without regard to the market price. The right to use something that is abundant has "value" independent of the market price . . .

The unused human potential and the unused biological potential of any given locality - if organized in a way that entitled contributors to a share of what was produced - could produce an abundance of food, clothing, shelter, education and preventive health care . . . and the right to partake of abundance would have value independent of the market price of the goods and services produced.

See Economics of Integrated Production.

The part about unused biological potential has to do with this part of the story:

What would happen if agriculture was something we did where we lived involving many creatures - and those who do not fit elsewhere – instead of monocultures done somewhere else. What if we honored the gift of the smallest of creatures and treated ecosystems as something that is a part of us – instead of something to be preserved someplace else? What did you learn about upward spirals? Do we have any idea how productive we could be if we added bridges for all the poor people and all the creatures?

“Okay, David. I know you're trying hard to answer my short question, but I still don't get it. Please give it another stab and force yourself to say it with a maximum of fifty words. If you are passionate about your position, you will accomplish this Olympian feat.”

Try looking at it this way:

Think of any group of people as a family. As a family, we can go out to eat, or we can have a member of the family cook dinner for us, we can hire the house cleaned, or we can have a family member clean the house, we can send the kids to day care, or we can have a family member watch and educate the kids, we can buy all of our own food at the market, or we can have a family member grow some of our own food. The value of those services to the family is independent of the money cost for those services - and independent of the market value of the family member performing the services.

If any of us can always provide that kind of value there is no reason that anyone should be without that kind of value - or without something to do so long as someone else is in need of that kind of value.

In the Global Mind Shift discussion, it was suggested that a different approach might work better, and a group there is helping me with this version:

Imagine living a good life where you are actively involved with your neighbors and you all live in prosperous harmony. You all have comfortable houses, plenty to eat, ample leisure time, and the air and water are fresh and clean. There is very little strife in the world and the top stories in the media are about great achievements, inventions, and key social projects. All of this can become real by deploying integrated production systems, producing an abundance of basic goods and services, and providing a place to fit for anyone in the community that wants to participate.

Our communities would still trade in the global marketplace but we would have an option to work at a slower pace while we are going to school, or retraining after a downsizing, or while our children are too young for school, or after a disability, and for those who cannot or choose not to seek a career in business or government. There would be a flowering of human creativity and certainly less stress in our lives.

Integrated systems of production use assets to support as many different processes as possible. The different processes are arranged so that the production of one process becomes the feed stock of the next process – creating internal production and consumption cycles. In the case of food production this means including as many different species as possible. It is difficult to make a monetary profit from integrated systems to produce basic goods and services because, as they become productive, the market value of the production is reduced. As a community owned production system, the system can be tuned to produce goods and services sufficient to meet the needs of the community, and members of the community can earn a share of production, creating the incentive to contribute.

examples: Grass Powered Greenhouse

The Upward Spiral

Bill Mollison

Greening the Desert

Michael Pollan

Christina Jordan said:

I went to Thailand and saw the Asoke communities that our friend Linda had tried to tell me about. One of the most interesting philosophies I viewed in practice there was that earning personal (spiritual) merit by doing good things in the community and in the world is more valuable to each individual than earning profit.

After all, it's the personal merit we earn - the good spirit in which we lived and how we are remembered by others - that lingers in the community (and possibly stays with us) after we are physically gone. When we limit our personal motives to earning profit, we leave too much out of the equation that can lead to happiness in life.

I don't think this means that profit needs to be completely driven out of the equation, but we need to readjust our perceptions of what we need, what is enough, and what is too much.

In Thailand, Linda also shared a video with me that another of our friends, Gayle had posted somewhere here but that I'd not been able to see on my Ugandan bandwidth. http://www.storyofstuff.com/ really drives it all home for me, in terms of rethinking our world and our individual roles in it.

I may appear to be a zealot when I say this, and please not that the opinions herein are mine alone and do noe reflect official Intel opinions.....

I think the path to humans living in peace is heavily dependent on personal merit. There already are examples of this in the technology world: wikipedia is a perfect example of people contributing to the common welfare of humanity with no compensation other than the acknowledgement of sharing their knowledge. Open source software is another example.

Where I disagree with you Christina (and humbly so) is that I believe the profit motive DOES need to go away in order for humanity to get to a "garden of Eden." I'm currently writing a work of fiction that details a possible scenario for how this can happen.

For years I've been thinking about the economic models modern societies (especially the US society) have supported. In most cases, the ideas of economic scarcity and that people are fundamentally motivated by personal gain are fallacies the educated elite have accepted as truths. The question is how do we get to a point where society is operating free of these heretofore convenient (for who?) truths? I strongly believe we can get to a place where there is no need for currency-based transactions.

Technology has a real chance of ushering in such a reality. I can support this assertion, but it would take a lot of words to do so. But it will take bold, brave moves to break through the inertia behind thoughts and beliefs that support the profit motive and other long-held economic theories that are turning out to be bankrupt.

I am going to try to walk a tight rope here between Christina and Perry.

I think the key here is MOTIVE. Profit is not an evil word but when it becomes the primary MOTIVE and drive for our actions it starts to rot.

Profit needs to be seen as an intermediate goal. I have no real desire to become an organic farmer. I do however enjoy the products. So, if I want them, I need to have cash to trade for the products. My particular gift (I think) is teaching. The only way I can do that and get my organic produce is to teach and make a profit that I can then turn around and use for my produce. This generates a profit for the organic farmer who can then use his profit to either give away to the community (as in the case of the Asoke communities) or to purchase things that they can not make themselves (also like the Asoke communities.) In my little scenario, there is no situation that makes profit the driving end goal. No need to maximize profit. It is an intermediate goal that allows me to earn a fair profit and convert it into things I can not (or choose not to) make myself.

I am going to try to walk a tight rope here between Christina and Perry.

I think the key here is MOTIVE. Profit is not an evil word but when it becomes the primary MOTIVE and drive for our actions it starts to rot.

Profit needs to be seen as an intermediate goal. I have no real desire to become an organic farmer. I do however enjoy the products. So, if I want them, I need to have cash to trade for the products. My particular gift (I think) is teaching. The only way I can do that and get my organic produce is to teach and make a profit that I can then turn around and use for my produce. This generates a profit for the organic farmer who can then use his profit to either give away to the community (as in the case of the Asoke communities) or to purchase things that I can not make myself (also like the Asoke communities.) In my little scenario, there is no situation that makes profit the driving end goal. No need to maximize profit. It is an intermediate goal that allows me to earn a fair profit and convert it into things I can not (or choose not to) make myself.

Perry and Linda,

Thank you for contributing. When I talk about:

As a community owned production system, the system can be tuned to produce goods and services sufficient to meet the needs of the community, and members of the community can earn a share of production, creating the incentive to contribute.

it is a reversal of, and complement to the capitalist model. In this design, labor is treated as the contribution that creates ownership - that ownership is represented by shares - and the shares can be traded for things the system produces.

So Linda, you would earn shares by teaching - and trade the shares for organic produce - and you and the farmer both own the facilities used for teaching and growing organic produce.

I would add to the story:

This is not impractical or a communist plot. In the same way that the stock market allows you to invest your money in publicly traded companies, a community investment enterprise allows you to invest your time in the wellbeing of yourself, your family, your community and the local environment.

But this next part is tricky.

Most of us have to specialize in order to be marketable. That means we have in depth knowledge of a tiny fraction of human knowledge. For the rest of our understanding of the world we rely on something like a “common knowledge” that we pick up as sort of a faith from the people around us. These beliefs about the world can be hard to challenge because they are not based on an independent analysis of the information. There two such beliefs that I would specifically like to challenge in order to free us up to deploy these systems. The first one has to do with big government or big business being responsible. The people who make up big business and big government are just like you and me – and they are doing the best they can in the circumstances in which they find themselves.

From essential unity:

There is not a corporate conspiracy to oppress the poor and destroy nature. Rather, in the market, that which cannot be exploited for a profit and those who do not have "marketable skills" simply have no use. Those things are in danger of losing (or have lost) their connections/relationships/bridges to "the system".

If we believe that government or business is responsible it relieves us of our responsibility for our choices.

See: A Future Conducive to Human Life

The other is the belief that resources are scarce and that human beings will have to live a diminished life style or perish. That belief prevents us for looking at all the ways we can change how we interact with nature that I would consider enhancement of our life style. And in fact those resources needed for humans to thrive on this planet are not scarce.

Any ideas on how I might address those issues – or should I?

And the response form the Global Mind Shift discussion:

I think we are all ignorant of our complicity in what amounts to a conspiracy, and should make it our work to dissect each of our choices in search of laziness or casual abandonment of responsibility. also - speaking of skills and even people as "marketable" treads across the line toward human commodification... it makes my skin crawl.

We need not think in terms of what is wrong with the existing system. We can think in terms of what additional connection/relationships/bridges are needed to create an increasingly inclusive economy and an increasingly healthy ecosystem.

what's wrong with pointing out a system's flaws and calling them what they are? we can probably get where we want to go easier if we're not carrying around bags full of stuff that we won't be using when we get there.

In a way the global community movement (I'm not actually sure what to call it) is to corporate capitalism what the protestant movement was to the Roman Catholic church: e.g. "We shouldn't have to go through the Man to find fulfillment!"

And I responded:

These are two very excellent points that illustrate precisely what I am trying to say. In the current state of the world a person has to have marketable skills to "fit" in the system. Hence I wrote this in the original version of the story:

If something is abundant, like labor in a town where the local factory work was outsourced, it has no "market value". Does that mean that people without marketable skills have no gift? Of course not. It only means that we cannot value that gift in "market money". What is it that we want to be abundant? Food, clothing, shelter, education and health care. If those things were abundant would they have no value? Of course not, but we would need a different way to measure contributions to that abundance. Is it possible that people without marketable skills could use their gift to produce an abundance of food, clothing, shelter, education and health care?

The point about believing that the "corporations and their government lapdogs" are "responsible" for people needing to be marketable means that people go out protesting at WTO meetings and don't stay home building community investment enterprises.

How Humans Came to Live in Peace and Plenty – Version 3.0

There came a time in our community when we grew tired of arguing over who was right and who was wrong. Despite all the arguing there were still hungry people and the environment kept declining. What we needed was more places for people and creatures to fit.

Then we came to realize that the market could not solve all our problems. The market is wonderful for what it does – a spur to innovation – producing better and better goods and services – more and more efficiently. But the market did not provide a place for everyone to fit. When there was more of us than the market needed we were laid off – the market did not value clean air and clean water and the diversity of ecosystems. Anything that is abundant has no value to the market.

Then we came to realize. If people are abundant in the eyes of the market does that mean we have nothing to contribute? And if clean air and water and plants and animals, fish and fungi are abundant does that mean that they have nothing to contribute? What else would we like to be abundant? What if food, clothing, shelter, education and health care were abundant? Would they then have no value?

Then we came to realize. If we cannot rely on the market for those things we want in abundance, we can create new ways of doing things for those things that do not fit in the market. We can design a way to recognize the value in people and creatures that the market does not value. We can find a way for those people and creatures to contribute their gifts to the flow of value and receive value in return.

And we called out to government to help us find the way – and government said, “We are not elected to interfere with business.” And we called out to the captains of industry to help us find a way – and industry said, “Our only mission is to make a profit.” And we called out to the foundations and the universities that they support to help us find a way – and academia said, “We do science and education – we do not design the world”.

And we came to realize that we would have to find the way ourselves.

And so, our community came together – people from government – people from industry – people of charity and seekers of knowledge – we came together to discover what we could do to make our community a better place to live. And we found that we could produce an abundance of food, clothing, shelter, education and health care, by creating integrated systems of production. Those who did not fit in the market and those who wanted to work at a slower pace, and those who had retired from the market, began to contribute their skills in exchange for shares in the community investment enterprise. And the enterprise produced abundance by finding a place for many different creatures. And we became whole, our economy and our lives in balance, and we live together in peace and plenty.

examples:

A Community Investment Enterprise in a US City

Economics of Integrated Production

Grass Powered Greenhouse

The Upward Spiral

Bill Mollison

Greening the Desert

Michael Pollan

I think that all of this is a re-visioning of Economics. I have had a problem with Gross National Happiness ever since I first heard of it. The problem is not with the original premise: that GNP does not measure the well-being of a society. The problem I had with it was that rather than tackle the problem head on and ask "What does measure the development of a community?", they took the stance that happiness is what we were really striving for.

Economics likewise seems to have lost track of what we are striving for. Early statements by Aristotle would have you believe that we were looking for maximizing well-being where well-being included an ethical/moral factor. God knows a (pseudo) (Social) SCIENCE could not consider ethics or morals (they are like subjective) so we switched to utility and kind of somewhere along the line slipped into evaluating well-being by how much you consumed. ($)

I think I can speak for most folks here in saying that we have figured out that $ is not all it is cut out to be and certainly doesn't measure well-being or even happiness.

I just finished my 4th reading of Buddhist Economics: A Middle Way for the Marketplace by Ven. Phra Payutto.

There was a clarity that came to me this time. I am working on how to best tell that and am thinking the person to share it with is you, David.

In anticipation of that, you might be interested in the original. I think it has help for you with your story too.

In all aspects of my readings in Buddhism, the philosophy attempts to strike a balance between the individual, society and the environment. One of my problems with classic and neo-classical economics and with your presentations has always been the denial of scarcity. To deny scarcity in a bounded environment seems to me to be at best delaying realization of the reality of the situation. The limits may be far greater than I have reason to believe but, there is only one earth. I think the problem is in looking at always trying to maximize the wrong thing.

Aren't we all really looking to maximize personal development? It's not clear to me that the maximization of personal development means the maximization of consumption. It means having enough: not too little, not too much - THE MIDDLE WAY.

One phrase that I am meditating on for a last teaser -

"And with the clarity of inner calm comes an insight into one of life's profound ironies: striving for happiness, we create suffering; understanding suffering, we find peace."

Thank you for your comments Linda. I look forward to exploring Buddhist economics with you.

I hear your point about scarcity. There are two aspects of that belief that, I think, hold us back, and that I challenge. One is what I was talking about above where "deep ecologists" take an anti-human stance. They advocate drastic reductions in the number of humans - humans prohibited from doing more and more things - and I don't think that approach is going to become a "popular" view. I find that confrontational, counterproductive, and inconsistent with what we know about all those things that we could produce in abundance (including food, clothing, shelter, education and health care). Further, when we start talking about "systems of production that cooperate with nature's processes" those look, to me, a lot like the garden of eden.

The other one is what I was talking about in Using a Better Map. So long as we believe that resources are scarce, we believe that life is about the struggle to get our share of those scarce resources.

In that respect I think I can characterize my view as "the middle way" and look forward to your thoughts.

There is a third point that you raise that I am unsure of how to approach. That is the beliefs we hold about human nature and the future. There is the one view that we can never improve humans so then we can never have a better world and the opposite of that - which is a belief that we can have a better world as soon as we produce better humans. I think there is a middle way there as well. That has to do with building a set of institutions that give every child the advantages that my family gave me - and I think the research shows that middle class kids have many fewer problems than other kids. The concepts underlying Spiral Dynamics support the idea that we will produce better humans when we create a better world. I look forward to your thoughts on that as well.

To me, limitations in both respects are best understood in terms of complexity spirals. We are at this current level of complexity - and at this level there is only so much we can produce. I agree with the analysis of the ecologist that we are currently decreasing complexity - and reducing our capacity to produce that which we need for humans to thrive. But, if we add elements to the system to utilize what we now waste in human and biological potential, we increase complexity and our capacity to produce that which we need for humans to thrive.

I would appreciate it if you would comment on the other side of this "scarcity" coin.

If there is a limited amount of anything (and I think that we would agree that at the moment, there is a scarcity) There are two options 1) produce more 2) reduce consumption. There are also the myriad combinations of the two.

In modern times, we have focused on the former - producing more - and in the process raised the concept of unlimited wants and desires to a sacred position. The thought of suggesting that people do with less is not even considered and when it is proposed is attacked.

I think (remember, this is my opinion) that the point we are missing is that often times (usually) more of things (food, clothing, medicine, shelter, just to look at the 4 basic necessities) is detrimental. Food, beyond the amount that is sufficient to sustain us, leads to obesity, disease and actual deterioration of the body. Clothing when it is treated as something more than protection for the body becomes a drain on financial resources, a battleground of competition, and a waste of time (in obtaining it and maintaining it). Medicine almost deserves a book of its own. We have all seen the abuse of medicines. Medicine in the West and particularly in the US has developed into an altar of illness rather than a source of wellness. People are encouraged to spend money, resources and time making themselves into something they are not so that they can fit the model of the day. People want to be trim and healthy looking but rather than get that naturally, they fall into a battle between satisfying the pleasure of eating all of that food that is not good for them and looking like the model on the front of the magazine and we develop new diseases of anorexia and bulimia. Plastic surgery. Extending life at all costs regardless of the quality. Then there is shelter. Huge homes to house ever smaller families. The expenses wasted. The time that is consumed in making the money to afford them and maintain them. And where in any of this is the development of the individual or the society? We do all of these things to the detriment of our bodies, our lives, our society, our environment and ourselves.

Only when you understand how much something hurts you, do you have a chance of stopping it and changing your behavior. What do we do to get people to the point where they see the dangers and want to change?

I have no desire or ability to make someone change. But what does it take from each of us to make the real choices more real?

Great question,

Do you think excess consumption is the biggest problem facing us as a species? The excesses you describe seem to me to be a crises of meaning in our lives – when the purpose of life becomes making money life suffers. I might agree with you if I thought the “market” would bring all six billion of us up to a financial status equivalent to the US and Europe. I don't think that will happen because a system based on economies of scale tends toward fewer and fewer people controlling more and more of the production capacity. That process is reducing complexity in the system, eroding its stability in the face of change in the environment, reducing its productivity in absolute terms and reducing the number of ways that people and creatures can fit in the system.

Michael Pollan's “The Omnivore's Dilemma”, which I am just reading now, is, in part, about how corn has become the single most successful species in the system. We spend five billion dollars a year paying farmers to grow corn at a loss and then, because corn is the cheapest commodity available, the entire rest of the food chain is based on how we can use corn. If every community had local integrated food production, the environment and we humans would all be better off, and there would be many more places where any of us could contribute value to the system.

Here is another example. Compare the tomato you buy in a US grocery store with the one you grow in the backyard. If you count the value of your labor and only measure value in dollars, it is better to buy the cardboard tasting orb - grown with toxic chemicals and picked green so that it can be shipped all over the world - than it is to eat the good tasting tomato - that actually has some nutrition and cost no money if you saved the seed from last years crop. If you still have to earn a living in the market, as an individual or a family, you can only go so far with that premise.

But, if you and I, as a community, own the green house, and produce the tomatoes with time we would not be making money anyway, we will grow exactly the number of tomatoes we expect to eat, because we need the rest of the greenhouse space to grow other things we like. And we can employ economies of integration were one process supports the next process. All of this productivity is in addition to what is now produced by the market – and what we get out of participating is a share of what has been produced. In that system I don't see people working extra hard so they can consume conspicuously.

Adding this additional element to the system changes the flows from more and more concentration to more and more diffusion, increases diversity -> leading to more complex interactions -> leading to stability in the face of changes in the environment -> and increased productivity. It reduces the demand for industrial foods, and other products we can produce ourselves, and re-balances the system at a point that includes a greater number of humans. I don't think we can accurately predict what that new balance will look like – and it will be in a constant state of flux as the market adjusts to this new aspect in the system – but, on the whole, it is better to have more diversity than to have less diversity.

David Braden said:

it is a reversal of, and complement to the capitalist model. In this design, labor is treated as the contribution that creates ownership - that ownership is represented by shares - and the shares can be traded for things the system produces.

So Linda, you would earn shares by teaching - and trade the shares for organic produce - and you and the farmer both own the facilities used for teaching and growing organic produce.

Hi David, thanks for this thread.

It seems as though you intend "shares" to replace cash as legal tender. I speculate whether legal tender and the profit motive are parts of what we must be let go if we're going to achieve peace. The shares model you recommend might alleviate the challenges profit motive generates, because a single person, I guess, could only exert so much effort to earn shares - seems unlikely one could amass an overabundance of shares, but I may be wrong ... so in the shares model would greed that comes with the profit motive be eliminated? Could one seek a profit in shares? Could there be a wealth gap based on this shares model?

I have a sneaking suspicion we are coming upon the edge of a technology explosion that will allow hyper efficient, hyper distributed (as in in the home) production of most goods using the most minimal resources. Under our current economic model, society, government and those seeking profit motive will want to subordinate these technologies to our current (scarcity based) economic model and thereby limit access to such technologies to those who could afford them...

But what would happen if such technology were instead used to usher in a cashless, barterless national model, where everyone had ready access to abundance (careful on interpreting abundance...I'm not referring to gluttonous abundance, but a level of abundance that allows one to have the food, shelter, clothing provided - all those needs that some people work for to have - thereby allowing a person to focus on higher pursuits such as education, personal growth and willful contribution to society for contributions' sake in a field they enjoy rather than one that pays them the most money)?

There are powerful vested interests in maintaining the economic status quo. It will take a tipping point of people recognizing that efforts to amass material wealth of any quantity, while strongly encouraged and supported by many facets of our US society, are, in the end of little value in this experience on the planet. In fact, it is this pursuit of amassing material wealth that is creating our environmental and some social problems. What matters, I think, is the experience and development of life itself - amassing spiritual wealth through an introspective-oriented experience of upwardly evolving life on earth (and beyond). Profit motive is a distraction. Combined with relatively unbridled capitalism, it becomes something much more destructive.

Ok, I'm going to get off my soap box...

Linda Nowakowski said:

Aren't we all really looking to maximize personal development? It's not clear to me that the maximization of personal development means the maximization of consumption. It means having enough: not too little, not too much - THE MIDDLE WAY.

One phrase that I am meditating on for a last teaser -

"And with the clarity of inner calm comes an insight into one of life's profound ironies: striving for happiness, we create suffering; understanding suffering, we find peace."

Here here Linda!!!!!!

David Braden said:

Great question,

Do you think excess consumption is the biggest problem facing us as a species? The excesses you describe seem to me to be a crises of meaning in our lives – when the purpose of life becomes making money life suffers.

I do not think that excess consumption is the biggest problem facing us. I think that excess consumption is a symptom of the crisis that can be caused by misplaced values or lack of conscious choice making. I think that Neo-classical economics has done an incredible job of smoke and mirrors that with the assistance of advertising has diverted people's attention from real values to artificial values. It has succeeded in shifting our focus to what really matters in life to thinking that all things can be measured by money and who has the most stuff.

I might agree with you if I thought the “market” would bring all six billion of us up to a financial status equivalent to the US and Europe. I don't think that will happen because a system based on economies of scale tends toward fewer and fewer people controlling more and more of the production capacity. That process is reducing complexity in the system, eroding its stability in the face of change in the environment, reducing its productivity in absolute terms and reducing the number of ways that people and creatures can fit in the system.

I don't want to see the entire world with life styles equivalent to the US and Western Europe. If I believe that that life style reflects a misplaced sense of priorities, why would I wish to enable things so that everyone could miss the point?

Michael Pollan's “The Omnivore's Dilemma”, which I am just reading now, is, in part, about how corn has become the single most successful species in the system. We spend five billion dollars a year paying farmers to grow corn at a loss and then, because corn is the cheapest commodity available, the entire rest of the food chain is based on how we can use corn. If every community had local integrated food production, the environment and we humans would all be better off, and there would be many more places where any of us could contribute value to the system.

What sane system defines success in the terms you have (Pollan has) used? Again it is measuring success by quantity rather than quality.

Here is another example. Compare the tomato you buy in a US grocery store with the one you grow in the backyard. If you count the value of your labor and only measure value in dollars, it is better to buy the cardboard tasting orb - grown with toxic chemicals and picked green so that it can be shipped all over the world - than it is to eat the good tasting tomato - that actually has some nutrition and cost no money if you saved the seed from last years crop. If you still have to earn a living in the market, as an individual or a family, you can only go so far with that premise.

I don't think I have ever really argued for the success of the marketplace although I think there is a place for it in the whole system. Not everything can be cooperatively produced in a community. There has to be a system that allows for the interaction of individual communities. The marketplace is a time honored method of doing that particularly when it is not taken advantage of.

But, if you and I, as a community, own the green house, and produce the tomatoes with time we would not be making money anyway, we will grow exactly the number of tomatoes we expect to eat, because we need the rest of the greenhouse space to grow other things we like. And we can employ economies of integration were one process supports the next process. All of this productivity is in addition to what is now produced by the market – and what we get out of participating is a share of what has been produced. In that system I don't see people working extra hard so they can consume conspicuously.

Adding this additional element to the system changes the flows from more and more concentration to more and more diffusion, increases diversity -> leading to more complex interactions -> leading to stability in the face of changes in the environment -> and increased productivity. It reduces the demand for industrial foods, and other products we can produce ourselves, and re-balances the system at a point that includes a greater number of humans. I don't think we can accurately predict what that new balance will look like – and it will be in a constant state of flux as the market adjusts to this new aspect in the system – but, on the whole, it is better to have more diversity than to have less diversity.

We agree on this. We agree on many things. I think the place we might be hanging up is that I believe that there is a personal spiritual dimension that needs to be addressed in order for it all to work. We need to straighten out out flawed thinking and get back on the right track.

Ultimately I think that the key is realizing that it is we, us and our not I, me and mine. I have to think about that some more.

Perry said:

What matters, I think, is the experience and development of life itself - amassing spiritual wealth through an introspective-oriented experience of upwardly evolving life on earth (and beyond).

and Linda said:

I think the place we might be hanging up is that I believe that there is a personal spiritual dimension that needs to be addressed in order for it all to work.

I do not dispute the need for personal spiritual development. I just don't feel qualified to tell anyone else what that is. The closest I have come is my statement above that:

The excesses you describe seem to me to be a crises of meaning in our lives – when the purpose of life becomes making money life suffers.

When I drafted essential unity I left out any reference to a universal soul or mind or creator, because that can distract us from the fact that we are all in this together.