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.