Alan Alves Fortes' posterous

Inspiration spreads like wildfire over the web. I myself try to present my views on how to improve the world we live in with this blog and inspire others in the process. It's funny to see that the views I present in e.g. The open sourciety series correspond with the views of others. To me it shows that after some analyses on our current economy some conclusions are inevitable and crystal clear. I find it great to see these ideas and views spread among the entrepreneurial change agents of our beautiful human race. In this post I present my latest discoveries in this field.

I recently discovered this project by Drew Little called Producia. It's based on the theory of Producism:  an evolutionary economic model that has the goal to help everyone become an impactful social entrepreneur to eventually self-actualize. In practice this means it is a fun, barter-based marketplace by and for social entrepreneurs. It’s a Marketplace, Social Network, and Startup Incubator all-in-one.

Sacred economics is a book that came out in 2011. It's written by Charles Eisenstein.

"Sacred Economics traces the history of money from ancient gift economies to modern capitalism, revealing how the money system has contributed to alienation, competition, and scarcity, destroyed community, and necessitated endless growth. Today, these trends have reached their extreme—but in the wake of their collapse, we may find great opportunity to transition to a more connected, ecological, and sustainable way of being.

Sacred Economics is about how the money system will have to change—and is already changing—to embody this transition. A broadly integrated synthesis of theory, policy, and practice, Sacred Economics explores avant-garde concepts of the New Economics, including negative-interest currencies, local currencies, resource-based economics, gift economies, and the restoration of the commons. Author Charles Eisenstein also considers the personal dimensions of this transition, speaking to those concerned with “right livelihood” and how to live according to their ideals in a world seemingly ruled by money. Tapping into a rich lineage of conventional and unconventional economic thought, Sacred Economics presents a vision that is original yet commonsense, radical yet gentle, and increasingly relevant as the crises of our civilization deepen."

I'm sure there are many more out there. I'll keep posting the interesting stuff. As the awareness increases the speed of change will accelerate. We will see this all happen in our lifetime and more. Be ready!

Onstage at TED2012, Peter Diamandis makes a case for optimism -- that we'll invent, innovate and create ways to solve the challenges that loom over us. "I'm not saying we don't have our set of problems; we surely do. But ultimately, we knock them down."

"The economy of love is - the more you have the more I have. If I can make you feel happy or hopeful or beautiful I might feel more that way myself.... If I want a society that works, then I need you to be powerful, I need you to be responsible, I need you to be fully engaged, and maybe I need you to be joyous. The more I can give you the better my society is, because we are actually in this together" - Rebecca Solnit.

A taste of the upcoming feature documentary, Occupy Love. This is a community funded film. Only a few days left in their crowd funding campaign! Visit: http://www.indiegogo.com/Occupy-Love Last chance to become a part of this historical project!

www.occupylove.org

WE-defining Me written and performed by Sekou Andrews (sekouworld.com). Design and animation by Troika (troika.tv). Original music and sound design by Machine Head (machinehead.com).

There is something unfair in the way this world is organised. Why is our environment deteriorating? Why is unemployment rising? We want a new vision for the future. The upcoming third industrial revolution needs a new economic paradigm.

Read more about this here on Wired.

280_Economics_for_Humans.mp3

(download)

Click here to download:

280_Economics_for_Humans.mp3 (14.07 MB)

This podcast is an interview with Umair Haque, director of the Havas Media Lab and author of Betterness: Economics for Humans. He argues that a paradigm shift is needed in economics. Present day economics only focus on the concept of GDP, the amount of stuff and money we make in a country. But there's much more to prosperity than just stuff and money. Other types of value are not measured and therefore are not tapped effectively which leads to less prosperity. Money and stuff do not add up to overall prosperity and well being.

This podcast reminds me of what the people of the Metacurrency project are saying. You can find more on this in my previous post: The open sourciety (part 2).

Produced by the Center for a New American Dream

Psychologist Tim Kasser discusses how America's culture of consumerism undermines our well-being. When people buy into the ever-present marketing messages that "the good life" is "the goods life," they not only use up Earth's limited resources, but they are less happy and less inclined toward helping others. The animation both lays out the problems of excess materialism and points toward solutions that promise a healthier, more just, and more sustainable life.

Animation by Squid and Beard: http://www.squidandbeard.com

Learn more at http://www.newdream.org

"In the shadow of the Great Recession and the Occupy Wall St. movement, ordinary people are re-negotiating their terms with big business. They want to spend less, do more, and solve problems together. They are the foundation of the new "sharing economy"."

Read the entire article by Sara Horowitz here.

The Social lab 0.0 chapters:

What's going to emerge next when social media comes to an end? Key persons who lead the cultural context in Japan got together at the "Social Lab 0.0" to achieve an ambitious objective of finding out what's beyond social and seeking a rich future. The social network can become vicious or at other times, become an innocent baby. What kind of future will it let us see?

Chapter 2
"Social 0.0 Lab" was a project launched by Naohiro Ukawa who said that the idea of a rich future starts by sharing a spectacular imagination. In this second chapter, we will feature messages by Daisuke Tsuda (Media Activist), Kageki Shimoda (Naoki-Prize Writer), Kyary Pamyu Pamyu (Symbolic Model of Real Harajuku), Yasumasa Yonehara (Photographer who communicates the Kawaii culture across borders) and Takashi Ikegami (Complex Systems Physicist). Do these real voices of contemporary Japan have the power to exceed drama and be the guiding light towards supreme richness?

Chapter 3
Our media project "Social 0.0 Lab" based on the theme "The Future of Abundance," is finally coming to an end. In this third chapter, our "social brain" will head towards releasing their spirits and building a free world. We will feature Naoto Hiroyama (Orange Range, delofamilia), Rie fu (Delofamilia), Tota Hasegawa who is broadening his activities from Tomato to W+K, Akiyoshi Mishima, an artist who evolves in indeterminate form as we see in his fashion brand Fugahum, and Toshiyuki Inoko, representative of Team Lab, a modern ultra-technologist group. Will you be able to find your richness? And what kind of drama will begin from here?

With the recent economic developments more and more people are waking up to the way our money system is organized. There are a lot of good documentaries out there that explain the problems with our monetary system. Here are some to name a few: The money myth, Money as debt, Money as debt 2, The money fix, The money masters and Zeitgeist addendum. What it comes down to is that money created out of debt (debt is not value) bearing interest by centralized institutions based on scarcity results in hording of wealth by a small group of people (rich get richer, poor get poorer), overconsumption of natural resources and immoral behavior. The crises we're in right now shows the problems resulting from the current money system. Some propose to eradicate money altogether. I propose a less radical solution. What if we reversed all the properties which seem to cause the problems? We would see a currency created out of actual value creation (therefore sufficient), interest free (no endless growth needed) and p2p distributed (no central control to benefit a few at the expense of many).

What is money?

Money must be able to serve three functions: unit of exchange, unit of account and store of value. The history of money started as commodity money (usually precious metals) based on an intrinsic value. It now exists as fiat money without intrinsic value derived from the physical commodity. The value is actually extrinsic and based on the trust that it will be accepted as form of payment by anyone. So, we the people give money its value with the trust we place in it. Money is in fact an agreement within a community to use something as a medium of exchange. However an agreement is supposed to be between two or more parties who have the freedom to choose. Right now there's not really a freedom to choose your own medium of exchange due to the obligation to pay taxes in a certain currency. This very monoculture of money makes it unstable.

Gamification of society

We can compare our current society to a big massive multiplayer real life game. The points you can gather is money. With the money we can buy all kind of status enhancing goods and services. These are the badges of this game. The reward system in a game, or better said, the measurement of value in a game determines the behavior of the players. The problem in our current game is that the points we can earn (money) do not accurately measure the value in the game. The bankers and traders who helped cause the financial crisis are still earning a lot of (bonus) points (money). This report shows that bankers destroy £7 of social value for every pound they generate. Top advertising executives destroy £11 for every pound they generate. For every £1 they are paid, childcare workers generate between £7 an £9,50 worth of benefits to society. These figures show that our money system is failing to measure different levels of value which leads to destruction of value which harms society and the environment.

Deeper levels of wealth

We need a way to understand and to show the deeper levels of value from which all wealth emerges. The people at the Metacurrency project have beautifully modeled these deeper levels:

These levels are beautifully explained with great examples by Arthur Brock in this video:

What's important is to make the deeper levels of wealth measurable and made visible with currencies.

A proposed future

So, where am I getting at? I (like many others) propose we find a way to make the deeper levels of wealth measurable. We can consequently track value creation at these levels and make this visible. This will literally change the rules of the game and result in a more complete reward system to encourage sustainable behavior. Anyone who creates these deeper levels of wealth will receive a certain increase in a reputation score. These scores are visible to anyone. This will be the new 'rich'. This means you're rich both inside (intrinsic rewards: happiness, health, mastery, wisdom, etc.) and outside (beautiful balanced environment, plentitude of goods and services you need). This also means you've created wealth not only for yourself but for everyone. It will result in an improvement to our game of life.

A few questions remain:

• How do we agree on a measurement method? The formulas/methods needed for this can be agreed upon in a wiki for each level of wealth. Wikis have proved to be effective medium for reaching consensus and allow for evolution (continuous perfection). If we look at the Wikipedia page of Israel we see consensus on a topic on which there is a lot of debate. People who may have disagreed with the collective decision (after extensive argument) to include or exclude a certain fact still enforce the decision on the page because they believe in something bigger than their own opinion.
• What about the tradable value? A mutual credit system would work here. As stated earlier this will be a currency that will come into existence when actual value is created and will cease to exist when a good or service is consumed. This allows for sufficiency (no scarcity, no inflation). If person A delivers a good or service to person B, person A will have a debit corresponding with the value of the delivered good or service and person B will have a credit. The sum of the two persons will be zero. So, anyone can issue money if you create the corresponding value. Person A can use the debit to buy goods or services frome person C.
  
  No more unemployment because there's too little money to offer everyone a paid job like we have now. There's enough work to be done nowadays and enough people to do it but no money to pay them due to the scarcity of money. This problem is solved in a mutual credit system due to the suffiency of the medium of exchange. Many examples of this already exist. The LETS system is a well known one.
• Is there any limit on the amount of credit I can have? Yes. The system must be able to reward the value creators instead of the passive consumers. So, the reputation score you've earned with the creation of deeper levels of value will correspond with your credit limit. Your reputation score will also increase the likelihood of people wanting to trade with you. This increases access to goods and services. It would be nice if people with high reputation scores would have more privileges and influence on collective decision making. This will result in a meritocracy were it pays to live by the motto: Don't be evil.

Disclaimer: This post is just to throw an idea out there to inspire and inform others. Nothing of this is set in stone nor do I think I have the ultimate solution.

My inspiration for this post: The people of the MetaCurrency Project, Bernard Lietaer, the mentioned documentaries and everyone who has contributed to the #futureofmoney discussion.