I like to approach looking at economics like a physicist. There are very few maybes in physics. They mention and value going back to first principles when things go wrong. So does architecture, if you find the central idea of your design is lost. That's my background.
If you understand game theory, it's quite apparent that so much of social structure is based on the Prisoner's Dilemma. This mindset seems prevalent also in many philosophical discussions, ancient and modern, such as Nietzsche and Diogenes, framing the human condition / human nature (HN) as being a weakness to overcome. I presume this comes from a mindset to overcome scarcity through dominion and therefore, cultures that reinforce our familiarity with that. However, despite our capacity for creativity and imagination and the absolute evidence that we have been able to overcome nature itself, we still create artificial, synthetic systems that are based on this old framework. We have stepped beyond overcoming natural systems and now play the game of overcoming systems themselves. The trouble is those systems are inherently disempowering because they are still built on fear based game theory that waste the most resources: war, politics, and finance are the most wasteful of all.
Ideas for solutions and the present day, magic bullet or not, are still built on those same fear-based frameworks: to overcome HN. Despite so many people wanting empowered change, we think this is the exception, not the hope of the norm. Such a framework is also familiar to us so it's easy to find solutions within a comfort zone that doesn't really change very much and we may be waiting for a personality to lead us to that change without losing that comfort. Experience from previous and even current political and religious leaders has not led to empowered change. But it is not just large-scale problems. It's also small-scale where businesses are in perpetual debt. These dichotomies make great stories to trickle down for people to tell and write books about, but that doesn't resolve the problems. Many don't want those problems to be solved because there's no money in it.
If we are to be leaders for the world to be a better place, then we must look at practical empowered systems that all people can use with little need for hierarchical goverance or fear. One of the best engineering companies, Arup, are renowned for their 2-level company structure and are renowned for some of the greatest engineering feats globally.
We need to find trust-based systems built on the abundance of our creativity and imagination that includes all things.
If you listen to people discussing authenticity and trust, there is a strong dividing line between someone is being sponsored or the product was bought with their own money. This already shows how powerful exchange really is in driving trust between people, or not. Look at how many YouTubers with their promotions stipulate where the product was given by a company or they bought it from their own money to preempt whether they are being honest or not.
It's interesting to find that in so many solutions put forward for empowered change, the design frameworks of currency are seldom looked into. People may offer new processes for currency and exchange but they are still built on the same usury frameworks that incentivizes people to quantify wealth in terms of money with little regard of what created that money.
My objective here is to offer you a model that incentivises and empowers all people to look at profit and wealth on qualitative frameworks that build trust, in both competitive and collaborative relationships, to value sustainable synergy in creating experiences to empower the most people for all.
During this time with the coronavirus, with this mass devolution of economic empowerment, timed or opportunistic, it's essential to find solutions that don't revolve around panics like this again and be left to still more messengers wanting your sacrifice, confinement and/or self immolation to support the rest.
So, let's get back to first principles. Let's look at the physics of humanity's identity and its relationship with nature, and discover the exchange model framework that supports the sustainable synergy of that to the greatest empowerment possible.
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THE FUNDAMENTALS
The objective here is to present a logic and the framework which empowers all people and has no need to compromise. This must be on qualitative terms where there is a dynamic empowered synergy that is adaptable and diverse dependent on location and capacity.
I would find it hard to argue that the most self-actualised empowered people measure their highest wealth is ultimately how we create to empower the most people in the most sustainable way possible, to redundancy. Anything we do, has to support this absolute. It must be structured on the strongest people that possess and act in distributing empowerment to the rest of their community.
From this central idea, we must build a adaptive social framework that incentivises such empowerment in the most constructive way possible.
Let's look at the basic fundamentals to work with:
Human Nature (HN):
Adapts to it's environment. This is the beginning of how we build culture.
In scarcity or abundance, we are valued by the excellence of what we create.
Highest excellence empowers the most people to survive.
Loves something to strive for.
Is the only species that has overcome natures limitations.
Thrives on creative capacity and imagination.
Wants to be remembered.
We want to trust more than fear others. Children are an excellent example of presenting this. Even as adults, we want to trust if we can, particularly government and authority. It's easier.
Wants to be as lazy as it can possibly be to achieve the greatest gain. we always pick the easiest path to get something if it is possible. Whether that is through taking advantage of people, taking the past of least resistance, or being able to create something to make things easier for others, is dependent on the framework that creates the most status and wealth.
When we govern such capacity with frameworks of disempowerment, it divides creative capacity, regardless of whether resources are scarce or abundant. This dissuades logic to empower cohesively and devolved to weakness being prioritised in decision making. We have built a model of exchange and social structures that promote weakness.
Fundamentally, however, all people want to achieve excellence. How we design the framework defines whether that's against other people or with other people.
If you define something about human nature on a negative framework, then it is more important to look at yourself and ask what is lacking in yourself to think such a thing.
Environment (E):
Resources are always scarce, but our creative capacity is limitless.
Resources only those that are useful to the central idea.
For resources to be their most plentiful, natural symbioses between them must be maintained and regenerative. Any adaptive social framework must support this.
Social Frameworks (SF)
How we value wealth define status.
How we govern defines status.
It doesn't matter whether it's from a disempowered or empowered framework, all that matters is how well we do that to achieve status with our greatest self-security in mind. If a framework is built around scarcity, then mainstream status will always be based on the success of overcoming this. If it is based on abundance, then mainstream status will be based on the best to cultivate that.
Fear drives separation. Joy drives integration.
We are also more likely to trust someone who offers an opportunity to overcome fear. This is most apparent in times of desperation. This usually doesn't end well.
if social frameworks are built around fear, then it only establishes the fear. It does not overcome it.
Money/Currency/Exchange (M)
Money doesn't exist unless we create something and somebody wants it. If there is nothing to buy, money is meaningless.
People's capacity to create is the real money. If we do nothing, there is no economy. Therefore, money must be directly based on the work people do. Basing money on something outside of that disconnects that basic fundamental.
Wealth is not money if there is nothing to buy. Therefore, money is always servant to peoples' capacities to create.
There are only three money structures to define and work with: usury (positive cost), demarrage (negative cost) and neutral (no cost). What defines which are empowering or not are dependent on how much is available, how it's distributed, I know if it is based on the work of people or something else.
Usury does not mean exorbitant cost. If this was the case, then there is an undefined band of money which is little cost. This seems to be conveniently swept under the carpet. It also implies that it cost on currency is fundamental. It isn't. Anyone that promotes such a definition of exorbitant cost and/or interest is not interested in sustainable synergy solutions.
Basing currency on something outside of work incentivises using it as a commodity of its own value. Basing it on work makes this impossible with the right parameters.
Cryptocurrencies are not different to any other mainstream currency if it follows the same frameworks as usury currency. it is just the same thing delivered a different way. Bitcoin is quite different to every other alternate currency due to specific parameters that made it difficult to continue as an exchange mechanism versus a store of value that many people have tried to overcome. This brought on ICO commodity boom that was purely fictitious, totally missing the larger picture that Bitcoin wanted to present. That again shows how powerful changing currency can be for sustainable empowered change.
Here are the parameters to scrutinise:
- What is it based on?
- Is the volume infinite or finite?
- How is that volume distributed?
- Is there a cost?
There are also only three frameworks of currency cost:
- Usury (any interest or fee)
- Demurrage
- No cost (neutral).
Unfortunately, we have been dealing with usury currency as a commodity for as long as humanity can remember and built our understanding of human nature from that. It is built on the framework of disempowering social structures that Prisoner's Dilemma game theory succinctly presents. It defines HN as a prisoner by default. Why? Money has almost always been created from violence and disempowerment to gain dominion to combat scarcity. David Graeber's book Debt: The First 5000 Years, establishes this. Usury currency has always been connected to political power disempowering people, regardless of whether it's capitalist or communist or anything in between. The only difference has been from the people who choose to have status to empower or disempower. As most democracies separate currency from governance, politics will not change anything unless you change fundamental frameworks to incentivize leadership to support people by default.
What usury currency and the Prisoner's Dilemma really demonstrate is that we trust what people tell us to overcome our fears and we try and trust what they say because we're told we cannot trust ourselves. So we choose to accept fighting disempowerment rather than leveraging empowerment because we are led to believe it's easier to follow then be an independent peer competing and collaborating for the greater good.
It seems the human condition is that a gravitates to fear and not trust itself instead of the opposite. That's quite different to defining human nature that objectifies humanity to be perpetually bad and need to be saved from itself.
This is beyond ethics and virtue to be prevalent in creating empowering frameworks. It is more relevant to incentivise the ethics of excellence in empowering frameworks. It seems some people mistake the word excellence to mean self against others. No one achieves excellence without the help of others and so in-kind excellence supports excellence. That is the highest ethic.
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BUXB
It is here that I will present the parameters of the buxbi model and how it languages and incentivises people to want to be sustainable in the creativity regardless of their personality. It takes out the argument of whether humanity needs to be saved or not. It takes out objectifying people being good or bad, true or not. What they create and why will define whether they are worth your time. If they're not doing their best to create experience is to empower the most people, including yourself, in the most sustainable way possible to redundancy, then they are not going to be efficient with your time to warrant it.
BUXB means Be yoU eXchange Bank. The denomination of currency is 'bux'. The parameters of bux are as such:
It is created by the exchange of work between at least two people. If nothing is done there are no bux.
As a result, no money is created independently of work done. BUXB is not able to be bought by other currencies.
Total exchanges balance to zero, except in regards to education. In such a case, all people participating in an education platform are paid by the bank.
The bank's deficit is the positive of education that is happening in the community. The volume and type of transactions recorded by the bank, irrespective of the amount, will show what interests the community or communities involved. This is transparent for everyone to see to know where to best use their energy, to the individual's greatest interest.
No one is forced to exchange with another person if they choose not to.
What people choose to create to exchange is transparent to everyone else in the community. again, this is to inform not just the community what has the greatest benefit to create but also the interest of the person in wanting to create it. It will also establish how good day are at it which only promotes them more.
People are free to give what they wish and record it in the bank if they want to.
If someone chooses to keep a transaction a secret, for whatever reason, they are welcome.
the bank exists simply as a ledger of exchange and amount of what people choose to create. It cannot create any currency whatsoever. Anyone working for the bank is paid by the bank. There are no taxes taxes from the community to run it.
Community projects are mandated by direct democracy which people at BUXB manage. The only advantage 4 people both at the bank and the community Ark pick the projects that best support empowering the most people in the most sustainable way possible to redundancy. Since this is the case, there is no compromise between self interest and the community. On a project being decided on, the best people who can do that most efficiently will be the people that will be paid. Such civil or community costs will be covered by the bank.
the bank is not a separate entity or corporation or business that requires profit. It is simply a quantitative record of exchange between people in the community and communities that use the same currency.
To overcome any misconceptions that charging more would mean more wealth, no one can be paid more than 60bux an hour. As prices of products are based on the amount of work that people do, there is a natural incentive of the price mechanism to fall for everything while quality increases. This establishes that products and services of higher quality cost less.
There is no loss of a free-market. The natural consequence of presenting ideas to the community to use their time in the most efficient way possible to effectively empower others in the most sustainable possible to no longer at needing to be required is the incentive for people to give their time to such ideas. Competing ideas will be based on those parameters. If there is a conflict of which idea is better, the natural consequence of this is either consensus to follow one project or for both projects to work concurrently to find out which is best. This is still the most efficient means of using resources instead of conflict in resolving who is better without actually have any experience to know and learn from doing what the idea of say they were going to.
Resources that people own using BUXB are not taking away from them. they only become available as they see fit while they become more comfortable and empowered using a model that has more options. It will become plain to realise that trying to find ways to look after properties you own when people are more independent is more difficult but you gain more connecting with people with what they make and don't lose your comfort for your security a,d experience; you gain it a different way
Any business built by many people will have a part of the business in some way to attain part of that future profit. But as the price mechanism is quite different in BUXB, participants would game or by selling products at the price that it took to make it. Ask the price will be quite different to what it would be in usery currency, the real value is that quality increases ice prices fall.
The true currency really is people's status in creating quality. The price is simply a transition mechanism as people become more comfortable to qualitative framework to value status.
Controversially, an example of how BUXB would work in the community is the intentional community mentioned and discussed in the end of Ayn Rand's book Atlas Shrugged. Entrepreneurs in her book get a bad rap but, as usual, we trust the messenger that delivers fear instead of logic. To say that entrepreneurs are bad because they are self-interested egoists is saying to love and improve yourself is bad.there should be no difference between an entrepreneur and a person. I must stipulate that saying an entrepreneur is an opportunist is incorrect. Whether we are people alone or together creating, the objectives of creating experience it's to empower the most people in the most stainboy possible to redundancy is the absolute objective to warrant any idea, and the work to do it, to be valued in its highest esteem.
It is plainly clear that her hero entrepreneurs create the best for the least price. all value the quality of their work, and the people that do it not just for but with them. They are not just the entrepreneurs but the politicians we would like to see. They respect everyone who respects themselves in being their best. This is priceless. It is only in that intentional community where they can negate the disempowerment of compromised social structures and usury currency for the greater good. In this intentional community, we can focus purely on what her hero entrepreneur is a truly like. They are mindful empowered selfish creators self aware enough to create their best for the greater good. Any bastardisation of that interpretation has been made rampant by the wannabes. Alan Greenspan, a frequent guest at Ayn Rand's social events, is the epitome of the second-handers she despises.
All her heroes are interested in education first, to offer the opportunity for everyone to be their best at what interests them. Hank Reardon makes the best alloy at the cheapest price than his competitors. Dagny runs the best railroad. Hiring a vehicle for $0.05 for the day. Who has the car is not important. All her hero entrepreneurs value creating the highest quality for the best price they can. All got their hands dirty being on the ground to experience the knowledge to be their best for those that will know better. In a commodity-driven world of wealth, there will always be the compromise between what to pay oneself vs the people under you doing the work. And the absolute genius to present how different this is in Ayn Rand's intentional community is the bank.
Midas turned everything into gold. In business, everyone he backed succeeded. When he leaves to join the intentional community, he balanced his books to zero. Rand's subjective in pointing this out is Midas left without owing or being owed anything. That in itself is an extraordinary feat in a usury world. Arguably, if that were truly possible, this could only happen in a currency with no cost. It would be interesting to analyse that. But in the microcosm of the intentional community, Midas is picking the best in a barrel. They're all good. They all want to be better. Interestingly, the means of exchange is in gold. This can bring up whether people a mining for gold for currency or as a resource. What's more important is that the main purpose of Midas in the intentional community is simply being the creator of the means of exchange. There is no possible need or means or requirement to add any cost to the currency in such a community. It would be absolutely pointless. His objective is to create enough velocity of exchange as required. It is just he would, but he can only, only, give money to those who are the best at perpetuating empowerment. No one else is living there. Further, it is not required to compete with whom may have a car to lend or not as there is no need to create more cars if none are really required. There will be enough business for everyone until more cars required; then the best most sustainable people will make it, customised on demand. No one in the community would be bothered to make them if they are not needed. The ultimate empowerment in such an intentional community is no one is owned by anybody else and doesn't do anything for anybody unless they want to. Consequently they all do their very best for self and all because there's no better option. That is what selfish really means.
Many say these ideas of economies will not work at scale but understand we are in economic models that create so much for nothing. There is so much waste that is not sold. That's not efficient or useful or sustainable or empowering for anybody. So what is created is dependent on the creativity also of the means of production but not for the sake of the economy, but the community. It is easy to create a Tesla production line that can be powered on demand if another vehicle is required and then turn it off again. Cars need not be bought but rented as needed. Any alternative to sharing resources is far more efficient than the waste usury currency economies create.
People will assume and say that such ideas can only work in small communities. but the whole global market is a series of small communities connected together. What matters more are how sustainably they connect for the greatest benefit of all that lived there. I'm not just talking about humanity. Any human would know that if they want to at least survive, they must respect the environment.
When a person says human nature or the human condition is inherently bad; when they say it cannot work at scale, they are only presenting the weakness in themselves.
And this brings up the alignment of ethics and excellence. If we go back to first principles, this sphere of .ethics is very much built around the game theory of the prisoner's dilemma: people are not to be trusted and there will always be compromise. There will always be compromise if solution is not possible but to mitigate that is not built on rights or privilege or social standing in themselves. It is built on excellence. That is the highest ethic. What do we create to empower people and the environment without compromise for the greater good without self-immolation? You do want to live, right? The idea of self immolation as many religions value as a way to relinquish the weakness of human capacity is the largest most init oxymoron of human identity I could possibly imagine.
The final book to establish the ultimate empowerment of excellence is Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. This is, incredibly, a seriously underrated book. it overcomes the duality and weakness we are presented with over and over again in being human and presents a simple monoism without making it a religion or a deity to follow. What Robert Pirsig makes abundantly clear with his first hand experience teaching his classes in Bozeman, Montana, is quantifying results disempowers people to create excellence and leverage empowerment. It is only when he conceals the marks that he must give because of the system he lives in that the students do their best independent work. Quality may be compared but it has no price. When quality is based on creating empowerment, there is no price-to-value such status. There is no greater wealth. We tell stories about people who have overcome the system. But why do we enforce a disempowering system to overcome? Do you think we will have no story to tell past the point of fear?
Look at the work you are doing an ask yourself if it can attain the absolute of empowering the most people in the most sustainable way possible to redundancy. Ask yourself if you are attached to the object of the work you were doing as the status in itself, or it is truly a trajectory to reach that ultimate goal of self and community empowerment.
If your work is based on the mindset of believes that the bigger picture is full of bad people to overcome, if it is based on absolute scarcity, if it is based on the character for people to follow and not the idea itself that can be given freely to empower, then you're not being honest and it won't work and it isn't worth doing. Who is it that said doing the same thing the same way leads the same results? While you argue for empowerment and freedom on frameworks of weakness, this reinforces itself. If you really want to do something different, you must change the way you value yourself. It's got nothing to do with commodity currencies.
BUXB itself would become redundant in the same way that currency almost is in Ayn Rand's intentional community (ARIC?). Other pioneers believe completely moving forward past quantified exchange would be impossible. But it is certainly achievable. Look at Trekonomics. No one buys the Replicator. It replicates for free, on demand. Wealth is in the discovery of empowering all people to do the same.
We are not all heroes, but in BUXB, you are fully supported to be the creator you want to explore. A master does not hide his evolution of being. He welcomes your interest, but what you do with it is your opportunity to be your own master. Not in ritual, not in obedience, but in creating to empower the most people the best way you can. And if you prefer to follow the master, that's fine, too. However, the fear of fearing people for their objective in connecting with you is allayed in every transaction. There is no need to swindle anyone participating in the BUXB. that would be the equivalent of shooting yourself in the foot. Instead that could alienate you. more likely, he would would look at you strangely saying 'You can be paid to be educated. What on earth are you thinking?'
If you are absolutely dogmatic to want resolution to the object overpopulation, modern monetary theory, steady state economies, degrowth, sustainability/regeneration, environmental/ecological/resource-based economics, discrimination, crime, slavery, famine, without looking at revaluing wealth on qualitative frameworks, then you are playing the object of being a changemaker, an activist, an icon for something better without actually changing anything. There's a long list of that. Another story to tell doing the same thing the same way and not getting any results. If you feel I have an attachment to 'BUXB', then you're looking at me, not the model. Wrong target. It is a tool for you, not against you. And it's free.
It has the means to achieve whatever empowered endgame you want. All I have done is change the currency model framework and revalue wealth for what it really is.
Not that complicated.
In this short time during the coronavirus, it's clear we can act fast globally if we want to. Let's try to do it with something empowering instead of disempowering as a means towards identity.
Frederick Malouf
