The non-owning classes need a different tool for tracking debts than the fiat currency we’re used to.
If there is a way to cooperatively track value created by working within your neighborhood, say fixing a neighbors deck, delivering food, etc, outside of macroeconomic trade, we could figure out how to live without the hoarding pigs.
The difficult part is accountability. Commodities and fiat currencies are what they are, but trying to implement some other fungible measure of value created before the representation of that value already exists is what has me scratching my head. If there are 100 people capable of doing work within their community but only $10 to go around them, it doesn’t make sense to exchange work for money that doesn’t exist. But if those 100 people can agree to compensate one another by exchanging work without using the currency, they would all be unblocked and industrious.
There were lots of economies that worked this way. One recent example was the Irish Bankers Strike. Most of the banks in Ireland closed because they wanted concessions. The banks gave up on their strike because the overall economy wasn’t affected much because people just paid with what cash they had, and if they needed credit they’d go visit their local pub where the owner would vouch for them.
There’s more examples in David Graeber’s book “Debt: The First 5,000 Years.” Early economies didn’t have money, but they still made it work.
The non-owning classes need a different tool for tracking debts than the fiat currency we’re used to.
If there is a way to cooperatively track value created by working within your neighborhood, say fixing a neighbors deck, delivering food, etc, outside of macroeconomic trade, we could figure out how to live without the hoarding pigs.
The difficult part is accountability. Commodities and fiat currencies are what they are, but trying to implement some other fungible measure of value created before the representation of that value already exists is what has me scratching my head. If there are 100 people capable of doing work within their community but only $10 to go around them, it doesn’t make sense to exchange work for money that doesn’t exist. But if those 100 people can agree to compensate one another by exchanging work without using the currency, they would all be unblocked and industrious.
There were lots of economies that worked this way. One recent example was the Irish Bankers Strike. Most of the banks in Ireland closed because they wanted concessions. The banks gave up on their strike because the overall economy wasn’t affected much because people just paid with what cash they had, and if they needed credit they’d go visit their local pub where the owner would vouch for them.
There’s more examples in David Graeber’s book “Debt: The First 5,000 Years.” Early economies didn’t have money, but they still made it work.
you’re better off ditching the strict accounting and foraging durable social relations instead. I recomend reading Bolo’Bolo