Introducing a practical way to build an alternative economy that takes the con out of the system. That’s right, no debt, no interest, no profit, no money at all. It combines individual voluntary action with cooperative enterprise to deliver goods and services without any need for government, currency or financiers. It can be started locally immediately with even just a small group of people who are tired of the financial slavery in our current system.
Here’s how it works. You help your neighbour by cutting his lawn. He shows his gratitude by posting a thanks online. A special database will be established here to record all thanks coming in. Your account will now show 1 thanks. You provide your labour for free. No money changes hands unless priced materials and supplies are needed for the job. You might charge a small amount to cover the cost of the gasoline so that you can replenish your supplies for the next job, but no other money is requested.
As you continue helping people however you are able, their thanks accumulates in your online gratitude account. Once you have acquired enough thanks your reputation is established at the first level (how much thanks is required and how many levels there are can be decided by members of the club).
If you want to do something more complicated that requires several people to achieve, you would channel your individual talent and energy into a voluntary cooperative that operates in exactly the same way as individuals contribute labour independently. People receiving goods and services from the cooperative would only pay for the materials and supplies used by the cooperative that were priced in the currency of the old economy. Here the collective labour would be free and the thanks received by the cooperative would raise the online gratitude and reputation levels of each member of the coop (whether they worked on that particular project or not).
Producers would sell a portion of their goods and services to the old economy to acquire the dollars needed to purchase supplies for the next production cycle. Another part would be reserved to give their own workers a right of first access to the production. The remaining portion would be available to all of the other club members for free, or for only the dollar cost of the external inputs if sales of the first portion were lacking. Producers would decide themselves how big each portion needs to be. They would also set a maximum quantity of their goods and services that any individual, including their own workers, can request. This would protect against hoarding and selfishness.
Now here’s the really interesting part. The reputation level of an individual determines what goods and services he or she can receive for free from the community. The supply and material costs incurred by the producer will still have to be paid using the currency of the old economy but as more people and coops come onboard as suppliers the need for those old economy inputs will decrease and eventually disappear. Now pay attention, here is the most important point. Club members do not spend their thanks when they receive gifts from other members. Their gratitude level remains the same. The only way they pay for the goods and services they receive (apart from the supply and material costs) is by giving thanks online to the person or coop that supplied them.
This is a perpetually renewing system that grows on gratitude, not greed. Receiving thanks raises an individual’s online reputation level. Each higher level offers a broader range of free goods and services to enjoy. At the start, the lowest level might include only relatively simple things like lawn cutting, dog walking or hair cutting (no offence intended by using these as examples). Higher gratitude levels would include more complicated items or products that take longer to develop or grow like food, repairs, or construction. Obviously, there would be a huge demand for raw materials, machinery and supplies that could replace the need for outside costs and currency. The gratitude levels of coops providing such resources would accelerate quickly. To ensure that users stay active and contribute their labour continuously individual gratitude levels should be depreciated occasionally. Once this idea gets going club members can decide what the depreciation rate and frequency should be. For example a 10% monthly depreciation rate would pretty much exclude anyone who hadn’t contributed labour during the last year from enjoying the club benefits.
The capital to start or expand cooperative actions could come from crowdfunding or the reallocated savings of people who are looking for ways to avoid the Great Taking (see my article here). Starting this concept locally will help citizens buffer themselves against the isolation and scarcity of resources caused by economic disruptions and supply chain failures in the traditional economy. With this concept, we don’t need government or money to look after ourselves. Instead we have to take responsibility and action ourselves and together. Think of each community as being a single cell that will expand into a broader network of trade that will eventually extend provincially, nationally and internationally, a network without non-productive middlemen and government usurers that steal the wealth that real workers create.
Come on folks, we can do this. Start talking about it with friends and family in your own community. Arrange a local face-to-face meeting to discuss the possibilities. Even if only 2 or 3 people attend the first meeting, together you can organize and plan how to grow from there. People know the economy is tanking and that governments are crooks, but they don’t know what to do about it. Show them this idea. Please restack this post on Facebook and Telegram. Together we CAN change the world.
Do We Really Need Government?
I streamed the entire Voluntaryism Conference today and was especially pleased with what Larken Rose (timecode 00:24:20) and Derrick Broze (05:37:00) had to contribute. Just click on the poster above to view the free live stream recording of the event. Unfortunately however the most important component of any viable alternative to the continued corporate/government farming of human talent was never discussed.
Society's problems are not primarily caused by the political isms. Political isms are merely the administrative control systems that sustain and enforce the underlying economic isms. What was not discussed is that capitalism, communism, socialism all share the same economic fallacies and corrupt monetary system that is used to enslave and torture the world. Without changing the economic isms, it won’t matter what political ism you put on top of them. Trying to implement Voluntaryism with the same debt-based, profit-driven economic system will limit its possibilities and ensure its failure.
Etienne’s explanation of how government political power is illegitimate and no different from an inter-generational crime syndicate, is spot on but his economic ideas are superficial and trapped in the same economic dogma that enslaves humanity today. Oddly enough, the needed economic solutions are so simple a 10 year old child could figure them out, yet they have eluded public thinking for centuries.
Why must every new project originate as debt?
Whether it is a new mining or resource operation, new roads, bridges or hospitals, new housing or a new technology or invention, everything must be financed and paid for upfront before any actual development can begin. Think about that for a minute. Every new asset or tangible configuration of useful physical wealth is only allowed AFTER the means of paying for it in full has been created. Developing large new assets requires vast amounts of money, far more than is readily accessible to average citizens. Average citizens therefore are unable to unleash their own creative and productive talents directly themselves but must rely on others to finance their talent and initiative. This order of business always encumbers new productivity with debt, in other words all assets originate as debt.
It is curious that no one ever asks why should new wealth (a positive) always start as a debt (a negative). Why does the positive benefit that a new asset brings always originate as a financial negative? This is not an accident. Structuring the financial bookkeeping this way provides the mechanism to transfer the ownership of all new assets from the creators to the financiers. The shortage of upfront capital to average citizens ensures that the use of borrowed capital will be needed. Those who are given the privilege to create new debt financing become the owners of the new initiatives until the loans are completely paid back. Not only do the lenders claim the initial ownership of the assets, they get to charge a premium of interest on every new development project that is started. In this way all new assets are captured by debt so that the creative and productive energies of the builders and workers are assimilated and used to feed the financiers interest or dividend payments.
If the purpose of money is to represent the remaining value of all assets in existence then it is essential that as new development projects begin new money to represent the value of the new assets being developed is created at the same time. So why not let the developers and workers themselves create the new money that is needed instead of the financiers? Why not recognize that the value of the new assets depends entirely upon the talent and energy of the workers who create them. This would eliminate the need for upfront borrowed capital and would open the doors of productivity to everyone.
Tying the value of money to labour hours would enable every worker to generate new money that equals the value of his own work. When new money is created this way, upfront costs disappear completely. Workers are fully paid from the new money that their own work generates. Employers track hours of work and deposit confirmation receipts into worker bank accounts which they can then spend to purchase the work of others. As components in a production chain move down the line the value added by the workers of each producer accumulate into the final price of the asset. Since all of the raw materials, energy and component costs are priced in labour hours too, the final selling price of a new asset is simply the total value of the labour needed to produce it.
If the purpose of money is to represent the remaining value of all assets in existence then there is absolutely no need to extinguish money any faster than the actual depreciation rate of the asset. Doing so would create a shortage of the money needed to pay for the future depreciation. If a house or hospital is built to last for 200 years (which is easily possible once the need for planned obsolescence is eliminated) then the amount of money needed to pay the annual depreciation cost would be only 1/200th of the original price. This amount would be easily affordable for every worker and with no interest or debt mortgages that would be the total monthly payment required to sustain a person’s exclusive right to use a property. A $600,000 property built to last 200 years would only depreciate by $3,000 a year or $250 a month. Housing would be affordable for everyone.
I hope this post teases your imagination to think about what I am saying and leads you to explore how an alternative foundation for money and economics might work. I have been at it since 1990 and now have a clear understanding of the variables involved. 100 years of economic garbage bury the simple truths about what a respectful exchange system would entail and as I said earlier, the truth is so simple a 10 year old child could figure it out. The Voluntaryism movement needs an truly liberating economic plan. As we establish our new communities based on respect for individual sovereignty we must have a money system that unleashes everyone’s natural talent and energies so that all can contribute and enrich the soil of our communal garden of possibilities… without debt, without interest, without control.
If you are ready to break free from our debt-based, profit-driven economy and build a voluntary labour-based local economy using an hour-denominated currency created automatically by the people themselves who contribute socially productive labour then please come and celebrate with us the possibilities that the Financial Party reveals.
The End of Rulers
There is very little difference between governments and corporations. In fact, most governments now are corporations themselves. Both are imaginary legal identities with super-human powers. Both were created by human conniving and can be dissolved just as easily by the will of the people.
Governments have the authority to act in ways that their human counterparts cannot. They have been given the right to kill using armies, police, scientists and medical professionals. They have been given the right to use force to collect taxes, fines and fees. They have been given the right to steal through property seizure and claims of imminent domain. They have been given an exclusive right to make laws and to administer justice to control the behaviour of others while granting themselves immunity from liability. They have been given the right to restrict, censor and punish those who have different values, opinions and lifestyles. But on their own they are almost totally unproductive and pretty much useless to average citizens.
Corporations have the authority to act in ways that their human counterparts cannot. They have been given the right to issue credit and create speculative debt-based wealth. They have been given the right to use force to collect interest and loan payments. They have been given the right to steal through liens, property seizure and claims of superior investor entitlements. They too enjoy an immunity from liability and prosecution. They have been given exclusive privacy rights to shield their business activities from public and even judicial scrutiny. They have been granted exclusive development rights and legal titles to vast natural resources to exploit for private gain. But perhaps most damaging of all, they have been given a monopoly right to define economic value, conceal internal costs, externalize social costs and reap unlimited profits that inflate prices and drive the need for new debt-financing.
Both stakeholders are monopolies. Both stakeholders are unnatural elitist organizations that siphon off the productivity of society for their own exclusive use. Working together they control every important aspect of human life including food, energy, housing, education, employment, information, science, healthcare, recreation and entertainment. Every fibre of the web of life is now owned and controlled to maximize profits for an indoctrinated global elite who don’t give a damn about humanity or even Creation itself. The life-sustaining natural resource assets of the Earth are now just another listing on the stock exchange of greed and speculation, another tool to feed power and control to the elite.
If humanity is ever to defeat the totalitarian coup d'état that is quickly becoming an extinction level event, we must recognize that both governments and corporations need to be abolished. Both are illegitimate usurpers of human productivity. Both are anti-social parasites driven by short-sighted, narrowly-focused, self-entitlement objectives… more power for themselves, less public interference.
Many are now cheering the victory of Donald Trump at the polls. The wicked witch of government corruption has been defeated, hail to the new emperor come to save us. But what does this knight in shining armour really stand for? For corporate capital and privilege for certain. For concentrated power and monopoly capitalism for sure. For US Manifest Destiny, or MAGA, yup. But does that necessarily mean he is against a one world government or just that he wants the US to have more power to control it? Will his enormous ego once again blind him to the dangers of listening only to his own inner circle of “experts”. Can he see that AI, robots, trans-humanism, genetic manipulation and weather modification spell the end of the natural world and most of humanity? Does he even care?
Average working people, families and friends are the backbone of society. Individuals cooperating together to achieve shared objectives without coercion is the only way to achieve liberty. Human beings have an amazing capacity to adapt and innovate creative solutions to almost any problems that arise. We don’t need governments or corporations to command us. We are self-organizing creatures that work well together on a level playing field. It is only when greed and self-interest are institutionalized that corruption sets in. All individuals have a natural right to decide for themselves how to contribute their talent and energy to society. Voting with your life should determine what society becomes. Ballots and leaders are unnecessary. Unobstructed information and equal access to financial compensation for productive social efforts is all that is needed. There is no need for economic scarcity. True wealth is created by human ingenuity and productive cooperation. Respect the equal rights of all to participate in society in whatever way they choose and we can achieve anything.
War is the perfect merger of government and corporations. It couples the financial greed of corporations with the lust for territorial supremacy of governments. Both of these illnesses have been institutionalized for centuries. The international facade of the UN, NATO and all the other so-called peacekeeper organizations is as transparent as glass. The economic evil that fuels the malevolent global war machine scorches everything it touches. The World Bank, the IMF, the WHO are all criminal syndicates set up to exploit and control the development of the Earth’s populations and resources. Workers, slaves and peasants create the bounty of the world yet after profit, interest and taxes they can barely survive. The privilege of justice for them is beyond their reach and to speak of their rights is an insult to intelligence. They have the right to stay in line and obey and that’s about it.
If the citizens of this world don’t turn things around in the next few years it will be too late for future generations to even imagine what true freedom is. Once AI and robots replace most human functions like police, soldiers, and the majority of workers in industry and retail, the forces against us will be insurmountable. Censorship and predictive thought crime will end free thinking and expression. Only the authorized dogma and propaganda of a dying race will be permitted. The natural inspiration of humankind that spawned the magic of cathedrals, symphonies, art, opera and all of the learned pursuits and inventions will be lost. The awe, reverence and respect for Creation and the profound knowledge that is inaccessible to the human mind will be replaced with an insipid monoculture of instant stimulation and superficial excitement.
If profit was abolished, or at least made visible and controlled, it would make virtually no difference whether a good or service was provided by the government or a corporation. The theoretical benefit of governments providing essential goods and services without adding profits is vastly overshadowed by the ever expanding taxes that they collect. Shutting out private sector competition gives governments a monopoly on trade but profits are still collected by corporate suppliers who inflate the prices they charge on government contracts by absurd amounts. All goods and services whether provided by governments or corporations are performed by individual workers regardless of who manages them or for what reason. All of the most important industries and public services are now monopolies, or near monopolies. Small businesses are increasingly being cut out of the economy by limited access to capital and the financial burden of government regulations and policy objectives. A world without the choice and diversity that small businesses provide, that is operated by robots and self-service, will be a pallid imitation of reality.
Please don’t concede your individual humanity to these vile creatures of commerce and government. Our children and grandchildren, and all living creatures both here now and yet to come, deserve the same living rights and opportunities that Creation so lovingly gave us all for free on this miracle planet of unlimited possibilities.
