View source for Talk:Value Exchange Systems

=== What is an economy? What is work? Can politics and the economy work in separation from one another? How can the economy nurture growth, evolution and prosperity? ===
Circular economy? Free market? Centralized control? What about work, is it a safe and uneventful transfer of energy? Seth Godin (2023) recently published The Song of Significance, which quite accurately represents the intentions initially suggested by the author of OneHouse. Should our work be limited to ''safe'' andor repetitive tasks which can - and soon likely will - be automated and replaced by technology? Can we not make all human labour inspiring? Naturally, this will create some calculated and some unknown risks, but if such challenges are to be expected, can we not embrace the mystery and discovery aspects of such a process? What if all work were to be elaborate expressions of an individual's creativity? 

In An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, later forming his magnum opus entitled The Wealth of Nations, Scottish philosopher Adam Smith (1776) argued for a free market unrestricted by government regulation only unless outcomes become violent or unruly. What he dubbed the Invisible Hand echoes in today’s capitalist endeavours suggesting that individuals acting not out of benevolence but rather in their own self-interest, directly benefits the society’s best interests as a whole. He suggested that innovation and increased productivity stem from the focused and specialized work achieved primarily through the division of labour, defining stock as the product of labour, and fixed and circulating capital as the owner’s benefits from said labour. Smith then argued that a nation’s wealth is not represented by mercantilism – the accumulation of gold and silver; nor through protectionism – trade tariffs and export subsidies which, respectfully, kept money from flowing out, and encouraged money from other nations to flow in. Instead, it was best represented by labour that produces tradeable goods and services; the birthplace of capitalism.

German philosophers Marx and Engels (1848) later published their alarming views in their Communist Manifesto. They defined the mode of production as the method by which life essentials such as food are made or manufactured. They highlighted how social class hierarchies stemmed from the change in the mode of production, consequently dividing to varying degrees those who owned the capital and those labouring for them, and in turn spawning a class struggle between the oppressive wealthy classes and their oppressed working classes. By definition then, the wealthy ruled the societies through which slavery ruled rampant for centuries, from Roman to feudal empires, and arguably to this day. More modern economists such as Milton Friedman helped turn these philosophies into modern day corporate practices and political policies; and one can easily suspect in which order these two unfolded and evolved.

In fact, Friedman (1962) stated that politics and the economy are so intertwined that one cannot function without the other. Even though Schumpeter (1942) had also credited capitalism for fueling social and intellectual progress, coining the term creative destruction to reflect this phenomenon in his work Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, he too warned of the finite path in capitalism as well as the flaws in democracy and its election process, favouring socialism as the unavoidable path forward if the masses are to favour growth and prosperity in a just society. Many economists today advise that weighing a nation’s success based solely on measures such as the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is by no means a realistic or even valuable way of demonstrating its true growth or prosperity.

=== What is a value exchange system? Is bartering more meaningful than current currencies? How can we deal and transact more efficiently and effectively? ===
Why is it that someone born in Sierra Leone will have an entry-level job at pennies on the hour while the same aged and abled youngling in Britain will easily make fifty to a hundred times as much, if not more? Can any human being’s time be rationally worth more than another? Our first inclination might be to lean towards their variance in ability level, or perhaps a difference in a mastered skillset in one geographical area vs another. It would then follow to consider why is it so? If the UN was charged with protecting Education, Science and Culture, why is it that one of the most expensive schools in Vietnam is UNIS (United Nations International School)? Quality learning seems to be reserved only for the select classes that can afford it, and this is now almost 8 decades after the 2nd world war? Aside from the lack of access to (quality or even any form of) learning in many nations, why should they accept low currency value when being compensated for their time? Is it not bad enough already that they were not given opportunities to develop their fullest potential, that we must hinder their value exchange capacities as well? This is not to mention the strict visa restrictions that lock these individuals into their nations, often translating into refugees leaving their homes desperately looking for a way out of their predicament?

Does this not all sound like a modern civilized slavery system? Well, that’s what my driver called in when we compared our lives, contrasting just how “rich” we each were. I used to change my monthly per diem into small bills and give him a stack to distribute to all the amputees on our way to the office in Freetown. I used to do it myself until I knew most of them and decided to sit in the back and read my old Sony e-book reader contents instead (which I sadly forgot at a Toronto airport during a long flight home to Ottawa one day). His remark was “You’re different from other rich people” – which led to us exchanging facts on home ownership, family, health, capacity to survive if unemployed and so on. In the end, he realized that he was far richer than I ever was, a single, childless, Lebanese-born Canadian who had climbed the corporate ladder to become a national manager of Professional Services for a large Canadian datacentre company. He realized he would need to work ten lifetimes before he could pay off my mortgage alone, not to mention insurance costs, bank interests and tax obligations. “Civilized slavery” was what he called my life in Canada.

I stumbled on a project called LinkPower during my stay in Vietnam and have been drawn to its beauty in simplicity. The founder has been building an ecosystem that balances the needs and interests of all citizens in any given community, both on a local and global scale. It could be a great start for immediate and impactful change if her platform is embraced and leveraged by communities everywhere. I had imagined an alternative approach to value exchange, currently described in the blueprint. What do you envision? How would we design a universally inclusive value exchange system from the ground up, if earth just popped into existence today and we were given free reign over how we run it?