In a world dominated by lies and deception, absolute sincerity is a revolutionary weapon.
The construction and development of a project as ambitious as Fair.coop is not simple. This is something that had never been done before, at least globally and, therefore, each step involves exploring completely new areas in a hostile territory. It is essential the objective assessment of all the details moment by moment, the appreciation of all the perceptions that make up what we call "collective intelligence", the acceptance of errors and an unusual maneuverability. It's possible? Of course!
THE CHALLENGES
There are a number of issues that should always be addressed without trying to disguise or hide them. The value of a community depends on the sincerity with which it can face each challenge. It is the basis of trust and social health.
More than 100 or 150 people are impossible to work together. It is a proven fact, unless they remain united by fears, indisputable hierarchical structures, identification with ideas or symbols as well as artificially constructed beliefs. Starting from that critical number of people, the "collective intelligence" concept could come into play, and this invariably implies the need to accept ideas different from ours and travel along consensuated paths. Paths that will not always be what we would have chosen individually. The advantage, overcoming this challenge, is that the total functional intelligence will be noticeably more powerful than the sum of the individual intelligences.
Ideas are always imaginative constructions but never objective realities. Reality is the earth, a forest, plants, animals, people or the air we breathe. Myths built with imagination are gods, states, currencies, laws and all cultural ideas in general that are not the simple approach of cultivating a field or building some kind of tool or artifact.
FairCoin is a myth, as much as any other currency or banking system. None of this has an objective entity of its own. It exists or influences our becoming through life insofar as we believe in those myths. Exactly like the gods when they were part of our existential beliefs.
If we are clear, we can continue building an imaginary building of ideas around other ideas supporting the non-biological evolution of humanity. Exactly as capitalism has been built around us without even realizing it until it becomes something so infiltrated in our lives that it is almost impossible to question its inevitability. In the case of FairCoop some people intend to build something around other myths. Life, in essence, with all its lack of transcendent meaning, basically consists of a series of physiological needs and a kind of game in which the most interesting thing is to obtain spaces of freedom and something similar to what we call happiness. If we are honest, this would be fully satisfied with a bit of land to grow our food, nice social relationships and the right amount of freedom and free time to enjoy the game. From there, all that would remain, would be to achieve similar goals for the whole world based on the constructed unreality in which we find ourselves immersed in the current moment.
FAIRCOOP, SOME CASE STUDIES
FairCoop proposes a revolutionary idea that consists of building an economy at the service of the common good as opposed to the dominant capitalist economy in which a privileged elite appropriates the resources of the land, the means of production and keeps the rest as a work force controlled at the service of their own interests.
To achieve its ends, FairCoop makes use of a tool that is typical of the capitalist system: a currency, the FairCoin. This is not a problem in itself. As a tool, a coin is comparable to a chainsaw that can be used both to cut wood and to cut up a person. Well used, a coin can be a convenient tool for socioeconomic relations. That is the idea, although not without complexities.
FairCoin is a more or less decentralized currency, outside the control of capitalist estates and this is good for most people. But currency, in itself, is an imagined and free construction; anyone can use it as they wish. The idea is to hack the capitalist system and obtain resources from that same system to build something different.
FairCoop was raised from the beginning to use that currency in its own ecosystem and also let part of it be bought and sold in speculative markets. If FairCoop tried to prevent that, it would end up looking like a controlling State. The value of the currency lies in the trust that the community gives it. Neither more nor less than as with any other currency.
Within the FairCoop community itself, the value of that currency is decided in relation to others such as the Euro, whose set of faithful believers is notoriously greater. Currently it has been agreed that 1 FairCoin is equal to 1.2 Euros. By letting people outside of FairCoop buy and sell it freely for the value that those speculative markets decide allows FairCoop to also participate in that game when it suits to its own goals. This way FairCoop can get Euros by selling when necessary part of its FairCoin that, with the time and growth of the community, should increase its value. In this way Faircoop can finance its developments in those parts where it is not possible to do it using FairCoin. It is David against Goliath and the sling is this trick that allows to extract resources from the capitalist system.
Naturally, this works very well when the speculative markets give a value to FairCoin close to the one decided by the community. In the context of a generalized collapse of the value of the alternative electronic currencies in those markets the trick fails; when in those markets the FairCoin has a value far below that the value agreed by the community for its own exchanges. The problem gets worse if the situation gets longer (as is the case) if, in addition, we have built the FairCoop idea around these premises:
That the value of FairCoin in the community never goes down once it has been established.
The commitment to change to Euros the Fair obtained by commercial transactions of those producers, businesses or people who accept them, in case they need them.
People or groups that perform paid work for the FairCoop community and that charge in Fair also have the right to change them to Euros.
In critical situations, such as those we live in, the basic hack and, unfortunately (until now) almost unique¹ is totally inefficient to maintain this construction. This situation could totally and quickly destroy FairCoop if we were not able to rectify the course in time.
The solution can only be drastic but that is precisely what the (collective) intelligence must deal with: to maneuver in time. At the moment it seems that point 1 is immovable. Therefore, in addition to other measures that should be developed immediately, it only remains to act on 2 and 3.
Regarding the 2, it seems essential to change the approach so that those who accept Fair only do so to the extent that they can use or save them. This will temporarily leave some of them out of the game, but it is not a serious consequence. It will promote a healthy growth although, surely, slower. Or not; because by clearly understanding the current reality more people can join by being aware of their limits.
As for the 3, it would be a question of not pretending, at the moment, to solve all the problems of the world at the same time. People who work at FairCoop in exchange for a remuneration must accept that such salary is in FairCoin and, like the producers, merchants and people who offer services in Fair, be fully aware that their contribution to the community must be balanced with their ability to use or save those Fair. Thinking of this ecosystem as a machinery to obtain Euros is a very serious error that, in addition, distances us from the essential objective of building an ecosystem outside the capitalist orbit. If we argue that it is a transitional model, we should easily accept that it should be in both directions: obtain the Euros that are strictly necessary as inevitable as well as assume that the idea is to use FairCoin. And in a transition, the latter requires certain sacrifices and establishing measures rather than thinking that we have reached the point of solving all our personal matters.
THERE ARE OTHER PRACTICAL TOOLS
We have mutual social and credit currencies that work very well in the most local or close economic relations. We must also think about them, as revolutionary tools that they are. Defending the exclusive use of FairCoin and focusing all our efforts on it makes it a flag of extremist, if not fanatical, thoughts. FairCoop must promote the use of social currencies as well as exchanges in which there is no currency as well as FairCoin itself. Education in this sense will ostensibly facilitate the transition towards a healthy economic model.
In Komun as well as in some FairCoop Local Nodes, we have wanted to facilitate circular routes in which surpluses from one region can be taken to others where they are needed and thus cover needs. Locally, these products can be exchanged by others, by social currency, Euros or FairCoin according to what is most convenient at each moment. This is a key piece to contribute to generating efficient circular economies connected to each other.
THE TRUST
I consider it is important to finish these notes with this matter. The trust between people does not consist in evaluating if other people think or not like us or if the intentions that move the actions of others are honest, dishonest or have a lack of "common" sense. Trust in the ecosystem should not depend on personal sympathies or antipathies. Trust must be established, in a system built between ALL, so that it is practically irrelevant if a person acts or thinks dishonestly since the ecosystem itself must be able to assume and regulate those possible personal deficiencies. And this requires, inevitably, a huge dose of collective sincerity to begin with.
THEN SHOULD WE BE OPTIMISTS?
I sincerely think so. I think that, although we have never done it before and we have made mistakes, we can do it
Notes
¹ FairCoop has other means to obtain liquidity in Euros, some functional like Freedomcoop and others quite untapped, such as FairMarket. Without doubt, there could be many more if we propose to think in terms of efficiency, something that in some sectors is considered capitalist which is surprising when we think that we are anti-capitalist using capitalist tools to achieve our goals. Efficiency is to make the most of available resources without losing the focus of where we want to go.
This article was originally published in Spanish: ¿Por qué soy optimista respecto al futuro de FairCoop y FairCoin?