“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
— R. Buckminster Fuller
Life is designed to thrive on planet earth. Why are human’s convinced that they must compete with each other to survive? In modern society, one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. Life is more abundant than it has ever been, yet people still compete with one another for resources. I propose that a prime reason for this competition is not scarcity, but a delusion of scarcity, largely due to the use of scarce moneys. So, the question remains, what is money? Why do we use scarce moneys? Are there alternatives?
Many traditional cultures did not use money at all. People would help their neighbors and when time came for the need, it was expected that their neighbors would help them. People thrive when they collaborate for we are naturally interdependent with each other and nature. According to anthropologist, David Graeber, money was most likely, a natural progression from friendly IOU’s to more formal IOU’s. IOU’s can be issued when needed, are abundant and valuable, backed by real goods and services. It works well as money and encourages collaboration. The issue comes when the IOU’s are issued by unknown or untrusted parties.
Traditionally, there have been few ways to break through these issues of non-trust. People use rare metals like silver and gold or third party IOU’s, usually, with interest added, like the US Dollar. These methods work, but there is an unfortunate by-product of scarcity in transaction. This scarcity causes both of these types of money to be more valuable, but also means people must compete over this money which there is not enough of, even though the resources they are using the money for, are often quite abundant. Although competition is seen in the natural world, beyond humans, I would say that this trait is not necessary for humans, especially in places where life thrives, naturally.
Many communities around the world have implemented their own centrally issued IOU’s, with no interest, such as timebanks or dollar valued, local exchange trading systems (LETS). This is very useful and encourages collaboration, but still has issues of high administration costs, location dependency and centralized control of supply. Also, central “trusted” parties have, often, shown themselves to be, in fact, untrusted or negligent.
We are creating a new system that may solve these issues. With social networking, comes a new option for how we exchange IOU’s. By creating a network of people who trust each other, we create pathways to people we don’t yet know, making a “Web of Trust.” We then have chains of connections that individually issued IOU’s can be routed through. This makes the need for a central third party issuer obsolete. Individuals and businesses can issue their own IOU’s, when needed, in any value measurement unit they choose, whether it be Hours, US Dollars or Coconuts.
Another advantage of having a web of trust is that we now have a network in which we can feel more comfortable collaborating with. We are creating a space for this, in which everyone’s IOU balance and ledger is transparent. This is a sharing space for people to collaborate by posting what they have to offer, request, teach and learn with privacy options so you can feel secure knowing that you are collaborating with the people you trust.
I look forward to your questions and comments.