Speaking of the financial system that he helped create, Keynes said,
It is not intelligent, it is not beautiful, it is not just, it is not virtuous – and it doesn’t deliver the goods. In short, we dislike it, and we are beginning to despise it. But when we wonder what to put in its place, we are extremely perplexed.
John Maynard Keynes (via Blair Fix) ∇
I just saw the quote above in one of Blair Fix’s papers entitled Redistributing Income Through Hierarchy,
The fact that Keynes admits to being extremely perplexed. shows how difficult it is to see past what goes by capitalism.
Life Nourishing
Hierarchies are perhaps the dominant feature of our working lives. Yet paradoxically, they rarely enter into mainstream theories of income distribution.
The Fiat system is based on competition and domination and capital happens to be a very efficient tool of getting power over anything and everything (i.e., domination).
The Radical alternative, on the other hand, is based on contributions, instead of capital. This, we believe, will produce more of a life nourishing system.
The Forever Obstacle
The obstacle has been who decides what is a contribution? We are so used to the Fiat hierarchical model that we immediately think of rules or benevolent judges. But judges don’t stay benevolent forever and rules become sacred and unchangeable and always sprout a clerical bureaucracy around them.
No wonder we are extremely perplexed.
Our non-Fiat Alternative
Radical-based alternatives makes sure that ownership is distributed to all co-owners based on their contributions, not the capital they invested. And not based on the “human capital” or any other nonsense. It is certainly not an equality system, where everybody gets the same no matter what.
For Sam, a co-owner, her contributions are determined by all the other co-owners who recognize it. The same for Joe, another co-owner. In fact, the same for all co-owners: other co-owners determine what the contributions of each co-owner is. No rules or benevolent judges needed. That is decentralized co-ownership.
Every co-owner figures out what a contribution is by the feelings it brings up, from enthusiasm to apathy. If they think they've seen a contribution, then they recognize it. It could be somebody who reorganized the warehouse, or computer code check-in which other co-owners perceive as valuable. Or it could be somebody’s smile that makes my day. Whatever a co-owner recognizes as a contribution, is a contribution.
At this point, you should be thinking, wow, that is chaos!
Chaos!
If you are thinking that this would result in chaos, that is Fiat thinking. I am not accusing you of anything that I haven’t done and, by the way, continue to do. It is what we have learned to fear: if there are no rules, there is chaos.
I now invite you to think about rules,
- Rules are bent and broken all the time.
- You would have to remember all the rules before you can recognize something as a contribution, so you can defend your decisions.
- You have to interpret the rules to make sure you are within their bounds.
- Some people are very good at bending the rules and getting away with it. They are like Rules Lawyers.
“Rules” add legalistic rigidity and add absolutely no value. They are a form of force and have no place in the Radical model
RADs
At this point, we have to explain RADs,
- Eveny co-owner gets one RAD per day, to give not to keep.
- Recognized Contributions are converted to RADs by the RADs! Mobile App.
- Things like money are factored through RADs. If you have twice as many RADs as me, you will get twice as much money as me.
- Everything is transparent, so everything is out in the open to everybody. If I give RADs to co-owner Mike everybody can see that. And ask about it, if they wish.
- You, and everybody else in a Radical company, are co-owners.
More Questions
OK, so not quite chaos, but it is open to cheating, right?
Well no. Since there are no rules, you can’t cheat.
Doesn’t this mean that people are not protected and can have money taken out of their pocket?
Maybe. If somebody cheats once, some amount of RADs will go to the cheating co-owner. But, remember that everything is transparent, and you can ask them about an iffy transaction. If the cheating continues, you and your fellow co-owners would stop giving them RADs.
But, what if people in cahoots give all their RADs to each other?
Yes, that could happen. But since everything is transparent, somebody is bound to notice and question it.
What if co-owners give out RADs for silly reasons?
One option is to talk to the “silly” co-owner, but not as an offender. You are really curious and you want to learn why he did this. By asking, you can learn that the “silly” co-owner has a really good reason for such giving. Alternatively, the giving co-owner might end up agreeing with you that the giving was on the “silly.” side
When questions come up, if something sounds counter-intuitive, ask, listen, be curious. And do it out of love, not as an indictment. Speaking from my own experience, this is really hard to do at first, but eventually you learn and it becomes a new, healthier habit.
Final Notes
Please, note,
- This is not a Fiat hierarchy and, therefore, there is no boss giving out goodies to his favorite people.
- People will get more or less RADs according to contributions that their peers recognize. If co-owners don’t contribute, they don’t get RADs, but if they contribute and other co-owners recognize those contributions, they do.
- There is nobody around who can give themselves a raise. The number of RADs one gets depends on what other co-owners recognize as contributions.
- If people are not recognizing your contributions, either 1) they see them, but don’t consider them valuable or 2) they don’t know the value of what you are doing and you need to explain it to them.
This is one alternative to the Fiat model and it leaves nothing to be extremely perplexed about.
Once you see the Fiat system and the harm that it causes to all of us, your horizons will open up and you will be able to imagine even more alternatives to it.
ENDNOTES
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John Maynard Keynes. National self-sufficiency. Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, 22(86), 177–193. 1933.
