Transitioning to ORES.
Why are people so attached to one ‘brand’ of economic governance over another? Comfortable familiarity, uneasy but familiar truce? Or… a systematic, top-down, propaganda-perpetuated, debt-indentured consumerism.
Before we discuss how to meet the essential needs of every person on the planet, or the Open Resource System (ORES) of production, distribution, and real-time self-governance, let’s discuss what has already been tried.
Let’s start with a simplified breakdown of the three most commonly practised forms of value exchange and/or systems of governance.
Capitalism – an exploitative and amoral (classical sense) incentives based production machine that funnels money from the many to the few. This has been demonstrated. It is supposed that Capitalism and the pursuit of financial enrichment drives the unparalleled innovation and production capacity which has characterized the 20th century. Left at that, Capitalism would seem the natural choice for value exchange system. Unfortunately, only the rich, brainwashed, or stupid have the luxury of ignoring the hastening slide into ecological, financial and moral collapse.
Socialism – tries to moderate the ill effects of Capitalism while balancing the individual as separate from the state. It is a precarious balancing act that tries to serve the disparate primary drivers of incentivized production via business vs group equality overall. But here we have the emergence of a “human needs” over “business needs” legislated morality. Although it should be noted that constraints on over-extending of resources are not implicit. Think of socialism as Capitalism-lite. Same animal, different bite.
Communism – shifts the weight of individual rights to individual obligation as determined by the group. All endeavours connected to production are meant to be incentivized by its benefit to the group. Equality is the stated goal, but of course without the technological means to collate and safeguard true consent, hierarchy eventually makes some more equal than others. Inevitably (and not too dissimilar from the other two models), cooperation by force becomes necessary.
Corruption of the founding ideals in all three models becomes inevitable, and the few quickly achieve power over the group by “gaming the system
”. Moreover, each system of production, value exchange, and governance represents an existential threat to the other. This means there is an automatic need to subvert or convert the other. They cannot comfortably coexist.
The equation looks like this:
Capitalism = profit first
Socialism = people first
Communism = group first
What do they all have in common? However, societies begin, the power to govern the society ends up in the hands of those who seek power. This means there must always be a part of society who is disenfranchised. Who’s needs are not met. Individual needs are quashed in favour of the many, and the many are thwarted by the ambitions of a few. You can find historical examples of this over the last 5000 years. Only a tiny fraction of human history to be sure, but sufficient in our current context to make the point. If the individuals in society had a direct hand in their own governance, unhindered by corporate, government or authoritarian interests, the resources our collective creativity and labour have created would be available to everyone. No more poverty, no more elites.
So where does this leave us?
Even with 7+ billion people to sustain, the issue is not productive capacity, it is the incentivization of resource hoarding, waste, upward distribution, and subsidized inefficiency. These flaws can be found to a greater or lesser degree in all 3 models.
So how do we change this without destroying all we have built? How do we begin the transition to a new system?
Let’s begin by defining the Law of Abundance. A counter-intuitive trend toward the multiplication of resources the more evenly they are distributed between members of a given society. Simply put: As our basic needs are met, the manifold capacity to meet other needs increases.
So in practical terms, an Open Resource System would begin like this:
1) Abolish Advertising. Want should be distinguishable from need. The internet allows all to be informed of their choices.
2) Outlaw planned obsolescence. All design and manufacture must be built to last, be upgradeable, and only when completely outmoded, to be recycled.
3) All technology is open source. Crowdsourcing is the default. Projects are created, wiki’d and tracked on the blockchain.
4) Ownership is inclusive, not exclusive. If you create it, you guide its development but must include all qualified contributors. Results are public commons. Recognition of individual or group contributions is maintained by distributed ledger.
5) All essential consumables must be universally available. No person without comfortably adequate food, water or clothing. Sourced locally unless scarce.
6) Luxury or intermittent use items are public domain. Distributed by blockchain verified software.
7) Education or aptitude determines opportunity but not exclusivity. Education is available to all. Anyone can start a project.
8) Automation of all dangerous or repetitive and labour-intensive jobs. Human labour is too precious to squander.
9) All land is public domain unless dangerous. Conservation is the primary driver. Resources meter demand not the other way around.
10) Choose or be chosen. Recognizing that career focus changes over time. Your contribution can be your choice, or by an app based on qualifications, experience, proximity or preference.
11) Real-time Self-governance. An app which tracks, summarizes and presents “votable” items. The votes would be incorporated in real time into decision-making processes on a local, regional, and national or international level. Low-level AI such as the GPT-3 could be employed to manage the collating and summation of the contents of legislation, bylaws etc.
