How Should Humanity Steer the Future? -- Sideways! by Thomas Howard Ray

Tom,

An interesting analysis of the immediate real world issues we need to face. While we frequently disagree, I would like to offer up a point I'm trying to make in these discussions. If you have been following them, you might have seen some of my efforts, but I would like to state it as succinctly as possible;

In our capitalist economy, we treat money as a commodity, in fact one with by far the greatest overall value, given the amount of currencies, bonds, and all the other notational devices and derivatives being traded, not to mention actual commodities, like gold, whose value is largely a function of their use as a currency. Given the power of these markets, it is safe to say we have something of a tail wagging the dog situation.

What I would argue is that money is not a commodity, but a contract and if we understood it as such, it would seriously change the economic dynamic for the better. Originally what became money was specifically contracts, such as clay tablets used as receipts for stored grain in ancient Sumer, up to the gold certificates issued by the Rothschilds in 18th century Europe. They were essentially IOU's backed by a specific item. It then became convenient to trade these contracts around as though they were commodities in their own right. Then such things as futures, bonds, etc, which were backed by promises of future income, came into use. Not to mention all the innumerable devices of notational value since created.

From this commercial convenience arose the use of state currencies. Which were originally minted from precious metals and so presumably had intrinsic value, eventually became notational as well.

Now what backs the value of these notes is essentially the health, wealth and economic productivity of the state issuing them. Essentially they are a contract between the community and its members, that one can count on the overall goodwill of the community in making good on the worth of these notes. "Accepted as legal tender in all transactions."

Yet when we then consider them as commodities, they become personal property and so there is no moral imperative to consider their function and no logical reason to limit their acquisition. Since they possess effective value and manufacturing them is only limited by the insistence on validity of the promises being made, there is a very strong inclination to create as much as possible and ignore the backing. The result is that the entire economy and often much of society becomes focused on the creation and acquisition of these notes, often to the detriment of the actual society and economy on which they are based.

Now if people truly understood these notes really do belong to the agency that issues them, since they hold the copyright, are responsible for guaranteeing the value and can adjust that value at will, possibly then people will start to be far more careful how much they are willing so extract value from interpersonal relations and environmental resources, in order to exchange for these notes. Also, on a more fundamental level, if it is to be understood as a contract between a society and its members, there would naturally also be leeway built into the system in case of emergencies, etc, because this would seriously reduce the need to accumulate excess. On the other side of the bargain, it would mean those who do try to hoard them, or otherwise abuse the relationship, could have the value of their store penalized. This then would encourage people to store value as goodwill, strong personal relations and a healthy environment. It would also create a smaller and more stable monetary system that would be more adapted to the efficient circulation of value around the economy and rather than being the giant tumor that it currently is.

Now I realize in the current situation, this proposal is as far fetched as any here, but given the solution to the last debt crash was to issue trillions more in credit, ignore any improprieties and water down all regulation and enforcement, it is a virtual certainty there will be a much larger and even more systematic crisis, given the effectiveness of the prior solution is likely well watered down, so there likely will be attention given to other models and theories and with the extent to which society is networked, some of these proposals will undoubtfully go viral.

So this idea might well compliment your lateral economic models.

Regards,

John

Damn logouts.

Tom,

I found your paper refreshingly informative toward the end, but I had to wait until page four for some things I think needed stated to be right up front. It was a struggle getting through the first few pages, but if you had an opening paragraph starting something like this, it would have been an easier read. "Research shows there is promise in a system that preserves freedom within a system community and allows cooperation between them. The image of well-maintained fences with open gates, serves to illustrate this principle at work..."

But if the reader is patient to continue reading, there is a gem in the rough to be uncovered in this paper. You have made a brilliant observation, Tom; now if only you could highlight it better. My rating will reflect both my appreciation of your point and the mixed feelings about how it is presented.

Regards,

Jonathan

Tom,

FQXi asked how should humanity steer the future. Didn't you equate humanity too much with the national perspective of U.S.A.?

At least you left the position of those philosophers and physicists who denied causality and the distinction between past and future: Russell, Einstein, ...

Do you hope for reaching more than emotional resonance? I am still fed up with "scientific socialism".

Regards,

Eckard

Hi Tom,

I enjoyed reading your essay. I particularity like the analogies of the fences with open gates and the knife being as important as the cake. You have set out a well argued vision for USA recovery.

I wonder whether climate change and falling oil production in the future will severely affect world trade because of the rising costs and difficulties of transport and logistics.Outsourcing manufacturing and importation of food and goods from all around the world has been cheap. It isn't sustainable though, it is wasting resources. It may be that local production and consumption become once more the most cost cost effective choice and more sustainable too. Then it would be more difficult to get a cut of the wealth by planning and distribution of other countries' 'cakes'. What do you think?

Tom,

One of the main ways of sustaining the value of that excess capital is to have the government, ie. public, borrow it back and fund everything from wars to research with the over-production, then sell off any income producing asset, such as results of the research, to well connected private interests, so while it may not be 'the problem,' it is certainly a problem and one which is shortly going to trigger a crisis and crises are noted as opportune times for change.

I don't see much being withheld from anyone with even a slim idea for wealth creation, but I do see a lot of unsustainable wealth extraction being used to fund this financial production.

Regards,

John

Tom,

Very much so. So even though we frequently don't see eye to eye, sometimes that difference of perspective can lead to broader understanding in other subjects.

Regards,

John

Tom,

The American way of consumption did indeed conquer the hearts of many people worldwide and caused the collapse of Soviet Union. I am however not sure whether this temptation will still suffice as to get control over religious conflicts like in Syria, nationalism like between Russia and Ukraine, and the seemingly harmless unlimited growth of population.

When I was a boy, I read a booklet that told me the main center of power and culture was shifting from Greece to Rome, to Eastern Rome, from Spain to France, etc. Maybe, China could get leading in future if mankind will be unable to install an international secular power. I am sure having Nobel correctly understood in that question.

Regards,

Eckard

A theory of how to fix the world:

We don't intend to debate the liberal ideal here -

we believe in it. We think it's the only sane

ideal among all choices, because it doesn't

expect the individual or the society to do the

same things over and over again only to get the

same undesirable results; it expects the

individual to grow on her own terms. What we

intend, is to frame a scientific perspective that

allows both believers in democracy, and the

opposition, to coexist and prosper in the

inevitable transition to a democratic world. For

if this transition is not inevitable, extinction of

the species is all we can look forward to.

We are trying not to write a political tractate -

facts are as they are, and we offer to explore a

fact-based scientific, not political, solution.

Politics, nevertheless, can as easily pave the way

for science as for special interests that pay for

their privileges with expensive lobbying of

legislators.

We may see a particular structural model, then,

as a mode of communication by which individuals, and cultural/political organizations of

individuals, can freely contribute to the

common well and drink from it, without being drowned in some doctrine of forced behavior.9

The motivation for Lim, et al, derives from Bar- Yam's extensive research in complex systems,

culminating in the theory of multi-scale variety. This theory generalizes the principle that

lateral, rather than hierarchical, distribution of activity and information drives system

effectiveness: "In considering the requirements of multi-scale variety more generally, we can state

that for a system to be effective, it must be able to coordinate the right number of components to

serve each task, while allowing the independence of other sets of components to perform their

respective tasks without binding the actions of

one such set to another." 10

Underlying is a hidden assumption we wish to make obvious: human free will transcends cultural and

political boundaries; if the means to cooperate is available, the will follows.

The means to guarantee entitlements - food, clothing, shelter, education and mobility - is a

logistics problem.

We want to explore how high-tech logistics

management of many small and redundant

systems, linked in a robust global network,

makes it possible to guarantee equal global

sharing of resources without depriving

individuals of personal access and use of as

much property as they can acquire, in unequal

measure. The idea of ownership in this model

shifts from control of people to control of real

property in a distributed system:

Bar-Yam introduced multi-scale variety, the idea

that independent subsystems allowed to organize

around task coordination at different times on

different scales, makes the larger system

effective. One can summarize: locally efficient

use of resources assures global effectiveness in

the creative growth of resource availability -

with the caveat that local subsystems remain

independent, because otherwise the drain on

local resources will reduce subsystem

effectiveness and cause an undesirable positive

feedback loop by lack of sufficiently varied

resources to sustain required tasks.

A remarkable 2006 result of Dan Braha and

Yaneer Bar-Yam 17 demonstrated that in a selforganized

communication network, a

continuously shifting hub of distributed activity

causes the map to sometimes vary quickly and

radically on local scales over short time

intervals, even while the map itself shows little

global change aggregated over long time

intervals.

This abstract model would mirror complex

military movements and communications, if we

considered the map as a theater of operations thesize of the globe. That is, each communicator in

the network has at their workstation all the

necessary resources to deliver a message and

coordinate events, sometimes acting as the hub

of activity, sometimes as the beneficiary of

information and sometimes as provider of

information. Point is, the metastability of the

system over time suggests that a continually

shifting range of activity represented by

changing hub configurations is self limiting; as a

result, the global domain is largely protected

from the danger of positive feedback - i.e., a loss

of system control and potential widespread selfreinforcing

destruction.

Etc.

Tom,

I can't transfer enough parts in a single message. My message is: save us from saviors of the world. What we get is: Disruption; Sanity checks; Censorship; Blacklisting; Containment; Violence; etc.

James Putnam

The leader in my question was Yaneer Bar-Yam.

James Putnam