Resource Based Economics


 
 
   In my life, resource based economic sharing has evolved clumsily, but
has progressed to a place of useful perspective, at least for me. The way I
define the idea is as an opposite of trade based economic sharing. It
refers to the kind of economics that traditional style families are often
inclined to engage with each other, wherein who owns or originated an item
is important only for honoring their feelings about it, and little or no
conventional trade negotiation happens between family members.
   My impression about trade negotiation is that it is a highly effective
safety device for minimizing hurt feelings about the symbols and products
of personal initiative that end up open to shared access. In America nearly
all families blow apart, I think due to unbearable hurt feelings from
attempts at resource based economic unity. I view the matter as very
difficult to be successful at without a high degree of conscious
observation between the people sharing without trade.
   Unfortunately there exists somehow a widespread tradition of encouraging
gross disrespectful avarice and unaccountable use of equipment on the part
of children in traditional families. Many of my associates look back fondly
at a childhood without an expectation of emotional accountability about
economic matters in a context without any reference to common trading. Thus
to obtain a trade free sharing environment I am forced to maintain the
appearance of commercial definitiveness without any actual negotiation, to
prevent these people from falling into their well established habit of
brutal abuse of resource based vulnerability.
   This is the economic form that my life has evolved into. I keep a fairly
explicit, and generally written, accounting and ownership labeling on all
my shared economic apparatus, that can be pulled out at any moment for
emotional self defense. Whenever someone gets heartless in their relation to
my economic initiative, I temporarily redefine our sharing as trade based
(though lacking any active proposal). I view the ideal of a Star Trek or
Cuban-like context of stable resource based sharing as a bad idea that
either oppresses the ignorant majority of people or forces them out.
   Thus in my view, the big challenge of the Zeitgeist Movement is in the
day to day human relations between members, not in the establishment of
resource control and access away from the trade economy. I think that what
is critically lacking is personally engaged social technology.  Or said
differently, I can live and develop economically within a resourced based
format (or bubble) if I can somehow avoid being a predatory object of
anyone else that I'm personal with, avoid falling into being predatory
towards anyone else, and somehow employ my personal resources in a manner
that is cute and delightful to be around.
   I have been successful in the past with obtaining welcome within a
resource based format through being a voluntary slave, but doing so
encouraged a destructive avarice between the others involved, eventually
shattering general rapport. Likewise, my being intimidating or charismatic
has shown short term promise the same way, but promoted emotional chaos by
encouraging unaccountable behavior between the others.
   I have only seen hope of sustainable resource based sharing with myself
through dodging predatory relating and maintaining a harmless cute
appearance. These two factors are also what I settled on as fundamental to
a successful and worthwhile feminine identity, during a three year period
when I focused on that. The other women that I was studying and copying did
not agree with me, viewing that outlook as cowardly and infantile, but they
liked including me, and they sustained that presentation of themselves. The
spontaneous love feelings that result seem as basic to me as breathing, in
any kind of social networking, whether economic or not, but the other women
were fine with letting the love intensity get minimal, though never quite
gone.
   I've found that men appreciate more intense love feelings and cute
associates. But even more so than women, they abhor being identified as
harmless and cute, so they only participate in being cute to the degree
that they can be tricked into it, like Mr. Spock on the earlier Star Trek.
   Significantly, the later Star Trek like television shows incorporated
the cute factor less and less, and evolved the use of war choreography to
maintain social cohesion among the resource based crews. Early Celtic
societies and medieval Italians apparently did likewise, and modern group
sports depend on this, at the cost of fizzling inspiration for most of the
kind of technical development that Jacque Fresco has proposed.
   The building expansion I'm currently engaged in on my own gets derailed
emotionally for weeks at a time by casual discussion eulogizing military
preparedness or predatory sportsmanship. The consistant honoring of creative
and constructive initiative, whether inside or outside of a resource based
sharing, appears to me essential to inspiring work without trade
arrangements, as well as for maximizing resource value. Jacque Fresco's
casual references to massive destruction of both existing structures and
redesigned new ones suggests a basis for his complete absense of communal
associates. I think a successful resource based society would have to revere
every blade of grass and every paper airplane.
   Thus the definition of waste or garbage is vital to the discussion.
Stuff that has any identifiable person's initiative represented in it or
inspires anyone's reverence at all has to be disposed of slowly if at all.
Better to propose a deliberate new use for it as raw material than to trash
part of someone's emotional vitality. I observe trade sharing getting
people to be fast and loose with destroying stuff that has lost trade
value, with a result that many are inspired to create large areas in which
all other people are forbidden to enter, where personal sentimentality can
be safer. To encourage labeling of someone's initiative product as trash
due to it's lack of technical value seems sure to drive people apart into
armed camps.
   Garbage actually has shown marvelous value in my life as inspiration for
ideas I wouldn't have otherwise come up with, and for getting a result with
less cost and effort. Thus the revering of junk looks sane to me, and I
encourage the deliberate cataloging and compact out of view storage of
anything emotionally significant for any reason, preferably with the names
and stories preserved somehow.
   Recognition of ownership in all it's forms, is thus essential in my view
to being able to share for real without trade. If someone brings home some
ground score fruit and cleans it up, I'd say it's no longer free and no
longer in the shared domain, regardless of the political views of the
person with the fruit. An offering of the fruit to those who can access it
creates a differential advantage compared to those who can't reach it, and
creates a technical debt to the person who brought it that in my experience
cannot be erased by denial. Just because solitary ambition and stingyness
are self destructive does not realistically imply that theft is harmless or
that a gift is not similiar emotionally to a sale in trade for illusory
paper money.
   Collectively established wealth appears in my life to have the same
properties. A group of people will demonstrate the same kind of emotional
vulnerability that an individual would, even if the individuals in the
group do not independently react that way about the same material. Thus the
honoring of group ownership looks just as important as ownership evoked by
individual initiative.
   In my experience, ownership is thus forced by events, whether or not the
people involved embrace it. The only control a person has on their personal
acquisition, in the real sense of consequences, is how they direct their
dreaming up of initiative. If someone dreams of shared initiative then they
will end up with shared ownership, if they dream of shared meditation then
they will end up with shared poverty.
   Poverty has been by far the lesser evil in my life. My prolific
initiative has produced enormous wealth that evokes all sorts of hysteria
and senseless beligerence that never happened when I was living dirt poor
and generally out of doors. I created a more conventional household to
share and am still not certain of it being the best direction for my
ultimate peace and sanity, given it's huge cash value.
   No-one I have ever met shows an overt visible inclination towards
resource based sharing, in the older Star Trek sense. I have met only
thieves and capitalists. Public discussions I've been in always have that
as a premise, and I guess rightly so, that everyone in the local community
can be lableled one of those two ways in any given context. While it seems
mostly true, it seems also like a huge mistake to go along with defining
the future with that as something to preserve and something honorable and
sane. I would rather define both as unfortunate challenges that result from
confusion about human sharing and the nature of contentment, something to
relate to like the flu rather than take sides, as if one kind of disease is
honorable and one is evil.
   I think the trade economy has to be refined and preserved as a failsafe,
not as a lifestyle but as a device like antihistamine, to be used solely
for permitting restful sleep on a very bad night. I define the goal as a
reduction and minimization of literal cash flow and of defined territory,
not to be more moral but just to have a nicer life.
   As I would say it, what this world needs is more spare time and less to
worry about. To that end, the idea is to micromanage ones own life to
minimize cash overhead through cheaper materials, more crowded use of
space, substitution of trash or windfall for commodities whenever possible,
insulation instead of space heating, slower travel and more study of the
world on the route, and adaptation to use of amateur products and services
and things no longer in demand.
   Setting up cashless sharing on the personal scale is actually quite
common among my associates but too often crashes emotionally from being
presumed easy. The complexity is so invisible. All that needs to change
about that is the introduction of a warning to the casual participants to
treat it like the high wire act that it is, not to fret about but to stay
focused on in a practical sense, to notice and ask about the feelings being
created and take them into account.
   Most sharing that I observe around me is not trade related but it seems
to be mostly ignored. For example, most households and individuals have
some kind of overt display presented to the public which represents their
spirit and which they offer as entertainment, not to mock but to feel with.
Some have special plants or furniture on display, some have signs or
significant equipment, some have pets or welcomed indigents, and some
display the items they no longer want as an offer for salvage. Though there
is almost always an unstated no trespassing declaration, the view is free
and open, and nearly everyone welcomes a knock on the door to ask about the
story that goes with some particular item.
   Nearly everyone is an authority on some topic that they like to show off
with people who are nice about it. I have found it quite worthwhile to
encourage banter about that kind of thing, with care not to introduce any
avarice, or push someone to share something that they have inadequate
emotional defense of.
   My impression about social mechanics is that the kind of huge beehive
like sharing described by Jacque Fresco is an end result of sharing groups
getting larger and larger, and more skilled at emotional harmlessness. As
he himself suggests, the technical challenge is the more straight-forward
reachable aspect, given the condition of current material offerings. 10,000
people getting along that well is far more miraculous and must inevitably
begin with a few getting along that well with a smaller stakehold.
   Thus the trade economy will never disappear by force or shaming of
people. It must atrophy. It's a fad with a virulant life of it's own that
cannot be legislated. It can only be upstaged with something more
worthwhile. It looks to me that for now the general loneliness of everybody
is the fuel behind the fad of trading and solitary acquisition. It's a safe
form of human contact. That has to be encouraged as a form of peaceful
friendliness and practice at economic sharing in an accountable way,
suggesting hope for the more tricky sharing without trade. I think of
StarFleet as a minority of earth humans that can get along unusually well
in the face of astonishing technical opportunities.
   
   
   
   
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