Blessin's Paul,

Thanks for putting that down into a pattern of bits for rapid redundant assimilation into the Gaian information network. My wetware runs a similar outlook and I look forward to the days when complementary currencies such as the Lime become more widespread. We had a nice discussion on "Worldchanging... Complementary Currencies" on the mailing list originally for the World Summit on Free Information Infrastructures (WSFII) but soon it digressed into a myriad interesting discussions. Here's a link for anyone interested in further reading of views on p2p and currencies:

http://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/wsfii-discuss/2005-October/000304.html

peace, metta,
core

I'd still rather see an egalitarion society, where capital is not needed. There is something wrong with capitalist, as if they could not see that the world is not made of money.
I believe, that one day money will be something seen in the museum and people will wonder why did their ancestors waste so much time and energy in pursuit of something as useless as money was.

T, there is no need for money?

What about facilitating exchange of goods and services? How would a division of labor come about in a money-less society?

There is no future for our species as long as we continue to be obsessed by irrelevancies.

Look around you, its too expensive for the richest and fastest growing nations to address pollution, there isnt enough profit to be gained from millions of Africans, so they die and starve because of their own crap governments.

What is money? It used to be a measure of an objects value, now it is an abstract drug manipulated and chased by our species.

Like the ant in the hive blindly following the scent of other ants.

That is us, this is money. How can you be empathic or sympathetic when your driving philosophy is the acumulation of capital?

There is no future for our species as long as we continue to be obsessed by irrelevancies.

Event Horizon -

I'm not obsessed with accumulating capital. Have you been reading my posts over the last week? You will clearly see that is not my goal. So I believe you are missing my point. It's ultimately not about capital, but rather what happens after capital becomes liberated. Liberating capital is not about accumulating it, rather it is about liberating it. This is a very important distinction to make. When capital is liberating it helps everyone. When it is accumulated it just helps yourself. Liberated capital, means a liberated economy. Liberated capital, which by the way is its destiny, means that poverty gets wiped out. The people who have the most to gain from the liberation of capital is the third world. Currently they are being fucked via the IMF and World Bank through economic blackmail. The very notion of a World Bank and IMF is all about CONTROL of Capital. Liberated capital abhors controls. The people who have the most to loose from the liberation of capital, are those who have made it their priority to control it. Those who control it are not really that interested in wealth as much as they are interested in power. The liberation of capital will make them richer along with everyone else, but they will loose their power. It's loosing power that has got them so scared. Besides, liberated capital means they are no longer top dog. They just become another player. The more the buy into the gift economy the more they will prosper. The more they try to control capital, the more the accelerating gift economy will route around them - making them ineffectual and irrelevant. I agree with you, if they can't let go of their addiction, or what you call 'irrelevancies', then they will wither away as old dinoasaurs of a bygone crony capitalist era.

Paul-

You are on a role lately,

I really like the future your illustrating, but can you give me a specific example of capital being liberated? I understand you in the abstract, but I want to connect it to the now, and advance it.

ha! this is great. very nice read paul.

along w/ the internet i see the biggest future enabler being the nanoreplicator(of course coupled with the internet as most circuits will be). this makes shipping kind of useless perhaps...and many other things. it will blow the gates open if we can free the tech and we will as you have previously stated whether by chance or work. look at how many movies and cds get leaked. poor example perhaps but it proves there is always a leak. always always always a leak. now we know there is the open source...but the leak becomes key.

-nick

In answer to those who want more specifics, please keep in mind I am not an engineer, and have no specific technical idea about how this will happen. It's not one technology anyway, it's all of them converging towards creating a radically decentralized and customized economy. But here are some more angles that might make it easier to understand.

Right now, this very moment there is more than enough wealth in real terms to house, clothe, feed, enable and support every man, women and child on the planet. The reason that is not the case is because of the capital is prevented from going where it wants to go. This is especially true in banana republics, which the US is trying to become, where capital ends up in the hands of its corrupt leaders. It is corruption and its compliment, greed, that is keeping the world in such misery. THE NETWORK CHANGES ALL OF THAT. It destroys the mechanisms in which greed and corruption can work. When you have massive decentralized, p2p technologies enabling everything that is meaningful in an economy become radically spread out, democratic and available, IT CHANGES EVERYTHING. Centralized governments become unsustainable, goliath corporations fail to compete, etc. Centralization IN ANY FORM, cannot compete with the massive and rapidly accelerating decentralized intelligence that is spreading over the planet at light speed. All the worlds wealth will become available to everyone, the economy will become frictionless, customized, and rapid responsive to economic conditions and needs all around the planet. Those who refuse to play by these new liberated rules do so at their own peril. Any attempts they make to keep the rest of the world in line with those old rules will also fail, simply because all it takes is one small, very small packet to play by the new rules, and the old goliaths loose. Witness p2p proliferation right now VS. intellectual property. IP is dead. All attempts to keep it alive are doomed. There is nothing anyone, you or I can do about it. It is the future. Personally, I'm perfectly happy with where its going. Maybe I'm delusional, but its looking increasingly bright from where I'm sitting. Thw world Bucky Fuller envisioned is coming true in more ways than even he could have possibly imagined.

http://isc.sans.org/top10.php

^-- bit torrent is #2

Wherever you have money changing hands, even if it is liberated, or somehow the power behind economies is less in the hans of the same few, you will still always have winners and losers, the mightilly succesful an the completely abused, you will always have people screwing each others LIVES over for more money.

A better, more fair system of economic distribution or 'liberation' might be the way forward in the near future, but discrimination, abuse and greed no matter how 'fair' or 'liberal' are things to be denied in our lives.

So the third world gets clean water in this new system, which by the way is a United Nations chartered Human Right, but what about second world nations who dont have the infrastructure to collect charges for public water supplies, such as India, so all water industry is private and the poor have no water?

What about the ultra explosive growth of China, 10 fossil fuel power plants per month are being built, and the USA 'wont even go there' in international talks?

And in 200 years or so where is the 'capital' going to come for all but the few most richest nations in the world to be able to afford to take part in the high tech energy shortages? Maybe the USA and a few other economic powerhouses might be able to forge ahead limiting the damage done by exhaustion of vast quantites of fossil fuels, but the rest of the world simply wont have the money, and will still further collapse. Free fusion reactors in India? They dont even get free water...

Since its invention as a concept some 10,000 or more years ago money has shown, and driven, the human race to be a bunch of hypocritical bullshit self serving liars.

Money is a matter of life and death for huge numbers of people. If it must exist, it should not be in the hands of the general public.

I would far rather this cancer removed from the face of humanity as soon as possible, and quite frankly im pretty shocked that on a website like this people are not straining their minds to come up with a money free alternative, even if it is only in theory only.

Money is the false Idol that religious sciptures warn us against.

Paul- yes, capital will be "liberated", but money will still have some value as long as there are any projects "bidding" for scarce(in the sense of "not (yet) available anywhere, any time, in any desired quantity")resources "Ordinary" stuff may be open-sourced to the point of being essentially free-but what about space elevators? starships? terraformed planets? time machines?
sliders? Jupiter brains? million-qubit computers?
Dyson spheres? With efficient networking, even these items might be bartered for- but they will still be traded for- and if they become ubiquitous, there will probably be newer things
that will be scarce, for a while.
I do not intend this to disagree with your basic thesis- that "liberated capital" will soon end absolute poverty and "everyday scarcity", but money and commerce are still likely to exist for
high-value stuff in particular, since by definition, new stuff, especially *big* new stuff, tends to be scarce at first.(However, as Kurzweil has noted, the interval between "early adopters" and cheap-to-free mass use is also shrinking.)

eventhorizon- you hardly seem to have read Paul's
article, no matter how much you may have looked at it. Where in it can one find the suggestion that poor people shouldn't have water, or that China should keep building fossil-fuel plants?
He's talking about new technologies that will provide clean water, clean energy and much else to everybody- with no one suffering for it.
Yes people can hurt each other with money- as they can with knives, guns, harsh words, lies, brutal truths, and innumerable other things. If people don't have money, they can just abuse each other in other ways.
And-"shouldn't be in the hands of the general public!?! WTF?! Perhaps we need a federal War on Money- with mandatory minimums, warrentless searches, a Money Czar, strip-searches at the borders to ensure that no one corrupts our pure communism with foreign currency, and, naturally, death to dealers in filthy lucre!(starting, no doubt, with all those cranky gold bugs...) Who, precisely, are the divinely annonted manderins whose souls can stand up to this innocuous-looking artifact of the Dark Side? What distiguishes them from "the general public"(other than power-lust and arrogance) Why shouldn't the rest of the general public exercise its unalienable right to throw these pompous autocrats out on their ear, and, in the words of a bunch of dreadfully reactionary crimethink addicts,"institute new Guards for their future security"?
200 years?? Hmmm... I don't know what the energy picture around here will look like then..but there will probably be lots of it around. Of course, I'll probably be too busy tripping with old and new friends somewhere beyond the bounds of the visible universe to notice.

Brian

As I see it, and I think I see the same trend in the article, we shouldn't 'get rid of money' or 'fight capitalism'. We should simply make it all irrelevant.
Money, ripping people off, producing trash, minimum wage jobs, child labor, all these things are a direct result of a scarcity economy, and impossible to eliminate within such.
However, once we get free (cost and pollution wise) energy, affordable nanoreplicators and such devices, we will make these things obsolete. *

Now, people are ripping each other off because they gain from it. We need to create an economy where there is no significant gain in screwing other people over. Then, this behavior will disappear.

*I realize that this may sound very futuristic and technology happy, but then again, isn't this the place for it?

New technologies will provide clean water and clean fuel to those people who can afford it. It doesnt matter how 'fair' the system is, people who cannot afford clean water nor clean energy will go without these fundamental requisits of life let alone modern society.

There are vast populations in the world living in appalling conditions with little or no opportunity to experiance anything else before their miserable lives end in short fashion. How all of a sudden these people are going to find sustained income that gaurentees corporate behemoths will sell them water rather than rich Western tourists I cannot begin to see.

These new technologies that you seem to pin your hopes on for the most part barely work in a lab with billion dollar financing. If they even exist.

I personally would like to know how commercial air flights are going to operate in a World lacking fossil fuels. Rocket fuel synthesised via energy produced by fusion plants?

I am not a fan of the impending future that is going to be available to about 5% of the human population, while the rest are left to deal with the mess left behind when neither natural resources nor technology nor even labour is something the top nations require from them.

Granted none of us will likely be alive in 200 years to witness this, but that has always been a rather poor excuse for having no soul imo.

Brian (aka bk_2112): Way to go, Kid-O! Brian & I go back 15+ years...I think what Paul and others (Esfandiary, Kurzweil, Moravec, John Smart, et al) are intimating is that we seem to be accelerating not only into ABUNDANCE (of almost anything/everything) FOR ALL, but that we are also exponentially accelerating toward entirely new states of being, both individually and socially (i.e., inter-individually). Esfandiary spoke of "mobilias", temporary dwellings, pleasure-domes, perhaps even semi-fixed, semi-permanent structures, dwellings, mansions, etc. through which people would "flow" (stay a while, then move on). Now, who would "own" these mobilias? Well, there'll probably be several variations: Collective-ownership like a condo-association is one that comes to mind. Ownership/maintenance by AI's (once they come online...) is another...nanofabricators, intelligent robots (including highly versatile "bush robots") etc. will be able to supply/construct/manufacture/provide **most** (if not virtually *ALL*) goods/services more or less for free (labor[exchange]-free, anyway).

But some foresee (attempted) monopolization of the nanotech, robotics, cybernated systems, etc. But I think what Paul (and, again, some others) are seeing is that there are **already** powerful social forces mitigating against this sort of continued domination to be viable/sustainable. Indeed, Paul, what you've said comparing would-be Corporate-Fascist Plutocrats to the old soviet "nomenclatura" class is right-on. This is, importantly btw, an essential part of what Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek were articulating in their "socialist calculation" dilemma. It really is. The more **ephemeralization** (thank you, Bucky, for that term...) of technology you have, in terms of how it handles mattergy, the *faster* things change, the more uncontrollable and non-dominateable it is and becomes, and the more important the **free flow** of ideas, labor (if/as needed) capital, etc. So trying to **impose** some sort of (so-called) "order" merely leads to those within this imposed-order sphere being (relatively)*less*-wealthy, *less*-(accurately)informed etc., and this is true as much, if not more, for the would-be tyrants themselves, would-be "elites" etc. than for the rest. The more they (the would-be Plutocratic tyrants) try to **impose** an order that sustains their monopolization/power, the more chaotic things become, the more people, ideas, innovation, etc., slip-away, the more ignorant/less informed they (the "power elites") become, etc. And the more anyone who **can** (which will be, increasingly, more-or-less anyone/everyone) will simply "work-around" the temporary would-be tyranical "clot"...

What we are seeing emerging is a new spontaneous order(s) that will be dynamic, changing, and yet progressive, in the sense of "getting ongoingly **better** and **better**". Sure, the power structures and the people who benefit from them, and thereby have an incentive to try to sustain them, will try to do so, but it will become a vainer and vainer, more infeasible and infeasible task...

Human nature (so-called) will co-evolve (already is...) with this oncoming abundance. And there will be a shift away from "keeping up with the Jones" and more minimalist (and perhaps not-so-minimalist) quest for ***esthetic*** pleasure and self-actualization.

But we'll still have tech and material goods, and transportation, and travel, and what-not, but it will take less interaction with other people's ***labor*** and more interaction with cybernated systems (nano-, robotic, etc.). As primates, we'll still have tendencies toward dominance-hierarchies, but the tech and abundance will strongly tend to dissipate the hell out of this tendency, since people will just "work-around" or "go-around" it.

The next 5-15 years may, in some resepects, be a bit rough, but if we make it through, then I think we CAN indeed achieve a "Robotopia" Leisure Society, and this should be able to be instantiated **WORLD-WIDE**. It's progressing in that direction, and doing so rather (exponentially) rapidly.

GAIL (aka EventHorizon)--I empathize with your despair, to some extent, because things are still pretty bad just about everywhere (even great minds still have to wage-slave and/or be on SSI or welfare, for example), but emerging tech is going to change this pretty radically & pretty soon/quickly. And it won't take 200 years---it should take no more than 20 yrs, **IF** even **that** long. But it will be another 10 or 15 years, though, and that's a window in which much plutocratic/fascist mischief can be tried by the turds comprising the (so-called) power- and wealth-elites. Which is why we have to beat the drums of liberalism, rule of law, etc., or THEY will try to impose/maintain some sort of feudalistic bullshit on the rest of us. The tech and trends that Paul is trying to describe, again, **mitigate strongly against this sort of thing succeeding**, but it could still be a bit nasty in the short-to-medium-run. So, again, we have to beat the drum of liberalism, individual autonomy, privacy, **sousveillance**, governmental/bureaucratic transparency/accountability and the **rule-of-law** as a stop-gap until Robotopia suddenly comes into being... (and even thereafter, these ideals will be important...)

GAIL, ***please*** check-out my other posts and the books & articles I've been recommending over the last few months (indeed, for quite a while, to one extent or another). There is abundant reason for hope & optimism. We can maintain liberal society, and not sink into hi-tech Orwellian feudalism, but we have to know what we're fighting for...

Paul, these recent series of posts have been very, VERY good. Very inspiring and hope-&-optimism-sustaining. It is such a tremendous plesure to see you posting again--and posting such evocative, inspiring, thought-provoking stuff. I look forward to your continued posts and to your comments (if any) on this particular post of mine...

Cheers to all...

"...capital is prevented from going where it wants to go..."

IOW, capital wants to be free?

That's what William Greene and the other individualist anarchists thought. Their solution? Free market banking, or "mutual banking." Allow private associations to form banking cooperatives and monetize any assets the membership agreed on, without any licensing or capitalization or other entry barriers, and compete with the capitalist banks. The competition would drive the price of secured loans down to the cost of administration.

Winners in the market are able to become super-rich only through the ability to receive compound returns on capital and land. And this is possible only because of the state's enforcement of special privileges for owners of capital and land, protecting them from competition and allowing them to charge a monopoly premium for access to the means of production. When the supply of land and capital are opened up to market competition, their price falls to the cost of supplying them, and labor's wage rises to equal its full product.

Kevin: Good comment. Your Ben Tucker site (I recommend everyone visit it!!) is very, very good! I see you, too, are a fan of RAW. In my judgment, one of the best avenues toward instantiating his RICH catallaxy is to institute some modified **Kelsonian** reforms. Also, as I'm sure you're aware, various Austrian-school free-market economists have advocated a similar (though slightly different) version(s) of "free-banking." I would commend to you and other readers and visitors at this site the works of Louis O. Kelso & his intellectual heir, Professor (of law) Robert Ashford of Syracuse U. Law School. Professor Ashford specializes in, among other things the law-&-economics of financial institutions.

To be sure, Benjamin Tucker (as well as his elder colleague/mentor, Lysander Spooner) definitely merits in-depth study & appreciation. Tucker's stuff is a gem...

Please do, however, check-out Kelso's *The Capitalist Manifesto* and let me know what you think about its basic approach. It seems promising as an instituional arrangement to systematically foster and bring-about ROBOTOPIA.

Best wishes to all...

Unrelated perhaps to this post, but what happened to the subsequent post about low power long range networks?

Six

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