Thoughts for the Independent Money Alliance

Thanks for the reply, Matthew.

It’s the question of how to govern the Credit Commons itself that I was wondering about. I can imagine that it has never been a problem so far, but that’s a large part of the reason societies around the world got into the mess they’re in now: benevolent dictators establish procedures that work well as long as they themselves are at the helm – but then they pass on and the reins are taken over by others with a less developed sense of what’s right.

A core principle of my own philosophy is that power should be exercised as locally as possible, that we should delegate to higher levels only as much power as it is absolutely necessary for them to have, and only for as long as it is necessary for them to have it (that principle is reflected in the name of my website, Local Sovereignty, which is a draft manifesto for a proposed UK reform party). However, there are undoubtedly many decisions that do need to be taken centrally and, long term, the individuals who take those decisions need to be democratically accountable. That poses a host of problems but, fortunately, we are able to draw on what’s been learnt in the past and we can recognise certain principles that a system of governance needs to embody. It’s very much easier to build those principles into a new system from the start than it would be to integrate them into a fully functioning system which finds itself, some years down the line, threatened by a crisis of democratic legitimacy.

You think it’s not worth rushing ahead on governance questions until you’ve got more people onboard but I suspect there’s a circularity there. I’d have thought that getting people together to sail off into the unknown is bound to be harder than getting support to head towards a well-defined destination. Unless you can present people with a clear vision of where the project is heading, it’s not surprising that they’re reluctant to commit to it; most people considering a venture will be unconsciously aware of all kinds of problems that it might throw up and knowing that there are satisfactory plans for dealing with those problems can make them much readier to join in.

For me, your point that capital gains made by Faircoin's appreciation should rightfully be spent and not liquidated illustrates one of the reasons why so many well-intentioned projects fail. As you know, it’s one thing to knock together a bit of software that performs a particular function, it’s another thing entirely to make it robust enough to cope with every error and exception that it might possibly encounter. I would say that any exchange system, or indeed any socio-economic system, that relies on people behaving unselfishly is doomed to either failure or, at best, a tiny niche.

What it boils down to is: what are your intentions for the system you’re building? Are you just aiming to fill in the gaps in the existing capitalist money system or are you hoping to build something that might displace it? This sentence – "But we have little hope of building a better society or a better money to organise that society until we can organise ourselves to become more than the sum of our parts. " – suggests the latter and that’s what drew me to engage here.

A key argument in your blog post, and the earlier one on basic income, is that ‘currencies are tools that have utility only in the context of an existing marketplace’. You recognise that scale is a significant factor, that ‘economic circuits are easier to create within larger marketplaces’, but I wonder if you’re overlooking a qualitative barrier, which can’t be transcended through exchange system innovation. What I mean there is that, if there are certain categories of essential resources that don’t get traded within a particular marketplace, then no amount of technical improvements to that marketplace will make it an adequate challenger to a broader system.

I’m conscious here that our world-views might be fundamentally at odds. In his ‘What comes after Capitalism’ paper, Tim Jenkin suggests that ownership of the means of production is derived from the capitalist's control over the means of exchange, with the implication that it is subordinate to it. Even if that is historically valid (which I have doubts about), I think they have to be treated as two independent features of capitalism, which need to be addressed separately. Fundamentally, the people who control the means of production can choose to use whatever system of exchange they like, but the people who control the means of exchange don't have any de facto power to force people to use it.

I quite understand if you want to focus just on currency issues, and I’ll leave you in peace if that’s the case. What I’m suggesting, though, is that we will only be able to build a new society if, alongside a healthy exchange system, we also work out what rules it will need governing the ownership and inheritance of essential resources, and the exercise of power generally.

Once we’ve worked those rules out, we’ll obviously still have the little problem of wresting control away from the existing system but … well, one step at a time. We certainly won’t be able to displace the current system if we don’t have a coherent vision of what could replace it.

"I don't know where to turn next."

I know the feeling!

I go on the principle that, even if it looks highly unlikely that everything necessary will come together, I still have to do what I personally am able to do. While a constitution for a healthy society is a very long way from being sufficient to bring it into being, it is still a necessary part, and it’s something that, in principle, an individual can work out regardless of whether everything else is in place. If nothing comes of it, so be it, but there’s no great harm in doing it and, who knows, perhaps the gods are waiting for that before they open the other doors. By contrast, I suspect that, if I had managed the technological breakthrough I mentioned, without first preparing a healthy societal framework to slot it into, it would almost certainly have ended up strengthening the existing system rather than undermining it.

Anyway, I won’t rush with it but I will probably take you up on that offer and write a credit commons governance proposal.