Abundance without money describes an economic system which has prices, but no money to be used as though it were a value substance. There is no double barter (rights to goods, properties and services bartered for money which is bartered for real value) and there is no double ownership (money and what it can buy). There are no legal fictions (companies, banks, states) which ever own real properties (factories, estates, rights to receive or perform any particular services); and real flesh and blood people never own fictitious value - tokens, numbers in accounts which are treated as though they themselves had value. How my proposal achieves this is by balancing accounts as completely and as continuously as possible.
Company earnings are entirely and continuously distributed to individual shareholders and employees as dividends and salaries. Such earnings are not 'money' but rights to real value, including shares in companies and other common properties. They are managed professionally by agreement just as employees' services are - and managers are themselves employees who earn salaries and dividends.
In the system, called 'Community Cooperation Coordinator' (CCC), numbers retained on computerised community bank accounts represent rights to obtain real value but have no intrinsic value of their own.
The CCC can start from within the present set-up, with small computerised exchange 'nodes' or networks, which can later be interlinked, like cells in a body, to form a single coherent whole.
The CCC helps to create socially and economically efficient and fair communities, without unemployment or inflation. As these multiply and expand, a new socio-economic structuring comes into being - simply, organically, and without a lot of ideological bitterness. As Blake remarked, 'good can really only be done in minute particulars.'
The CCC differs from simple barter in that exchanges are many for many (multi-lateral), rather than being one for one (bilateral, one thing for another at a given time).
In the present system, value is measured in terms of one 'thing' - money - which has little intrinsic value and is created arbitrarily out of nothing by select members of society. In the CCC, the value of each thing is measured in terms of all others by all members of the community. This is perhaps the hardest aspect to grasp: there is in the CCC no common measuring stick whose value is supposed to remain constant. Rather, the price of any given good, service or right serves as a measuring stick against which all the others can be measured. The lengths of all measuring sticks vary, but the length of any one stick at any time can be estimated in terms of the 'background' of all others. The CCC creates a debit-credit continuum whose structure is comparable to space-time.
The CCC has its own unit measure of value, represented by the symbol X. There are two requirements of prices expressed in X. One is that when a node is started up, prices expressed in normal currency units should be convertible into X in easy mental calculations. The other is that prices in X in nodes at different locations should be roughly equal. For this reason, the value of one X when a node starts up is defined as being roughly equal to the average hourly wage of an 18 to 20 year old employed person; the conversion factor being adjusted so that quick calculations are possible. When several nodes are interlinked, prices at some are automatically recalculated so that prices at all are expressed in identical X units.
Before giving a detailed example, here are some of the CCC's other advantages:
- It can be used by any group of people wishing to increase their internal cohesion.
- It requires no two-tiered social order separating those who regulate money and tax and govern from the beneficiaries of such services. In a CCC there is order but with no specific centres of control.
- The money system means that some people get something for nothing. Not so in the CCC.
- The system is not readily taxable, whilst at the same time encouraging people to cooperate voluntarily to care for the 'commons', which the present economic system is contriving to ruin.
- No services, including government services, are monopolised.
- The CCC does not encourage unnecessary production of goods.
- There can be no depressions or boom-bust cycles.
The CCC is as complicated as the money system, but could be learned through a Monopoly type game in the first instance. Just how complicated it appears, the following 'simple' example will demonstrate.
Let us assume that a certain young lady lives by making dresses during the day and selling her charms at night. She is interested in painting and astrology, and owns her dressmaking shop and the apartment she lives in.
When she registers at the CCC, she records for the computer her name and telephone number only, since that is all she wants. She enters her sewing ability, astrology and painting interests and requests the barter network to give her a list of other persons with similar interests so that they can contact each other.
She forms a 'composite person' (the CCC equivalent of a 'company') of which she is initially the only member and declares her shop to be managed by this composite person of which she is also sole shareholder. This shop is entered with what she considers a reasonable nominal price.
In the Agreements Register she enters payment arrangements in which she accords herself 10% of her earnings as only shareholder and 90% of her earnings as only working partner in her company. She also sets rates indicating under what conditions she is willing to part with a share of her 'base' (the shop) or to acquire other 'bases'. The value of her base immediately rises above its physical worth because she has committed herself to pay dividends on it.
The wisdom of this procedure becomes evident when other people wish to join her enterprise as associates or to invest in it. Then she will be ready to share increased earnings according to freely established agreements.
The apartment is registered as a property with no price since she does not intend to exchange it. Records are also entered for each of the main kind of dresses that she makes. Each of these gets the system code for dresses and her own user code for style, size, etc, a nominal price and any description she feels is pertinent. She also registers her dressmaking services at an hourly rate.
Now, when people ask the system for dresses and sewing services, her services will turn up and can be compared with others. Because dresses are not usually bought unseen, prospective customers will probably go to her shop to try them on. If a dress is sold, the customer can pay with a cheque in the usual way, or the transaction can be stored in a computer terminal.
One way or another, her earnings would enter the register. But this lady has expenses as well as earnings. She buys food, needs medical care and saves up to go travelling. At every accounting period her expenditures are balanced against her earnings. If she has earned more than she spent, she acquires rights to shares. If she has spent more than she earns, she loses some property rights - possibly to her shop if she had nothing else to cede before it.
How does all this differ from other barter clubs? Unlike these, the CCC has an internal measure of value, it has mechanisms for optimising investments and public services internally, it has arrangements for defining ownership and ensuring that agreements will be binding and it can operate without, or in spite of, official money systems.
The CCC is on IBM PC compatible computer programs, on 8 diskettes with accompanying manuals which are available for US$500 from Conrad Hopman, (address above).