How Americans can have it all

 America is a land of abundance. We have so much of everything. Everything we need to get done can be done. All that we want to have can be had. Anything we need from other countries we can trade some of our abundance to get it.

What keeps us from having it all?

Cash.

See those potholes in your street, the congestion on the freeway at rush hour? Remember that little girl who got killed trying to cross a busy intersection because there wasn’t a stop light? Ever heard “no” at work to your great idea because money wasn’t in the budget for it? What one thing could make it possible for all these things to get done?

Cash.

You want that new car, but you don’t have enough. Your kids need new shoes, but you don’t have enough. If you had enough, you wouldn’t have to choose between food and medicine.

I think you get the picture. Money-based economies are keeping us from having it all. But we can have it all. All we need to do is choose an economy that doesn’t depend on Money to get things done.

“But you have to pay people to get things done.”  Yes. I know that.

“But people won’t do anything unless you pay them.” Yes. I know that too.

“Things have value, you can’t just get them for free.” This is true.

Copiosis economies are not money-based and yet they still reward people with income. They just do it differently than traditional economies like Capitalism. It’s a paradox that goes like this: Reward people with money so that they get things done, but do it in a way that doesn’t keep things from getting done.

In conversations about Copiosis, I get pilloried describing this paradox to people who know things must change, but aren’t open-minded enough to think through how the paradox can work. That’s why I’m writing a book. Folks are intrigued, but we often get bogged down in objections. Objections I don’t think they’ll have if they fully understand how Copiosis economies work.

Only through Copiosis is the world going to make it. For me, the alternative isn’t worth thinking about. We have to get money out of the way of getting things done. We all are aware of the problems. Authors, think tanks, forward thinkers have described them in mind-numbing detail. What we’re short on are practical solutions on a systemic scale. We just can’t come up with something that can practically replace capitalism. For all it’s terrible outcomes, it still creates so much value and wealth for so many people, doing away with it seems absurd.

Barter economies are a problem because of the presumed coincidence of wants theory. By the way, anthropologists have done a lot of research on this kind of economy and no one has found credible anthropological evidence that such economies existed, even though Traditional Economists claim differently.

Gift economies are grand ideas. But getting there will require major leaps forward in human consciousness. It’s also going to take major advances in our ability to break free of addictions to beliefs like the ones quoted above before we can even conceive of even the possibility that such economies can work. That said, there is one guy I ran across who believe such an economy must happen, if we’re going to make it.

Communism – Forget it.

Socialism – Ditto.

Besides, both of those have had their chance and proved that central planning simply doesn’t work all that well. They are the economic equivalent of dunces sitting in the corner.

I think sticking with capitalism should be on this list of absurdities. For the last five years I’ve been thinking about what we’re going to do to get out of our conundrums. Capitalism isn’t going to fit the bill.  Copiosis economies can. I know there’s little here in the blog or on the site to explain why. That information is coming once the book’s done. Probably later this fall. Until then keep checking back.

I believe America can lead the world towards a future where not just Americans but everyone on the planet can have it all. I think Copiosis holds the promise of being the tool we need to make that shift.

A shift is going to happen no matter what. What that shift looks like will depend on all of us recognizing our nation’s abundance, then getting money out of the way.