Resisting these four issues is as futile as the GOP’s attempt to repeal the ACA

The future has the answers

There’s a lot of hullabaloo underway about the Affordable Care Act and the government shutting down. This is political theater keeping you from paying attention to things you really should be. Here are three things you and I both should be keeping an eye on:

Our continuing obsession with age-old energy policy – Gas prices are so high now it’s worth it to pursue expensive and environmentally damaging hydraulic fracturing. We’re already seeing companies lie about negative consequences of the process. Western capitalism is driving our energy policy. People are making a lot of money through it and in capitalism “earning a living” is the number one priority for most people. That’s a problem.

Our butts will be royally kicked by mother nature – Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report released last week removes all doubt that you and I are responsible for global warming. That we are to blame isn’t the problem. The problem is our actions are being dictated by a conclusion we have all believe when that conclusion it patently false. That conclusion is this: western capitalism is the best way to get things done. This is no longer true. There is a better way. As long as we continue believing something that is not true, we should be prepared to lose the fight we’re having with mother nature. We won’t win. Like jellyfish sashimi?

Little has been done to prevent future 2008s – The US Treasury on yesterday warned that not raising the US debt ceiling will spark an event far worse than what happened in 2008. US taxpayers saved the day after 2008. But nothing substantial has changed other than things getting worse. According to the head of the International Monetary Fund, taxpayers aren’t going to pick up the pieces next time. Next time, they may be picking up guns. He also has said recently that capitalism is “on its last legs.” Maybe, just maybe we’re coming out of the delusion that capitalism is going to take us merrily into the future.

Technology is killing off the middle class. It’s not only Wall Street or the 1 percent. Apparently, technology too it whittling away at the middle class. Yes, technology is making obsolete what once were stable and secure jobs for the middle class. Manfacturing, assembly, and even white collar jobs are disappearing to keystrokes and algorithms, leaving us with little to do in the way of work. Is it a wonder that most of the jobs fueling the recovery are menial service jobs? Productivity at the hands of technology is changing the workplace. It’s making the workplace smaller. Humans are being squeezed out.

Resisting these four issues is as futile as the Republican’s attempts to repeal the ACA. What we really need is an aikido strategy: a new system that allows us to go with the flow of these and other problems and redirect them into solutions. This system isn’t going to come from looking backwards. For it is true that given what we have known, capitalism has been the best option for running economies. But now we know differently, not only about how capitalism is working these days, but about something else calling us from the future. That something else I believe is the Copiosis economy.

Copiosis economies take and magnify everything we love about capitalism. They also throw out everything we don’t like about it. By redefining how both money and the free market functions, Copiosis economies spur innovations, truly solve persistent problems such as crime, poverty and more, and allow free human beings from earning a living, which allows them to just get things done.

How does it work?

A lot of the people I talk with on the internet, after hearing what amazing things are possible with Copiosis economies, want to know the specifics about how these economies work. I am currently finishing up a book I expect to be complete by the end of the month that answers this question in detail. But let me try, right now to provide a brief outline as a teaser to that book becoming available.

Redefining money’s function. In capitalism, we have a reward system that motivates value creation. But that reward system also motivates often the wrong kind of value creation. It’s hard to argue against the value created by the oil industry, for example. But I would wager the vast majority of us would agree that we are witnessing that value having gone wrong. What keeps us from shifting gears from fossil fuel reliance and onto a real national or global renewables strategy? I think the answers are numerous and clear. But underneath all of them is the need for people in capitalist economies to earn a living. They need to make money to get the things they need to live, as well as the things they want that they think make life worth living.

Copiosis economies gets rid of the notion that human beings must earn a living by redefining how money is used to motivate human behavior. First, it ties one’s earning potential to a person’s ability to create what we call Net-Benefit. In the labor and capital markets where people are rewarded for producing goods and services Net-Benefit is calculated by the following formula:

B – N = X

B = the numerical representation of the total benefit produced in the consumption of a good or service. This includes the total benefits to the individual consuming the good or service plus total benefits to society from that individual consuming the good or service.

N = the numerical representation of the total negative consequences of producing the good or service. It includes the total negative consequences that occur to both the individual and society, including environmental impacts, resource impacts, raw material impacts, and labor and opportunity costs of capital employed in producing this good instead of something else.

If = (equals) a number greater than (>) zero, labor and capital markets earn a reward.

If X = (equals) zero, no reward is earned.

If X is less than (<) zero, future earnings is lost.

Second, it eliminates money’s ability to support activities that allow capitalists and labor to get around producing Net-Benefit. Copiosis economies do this by attaching new functions to money that haven’t existed before:

  1. Money is virtual. Physical money no longer exists. Dollars, Pounds, Yen become “credits”
  2. Money can only be possessed by human beings. Corporations, non profits, and other human created entities, including the government and the treasury an not human. Therefore, they can’t possess money. (The ruling that corporations are “persons” is abolished in Copiosis economies).
  3. Money can not be transferred between people
  4. Money can only be used to purchase items designated as luxuries. All necessity goods and services (basic ones are Healthcare, Education, basic Shelter, basic Food, basic Clothing) are provided to all at no cost to them.

Immediately, people hearing this conversation key in on the “no cost to them” clause, equate that with “free” and label Copiosis economies socialist or communist. This reaction I get a lot. But it reveals more about the listener than it tells about Copiosis economies for Copiosis is from the future. It isn’t anything like what we’ve experienced in our history. Deeper detail on this must wait for the book. Or you can contact me via this site for more in-depth conversations on the topic.

There are many surprising and powerful implications that organically come from orienting people to produce Net-Benefit and then redefining how money works. But another redefinition is in order, one that impacts the nature of free markets. This is the most complicated seeming aspect of Copiosis. In reality it’s quite simple, but because we are not familiar with the future, intellectually understanding this simple change in how markets work, it a monumental task for most people.

A real free market. Anyone with an intermediate understanding of capitalist markets will agree that such markets are not really free markets. If you disagree with this basic fact, write me and let’s talk about it. Copiosis economies redefine the free market, making it completely and totally free. There are no market barriers. There is no competitive pressure causing people and organizations to operate in ways that counter producing Net-Benefit. Any action that produces Net-Benefit performed by anyone (even a child) earns that person income.

How can this happen?

Copiosis free markets are much different that capitalist ones. Copiosis free markets take advantage of 3-way transactions that when combined with the redefined money and Net-Benefit concept, produce stable, predictable and only positive results. The first participant in the 3-way transaction is the consumer. The consumer is responsible for producing the result in a moment in time at which the Net-Benefit calculation takes place. This naturally happens the moment a consumer “consumes” what it is she has received (in the case of a necessity) or purchased (in the case of a luxury). There’s not much difference between capitalism and Copiosis regarding consumers except this: in capitalism, the person providing the good to the consumer is immediately rewarded for producing the good no matter how it affects the consumer. I know, there are sanctions in capitalism that can occur if consumers are harmed by goods, but not across the board. Contact me and let’s talk about your specific objections is you have any. The producer is rewarded immediately because in order to get the good (even before consuming it) the consumer must transfer some of her money to the producer. We’ll get back to this in a moment.

The second participant in 3-way Copiosis transactions is the producers. A producer is anyone who provides a consumer an opportunity to create Net-Benefit. Note this is different than a producer in capitalism, which is a person who uses labor and capital to create a good or service. In Copiosis, everyone is a consumer with no exceptions. Anyone can become a producer in Copiosis too. Even a child can become a producer. By helping other children cross the school each morning prior to class, a child is acting as a producer creating the benefit of “children crossing the street safely”, for example. By working with another child to stop traffic (with flags and reflective vests of course), the child is creating an opportunity for the consumer (other children) to produce a Net-Benefit (crossing the street safely). Now, think about this. If everyone can do virtually anything for anybody and get paid, what does that do for the concept of unemployment? Note: the value the producer is producing is not the product or the service. It is the opportunity intrinsic in the product or service that is materialized when the consumer interacts with the product or service. This is what producers are rewarded for. A producer who produces a good that no one consumes gets paid the same amount a producer who produces a good that creates Net-Benefit of less than zero. That is, they both get paid nothing.

The third participant in the 3-way transaction is the most strange part of Copiosis economies. I say strange only because we’ve never heard anything like this outside of some sci-fi novels perhaps. This third participant acts as an observer. This person is responsible for observing transactions taking place in society and rewarding people (compensating them by paying them money) for Net-Benefit  produced when a consumer “consumes” the opportunity the producer produced. These people are enabled by a large group of other people all working together to facilitate the B – N = X occurring in literally billions if not trillions of transactions every day across the economy. No small task.

Obviously, people in the third group hold a lot of power. Power is corrupting. Everyone knows this. In Copiosis though, the enormous power this third group of people have is 100 percent kept in check through a very simple mechanism inherent in the Copiosis economic design. That mechanism is beyond the scope of this post, but trust me, it’s there, it’s equally powerful and it works.

Accepting that their power is powerfully kept in check, this third group’s participation combined with the redefined money and the B – N = X calculation has some interesting, intrinsic effects that make impossible most things we don’t like about capitalism.

Resource inefficiency is virtually eliminated over time. The variable motivates producers to minimize negative consequences not only of how their goods are produced, but also the N results that show up when a consumer consumes a good.  Aspects of product design that in capitalism are given only cursory attention in capitalist markets (such as what happens to the product after its service life) are now front and center.

Innovation is maximized over time. The B variable motivates producers to ensure their good is the best it possibly can be at doing what it’s designed to do. Smart producers not only consider the direct benefits a good is designed to produce, but also ancillary service that same good can produce all in support of increasing B. Consider what would happen to industries such as tobacco, energy and transportation?

No wealth for harm. In capitalist markets, it is possible for a person or group of persons to generate tremendous wealth by selling people goods or services that actually harm them. This is not possible in Copiosis.

Crime largely is eliminated. People can do whatever they want in Copiosis economies. Most crime is committed in an attempt to get other people’s money. In Copiosis economies money can not be transferred from one person to another. It is completely virtual, so the only way to get at it is via hacking, which may occur initially, but only briefly. Why? Because the Net-Benefit calculation of ensuring money is secure in Copiosis economies is extremely high meaning people who work to make sure people’s money accounts are secure and that counterfeiting the virtual currency is impossible stand to be very wealthy. There are other, natural and intrinsic elements in Copiosis that also go a long way in ensuring financial crime is not possible.

There’s a lot more to Copiosis than what I’ve written here. But this was to serve only as an outline. Copiosis economies are a rich and elegant way to create much more desirable, much more attractive futures for all countries. Finally, a way out of the challenges we face with our capitalist based economies.

And thank goodness.

While we face multiple impending crises, the least of which is the kabuki dance we see in DC, the door of opportunity has opened in the form of Copiosis economic philosophy. I only hope Americans find it as fascinating as I have and show a desire to learn more, so we can make it the reality for our great nation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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