It’s a common misunderstanding that Net Benefit Reward (NBR) and “money” are synonymous making “Copiosis just another monetary system” as someone once said.
Critics of our system claim because it’s just another monetary system, it is no better than capitalism, or any other system enforcing scarcity though a medium of exchange.
Let’s examine why none of these claims are right.
NBR is not money.
There is no correlation between money and NBR. When was the last time you received $700 dollars for attending a meeting? Yet that’s exactly what happened when participants in our early demonstration projects attended their demonstration project meetings.
Why did they get so much? What was the “value” these people produced by just attending a meeting? These questions show differences between NBR and money.
What is the value of one dollar, One Yen, or One Renminbi? Usually the way we measure a currency’s “value” is by how much the currency can buy.
But in Copiosis, NBR doesn’t “buy” you anything, as you get most things at no cost. There are no prices, so it’s difficult to judge how much one NBR is “worth.”
Words such as “worth” “value” “buy” and “sell” seem like everyday parts of our language. Yet such words apply only to monetary systems. They don’t translate into Copiosis because no such concepts exist in Copiosis.
Our demonstration project participants got this instantly. Participating in the projects revealed language limitations useful in monetary systems, but foreign in Copiosis. Clarifications such as these represent major project benefits.
Demonstration projects make Copiosis come to life. They also contrast a Copiosis reality with capitalism’s reality. That’s why we’re looking for more project opportunities. They create psycho-social shifts that open hearts.
These shifts makes it clear: capitalism has conditioned our thinking. Once it’s clear, shifting our conditioning gets easier.
Shifting our conditioning must happen before a new and better system becomes real.
Here are other features differentiating Copiosis from monetary systems:
Prices don’t exist
Copiosis NBR Gateways are often mistaken as “prices”. Yet they function in no way like a price. Prices facilitate two-way transactions between a buyer and a seller. There are no buyers and sellers in Copiosis, nor are there two-way transactions.
For one, nothing is being bought or sold, just given. People making things give what they make to people. Then, when people use the things, people making them get rewarded for benefits their things produce for users. Nothing is bought or sold.
Three-way transactions replace two-way “buyer/seller” transactions. In every transaction, there is a producer, a consumer and the “rewarding entity” (society) represented by the Copiosis Organization. Through the Copiosis Organization producers get rewards for net benefit their products create when people use them.
Capitalism’s prices do more than help two-way transactions of course. They also show how much a seller is going to make (minus expenses) from the sale transaction. A common error people make in comparing NBR with money generally, and Gateways with prices functionally, is they believe the Gateway amount is the amount producers get when consumers use their goods and services.
The Gateway has little effect on how much a producer gets. Our computational model calculates producers’ rewards, based on how much net benefit that producer’s good or service creates. How much a producer benefits people and the planet defines how much NBR he gets.
Price also determines how much money a consumer must give to the producer to get the thing the consumer wants. In capitalism, the money the consumer gives up goes directly into the pocket of the producer (minus expenses).
In Copiosis, the Gateway determines how much NBR a consumer must have and give up to get a luxury product or service, but that amount of NBR does not go to the producer. It disappears from the consumer’s NBR account and that amount goes into thin air – right back where it came from.
In this way, NBR Gateways serve an important function in Copiosis: For those who want to consume and enjoy luxuries, they must accumulate NBR enough to satisfy Gateways assigned to the luxuries they want. To do that, they must benefit other people and or the planet.
So Gateways motivate morally positive behavior.
Prices motivate morally positive behavior too. Sometimes. Often though they motivate immoral behavior. That’s why we have crime: everything you might want in the world, including love and belonging, food, healthcare, shelter has a price. In many ways, it’s easier to meeting needs through crime. That’s why there’s so much of it.
Gateways only apply to luxuries. Every other good or service is provided at no cost. Sometimes (depending on the producer) even luxuries are given at no cost. It’s totally up to the producer because there is no cost in Copiosis and everyone is free. A “cost” to a producer is also a “price.” After all, producers pay “cost” to suppliers for raw materials and other capital goods they need.
But there are no costs in Copiosis, as is there are no prices.
Monetary Systems broadly defined
Wikipedia describes a monetary system this way:
A monetary system is the set of institutions by which a government provides money in a country’s economy. Modern monetary systems usually consist of mints, central banks and commercial banks.
You probably already know there is no government, no mints, central or commercial banks in Copiosis. So if you think Copiosis is a monetary system, how can it be when none of these institutions exist in it?
The same article goes on to describe the three kinds of money used in monetary systems: Commodity (or Hard) Money, Commodity-Backed Money and Fiat (Soft) Money. Here are the descriptions of each, again, taken from the same Wikipedia article linked to above:
A commodity money system is a monetary system in which a commodity such as gold or seashells is made the unit of value and physically used as money. The alternative to a commodity money system is fiat money which is defined by a central bank and government law as legal tender even if it has no intrinsic value. Typically fiat money is paper currency or base metal coinage, but it can also exist as data such as bank balances and records of credit or debit card purchases. In the modern economy most money is held as deposits in banks, and the fraction that exists as currency (notes and coins) is relatively small. Money is mostly created, contrary to what is written in most textbooks, by banks when they loan to customers. Put simply, banks lending currency to customers creates more deposits and deficit spending.
Copiosis uses no precious metals to “back” NBR. So the first two types of money used in monetary systems, don’t exist in Copiosis.
There are no central banks, nor are there laws declaring anything as legal tender. NBR is never expressed as a physical thing. There is no paper or coined NBR. It does exist as data (bits and bytes), but again, that is not by any kind of government decree. Nor is the value of NBR guaranteed by a government or some other entity. NBR isn’t held in reserve somewhere, with the balance being traded in the market. There are no loans in Copiosis so NBR is not created like money either.
These points about monetary systems alone should show anyone that Copiosis is not a monetary system, nor does it rely on elements of one.
Instead, it is a system of three-way gift transactions where the givers receive rewards for the net benefit their gifts create when given to receivers. Receivers benefit from consuming that which is gifted. After all that happens, the third party (society) rewards the gift-giver for his act.
Available for all to see
Some really negative people say I’m being “dishonest” saying there is no money in Copiosis. Not only is that a strong accusation, it’s completely inaccurate. As I described above, “money” facilitates two-way exchanges. Buyers give sellers their money. This transaction allows two people to satisfy dissimilar desires via a common standard of value. Often those desires are immoral. A system of banks and government tries to control the whole process.
Finally, all forms of money ever in existence shared the following properties: transferability, measure of value, store of value, amorality, uncontrollability and the classic two-way (buyer-seller) transaction process. NBR shares none of these properties. It cannot be transferred from one person to another. It does not function as a common standard allowing for trade because there is no trade in Copiosis. Two-way transactions are not the norm in the system and NBR is only rewarded for acts which produce net benefit.
What we have here is anything but a monetary system.