Global Resource Management and Stages of Production

No matter what, any product worth buying requires two things to manufacture: Mass and Energy. Every sustainable economy needs to account for both.

We've already discussed how goods and raw resources would be priced, but we haven't said how communities would be compensated for extraction of natural resources or how we would keep track of them. There's no reason to wait for the future when we can easily do this today. Companies like Wal-Mart and Amazon already use smart management systems to help keep track of their inventory, all we have to do is scale this system up so we can keep track of Earth's resources.

Right away, we will establish a connected system that keeps track of how many resources are stockpiled and available for use. We'll know how many liters of fresh water are in each reservoir, how many kilograms of gold and copper are in storage and how much plastic is available for molding. For every possible item or good, we also will know exactly how much of each natural resource goes into making it: A mattress requires x yards of cotton, y pounds of foam rubber and so on.

We will monitor resource inflows and outflows: Inflows could come from products being broken down for recycling or new resources being mined, outflows may be those same resources going into new products or landfills if they cannot be reused.

Once we know the supply and demand, (which is instantly calculated whenever someone places an order using the Collaborative Design System), we can determine the price per kilo of that material and update it, sending signals to producers to reduce their use of that material or find alternatives. Remember, people are paid based on how often their product is used or bought by others. If people don't think their product is worth it then they will not buy it and the producer/inventor earns nothing. This encourages people to be efficient when designing products.

While The Global Assembly operates the Collaborative Design System, acts as a global steward of earth's resources and manages the means of production; the true power lies in the hands of the consumer. Through their everyday choices, consumers decide what gets produced, not a centralized and inefficient bureaucracy. Sociocapitalism isn't centrally planned and it isn't communism- in many ways it's much more of a free market than capitalism is because it satisfies true demand. It allows people to profit while ensuring equal access to the means of production so that all innovations are on a level playing field.

A resource-based economy operates on a philosophy of lean manufacturing and just-in-time distribution that will minimize waste and wait times. Products are made-to-order whenever a consumer orders online through the CDS and "pulled", not "pushed" through the production line. If someone needs something right away, they will be able to buy it but just like with express delivery it will be more expensive. Costs for express delivery are not returned when the product is.

Stages of Production and Distribution:

Let's go through the stages of production for someone ordering a new lawnmower. The first thing that would happen is that they would go online and choose the make and model they want. While shopping, the estimated delivery times of each would be visible, or the person could opt to purchase a ready-made express-delivery lawnmower at a higher cost.

After the decision is made to buy a lawnmower, a signal travels to the automated factories to make one extra lawnmower. The Collaborative Design System sources the raw materials needed to produce an item and automatically looks for the "lowest cost" suppliers. In a resource-based economy, lowest cost usually means the suppliers that are nearest to the final customer because they will require the least amount of energy to transport. "Suppliers" in this system are not entirely independent entities: They are other, specialized automated factories also managed by the Global Assembly. They do have some ability to set their product prices, but their level of efficiency, energy use and distance from the end user mostly does it for them. (More about the daily operation of factories is explained below) The necessary materials are transported to one of two factories for final assembly:

High Volume: If a product is in high demand it will be mass-produced in a large factory and sent to distribution centers (a lot like today's retail stores.)

Low-Volume Production: For custom products. Since our customer wants a custom product, it will go to the low-volume plant and be directly delivered to the client's home or personal delivery locker.


At the end of it's lifetime or when they don't need it anymore, our customer sends their lawnmower back to the distribution center, where it is sent to a recycling plant. The customer is then given a full refund of the initial purchase price minus profits and taxes. This is how items are given away for "free" while preventing overconsumption, and the real secret to the system.

Distribution centers are two way streets: Not only do they distribute items from factories to consumers, unlike today's stores they send items from consumers back to factories as well.

The actual day-to-day operation of the factories is managed locally in a production district. Consider production districts "zones" not unlike congressional or school districts. Everyone who lives in a production district owns a share in all factories and distribution centers located there. These shares cannot be traded or sold: they're yours as long as you live there. An equal amount of transferable shares are placed for sale on the global stock market and can be bought by anyone with the same coupons they use to buy shares in tribes. 

All shareholders together elect a board of directors who then choose a district manager. This district manager appoints individual managers for certain factories and distribution centres. 

The shareholders in a production district together decide how much they want to charge for the goods and services they produce. Everything made in an automated factory has a "base price" determined by the energy and raw materials that went into producing it, but the production district can still charge more if it wants to earn a profit and give dividends to shareholders. The amount the district can charge is limited due to competition from other nearby production districts. In order to prevent monopolies, the maximum size of a production district will need to be fixed by law. We suggest a preliminary limit of 1,000,000 members and that no district be larger than 10,000 sq km. Any limits can be altered as needed by The Assembly. 

Since profits are distributed to shareholders, they are not returned when the product is. A person only gets the base price returned to them when they give back a used item. 

For repairs and tech support, production districts usually contract help from the global assembly's technically experienced staff.

It's important to note that while production districts are locally operated and have a high degree of independence in setting prices, ultimately the factories are "owned" by the entire world through The Global Assembly. If a local production districts's management of a factory begins inhibiting the operation of others or disrupts the flow of trade it can be repossessed. A single factory may ship goods all around the world, so even allowing one to be vandalized or misused cannot be tolerated. 

Compensating Communities for Extracted Resources

Traditionally, communities would derive revenue from extraction of natural resources by taxing the process or requiring permits to do so. This won't work anymore since resources are no longer privately owned but considered as common property. We know value is created whenever previously inaccessible resources are taken out of the ground, but the distribution of this value is always contentious. One things' for sure though: we don't want that wealth privately concentrated in the hands of huge multinational corporations. There are really three ways of doing this:

> All revenue from the use of natural resources could go to the Global Assembly (unfair, too many opportunities for corruption and control)

> Revenue could be equally split between every person on Earth (not fair to the local communities closest to the resources)

> Revenue could only go to the community that sits nearest to the natural resources (could lead to an undesirable "gold rush" situation where communities scramble to relocate where natural resources are plentiful. Alaska has a similar program, where every verified resident gets hundreds of dollars yearly as a share of the state's oil reserves.

Of all the options, a mixture of 2 and 3 seems to be the best choice. Everyone should get a piece of the pie when natural resources are extracted, but the communities closest to the bonanza should earn the most, with the amount received rapidly dropping off the further away you get. This makes sense because communities closest to mines have to deal with most of the ill effects, whether it's pollution, environmental degradation or noise.

Every mine will act as a "point source" of social capital for the purposes of our formula. The amount of value that a mine generates in a year is cataloged, saved and distributed in one lump sum to everyone yearly.

The distance from a mine to a city is measured center to center, not edge to edge. Only settlements with over 10,000 people will count. The distribution of natural resource income doesn't depend on where you are at the moment, it depends on where you are registered as a resident. If you have multiple residencies then the program will assume that you are resident of the city closest to the mine.

Here's how we will determine how much each person should earn from extraction of natural resources:

First, we take the total value of all resources that mine has produced in a year. This is determined by the price natural resources extracted by the mine sold for at the time they were mined.

Next, we determine the closest city of 10,000 to the mine or oilfield or whatever. We set this equal to zero.

Third, we determine the farthest city of 10,000 from the mine. This is the far point and is probably halfway around the world.

Fourth, we calculate the distances in kilometers of every other city to the mine.

Finally, Subtract the distance of the closest city from the farthest city, and repeat for all other settlements. Add together the total distances of all cities. Take the percentage of this total, and that's the percentage of money each cities' residents will receive.

The money is not given to the government of a city, it's given directly to the people as a yearly check for social capital.

For simplicity, we will use an example mine that has generated $50000 in income this year, and three cities: One that's 100 miles away from the mine, another that's 10 miles away, a third that's 40 miles away and a fourth that's 60 miles away.

Step 1: Determine the closest city. City 2 is only 10 miles away.
Step 2: Determine the farthest city- City 1 is 100 miles away.
Step 3: Determine the distances of every city in between- City 3 is 40 miles away and City 4 is 60 miles away.

Step 4: Subtract the distances of all cities from the farthest city:

City One: (100 - 100 = 0) City one will not receive any money from this mine as it is the farthest away.

City Two: (100 - 10 = 90) City two has a score of 90, which is the highest. It's residents will receive the most money of all cities because they are closest to the mine.

City Three: (100 - 40 = 60) City three earns a score of 60

City Four: (100 - 60 = 40) City four has the lowest score, but will still earn a small amount of money.

Step 5: Add together scores and calculate percentages. 

Adding the scores of cities 1-4, we get 190. (0 + 90 + 60 + 10)

Ignoring City One, which has 0%,

By percentages, City 2 has 90/190, or  ~47% of the total. 0.47 x 50,000 is $23,684. That money is equally divided and distributed among the residents of city two.

City 3 has 60/190, 3l.5% or $15,789

City 4 has 40/190, 21% or $10,526 .

There's obviously more than one mine in the world, and way more than just four cities. It's clear that the math will become very complicated, very fast. It's a good thing humans won't have to crunch these numbers! Powerful supercomputers that can perform billions of computations a second will do the job instead, and automatically distribute the necessary payments.


If the Global Assembly wants to open a new resource extraction facility or distribution center then it will seek the input of the community the proposed mine is closest to. The community will need to balance the potential windfall with whatever environmental consequences the mine could generate and make a decision on it's own by taking a vote. Whatever choice they make, the Global Assembly is required by law to follow and respect it. They do not have the power to just slap down mines and factories wherever they please without carefully considering the interests of the place affected by it. This is only required if a factory or mine is within 100km of a settlement with over 10,000 people. If not then they can build it and are only required to host a public comment session.

Creating a Tribe

    Anyone can create a tribe. You don't need to ask for permission or apply for any prior approval. All you have to do is create a proposal and charter explaining what your tribe is for, it's name, theme, culture and how it will operate. You then need to submit it to the global assembly's main website. Creating a tribe is a lot like creating a group or community on a social network. You have wide privileges and can run your community any way you want, but you still have to follow the general guidelines of the website or your club can be shut down. In the same way, all tribes must follow the Digital Bill of Rights listed here that guarantee their members certain freedoms. Tribal charters should be very thorough, since they define everything the tribe is allowed to (and supposed to) do. 

Once you upload this charter it's time to collect digital signatures. You have to find 10,000 people willing to join your new tribe for it to become "active". This is a tall order, and it takes time. Requiring a certain number of members screens out some of the less diligent or poorly-planned ideas, leaving only the best. At the same time, 10,000 is a low enough number that smaller communities still have a chance to get through the net. If your tribe ever falls below 10,000 members once it becomes active it will automatically be dissolved and all assets returned to their original owners. 

Tribes function as their members' portal to the economic world, and hold a large amount of power over their finances. Nobody would be able to buy anything without being a member of some tribe because their paybands wouldn't work. They act as a centralized record of access and ownership, which is very important since they also provide dispute resolution for their members. With all of this power comes great responsibility, and if a citizen believes that their charter has been breached they could take the tribe to court. 

Starting a tribe is a serious commitment with plenty of risks and even more rewards. It will take a lot of time to get off the ground, but once it's growing there is the potential to make millions, or even billions. Tribes led by popular figures usually grow even faster due to network effects. 

Target Area and Input Radius

  If anything could best describe tribes, it would be "virtual countries". Each tribe has it's own created history and culture, and is expected to provide a sense of kinship and belonging to it's members. Even though they are mostly virtual, tribes still need to have a presence on the ground so members can get together and have meetups. Otherwise, citizens would be spread too far apart to feel a connection. This is why when you create a tribe you have to select a "base" (really, a point on a map), and an input radius, which is a distance from this point. Everyone who initially signs up for your tribe has to live within this circle. The circle can be any size, but people who want to sign up may frown on small tribes with large circles of influence. Your base does not have to be your headquarters (you really don't need one), and has no bearing on what your tribe can and cannot do. Tribes are only answerable directly to the global assembly, not the cities their members are based in.  

When you set your radius, you will be able to see the competition: Other tribes who have set up shop in the area. Their mission statements, constitutions and charters will all be visible so you can refine your concept and make sure it's not being duplicated. Those who are looking for a new tribe can signal this on their profile, and you will know exactly how may people are "searching" in this area. Even if you are already a member of a tribe, you can leave and create a new one at any time. This is a fundamental right. 

Internal Organization: The two types of tribes

  There are two types of tribes: closely-held and public. Closely-held tribes are defined as any with less than 100,000 members (but more than 10,000). They can be organized and run any way the creator wishes, which means they could be monarchies, democracies, dictatorships etc. The common factor is that the tribe's original charter reigns supreme, unless they choose to issue stock.

Things change once a tribe gains more than 100,000 members. Past that point, it must go public and issue stock to any and all buyers. The process of issuing stock is taken care of automatically by the global assembly, and cannot be stopped by the creator unless they decide to stop accepting new members. A tribe starts off with 100,000 shares, and gains one for every new member that joins. The tribe can later decide to split the shares if the need arises. The cash from the sale of this stock goes directly to the creator of the tribe. 

Going public requires internal restructuring. Public tribes must put the interests of their shareholders first, which means that a simple majority of them has the ability to change the direction of the company, edit the charter or choose a new board of directors. All public tribes must be set up with a ceo and elected board of directors. Until an election is held, the temporary CEO will be the original creator, or someone they choose. The creator of the tribe always maintains a permanent seat on the board of directors and voice in the company, but their vote is worth the same as any other. 

Immigration 

Tribes can choose whether they want to be open or closed no matter if they are publicly or privately held. Open tribes allow anyone to sign up and join, usually without a review period. Closed tribes require a review or may even be invite-only. All of this must be specified in the charter. 

Making Innovation work for everyone: How Intellectual Property Works in a Resource Based Economy.

Trademark wars. Patent trolls. The RIAA. We've all seen their crazy antics.

From suing music downloaders to bankrupting small businesses, copyrights and patents have slowed down innovation for years. That's right, slowed it down. You may think that giving inventors a monopoly over their invention would be a great incentive, but it really isn't. Most of the world's greatest inventions weren't created to make money; they were discovered through curiosity and most importantly tinkering with and improving earlier inventions. Everything was inspired by what came before it, and once we turn off this tap of fresh ideas, everyone suffers. The Wright Brothers didn't invent the airplane because they wanted to become rich, they did it because they wanted to fly.

If you want to see more concrete examples of the damage copyrights cause, go online. People live in fear just because they want to watch a movie but don't have the money. Engineers who create new products are shocked to find they've been sued by a company they've never even heard of, for patents they had no idea existed. In more serious cases, life-saving medicines aren't available to the people who need them because they can't afford to pay the sky-high licensing fees pharmaceutical companies charge.

Art wasn't meant to work this way. Life wasn't either. Information wants to be free.

But artists and inventors need to earn a living and gain prestige from their creations too. So what can we do?

If you've noticed, the biggest problem in all these scenarios is money. Someone wants to watch a movie or use an invention, but they don't have the paper to pay for it. Get rid of money, and you fix patents. Because of our reliance on "money", capitalism tends to create perverse incentives that actually go against human nature. Ideas are meant to be shared, but if you can't monetize it, you are forced to work another job or forego your dreams altogether. Perverse incentives lead to grocery stores throwing away food instead of giving it to shelters. It's the same kind of thinking that leads to there being four times as many empty houses as there are homeless people.

Think about an aspiring music artist in Colombia. They spend years honing their craft and slowly, surely gains a respectable fanbase. She's getting rave reviews and everyone loves her songs. There's only one problem: Although she has thousands of fans, nobody has enough money to buy her latest albums. Try as she might, she just can't make ends meet. One day this artist gets into a car accident and dies because she can't pay for a life-saving treatment. Now her voice has been silenced forever. Something that added value to each person's life has been taken away.

It may sound like a dramatic example, but it happens all the time. 20,000 people die each day because of hunger. Most of them are kids. If children are really the future, then think of what we're losing. Some of them would have been doctors or engineers. Some of them would have taken an interest in music. Maybe one of them would've been our singer.

Money has warped our values so much that we just don't get it anymore.

Art is meant to be seen and enjoyed.
Inventions are meant to be used to make life better for everyone.

And creators always deserve credit for what they've done.

The most beautiful painting in the world is worthless if nobody can see it. And if you've made this super-awesome new wonder gadget, it doesn't mean a thing if nobody can use it. Society wins when new ideas are freely shared and improved upon. You can already see this in the open-source movement, which consistently delivers products with higher quality and less glitches. Inventions don't derive value from how much money they make, they get their value from how many other people use them.

When you think about all this, the easiest solution is really the best one: Just turn uses or views directly into money and cut out the middleman. Times have changed. Before, we had no way of knowing exactly how many fans you had, or how many people read your book. Now, we can easily measure it by looking at your Youtube page. In simple terms, every time someone reads your book or uses your song, product or idea, you will automatically be paid because these actions create social capital. These payments will continue for the rest of your life. No mess, no fuss. The person using your product will not have to give up anything because the very act of them using your product IS the payment. In return for this privilege, all inventions and ideas will be open source, able to be remixed and used by others permissionlessly. The only protection that will be needed is trademark registration for those who want to build brands, and an unlimited copyright to your own image and voice.

Combine this with a few of the other social indicators we have today (likes, shares, comments etc), and we've built the beginnings of a brand-new economy. Friendship-Based Economy, Resource-Based Economy, Sociocapitalism- whatever you call it, it's based on the free sharing of ideas and goods plus fair compensation.

By measuring your social capital (or the value you add to society) we can create an economy that isn't based on debt, but a truly limitless resource: Human Creativity.

Let's go into a little more detail of how this system would work.

Like today, creators can share their work on the web to be seen by others. The difference is what I like to call the "CDS", or Collaborative Design System. The collaborative design system is an online social network that lets individuals work together to design pretty much anything. New cars, buildings, or even movies- the CDS has several dozen modules that let people from all across the world upload ideas or finished products and allow anyone to work on them. A physics simulator is built-in, so the designs can be tested virtually before being manufactured. All open-source, of course. Everything that is uploaded to other websites and social networks is automatically searchable through the CDS. CDSses already exist, although none are as comprehensive as the one i'm proposing. People already work together through Google Docs and Autodesk, but the CDS would be a complete online suite containing everything a creator would need from CAD to animation and editing software.

CDS design files are unique. In the metadata, everyone who worked on the file is listed, along with how much they contributed to it. People can contribute anonymously but they will not receive any payment when the finished product is sold or given away.

There will obviously be many versions of the same product, but that's the entire idea: The CDS is also a content-management system. "Idea trees" allow you to track the evolution of any idea, and see how it's been remixed and changed over time. Besides allowing people to design together, the CDS also acts as an online store where you can purchase and customize products.

Profit isn't made based off of how much the specific product sells for, because they are sold at the cost of the raw materials needed to produce them. How much each designer earns is determined by how much the project itself sells. Remember, the CDS itself is a social network. Projects can be liked, shared and viewed- and each of these give potential designs a boost in the rankings. Everyone who helped create a product is paid in proportion to how much work they did.

How much a project earns:

1 point- a like or a view.
2 points- an add (to a collection) or favorite.
5 points- a share or a comment.
10 points- a new subscriber/friend/use of a product or service.*

Every time an invention is used in a new product, the creators are credited 10 points. This is individuated so that if an invention is used in a TV and 500 TVs are made, the creators get 5000 points to split up. 

Important note about prices and pay: 

The creators of the project do not set the selling price: It's automatically set by the CDS itself and only depends on the cost of the raw materials needed to produce it. Keep in mind that in a resource-based economy, production is highly automated so labor is no longer a factor. For this reason, only physical objects will be sold. Intangible objects (like music) cannot be sold because they require no raw materials to produce or copy. Creators are paid based on how many times their invention is used not just by consumers, but by other creators as well.

If you create a song and someone else samples it, you are still credited as if they used the entire song because they still used your song. Now, each time their song is heard it counts as a partial listen for your song too. (Uses and Views act as separate categories: Anytime someone uses your idea, it counts as a full use, but the amount of views added depends on the percentage used.)  In this way, the amount of money a creator earns can rapidly multiply, far more than if they tightly held on to their content like in today's system. It's true: Copyrights and Patents as we know them today will not exist. But that's a good thing.

Via the CDS's idea tree and a ContentID-like system, creators will always know who's using their content- and if they don't like it they can ask them to stop. At the same time, your right is not absolute. While you can stop someone from using your exact interpretation of an idea, you can never stop someone from using the idea itself or building upon it. We're already seeing this online with the booming subcultures of fanart and fanfic. Both are where someone takes someone else's character and uses them in another original story. In this system, while the original author would still receive compensation, they wouldn't have the right to force the fanauthor to stop. This immediately takes care of those silly "sound-alike" music lawsuits.

Microfactories

The future of manufacturing looks a lot like the past: Tiny.

Back in the old days, goods weren't made in large batches somewhere far away. They were custom-made and designed just for you. If you wanted a new pair of shoes, you would go right down to the local cobbler, he would take your measurements and create them on the spot. Everything fit just right, because they weren't created for a "Size 8". They were created for a Sarah.

For a while, it seemed like Mass Production was the better alternative to slow, old-fashioned "craft" production. Sure, it wasted millions of tons of oil and gas, polluted Earth's precious atmosphere and left behind barrels of toxic waste, but it was "cheaper". What you saved in price, you lost in value- thanks to mass production, the quality of goods usually went in one direction: down. Consumers also lost that close connection with those who produced the things they relied on. No longer do we get to see goods produced or who makes them. That's not to say there weren't a few benefits- products were consistent everywhere you went, the same size and made of the same materials. You just paid the price of individuality. Eventually mass-production spread into our culture too, with the same fast food restaurants following you everywhere you went and music studios stamping out teen pop idols on an assembly line.

In a resource-based economy, localized, closed-loop manufacturing is the "secret sauce" that brings everything together. While every city and town won't have their own factory, manufacturing will be far more distributed than it is today, with each region, or "metropolitan area" having one. All products are designed with recyclability in mind, completing the "loop" of raw materials.

So what are microfactories? True to their name, they are small factories. Small factories are cheaper to build and easier to maintain since they require less inputs. Microfactories are key because without them, transitioning would be nearly impossible due to the large expense of building or buying full-sized plants. What makes microfactories unique is that they aren't just small, they're completely automated, modular and mobile. A microfactory will be designed to neatly fit into a few shipping containers, be easily assembled and disassembled. Because they can be moved so easily, microfactories can be produced in one location and taken wherever they're needed. Microfactories will be able to produce nearly everything current factories do, including high-tech electronics. It would be impossible for one microfactory to produce every possible product, so a diverse array of specialized microfactories would be available in every region.

For example, one microfactory may produce high-quality steel while another makes custom computer chips. Yet another may refine biofuels and produce plastic, or gas. When an industrial process is too complex for one factory to do on it's own, an ecosystem of factories will work together to create a finished product.

The first microfactories will be designed around our basic needs: Food, Clothing and Housing. Food processing and preservation is a must, along with clothes. A simple brick press can be thought of as a crude "housing" microfactory, but later versions will build entire house sections, with electrical wiring and plumbing included. Chemical processes such as steel and glassmaking can also be easily miniaturized, but it's most likely materials such as steel and glass will be pelletized and shipped instead, to be melted down and made into products on-site.

When you think about it, microfactories make manufacturing easier. Finished products, which take up a lot of space and require special shipping conditions will no longer be traded between cities. Instead, raw materials will. Since raw materials are easy to load and ship, it's possible that products could be created faster. Large silos of raw materials would be located right next to the manufacturing complex so transportation time could be minimized.

What's a Venus Society?

Venus societies are groups of people committed to advancing the goals of TVP and a resource-based economy in the best way possible: Making it happen in real life. In every city, Venus Societies will live the dream by taking a "waste not, want not" approach to life. Read this article for more. 

What does that mean?

While still working in a monetary economy, Venus Societies will constantly aim to be as self-sufficient as possible. They will grow their own food with automated gardening, 3-D print a diverse array of products and lobby for the construction of makerspaces. They'll take what other businesses might consider "trash" and discover innovative ways to reuse it. Societies also seek donations of land and money from local philanthropists. If you got 1000 people to each donate $100, you would have enough to purchase almost all the necessary machinery.

Venus Societies will partner with local farmer's markets, stores and businesses to inform and educate them about a resource-based economy, and look for their input on planning the next stages of transition. They may even promote the use of alternative community currencies. They won't work alone- instead joining forces with other local sustainability movements and academics. Together they will build and manage the Direct-Democracy infrastructure that will allow citizens to take back control of their city.

Venus Societies aren't so much activist groups as they are ways of life. They serve to test out Resource-Based Economies on a local scale, with each member receiving an equal share of local production. Venus Societies run the members-only "warehouse stores" where they get products for "free". Put simply, it's the society that does the real on-the-ground work of preparing cities for transition.

How to reward people for supporting a Resource Based Economy: The beginnings of Global Governance

You've already read about why the rich and powerful won't stand in the way,  but what about governments? Won't they be unwilling to let go of their power? It's possible, but unlikely. Call me naive, but I believe that government, like any other human institution is made up of normal people who can be reasoned with. Once it's made clear how much better this would make life not just for us, but for them, they would likely back away. They are only doing what they feel needs to be done and despite the rumors, a lot of them actually do it because they believe they are serving the people.

We don't need government to actively support this, or any other project. All we need is for them to let events take their course. We need them to be Gorbachev instead of Stalin.

But speaking of governments, how exactly would the ones in Sociocapitalism function, especially without a steady source of tax revenue?

There will be a lot less to govern, for one. Some people think that the idea of government melting away is nonsense, and they're right. Decisions will always need to be made, and people will always be needed to make those decisions. But when you step back, it's true that there really won't be much need for large governments anymore. Think about it. When everyone's basic needs are met, most crime goes away. Somewhere around 90% of crime is drug or money-related, right? And most people turn to drugs as an escape because of a lack of economic opportunity, correct? When most of the stresses from life are removed, it's very easy to see the crime rate drop at least 95%.

Will there still be murders? Sure. There will always be a few scattered "crimes of passion" here and there, but they will be so rare they would almost be considered freak accidents. With a powerful mental health apparatus and law enforcement that focuses not just on punishment, but rewarding good behavior, it's likely that these too will drop. Robot companions will also take the edge off of loneliness.

It isn't just personal crime that will go down: On a larger level, the great crime of war will end too. When all the people in a country are well-cared for, there isn't a reason to go to war to steal others' resources. The global assembly also ensures that cities get along by providing alternate ways of conflict resolution, and as a last resort talking decisive military action against any city that dares invade another. Because of this, the need for large, centralized nation-states will go away and power will return to the city-state.

It's not utopia. It will never be utopia, because there will always be more work to do. There will always be ways to make society even better. But it's still 99% cooler than what we have now, and it's a future we should fight for.

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Government will look a lot different in a resource-based economy. It's participatory, meaning that everyone has the chance to take part in helping their city function. It's direct, meaning that you can vote directly on things that matter to you, while delegating less important votes to others. Most importantly, it's transparent- you will always know what's going on and where the money's gone.  

The greatest lie that we've been told is that the general population is too stupid to think for themselves. "The best argument against democracy.. is a conversation with your average voter", Said Winston Churchill. Do you ever stop to think why that is? Why they would purposely keep us dumbed-down, watching reality T.V? What people seem to forget is that in a resource-based economy, people would have far more time to educate themselves on the issues that matter to them. Without a job to weigh them down, citizens would take a lot more pride in their government and actually care about what it does. Many would volunteer to help out, seeing it as a great honor. There really isn't any need for taxes because nobody needs to get paid. The police do it because they want to keep their community safe, and so do the firemen. The only time taxes would be needed is if the city wants to complete a large project, and even then most funds are provided by the Global Assembly or a Confederation of Convenience.

The small amount of revenue that cities need will be provided by tribes and service/property/transaction fees. Every tribe has to give 25% of whatever revenue it earns from it's members with the cities they live in. This compares favorably with current corporate tax rates around the world, and is fair considering that cities can't charge income taxes. This tax is calculated on a per-capita basis and causes tribes to form symbiotic relationships with cities even though they are nominally separate. In return for this, cities agree to enforce tribal contracts (such as arresting and imprisoning those who break tribal law)

Service fees are charges for things such as physical stores, permits, electricity, water and sewage/garbage. These are mostly "dirty jobs" that humans will still need to do for a while, so they must be paid for. Transaction fees are assessed whenever members of two different tribes exchange money. For those that still choose to own property in an RBE, they will be taxed as usual. Home ownership won't be necessary or practical when housing is free, but the freedom to exclusively own a space will always be offered. Altogether, these represent a sizable chunk of revenue to do projects with.

All newly-built RBE cities will run on delegative democracy, a system that allows you to delegate your vote to a representative of your choice. Key word, delegate. Unlike representative democracy, you are allowed to take your vote back at any time and give it to someone else. The voting power of any one individual is based on how many other people have delegated their vote to them. This gives elected officials a powerful incentive to act in the best interests of the people at all times, or else the only vote they will have is their own. Someone who's been delegated votes can then delegate those votes to someone else, and so on. They can even split them into smaller groups and give them to different people. All of this means that democracy is far more liquid and responsive to the needs of the people. Instead of being locked in with a bad candidate for four years, you would just pick someone else. No mess, no fuss.

Because democracy is built-in, you don't just have the right to vote directly on issues at the local level. With the tools of referendum and initiative, the people always have the last word on any law created at any level of government. Gather enough signatures, and the proposed law must automatically go to referendum (or the passed law must be halted and sent back to the citizens for approval.) This is akin to Switzerland's referendum system, which has received high marks. Not only does it increase citizen engagement, it acts as yet another leash on government overreach. Previously-existing cities can keep their current system if they wish.

Sociocapitalism draws a lot from parpolity's nested council structure, which is one of the best ways to organize society in order to transmit the will of the people higher up through the levels of government while preventing tyranny. Nested councils are exactly what you'd think they are: Delegated stacks of nested councils, with each council sending a member to a higher one. What makes parpolity special is that no higher council can override the laws made by a lower one, as long as those laws only effect that particular council. In cases where proposed laws effect more than one council, the next-higher one has the authority to make decisions. When jurisdiction isn't clear, a citizen's court will be used to decide.

Because higher-level councils can't override lower ones, local sovereignty and subsidiarity is protected. Compare this to today's large, centralized nations where "one-size-fits-all" solutions are often shoved down local governments' throats. Most times, father doesn't know best. Each city and town is unique: It doesn't make sense to outsource decision-making to a group of people who
a) most likely have never visited and b) are hundreds or thousands of miles away. Democratic choices should be made at the level closest to the people, and when it comes to daily governance that level is the city. You always want to see countries breaking apart- separatist movements. Catalonia, Scotland, Flanders. It's a sign that one-size-fits all planning simply doesn't work. We already know centrally- planned economies fail, so it should be no surprise that centrally-planned governments fail too.

To defend against the tyranny of the majority, a law can be challenged in the courts to determine it's constitutionality. Each city, assembly and town has it's own constitution specifying how this would be done, and how many appeals a person may have. A few very specific types of cases can be tried in the Global Assembly's courts if one's fundamental rights have been violated.

How Nested Councils Nest

The goal of nested councils is to create small, personal lawmaking chambers where debates can be held and everyone knows' everyone else's name. For this reason the number of representatives in any single chamber is always less than the Dunbar Limit- the maximum amount of people you can form close, personal relationships with. Beyond around 150 people, it's impossible to truly "care" or see others as human beings. This article explains a lot. 

Starting at the local level, every city or group of cities with at least 10,000 people will choose four delegates: two male, and two female. Tribes will do the same. Cities and Tribes are both given free reign when it comes to deciding how to pick these delegates and organize politically. Some cities may hold elections, others may appoint, and still others might hold a lottery. It's up to them.

Each male and female pairing goes to a different assembly: One goes to the "lower house", where the amount of votes each city has is based off of its' population and the other goes to the "upper house" where each city has two votes, no matter the size. Any proposal must pass both assemblies to become law.

A grand total of 100 representatives from 50 different cities will form the first level of nested councils.

From here, the council selects another boy/girl pairing to go to the next-higher council. They do not have to both be from the same city or tribe. These delegations are retractable at any time, but the delegates aren't bound to vote as their sending council might wish. Otherwise there wouldn't be a point to the system in the first place, and everyone may as well just vote on everything. All delegates are required to regularly keep in contact with their sending councils and update them on current events.

This process repeats itself until it gets to the highest-level council, the Global Assembly. Things are a little different at this level. For one, the tribe's and the city's nested-council structures both merge into one, symbolizing the unity and bond both share. At lower levels, they are separate entities. Because the Global Assembly makes choices that effect the entire world, both tribes and cities must work together in order to implement them and ensure they are the right ones.

Make no mistake: The Global Assembly is NOT a world government. It does not tell cities or tribes what to do. We're trying to get away from "one size fits all" policy, remember? It's functions are very limited, mostly acting as a watchdog and steward of global resources. They are the ones who maintain the automated systems that underpin society, and ensure that everyone has equal access to them. The Global Assembly is legally barred from discrimination, meaning anyone and everyone must have access to it's services at no cost. They are less interested in what cities teach in schools, and more interested in making sure everyone has food to eat and a roof over their head. After all, no matter what you believe in you still need basic necessities to survive. There are only a few crimes that the Global Assembly will drop the hammer on a city for, and one of them is denying citizens access to their basic resources. For the most part, citizens won't need to think about the GA that much. They don't intervene in local politics. It'll just be there, quietly making sure everything is operational and running smoothly. The Global Assembly also has a few other important roles which are described later in this section.

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Thanks to the magic of exponents, you only need four levels of nested councils to represent the entire world!

Assuming that each pair of representatives represents 10,000 people and there are 7 billion people in the world (in reality it will be much larger because most cities will contain far more than 10,000 people..)

Assume all councils except the highest have 100 members. As there are two councils at each level, the total number of councils is twice what the raw population data would suggest.

The first, local level of councils will each represent 500,000 people. There will be (140,000 x 2) = 280,000.
The next level of councils will each represent 2.5 million people. There will only be (2800 x 2) = 5600.
The third level's councils each represent 125 million people. There will only be (56 x 2) = 128! of them.

The fourth level is the global assembly, representing all 7 billion of us. There is only one, but both assemblies have a larger number of members + a randomly selected contingent to ensure everyone has a fair chance of entering. The tribe/city selected gets to automatically send a delegate directly to the global assembly for a period of two years.

Structure of the Tribal Assembles

The tribe's nested councils are organized in almost exactly the same way, melding with cities' at the top. Because people are members of both a city and a tribe, individuals are represented "twice".
Cities and tribes each represent separate and distinct interests: Cities are physical and political while tribes are ethereal, economic entities. Consider tribes the successor to today's multinational corporations: Again, just like stock one can invest in multiple tribes, trade their votes or even sell them. Within tribes, decision-making relies on liquid democracy, with each shareholder receiving an amount of votes equal to all the wealth they've contributed to the transition.

The factors that determine votes in tribal nested councils are different too: In the "lower house", the amount of voting power a tribe has is determined by the total number of people who are a part of it. In the "upper house", total voting power is determined by the combined wealth of all citizens.

Other than this, the councils nest in exactly the same way. You can find out more about tribes here.

Function of the Global Assembly

Think of the Global Assembly as a giant referee. Their main purpose is to protect and defend local sovereignty, peacefully resolve disputes between tribes and cities, enforce fundamental rights and freedoms, and, most importantly build, own and operate the automated systems and infrastructure that will form the backbone of society.

The global assembly creates a blank slate that allows cities and people to freely experiment, innovate and find the place that's right for them. They don't do much "governing". Of course, only the global assembly has the right to declare war, admit new countries or cities, and sanction tribes and cities.

Fundamental Rights and Freedoms

The global assembly exists to defend these rights which belong to all human beings at birth. The global assembly has the right to use military force if necessary in order to protect them. You will not find many western values here, because this is a global assembly which intends to unite the entire world. In order to do this, we must recognize that different cultures have different concepts of "rights" that might not always mesh well with western ones. Some ideas, such as democracy will not work everywhere. Because of this, local governments, under the principle of "Local Sovereignty" have the right and privilege to determine which type of government and how many rights they will provide. Instead of attempting to force existing cities to adopt our values, all future cities that the global assembly builds will guarantee the rights we know and love in a special charter.

Right to leave: This is the most important right of all. At any time and for any reason, a person has the inalienable right to leave a community. No community may require residents to ask for permission before exiting. Forcibly restraining someone who wants to leave is against international law. This even extends to those convicted of a crime or undergoing criminal trial, with one caveat: They have to find one city willing to accept them, and show proof that they've been accepted. If no other town will accept them, then the individual will have to submit to whatever punishment the community chooses, or be banished to the wilds*. In general, the worst punishment a community will be able to offer is banishment. If someone returns to a community they have been banished from, they consent to being executed or at the very least waive the rest of their fundamental rights. The right to leave does not imply that you can take anything with you; you may be reasonably required to turn in all physical possessions that you do not own.

*"The wilds" is a fenced-off natural area without any modern amenities. In the wilds, the lawless state of nature reigns supreme and there is no way to call for help. It functions as an open-air international prison for the worst offenders. Keep in mind that banishment to the wilds will only be for the most grievous offenses. It's highly unlikely no town will be willing to accept you if you just skipped paying a parking ticket.

The time you will be allowed to search for an asylum community may be legally limited to no less than 2 weeks.

Right to Resources: Besides acting as an intermediary between tribes and cities, one of the Global Assembly's most important duties is making sure that everyone has the basic resources they need to survive. As you read earlier, the Global Assembly manages the means of production to ensure all people have access to it and that no one country abuses it to it's advantage. In practice, this means that they use technology to grow crops, provide healthcare, build housing, infrastructure and schools (even entire cities), all using little to no human labor. It also provides a basic income to every man, woman, and child each month deposited directly into their accounts. All of this is freely provided to everyone in the world. One of the biggest no-nos for any city is to deny citizens access to their basic resources without cause. The Global Assembly will not tolerate it under any circumstances, and any regime that does so will be labeled an enemy of the people and swiftly removed.


Right to enter and travel: Free movement of people is a fundamental requirement for any new global civilization. Everyone has the right to move anywhere else and live, as long as they have not been convicted of a crime, or anything else that is illegal in that jurisdiction. (In those cases it's up to the receiving city whether or not to accept them.) No passports or travel documents will be required: All necessary information will be found on your wrist, as part of your payband. You will also have a "digital passport" on your smartphone that lists all the places you've been. At the station, all you will need to do is wave your wrist to pass. The right to travel and stay doesn't mean you'll be granted residency rights at your destination: That's the responsibility of local authorities.

Residency means that you will pay less for city services and gain the right to vote in that cities' elections. Whether or not you will be allowed to hold multiple citizenships is up to the city.

Currently, the main motivation for movement restrictions is economic: People are afraid that immigrants will rush in and steal all the jobs! In a resource-based economy where work is optional and everyone is well-provided for, this is a moot point and there's no reason to limit freedom of movement.

Right to be informed: Because every city is an independent entity, there will undoubtedly be a wide variety of unique laws and cultures. It is the responsibility of the city to compile a list of "things you should know" before you come to immigrate or visit, and make this information publicly available.

Miscellaneous other duties of the Global Assembly

Tribetaker- Tribes are entities that run off of the Global Assembly's platform. Because tribes are digital, it's a good idea to think of them as smaller communities that are part of a larger whole. If a tribe has been ruled against in court and ordered to pay fines, only the Global Assembly can enforce the verdict. It rarely has to do so because most tribes voluntarily cooperate.

Fiduciary Intermediary- The 25% income tax on Tribes is first paid to the Global Assembly, then distributed to cities monthly as a lump sum. This is more convenient for cities because they usually contain citizens who are members of many tribes. It would be too time-consuming to negotiate payment schedules individually with each of them. The Global Assembly does not keep any part of this tax.

Generousity- Recognizing that when people are happy, the world is a better and safer place, The G.A. operates a "positive policing" force that rewards people for doing good deeds. These rewards may take the form of increased income, random gifts or vacations. Generousity in particular (the intelligence agency that handles this type of thing), is always watching and rewarding those who help their community.

As part of the state security and mental health apparatus, Generousity takes care of the "social" side of society. After all, even if all of someone's material needs are met, if their social and emotional needs are ignored they may still turn to violence. The greatest threat to a new, peaceful and stable world order isn't terrorism, it's mental health.  Generousity will use international intelligence to predict and remediate threats before they have a chance to become hazardous. People are encouraged to report suspicious behavior to them in exchange for a reward, and they operate an anonymous chat/mail exchange for people who want to get things off of their chest. Generousity's mission is a world where everyone feels loved and cared for. Although it sounds altruistic, it has everything to do with security and preventing, as much as possible, "random" acts of violence.

Global Defense Force and International Rescue Service- Each ensure the security of cities and people, respectively. The GDF acts as the military wing (all-volunteer, by the way), and the IRS rescues people who are in dangerous situations.

Court of Last Resort- The Global Assembly operates a network of courts for parties who have not found suitable settlements elsewhere. These are the courts someone would go to sue a tribe for breaching their contract.

Structure of the Global Assembly

The centerpiece is a bicameral parliament that's fittingly enough, called the "Global Assembly". Consisting of two houses, it's main purpose is to function as a nominating body to select administrators and managers for local production units. Legislating is a secondary function of the body. It can pass a resolution on anything, but in order to be binding it has to be an issue that a) effects the entire world and b) was already tried at lower levels of government but found to be lacking or c) is explicitly defined in it's (very narrow) constitutional limits.

The upper house, the House of Regent, doubles as the highest assembly for tribes. Votes in it are distributed based on wealth.

The lower house, the House of Representatives, doubles as the highest assembly for cities. Votes there are distributed based on population.

Any measure or proposed candidate nomination should pass both houses with a simple majority in order to become law. If either house vetoes a bill the other house has already passed, that veto can be overridden with a 2/3 majority. The size of each of these houses is fixed by law, but as a rule the upper house must be smaller and all of the lower councils must be guaranteed seats. An equal amount of extra seats must be provided for randomly-selected cities and tribes to join.

Any single delegated member to the assembly has a maximum term length of 5 years before needing to be replaced or rotated.

How does my vote count?

While you don't get to directly elect the representatives, you still have an incredible amount of control over the political process via initiative, referendum and recall.

Via initiative, citizens can directly propose new laws at any level of government once they gather enough signatures. If the legislature does not act on the proposal within the timeframe specified in the referendum or votes it down, it automatically goes to the citizens for approval. Even constitutional amendments may be suggested via initiative, although they require twice the number of signatures.*

With referendum, citizens have the authority to challenge any law passed as long as it effects them and they gather enough signatures from other people effected by the law. Referendum doesn't just extend to laws, it also applies to any act of government, including judicial rulings.*

With recall, you can remove any public official from office by forcing a special election once you get enough people to sign a petition. This does not apply to the first level of nested councils.*

The number of signatures required for these tools are all the same at each level.

Level 1: Local Councils representing 500K or more: (does not apply)
Level 2: Regional Councils representing 2.5M or more: 250,000 signatures
Level 3: "National" Councils representing 125M or more: 500,000 signatures
Level 4: Global Assembly representing 7 billion or more: 2.5 million signatures

*All of these tools only apply to cities' nested councils, and none of them apply to the first level of nested councils. Tribal councils are exempt from this, except for the House of Regent.


How is the Global Assembly Funded?

The global assembly does not directly tax anyone, but does have the ability to tax tribes. Instead, they withhold from the basic income that they distribute. Each time a basic income is given, the global assembly credits itself with an equal amount of basic income to use for projects around the world. They can change the amount that they credit themselves with, thus changing the amount of basic income.

A day in the life

Describe what a day in the life would look like

Confederations of Convenience

What are they? Simply put, confederations are groups of cities and towns that band together to complete projects too big to do on their own. Things such as new railways, airports, dams, or collective defense installations are too complicated and effect too many people for just one town to control. For these, confederations will be formed that allow cities to freely work together for the common good.

These confederations will provide most services we currently think of countries or states providing now, and as always cities will be free to leave at any time.

While confederations have a considerable degree of power, ultimately they are less powerful than tribes because only tribes have access to the global society (a supersized version of the UN), and completely control the economic sphere of life. Both tribes and confederations help plan and manage The Venus Project.

The resource-based-economy is planned for on the basis of self-organizing confederations, which will tend to come together in the most efficient way.

Because confederations are self-forming, the cities within them will tend to get along better than today's often grumpy neighbors. Nothing says that cities in a confederation have to be coterminous, although common sense would prevent a city joining a confederation 1000 miles away.

It's that "of convenience" part that matters the most though: These confederations could be created to design and build a single project, then disappear when they're finished. Flexibility is key to maintaining freedom.

Let's bring democracy back: How to change the world, one city at a time.

It's a Catch-22. If you want to change the world, then you need to get into politics. But people won't vote for you unless you're supported by the establishment. And as we all know, the establishment would hate to see things change.

Everyone knows that our electoral system is broken- yet we still vote, because we don't really have a choice. If we vote, at least we get a short burst of "pride", but that pride is quickly tempered by the fact that, aside from a few local races our vote almost never counts. And even when our candidate gets elected, there's no way to keep them accountable throughout their term! If they make a bad choice but also make good choices, it becomes hard to decide whether or not you will vote for them again.

Maybe in the 1800s we needed a system of representative government, but today we obviously don't. The first hurdle to any sort of political change is getting into power- and this is where a lot of young movements go wrong- or right, depending on your level of realism. What's been missing all this time is a widely-accepted and safe way for the people to express their will on public policy issues. I'm not talking about corruptible small-sample -size surveys, or easily hacked internet tallies and opinion polls. 

I'm talking about a real direct-democracy voting system that is always on, all the time. A place where citizens can go to vote 7 days a week,

One of the biggest hurdles to e-democracy has been the fact that many home computers and smartphones are riddled with malware and viruses. Not only could these viruses spy on the user and steal highly sensitive personal info, they could alter the vote in ways that would be impossible to detect. This is why we go to such great lengths to produce application-specific voting machines that are harder to tamper with, and even then we only bring them out once every four years. We also hold elections in well-trafficked, public places to ensure people are not coerced into choosing a specific candidate. This poses a great many limitations for any home-internet voting system, which are more or less impossible to solve today. 

Even with these challenges, nothing changes the fact that our current political system is broken beyond repair- with the levers of power kept far away from the general public. This is a problem that must be solved if we want to move forward with any type of proposal. There must be a direct link between the citizens and their government. 

The secret then, is to continue holding elections in public areas, but instead of holding them once a year, hold them all year long. Citizens will be able to walk into any partnered business or school, swipe an identity card and make their voices heard when it comes to public policy issues.

The voting itself will happen on locked-down hardware: Laptops or smartphones that are not only chained to the desk, they will require a special code to change or alter the software. This is not unlike the filters that exist on school or work computers. This password will not be known by any one person- it will be split up, and placed in the hands of several trustees. The code may be well over 100 characters long, and in order for any changes in software to occur, all the trustees (or people who know the code) would need to be present. It would be best if a random group of citizens were chosen for this purpose, as they are less likely to become corrupted. When it comes time to access the central computer and unlock the results, people will be brought in one at a time, never meeting the other trustees.  

These laptops would be available in any private business that wants them, and an app would show the locations of them in your city. All software and hardware would be open-source for transparency. The genius of this proposal is that it allows everyone to vote any time they wish, not on people, but on policies. 

In order to authenticate voters, citizens would only need to swipe an identification card into an e-reader, not unlike the current system in Estonia: http://www.economist.com/news/international/21605923-national-identity-scheme-goes-global-estonia-takes-plunge

These new computers would not have any internet access beyond a very limited set of websites- all directly dealing with the democratic process. Here, citizens could view proposals, communicate and edit them. Note that each time a person attempted to visit an unauthorized website this attempt would be logged and published.

Businesses that have a voting terminal within them would see increased traffic and purchases, likely gaining a boost of goodwill too. The hardware exists and can be bought cheaply, with many computers available for under $200.

The software for liquid delegative democracy is also freely available and open source. There are many options, but helios and liquidfeedback are two of the best.

In order to implement the policies the citizenry chooses, (first at a local level, then state, then national), a new political party will need to be formed- but this one will be unique. It will have no platform, and only do what the citizens tell it to through the voting terminals. Beyond this, it will act as a major "disruptor"- shouting down politicians who don't follow the will of the people, demanding resignations, and making it political suicide not to listen to the demos. It will be incredibly hard for politicians to justify going directly against their constituents, unless they prefer an early retirement.

Of course, this party's ultimate goal will be transition of the world to a global liquid democracy- and this is a giant step in that direction. Eventually after this party gathers enough power it would simply abolish itself, and pass a law stating that from here on out, the word of the demos *is* law.

With democracy re-established, it will finally become possible for us to move towards a resource-based economy, and this political party will pave the way for sister organizations such as TZM and Copiosis to operate in each town. These organizations (remember tribes?) will take over many of the current roles of government, and said party would constantly cut taxes, take payment in alternative currencies and promote sustainable development, ensuring re-election.

Ideally, we want to make it impossible for any candidate to get elected unless they agree to vote the way the people do- and after a few years, representative government will be completely superfluous.

This is how we win: City by City, Street by Street. 

Step one: Canvass local businesses to see if they would allow a voting terminal to be placed in their store. They have the freedom to set polling hours and days, and the app would recognize this when you search for open voting booths.

Step Two: Lay the groundwork and "register" voters. In comes the on-the-ground political organizing. We will give everyone a smartcard they can use to sign in and vote. Come next election we will win in a landslide, based on a platform of lower taxes, deregulation and direct democracy.

Step Three: Pave the way for the next level- Set up and invite sister organizations who can lay the groundwork for winning the next-higher level of government, whether this means protesting undemocratic political candidates (who go against their own constituents) or supporting policies conducive to an RBE (such as open borders, basic income etc). By this time, thanks to the sister organizations, many of the homeless will be housed and fed through great advancements in technology like automated farming and earthbag construction. Citizens of the cities will begin to see changes as well, as free food and other products are beginning to flow in. Investment will begin in building the new, efficient cities and the fever will spread.

Step Four: Create Local Confederations Of Convenience: Using the internet, groups of political leadership in certain cities and towns will connect together and form regional policy, laying the groundwork for a resource-based-economy. In the future, with each city being independent, confederations will provide services such as defense and policy co-ordination that can't efficiently be provided by one city on their own. These confederations will replace all current nations. Most will be rather small, but bigger confederations may be possible. Ultimately it's up to the voters of a city to decide if they want to join.

Step Five: Global domination: Not really. At this point, the citizens will have all the power, so the party's work will be done. With the direct-democracy system fully built-out, the party will disband itself and declare power officially devolved to the people. Not only will the party be dissolved, but borders and countries will be too. The world will finally be an open place.

While this change is occurring, new apps can be created to connect people who want to help their city. A good idea would be a "Cityvolunteer" application which would allow a group of people to crowdfund local improvement projects.

Localized Manufacturing and Automated Agriculture: What you need to make an RBE in your city.

When it comes to making a Resource-Based-Economy happen in real life, it's best to start small. Really small. Like your city. I propose a "food first" policy when it comes to automation, where we automate the production of the basic needs of life first, then work our way up to producing more complex goods. For our purposes, this means food be the top priority, then housing. This new approach isn't about building shiny new cities or breathtaking vistas: It's about producing real, tangible results for all the time that's been invested, and allowing members to work less. Everything mentioned here works together to give members a better quality of life at a lower cost.

Automated Agriculture

Steady, free food should be a right for all people. Everyone could grow food at home, but most don't because it's too much work. "Food First" means that we would use technology such as farmbot to take care of TVP members' gardens for them- and eventually produce an overabundance of food to freely give away. Some local ordinances will need to be changed to allow home gardening, which will require getting into politics.  Alternately, we could seek farmland donations from people interested in assisting the project. While the current version of farmbot runs on a system of rails, an outdoor version would probably use wheels and raised beds. Each raised bed would contain an RFID chip that had information about it's position relative to the other raised beds, and farmbot would know what types of plants were inside. An interesting effect of knowing exactly where plants are is that you can plant "polycrops"- ecosystems of plants that work together in the way nature intended. With automation, Permaculture just got a whole lot easier. Every few days, a truck with several farmbots would pass by your house and take care of your gardens for you. Even the harvest could be done automatically. While in the beginning people would need to volunteer to drive the truck, self-driving vehicles could later make their daily rounds unattended.

When it comes to meat and dairy needs, automatic farming can shine too. Any farmer in the rural areas of town who wanted to join the project would be welcome to donate their time and resources. As technology improves, even this would become unnecessary. Chicken production is already largely automated, and automated dairy farms have already been tested out. In keeping with the "waste nothing" ethos of a RBE, even the lawn clippings from grass would be used to feed cows and goats. Of course, the lawnmowers would be electric so the grass wouldn't become tainted with gasoline. Localized food production will allow members to save money on groceries. 

All Hail The Sharing Economy!

One of the core tenets of a RBE has always been "Access Abundance"- the idea that everyone really doesn't need one of everything. We see sharing services such as Taskrabbit and Lyft exploding in popularity. Tool lending libraries are starting to pop up in cities all over the globe. But what's been missing is a free and open source alternative that allows communities to easily set up trust networks. Like many of the things we need, it already exists.

Meat Joatu.

Short for "Jack of All Trades Universe", Joatu is an open-source community marketplace you can use to exchange nearly anything you can think of. With Joatu, you can keep track of your trades and build a reputation- all without using money. It's purpose is to build "vibrant communities", and with a little on-the-ground promotion, I think it can work.

Localized Manufacturing and Closed-Loop Recycling

This is the big one. Obviously, the goal of a RBE is "zero waste"- getting the most out of every product from cradle to grave. The Venus Society in each city would live by this principle: "Waste Nothing, Want Nothing". In practice, this means that everything would be "kept in the system", recycled, and used to make new products. You can call it "Trash to Treasure" if you want.

Every member's home would have a special trash can with several holes in it. In reality, this is a recycling bin. One hole is for paper waste, another is for metals, yet another is for plastic and the last is for "Organic" Waste. I don't see glass being used that often, but if it is it could have it's own hole too.
When the "trashman" comes, the entire trashcan is taken and a new, clean one provided. At the processing facility, waste is seperated for reuse:

Paper, Wood and organic waste is used for biofuel.
Plastic is melted and formed into filaments for 3-D printing new products
Metals are separated and go into induction furnaces for reprocessing. Open Source Ecology already has most of this stuff covered, including the machine tools you'd need to build functioning products.

When you look at everything cities throw away, it becomes clear that if all that waste was constantly reused, cities would always have enough resources to support themselves.

In the beginning, you won't be able to make everything. Advanced components like computer chips and other technology is still too expensive to produce locally- if done the old fashioned way. However, using direct-write electron beam lithography, it's possible to create computer chips in your average university research lab. In advanced stages of RBE development, it'd make sense to crowdfund the purchase of an electron microscope and use it for semiconductor production.

Even with the limited variety of products you can make, there's still plenty you can do. You can manufacture clothing, chairs, cups, bears- just take a look at Thingverse and let your imagination run wild!

And as always, an equal share of goods will be distributed freely to all members at no charge. Read below for more info.

How will you distribute goods?

That's a very good question. In a resource based economy, everyone will be entitled to an equal share in the world's production. This is a birthright, and it isn't transferrable or up for sale. But what does that mean? You can't just give everyone a chair if you produce 7 billion chairs monthly- some people won't want a chair, they might want something else entirely, or nothing at all.

It's here that the ideas of "RBE" and "UBI" collide. An equal share in the world's production could more appropriately be called an equal share in the value of the world's production. How would we allocate this? You guessed it: "money". But in sociocapitalism, money has a vastly different purpose than it has today. For one, these credits can only be used to buy goods- and once the goods are bought, they are destroyed. (The market for services uses social capital.) There would be a finite amount of credits too- exactly enough to buy all the goods on the store shelves. No more inflation, period.

What's more interesting than the credits themselves is the price system. How, exactly do we determine how much a particular good should cost? While it would be easy to do this at the local level, it definitely would be harder at the global level. Some people argue that a "free market" is the only way to do this, but I disagree. The free market as it is today leaves out many of the bigger costs, like the incredible damage to the environment and public health. Higher crime, corruption and even terrorism isn't accounted for either. The most important thing of all, the cost in human lives is also given no value. Externalizing all of these costs can only harm society at large.

When we think of "cost", we usually think of money and the price system. Price is an important way to allocate scarce goods, no doubt- but deciding who lives and who dies based on who has the most pieces of paper with funny pictures on them isn't just stupid, it's inhumane. So can we separate "price" from "money"? Of course we can.

Let's start with the basics: A resource-based economy is an economy based on resources. Simple enough, right? So we want to always keep a running total of how many resources are available, and compare those amounts. We'll call this "Scarcity", and the higher the scarcity of something, the higher the price. Scarcity can be measured based on available supply of an item vs the demand.

Next, we need to calculate the "Labour" that goes into producing a product, and since labour is just Time x Energy, both of these values are directly measurable in seconds and joules, respectively. So for a computer, we will measure how much time it takes for us to gather the necessary raw materials, manufacture the final product, and most importantly, ship it to your destination. We'll also measure how much energy it took to extract the raw materials, run the machines and transport them to the store.* This gives a great incentives** towards designing methods of production that use less time and energy. There's no doubt that this final number will be large, maybe in the millions- so we'll want to divide it by 1000, or any number that makes the final price human-readable.

Price = Scarcity x Time x Energy

*An important note about energy: For "natural" products that grow on trees or inside animals, the energy only includes what it took to prepare and transport the finished product for sale. Direct solar energy is always free.

It would be a ridiculous idea to get rid of prices and money altogether, and by reworking them we can design a stable system with little to no inflation or externalized costs.

**Most of this really falls under "Economics", but the question of how you motivate people to innovate and improve society when everything is free is a good one. Although it's been proven that money is a bad motivator, saying that people will work just for the joy of it isn't satisfactory to most people. They have a good reason to be skeptical- communism failed because people were paid the same for doing terrible work.

In this case, things are very different. While everyone receives the same amount of good credits monthly, nothing is stopping them from earning social capital by doing things for other people. In this sense, social capital is a lot like today's money. If you invent a new industrial process that saves time and energy, you will receive all the saved good credits for a year.

So why this, and why now?

By growing food and manufacturing products locally, you are bringing a small-scale version of an RBE to life. You won't be able to produce everything you need at first, and that's okay. It's about taking real steps towards sustainability. There is absolutely no need to go out and buy large tracts of land to produce communes- besides being remote, most new "intentional communities" don't survive because taking care of them is too much work, or they lack a steady income stream. It would only be wise to establish new cities once we have the proper technology to care for them. This is why getting people who can help develop the technology is so important, and why we will eventually need to find investors.

New Technology: Payband

January 1, 2028 - Just outside of Chicago, Illinois

It's a cold day outside, and winter is in full swing. The party ended a few hours ago and it was finally time to go home. Thanks to automated vehicles, you didn't have to worry about being safe to drive- but your smartphone was broken so you couldn't hail one. Shivering, you walk down the street and come to a bus stop. You look down, disappointed. You still have 5 more miles to go, and you can barely walk as it is. The forecast says it's going to get even colder within the hour. Luckily, the city's transit system is always on time. Within a few minutes, a large white vehicle smoothly glides to a stop in front of you. To your surprise, it has no wheels! It's a hovercraft, and it floats on air instead. You want to ride, but you don't have any money in your pocket. Ten years ago, you'd be in big trouble.

Luckily, you don't need money anymore. You wave your wrist in front of the payment terminal and grab a seat- your bracelet takes care of the rest. It fits snugly, and is completely customized. From the color to the style, everything was made just for you. The band may be small, but inside lies amazing technology that lets you pay for things with the flick of a wrist. No more fumbling around for loose change and dropping dollar bills, no more worrying about money being lost or stolen. The best thing about your paybracelet is that it only works for you. Besides remembering your unique biological signature, your bracelet is linked with your handprint- something that's unique to every individual and nearly impossible to fake. Using palm-vein scanning technology, whenever you go to the store to buy something, all you'll have to do is wave your hand over the palm reader. No PIN numbers, no secret codes. There's nothing to remember or write down so there's nothing to steal. You also don't need to touch anything, which will help prevent the spread of germs.

Palm-Vein Scanning

Vein scanning is much more secure than using fingerprints or facial recognition, because the veins are *inside* your body. Unlike your fingerprint, which can be lifted from any flat surface, it's nearly impossible to counterfeit your hand-vein pattern. 

Biological Signature with Nymi

That's not all. It may be called a "payband", but this bracelet can do much, much more than just pay for your drink. In a resource based economy, your payband is your lifeline and best friend. It's not just for young people or old people- it's for everyone. Using your wristband, you will be able to sign in to websites, unlock doors, cars and even your home. Lost keys, just like money will become a thing of the past. You'll be able to meet up with other members of your tribe and form groups just by tapping your bands together.  Your bracelet will constantly monitor your health and wellbeing, along with providing location data to your tribe's emergency center. Thanks to the two-way nature of privacy, you will always be able to see who is accessing your data and where they are. Unlike government, if a tribe is not respecting your privacy you can fire them and choose another one! The pressure of competition will naturally lead tribes to find new ways to protect privacy. Still, in case something goes wrong, you will be able to get help at the push of a button- and the police or ambulance will know exactly where you are, wherever you are. Speak into the bracelet's microphone and let them know what's wrong. Fire, heart attack, sudden fall, or downed power lines; Every second counts in an emergency, and this bracelet will undoubtedly save countless lives.

The bracelet can measure your blood pressure, heart rate, nerve function and galvanic skin response. If you place it on your chest (like a stethoscope) it can also measure your breathing rate. While the bracelet itself won't have any screens, you will be able to wirelessly connect it to your smartphone to view data and send money. Did I mention it's completely waterproof?

What about the batteries? None needed. No charging time required. Thanks to the magic of piezoelectricity, simply walking around or shaking the bracelet will be enough to power it. To supplement the piezoelectric generator, flexible solar panels will wrap all the way around the edges of the bracelet in order to power it.

http://www.gizmag.com/wearable-thermoelectric-generator/31617/
http://www.geeky-gadgets.com/solarhug-bracelet-solar-powered-external-backup-battery-19-12-2014/

Payments

These bracelets use harmless NFC and RFID tags to communicate to payment readers. Like today's smart cards, they also contain a low-power microchip. If you tap your bracelet with any phone, a digital ID will pop up, giving you easy identity verification.

"Lollapalooza goes cashless"
http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/lollapalooza-goes-cashless-digital-wristbands-158661

"Bpay contactless payment system"
http://www.barclaycard.com/news/bpay-band-launches.html
http://www.wantchinatimes.com/news-subclass-cnt.aspx?id=20150220000004&cid=1204


Fitness and Health Band

http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/27/the-mood-ring-gets-its-quantified-self-update-with-the-wme-wristband/
https://jawbone.com/blog/up3-wearable-heart-rate-monitor/

As you can see, while the idea may sound farfetched, bracelets like this already exist! We only need to bring the separate functions together.

Measuring Social Capital

From here: http://fueledbyfriendship.blogspot.com/2015/02/what-is-sociocapitalism.html

We're living in a digital world. This generation spends more time online than ever before, and parents often think of it as a waste. But instead, what if spending time online connecting with your friends was a way to earn money? Think about it. You post videos to Youtube, say funny things on Twitter and upload amazing pictures to Instagram. All these are examples of things that add value to society- yet we don't get paid a penny for them. I'm sure you're laughing right now. "Me retweeting that funny cat video isn't worth anything" you think. But it does. Facebook and Twitter make millions because of the community we built, but an artist who spends hours painting pictures on Deviantart doesn't make a dime.

Why? Doesn't creativity count? Tsu is on the right track by giving their users a portion of the advertising revenue they bring in, but why not take it further? In today's world, views and likes are a new form of social currency. They're a status symbol and a harbinger of digital wealth, a quick snapshot of what the world thinks of you. No longer do we look to see if you have fancy watches or cars, we check how many subscribers you have on Youtube, or how much karma you have on Reddit. What if we could take this snapshot with us, wherever we go?

This is social capital- the inherent value found in what you do and who you know. Until today, there was no direct way of measuring it. Thanks to the internet, that's changed. We have the ability to harness massive amounts of data and gain insights into a person's trustworthiness, responsiveness and more. It's a near future where your reputation is gold- giving you access to free goods and services from others. Your social capital will allow other people to trust you, and it'll let you trust other people. We already are starting to see baby steps towards reputation-ranking services such as reputation.com and trustcloud, but we're still waiting on something that will bring all your data together. Today, your Ebay seller score, your Airbnb trust ranking and Uber score are each separated into walled gardens. Tomorrow that won't be the case- your reputation and social ranking will be easily accessible on a single page, and constantly grow each time you "buy" a good or service from someone else. Of course you won't actually need to buy anything, because thanks to automation everything is free in a resource-based-economy.

In order to directly calculate how much social capital someone has, it's necessary to use an algorithm. This formula will evaluate the depth and strength of a person's human relationships, along with how widely their influence reaches. While using social media to determine the amount of social capital someone has can never capture everything they do, currently it's the only way to directly measure how much society values someone without resorting to intrusive surveys or subjective value judgments.

Keeping in mind what social capital is (the collective value of a human's social networks), we can separate this value into two broad categories:

"Depth"- The strength and intensity of someone's relationships.
"Breadth"- How many relationships someone has or how far their influence reaches.

A great example of this difference would be comparing someone who has a few, very close friends to an internet celebrity who has millions of casually engaged followers she rarely speaks to. In order for a relationship to be "deep", it needs to be reciprocal- I have to return your favors. Measuring depth is much harder than measuring breadth, because while you can easily count the followers or unique views a person has to see how widely their influence reaches, it's a lot harder to measure how intense a relationship is. Both are equally important when it comes to evaluating social capital.

The four types of online relationships.

Deep + Narrow: Someone with a small circle of friends who are deeply engaged with each other, or highly interested in a single topic/range of topics.

Shallow + Narrow: All new website users start here- with a shallow or nonexistent circle of friends, and a microscopic influence.

Deep + Broad: Comparatively rare, this is a person with a large following who regularly interacts with their fanbase.

Shallow + Broad: The initial example of an internet celebrity who rarely "Gets into the comments" and talks to fans.

These can apply to communities as much as they can apply to people.

Social capital is earned whenever someone likes, views, shares or otherwise positively interacts with content you produce on the web. It's also produced when you form deep friendships with other people. It's lost when these friendships are broken. This isn't limited to social networks as we know them today, but specialty websites such as art portfolios, design catalogs and even video games can all count towards your earnings. In order to distinguish actual views from fake activity, only activity that's done while a user is "signed in" with a specific account will be counted. Needless to say, a person can only have one "money" account per website that's connected to their true identity.

When we want to actually add up the amount of views and likes a person receives, immediately there's a problem: How much are they worth? Obviously likes aren't worth as much as subscribers, but exactly how much more they are worth varies. For our purposes we will use this scale.

1 point- a like or a view.
2 points- an add (to a collection) or favorite.
5 points- a share or a comment.
10 points- a new subscriber/friend/use of a product or service.*

Each time something you create is used in a new invention or product created by someone else you will earn 10 points. For physical inventions this reward continues each time the product is bought, for virtual products it only occurs once. So if you create a new kind of component used in a smartphone, and 10 million of those phones are bought, you then earn 100 million points. If you create a song and it's used in 10 million other videos (unlikely, but it happens), that counts for 10 million points.

Some notes:

The total value of all social capital is limited to twice the value of the basic income provided to everyone each month. The percentage of social capital each person earns monthly determines how many BI credits or T-Notes it's worth.

*Partial Social Capital will never be given, the amount will be rounded up or down.

One somewhat important aspect of social capital is that it accumulates- but not over time. If you get people with a lot of Social Capital to talk to you, it will increase your social capital too. In general this means that if a person with a lot of followers follows you your social capital will grow as if their followers followed you as well. If someone with a lot of favorites favorites your tweet, the effect will be the same. This will not show up publicly on your profile, and you will not be able to transfer this effect to others. Still, this will be a big help to smaller accounts just getting off the ground.


While that's fine for measuring the breadth of someones' social reach, it's not enough for deriving the depth.

To do this, we must consider what makes a good friendship. Time is definitely one thing- You generally get to know people better the longer you know them. Frequency is also nice to have- You'd like a friend to contact you often so you can talk to each other and have real conversations. Reciprocity is the third and arguably most important- if you do something for a friend, you would like if they did something for you at some point in the future.

Keeping this in mind, we can devise a simple scale based on reciprocity and the average amount of it found on a specific network. "0" will be the average amount of reciprocity, while "100" will be complete reciprocity (every time someone watches you, retweets you, you watch and retweet back). If your levels of reciprocity are less than the average, your score will be negative and it can actually take away from your social capital. No "friendship" will begin until those involved have mutually followed each other on any platform.

Here's how we will handle each of these three quantities.

Time- How long have you been mutual friends with someone? This one is very straightforward. We would just measure the amount of time it's been since you followed someone, and use it to compute the next value. Time is not measured on it's own 0-100 scale.

Frequency: How often do you speak to your friend? How much time do you spend communicating with them? This includes the time spent typing messages and voice chat. Compare this to the average on the 0-100 scale.

Reciprocity: How often do you return the behavior of others? This is in general, not just for friends. If someone leaves a comment on your post, do you comment on theirs? If someone watches you, do you watch back? How much time do you spend on your friend's profile compared to how much time they spend on yours? There are many more possible questions, and reciprocity could be applied to any social behavior.
Zero is average reciprocity, and 100 is total reciprocity. Most people will fall somewhere in between.

Engagement: What percentage of your audience regularly interacts with you? If that interaction is reciprocal, it's value is doubled. 0%-100%

What do we do with these values?

Simple. "Depth" acts as a multiplying factor that levels the playing field between those with a lot of social capital, and those with little. It screens out people with a ton of followers who do nothing, while rewarding those who have active and devoted followings of any size. It can have a value anywhere between -100% and +100%, and this percentage is multiplied with your "breadth" score in order to increase or decrease it. For example, if you start off with a breadth score of 23000 and have a "depth" score of -17%, your final score will be 23000 -(.17 x 23000) = 19090. Only negative depth scores lower your total, zero or positive percentages will have no effect or increase it, respectively.

Depth is calculated by adding your Frequency, Reciprocity and Engagement values together, then dividing them by three.

Distributing and Tallying Social Capital

Social capital is measured and distributed on a monthly basis. In order to prevent rampant inflation, unused social capital from a previous month cannot be used next month. There's a simple reason for that: Likes and views aren't scarce. Me liking your tweet doesn't mean there are less likes in the world. If these likes accumulated, existing social capital would rapidly decrease in value. It's the change in social capital that truly counts, and while the total amount of social capital you've accumulated throughout time would be visible on your reputation profile, you would only be allowed to access the amount you earned in the past month.

There is one way to cash in your excess social capital though, and that's turning it into T-notes issued by tribes. Unlike SC, Tribes can be saved over time by using them to buy tangible objects. If you want to buy more stuff, you can simply offer your social capital for sale, and someone will give you other things in return. Remember, everyone receives an equal amount of good credits monthly but the amount of social capital you can earn is unlimited.

Calculating the amount of social capital someone has earned is easy, and will be done automatically: Just add the total views, watches and shares they received across all platforms they use, plug in their relative market values and multiply this by the "depth" score. Tribes are in control of this process and run the markets.

The total value of all social capital does not change in a month, rather it exists as a "pool". This pool of wealth is always equal to the value of all basic income and tokens added together. This pool is then split up according to who earned how many points that month.

If the pool of wealth to be distributed sat at "100" credits/month, and there were only two people in the economy with one earning 50 points and the other 200 points, the first would take home 20 credits and the second 80.

Today's social networks are inadequate for this purpose, so new ones would need to be created. They preferably would follow this charter: