Let's Kill Capitalism, Together.

This article is about transition.

We all want a better future, preferably in our lifetimes. But a change as big as this can seem impossible at first, utopian even.

The secret is we already have the ability to create everything proposed here. The biggest changes won't happen out there, they'll happen inside. Really, the most important transition takes place in your mind, once you open your eyes and see the world as it really is. After you've been enlightened you can't go back. It's our job to share this light with others.

This is how.

What does Sociocapitalism require?

It requires that we recognize a truth that's been lost to the ages: We are the people. We are the government. It's time to take back what is ours. Money doesn't exist. Countries don't exist. Everything that you think stands in the way only stands there because we, the people say it does.

The Declaration of Independence already gives we the people an unlimited right to "Alter or Abolish" government whenever it becomes destructive to our personal freedom, liberty or happiness.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. "

This right is further enshrined in several state constitutions, and since nearly all other liberal democracies uphold popular sovereignty, it can be inferred that they would accept this too.

Popular sovereignty is the cornerstone of every western democracy. The idea is that governments are formed by the consent of the governed, and no one else. So how do we move something so big, so powerful?

One: Remove your consent. Stop voting in elections above the local level, and be loud about it. Tell other people to do the same and why you're doing it. The second part is critical: If you stop voting silently and don't explain why, then it won't do any good. If everyone stops voting at the state and national levels and recognizes the new governments then they no longer have democratic or political legitimacy. Already, the president is elected by a distinct minority of citizens. We just need to push the needle a little bit further.

Keep paying Uncle Sam and render unto Caesar's what is Caesars: Don't resent paying your taxes because those dollar bills will be worthless soon. And you can get more done out of prison than in it. Take an attitude towards money that doesn't see it as the be all- end all of life. Try to put people first whenever possible.

Two: Transfer your consent. A new constitution will be created, to be ratified directly by the people via social media. All someone needs to do in order to ratify it is to take a picture of themselves with a sign saying that they support it. A link to this picture will be placed underneath or nearby the constitution. It will fully detail and explain the operation, purpose and limits of the new government, along with transferring governing authority back to cities and the people along with the institutions described. Getting more people to ratify and vote in our elections will grant them untouchable democratic legitimacy.

Being open with our purposes and goals will help a lot too. From the beginning, we will state that we are working towards a world without poverty, war or money and invite everyone who wants to help to join. We will make clear that this isn't a utopian dream for the future, but something we can do right now with a focus on real, clear and tangible results. Once people can see the change the avalanche will accelerate. Getting celebrity or past politicians' support would be a major boost and is very important.

Three: Hack the political system at the local level: Set up an online voting platform. (There are already several good, open-source ones like DemocracyOS or Helios.) Register people to vote with their verified government ID. Then, create a new party that pledges to vote directly as the people do. Watch it sweep the offices at the local level, which is really the only one we need to worry about. Once there, we can easily implement these reforms.

Before anyone has even been elected, though, we can give a simple monthly basic income to anyone who ratifies the constitution. This basic income will consist of a digital currency, a little like bitcoin. As our economy grows you will be able to buy more and more with it.

How will we get the capital we need to construct the cities?

  This will be a massive volunteer effort, on the scale of the rebuilding after World War II. Even then, after millions of people lay dead and entire cities were in ruins, average, everyday people like you and me banded together to rebuild, brick by brick. Don't think that you won't find volunteers. Ohh, you will find plenty of volunteers. Thousands volunteer for habitat for humanity each year, and even more donate millions worth of building materials. Part of the innovation is that we are building less expensive homes that require less materials. Using dry-stacked earthen blocks (made out of dirt so they're free), low-cost solar panels and composting toilets, these houses will cost under $5000 each but be big enough for two. Labor is provided by whoever wants to live in the house along with some volunteers.

You'll find plenty of people eager to live a debt-free, money-free existence. We really don't need so much space and the homes won't be tiny. They will be around 600 square feet in size and densely placed.

Money is just an agreement between two people. It can be anything. We know this because in the past people have used anything from salt to gold to cows. Whenever two people agree to exchange something using an intermediary, money happens. Only direct exchange avoids this.

But just building houses isn't enough, and everyone knows it. In order to work, a Resource-Based Economy requires all resources to be managed and held as the common heritage of the earth's people. In this system, the global assembly plays the role of manager and steward. The problem is that currently, many of the resources we need are held privately. The solution is to give people vouchers for shares in tribes in exchange for their resources. The larger their total percentage- contribution (monetary or otherwise), the larger the amount of vouchers (and votes) they get. In the new cities, votes in the upper assembly are also based off of how much someone contributed to the construction of the city. This includes building materials, time, labor or pretty much anything else.

Tribes are the banks of an RBE and once they grow large enough they can make their owners fabulously wealthy. It's not a handout, it's an investment in the future. Owning a share of a tribe is owning a share of the entire economy. The only difference is that their newfound wealth will no longer impoverish everyone else.

Where might this be located?

   I think the Midwest is a good place to start, but since this is a global movement the transition should be happening all across the world*. You don't need to build physical buildings in order to create a resource-based economy, although they are useful. It begins with a value shift, from generating the most capital to generating the most social capital.

Why the Midwest? Mostly because there's a lot of opportunity and infrastructure there. In rust-belt cities like Detroit, Cleveland and Gary there are many abandoned lots and, unfortunately, abandoned people. This would be the best place to put in a little bit of effort and create a huge difference.

Not only that,

a) Revitalizing a small portion of one of these cities will generate a huge amount of media attention and place an international spotlight on the concept of a resource-based economy. 

That's the most important. If we can get the tech industry to take notice of the concept then it's over.

b) Detroit is a city that's full of dreamers, artists, and people ready for a change. They are far more open to unorthodox concepts you couldn't really try anywhere else.

c) The midwest's flat grid system and climate are perfect for the development of large, sustainably integrated urban/rural cities as called for here. (In other words, we get a lot of rain)

d) Close to major east coast population centers.

In Detroit and Gary, it would start with a single block, then grow to cover a square mile of the original city. This would serve as a demonstration. Each house would only take a few days to complete, and training programs/workshops would teach people how to safely wire or plumb homes.

In the rest of the country, the new cities would be built just outside existing ones, in currently rural or unincorporated areas. A large number of projects could be started simultaneously, on donated land or land sold for share vouchers. Some other candidate areas:

Madison, WI
Milwaukee, WI
Champaign/Urbana IL
Peoria, IL
Davenport, IA
East St. Louis, MO
Ft. Wayne, IN
Grand Rapids, MI
Youngstown, OH
Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN

* The transition is expected to mainly take place in the Western Hemisphere and Europe at first. It will take longer to spread to the rest of the world.


Explain the transition in more detail, please.

Gladly. There's a lot more that Sociocapitalism requires outside of the political strategy. Let's start with the basics.

Change what money can buy.

First, all essential items are made freely available by one simple tweak: People work in order to earn tokens that can be redeemed for luxury products only. Eventually even this won't be necessary as production continues to be automated, but for now we still need to motivate people to work.

All non-luxury items will be able to be bought with the basic income we provide, the tokens, or earned social capital. The goal is to remove the barrier between supply and demand. Read more here.
Since the basics of life are now free, people don't have to worry about getting enough to eat.

The end of intellectual property.

As described here, Inventions and products are given value not based on how much money they make, but on how many people use them. Thus, the goal is to maximize access to the goods and services people need instead of hoard knowledge. Products are literally worthless if nobody can use or afford them. Intellectual property has held back innovation, but until now we haven't had a way of rewarding artists without it. Now we do.

The Creation of a Collaborative Design System

The CDS (Collaborative Design System) is critical to the creation of a fully-functional resource based economy. Acting as an online suite of design software, people will be able to work together to design or create almost anything, from products to buildings to movies. The Collaborative Design System keeps track of who's contributed to each project and how much they've contributed, rewarding them accordingly.

The Creation of New Social Networks

Currently-existing social networks like Twitter and Facebook are not designed with the principles of social capital in mind. They lack several important features, such as a direct messaging and user ownership of data, are more like walled gardens than parts of a single, larger organism. For this reason, new social networks need to be generated, governed by the bill of digital rights and managed as a virtual commons by The Global Assembly.

Social networks are necessary so that people can earn social capital based off of their online influence and prominence.

The Creation and Acquisition of "Productive Ecosystems"

Any society needs a manufacturing base. This is where most communes and intentional communities fail because acquiring them is capital-intensive and nobody wants to farm all day. We need to work our way up instead, from a "food first" perspective. That means that we focus on creating or acquiring means of production that fulfill our basic needs first (like food, housing materials or cotton fields), before going after higher-value targets. This is also the order in which automation should occur. First automate food production, then construction, then production etc.

Productive Ecosystems are groups of products that work together to produce a final, more useful product. Why build a button factory if you can't make any clothes? This involves the creation of microfactories.  When we try to involve manufacturers and businesses we need to make sure we're creating integrated systems, not just random products.

Positive Policing

Society made a mistake when it chose to only punish bad behavior but not to reward good. You need both in order to create a productive and peaceful populace. We won't make the same mistake. The Global Assembly, through it's Generousity Program, will create a large network of positive police: Plainclothes individuals who watch and reward people for doing good things. Each member will have a certain allowance of tokens to give away weekly, and for larger payouts multiple members can get together. Generousity also provides life and event planning, counselling and aims to know as much as possible to make citizens as happy as possible. Like Santa Claus, they leave people random gifts from a wishlist at least once a year. Generousity should comprise around 5% of the population, and people can recommend or report others they think have done something good. This would be one of the easiest things to set up in the beginning of transition.

Basic Income

Consider the basic income a reward for being a good citizen and fulfilling your civic duties. It can be reduced or taken away if someone gets into trouble. It's self-explanatory, but every adult gets a certain amount of money monthly to buy things. Since this is digital, we won't have to "raise enough money" to provide it. Banks create money out of thin air, so why don't we?

Creation of the Global assembly and "Immigration"

This is probably the most important thing we need to do, and it's also one of the more difficult ones: The creation of the Global Assembly, and it's growth or expansion over time. I tried to simplify it as much as possible. 

It starts with a group of 100 self-selected people. These are the judges, the ones who interview and evaluate applicants who want to receive our digital basic income, grant them identification and give them access to the online voting system. Technically this is the seed that acts as a proto-global assembly that bootstraps and gives birth to the official one once enough people have joined.  

In order to gain access to the basic income, one has to "immigrate" into our virtual society. The entire process, including the interview takes place online. Send us a photo of a valid government ID (both sides), a few photos of yourself in front and profile view, choose a new name or nickname and schedule a live virtual meetup on Google hangouts. This immediately weeds out many would-be scammers who wouldn't last through a live interview. 

A randomly-selected group of 10 judges from the initial pool write the interview questions, and one judge actually does the interview. These interview questions can be random, but shouldn't be inappropriate or personal. The interviewing judge has the ability to prescreen the questions and ask for revisions before the interview. The standard questions are "How did you find out about this" "How old are you", "What would you do if you no longer had to work" "What is your passion" "What is your favorite color" and "How do you feel about the concept of a RBE". The total interview should take less than 5 minutes. The subject may be asked to turn completely around and wave their hands. 

This interview is then sent to ten other randomly-selected judges, who vote on whether or not to accept the individual and grant them basic income. They are supposed to look at the evidence and run a facial recognition/ID check to make sure someone is not trying to exploit the system. Someone is in once 7/10 judges vote to to accept them.

Once accepted, a member will need to complete a simple monthly test to continue receive basic income. This test is sent to the email address they used when they signed up. The test is short, but designed so that only humans may complete it and involves mostly spatial recognition and image problems. Members also have the right to vote for new judges so that the system can handle more applications and grow at an accelerated rate.

When the total number of people signed up for the basic income and registered to vote reaches 20,000, the first two tribes are born: Red and Blue. The platform for citizens to create new tribes opens and begins taking applications.

Once the population of the entire system reaches around 100,000 people, the first representatives for the global assembly can be elected. Each "house" will start off with 100 people and grow as more sign up. The final size and form of the global assembly is to be fixed by law, but half of each house must be tribes or cities that are randomly selected. 

Creation of the "Tribes" platform

Tribes are a lot like groups on Facebook- just created on The Global Assembly's platform instead. They function as economic portals and mutual benefit societies for their members. In order for new tribes to be created, a platform must be designed which allows them to a) sign up and import new members, and b) manage the money they earn.

Keep in mind that none of this will require government intervention. We'll just do it.

If you haven't yet, please read the technology section of this blog in order to get a feel for just how little technological advancement this plan would require.

The Six Stages of Success 

Step Zero: Education and Planning

This is where we are today. We need to get out of this stage as soon as possible. This stage is important, but not as important as actually getting out there and making it happen. If they say a picture is worth a thousand words, then real life is worth a million. Talk to people, talk to your city council, talk to local businesses and charities. Spread the word and attempt to get a feel for what people might do with their lives if work was no longer necessary. If you can find people willing to donate their land to the project, then that's even better. We don't have to convince anyone. We can't convince everyone. We just have to convince enough people, and in some cases one person is "enough". Consolidate or create a mailing list for those who want to learn more, and have your educational materials at the ready. Register people to vote online and gather signatures for the constitution. Even if people don't believe these things will work, they will get people thinking about ways life could be better.

Step One: Close the Loop

Where the rubber meets the road. This stage is called "closing the loop" because it's about efficiency in product design and manufacturing: Ideally, we want the loop to be closed so that all resources used to make a product can be reused and recycled. In this stage we create localized manufacturing, makerspaces and recycling chains. Crowdfund the purchase of milling and tooling machinery and acquire small means of production. Begin to solicit investment. We must create ecosystems of products that work together so that our communities can be as self-sufficient as possible.

We should recycle everything we buy, but not with the city. Place it into our system and use it as a resource. Waste plastic bottles can make excellent 3-D printer filament. Aluminum cans can be melted down and used for CNC milling. Wood and organic matter can be used as compost. Create a local currency to facilitate easier transfer of resources between people.

A secondary part of this might be physically building small demonstration communities, but that's less important than the manufacturing side of things.

Closing the loop in your everyday life also means cutting back whenever possible. Downsize if you can and save money.

Step Three: Bring Democracy Back

Create and encourage people to vote for liquid democracy parties in their city and state. This is absolutely critical, and will place government control back in the hands of it's citizens.

Step Three: Building Institutions and Technology

The amount of people interested in an RBE should be swelling by now. Build the institutions (tribes, global assembly etc), and call for a meeting to further flesh things out. Hundreds of thousands have ratified the constitution and are receiving basic income at this point. Several fully-functioning communities have been set up, and the collaborative design system allows all people to work together to design products which can be manufactured locally.


Step Four: Crystallize Support and Momentum

Cross the point of no return. Attract even greater attention and gain support from celebrities and the rich/powerful. Wealthy individuals begin to donate to further expand and develop the technology needed for a RBE. We should have the ability to manufacture nearly everything we need at this point and can begin to approach bigger fish. By this time we are highly visible and you can already see on-the-ground results.


Step Six: Rollout and Restoration

Automation is complete, and for all intensive purposes the monetary system is over for everyone who's participated in the project. The new cities have been built, and work begins to restore the environment and construct megaprojects to further increase quality of life.

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  You probably noticed that the paragraphs become a lot shorter towards the end. It's hard to predict that far into the future, and any transition plan that claims to be "set in stone" should be looked at with extreme skepticism. I've also covered a lot in other articles on this website. Still, with strong on-the-ground effort and press coverage, you might be surprised at how quickly social change can occur. We just need to get the ball rolling. If we work hard, all six of these stages can be complete within 5-10 years.