What is the economy we want to build?
This page will collect ideas for defining a regenerative economy that Earth Regenerators can support.
Joe’s latest webinar addresses this question directly and yields some surprising answers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDrCeYSGJb0
We can think of ourselves as regenerative economies.
From Langdon Roberts, (6/15/2022):
Hey everyone,
Monday’s meeting was productive and inspiring. Todd’s software is looking great, and it seems that it may soon be ready for some serious experimentation by all of us! I’m excited!
I have been reflecting on a few ideas that came up during the meeting and would like to offer my perspectives.
There were several suggestions about how we might motivate community members to participate, and what might be perceived as fair. They included elements related to at least four methods of assessing fairness: equality, equity, needs fulfillment, and merit. The perceptions of fairness and transparency are essential if we want to maintain wide scale buy-in and minimize conflict, so it is important to keep these elements in mind as we make design choices, and to be clear about why we are making those choices.
Most economic systems are pseudo-meritocracies, where those who achieve or inherit financial power function much like an aristocracy, in which power over others, rather than actual merit, determines success. Most of these aristocratic pseudo-meritocracies place very little emphasis on the other three forms of fairness, which are essentially included in the financial structure just enough to prevent those who fall through the cracks of the meritocracy from suffering so much that they rise up in revolt. At least that’s how I see it. Those who favor equality, equity, and needs fulfilment over meritocracy are generally those with the least power, so it is common for those who are successful in the meritocracy (or strongly desire to be so) and want to improve our economic system to focus primarily on creating a less corrupt and more “fair” meritocracy, rather than focusing on creating balance with the other three forms of fairness.
As we design our economy of giving, I think it is critical to evaluate each element of our systems from the perspective of balancing these four forms of fairness, as well as minimizing corruption. Even in a gift economy, the habit of elevating merit over the other forms of fairness can be strong. This is natural, since it is what we are used to, and it’s important to recognize when we are doing it. The more we identify how our preference for meritocracy connects to the many forms of privilege we all enjoy, the easier it will be to identify imbalances.
Some of the ideas that came up in the discussion, and the primary category in which I would place them in were: Gratitude based currency (primarily merit), time banking or hour-based currency (equality), evaluation of contributions based on total available resources (equity), specific color and place coded symbols indicating requested gifts (needs-based), and effective ways of telling our stories (all 4 categories). It seems to me that if we keep the four basic categories of fairness in mind, with the intention of maintaining balance as we add elements to our systems, we will maximize our chances for success.
Another important topic, which has not been discussed much so far, is the powerfully destructive influence of shame on an economy. Shame generally operates in the background, often below the surface of our awareness, but it is nearly always there. If you haven’t personally explored the topic of shame, I highly recommend it, as it profoundly affects us all, whether we are aware of it or not. When we don’t ask for what we need, it is usually driven by shame. When we are not good at playing the merit game, we experience shame. In my opinion, no economic system can be successful unless it incorporates shame-aware and shame-shifting mechanisms. For example, how can we make it safe for people to be honest and transparent about their financial situations? How do we adapt award systems to gently shift our relationships with being vulnerable about our finances? If we succeed in this, we may well succeed in creating a regenerative gift economy. If not, the emotional dysregulation that prevents us from showing up fully for ourselves and each other is guaranteed to be perpetuated and eventually sabotage whatever we create. If you haven’t yet done a deep dive into exploring your own shame and how it affects all forms of behavior, including economic, I suggest starting with this short TED talk https://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_listening_to_shame?language=en . While it doesn’t specifically address finances, the basic concepts generalize well.
Thank you all for your presence and participation.
Blessings,
Langdon
Langdon Roberts
Neurofeedback Director
Santa Cruz Neurofeedback Center
831-464-1419
From Travis Kiplean, independent scholar/activist/philanthropist (5/27/2022):
This is a narrative prototype of an idea I had when asking myself “Can we create a network that can take in money from motivated but less well-informed people on an issue and dynamically redistribute it to underfunded folks & projects doing good work, without relying on proposal writing, group decision making processes, formal organizations, and/or arduous research?”
As a prototype, there are lots of bugs. Nothing guaranteed.
Liquid finance for a thriving Earth
Around the world, people are doing crucial, underfunded work striving to secure a thriving planet for future generations of humans and other living beings.
Can you help provide them with a basic living income? Any curious person can take part. You don’t have to give money (though you could!), and you don’t even need to know someone who is doing this work directly (though you might!).
The most important contribution you can make is to identify who might be more informed than you (or knowledgeable in a different way than you) about good candidates to receive funds.
Liquid Giving is:
- Trust-based: We trust those who receive funding to take out what they need and put it to good use.
- Delegative: Each person in the network can delegate their decision about who to fund to people they believe may know of good candidates.
- Transparent: Everyone can see where money enters the network, through whom it flows, and where it leaves.
- Dynamic: Anyone can change who they direct money to ahead of each monthly distribution, so that the network can adapt to new circumstances.
For more see https://traviskriplean.com/prototype-liquid-finance-thhdbb/earth_regeneration
From Charles Eisenstein’s Sacred Economics (2011)
“In the beginning was the Gift.”
From Vivek · May 9, 2022
I’m just lurking (Loomio keeps emailing me notifications for this group), but “what is regenerative” sounds like an important conversation to explore around. Could help to avoid using the ‘regenerative’ word itself to help understand the systemic change and interaction with financial capital/systems. There’s a lot of conceptual blending currently going on (‘regenerative real estate’, ‘regenerative civilization’, …) where the actions may be practical steps in a given socio-cultural environment yet aware it frustrates those seeking a more rigorous concept of ‘regenerative culture’ (ex: https://mobile.twitter.com/cognitivepolicy/status/1519464943942311942, https://mobile.twitter.com/cognitivepolicy/status/1520362541507035137).
Saying this knowing I feel fairly entrenched at the moment in the civilization camp, and try to be level-headed around even the leading examples of inspiration (they’re human at the end of the day) to feel into where to move towards. Again, these aren’t easy discussions to have – techno-optimists might claim those seeking regenerative culture are eugenicists, regenerative-culture seekers may seem dependent on the globalized flows of tourism, yadda yadda…