Usury 5 - Really Really Free Market

Last Sunday, there was a Really Really Free Market (RRFM) at the Post Museum. 

For more about the Singapore RRFM, click here

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Everything in the market is free. As the RRFM website says, "No money. No Barter. No trade. Everything is FREE!"

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The founders of Google ever said that free is best, as nobody can compete with 'free'.

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Is this possible in today's materialistic society? Particularly so in highly urbanised and compact city states like Singapore. But here it is, there is a market where everything is for free! :)

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Wikipedia:

The Really, Really Free Market (RRFM) movement is a non-hierarchical collective of individuals who form a temporary market based on an alternative gift economy. The RRFM movement aims to counteract capitalism in a non-reactionary way. It holds as a major goal to build a community based on sharing resources, caring for one another and improving the collective lives of all.

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Participants from the SouthEast Anarchist Network (SeaNET)[2] held demonstrations using the first known Really, Really Free Market to protest the G8 summit. The first known Really, Really Free Market took place simultaneously in Miami, Florida, and Raleigh, North Carolina during the anti-globalization protests against the FTAA in 2004.[3] The idea quickly spread across the United States.

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The RRFM website states the following reasons for giving things away free:

• Because there is enough for everyone
  
• Because sharing is more fufilling than owning
  
• Because corporations would rather see landfills overflow than anyone get anything for free
  
• Because scarcity is a myth constructed to keep us at the mercy of the economy
  
• Because a sunny day outside is better than anything money can buy
  
• Because "free trade" is a contradiction of terms
  
• Because no one should have to do without food, shelter, entertainment, and community
  
• Because life should be a picnic, but it only will be if we make it happen
  

Are we seeing the beginning of what will be a world where we won't need to work for money because everything we need is already provided for us for free? 

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This is what philosopher and comprehensivist Buckminster Fuller sees in his World Game. Futurist Alvin Toffler envisioned that there will be more and more common "Prosumers", like open source programmers, bloggers, YouTube contributors,...etc in our societies - this may be a halfway house towards a world where we work only for passion and not for money. Read post about "Revolutionary Wealth".

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RRFMs are so far fragments of free flea markets doting around the US and now has set foot in Singapore. But is giving away free sustainable in the larger scheme of the market? Or is the market any more relevant if everything is free?

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Proponents of this free world thinks that technology will enable us to make things cheaper and cheaper. This is evident in the computer industry.  Some say that one day nanotechnology assemblers will produce things so cheaply that it will not be worth selling to anyone. When we reach that, then truly the whole world will be a RRFM as we will have manifested the true abundance in this eternally regenerative universe. Then, money and the monetary system that goes with it will  be obsolete.

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Usury 4

I had the good fortune to speak to a wise old man, who was looking for investments into a commerical property development. Investors for properties are hard to come by in a credit crunch. When I asked why he did not look into borrowing money from the bank, he told me that it is not wise to play the 'financial game'. He wouldn't even borrow in US dollars as this will mean exchange risks with his local currency. His grandfather lost billions playing the financial game.

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Too many people are playing the financial game and he thinks that this is fundamentally the problem leading to the current global economic and financial crisis we are in. In other words, we are living in a society of borrowed money, not always used for legitimate investments. A "legitimate investment" is one that essentially creates life supporting wealth. When we move away further and further from creating life supporting wealth and the true objectives of money, an economic crisis will be inevitable.

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"There is money found in the project itself", he said.

"The investor can make his profits in the project and that is better than borrowing from the bank and incurring interests and charges", he continued.

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Not unless if he seek money from an Islamic bank - one that shares the project risks and profits. In Islamic banking, trading of financial risks is forbidden as it is 'haram' like gambling.

Read more about "Usury" here

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Usury 3 - Renewable Energies

Just back from the Arab-Asian Financial Forum. The Forum is about Islamic Banking and financing, held in the lovely Palace of the Golden Horses in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. This year, there is special mention on environmental technologies and renewable energies, which was quite a surprised given that most of the Arab nations are major oil producing countries. Just a year ago at the same conference, renewable energy investments were objected explicitly.

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I was there to talk about providing clean drinking water for the rural folks in the region and also to convert domestic waste to electricity. While most of us take clean drinking water for granted, there are some in the neighbouring countries that are not as lucky. In fact, every ten seconds, about two persons die because of consuming unclean water somewhere in the world.

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Two local residents of a Sumatran landfill site

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Environmental technologies go on very well with the objectives of Islamic Banking - which is to finance projects that are beneficial to both investor and investees, and not for profit maximisation. In Islamic Banking, both the investor and investee share the business risks together - and in the case of environmental technologies, they go beyond benefiting the investor-investee to include also the community, the animal kingdom and plant life.

For more of my travel pixs of the palace, click here.

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Past Posts: Usury, Usury 2 - World Game, Usury 2a - World Game, Usury 2b - World Game

Usury 2b - World Game

Finished reading the chapter on "World Games". The following is a summary of the chapter. For a complete understanding, it is best to read the chapter itself.

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To Bucky, wealth consists of physical energy (as matter or radiation) combined with metaphysical know-what and know-how.

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In the game of making money with money, the money makers and their economists continue to exploit the general political and religious world's assumptions that a fundamental inadequacy of human life support exists around the planet.

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These assumptions are wrong because of:

1. the constant increase in strength per pound of new metallic alloys


2. the constant increase in horsepower per each pound and cubic inch of aircraft engines'


3. the ever-increasing performance per pound and cubic inches of new chemistries and electronics.

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It all can be done with proven technology and also phasing out the use of fossil fuels and atomic energy. The technological strategy is to live luxuriously entirely on sun radiation and gravity produced energy. The quantity of physical, cosmic energy wealth as radiation arriving on-board planet Earth each minute is greater than all the energy used annually by all humanity. World Game makes it clear that we are all billionaires on planet Earth, as accounted by real wealth. And that this fact is obscured from public knowledge by the exclusively conceived and operated money game and its monopolised credit system accounting.

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The success of humanity can be accomplished only by a terrestrially comprehensive, technologically competent, design revolution.

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There can be no planetary equity until all the sovereign nations are abolished and we have but one accounting system. One that show more justice to the balance-of-trade between rich nations and developing nations (mostly providing the basic mineral resources).

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Ample food and growing capacity exist on our planet to feed well every human being. But sovereign nations and their international trade balancing system, and the individual hoarders of foods and other goods within the separate nations, prevent the distribution of foods. Metaphorically, nations are akin to blood-clot to the integrity of the aforesaid distribution.

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Bucky's fundamental idea of desovereignization will be the closing of the gaps of the world electrical power grid. Electrical energy integration of the night and day regions of the Earth will bring all the capacity to use all the time, thus instantly doubling the generating capacity of humanity because it will integrate all the most extreme night and day peaks and valleys.

The world-unifying electric power accounting will be the beginning of the omni-energy accounting for the world economic management.

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Bucky demonstrated how resources can be better used in his geodesic dome design which gives the strongest structure per weight of materials employed. Read here for more about Bucky's geodesic domes. Besides the structural advantage, Bucky has designed the dome to take advantage of the energy concentrating geometry of the dome and its ability to create the upward draft (Bernoulli effect) caused by the solar heating outside its surface.

World Game is a continuing scientific research and physical prototyping development. It is devoted to progressive discovery of how most efficiently and expeditiously to employ:

1. the total world-around resources
2. the total accumulated knowledge
3. the total already-produced technological tooling of Spaceship Earth.
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World Game is therefore the antithesis of World War Gaming as played by the joint chief of staff of the world's most powerful sovereign nations' respective military, air and naval establishments.

The paragraph in page 214 describes it very well,

"With legal planning of their lawyer-advised banking leaders, the "haves" have now succeeded in cornering all the world's monetary gold as well as he prepondence of the world's petroleum sources - along with their refineries and world-around petro-delivery systems together also with acquisition of all the atomic power-generating plants, originally paid for by the US taxpayers - and thereafter in severing the monetary system from the wealth system while marking up the negotiable equity value of gold and petroleum tenfold."

This is the monopolised credit accounting system that Bucky talks about frequently that have kept the poor countries poor and also allow the leaders of the supreme socioeconomic control systems to induce spontaneous sub-divisioning of those designed to be conquered.

Bucky said,

"The prime vulnerabilities of humanity, which make it subject to spontaneous subdividing, are those of different speech patterns, skin colour, religions, social customs, class or caste systems, political preferences, and all varieties of individually unique "troubles", suffering, and discontent."

The World Game conversely works on the basis of a world electrical systems' energy-network integration and its comprehensive powering of automated, special case machinery would most effectively counter the peril of overspecialisation of the humans and would introduce the omni-Universe-operative, time-energy, kilowatt-hours-per-year, commonwealth (with a small 'c') accounting system. With this computerised integration, each individual will have a "credit card" to enjoy world commonwealth facilities, their per-capita "consumable" and "employable". Everyone of use will thus become "Omni-billionaires" overnight.

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There will also not be a need to mined new resources in the ground as all the resource needs are already above ground and can be recycled and mixed into new alloys giving more strength per unit of their weight. In short, we can continue to "do more with less".

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The chapter speaks a lot more details in criticising the state of the monopolised credit accounting system and the 'blood clot' of sovereign nations preventing the swift distribution of a global electrical energy grid to distribute wealth and implement the individual per-capita energy-based credit card. For a full treatise, it best to read the book "Critical Path" written by Bucky. If your thoughts about global wealth distribution and equity to all individuals have been provoked, then this post has serve its purpose.

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I would like to conclude this post with a poem and a song. First the poem, by Rudyard Kipling's "L'Envois":

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When Earth's last picture is painted,

And the tubes are all twisted dried,

The oldest of colors have faded,

We shall rest

And well shall we need to

Lie down for an eon or two

'Til the master of all good workmen

Shall put us to work anew.

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Then only the master shall praise us.

And only the master shall blame,

No one will work for money,

And no one will work for fame.

But all for the love of working

And each in his separate star

Shall draw the thing as he sees it

For the God of things as they are.

Now the song, most of you would have heard it before but you may like to pay attention to the lyrics clearly - make it a song message! :)

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Past Posts: Usury, Usury 2 - World Game, Usury 2a - World Game, Bucky Group, Bucky Group 2

Usury 2a - World Game

Got the ripped off chapter on "World Game" from Joo Hock and had been busy reading it in between my daily chores. It made me think of how the world could be in-tune to solve all its problems and yet not resorting to vicious competition, exclusively sanctioned (approved by political powers) cartels and wars.

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As my thoughts travel, I ended up discussing this with my business associate Zen whilst working on the iron-ore mine investment. Zen related to me how in one of his projects, he had advocated that money be backed by 'useful' commodities, like coffee or rice. Then it dawned on me that since the world monetary system had left the gold standard in 1973, money is now no longer representative of 'life supporting wealth'. It has worsened the adverse effects of 'money making money' by the trading of financial risks.

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Past Posts: Usury, Usury 2 - World Game, Bucky Group, Bucky Group 2

Usury

If we buy a cup of coffee and get charged for the coffee and also for (the act of) drinking the coffee, then we are being charged twice! We won't accept that and no sane cafe owner would dare charge you that way!

However, when we borrow money, we accept being charged twice. Once, for the payment of principle sum and second time for the privilege of using the money (interest).

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The Wikipedia defines usury as "charging a fee for the use of money". However, as it is now common practice in modern commerce to charge interests, usury is more commonly referred to as "excessive interests charged".

I used to think that only Islam forbids the charging of interests, but this is not so.

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"Usury (in the original sense of any interest) was denounced by a number of spiritual leaders and philosophers of ancient times, including Plato, Aristotle, Cato, Cicero, Seneca, Plutarch, Aquinas, Muhammad, Moses, Philo and Gautama Buddha." [Wikipedia].

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus emphasizes lending without concern for a return - or even repayment:

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If ye lend to them of whom ye hope to receive, what thank have ye? for sinners also lend to sinners, to receive as much again. But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest, for he is kind to the unthankful, and to the evil. (Luke 6:35)

The Quran says the same thing:

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The usury that is practiced to increase some people's wealth, does not gain anything at God. But if people give to charity, seeking God's pleasure, these are the ones who receive their reward many fold. (Ar-Rum 30:39)

Aristotle wrote:

"Usury is detested above all and for the best of reasons. It makes profit out of money itself, not for money's natural object... Money was intended as a means of exchange, not for increase of interest."

Buddhist teachings on the Eightfold Path taught by the Buddha over 2500 years ago, includes “the right livelihood,” which says that one ought to avoid treachery, deceit, usury, exploitation, or other harm to humans or animals.

Even Jews were forbidden to practise usury to other Jews, but are allowed to do so beyond their community, ie. to non-Jews.

So it is surprising that the mainstream financial systems that are practised today are mainly interest-based. This is easy profits, and compound interest is accelerated easy profits that grow exponentially! :) To exacerbate the matter, in modern banking, monies are represented as mere electronic digits. Which means that it takes the same effort to count one billion dollars as it is to count ten dollars. So, for the same effort, banks make more money transacting a billion dollars, since computers don't wear off very much (if at all) counting bigger numbers. Hence, it is safe to opine that profits are good in modern banking! Besides, it is the borrower who bears most of the risks, not the lender, as loans are almost always collateralised.

Islamic banking is an attempt to level this playing field. In Islamic banking, both the borrower and the lender share the risks and profits, without the involvement of interests. They are also to fund projects which are for the greater good of both investor and investee, the community and the environment and not for profit maximisation. Islamic banking will not fund haraam activities, ie. activities that are considered detrimental to society, like gambling. In recent years, Islamic banking has gained popularity rapidly, and more surprisingly, among non-Muslims and countries without Muslim majority.

Let's hope this growth happens for noble reasons, since it would be tempting to disguise conventional banking beneath a thin layer of Islamic banking for profit maximisation.

Islamic banking also forbids the trading of financial risks, as it is considered as 'gambling', and gambling is a 'haraam' activity.

That said, big financial institutions and hedge funds have made financial risk management into a fine art. With big capital flows, clever algorithms, market research and computerisation, these institutions are capable of giving huge returns with great certainty in their trades.

Actually, it is faster for institutions to make money in the financial markets than in direct investments. This is not healthy as it means that good startup technologies and businesses will not get the investments needed to create tangible wealth. Sometimes businesses with noble objectives to bring society to a higher good are unable to take off without investments.

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With attractive returns from the financial markets, investors will be more motivated and tempted to multiply their money in there. Also, financial markets are zero-sum games. That means, when one wins, some others have to lose. And when big institutions win big, many small investors will have to lose. This does not help with wealth distribution.

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Communist countries have attempted state planning to distribute wealth which had failed miserably. I think communism was a noble ideology that could not overcome human greed and selfishness. What we need badly is a new way of distributing wealth, without destroying the fabric of society, freedom and the dignity of people.

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This gives rise to a new breed of entrepreneurs who call themselves 'social entrepreneurs'. Social entrepreneurs set out with noble objectives to improve the community sustained through profits. Some examples of such enterprises deal with providing clean drinking water, converting domestic garbage to energy, providing micro-loans to rural villagers, promoting eco-tourism, ecologically sustainable housing,... etc.

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Social enterprises focus on what value they bring to the society in the long term. So, typically, it won't be interested in businesses whose sole aims are to encourage more people to send sms messages on their mobile phones; or for the distribution of more chemically preserved fast food to the masses. Social enterprises will definitely not charge you twice for your cup of coffee. Instead, it might set up cooperatives among coffee growers so that they can sell their crops at a better bargain and have their proceeds used to set up village schools or better access roads to their plantations, benefiting everyone in the long term.

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There is a social enterpreneur who told me that in social enterprises, there are no exit strategies. He cited an example in a project in a village in Nepal where they succeeded in piping water to the hilltops and learned that the 3 hours up and down from the hill to the rivers made by the womenfolk each day was the only time they had away from their mother-in-laws. So, you see, there is still no exit strategy! When old problems are solved, new ones emerge! :)

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Whichever method that will become vogue, be it is Islamic banking, social enterprises, or otherwise, there is a need to balance the globalisation and the cut-and-thrust of the market economy. I am glad that there are many kind souls out there doing their part in this balancing act. Many of them unsung heros and silent achievers, without which many communities would have collapsed into more sufferings.

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With this balance, we would be living in a "capitalism with a human face". Though sounding stark in contrast to Gorberchev's "Socialism with a human face", they both seek to achieve the same - that is, to love people and to move money to where love is.