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

.

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

.

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

.

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! :)

.

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.

.

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.

.

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? 

.

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".

.

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?

.

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.

.

Bucky Group 23 - Geometry

This week we started something new in the Bucky sessions: toying with geometry. When Joo Hock started his song sessions (usually about 'Love' and 'Gratitude') in his salon, I was suspicious that he was trying to start a church, but may be not anymore! Churches don't get academic with geometries. :)
.

So, here's the game. Take these two hair clips triangles and make four triangles out of them.
.
"Can't be that easy, can it?" I thought. If it is a Bucky Session and you are dealing with triangles, it can only asking for a tetrahedron. "Hmmm... let me try something else..."
.

How?

.

So, I got this. Four triangles out of two. Ha ha! Joo Hock said that this is one of the possible solutions, but I can certainly think of a more elegant one! Cheeky!

OK, I concede to it. Here's your tetrahedron. From two triangles you get four triangles.

Next, he gave me a few lumps of plasticine to form a tetrahedron. This time, I am clever and choose the easiest way out.

.

I got this! And it is correct. The moral of the story here is to choose the easiest answer to the question.

Here are the various tetrahedrans we made. The one made of four balls of plasticines is expressed by 'events of energy''; the one with thin lines expressed as 'relationships'; and lastly, the one made of paper is expressed from planes.

The objective of this exercise is to make you look at problems from a different perspective, or thinking at it 'out of the box'.

Often, people make assumptions subconsciously that restrict their view of the world. For instance, one may assume that the solution is one that is two dimensional (planar), instead of three-dimensional (like the tetrahedran). I assumed that the solution cannot be that 'obvious', ie. a game got to be 'difficult', not easy. Hence my four convoluted two dimensional triangles with the two hair clips.

Thankfully, the Bucky Group comprises people from different backgrounds in terms of: age, religion, race, gender, nationality, cultures, languages, formal educational level, profession, talent, hobbies, exposures to different parts of the world, ... etc. Hence we get different perspectives to every topic we discussed. In many groups and organisations, alternative views (perspectives) are often gunned down. In the Bucky Group, we allow different opinions and views to be expressed. Sometimes, we don't agree with each other but live with the disagreements. Sometimes, we even get to understand more about something because of the disagreements. Isn't it beautiful?

Clara shared her experience that as a mother of an autistic child, she has learned to assume that her child cannot do anything on his own, and everything has to be trained. Interestingly, it is because of bringing her expectations to 'zero' that she began to look at many things from a new and different perspective.

"Perspectives are more important than IQ", Nicholas Negroponte. He said it amid:

Often, engineers are so deep into the technicalities of a problem that they fail to see the broader perspectives of the problem.

The Chairman of Las Vegas Sands, Mr Sheldon Adelson, when asked what his secret for success is, commented that he identifies a business opportunity whenever someone who has been in the industry for a long time insists that the business in question cannot be done in any other way, because 'that's the way it has always been'. When he hears that, he goes in with his own way and succeed.

Similarly, I went into the information technology industry after the many complaints I heared from fellow students moaning in the computer labs about how much they hated programming. I saw that that as an opportunity, and that there must be an easy way to programming that the other students had not discovered, and there was, as I later discovered to my delight. From there, I lead an exciting and successful twenty year career in the industry in seventeen cities across four continents.

I think 'engineering' can be a mental hazard, though it is a great discipline and is a subject of an honourable profession. I am saying this as an engineer myself. It is very important that engineers get into the depths of engineering, but also remember to get out of their tunnel back into the needs of the real world.

A famous exercise of "Perspective being more important than knowledge" is Bucky's Dymaxian Map. Firstly, the Dymaxian Map puts the relative sizes and locations of countries in the right perspectives. Further, in World Game, it puts the depth of the earth crusts, heights of natural land reliefs, demographics,...etc into the real world perspectives, rather than one that is dominated by politics, developed countries' governments and the Western media. For more about the World Game, click here

Joo Hwa's TIME OUT:

"There is this man who got his golf ball in the bunker. After 9 putts, he couldn't get the ball up. However, on his 10th putt, he swung and got the ball out of the bunker and right into the hole! He was elated! Alongside him, there was an alien watching the game, but was devastated. Devastated because now he thought, "How many times will the man need to swing his club to get the ball out of the hole?" :)

An amusing story, but not quite appropriate because the Alien does not know the rules of golf. Therefore the Alien looked at the game that way due to his lack of knowledge and not that he has a different perspective. A 'game', by definition, is a series on decisions and actions/responses, based on a finite set of rules.

Sorry, Joo Hwa should be here to defend himself, but I didn't manage to catch the 'air-time' during the session to voice this. In the Bucky sessions, you have to be quick to catch the attention to voice your comments, as most of us are very actively participating. :)

Joo Hock summed up by saying that the exercise is to encourage us to look at problems with a new perspective and what we have covered today is only a superficial view of Bucky's geometry. Further, we will drill into the deeper meanings of such geometry, and we will also do so in our Sunday sessions at MacRitchie.

*Hint* Tetrahedran are very useful to express multi-dimensions. Why?

Here are some more of the Bucky artifacts. Joo Hock hangs them in his cozy corner in his salon. We will come to that someday.

Bucky Group 4 - Local, Global and Universe - Penang Hill

The picture says it all, a happy Singapore group with Bucky's famous Geodesic Dome on top of Penang Hill with breathtaking scenery!
.

We were there for the “LOCAL, GLOBAL & UNIVERSE - A Tribute to Buckminster Fuller" seminar organised by Penang Tourism Council Action, Suriana Events, BigPictureSmallWorld (USA), Universiti Sains Malaysia, Angkasa (Malaysian National Space Agency), Penang Hill Resident Association and Bellevue-The Penang Hill Hotel.
.
Well thank you so much to all those that made this event possible because we enjoyed it thoroughly. It was indeed an environmental awareness and education program for learners of all ages.

The opening address overlooking Penang City and Butterworth on the Peninsula. Of course, we could not see anything of the cities below as the mountain mists decended on us.

Talk about mists, Datuk Sri Lim Chong Kiat the owner of Bellevue Hotel said that Bucky invented a shower that uses mist spray to cleanse the body and this saves water.

.

Incidentally, Bellevue Hotel uses a de-ionised water system called Tamura Water. No soap or detergent is needed to wash your body and your hair. The de-ionised water even cleans kitchen grease. The Bellevue kitchen washes all its plates and crockery just with water and a cotton cloth. That way, no chemicals are discharged into the water system.

.

I showered in the hotel's water system without soap and true enough felt it to be very refreshing and clean. Not satisfied, a few of us put the water to the ultimate tests, by washing our fingers with only their water after eating durains!!! :) True enough, even the durains smell went off! That was impressive!

.

One of the main activity of the weekend was World Game. It was a scaled down version of the game and was also customised for the high school students.
.
Bucky said, "Perspective is more important than Knowledge".

This seems to be the message in the World Game.
.

We started with the World Map. The one which we are usually fed with is the following...

This is not a very accurate one. For instance, the island of Greenland is almost bigger than the entire South America. This inaccuracy is the result of trying to put a spherical surface on a flat piece of paper.
.
The Dymaxion map, made of many equilateral triangles is a more accurate representation of the world map. Here, South America is a lot bigger than Greenland. And look at the size of Antartica, which is usually even forgotten!

The standard size of the Dymaxion Map for the World Game is a lot bigger. This is a cut down version due to constraint of space. We carried out this activity in a Hindu Temple Hall on Penang Hill.

As the Game proceeded, the participants got to experience the feeling of the size of the world, its demographics, wealth distribution and commonly disproportionate representation by the Western World.

It's through games like these that the next generations of young people will have a better perspective of the world, its problems and the resources to solve them to make the world young again!

In between the World Game sessions, we had a meeting with Dr Medard Gabel, the facilitator of the Game. Dr Gabel said he is very impressed with the enthusiasm of the Bucky Group in Singapore and that he is now inspired to think of what he can do to promote the principles of Bucky's philosophies in Singapore and the region. After a short brainstorm, we came to the conclusion that perhaps we should focus on spreading the awareness of Bucky's Generalised Principles. Bucky's Generalised Principles are principles that works across different human categorised disciplines. Bucky believes that in the Universe there is only one system, not different systems obeying different laws. We are now working on how we can organise seminars based on Bucky's Generalised Principles.

.

That means, from the vastness of the Universe and the minutest sub-atomic 'particle' that we are studying, they all obey the same laws under one system. As we understand more about the Universe, how stars in the cosmos expands and create new elements and it is the same types of elements that make earth and our bodies, we know that we can understand the Universe by understanding ourselves. That is, the understanding of the smallest 'particle' will enable us to understand the vast Universe better. Therein, now comes the subject of "Quantum Cosmology", which at first glance would sound like an oxymoron term of two contradicting terms. That was what Prof Mazlan Othman from Angkasa said.

.

In the evening, we spent our time star gazing. Had the opportunity to see planet Jupiter and three of its moons and also planet Venus using the telescopes. It was so relaxing gazing at into the skies. At some point, I became entirely immersed into the universe and forgot about my physical presence. In those brief moments, I became one with all.

.

For more pixs of this Penang Hill trip, click here

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

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.

.

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

.

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.

.

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.

.

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.

.

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

.

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).

.

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.

.

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.

.

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.
   .

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.

.

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".

.

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.

.

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

.

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.

.

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! :)

.

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.

.

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.

.

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

Usury 2 - World Game

"...the real enemies of humanity: hunger, illiteracy, lack of health care, environmental degradation and 'you or me' thinking. "

.

Just back from the Middle East, so it is time to get the logistics sorted out for Wednesday's Movie Nite in Singapore. Amazing that I organised everything else via the Internet! Thanks to technology.

I managed to borrow the projector from a friend and now am to test it at Joo Hock's hair salon. He is going to close his shop earlier so that we can watch the show there! Isn't that sweet?

.

As we were setting up the laptop and projector, we discussed about the Bucky (Buckminster Fuller) Programme we will be attending this coming weekend (13-15 July 07) at Penang Hill, Malaysia and that Datuk Lim (the organiser) used to work with Bucky himself on the World Game.

.

What is amazing about the "World Game" is that the players are supposed to solve simulated world problems by role play, without resorting to using money as a tool to make money, but instead, design ecologically sustainable solutions.

.

Bucky's game was intended to be a tool that could be used by people around the world to understand and develop solutions to what he called the real enemies of humanity: hunger, illiteracy, lack of health care, environmental degradation and "you or me" thinking.

.

At this point, Joo Hock handed me a ripped out chapter "World Game", from one of Bucky's books - "Critical Path". I started reading the chapter, whilst Joo Hock went back to do his customer's hair. The opening paragraphs are astonishingly revolutionary! It talks about how the current economy makes money with money and that it is not a representation of real wealth. Astonishing because this is what most of our banks are doing!!! And that, in the United States, many people work for such industries that are not creating real wealth, but yet travel to office every morning burning fossil fuels contributing to a total estimated costs of US$3 trillion wasted every day!

.

I have asked to borrow the chapter back to read and digest, and I am going to get it today. Funny enough, I once borrowed the book, "Critical Path" from the Theosophical Society Singapore Lodge, but found it an extremely daunting book to follow and returned it after the first few pages. Very dense in content. I will try harder to comprehend better this time round, so more later...

.
.
.
Past Posts: Usury , Bucky Group, Bucky Group 2