infinite individuality

We like to say the world is finally perfect. At least as is, to borrow the phrase, humanly possible. It all started when Lazarus Incorporated designed the first true nanomedicines. We could now record and correct our bodies at the molecular and genetic level. We conquering death and disease and balancing our hormones in the process. We had never felt so physically fit. With death conquered, those who owned Lazarus, Inc finally began to understand listlessness that comes with eternal life. Seeking purpose facing a projected endless existence, they decided to do what they could to prevent death from conquering the lives of others. The motives for this purpose were unique to each individual. Most of the shareholders just wanted to be rich, though there seemed to be a general spirit that to be able live with an eternal conscience, one had to help others who aspired for the same opportunity. As the information age evolved information technology, it necessarily evolved our political econo...

Property is a state defended right that entitles us to compel actions from one another. For instance, the State can declare someone as indebted to someone else who claims property damages.  Our Legal Tender, Federal Reserve Notes, exemplify state enforced property-right as they are "payable for all debts, public and private" of dollars, our favorite construct of exchange-value. This modern money (and the banking and credit systems built around it) allows the manufacturers of debt to own our common means of exchange even as we use it. Owners exact a tribute for it's use in interest, much as our absentee landlords exact tribute in rent for the use of their property. As a result, those of us who live paycheck-to-paycheck (laborers) are compelled to pay tribute to those with property-rights over the land and money that we, the Common, use to work together. We pay tribute to the owner-class to exchange our ideas, goods, and services. Property-right found perhaps its fullest e...

After reading Mutual Banking , I want to attempt to provide an example of how such a society could function. Greene proposes a real-credit system, where notes of exchange are created upon the mortgage of real-property for collateral. Essentially the mutual bank agrees to a use-value for the home (in dollars for Greene) and is willing to give the mortgagee up to half that value to be traded as currency with an agreement to pay back said mortgage. The interest rate can be held at virtually 0 due to the non-speculative nature of the notes, creating a system of "paper money" with legal value among the mutual credit association. This credit is to be used in trade and for services among the other members of the association. As goods and services are provided, they are constantly reassessed in comparison to the use-value of competing goods on the market. The divide between real-property and currency disappears into the numerous associations' joint-ownership of all of the fo...

The biggest flaw of a capitalist free market: the inequality of bargaining power between the wage-worker and the hierarchical corporation. "I have shown the contractor, at the birth of industry, negotiating on equal terms with his comrades, who have since become his workmen. It is plain, in fact, that this original equality was bound to disappear through the advantageous position of the master and the dependent position of the wage-workers. In vain does the law assure the right of each to enterprise . . . When an establishment has had leisure to develop itself, enlarge its foundations, ballast itself with capital, and assure itself a body of patrons, what can a workman do against a power so superior?" -Proudhon The modern day economy is a master-serf relationship as the worker must depend on his employer for every form of sustenance via his wage. It is our state enforced conceptions of private property which support such an unequal market, and so to free ourselves, we must...

And they should just accept it and be happy that those who have more don't try to squeeze them for more of what they've got, right? Because that's what the "free-market" is about, right? Exploiting others for as cheaply as the distorted centralized currency allows us to? You ever notice how all countries compete to make their labor cheaper while their politicians "nobly fight" to make sure laborers get a "living wage"? Maybe citizens need to grow the courage to stop governments from forcing corrupted value systems (read: military-industrial complex, endless foreign wars, endless economic regulation, state regulated education) on their populaces. Perhaps if individuals were allowed to pick the currency they got paid in, the economic distribution would actually be a product of men's labor and contributions to his community. A truly merit based economy, rather than concentrating the wealth of well connected individuals who happen to come fro...