The Field
How do we get from here to there? What is there? When will we get there?
When is undefined. This could take a decade, a century, maybe another millennia. You reading this today may not see the results of the efforts made today. But, any effort will get us closer, and there is no reason that we cannot achieve this within a lifetime.
What is also undefined, but the Equity Systems Explorations is how we find out what is there. This transition is designed for all people and all communities to safely prepare. With our modern globalized systems, it will require a global transition to maintain our modern amenities.
How is just a process, the scale is the biggest blocker, literally. We’ll need to break up the process into smaller steps. This process is inspired by Matthew Holten’s five stages of economic transition, in his book Moneyless Society.
- Raise Awareness
- Organization and Mobilization
- System Building
- Infrastructure Transition
- Globalization and Ownership Shutdown.
The Start
The first step is to raise awareness, but anyone who ventures down this path encounters the same wall. Disbelief. How do you convince everyone in the world to abandon a belief ten thousand years old, and adopt a new shared belief with everyone else in the world? You first need to define that new belief, then you figure out the rest later.
Holten correctly identified that ownership was the root of the problem, but I wasn’t entirely satisfied with the belief Holten defined in Moneyless Society. The “highest good of all”, and the belief that you have to put the needs of the community above yourself. While it’s a positive sentiment, the message conflicts with a lot of people’s value of individuality. Which is a valid concern from people fearing another fascist government dictating how everyone needs to live.
So I defined the Human Baseline as the solution, the foundational equitable belief that values individual needs the same as the community needs. Without either you have neither. This belief gave me a starting point to explore what humanity could look like without the need for ownership systems.
The next two steps are to define the organization and systems. The Economic Transition Cooperative was founded to facilitate the economic transition. The systems the ETC are defining are the Equitable Systems. This is a collection of Necessary Systems and Interaction Systems that are required for people and the community to exist, and define how the people coordinate, labor towards, and access their needs.
This is where we are today.
In order to achieve the first three steps and work towards the fourth and fifth steps, we need to design the ETC to grow in phases alongside the scale of the transition. The first phase is the Prototype (what you’re seeing now), this phase is to test the organization and systems we are designing before we introduce them to real communities. The primary goal of the Prototype is to complete the Catalog based on a sandbox community.
The secondary goal of the Prototype is to identify candidate communities that would be more likely to achieve a successful transition. Transitioning communities that can be more economically independent first will increase the likelihood of sustaining the community and transition process.
The Work
The second phase are local ETCs. Starting with self sustaining communities allows the ETC to exist in a transitioned community to continue the work transitioning other communities without economic threats. ETCs should still be established in as many communities as possible to increase the likelihood one of them succeeds, and it gets us closer to a global transition.
The local ETCs primary goal is to prepare the people and economic systems for transition. Preparation will start with the Personal Transition Report. This census will inform the ETC of who and what economic systems need to be accounted for, and the impact on the person’s life.
Then begins the process of fulfilling the Catalog, just as we practiced in the Prototype. This time the data is real, the people are real, the systems are real, the impact is real. While the Catalog is being defined, the ETC will also campaign within their community for support. This campaign will need to eventually become political, creating legislation to adopt the Community Equity Contract and enforce a ban on ownership of necessary systems.
The Goal
Once multiple ETCs have been established, they will need to form an Economic Transition Committee. This committee will help the coop representatives coordinate their efforts, creating a more sustainable network. The Committee will eventually work with global political systems like the UN to adopt equity as the new economic baseline.
Once equity has been adopted, ownership systems can be safely shutdown without risks to our necessary systems. The process has been complete and the ETC can shutdown as the last ownership system.
Transition Risks
- Internal and External Blockers: The owners within your community will stop at nothing to maintain their ownership. They will kill any person, any community, who challenges their ownership and authority.
- Mass Immigration: In the event that a community does successfully transition, communication about that community will reach owned communities. That “promise of a better life” will impact the new Equitable Communities with an unsustainable influx of immigrants.
- This is only a risk if the incoming community doesn’t have the available resources and ecological sustainability.
- To mitigate this risk, no community is obligated to grant membership to immigrants. Immigration is a privelage.
- Early Transition: If a community attempts to transition their economic systems without completing the preparation steps and completing their Equity Catalog, they run the risk of not having the Necessary Systems prepared for transition.
- People and resources may be neglected, resulting in mass populations unable to survive.
- Transition Failure: This process is not guaranteed to work. It will require the collective efforts of all people organized under a single belief. The owners may overpower you, or the people may not care enough. Keep moving forward.
- Once this transition begins it will reach a point where it’s all or nothing. I do mean that in the mortal sense. The pursuit of this transition will risk your life and those around you, all to maintain ownership. The safest way forward is together.