What does Post-Monetarism Mean?

[kch49er]

Out and about atm so will have to comment on article later

This is why I like the term post-scarcity if money is 'a medium of exchange' I don't see how you can have a post-monetary system(Short of transap interventiona nd posssibly draconian laws) I know before we talked about paintings by artist,or scupltures and trading services, but if the pictures by artist x are so great then a lot of people might trade for y number of x paintings,which is back to money again.

Of course not everyone might accept them but then not everyone accepts $ or € or bitcoins.

Whilst it's true that private markets using money will most likely still be present in a post-scarcity economy the key difference is that they are no longer dominant. Barter and gifting occur everyday but we still live in an age where market economics with currency is the dominant form of economics (with a few caveats).

So whilst there may still be various currencies used to trade things on a market in a post-scarcity society this could be quite niche.

Incidentally I'm also not a fan of the term post-scarcity. Rather I prefer the term post-labour given that what we're often talking about is an economy that has been near totally automated, thus removing need for the vast majority of of labour.

Post-monetarism seems to be quite different from post-scarcity/labor. Putting it in OAish terms post-monetarism seems like an AI mediated economy set up specifically to prevent wealth accumulation (and strangely doesn't seem to specifically forbid using currency as long as you can't accumulate it). Wealth accumulation can happen in a post-scarcity economy- its just that that wealth wouldn't mean much.

I like the post-scarcity/post-labour division some OA aras might be one or both depending on local avalaibilty of tecnology and elements.

Hello, I happen to be the author

Hello, thanks for dropping by.

I do not necessarily see accumulation of capital as a problem, but the current ecological situation - driven by the needs of increased economic growth - is preparing for a mass extinction.

Accumulation of capital results in wealth inequality if there is not sufficient growth. To paraphrase Capital by Piketty: wealth inequality rises when capital grains exceed economic growth. I'm not defending growth as a necessary and would like to see a steady-state system implemented (where growth occurred when desired and appropriate rather than as a means to keep the whole system going) but you need a check on the accumulation of capital. It becomes increasingly easy to make more money and accumulate more capital the more you have, not always of course but as a general rule. If your economy isn't growing then this means the owners of land and industry will steadily accumulate a larger percentage of the whole.

We need to base our calculations not only on the laws of supply and demand, but we need to have a system that by default includes the "externalities".

I don't think many people would dispute that, what type of system would you suggest exactly? Whilst I agree with the sentiment of your blog the lack of substance was my main criticism.

If we would have a closed loop system with a monetary exchange system in place, wealth would become deflationary instead of inflationary, and lead to decreased social mobility and thereby heightened social conflicts.

Why would a closed-loop (and I presume steady state) system necessarily lead to wealth being deflationary? Also it seems like you're arguing for a closed-loop system but then saying here that it would be a bad thing.

Therefore it is important that a sustainable system is not only ecologically, but also economically and socially sustainable.

http://eoshorizon.wordpress.com/2013/09/...ccounting/

I've heard of similar proposals for tying economies directly to an aspect of the biosphere. A big problem though seems to be exactly how to measure the biosphere in a way that can be distilled to a simple numerical, especially given that the biosphere is constantly changing despite mostly being in equilibrium. Furthermore as a small critique production only when people order something would be very inefficient unless we posit some big advances in technology. A company predicting that it can sell 10,000 products and so mass producing 10,000 is more efficient due to economies of scale if it sells close to that number. Producing 10,000 products separately if and when a customer orders them will not likely benefit from this. Also the idea that there will be no advertising is overly simplistic and fails to recognise that without advertising people will have no idea what products are out there. There needs to be regulation on the industry sure and a cultural change with regards to consumption but a blanket ban is unworkable and undesirable.

I'm reminded of triple-bottom line and other accounting aspects as well as the depreesion era Miracle of Wörgl, as a way of preventing accumlation there is also the trick phone companies and stores use with expiring vouchers or the carbon trading scheme.

Regarding production, the cost of externalites would make transport from a larger more distant factory more expensive, if that would be enough to make a smaller production more viable or not is an open question. However we have started getting print-on-demand though I think ebooks is affecting that, once 3D printers are quick and verstile enough to compete on cost level with exisiting production methods, fab-on-demand might become a viable method,especially as they might be able to use exactly the same belt to produce multipe lines of products changing as demand does.

[Lewx_Lucas]

The important thing is not to localise, but that production from the extraction to the recycling should be sustainable. Internalising externalities will provide the impetus for creating such flows. ^^

[Worldtree]

The important thing is not to localise, but that production from the extraction to the recycling should be sustainable. Internalising externalities will provide the impetus for creating such flows. ^^

Have a look at this for more inspiration about accounting for natural capital- people trying to figure it out right now.
http://www.naturalcapitalproject.org/

[QueElEs]

I'm just gonna put here (sorry if it's been mentioned already) that a gift economy need not be post-monetary.

[Cray]

I'm just gonna put here (sorry if it's been mentioned already) that a gift economy need not be post-monetary.

I stumbled over an interesting historical example of a society moving to a post-monetary one:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heian_period#Economics

The Heinan-era Japanese had partly monetized rice, tying social rank of nobles to the amount of rice their fiefs generated. Rice became a primary medium of exchange and partly displaced currency, but rice was a poor medium of exchange for anyone other than farmers and nobles who could command wagon-load deliveries of the stuff. Payments were often handled by gifts for lack of useful currency.

The situation reminded me of a science fiction novel written in the 2000s [edit] Donald Moffit's Jovian! [/edit] took me forever to remember that...

Anyway, Jovian is about a young gas miner on Jupiter who eventually travels to Venus and Earth and witnesses how the solar system is ruled from (Liechtenstein? Luxembourg?) by corporate-noble families who have gotten out of touch with the impact of their enormous wealth. For example, a noble is willing to disrupt an enormous calcium shipment from Mercury to the Venus terraforming project to assassinate the main character over trivial, petulant motives. Nobles on Earth attempt to one-up each other by resurrecting mammoths and dinosaurs, and work on a near-gifting economy because (like the Heinan) currency was too abstract to them.

[Worldtree]

If you're looking to understand the possibilities for what a post- monitary society could be like, there's plenty of sucessful and not-so successful examples from the past.

David Graeber
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree...-austerity

Also a good read-his book "Debt: the first 5,000 years"

"Money: an unauthorized biography" by felix martin

And a bit more radical- "the end of money and the future of civilization" & "money: a guide to creating alternatives to legal tender"
By Thomas H. Greco jr.
https://reinventingmoney.com


kim stanley robinson depicts a mostly moneyless, funtional command economy in his book 2312, in which the problem of shortages is addressed mostly through a network of quantum supercomputers allocating local and imported resources rather than a central planning commitee, like in soviet russia. Would that work? Who knows. But it was inspiring to read about the non-earth solar system governed by a postcapitalist
Network of nested cooperatives in which all basic necessities are provided automatically (so, similar to the early years of OA, basically).