Read through the article a few times. My overall thoughts are that it's quite vague and in parts simplistic. It could do with a lot of expanding to link in to relevant theories it is trying to discuss rather than name dropping them in a way that doesn't really show how any criticism is being applied. The key point is that in a "post-monetary" future we will still need a system of accounting but the author here argues we can have that without having the ability to hoard wealth. Ok, fine but there's absolutely no expansion on this idea or even examples of how it can happen.
There have actually been policies implemented IRL (under very strange circumstances) that could achieve this such as negative interest rates which prevent any store of liquid value. The problem with this is that wealth could be stored in assets but potentially a wealth tax could be applied. Aside from the individual problems with this though the tackling of wealth hoarding is putting the cart before the horse if you don't have a way of distributing wealth in the first place. The article acknowledges that automation can potentially cause large scale unemployability but doesn't mention how this could be dealt with.
I'm not going to read into what the author may or may not believe are good policies but I agree with the fact that wealth hoarding is a problem in most post-scarcity set ups if there is some mechanism for people to accumulate wealth in the first place. The most common proposal amongst post-scarcity groups is a basic income which potentially would have to come with a few checks in the form of low/regressive/negative interest rates and a wealth tax if wealth equality was a desired goal.
Final small point but whilst I've come across the term post-monetary before the use of the authors term "post-monetarism" is problematic IMO as monetarism refers to the practice of placing importance on government control over monetary policy in matters of economic regulation.
There have actually been policies implemented IRL (under very strange circumstances) that could achieve this such as negative interest rates which prevent any store of liquid value. The problem with this is that wealth could be stored in assets but potentially a wealth tax could be applied. Aside from the individual problems with this though the tackling of wealth hoarding is putting the cart before the horse if you don't have a way of distributing wealth in the first place. The article acknowledges that automation can potentially cause large scale unemployability but doesn't mention how this could be dealt with.
I'm not going to read into what the author may or may not believe are good policies but I agree with the fact that wealth hoarding is a problem in most post-scarcity set ups if there is some mechanism for people to accumulate wealth in the first place. The most common proposal amongst post-scarcity groups is a basic income which potentially would have to come with a few checks in the form of low/regressive/negative interest rates and a wealth tax if wealth equality was a desired goal.
Final small point but whilst I've come across the term post-monetary before the use of the authors term "post-monetarism" is problematic IMO as monetarism refers to the practice of placing importance on government control over monetary policy in matters of economic regulation.
OA Wish list:
- DNI
- Internal medical system
- A dormbot, because domestic chores suck!