What does Post-Monetarism Mean?

[stevebowers]

Article by Enrique Lescure
http://eoshorizon.wordpress.com/2014/09/...yism-mean/

What I would like to offer is a definition of a post-monetary system which can – in a broad way – set it apart from a monetary system. The first marker is that a post-monetary system does not exclude accounting. On the contrary, it must rely on accounting.

[kch49er]

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.

[Rynn]

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.

[Rynn]

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.

[crevicecrab]

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.

[Lewx_Lucas]

Hello, I happen to be the author

There are previous articles that explain why our discussion is framed as it is. 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. This will affect the majority of humanity in a very negative way, and risk the technological and social progress we have made. 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".

The issue with inequality comes up not as a centre-piece, but as a result of moving towards a closed-loop sustainable system. Capitalism derives it's legitimacy from economic growth, since "people who 20 years ago were starving are now half-starving, and the Indian and Chinese middle classes have exploded" (the American dream globalised). 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.

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 agree that the term "post-monetaryism" is a bit bad, since it can be misinterpreted for "post-monetarism".

The article on post-monetarism is written to purposely exclude for example luddites, anarcho-primitivists and "free energy" conspiracy followers from the discourse, in order to be able to move it forward. Therefore it was left deliberately vague, so people that are working seriously on these issues can move forward.

[Rynn]

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.

[Lewx_Lucas]

Just a brief comment on advertising. We are not implying advertising would be banned, but there would simply be no incitament to try to make people consume as much as possible so you can make gargantuan profits. Regarding economies of scale, one of the problems today - the main problem I would argue - is that we are using between 1,33 and 1,50 Earths globally annually, and that it eventually will cause a mass extinction and thereby the social collapse of our civilization.

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.

Yes, and this was what I described, with other words. So did medieval economies work. Since most capital is ending up in the hands of a superclass, there will be less money chasing goods if we have a circular monetary system (without massive regulations). It seems that the best route forward is to move towards some sort of post-monetary system.

[stevebowers]

..one of the problems today - the main problem I would argue - is that we are using between 1,33 and 1,50 Earths globally annually, and that it eventually will cause a mass extinction and thereby the social collapse of our civilization.

This is true only because we are able to consume fossil fuels that were created millions of years ago by long-dead organisms. Once it is no longer economical to consume fossil fuels at this rate we would need to find another, longer-term source of energy, or reduce our consumption to fit within the global footprint.

As an optimist I think it is possible to do both. We only consume a minute fraction of the sunlight that is incident on our world, and we could use oceanic deuterium and fissiles for the foreseeable future, so energy need not be the world-killer some might think. If we for some reason could not extract enough energy from the seas and the sky to power our society, we could import energy from space-based solar power (note that this does exist in the OA Interplanetary Age, but it is mostly used to power the economy off the Earth).

And in addition we could make our civilisation much more energy-efficient. I've got a number of ideas on how to make our civilisation more efficient, and I'm open to more - but the energy situation isn't entirely hopeless, even without such savings.

[Lewx_Lucas]

..one of the problems today - the main problem I would argue - is that we are using between 1,33 and 1,50 Earths globally annually, and that it eventually will cause a mass extinction and thereby the social collapse of our civilization.

This is true only because we are able to consume fossil fuels that were created millions of years ago by long-dead organisms. Once it is no longer economical to consume fossil fuels at this rate we would need to find another, longer-term source of energy, or reduce our consumption to fit within the global footprint.

As an optimist I think it is possible to do both. We only consume a minute fraction of the sunlight that is incident on our world, and we could use oceanic deuterium and fissiles for the foreseeable future, so energy need not be the world-killer some might think. If we for some reason could not extract enough energy from the seas and the sky to power our society, we could import energy from space-based solar power (note that this does exist in the OA Interplanetary Age, but it is mostly used to power the economy off the Earth).

And in addition we could make our civilisation much more energy-efficient. I've got a number of ideas on how to make our civilisation more efficient, and I'm open to more - but the energy situation isn't entirely hopeless, even without such savings.

I am in agreement there, but it is not only a question of fossile fuels. It is also a question of the way we produce food, raw materials, consumer products and similar. Most production is made in the context of turning the planet into sectorial monocultures which have linear transfer relationships with huge population concentrations.

That must change.