OPEN DEVELOPMENT NETWORKING
Money is not a natural resource. It is created by governments and banks – institutions of society – as a medium of exchange.
Eradicate the necessity for `exchange’ and you eradicate the need for money.
Empower individuals with the means of providing themselves with the products and services they would `buy’ with money.
There are sound logical reasons to eradicate the need for money, outlined in this article.
It would be wonderful to live in a world broadly outlined by the `Venus Project’:-
“The Venus Project is an organization that proposes a feasible plan of action for social change, one that works towards a peaceful and sustainable global civilization. It outlines an alternative to strive toward where human rights are no longer paper proclamations but a way of life.”
But there is much cynicism and doubt about whether we can ever get to that stage, seeing that our politicians are extremely unlikely to give up control and change the global power system.
People who work towards a resourced-based economy have two main challenges:-
Political:
Lobbying politicians, companies and those in power to change and adapt their profit practices towards a resource-based economy; protesting, electing sympathetic politicians to power who will promise to work towards a resource-based economy.
Technical:
Make plans, develop technology and design entire cities ready for the time when politicians agree to change.
The weakest link is the political aspect. It is extremely unlikely that politicians will deliver a recourse-based economy because they seek perpetual power and a resource-based society will take away their power.
Therefore there will always be limited enthusiasm and motivation from politicians for a resourced-based economy. And the profiteers in business are also unlikely to help because they would loose control the resources by which they make profit.
Is there a way to get to a recourse-based economy without relying on support of politicians or profiteers?
A viable sustainable alternative is to create an economy based on open source & shared resource technology and manufacturing, delivered through social networking. Whether or not we get to this stage we can start to improve lives of ordinary people by using open source networking ideas. We must focus on the basic human needs sectors:-
- Housing
- Food
- Water
- Clothing
- Energy
- Health & Medical
- Transport
After food and water, housing is the most essential need of all humans on the planet. In the West and industrialised countries, rent (or mortgages) take the lion share of income. We have to keep working simply to justify our most basic human need – and basic human right – of shelter. It is a similar story with energy; we have a nearby star that can supply all the world’s energy if we wanted to develop the technology to use it, but instead large companies – profiteers – extort payment for providing people with inefficient and finite forms of energy. Everyone recognises this as madness but most of us feel powerless to do anything about it.
The consequences, for ordinary people, of having to pay a ransom for housing and energy each month, is that they are actually slaves who must hold down a `job’ simply to justify their existence on the planet. Because we are used to such a condition we think of it as a `valiant sacrifice’ and promote the virtue of `hard-work’. But it is actually a very real type of slavery. We must release people from this tyranny of justifying their existence by unnecessary hardship by targeting the basic needs sectors.
Why target the basic needs sectors in particular? Because they have the biggest impact on the poor and impoverished.
Under the present monetary system there are many ways to make profit – especially luxury and consumer goods. The problem for the poor is the high number of profiteers target the basic need sectors such as housing, energy, food and water. Most of the world’s population are exploited by those who control these basic needs sectors. That is why we must fist target these sectors.
Unfortunately, profiteers will never leave these basic needs sectors voluntarily and so must be forced out. Up until now, left-wing political systems have attempted to liberate the poor from exploitation. But the fundamental flaw in the political approach is that it can can not maintain long-term protection against the profiteers. Even if we have revolutions or elect left-wing governments, sooner or later, perhaps after only a few years, another government will be elected or seize power – a government which will reverse the left-wing policies and sell off the basic needs sectors to the profiteers again. We would then be back at square one. Politics is an inefficient method of empowering people. We must focus on developing open source technology because technological advances are not reversible. Technology is an unstoppable force of progress that ultimately liberates and empowers individuals.
The only way to force profiteers out of the basic needs sectors is to make them unprofitable. We must use the weaknesses in the monetary system – economic market demand. No opportunity for profit is the only weapon that can defeat profiteers. These are the same “market forces” that have ensured High Street businesses closing in recent years because of competition from large supermarkets and internet stores. Economic forces are the profiteers Achilles’ heel. In order to force profiteers out of the basic needs sectors we must bypass politics and create a network of technology and manufacturing on the software open source and cyberspace freedom model.
Shelter / Housing
This is an urgent priority. Not only must we devise inexpensive systems of manufacture but we must also think about making all land `open source’. If profiteers own land they can continue to exploit people no matter how inexpensive the homes built on it. Land, like the sun, wind and water, can not belong to any one person or group of people. This is the only aspect of Open Development that needs some degree of political support. As for the actual homes themselves there are many companies now producing low cost buildings and this is a model for open source manufacturing of the future. The problem with homes built with the monetary philosophy is not only that they come with the price tag of lifelong slavery for the resident to justify occupation, but also that building materials are chosen on economic criteria rather than safety and longevity.
Energy
We must encourage people to share in the making of technology and knowledge with others via a world-wide network. On youtube there are many videos showing people how to make their own solar panels. Lets jump ahead and imagine that an efficient, powerful and robust energy-producing panel can be manufactured by anyone anywhere in the world – a panel that would be inexpensive to manufacture and that would use technology in the public domain. This technology would be maintained by a network of enthusiasts across the globe. Imagine that this panel is so effective that it will provide homes, buildings and vehicles with as much power as they need – even in cloudy circumstances or at night. Imagine that this product would be so robust that it needed little maintenance and would last a lifetime. Such a product would absolutely release people from the tyranny of the profiteers who force us to pay for energy that they control. For people with open source technology there will be no more energy bills. For this basic needs sector money would they never be an issue again.
No more bills is just a pipe dream? Utopian? Unrealistic? Not at all, because Open Development provides a model to achieve this gradually, piece by piece. And using this model the products and services we currently have to pay for with currency will gradually become free as technology liberates us from profiteers. The need for money will eventually disappear.
The Problems
There are, of course, many barriers to overcome before we get to the stage of having such an energy-producing unit in each home. For the foreseeable future, raw materials will have to be sourced and manufactured – and paid for in the conventional way. The profiteering companies will certainly want to cash in and also manufacture a similar product and would either charge extortionate fees or ensure that it requires upgrades or has a limited lifespan or needs specialist maintenance or license. In other words, once renewable energy technology becomes workable any scale, profiteering companies will try control the flow of energy. They may develop their own technology based on limited methodology and bring out a patient, license or copyright to prevent others from using their invention – to protect their profits. And of course to use their technology everyone must pay the profiteer money. This is akin to proprietary software in the computer world. This is software licensed under exclusive legal right of its “owner”. The purchaser, or licensee, is given the right to use the software under certain conditions, but restricted from other uses, such as modification, further distribution, or reverse engineering. We see this model in Microsoft Windows OS. Windows and most of the software that runs on it is proprietary software. It costs a lot of money and end users have no control over the source codes of the software.
The Answer
The computer world supplies us with a workable counter to proprietary technology. Linux is an alternative operating system that is available free and all the software needed to do all the things you can do using Microsoft Windows. Linux users are therefore free from the tyranny of proprietary software. As far as open source/Linus uses are concerned, money, virtually does not exist in the universe of computer software. And it is this Linux/open source model that must be used to develop physical technology.
It is essential that Open Development technology is NOT controlled by governments or profiteering companies but by a network of individuals. The analogy is cyberspace with nobody owning the network itself.
The sun’s energy does not belong to anyone and neither should the technology that harnesses it and distributes it to every human on the planet.
We need technicians, engineers and scientists to develop technology and place it into some sort of General Public License similar to that used in software. Licenses are generally designed to take away the user’s freedom to share and change the works but the GNU (General Public License) is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change all versions of a program, schematics, plans of a mechanism — to make sure it remains free for all its users.
Profit; Incompatible with Essential Services
Profit in the basic needs sectors has the potential to harm or even endanger human life. If a pharmaceutical company produces two similar products, one that is known to be safe yet makes marginal profit, and one that brings a slightly higher risk but can be sold at a very high profit, there is every incentive for the company to bring the slightly higher risk product to market. This has happened and it happens still and will happen as long as profiteering is the prime motivation for the pharmaceutical companies. This may have terrible cost in human suffering. So as far as any enterprise involving basic human living is concerned, monetary profit is a flawed and dangerous motivation.
Profiting from the basic needs sectors is exploitation because we can choose whether or not to buy luxury or non-essential goods, but we must all have food, water, clothing, shelter energy and transport.
