A dialogue worth sharing

I must admit, I'm lost in ideas and paralyzed by overthinking and procrastination. But something interesting happened, a stranger reacted to my post on Mastodon challenging my ideas and got me spontaneously writing about my vision for SintropiaDAO on an unexpected thread conversation.

Let me share how it went:

Flávia: Years ago I had a vision of a #postmonetary society. It was task-oriented, no need for bullshit jobs or titles. #AI helped us with task allocation, matching people to tasks based on our intrinsic motivation and the individual quest to identify our function as an abstraction of the undivided movement of the universe. It was peaceful and full of divine purpose

AK: But was it realistic? If there isn't anyone (or there aren't enough people) with the intrinsic motivation to do dangerous, unpleasant, extremely difficult, etc. jobs... then what?

Flávia: I honestly believe there are all kinds of tastes and crazy, that's why diversity which is now seen as a threat should be seen as a blessing. But automatization is the obvious answer for that. Besides the sense of service necessary when managing a commons and being part of a community. Doing unpleasant stuff is important for personal growth but only if it's aligned with our goals.

AK: I've done plenty of jobs in my life that many would consider unpleasant, and more than once for no money. But I don't imagine that that's much of a real solution; it turns out that things like cleaning out septic tanks, or managing roadkill, or many other examples are generally so unpopularly unpleasant that we have to pay people to do them. I'll believe in automation when I see it.

Flávia: Why did you do these unpleasant jobs for no money then?? Genuinely curious! Also important to mention that in a community people should share such unpleasant responsibilities, instead of hiring the same person to do it every time, each person should do it once and a while and track the accomplishments. Just as in a household people should share chores, no free-riding. Then it's not too heavy on anyone.

AK: I did them for various reasons; largely because I gained things of value besides money, such as experience. It's all fine and well to say that everyone should share in such jobs, but specialization has a LOT of advantages. It's difficult and expensive to train and equip everyone to do every difficult or dangerous or unpleasant task. Do you really want everyone to have their own set of firefighting gear, their own fall protection harness, etc?

Flávia: Of course not, gears and equipment should be shared as commons as well. The thing is, when money was invented we didn't have the information technology necessary to track at a large scale individual contributions, resources' flows or to properly allocate tasks based on skills (surely) and personal interests. But we have it now! My point is when we're overly motivated by extrinsic factors people do all sorts of wrong things for the wrong reasons.

Flávia: And you just shared an example of intrinsic motivation that is sadly overlooked, curiosity and education. If we create a database with people's goals and interests we can allocate the tasks to encourage such pursuit. It was never tried and I'm hyped to do so. Btw, in a post-monetary (or pre-monetary) society the concept of expensive does not exist. There's only the concept of valuable. This alone can shift our mindset to what really matters.

AK: This is a very old question, one sometimes referred to as the information problem. Throughout history, MANY people have asserted that they had the genius to properly collect, collate, and control all the necessary information in order to centrally plan the economy and make it work correctly. They have, universally, failed. The economy, the world, is simply too complicated for us to ever hope to effectively centrally plan it. And why should we even want to?

AK: Yes, central planning has been tried. Many times.

Expensive and valuable are literally synonymous.

Flávia: Wow, you scared me for a second. I thought you were mentioning 'a large scale solution for task allocation based on personal goals and intrinsic motivation' was tried many times before. Was about to ask for references when I realized you were simply reducing the specificity of what I'm implying as 'central planning'.

What I'm suggesting can be better described as a Global Collective Intelligence system. If you're not familiar I suggest Jean-François Noubel as a reference.

Flávia: Not suggesting we centralize anything. Thanks to the Goddess plenty of people are working on decentralized tech (as those who connected us here) who could help build a Global Collective Intelligence system without such centralization. I'm suggesting we build a coordination system based on a different flow of information and incentives. In case you're satisfied with how we're globally managing our complexities it doesn't discourage me to try doing better. (Reference to an off-the-thread post:

Flávia: Metacrisis is a product of human collective behavior. And our inability to solve it is a symptom of a faulty collective intelligence. We're like a school of fish unable to change the direction in face of danger, swimming right into the predator's mouth. We can do better!!)

Flávia: "Expensive and valuable are literally synonymous" This belief is so dangerous and triggers me in so many ways. It's the main reason why I believe only a #postmonetarysociety could heal us from its damage.

They are only synonymous from a market perspective. And a market tag (which is mostly determined by the ultra-rich) can never account for intrinsic and personal value. Eg. a good can be expensive, but only valuable to you if you sell it to trade for something else.

Flávia: Money acting as a store of value is so dangerous because what the market deems as cheap/free loses its intrinsic value. So if you slave people, their work and lives become worthless and it takes generations to prove them wrong. As a black Brazilian woman this is a deep wound. A famous song here goes "the cheapest meat in the market is the black meat". Not to mention all the free natural resources and caring labor the market exploits. No, expensive and valuable are not synonymous!

AK: Something cannot lose intrinsic value just because the market devalues it. That's part of the nature of it being "intrinsic".

AK: If you're not going to centralize anything, how are you planning on having an AI that makes all these decisions based on skills and "intrinsic motivations"? Do you plan to have many of them, coordinating?

AK: A different kind of central planning is still central planning; there's no good reason I can see to suspect your is not prone to the same problems.

Flávia: I initially wrote loses inside " " but removed it, linguistics choices we make for the sake of character limitations. Thanks for the opportunity to rephrase it.

The market has historically corrupted our perception of the intrinsic value of things, beings, relationships and nature. Besides social issues, capitalism allows the destruction and underappreciation of things of extreme value to our well-being, such as limited natural resources, caregivers, blue-collar workers, etc

Flávia: Honestly I didn't get to this technical part yet as I don't have the necessary knowledge, funds, or team to build anything :( If I ever get to build a pilot that enables me to test this hypothesis with one community I'd consider it a big win. The global scale part is a wild dream I'd only worry about if it makes sense locally. I wanted to test it by building a community garden, but it's still only me and ideas. Talking to you is the biggest outside action I've got in months!

Flávia: Maybe you're right. I think sharing the same pattern of information is how nature coordinates. As we must share the same part of a DNA to be in the same species, genera, etc.. we must share a basic pattern of info (that also allows differentiation and individualization) to track, measure and share the externalities of our behaviors to enhance our collective decision-making. To coordinate we must speak the same language, but language itself is collectively owned and constructed.

Debating capitalism

AK: Do you imagine that there would be no such thing as a market without capitalism?

Flávia: Well, if you radically change the incentives system and untighten people from the current mindset and limitations, yes. I believe.

AK: Then you misunderstand what economists mean when they say "markets". Markets required neither money nor capitalism. Markets are merely systems where parties engage in exchange. There are markets under socialism, markets under communism, indeed if there is more than one person, and people have a system to interact and exchange goods and/or services, you've got a market.

AK: I care a great deal about ideas, particularly economic ones. Primarily because most of the people I see who object to this or that economic idea often (not always) don't understand them. Not one in ten people who I see complaining about capitalism can even define it; not one in a hundred seem to understand it.

Flávia: Oh I misread your question. I thought you were asking if I believed there would be no underappreciation and devaluation IN a market without capitalism. My bad!

But yes, it's not about the market, it's about capitalism. However, the term is already too emotionally charged and embedded in the current capitalistic culture I would personally avoid using it to describe alternative economic transactions.

Flávia: I'm probably one of those who don't understand it lol. But I always felt a huge discomfort. And this gut feeling shaped my life journey and today I work at a non-convertible social currency project where we mostly spend money fostering socio-educational and environmental projects and speaking about the need for an alternative monetary system based on abundance, cooperation, wealth circulation, all things not fostered by capitalism. Bernard Lietaer was a great source for me.

AK: The particularly galling part sometimes is that it's not a complex idea. I understand if people struggle to understand something like quantum entanglement. But most misunderstandings I see surrounding economics (well, from honest people) stem from them simply getting information from bad sources.

Capitalism is merely the idea that property, including the means of production, should mostly be held privately, and that there should be a free market.

Flávia: And you think there's nothing wrong with these ideas? Specifically considering their development and the current state of the world?

AK: I think there is nothing wrong with these ideas; indeed, I think they are crucial to an ethically valid economy. Bear in mind, of course, that no nation on earth complies with these ideas; most nations that people call "capitalist" are engaging in something more appropriately called "cronyism". Most of the economic problems people object to stem largely from interference with the free market, not from the free market itself.

Flávia: We couldn't differ more. I believe these ideas are unethical, morally perverse and based on toxic individualism and competition. Have you considered why so many interventions had to occur to regulate the free market (which is manipulated by capital accumulation)? How can you privately own a means of production when the externalities to your profits are collectively shared? We shouldn't compete to survive, we should self-organize in support networks to manage our commons.

AK: Tell me; who owns you?

Flávia: Thanks to the end of slavery.. wait, thanks to the reformulation of slavery to its modern state that no longer sets property over people due to skin color, no one. Why?

AK: Well, because I own me. I think you own you. Do you disagree?

Flávia: Yes, I am privileged enough to admit my actions are governed by my mental models, instinctive reactions, and belief systems which are shaped by my personal experience.

Now I'm curious to see how your reasoning, based on individual realities, will account for those who can't say the same. Who are coerced by violence, debt, human trafficking, etc. As long as there's demand in the free market to buy their enslaved work and bodies, it's gotta be right to supply it!?

AK: Of course not. Just because there is a demand for something does not mean that it's "right" to supply that demand; I'm unaware of anyone of any stripe who has made such a claim.

Flávia: But that’s exactly what happens in a market where everything is reduced to numbers and the ultimate goal is to accumulate the greatest amount. I don't get why hold on to a system that allows, rewards and incentivizes such behaviors. It's morally flawed and based on theories conceived centuries ago in a totally different context and technological development. These old dudes didn't know what we know, we've followed their rules for too long. Passed time we try something new.

AK: I'm not interested in attacking ideas based on the age or gender of some of the people who believed in them. And you're mistaken about capitalism; people keep bouncing this idea around that "the ultimate goal is to accumulate the greatest amount", as if that's something capitalism demands or directs. It does not, and never has.

Flávia: I'm not interested in attacking ideas based on characteristics of those who believe in them either. When I mentioned "old dudes" I was stating a fact about the writers of these economic theories. Smith and Marx are old dudes, so old they died ages ago clueless about the challenges of our time, the potential of our technologies, and the realistic effects of their thoughts on our collective behavior. If they could see us now they'd be postulating completely different ideas.

Flávia: It does not matter if capital accumulation as we see it now is not demanded in the capitalism textbook. Even if it really is an unintended outcome, which I doubt it, it's still a product of capitalism.

When designing a tool, you're responsible for the unplanned misuse/overuse of it. You must anticipate the actions of ill-intended users. If you can't see ahead, once aware of the harmful outcomes you're responsible for mitigating them.

Flávia: For how long will we keep mitigating the harmful effects of capitalism until we realize it's just bad design, not suitable for a peaceful and caring society?

It surely made sense back then and allowed us progress, but we can no longer sustain our global coordination to be guided by a narrative of separation and competition. It's destroying our souls, bodies, ecosystems.

To keep defending it for the theory that never made into reality, that's what's unrealistic to me.

AK: There are a LOT of theorists when it comes to these ideas. But even limiting yourself to Smith and Marx, there's no need to bring up irrelevant characteristics. And yes, they came from a long time ago. At what time should we discard theories and philosophies? When they're 100 years old? 200?

AK: Actually, when you design a tool, you're not liable for everything done by anyone with it. But it's irrelevant, because no one "designed" capitalism. It is an emergent property of respecting basic human rights.

AK: How long? Well, first, I'd like to see us actually practicing capitalism, before we start blaming it for the state of the world.

Flávia: Really? That's so incoherent. Our convo started cause you questioned if my proposal, which has never been tried or reached the masses, would be realistic. Yet, you're expecting a theoretical version of a system widely known and practiced for more than 200 years to materialize. Why do you think we don't use it as you're idealizing? Cause it's unrealistic, not practical, people don't buy it. Just detach my friend, capitalism had its chance. Good luck preaching otherwise.

Flávia: You'll be forever responsible for your creations and what people make of it. And yes it was designed, endorsed and theorized.. how else would it had emerged? Which human rights? Private property?

Flávia: Theories should be discarded when they threaten our peace, well-being, and existence.

AK: And yet socialism marches happily on, despite having slain tens of millions.

AK: Absolute nonsense. If I make a hammer and sell it, and the person who bought it kills someone with it, that is not my fault.

Tell me; who "designed" capitalism?

Yes, partially, private property. Also the right to exchange what you own with others freely as you see fit.

AK: Central planning of all sorts has been tried. I think we don;t use free market capitalism because I can point to countless examples of government interferences in the free market; we have cronyism, not capitalism.

Flávia: It's not your fault, but you're responsible for making a deadly hammer. You should ask yourself can I make an undealy one? You clearly never had a toddler choke because of a toy not designed for eating. User behavior must be considered, and the greater your mistake in foreseeing the misuse the greater your responsibility. That's the difference between the hammer and the toddler cases.

Your priorities for human rights are really weird.

Then socialism should be discarded!

Flávia: Yes, you said this before about central planning and this conversation is clearly becoming pointless. It will be more beneficial for us to engage with like-minded people so we get to materialize what we envision.

It would be cool if in the future we both get to see our idealized systems in action so we get to discuss the effectiveness. If you're defending a future where all humans are supported and respected and all life forms can thrive, I wish you the best of luck!