On Utopian Economics

"Post-Scarcity"

"Post-Capitalism"

"Resource Based Economics"

We give many names and many shapes to the hypothetical economy of the future. Without fail, we envision it as the Utopian ideal economy. Today I'd like to address the concept of economics in the future- what can we expect? Why should we expect it? What will it look like?


For starters, why do new economies develop? Currently, the mixed global economy employs a bridled capitalism to allow workers to "keep what they earn" while also contributing to social endeavors. The complex global market is an evolutionary extension of the economic theory of early 20th century economics, and is not a significant revolutionary deviation from economics throughout the industrial revolution. Economics has experienced revolutionary upheaval many times throughout human history, but it is not something any of us have familiarity with, as currencies and capital trading have been the status quo for a very long time.


Early humans, throughout the Paleolithic era, operated in small bands with limited resources. Their primary means of economy was through the barter of tools and resources with other economically limited groups. Throughout the Mesolithic era, the economic resources available to a clan drastically increased, but barter remained the primary method of exchange.


The first major revolution in economics happened during the Neolithic era, when tribes with expanding resources developed the concept of crafts and trades, specializing in production of various goods and services. This production based economy would have been unimaginable to socio-economic units from eras past, as the social structure and resources to produce goods through skilled labor were not present.


As this growth continued, Bronze-Age City States formed the first commodity markets, using specific measures of commodities as fundamental units of trade. This was also a revolution in economics, as resources could now be measured and compared, and rates could be set. For the first time, laws of supply and demand were quantified, demand could be anticipated, and markets became a concrete extension of the state of human affairs. The quantification of monetary value introduced the concept of interest, and as human society continued growing, economies grew as reflections of the resources available to continually more resource intensive projects.

"...economies grew as reflections of the resources available to continually more resource intensive projects."

This growth has continued for millennia, through the Middle Ages- where we saw the introduction of bank notes- and modern history - with the advent of mercantilism, global trade, and investment. An extraordinary thing has happened within the last century though, something which places modern economics distinctly at odds with the historical operating principles of economic systems:

Currencies no longer represent resources.


This is a major development in human affairs. From the shekel to the gold standard, human beings have used currency to reflect actual, physical resources. The currency of today is not secured by anything, it represents nothing, and its value is manipulated behind the closed doors of federal offices relative to other currencies, which are also secured by nothing.

"Currencies no longer represent resources."

This, in and of itself, is not as large a concern as many make it out to be. As long as the population has faith in the currency, it doesn't matter what the currency is based on. It is the byproduct of this fiat currency that I would like to examine, and that will ultimately drive the engines of creation to build a new economic structure.



For starters, growth today is measured in inflation. We want costs to go up, and for currency to devalue, as the primary measure of a healthy economy. Inflationary economics is its own field of study entirely, but what is clear is that social programs struggle to keep up with an inflating economy. The value of a dollar when the minimum wage was established, for example, has not kept pace with the value of a dollar today.


Another major result of this unanchored dollar has been the means of wealth production: most wealth generated in today's economy is not generated by production. Historically, to become wealthier, a business would produce goods, or would provide a service. Today, however, most wealth is generated by the simple act of moving money around. Banks keep less than 1% of their assets in reserve, and through manipulation of currency and interest rates generate billions of dollars in revenue while doing no service to society. General Electric - one of the world's largest and most powerful corporations - gets most of it's revenue from financial operations.


The global economy is designed to make the wealthy wealthier, but not in the historical "the rich get richer" sense, where the rich control the means of production, but in the sense that money simply creates more money without any production required at all.

"...most wealth is generated by the simple act of moving money around"

This is the true source of inequality in the modern world. No politician, no amount of socialism or communism, no tax system will be able to stop the modern economic engine, which from its very foundation - the currency itself - is flawed. As I see it, politics will not be required.


The flawed machine will destroy itself.


Economic systems have always existed as a representation of physical resources- be it human resources, such as labor and expertise, or natural resources, such as gold or oil. Today's system does not, and frequently becomes out of sync with the operating resources of the economy. This is why we get market crashes, why laborers do not labor in factories that exist but sit idle, why vast amounts of money can simply "disappear" overnight. The money is not real, it does not serve the people, and the flawed engine of economy is as unreliable as the humans controlling it.

"...money is not real, it does not serve the people, and the flawed engine of economy is as unreliable as the humans controlling it."

So what comes next?


As the economy self corrects, the problem itself - currency - will be rooted out. A "post-currency" economy is required to remove a layer of abstraction in our highly complex global cooperative. In a world without currency, the very concepts of capitalism and socialism are quite irrelevant, as these concepts address the means of distribution of currency throughout a socio-economic system.


We already see the building blocks of its replacement rising from within the system itself. The information technology system, in all its disruptiveness, has produced a generation of makers.


Millenials are makers. They provide expertise, they create art, they create commentary, they provide training, they build technologies and interact with other makers on a global scale and with a huge impact to society- all without the exchange of a single penny of currency.

"We give, we take, knowledge is gained, and no money is exchanged."

Consider Wikipedia - the world's most exhaustive and accurate encyclopedia. Curated by internet users around the world for free. We give, we take, knowledge is gained, and no money is exchanged.

Minecraft Creation

Consider Minecraft- a game, but also an artistic expression. Millions of players spend hundreds of millions of man hours creating publicly available gaming worlds, shared with anyone and everyone who would like to access it, and no money is exchanged.

Consider YouTube- a video sharing site, where billions of hours of entertainment, educational, and artistic videos have been created and shared by users who by and large make no money whatsoever off of their videos. We give, we take, knowledge is gained, and no money is exchanged.


I could go on forever with examples of how technology has produced a maker culture, a sharing culture, and a money-free society. As of now, this society exists within the confines of a physical infrastructure maintained by the old world of currency economics- but that society is bursting at the seems.


In thirty years or less, those same makers will be the dominant voting population in America. They will make up the vast majority of the work force. Our politicians, our CEOs, our cultural heroes will all be aged members of the maker economy, and they will run the world together.
So what will the future of economics look like, when shaped by the makers themselves? Judging from experience-


We give, we take, knowledge is gained, and no money is exchanged.