RBEM/Strategies for integration with the monetary market

The issue of the openness of RBEM implementation projects is mainly relevant for the bottom-up approach of implementing a Resource-Based Economy, though it might also be of relevance for specific experiments of top-down approaches. The issue involves the following questions:

• How do people get resources that are only (or most easily) available for money?
• What happens with the property of people who join RBEM projects?
• Which rules need to be defined, if individuals, groups or a RBEM project as a whole are trading.

Most people have social relationships, hobbies, items and even jobs they love and want to keep. On the other hand they want to detach from a system that exploits and destroys themselves and their environment. If people have to give up everything they have, it may be difficult to find enough skilled people to develop RBE communities to a level that allows most people to join without losing anything. On the other hand isolating RBEM projects from the monetary system provides protection against being compromised.

Closed RBEM Project

A closed RBEM project will need to purchase all resources they need for the whole lifetime of the project in advance. If it runs out of resources because of poor planning or unpredictable events it will simply fail. Temporarily project members will be strongly restricted in their freedom. If they cannot use money, they cannot get resources that are not available within the project. For example, project members will not be able to visit friends or travel the world, if no free transportation exists to bring them to their destination. If no money or property is allowed within the project, there is no risk that the development of an RBE is neglected.

Collective Interactions with the Monetary System

With this setup, individuals cannot interact with the monetary system directly, but the project exchanges resources continuously (directly or by using money). This way required resources can be purchased, if the project produces excess resources. However, people completely depend on the other project members.

Individual Interactions with the Monetary System

People enjoy maximum freedom. They can use any economic system at any time. It must be defined which resources belong to the project and can be used by anyone and for which resources an individual has exclusive rights. It must also be defined which actions of an individual are devoted to the project and which are not. This model requires a more complex set of rules, but it also attracts people to be involved in the project that do not want to much of their freedom and comforts, even if it is only temporarily. People can take advantage of RBE gradually. However, it has to be evaluated how fast people would adapt to RBE, or if they would adapt at all.

Mixed Model

It might also be worth to evaluate, if a mixed model is possible for a RBE project, i.e. some project members use a closed system, while other members use open systems, but all members could interact with each other.

Empirical Evaluation

It is proposed that the key function for the evaluation is the total participation in RBE in relation to time, i.e. the growth function. The total participation is not necessarily equal to the number of participants. In some models partial participation is possible. There are different characteristics that are worth investigating considering the growth function of a RBE: e.g. time when RBE will become the major social system of a country or of the world, time when it is possible for an average person to change to RBE without renouncing anything important.

A survey that maps personal information (profession, education, age, income, ...) to the current motivation of joining RBEM projects of different degrees of openness can help to estimate the potential of the different models.

Interesting personal information:

• Profession
• Education
• Age
• Place of residence, residence rights
• Income / assets

Probability of participation:

• Inconceivable
• Much persuading required
• Likely
• Definitely