RBEM/Strategies for integration with the monetary market

The Degree of Openness of RBEM Projects refers specifically to the openness of an implementation of a RBE system to interact with the monetary market system. Specifically, the quality for openness in this article is not related to openness to information, or to any other form of openness than that stated at the beginning of the paragraph.

The issue of the openness to the monetary market system 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, and a complex bureaucratic body might be required.

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 give up 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. For an unbiased result only characteristics of the different models should be mentioned, no names, not even "Resource-Based Economy". An early survey would help to focus on methods that are most likely to succeed.

Interesting personal information:

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

Probability of participation:

• Inconceivable
• Much persuading required
• Likely
• Definitely

Criticism

Money and property in a RBE

The whole problem with the monetary system, according to The Zeitgeist Movement and derived from conversations with Jacque Fresco, lies in the pursuit of profit, as expressed in Zeitgeist: Addendum and sustained in Zeitgeist Moving Forward. In these films, it can be understood that the purposes of the pursuit of profit are:

1. a priority access to desired scarce resources

One of the reasons for a RBE system not to use money is avoiding priority access to scarce resources, which it is hypothesised that invariably leads to artificially caused scarcities, such as we can see in the monetary market system. An example for this that has some popularity is the gold toilet.<ref>toilet seat example in in ZMF</ref>

1. access to property

The problem with property is that as soon as someone has some kind of property, it immediately becomes an artificially created scarce resource, that may lead to competition.

Rights in a RBE

Rights are protected by law (referred previously in the article as more complex rules). Law produced by legislation, and enforced by police and the justice system, including punishment methods. In a RBE system there are no rights because as they cannot be enforced due to the (intentional) lack of police or punishing methods.

A RBE system enables access instead of property, in such a way that scarce resources can be utilised by society fairly, without the need for rights. The rules of the system of access are based on courtesy and consideration towards others, and gratitude to society for making needed resources available to all. An example of how access vs property works in society can be seen in kibbutzim, in which supermarkets have no cashiers, and people only take what they need, and probably out of consideration for others, take less as any product becomes scarcier. The example of a library is limited, as there are monetary sanctions for returning books late.

The lack of rights and property are inherent, defining and unavoidable characteristics of the RBE system. Enabling rights through quirky methods can cause general disruption, confusion, and the seed for the collapse of the whole system. The pursuit of profit, or any kind of differential advantage for personal gain or pleasure, can lead to competition and social disruption.

Access to scarce resources for personal gain vs for fair use

Access to scarce resources for personal gain or pleasure is different than diferential advantage for purposes of high quality communal goods, services or research. A musical master may have differential advantage in accessing the best quality instruments as a result of their mastery. Someone who provides a service for hairdressing might have differtial advantage in using the best scissors. Someone who is in a chemistry lab doing research may have differential access to raw materials for the purpose of their research. All of this would be managed by the intelligent management of available resources system, according to skill, trajectory, purpose, benefit, cost, trustworthiness, and collective objectives for development.

References

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