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Topic: Beyond Civilisaiton: Intertribal Economy
Part of the forum "Dialog Cafe" in the IshCon Forum Archive
| Poster and Date | Post |
| Ghost Sat Jul 8th, 2006 at 03:09 PM |
The whole point of everything is making a living. Simple as that. The question is, how do we do it in a sustainable way? Yesterday I was at work. I had a conversation with another actor. He was telling me that allegedly, the Chinese government will condemn Fallun Gong practitioners to death for no good reason, execute them, then harvest their organs (which are generally in good shape because of their health regimen) and then sell them on the black market. Apparently, you can get 40k for someone's organs. I was pretty overwhelmed. The lone intelligent thought that percolated through my flabbergastedness was that the commodification of humans was the ultimate expression of the free market. I pondered that as I tried to process my feelings on the matter and then I was suddenly bathed in the light of epiphany. The free market is about unlimited competition. More succinctly, the free market violates the Law of Limited Competition. This realisation hit me like a truck. I began to meditate on the permutations of this idea and found that the flood gates opened. Nearly a decade of meditations on economics coalesced in brilliant clarity. Here's some of what I realised. Marx wrote that one of the reasons that capitalism was designed to fail was because it was based on unlimited competition. Every business tries to get the largest market share possible and to that end, they must undermine, absorb or destroy their competition. Eventually, a small number of people would control the vast majority of wealth. The system will then collapse when those at the bottom realise what a bum deal it is and rise up. He was absolutely right. But it wasn't limited to capitalism. It's true about any class-based mode of production. The point of the Law of Limited competition is to preserve DIVERSITY. When we monocrop, we are destroying diversity. When we compete in an unlimited free market, we are doing the exact same thing; intentionally trying to destroy diversity to replace it with it's opposite; MONOPOLY. We see this happening right before our eyes and on a wide scale today: AOL-Time-Warner, Glaxo-Smith-Kline, Daimler-Chrysler, Renault-Volvo, just to name a few. In Canada, we've traditionally had six chartered banks. Even they are merging. We've seen the emergence of multinational corporations of unprecedented economic power. Wal-Mart. Coca-cola. GM. Microsoft. A few years ago I heard that, pre-merger, Chrysler was the 15th most powerful economic organisation in the world; more powerful than Argentina! (For years I've had a theory that pre-World War II, we saw the same thing happening with companies like Standard Oil and that this widespread monopoly, as per Marx's prediction, led directly to the Great Depression and that the economic system would have collapsed if not for the economic boom of World War II.) More and more, we see these corporations actively seeking out and destroying competitors wherever they can find them. As a stomach-turning example, the Bechtel Corporation, after privately taking over the Bolivian water supply, in a bid to preserve their monopoly, went so far as to lobbying the government, successfully, to outlaw the collection of rain water . Just watch The Corporation to see how they and other multinationals, operate. This practice of annihilating competition is NO DIFFERENT than that of Totalitarian Agriculture. I'm amazed that I never saw this direct link before. Simply put, anything that is a violation of the Law of Limited Competition is UNLIMITED competition and can be referred to as TOTALITARIAN. The free market espoused, championed and revered by neo-cons everywhere like Milton Friedman and the Frasier Institute, is in fact, Totalitarian Economics. (A quick note about the Law of Limited Competition. I've often lamented the fact that it was written in the negative. "Thou shalt not"... It really should be written in the positive or in the logical, "if x, then Y". Like "Objects with greater mass bend space/time to a greater degree and attract objects with less mass." Or "an object in motion stays in motion." Or "for every reaction there is an equal or opposite reaction." I've never been able to figure out HOW to phrase it in the positive, but I imagine it should be something to the effect of, "any node in a system that competes in an unlimited fashion will undermine, overwhelm and destroy their competitors, eliminate diversity in favour of monopoly and eventually collapse that system." When phrased like that (it ain't perfect) its much easier to see how it applies to situations outside of interspecies competition. The spirit of the law is clearer, "if you undermine your competitors you fuck yourself." Anyhoo...) Obviously, one of the goals of people who want to make their living in a sustainable way is to design and employ systems that are inherently sustainable so that we might replace systems that are not. To that end, we must identify the fundamental flaws in the systems we currently use. Clearly, the fact that our current economic system is built on unlimited growth, which is itself supported by a policy to violate the Law of Limited Competition, makes it unsustainable. So the question is, can we create and economic system that is based on sustainability (leaving growth as an imperative out of the equation completely because sustainability is reactionary rather than linear) and that is in accord with the Law of Limited Competition? The answer, thankfully, is yes. The application of the Law of Limited Competition to economics promotes, above all else, economic diversity. By consciously not trying to destroy competition or undermine their ability to compete, or more succinctly, by competing in a limited manner, you allow competition to flourish. Today, small businesses are being swallowed whole by large multinational corporations; from the local cinema to the family farm. In an economy where competition is conducted in a limited manner, the small business would flourish. The small business of choice, of course, is the tribal one. The term business is unfortunate and misleading. It implies that there is a single internal structure that can be adopted. Not true. The tribal business is merely a competing society of humans that may engage in economic activity. The possible forms that the economy takes and the structure of that cooperative are unlimited. The tribal business is simply one expression of the cooperative. The cooperative has many properties that make it INHERENTLY sustainable: cooperative structure, limited membership and most importantly, because they are incapable of exploiting their own members, they are absolutely INCAPABLE of producing surplus as a policy. Because the tribal business cannot produce a surplus, there is a limit to how large a market share they can own. The dominant economic model today is to constantly grow your business and to gobble up as much market share as humanly, or as inhumanely, as possible. To that end, the organisation itself must grow, both in numbers and in terms of its productivity. The tribal business cannot grow unlimitedly and so there is a fundamental shift from the growth urge to the sustainability urge. Tribal businesses have a fundamental ceiling to how large they can grow and in how much product they can produce. If you can produce ten units of trade, and you trade them all, even if you or another group wanted to trade, too bad. There is no eleventh unit. This limit to how large a market share an individual tribal business can control, coupled with the imperative among leaver societies to incorporate the Law of Limited Competition into their economic activity, leads DIRECTLY to wide open space in market share (tantamount to open niches) that can be filled by a wide array of similarly limited businesses. I must say and I am quite shocked at this myself, that the invisible hand of the marketplace makes a hell of a lot more sense in a limited economy. Now, obviously, it is as impossible for tribal businesses to directly compete with hierarchical ones as it is for tribal organisations to directly compete with hierarchical ones. This is where the INTERTRIBAL ECONOMY comes in. The intertribal economy itself is neither a capitalist, corporatist, feudalist or slave mode of production, it is what I have coined, a modern cooperative mode of production. Within any given cooperative, the class-based modes of production are meaningless because neither class nor exploitation are possible within the cooperative. Internally, they can distribute resources however they see fit and, in fact, each tribe will have vastly different strategies for that. The point is that each cooperative will trade in an intertribal economy (to greater or lesser degree). Again, this essentially OPEN-AND-LIMITED ECONOMY can operate in whichever way the participants see fit within the framework of the Law of Limited Competition. Some economies will be infinitely compatible (they all use the same currency), some compatible with some conversion (five use different currencies and three use the labour theory of value and two use... well... some unheard of principal) and some incompatible. In the other thread, Beyond Civilisation: Hasidic Jews, I spoke about the idea of intertribal economy and how it can exist in a parasitic cancer-like state within a larger host economy until the day that that host is consumed (as cancer always does), collapses and leaves the parasitic economy intact (if it has been designed to survive on it's own, ie, the economy as a WHOLE is self-sufficient) to compete freely without the worry of conflict with Annihilators. The idea still stands. If we create a parasitic intertribal economy, we will create a NEW MARKET. The larger this market becomes, the more that the member tribes can rely on it for their every needs. This is the transition that Quinn speaks of: "Daniel Quinn" wrote: 100 years beyond civilisation P eople will still be living here in one hundred years - if we start living a new way, soon, Otherwise, not. But how would we get there, and what would it look like? Utopians can't let go of the idea of sweeter, gentler, more loving people taking over. I prefer to look at what worked for millions of years for people as they are. Sainthood was not required. To project into the future: as people begin going over the wall in the early decades of the new millennium, our societal guardians are at first alarmed, seeing it as portending the end of civilisation-as-we-know-it. They try heightening the wall with social and economic barbed wire but soon realise the futility of this. People will keep dragging stones if they're convinced there's no other way to go, but once another way opens up, nothing can stop them from defecting. Initially the defectors derive their living from the pyramid-builders. They interact more and more with each other, building their own intertribal economy. After a hundred years civilisation is still hanging on at about half its present size. Half the world's population still belongs to the culture of maximum harm, but the other half, living tribally, enjoys a more modest lifestyle, directed toward getting more of what people want (as opposed to just getting more). -Daniel Quinn, Beyond Civilisation, page 115 -Italics added At first, like small businesses, tribal businesses will deal to a large extent with the host economy and generate most of its revenue through that trade. But it will re-invest that revenue, not in the host economy, but in the intertribal one. Build it and they will come. The greatest hindrance to people leaving the current economy is that there is nowhere else to go to make one's living. As the intertribal economy grows in size (not scale, ie, in its ability to support more participants rather than in its ability to increase productivity and per-capita output), it will attract more and more people. As the intertribal economy grows, it is within THAT market that tribal businesses will divide up market share. In effect, investing and re-investing in the intertribal economy is tantamount to creating new niches. As well, not only would the small tribal business, or cooperative, flourish, but it would be the only type of organisation ALLOWED to participate. It is within the intertribal economy that diversity will be allowed to flourish because membership is predicated on your organisation being cooperative and incapable of violating the Law of Limited Competition. Furthermore, within the context of an intertribal economy, cooperatives DO NOT have to be self-sufficient. This is an IMPORTANT point to stress because many people fear that a complex division of labour that exists BETWEEN tribes, will allow for surplus production and will allow for economic dependencies. Both of these could theoretically lead directly to the re-establishment of hierarchy. For instance, if a food production tribe (food being an essential product) tells the weapons production, entertainment and jewllery making tribes (all non-essential products) that they either produce a surplus and follow their leadership (using their control of the essential product as a form of coercion), then they could easily establish hierarchy and renewed growth. But this is an impossibility in an intertribal economy. In an intertribal economy, there is NOTHING BUT market diversity. If a producer of an essential product tries to use that control as a form of coercion and there were no other option for that good, then certainly, it would work. But in an intertribal economy, MONOPOLY is a virtual impossibility (and I only use virtual out of courtesy rather than probability). In an intertribal economy the incredible diversity in the market leads to an abundance of PRODUCT REDUNDANCY. Far more likely, there will be MULTIPLE food production tribes who together could easily absorb a redistribution of trading partners. Furthermore, non-essential product producers have available to them as a counter, the BOYCOTT. This is an extension of what Quinn speaks of in My Ishamel: "In 'My Ishmael', Daniel Quinn" wrote: …They’re going to say, ‘If the Jays are going to start annihilating opponents (or in this case, trying to use their position to re-establish hierarchy), then we’ve got to adopt a new strategy toward them. We can’t afford to treat them like they’re still playing Erratic Retaliator, because they’re not’… …If the jays go back to playing Erratic Retaliator, they could probably just let it be. But if the Jays continue to play Annihilator, then the survivors are going to have to join forces against the Jays and annihilate them. The boycott, in this case, means that the offending tribe is SHUT OUT of the intertribal economy. Being shut out of the only economy that you can actually compete in represents a serious and possibly fatal risk to a cooperative. (The possibility DOES exist that a big man could organise essential product producers to collude and collectively CREATE a monopoly that could be used to coerce other tribes in the economy into hierarchical subordinance. But this is the same question being addressed in the Problems With Rhizome? thread. I think the strongest case against it is that each member tribe in that coalition is sovereign and operates cooperatively and so subordinating them to a big man might be difficult. Still very much open for debate but I'm not quite as worried anymore.) The more that people begin to flock to employing this alternative economy, the more energy will be siphoned from the hierarchical one. This constitutes a collapse. This should and would, be encouraged. People involved in an intertribal economy are themselves in tribes, are likely Leavers and have a vested interest in investing in that economy. The stronger the economy, the easier it is to enact their story and limit their participation in an inherently unsustainable economy; that of the Culture of Maximum Harm. Members (individuals and cooperatives alike) would be discouraged from trading with ANY hierarchical/exploitative business making it harder for hierarchy to compete/exist (and preventing it from gaining large market share and by extension, growth essential to survival). Thus the hierarchical economy, along with it's capacity to exist, will begin to collapse, not because of any kind of attack, but through simple abandonment. All of this can be regulated memetically rather than legislatively. Most people today won't trade with producers who use slaves. This, obviously, was not always the case. But at a given time, the mythology surrounding the benefit of slavery was exposed as a sham and the practice was largely abandoned. Granted, there are still slave economies alive and thriving today; however, trading with slavers and certainly being a slaver, has lost the near-global popularity in once enjoyed in the extreme. Today; furthermore, there is a movement to only buy from producers who pay "fair" wages and another to boycott third world 'slave' wages and another to boycott factory farmed animals or GMOs. If, as the intertribal economy grows, people find trading with groups that use the hierarchical/exploitative system to ANY DEGREE as unpalatable as most of us currently find trading with slavers, they simply will not trade with them. This can be accomplished by exploding the mythology of hierarchy; something that is generally a prerequisite for anyone willing to shift to life in a cooperative. The more reliant we can become on the intertribal economy and the more we can boycott trade with the hierarchical one, the stronger the intertribal and the weaker the hierarchical. In this way, an intertribal economy is sustainable, cannot produce surplus, will not trade with those who do and cannot form dependencies because monopoly is impossible. The inherent sustainability and adherence to the Law of Limited Competition, will resonate through all aspects of the economy from marketing, to extraction, to production, to consumption. With so much competition an no worry (or ability) to pump products out in volume (in an attempt to secure greater market share), producers will be forced to focus on quality rather than quantity. Like Ray Anderson suggests, closed loop production, where products are designed to be recycled, will become the norm. Innovation will go through the roof. The imperative for evolution comes from competition. The greater the monopoly, the less the impetus for innovation. As Adam Smith put it: "Adam Smith" wrote: Wherever capital predominates, industry prevails: wherever revenue, idleness Through greater competition comes greater vicissitudes in the system, which leads to constant selection, which demands greater innovation to simply remain competitive. The beautiful part is that this innovation will have, at its core, the imperative to adhere to the Law of Limited Competition. And so our products and practices will be sustainable by design. Throw in the Post-Information Age, where ideas, designs and processes are shared in an open-source manner and innovation will soar to heights we never thought possible. We will not have as much wealth as we do today in a gross manner, but we will certainly have products and services that are sustainable and that are of actual use to us. Furthermore, markets will be forced to be more local as transportation costs (because of the limited resources of each coopearative group) will make foreign trade prohibitively expensive in most cases (not to say that there won't be transportation tribes) and because in a Post-Information Age world, anything that can be produced can be produced locally, because there is no monopoly of knowledge and; furthermore, the locally produced product is likely going to be of more direct use in that region because its properties will be tailored to the needs of that region. Rhyzomal communication is also facilitated handily. The moment that the host organisation collapses (which, according to Jason, wont happen until ALL hierarchies world-wide collapse as a single unit, or global PEER-POLITY SYSTEM) the intertribal economy will be vulnerable because it will no longer have the host to protect it; to hide within. After such a collapse, assuredly, there will be remnants of civilisaiton all over the world who will then dutifully try to re-establish hierarchies and take over the world again. At this point, as it was 5 000 years ago, cooperatives will find themselves in DIRECT conflict with hierarchical organisations. The standoff between Cain and Able will resume. Hopefully, Vail is right and rhizome will work. Whether he is or not, intertribal communication will be a snap because they will be cooperating economically on a day-to-day basis. I think that the cooperative structure organised by the power of memetics and the Leaver premise are more than enough to keep this sort of economy in check. The argument could be made that since things will be so prosperous economically (people having lots of the products they want and need) that, obviously, people will want more. Maybe. But that doesn't mean they can get it. The only way for a cooperative to increase production is to agree unanimously internally to increase their standard of living because exploitation is impossible. Because of the cooperative structure, labour burden is evenly distributed among the membership. So personal greed is checked by consensus laziness. As a perfect example, hunter-gatherers work very little. They could easily agree to produce more, to dedicate more time to production, but they don't. We can't assume therefore that just because our products are shinier that we'll be any hungrier to work harder. So I guess that's about it for now. I'm quite excited about this. It, to me, is quite a breakthrough. Hope you enjoyed it. I look forward to dialogue :D Peace and Love and Empathy, Matt |
| TwoRoadsTom Sat Jul 8th, 2006 at 07:28 PM |
Just a half-second reply, Matt. What you've come up with is beautiful. Thank you & I look forward to the dialogue as well. |
| MatthewJ Sun Jul 9th, 2006 at 12:42 PM |
Wow Matt! Very cool! The first thing I want to throw out, and this is what gives me some hope that there might be an alternative to the "99% of the population dies within a few years in a big crash" scenario, is that I have found that there are SOOOO many people who want to "drop/walk out". They are held back, however, by both a lack of practically being able to do this (or knowing how, or even consciously knowing they want to), and by the very strong voice of mother culture condemning walking out. So, I think that one of the great things about this model, versus a single tribal business, is that while a tribal business gives individuals more of what they want, it also happens to involve a significant amount of a feeling of insecurity, often involves more work that a wage slave job, and requires a hell of a lot of soul-searching, and networking to get going. Also, the line between an individual tribal business and a regular small business can be blurry from the inside, and the benefits are almost invisible to those on the outside. However, once something like this gets going, it could provide a greater sense of security (a a group of limited competing/mutually supportive tribal businesses is much more stable than a single tribal business in the market economy), and a sense of cohesion that would let the non-pioneers start to feel comfortable walking away. Anyway, this seems like it would provide a huge pressure valve for people to start to walk out. The other thing that a tribal economy might provide to get the NTR going, that a single tribal business can't, is the space in which to really enjoy the benefits of not being in civ. So while a tribal business person has to suffer all the daily suckyness of being in civ (working half the time just to pay the rent!!!! AGH! The idea of rent makes me crazy!!!), a tribal business network might (could) provide the space to allow people to really walk out. However, how do we get there from here The main doubt I had after reading BS, was that if the main requirement for membership in a tribal business is a genuine interest in the business (i.e. I want to write a newspaper more than anything else), and not a common set of ideas (i.e. I want to get beyond civ), then its going to be damned hard to get the critical mass going for anything beyond a single, isolated, tribal business, and that a tribal economy, without the shared ideals of beyond civving, would be even harder (and this applies mainly for the beginning. Once the members of a tribal economy enact the benefits of beying beyond civ in their daily lives, ideology is just silly). Again, you need a critical mass of people who understand and are commited to the ideas, not just the acitivty, in order to get the ball rolling. So the only way I see of this happening is if a fairly significant number of people who share these ideas (and not just ishies, but green-anarchists, anti-civies, and even some entrepreneurs might be compatable) intentionally physically get together, and start this from scratch. I dont see the inter tribal economy being emergent from randomly forming tribal businesses (at least in the beginning). So, what I'm saying is that we all need to move to one place and start this damned thing.... :P |
| Ghost Sun Jul 9th, 2006 at 11:01 PM |
Hey, Bill. Thanks man. Hey, Mat. "Mat" wrote: The first thing I want to throw out, and this is what gives me some hope that there might be an alternative to the "99% of the population dies within a few years in a big crash" scenario, is that I have found that there are SOOOO many people who want to "drop/walk out". They are held back, however, by both a lack of practically being able to do this (or knowing how, or even consciously knowing they want to), and by the very strong voice of mother culture condemning walking out. Amen. "Mat" wrote: So, I think that one of the great things about this model, versus a single tribal business, is that while a tribal business gives individuals more of what they want, it also happens to involve a significant amount of a feeling of insecurity, often involves more work that a wage slave job, and requires a hell of a lot of soul-searching, and networking to get going. They involve a lot of work if you try to compete in the free market. Hierarchical businesses just plain outclass you in terms of output because they use exploitation. You would work far less in an intertribal economy; well, you would work less and less the closer the economy came to self-sufficiency. Until that point, a lone tribe would be insecure because they wouldn't be self-sufficient. An intertribal economy (fully-formed) IS self-sufficient. The neat thing is, not every cooperative NEEDS to be a part of an intertribal economy (I say AN specifically over THE because there would be MANY intertribal economies). If a bunch of people figure out how to create a completely self sufficient tribe (I imagine your Tom Brown types could pull it off in the woods say) then, well, they're self-sufficient. What the intertribal economy allows is space for all of the other people who can't just melt back into the wilderness. It is an economic space for people who want to make their livings sustainably but can only do SOME things themselves. Together they get all things. The soul searching and networking is the bane of my existence right now. Has been for a while. But I am B. It's a process, not an act. "Mat" wrote: Also, the line between an individual tribal business and a regular small business can be blurry from the inside, and the benefits are almost invisible to those on the outside. An economy full of small businesses is a health economy. The problem with the free market is that small businesses get swallowed whole. But from the outside, absolutely, they look the same. If you walked into a little Italian place with their minimum wage dishwashers in the back, or if you walked into Mondragon in Winnipeg, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference unless it was explained to you. In both cases, someone brings you a sandwich. This AIDS in the whole 'we're clandestine cancer cells' part. But what is important is the internal structure. The line isn't so blurry internally. No one is on slary. No one earns a wage. Everyone helps. There is no boss. Everyone shares in the revenue. People care about each other. The people involved are happy. "Mat" wrote: a a group of limited competing/mutually supportive tribal businesses is much more stable than a single tribal business in the market economy The members of an intertribal economy wouldn't necessarily be better equippped to compete in the free market just by working together. They'd need to take less FROM the free market the more they worked together. But the point is not to be content in the free market, but to build an intertribal one. I think the real security for those involved and the real attraction for people hesitant to walk away will come when the intertribal economy is approaching self-sufficiency. When people can say "I will invest in THIS economy RATHER than the free market and I can do so confidently without fear of starving". Because unless you can tell someone where their food's gonna come from tomorrow, they ain't goin' nowhere. "Mat" wrote: The main doubt I had after reading BS, was that if the main requirement for membership in a tribal business is a genuine interest in the business (i.e. I want to write a newspaper more than anything else), and not a common set of ideas (i.e. I want to get beyond civ), then its going to be damned hard to get the critical mass going for anything beyond a single, isolated, tribal business, and that a tribal economy, without the shared ideals of beyond civving, would be even harder (and this applies mainly for the beginning. Once the members of a tribal economy enact the benefits of beying beyond civ in their daily lives, ideology is just silly). Again, you need a critical mass of people who understand and are commited to the ideas, not just the acitivty, in order to get the ball rolling. You mean BC :?: 8O Remember, don't confuse a COOPERATIVE with a COMMUNE. A commune is a group of like minded people (the Amish, the Hasids, the Branch Davidians). A cooperative is a group of people who make their livings together. Wanting to employ a cooperative STRUCTURE is not a cultural belief. Uniform hairstyle is a SUPERSTRUCTURAL or cultural belief (for more on my thoughts on cultural materialism, peep DIS). The question of shared belief is an elusive one. I had this argument with my roomate a couple weeks ago. The language isn't very precise. Yet. If there's one thing I love doing it's inventing language 8) That gays are wrong, that little dogs go to heaven, that apple pie is best, that hockey is the greatest sport on Earth, that cows are sacred are all BELIEFS. They are part of a given society's culture. To organise as a cooperative: ethnic tribe, urban tribe, tribal business, eco village; or to organise as a hierarchy: state, corporation, kingdom; are NOT beliefs. They are LIFESTYLES. It's all about investment. Everyday, we invest in the free market in the hopes that we'll see some return. The WAY that we invest is that the vast majority sell our labour and a small minority purchase labour and keep the result. So when Quinn says that the people involved need to have an interest in the business, it means that they need to want to INVEST in THAT cooperative in the WAY that people invest in cooperatives. The WAY people invest in cooperatives is that they give support to the whole in return for support from the whole. Daniel, Rennie, Hap and CJ all WANTED to invest in the East Mountain News. But they couldn't grow because no one else presented themselves who wanted to do the same. They all wanted to collect a paycheque and leave it at that. So yes, people who want to form tribal businesses need to want to make their living in a similar manner, ie, share a lifestyle, (and in a specific way: butchers, bakers, candlestick makers) but their actual beliefs: do people watch porn in the open or in private, is Sunday a holy day, is bacon a breakfast meat, do the women let their nasty-ass arm pit hair grow so long they can braid it, which is the best hockey team (like that's a fucking question... GO HABS GO!!!); are IRRELEVANT in the formation of the tribe because those beliefs will evolve through the day-to-day activities of the tribe as they make their living together (for example, a priest, rabbi and an atheist can open a cooperative bar together but they sure as hell couldn't start a commune of like minded people). Conflicting cultural beilefs sort themselves out (people either learn to get along or no one makes their living). But the SOURCE of that desire to adopt a new lifestyle is MIND CHANGE. Why mind change? Because once your mind changes, you can SEE the effect of the way you make your living. THAT is the thing that you need to change. So you need to make your living differently. People will look for a new way and either find it or they won't (like the Hippies. They couldn't figure out how to make their livings differently so they all got jobs, got fat and now run banks). You can't make a living saving the world. You can make a living working cooperatively to produce a newspaper. As for critical mass and tipping point, when people realise that a lone tribal business is a hard way to make a living (a lot of investment for little return) they might go the way of the hippie unless they find a way to make it work. An intertribal economy is a way to make it work. "Mat" wrote: So the only way I see of this happening is if a fairly significant number of people who share these ideas (and not just ishies, but green-anarchists, anti-civies, and even some entrepreneurs might be compatable) intentionally physically get together, and start this from scratch. I dont see the inter tribal economy being emergent from randomly forming tribal businesses (at least in the beginning). People moving to the same place will make things easy in that place, but people doing the work where they live will make things easy EVERYWHERE. Some already-established tribal businesses will begin to find each other and begin to work together. Other economies will be planned out to the last detail before the first step is made. I think that there will be a certain amount of design and a certain amount of organic growth from economy to economy and in different mixes. Things are always harder to get off the ground than they are to join after they're set up. We're the architects of the New Tribal Revolution. ON EDIT: Just something that popped into my head. Within the market economy, tribes will need to use money. But at the same time, all intertribal transactions can be conducted however they see fit. So a bagel shop could sell bagels for 50 cents each to the public, but barter them on the intertribal market, or trade using the labour theory of value, or use gold dubloons, or use acorns, or just share things openly, or have service agreements, they could even use USDs... So long as they figured out how to conduct intertribal transactions in such a way that it didn't piss of the tax man, each intertribal economy could use whatever system they wanted. The beauty of this is that the money they generate would be used to buy resources to re-invest into the intertribal economy but the economy itself would have it's own exchange system that, if they're smart, could survive the collapse of the host economy. Peace and Love and Empathy, Matt |
| MatthewJ Mon Jul 10th, 2006 at 09:34 AM |
"Ghost" wrote: You mean BC Heh. Oops. "Ghost" wrote: An economy full of small businesses is a health economy. The problem with the free market is that small businesses get swallowed whole. I am actually at work right now in a non-tribal family owned small business. It might be part of a healthy economy, but it's hierarchal, exploitive, and very much part of civilization. This better not be what we're aiming for :S I think we are saying the same thing mostly. "Ghost" wrote: As for critical mass and tipping point, when people realise that a lone tribal business is a hard way to make a living (a lot of investment for little return) they might go the way of the hippie unless they find a way to make it work. An intertribal economy is a way to make it work. Right on. It would seem that an inter-tribal economy would really work. However, as I think we both have agreed, a lone tribal busines in the free market marginally works. It can be done, and is being done, but it requires an extra-ordinary (in the literal sense of the word) group of people. Without an inter-tribal economy in place, it takes extra-ordinary people to form tribal businesses. You might see one in every 5 or so major cities (you have to use Winnipeg as an example). For an inter-tribal economy, you'd need the opposite ratio. So, my point is the critical mass for an inter tribal economy is very likely not going to come together unintentionally. 1) Those with changed minds are pretty difusely spread out. 2) Changing minds without a physical example of what it would look like, and a place or model for them to emulate is slow and not as fruitful. 3) People with changed minds are far less effective if alone, than if working ot make a living together with other's with changed minds. 4) The practical example of changed minds that would Change further minds (an inter-tribal economy) requires a significant density of changed minds, that is going to take a looonnng time to happen unintentionally 5) We don't have a lonnnng time to play with. "Ghost" wrote: People moving to the same place will make things easy in that place, but people doing the work where they live will make things easy EVERYWHERE. This is assuming that the effectiveness of individuals vs groups is linear. It is not. It is demonstratably exponential. 4 people trying to make a living (and trying to change minds) in the four corners of the world are going to have a much harder time of it than if they were 4 people together. Plus, I'd even say that a sucessful example in one place is far more effective in helping everywhere than a group of aspiring people spread out. We are running out of time, and I don't see many examples of successful tribal businesses around, nor any signs of the tribal revolution being underway. I think you just hit the nail on the head with the reason why, Matt, (the tribal business works best in, and achieves the level of effectiveness it really needs, almost only in the tribal economy) but I think it absolutely requires a kick start to get going, and isn't going to appear on its own. MatthewJ |
| Ghost Mon Jul 10th, 2006 at 12:46 PM |
Hey, Mat. Yeah, we're pretty much on the same page :D "Mat" wrote: I am actually at work right now in a non-tribal family owned small business. It might be part of a healthy economy, but it's hierarchal, exploitive, and very much part of civilization. This better not be what we're aiming for :S Oh hells no! The small business is hierarchical. We certainly don't want that. What I meant was that the tribal business is similar to a small business in scale, Say 5-50 participants and that the two have just about the same role in an economy. In the case of small business it's employers and employees. In the case of a tribal business, everyone is an equal partner. The size of such a business limits production and the ability to claim market share, leaving more room for other enterprises. That's good for diversity. There is a FURTHER limitation to production (one that we are DESPERATELY looking for) in that there is NO exploitation. This is a VERY GOOD THING. It means that the tribal business is incapable of producing a surplus as a policy. That makes them inherently sustainable. If the free market operated like people like Smith SAID it should (a man who is incredibly distorted by neo-cons, he's actually closer to Marx than to Friedman) you'd have a ton of small businesses (which you don't because the market economy is filled with annihilators). The advantage of that is tons of product redundancy and healthy competition. So an intertribal economy, filled ONLY with tribal businesses, will be a healthy economy. "Mat" wrote: Right on. It would seem that an inter-tribal economy would really work. However, as I think we both have agreed, a lone tribal busines in the free market marginally works. It can be done, and is being done, but it requires an extra-ordinary (in the literal sense of the word) group of people. Pretty much. It's very difficult for a tribal business to operate in a market economy. Most of them can only operate in NICHE MARKETS. That way, they don't really have to be in direct competition with hierarchical businesses. For example, the East Mountain News filled a vacuum. There was no other newspaper for that small region. They had no competition. If there had been a large daily, they probably wouldn't have gotten that far. That's not really a universal though. Some kinds of tribal businesses CAN operate in DIRECT competition with hierarchical businesses. Restauraunts as an example have a very clear limit to growth; the seating capacity of the restauraunt. If more people come, they have to turn them away. So for businesses that have a similar ceiling, they can compete with anyone. They can't compete with the advertising dollar of the fast-food chains, but sit-down restaraunts are a different niche really and always survive; regardless of if they're hierarchical or cooperative. But a tribal business, like the East Mountain News say, has no such limit to growth. They could theoretically increase their circulation to a billion people (if that many people were interested in news from that region). But to do that, they would SERIOUSLY need to increase their output. To do that, they'd need the production power of hierarchy. Because tribal businesses have a limit to their production power, they simply can't compete because once they reach their maximum output, they have to turn clients away. I'm certain there's better economic terms for the two above scenarios, but I can't think of them. So yeah, as a general rule, most people in tribal businesses have to work their ass off just to compete. But in an intertribal economy, they wouldn't because EVERYONE has the same limit to their production capacity. This is why the invisible hand works so much better in an intertribal economy. If there is demand for 100 units and each tribe can produce about 10 units and there's 5 tribes, well, then you better believe that five more tribes will pop up to fill the void. If the demand sinks to 50, or if there are suddenly 15 tribes, all of the tribes involved are going to have to rethink what they do. In that case they'd be forced to work harder, but that's just a scarcity thing. You can't avoid that. In a market economy, the invisible hand just plain doesn't work. Take cola. There are justa handful of cola producers in the world. Coke, Pepsi and the little guys. The no-name brands are usually produced by the large players anyway. When demand goes up, instead of attracting NEW PRODUCERS (the point of the invisible hand) the MONOPOLIES just move into that new market share. If you wanted to be a new producer, you'd have to sink billions in investment just to be large enough to compete with Coke. If you didn't, you'd just get swallowed up by them. Just because of the power of branding, that's a seriously dangerous investment. Conversely, when demand falls, all Coke does is downsize, fire 60 000 people and maintain their profit margin. Then when there is an upswing, they can just do it again. In a market economy, once monopoly is established, there is very little that can be done to dislodge it. "Mat" wrote: Without an inter-tribal economy in place, it takes extra-ordinary people to form tribal businesses. You might see one in every 5 or so major cities (you have to use Winnipeg as an example). For an inter-tribal economy, you'd need the opposite ratio. So, my point is the critical mass for an inter tribal economy is very likely not going to come together unintentionally . I agree in principal, I agree with the likelyhood, but I just don't want to rule it out. That's all. There's something to be said for things just popping up like that. I liken it to vegetarianism. 20 years ago, you had to go out of your way to find vegetarian options because they were few and far between. To use my new favourite expression, for most people, the juice was not worth the squeeze. But today, you can throw a rock and hit a vegetarian product. There are large corporations churning them out. For consumers (a market economy term that I hope will be abandoned in an intertribal economy) its now EASY to find those alternatives. So yeah, once the intertribal economy is in place, it will be a snap for people to jump right on in. But we extraordinary people are the poor shmucks who get stuck doing all the grunt work because we think it's the right thing to do. Even so, it's NOT happening all that fast. I think that what I just identified, that only certain kinds of tribal businesses compete well in the market economy, is a HUGE reason. So I'm not quite sure what the solution to that is? Perhaps it's designing the whole thing before you get going, perhaps its starting with the ones that can compete and then adding the other stuff after. At any rate, a little planning never hurt anyone. "Mat" wrote: 1) Those with changed minds are pretty difusely spread out. 2) Changing minds without a physical example of what it would look like, and a place or model for them to emulate is slow and not as fruitful. 3) People with changed minds are far less effective if alone, than if working ot make a living together with other's with changed minds. 4) The practical example of changed minds that would Change further minds (an inter-tribal economy) requires a significant density of changed minds, that is going to take a looonnng time to happen unintentionally 5) We don't have a lonnnng time to play with. 1- Yup 2- Yup 3- Yup 4- Yup 5- Yup "Mat" wrote: This is assuming that the effectiveness of individuals vs groups is linear. It is not. It is demonstratably exponential. 4 people trying to make a living (and trying to change minds) in the four corners of the world are going to have a much harder time of it than if they were 4 people together. Good point. "Mat" wrote: Plus, I'd even say that a sucessful example in one place is far more effective in helping everywhere than a group of aspiring people spread out. Again, good point. From an advertising a la Gandhi's be the message you want to see in the world, it's a good plan. A little tougher to organise than local initiatives, but a good plan nonetheless. Not to take away from it at all, but we do still need people to do this sort of thing where they live. How about this, everyone out there... move to Montreal 8) It's a beautiful city, we've got pretty progressive legislation and I don't gotta go nowhere. "Mat" wrote: We are running out of time, and I don't see many examples of successful tribal businesses around, nor any signs of the tribal revolution being underway. I think you just hit the nail on the head with the reason why, Matt, (the tribal business works best in, and achieves the level of effectiveness it really needs, almost only in the tribal economy) but I think it absolutely requires a kick start to get going, and isn't going to appear on its own. Well, they are there. But yeah, I too lament the seeming lack of forward progress. But hey, all we can do is keep our eyes on the prize. Peace and Love and Empathy, Matt |
| Talvir Mon Jul 10th, 2006 at 12:49 PM |
Hey Matt 1 and 2 :D This is a very interesting discussion, good points everyone. :) Getting changed-mind people together is a big issue. I think DQ's newspaper is the perfect example of a functioning tribal business running into that barrier. Early on when I first joined, I wrote a thread where I asked why people here at Ishcon weren't getting together and forming tribes. Matt J is sort of alluding to this: changed-mind people are diffuse and it's a struggle to get something going by yourself (or with only one or a few like-minded friends). Having lots of "ready to go" Ishconners spread thinly across the globe hasn't really gotten things off the ground. Maybe that's because things are just ripening now and we're not yet aware of the change. Or maybe because it's not going to work until people start moving to be with each other. Or maybe we need a "recruiting" drive. Or something else. - Joe |
| MatthewJ Mon Jul 10th, 2006 at 01:33 PM |
I am ready to begin to drop everything and gather energy somewhere to kick start an inter-tribal economy. I'm throwing down the gauntlet. Of course, we research and plan first, but I'm ready to act when the time to act is ripe. Anyone else? :P ==On Edit== To be clear. This is not to start a COMMUNE. We need changed minds within physical proximity to start an ECONOMY. |
| Ghost Mon Jul 10th, 2006 at 01:47 PM |
I've had a little experience trying to cobble together a tribal business. I've failed many times. I think the best advice I ever got came from Mark Merrit and Howard Ditkoff. They told me that the best way to go about it was to create a project rather than an idea. By that they meant that what I was doing, trying to get people together to form a tribal business got me nowhere; whereas, getting people together to DO something: mount a play, make cabinets, bake fresh bagels, works better because people are working towards making a living rather than working towards an ideal. You can have a big bowl of ideals but they don't have a single calorie. So I think the key to getting people to move to a new city, if that's the thing you want to promote, is to have a plan about who can do what. Don't just tell people to move there and then you'll figure it out. Tell them that you intend to build an economy consisting of a bakery, a fruit and vegetable stand, a blacksmth, carpenters, electricians, a clothing store and a theatre troop. Then tell them what progress has been made already and then ask them if they're interested in filling one of those roles. That's an interesting question. What constitutes a self-sufficient economy? I don't just mean, food, shelter and clothing, but today, what would we need? Mechanics? Computer geeks? To get a standard of living somewhat comprable to what we have, what would we need? --- The funny thing is, I've never felt so close to Jason 8) Peace and Love and Empathy, Matt |
| MatthewJ Mon Jul 10th, 2006 at 02:05 PM |
Heh, was just about to come back and edit my post to make it less of a "move together" and more of a "here is what you'll get if you [move/work here]. Well.. A city economy, since you are living in an area that is beyond carrying capacity, needs some access to fertile acerage for horticultural purposes. Also, every horticultural group I know of, that isn't holding domestic animals needs access to wild land, especially for protein (hides from the vegan). I don't know much about food production, but I get the feeling that if you aren't going to do it industrially or agriculturally (as per Jason's BDR definition), it doesnt scale well, and a large percentage of the economy will be involved in it. Woodlot management is usually included in a horitcultural system, so there are your buildign materials. Textiles aren't a siginficant drain, and can come from animal skins, wool, or scavenged from civ. Having a place to live is the biggest one I can see. Civ makes people work SO hard just to have a legal place to sleep at night. Especially if you are living in a city, including shelter in a tribal economy is gonna be tough. A blacksmith and metalurgist might be cool, as well as useful if we want to use metal post civ (which we might not). Those would be the basics. Any other ideas? Am I totally off on a crazy limb wanting to do something like this? === on edit === The inter-tribal economy I am a part of (in 2 years) So first, and inter tribal economy would need to have wild space, where, as an insurance policiy, evreryone learned primitive skills. That way, everyone has insurance against a hierarchal lord locking up the food. Those learning primitive skills would, of course, supply the economy with meat, wild edibles, medicinal herbs, perhaps clothing, whatever. Furthermore, this wild space would be tenede a la permaculture to increase human use of it. We'd also have a group of lazy Scavengers whose "living" would be scavenging dumpsters, consigment shops, whatever, for useful materials. We'd need to have some sort of way of defeating rent/mortgages. Don't know about this one. Any ideas. Everyone would be growing food as intensively as possible, both as insurance against hierarchy, and as a useful skill. Food in the tribal economy is more expensive than rent. We'd have woodworkers and some sort of wood processing area to take advantage of our woodland. Perhaps this would be a route to paying the inevitable civilization fees. We'd have various "specialists" who could work with metals, electricity, clothing, and what have you, but who also grow food on their roofs. Anyway, I'm at work, so I'm posting things that come to me in my odd moments when the bosses are out MJ |
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