Who builds the house that is marked Available? Who feeds them and their dependents? What about those who assume responsibility for an asset and then let it fall under repair?
Thanks for the questions, Arun - and yes, you're entirely right to ask them.
On "Who builds the house", the short-answer is 'a builder' The roles in both scenarios are exactly the same, from town-planner to coordinator to architect to procurer of resources to constructer to plumber to building-inspector and so on.
On "who feeds them and their dependents", again, all of the players are exactly the same in both scenarios, from farmer to food-processor to trucker to store or cafe to home-cooking-or-whatever, and so on.
On the specific "who feeds them" part, the short-answer is 'they feed themselves', via engagement on the respective macro-scale socioeconomic model - exactly as at present, except that in a responsibility-based model there is no need for money or its equivalents. (More on that in a moment.)
On "What about those who assume for an asset" etc, probably the simplest answer is to compare it to life as a renter in the present day. You don't 'possess' the asset, but you're responsible for it. The metaphoric 'landlord' who you are responsible to is the entire world, past, present and future. Remember also that you are not alone in that responsibility: just as in the current rental model, you can ask others for help (and often should, for safety reasons etc). The key responsibility is actually to respect the asset _as itself_ (much as, now, a team of steam-enthusiasts might maintain a old steam-engine, for example). If you can't be responsible for and respectful to and about the asset, then you shouldn't in charge of that asset, and hence you need to move on the less-challenging asset (such as in this case, a more easy-to-maintain and/or mess-resistant place). Again as per the current rental model, it's roughly the equivalent of a 'landlord's inspection', with the community as a whole acting as the metaphoric judge. (Yes, I'm well aware that there a lot of ways in which this could go wrong - racism / classism etc - so yes, we do need to design cross-checks to counter that risk. Otherwise known as 'rule of law' etc.)
As described in previous posts here, there are two core guiding principles. The simpler one, which replaces the money side of a money-based economics, is the realisation that we can replace every single monetary transaction with one four-word question: "what do you need?" _Money contributes nothing whatsoever to a functioning economics_: all it does is provide a mechanism to enable theft at every interaction, all the way up to a fully global scale, and at timescale too. (Look at the _literal_ meanings of many key terms in our current 'economics': for example, 'entrepreneur' is literally 'entre'+'preneur', 'between-taker' - 'one who stands between, and takes [from others]'; 'excise' (a common term for tax) is literally 'ex' + 'cise', 'out-cut' or colloquially 'to take a cut [from someone else's interactions]'; 'rent' is literally 'to tear apart'.). We don't _need_ any of this in a functioning economics: its only actual function is give the parasites priority over everyone else. Not A Good Idea...
The other key theme is the description of how the economics actually works: _mutual interlocking responsibilities_. On its own, responsibility on its own is not enough - you just end up with fewer and fewer people on whom all of the work (and blame) is dumped, with everyone else just sitting around claiming that it's their 'right' to contribute nothing towards 'the management of the household' (the literal meaning of 'economics') and instead just freeload (i.e. parasite) off the efforts of those few who _do_ take responsibility for anything at all. To make it work, we _need_ those mutualities and the interlocks, and how they interconnect with each other to support the dynamics of an entire world. (Yes, I/we _can_ describe all of that, how the interactions work, how to dive down into the detail, how to design, build and test the crosschecks, and so on. But because people to tend churn out endless 'what about this? what about _that?_' objections, it's not something I can easily summarise here - it's already several books'-worth, in fact, and rising fast. Oh well...! Happy to talk more about this, if you wish - though please first _do_ read the other episodes here, because you'll find a lot of your questions would have already been answered.)
I hope that helps as a quick overview? And again, many thanks for the questions.
It's turtles all the way down for this question. Once you get rid of the money system and replace it with responsibility, the question of "who gets paid for what" becomes "who takes responsibility for what" instead - all across and all the way down.
Humans have managed for millennia without a money-based economy, and not just as 'primitive hunter-gatherers' but all the way up to much admired civilisations such as the Ancient Egyptians, the Mayan and Aztecs, Ancient (pre-)Indian societies, Old European ones ... even if there was the concept of money, it barely ever stretched as far as daily life. As David Graeber puts it in his "Debt: the first 5000 years": money was for Kings, Temples and Armies - everybody else went by with pledges, reciprocal debts owed, and the trust that one's contributions to society would be returned in the form of sustenance, housing or other useful services. We find it hard to believe, but there's plenty of archeological evidence for this.
Of course, we would have to relearn the meaning of the concept 'responsibility' from scratch. It not the same as liability or accountability. It is closer to a sacred commitment, a determination to do the right thing, to reciprocate rather than appropriate. As many first-nation tribes across the world could tell us if we cared to listen, such systems of mutual responsibility are never perfect, so they need constant maintenance. People need to talk about it, be reminded of it, be corrected if they drift off, ... But it can work. In fact it has worked for much longer than our current system, which is well on its way to wreck the entire planet for the sake of a small group of people's mistaken idea of power and success based on how much money they can collect.
Huge thanks on this, Bard - you've saved me many hours of explanation, and done it much better and more concisely than I could, too! You've covered basically all of the key points about the historical basis and the present day drivers: for my part of the reply, I'll focus more on the specifics of Arun's questions.
Who builds the house that is marked Available? Who feeds them and their dependents? What about those who assume responsibility for an asset and then let it fall under repair?
Thanks for the questions, Arun - and yes, you're entirely right to ask them.
On "Who builds the house", the short-answer is 'a builder' The roles in both scenarios are exactly the same, from town-planner to coordinator to architect to procurer of resources to constructer to plumber to building-inspector and so on.
On "who feeds them and their dependents", again, all of the players are exactly the same in both scenarios, from farmer to food-processor to trucker to store or cafe to home-cooking-or-whatever, and so on.
On the specific "who feeds them" part, the short-answer is 'they feed themselves', via engagement on the respective macro-scale socioeconomic model - exactly as at present, except that in a responsibility-based model there is no need for money or its equivalents. (More on that in a moment.)
On "What about those who assume for an asset" etc, probably the simplest answer is to compare it to life as a renter in the present day. You don't 'possess' the asset, but you're responsible for it. The metaphoric 'landlord' who you are responsible to is the entire world, past, present and future. Remember also that you are not alone in that responsibility: just as in the current rental model, you can ask others for help (and often should, for safety reasons etc). The key responsibility is actually to respect the asset _as itself_ (much as, now, a team of steam-enthusiasts might maintain a old steam-engine, for example). If you can't be responsible for and respectful to and about the asset, then you shouldn't in charge of that asset, and hence you need to move on the less-challenging asset (such as in this case, a more easy-to-maintain and/or mess-resistant place). Again as per the current rental model, it's roughly the equivalent of a 'landlord's inspection', with the community as a whole acting as the metaphoric judge. (Yes, I'm well aware that there a lot of ways in which this could go wrong - racism / classism etc - so yes, we do need to design cross-checks to counter that risk. Otherwise known as 'rule of law' etc.)
As described in previous posts here, there are two core guiding principles. The simpler one, which replaces the money side of a money-based economics, is the realisation that we can replace every single monetary transaction with one four-word question: "what do you need?" _Money contributes nothing whatsoever to a functioning economics_: all it does is provide a mechanism to enable theft at every interaction, all the way up to a fully global scale, and at timescale too. (Look at the _literal_ meanings of many key terms in our current 'economics': for example, 'entrepreneur' is literally 'entre'+'preneur', 'between-taker' - 'one who stands between, and takes [from others]'; 'excise' (a common term for tax) is literally 'ex' + 'cise', 'out-cut' or colloquially 'to take a cut [from someone else's interactions]'; 'rent' is literally 'to tear apart'.). We don't _need_ any of this in a functioning economics: its only actual function is give the parasites priority over everyone else. Not A Good Idea...
The other key theme is the description of how the economics actually works: _mutual interlocking responsibilities_. On its own, responsibility on its own is not enough - you just end up with fewer and fewer people on whom all of the work (and blame) is dumped, with everyone else just sitting around claiming that it's their 'right' to contribute nothing towards 'the management of the household' (the literal meaning of 'economics') and instead just freeload (i.e. parasite) off the efforts of those few who _do_ take responsibility for anything at all. To make it work, we _need_ those mutualities and the interlocks, and how they interconnect with each other to support the dynamics of an entire world. (Yes, I/we _can_ describe all of that, how the interactions work, how to dive down into the detail, how to design, build and test the crosschecks, and so on. But because people to tend churn out endless 'what about this? what about _that?_' objections, it's not something I can easily summarise here - it's already several books'-worth, in fact, and rising fast. Oh well...! Happy to talk more about this, if you wish - though please first _do_ read the other episodes here, because you'll find a lot of your questions would have already been answered.)
I hope that helps as a quick overview? And again, many thanks for the questions.
It's turtles all the way down for this question. Once you get rid of the money system and replace it with responsibility, the question of "who gets paid for what" becomes "who takes responsibility for what" instead - all across and all the way down.
Humans have managed for millennia without a money-based economy, and not just as 'primitive hunter-gatherers' but all the way up to much admired civilisations such as the Ancient Egyptians, the Mayan and Aztecs, Ancient (pre-)Indian societies, Old European ones ... even if there was the concept of money, it barely ever stretched as far as daily life. As David Graeber puts it in his "Debt: the first 5000 years": money was for Kings, Temples and Armies - everybody else went by with pledges, reciprocal debts owed, and the trust that one's contributions to society would be returned in the form of sustenance, housing or other useful services. We find it hard to believe, but there's plenty of archeological evidence for this.
Of course, we would have to relearn the meaning of the concept 'responsibility' from scratch. It not the same as liability or accountability. It is closer to a sacred commitment, a determination to do the right thing, to reciprocate rather than appropriate. As many first-nation tribes across the world could tell us if we cared to listen, such systems of mutual responsibility are never perfect, so they need constant maintenance. People need to talk about it, be reminded of it, be corrected if they drift off, ... But it can work. In fact it has worked for much longer than our current system, which is well on its way to wreck the entire planet for the sake of a small group of people's mistaken idea of power and success based on how much money they can collect.
Huge thanks on this, Bard - you've saved me many hours of explanation, and done it much better and more concisely than I could, too! You've covered basically all of the key points about the historical basis and the present day drivers: for my part of the reply, I'll focus more on the specifics of Arun's questions.