While there are great points here on trying to make the exchange economy work better, what's missing from the broader discussion across the web is ideas like a "basic income" to soften the exchange economy (funded by taxes or government revenues for allocating resources) or a bigger transition to a gift economy (Linux, Wikipedia), subsistence economy (3D printing, dirt-cheap solar panels), or a planned economy (just building public access life-supporting infrastructure, made easier with better computing models and elecronic democracy) as ways for people to get by whether what they want to do is make music, write stories, keep up a blog, or raise happy healthy children. I put together a YouTube video and presentation linked at my site called: "Five Interwoven Economies: Subsistence, Gift, Exchange, Planned, and Theft". The key point is that the balance between those five types of transactions shifts with cultural change and technological change. We need to look at across all five types of transactions to understand what is going on in our world right now, not just focus on the exchange transactions. The exchange economy may just become less important in our lives as many costs go to zero through technological advances, and cultural advances may also lead to a basic income for those things that may still need to be rationed or which people may still need to be motivated to do through pay.
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Basic income and five interwoven economies
While there are great points here on trying to make the exchange economy work better, what's missing from the broader discussion across the web is ideas like a "basic income" to soften the exchange economy (funded by taxes or government revenues for allocating resources) or a bigger transition to a gift economy (Linux, Wikipedia), subsistence economy (3D printing, dirt-cheap solar panels), or a planned economy (just building public access life-supporting infrastructure, made easier with better computing models and elecronic democracy) as ways for people to get by whether what they want to do is make music, write stories, keep up a blog, or raise happy healthy children. I put together a YouTube video and presentation linked at my site called: "Five Interwoven Economies: Subsistence, Gift, Exchange, Planned, and Theft". The key point is that the balance between those five types of transactions shifts with cultural change and technological change. We need to look at across all five types of transactions to understand what is going on in our world right now, not just focus on the exchange transactions. The exchange economy may just become less important in our lives as many costs go to zero through technological advances, and cultural advances may also lead to a basic income for those things that may still need to be rationed or which people may still need to be motivated to do through pay.