Global Resource Bank

[Dave B]

So if you object to calling that an "exchange" because it's not what you personally consider "exchange" then please provide a word that you understand as a replacement.  I'm not really concerned with what it's called and am focusing on how it works.  Division of labour

[John Pozzi]

Alan said: In my vocabulary, "exchange" does not require property or imply property necessarily.  There are exchanges that involve property, but there are also exchanges that do not.  Perhaps it would help if you considered "moving an object from one location where it is accessible to one person (but not owned by them) to a location where it is accessible to a different person.  So you might exchange the location of a tractor from one field to another without owning it.  or there's the problem with "who gets drives the tractor" since they only have one seet, you might "exchange" roles with the driver of the tractor farming carrots so that you drive the tractor while the other person eats lunch and then you might exchange roles again at the end of the day if one person has to go home  in the same direction as where the tractor is needed for the next day and can take the tractor back to their home on the potato farm(wich is not their property, and just where they sleap) with them to save a trip.  So if you object to calling that an "exchange" because it's not what you personally consider "exchange" then please provide a word that you understand as a replacement.  I'm not really concerned with what it's called and am focusing on how it works.  Hi Alan, Thank you for the correction. I dilited "exchange".The first paragraph is how it works.Warm Regards,John

[robbo203]

Steve-SanFrancisco-UserExperienceResearchSpecialist wrote:

  This means "there is an exchange".   information is exchanged, and values such as a clean household are exchanged.  for houshold chores one person might do dishes in "exchange" for another person sweeping.  In a family there's few enough people that this is all kept in the head with a sort of "how much do you help me vs how much do I help you" type mental accounting of fairness.  Unfortunately that only works because a family is a small group where you know each persons history and reliability and repuation from long experience with them.  The unfortunate part is that won't scale to the large numbers needed for specialization.  The woman who makes silicon chips doesn't know personally from long experience the people who want to use the silicon chips for making the computer that will be sold to to the family to use in creating a google doc for sharing chores.  She has no knowledge about them or their reputation or if they are working against her or not.  She could have that information if you gave her access to your google docs for sharing chorse an there was a chore in there that said something like "bring food to the people who help us out by making microchips".  So that's a solution, but one that requires sharing a Shareable count and tally of chores and who benefits from the chores.  In the family wthout a sharing chores speadsheet this count is kept internally to each person in their head and not sharable with the rest of the world except by word of mouth and then there's no way for strangers to check your reputation and history to see if you are honest.  So the solution is to share the information and the family can share their chores so others can trust them.  These spreadsheets with different interests being helped by different chores is effectiveliy (due to how it's used and how it works) a form of exchange and a form of "money".  

 Two points. Firslty, on the question of "exchange", when we talk about exchange in an economic context we are referring to quid pro quo exchanges – I will give you something on condition that you give me something else in return. In other words it is an exchange in property titles to the things being exchanged. It is only because there is the expectation that you will get something back from the other party to the transaction that the transaction happens at all.  Otherwise it wouldnt.  A further point about economic exchange is that it is fundamentally self interested.  Each party to an exchange is looking to his or her own interests only. This necessarily implies economic valuation for the purposes of comparison.  Each party to the exchange wants to maximise the difference in utlility between what s/he gets in an exchange and what s/he gives, This is a foundational dogma of bourgeois economics and the basic reason why it asserts that trade is necessarily a positive sum game.  If both parties did not benefit from the transaction it wouldnt happen. Period. That is "economic exchange".  But it is totally misleading to apply the reasoning behind this to "exchanges" in the general sense.  When people "exchange" pleasantries or information they are not engaged in a property based transaction.  The word you are looking for is actually reciprocity not exchange,  In socialism there will be no  economic exchange since economic exchange as a quid pro quo phenomenon is based on private property in the means of production .  There will however be reciprocity.  Reciprocity is about cementimg snd strengethening social bonds,  It is not about advancimg ones own self interests.  In the case of household chores where one person might do dishes in "exchange" for another person sweeping, this is not an example of economic exchange but of reciprocity. It is about what is good for household as a whole. It is essentially a moral concept Seondly the argument that a system of generalised reciprocity – which is essentally what socialism is all about – cannot be "scaled up" is a completely bogus argument. It is the argument of last resort that critics of socialism resort to when all their other argument have been knocked away from under their feet.  "Ah its a nice idea" they say "but you can only really apply but on a small scale – such as within a household or a commune  but not to a large scale society" Thats rubbish.  There are numerous examples of generalised recipocty that operate on a very large scale indeed even under capitalism,  Take the internet for example,  This has been cited as an example of a gift economy which is esentially what socialism would be. See https://wiki.gifteconomy.org/Main_Page What people who make this kind of objection really mean is that you cannot "scale up" the kind of riciprocal relationships to be found inside the household to capitalist society as a whole since that would no longer be capitalism,  That is true enough but that is NOT an argument against socialism though it might be an agument against peice meal reform. Socialism entails a fundamental change in the entire social context in which people relate to one another in a way that make generalised reciprocity not only possible but the norm

[Dave B]

There seems to be some misunderstanding from Steve-SanFrancisco about how we understand [historical] division of labour, exchange and communism etc. Whilst we are not dogmatic Marxists but perhaps Kautsky’s Das capital for dummies might be a starting point for debate, discussion and crticism Karl KautskyThe Economic Doctrines of Karl Marx Part I.COMMODITIES, MONEY, CAPITAL  Be it observed that among this hunting people production is carried on socially; various types of labour co­operate in order to achieve a collective result. We can detect here the beginnings of division of labour and systematic co-operation. The hunters perform different kinds of work, according to their differing capacities, but are based on a common plan. The result of the co­operation of the various types of labour – “the exchange of energies,” as Marx puts it in Wage Labour and Capital; the spoils of the chase – is not exchanged, but divided…………  ………..Let us now turn to another and higher type of a social mode of production, for example, the Indian village community based on agriculture. Of the primitive communism which once prevailed there only a few scanty traces may now be found in India. But, according to Strabo. xv, 1, 66, Nearchus, Alexander the Great’s admiral, described countries in India where the land was common property, commonly tilled, and after the harvest the produce of the soil was divided among the villagers. According to Elphinstone, these communities were still in existence in some parts of India at the beginning of the last century. In Java village communism continued to exist in the form of a periodical re-distribution of the arable land among the villagers, who did not receive their share as private property, but merely enjoyed the usufruct thereof for a definite period. In India the arable land has mostly become the private property of the village communes. Woods, pasture land, and uncultivated land, however, are in many cases still common property, over which all the members of the community have a right of usage. What interests us in such a village community, which has not yet succumbed to the disintegrating influence of English rule, especially of the fiscal system, is the character which the division of labour assumes therein. As we have already noted such a division of labour among the American Indians, but a much higher type is presented by the Indian village communities. Next to the head of the community, who is called the Pateel when he consists of one person, or the Pantsch when this office is filled by a committee of five persons at the most, we find a whole series of officials in the Indian economic community: the bookkeeper, who has to supervise the financial relations of the commune to each of its members and to other communes and to the State; the Talker for the investigation of crimes and encroachments, upon whom also devolves the protection of travellers and their safe conduct over the communal boundary into the next community; the Toti, the fields patrol and surveyor, who has to see that neighbouring communes do not encroach upon the boundaries of the fields, a circumstance that can easily happen in the cultivation of rice; the water-overseer, who distributes the water from the common tanks for irrigation, and sees that they are properly opened and closed, and that every field receives sufficient water, which is of great importance in the cultivation of rice; the Brahmin, who conducts the religious services; the schoolmaster, who teaches the children to read and write; the calendar-Brahmin or astrologer, who ascertains the lucky or unlucky days for sowing, reaping, threshing, and other important labours; the smith, the carpenter, and wheelwright; the potter; the washerman; the barber; the cow herd; the doctor; the Devadaschi (the dance maidens); sometimes even a singer.All these have to work for the whole community and its members, and are remunerated either by a share in the open fields or by a share in the produce of the harvest. Here also, with this highly developed division of labour, we find the co-operation of various types of labour and the division of the products. Let us take an example which should be familiar to every body: that of a patriarchal peasant family, which satisfies its own needs, a social structure which has developed out of a mode of production such as we have just described in the Indian communal economy, a mode of production which may be detected on the threshold of the development of all civilised peoples with whom we are familiar. Such a peasant family likewise does not reveal isolated persons, but is a type of social organism based on the co­operation of various kinds of labour, which vary in accordance with age, sex, and season. Ploughing and sowing are carried on, the cattle are tended and milked, wood is collected, cut up and carpentered, wool is spun, woven, and knitted. The various types of labour co-operate and dovetail into each other; no more than in the previous example are the products here exchanged by the individual workers, but they are divided amongst them in accordance with the conditions. Let us now [1]assume that the means of production of an agricultural community, such as we have described, are perfected to such an extent that less labour than formerly is devoted to agriculture. Labour-power is set free, which, provided the technical means are sufficiently developed, will perhaps be devoted to exploiting a deposit of flint situated in the communal territory, and making flint tools and weapons. The productivity of labour is so great that far more tools and weapons are made than the community needs.A tribe of nomadic shepherds in the course of its wanderings comes into contact with this community. The productivity of labour has also increased so far as this tribe is concerned, which has reached the point of rearing more cattle than it needs. It is obvious that this tribe will gladly exchange its superfluity of cattle for the superfluous tools and weapons of the agricultural community. Through this act of exchange the superfluous cattle and the superfluous tools become commodities. The exchange of commodities is the natural consequence of the development of the productive forces beyond the limited needs of the primitive communities. The original communism becomes a fetter upon the progress of technical development when the latter has reached a certain level. The mode of production demands a widening of the circle of social labour; as, however, the separate communities are independent of, and even hostile towards, each other, this widening is not possible through the extension of systematic communistic labour, but only through the mutual exchange of the superfluous goods produced by the labour of the communities. It is no part of our purpose to investigate how the exchange of commodities reacted upon the mode of production within the community, until commodity production became production carried on by private individuals working independently of each other, and owning the means of production and the products of their labour as private property. What we design to make clear is that commodity production is a social type of production; that it is inconceivable without social co-operation; and that it even signifies an extension of social production beyond the limits of the communistic system (embodied in the tribe, the community, or the patriarchal family) which preceded it. But the social character of production was only implicit in the latter system. Let us take a potter and a cultivator, considering them first as members of an Indian communistic village community, and secondly as two commodity producers. In the first case, they both work in the same manner for the community; one hands over his pots, the other the fruits of his labour in the fields; one receives his share of the fruits of the field, the other his share of pots. In the second case, each carries on private work independently for himself, but each works (perhaps to the same extent as before) not only for himself, but also for others. Then they exchange their products, and it is probable that one receives the same quantity of cereals and the other as many pots as formerly. It seems that nothing has been altered in essentials, and yet the two processes are fundamentally different………..and so on https://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1903/economic/ch01.htm

[Anonymous]

Quote:

Whilst we are not dogmatic Marxists but perhaps Kautsky’s Das capital for dummies might be a starting point for debate, discussion and crticism

I like it, but I remain a dummy.

[John Pozzi]

HI Dave B,Thank you for the feedback. I changed the word exchange to tranfer as in the second question and answer.Are GRBe a natural commodity-backed currency that transfers the eco value of natural resources? Yes.

[John Pozzi]

Hi Alan J. Johnstone,Thank you for the feedback.I changed the word exchange to transfer as in the second question and answer:Are GRBe a natural commodity-backed currency that transfers the eco value of natural resources? Yes. 

[John Pozzi]

In reply toHi John Pozzi,Dave B has commented on: "Global Resource Bank (GRB)"—-There seems to be some misunderstanding from Steve-SanFrancisco about how weunderstand [historical] division of labour, exchange and communism etc. Whilst we are not dogmatic Marxists but perhaps Kautsky’s Das capital fordummies might be a starting point for debate, discussion and crticism Karl KautskyThe Economic Doctrines of Karl Marx Part I.COMMODITIES, MONEY, CAPITAL …Thank you for the information.I changed the word exchange to transfer as in the second question and answer at http://www.grb.net:Are GRBe a natural commodity-backed currency that transfers the eco value of natural resources? Yes. 

[Anonymous]

John Pozzi wrote:

Capitalism works if all the people own the capital, i.e., Earth.

Capital is a product of economical exploitation, How can we exploit each other ? Capitalism is running so well that there is famine in Africa, and they have all kind of natural resources that are being exploited by the capitalist class. 

[John Pozzi]

mcolome1, wrote: Capital is a product of economical exploitation, How can we exploit eachother ? Capitalism is running so well that there is famine in Africa, andthey have all kind of natural resources that are being exploited by thecapitalist class.  By investing GRB ecos in growing natural resources. GRB capital – wealth in the form of the earth's natural resources owned by everyone, i.e., commonwealth. How do we grow natural resources? Natural light, energy, air, water, land, food, shelter, climate, human ecology, law, biodiversity, and consciousness, grows with GRBe investments in ecosystems, the GRBnet, conservation, farming, transportation, meditation, disarmament, technology, innovation, artificial intelligence, robotics, science, education, efficiency, health, music, art, love, joy, i.e., life. https://www.grb.net

[Anonymous]

John Pozzi wrote:

mcolome1, wrote: Capital is a product of economical exploitation, How can we exploit eachother ? Capitalism is running so well that there is famine in Africa, andthey have all kind of natural resources that are being exploited by thecapitalist class.  By investing GRB ecos in growing natural resources. GRB capital – wealth in the form of the earth's natural resources owned by everyone, i.e., commonwealth. How do we grow natural resources? Natural light, energy, air, water, land, food, shelter, climate, human ecology, law, biodiversity, and consciousness, grows with GRBe investments in ecosystems, the GRBnet, conservation, farming, transportation, meditation, disarmament, technology, innovation, artificial intelligence, robotics, science, education, efficiency, health, music, art, love, joy, i.e., life. https://www.grb.net

That is not capital. We come back to the original question. Are we going to exploit each one ? You do not know the real meaning of capital

[Anonymous]

Go and tell that to the Indian of  dakota  don't confuse homegardening with capitalist production 

[Anonymous]

http://www.latimes.com/world/africa/la-fg-south-sudan-famine-funding-20170323-story.htmlThese peoples own a shares of the world capital, and natural resources http://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/impact-of-hunger/hunger-and-poverty/hunger-and-poverty-fact-sheet.html GRB is just a nice beauty parlor for capitalism

[John Pozzi]

mcolome1, wrote: Capital is a product of economical exploitation, How can we exploit each other?Dear mcolome1,Global Resource Bank shareholders don't exploit anyone. GRB shareholders share the Earth with everyone.In the GRB Socio-Ecological Economy, capitalism, i.e., an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state – does not exist.In the GRB Socio-Ecological Economy capitalism does not exist because the state does not exist. 

[Anonymous]

John Pozzi wrote:

mcolome1, wrote: Capital is a product of economical exploitation, How can we exploit each other?Dear mcolome1,Global Resource Bank shareholders don't exploit anyone. GRB shareholders share the Earth with everyone.In the GRB Socio-Ecological Economy, capitalism, i.e., an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state – does not exist.In the GRB Socio-Ecological Economy capitalism does not exist because the state does not exist. 

What is  your definition of capital ?  The only who talk about capitalism without state are the anarco capitalists, which are not Anarchists, and capitalism without state is an impossibility

[Author]

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