BELOW IS A REPOST OF MY FINAL COMMENT IN…

Below is a repost of my final comment in this thread:

https://plus.google.com/115633934578783827271/posts/fzQHDwgtLSE
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+Alex Schleber Thanks for helping me find my community, its definitely appreciated.

I agree without hesitation about the need for deep #systemhacking . And undoubtedly, there are thousands of minor system hacks that are waiting to be exploited for building a better world within the existing infrastructure, and that possibly will result in some genuine social change. +Jennifer Pahlka‘s amazing TED talk that went around a few weeks ago is, I think, a slightly less nihilistic call to hack the system than the Cult of Done, but the two approaches compliment and reinforce each other well.

https://plus.google.com/u/0/117828903900236363024/posts/1XLMigFwWZz

But these are just minor hacks, patchwork fixes on a broken and sinking system. Latching onto that system is a losing prospect, and relying on these hacks is fundamentally unsustainable. There is only one system hack that matters, and it is the hack where we all agree collectively to stop using money as a means of organizing ourselves. Transitioning off money as a form of social organization is precisely how we overcome the industrial age economies that we have used to organize ourselves for the last few hundred years and fully transition into the digital age.

At +Occupy Wall Street the #freegan groups hacked the system and got things done by visiting all the businesses around Zuccotti Park late at night and asking for the food they would otherwise throw away. +Starbucks Coffee was particularly generous with their garbage, siphoning bags of perfectly edible baked goods that fed dozens of people. These are the kinds of system hacks that actually generate change, but they aren’t the sort that are going to attract the dollars of a venture capitalist. These are the system hacks that the homeless communities have known for generations, but that the rest of us are having to pick up on the fly while the big boat of capitalism capsizes. We are now forced to figure out how to organize ourselves without money, because that system of organization has failed a staggering number of us. We would be wise to start utilizing cashless hacks on a mass scale so we can stop depending on the money and don’t collapse along with it. This isn’t the kind of news that looks promising to investors.

There is without question some room for business opportunities that leech off the existing system in order to improve it. Some of them will be incredibly profitable. Most of them will be lucky to raise the funds to sustain themselves, and we should applaud and praise them when they do. +Gregory Esau and a few savvy others are doing incredibly important work by being clear about how to do it successfully, and I have nothing but respect for the entrepreneurial spirit that drives the work. But we dramatically underestimate the scope of the change if we treat it like a marketing strategy. The attention economy isn’t a social media strategy, it is a strategy for managing the oikos, and that system must transcend the use of money as a form of system management. Money doesn’t get things done, it just gets other people to do them. That system no longer works for managing the scope and scale of the problems we face.

I agree entirely that action, and not argument, will foment change. But that doesn’t mean argument isn’t important. Argumentation is one of the oldest and most venerable forms of system hacking. Argument is discursive, so I’m trying to have that argument in public and with a crowd I feel is tuned into the right issues to understand both the importance and the impact of the argument. I agree that uncertainty is a factor, but it is a factor in climate systems too and that does not prevent us from accurately modeling these systems. The digital age will allow us to model and manage our social organizations, to accurately and sustainably produce and distribute and recycle the abundance of wealth on the planet in ways that are humanitarian and participatory. We will be able to do it without destroying ourselves in the process. Continuing to rely on money as a primary form of social organization will never do this.

So when we build organizations in the present to manage our current circumstances, we must do it fully conscious of the eventual goal of transitioning off money as a form of social organization. That doesn’t mean shunning money as if we can do without food and shelter. But that also means not fooling ourselves into thinking that the goal here is to manage better businesses. The goal is to get us off the business model.

This brings us full circle to the beginning of this discussion, which I think has been amazing but has also run its course. I reposted this comment in my own thread, and would love to entertain any further discussion there.

I hope these words are taken in the spirit of cooperation and solidarity with which they were meant.