Establishing a Bridge Between Capitalism and Post-Capitalism
Discussion
Establishing a Bridge Between Capitalism and Post-Capitalism
Dil Green:
"The idea of the Bridge is inspired by a section in Yanis Varoufakis’ “Talking to my Daughter about the Economy”, in which he talks about the birth of capitalism through the lens of the wool trade in England. Feudal landlords had the assets – the land, the serfs and beasts that lived on the land. And they acquired and held them by deploying power; land was not for sale, and neither was labour. Wool merchants, though, convinced landowners to throw the serfs off the land and to rent it in exchange for gold so that the merchants could grow wool and sell it for even more gold.
The lords thus gave over control of the key asset of the feudal economy – land – in exchange for the key asset of the new economy – gold. In order to realise the value of that gold, though, they had to spend it into that same new economy. The feudal lords both funded the development of market economies by providing land, and then helped to expand their scope by spending investment returns into those same market economies. Thus over time the new asset – gold, became more desirable than the old – land, because it was useful in many more ways, until eventually land itself became a saleable asset – enabling it to be allocated to more productive uses through peaceful trade rather than violent struggle.
We can now see how we can use the two planks above to build an equivalent bridge from the current, extractive economy into the new, collaborative economy.
If we raise investment in pounds and dollars, which we use to build the new economy – most obviously, to finance the development of new, collaborative enterprises – and pay fair returns on those ‘fiat currency’ investments in the currency of the new economy – in UCO and MCU – then in order to access the value of those returns the investors will have to become participants in the New Economy.
Again, as with the transition from feudalism to capitalism, this will be a welcome move for many – the simple fact of being wealthy does not mean that an individual does not care about the damaging impact of an extractive economy on the biosphere. " (https://digital-anthropology.me/2020/10/17/two-planks-and-a-bridge-to-the-new-economy/)