The Digitalisation of Money

And the Dual Currency Concept

In A Nutshell / Core Questions:

How would the ideal economy work? If we had to start all over again, how would we, should we, set it up?

A fully digitalised economy has a lot of perks, but also some risks and downsides. What a lot of it comes down to is: who is in control?

Can we have more control over our economy, making it stabler and fairer and more lucrative? What are the possibilities if we were to reimagine everything?

Sections:

1. A Short Ramble

2. The Control of Expenditure

3. The Dual Currency Concept

4. A Final Note

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A Short Ramble

Freedom. Opportunity. Happiness. What does money represent to you?

The capitalist world is a monstrous neon casino, its explosive coin-generating machinery seemingly infinite in its potential, with cash symbolic in how one person can own and stockpile whatever is within reach by means of trade and cunning. A whole world has been built on the innovations and strategies of value exchange, the free market a charming uncle of the modern economy.

But whether or not you win the birth lottery, being born into a wealthy home or favourable situation, the strategy to succeed in the capitalist economy often requires cut-throat cunning and some kind of manipulation—the clever and the opportunistic usually rising above those who labour tirelessly for an honest piece of the pie.

Greed. Corruption. Excess. Unfairness. Exploitation.

These are the things that result. While many if not most business owners have honest intentions and a love for their own unique form of contribution that rewards them duly, millionaires still dabble in the lower playing field. The ‘Big Club’ as George Carlin puts it, is made up of the billionaire puppet-masters of society. The Bilderberg Group, the Arabella Advisors, BlackRock and Vanguard—trillionaire playboy money that laughs down at the 99%, not just leveraging tax-holes and favourable business opportunities, but owning—quite literally—every. major. industry.

The capitalist game, in truth, is rigged. There is of course a lot of dirty play across all areas of business, but the rules at large are still set by the big dogs. The pro-capitalist mindset is a vestigial fondness of innovation and opportunity, thought to represent some optimistic idea of fairness. But the truth is, despite any favourable part capitalism has played in our history, we are now enslaved helplessly to the capitalist machine, trapped in a spinning clothes dryer that is thirstily sucking and wringing all money, power, and ownership from an increasingly impoverished population.

What for a time has had its use in developing society and bringing us to a new age of technological living, is now requiring mass surrender to a globalist cannibal. Money has been the game for the individual to rise to the top; it has been the tool to control industry, which in turn has been the tool to control politics and other industries. But those at the top are no longer playing for money. The same players in the Big Club literally own the Federal Reserve, and can print their greens at will. No, money literally is a game at such heights of control, and is little more than the means for other ends. I dare not presume to know all ends, but it seems quite obvious that the wellbeing of the citizen is not a valued element. In fact, it appears that health and autonomy are threats to the increasing dependence that gives them that precious leverage over our lives.

Money is the root of all evil, because in its freedom it is used for corruption, and in its restriction it is used for control. Who gets to choose the freedoms and restrictions? Not us.

But is it hopeless to dream of something else? Is it already too late to fight Big Industry? After all, the Monopoly Man has already won, and the individuals of society have not the coordination to outmanoeuvre such a vastly powerful opponent.

A transition away from worshipping the capitalist machine is a difficult one, and it seems, one way or another, something is soon going to break. When it does, what will rise in its place? How can we channel our resources, coordinate our efforts, and quantify value?

It seems the only way for the People to assert their own value and not allow themselves to be manipulated like this is for them to have a say. It seems too much to ask for a singular heroic entity to spearhead a just way of living on humanity’s behalf. The time has come when we must dictate what happens in our own society. The power to do that is through democratic control of money and resources.

With the advent of a live global digital democracy (proposed in the TTS), we can have the ability to fine-tune our economy, understanding and directing the financial flows to our advantage. In a world where individual benefit comes at a cost to the rest, there is room to realign ourselves so that an act of self-benefit exists as an act of public benefit. This could have grand implications for industrial ownership and power structures—and so it should. All repugnant operations and mindsets attached to the capitalist world are born from a desire to win against the other; and those who have power—through commercial victory or blind luck—will never willingly relinquish it. And yet this ownership structure is the very sled that is sliding us to the edge. Individual ownership of powerful industries that are polluting the planet, manipulating the people, manipulating the politics, is entirely unsustainable. Should individuals own the food industry? Should individuals own the oil industry? Let’s take a step back and consider the implications of just that—and what one might expect could happen if profit or power of those individuals are threatened.

Where money is power, that power, like any other, needs to be in the hands of the people. We can no longer trust cash, because it is being gravely misused. But we cannot trust our governments either, nor a cashless digitalised world whose operations are dictated by government policy.

Are we stuck?

Far from it, I say. With every problem comes a solution that evolves us profoundly.

Cash does have to go—at least for now. We cannot tackle corruption otherwise. But that does not mean we should have a government telling us what we can and can’t spend our money on. That’s for us to decide. In fact, we must flip this table and create a system where it is Government and Industry that spend their money in the way that we see fit.

And so a digital economy does not have to be lifeless. It does not have to be dystopian. Instead of seeing this transition as surrendering our freedoms to computer codes, let us imagine a beautiful array of mathematics and algorithms that can more accurately tailor the world around us.

Money is no longer based on gold. Money is based on an idea, and when you consider the possibilities for money being based on thoughts and ideas, we can emerge at a place most profound.

Imagination take us, as the functions of our world become responsive, expansive, inclusive. What control has been seized by CEOs and politicians and councils, will be re-released to the public, so that community values and personal interest can help shape the face of investment and societal development. A democracy here, with an idea-based economy, helps us not just to regulate the evils of finance, but to feed and water the best ideas sourced from around the globe, making thought and interest into raw materials that stand as valid contributions to the flourishing of society.

This is the time when we can creatively reimagine society in all its glory. But money is the lifeblood, and the form money takes and how it is used will dictate much of our future. This is key objective, the flag on the hill, that we must succeed in taking if we are to endure. Despite what the numbers and banks and even legal documents say, this world does not belong to a small group of billionaires. It’s time to remind them.

The Control of Expenditure

It doesn’t take much imagination to consider a world of digital payments. In a lot of countries it’s quite normal, and cash is becoming obsolete simply because electronic transfers are more convenient. They tend to be quicker, more accurate, require less space in your wallet (if you need a wallet at all), and make it harder for someone to rob you on the street.

These transactions are recorded, sometimes traced to a physical location, and can be blocked if deemed to be suspicious. But what if they were deemed to be unbefitting of society? What if there was a system of morality that could dictate what you could or could not buy? What are the implications of such a system?

There are huge benefits to policed transactions if the rules are largely agreeable. People may be unable to engage in trafficking of weapons, drugs, children, and sex workers. Corruption in politics would be a thing of the past, and worrisome inter-industry purchases that threaten fair society could be forbidden.

But also there are also huge downsides if rules are not agreeable. Who gets to decide what is ‘unbefitting’? Who gets to decide what can and cannot be traded, what is immoral or dangerous? What is objective, and what is subjective? And when it comes down to setting rules and algorithms, who gets to decide where, when, how, what, who, and why?

To counterbalance the reluctance for digitalisation, we need to look at the reasons why we would move away from cash in the first place. A complete lack of control of trade has and inevitably will always lead to grave misuse. Corruption is the key word, and it affects all areas of society. Corruption is the very core of dysfunction and malpractice, and it has allowed true evil and greed to worm its way to the highest echelons of society. Politics is run by money; medicine is run by money; transport and industry and food and laws and construction and technology and science and information and resource use and weaponry and entertainment . . . is all run by money.

So when those who have the money can’t be trusted, what is the result? What is the implication for a system that permits self-serving, corrupt, holier-than-thou billionaires literally decades if not centuries of shaping society in their favour?

In a huge world controlled by the resources of the individual, where economic complexity and trackless cash offer convenient nooks and crannies for under-table transactions, string-pulling, and outright leverage, it’s no surprise that this system has been momentously abused. All industries and rules have long been bought and paid for, which makes a joke of democracy and this idea of ‘fairness’ that we at the bottom squabble over.

A true system overhaul is the only way we will ever see anything that even closely resembles fairness. As far as I’m concerned, digitalisation is the only way we are going to be able to insure against corruption and the devious control that derives from it.

At the same time, digitalisation also gives someone an opportunity to seize ultimate control, and in the wrong hands would be the final, irreversible win for a so-called ‘elite’. The merging of digital ID, a centrally controlled digital currency, and consequently government-dictated access to food, transport, and digital communications (e.g. phones and Internet) would mean total leverage over the citizen. The result, effectively, is global slavery.

For obvious reasons, we cannot let this happen.

The answer seems to be to move toward full digitalisation—but with a rigorous anti-corruption design in place. Let’s be clear: this is not with the primary aim of providing security for the individual or protection against hackers, although both of these would be integral in the design. Rather, it is a protection against the rich minority outmanoeuvring and manipulating the majority. It is protection against political meddling, human trafficking, undemocratic provision of weaponry, and other acts of illicit or amoral industry.

Now morality in itself is a whole other discussion, as it can sometimes be subjective. The discussion on recreational substances (“drugs”) is one we could talk about in length, and actually fast-tracks us into a conversation on what exactly should be allowed and what should not be allowed. To put it plainly, some people enjoy drugs and use them intentionally, based on their own adult judgement that the pros sufficiently outweigh the cons. As grown adults, should an overbearing Big Brother totally forbid something like marijuana? In some ways it could be a blessing that a black market exists to allow some flexibility in the matter. But what if all drugs were totally forbidden and it became extremely difficult and illegal to smoke a joint, based on what the State or a democratic society had ruled? Here it becomes hairy—and slightly worrying. Unlike something like human trafficking, which is, for lack of a better term, less popular than marijuana, reasonable arguments for and against recreational substances can be made. This tugs on the strings of policy-making and law, and this is exactly why we might want to tread carefully when making changes to our financial and economic systems. We must remember that we want to work with the People as much as possible, and against them never.

We will get into the subject of regulation and substances more in another article, but the primary point we should consider is the expected societal response to absolute prohibition and shutdown of products or services that people are prepared to fight or break rules for. We should never aim to make an enemy of our citizens, and there are intelligent and often quite beneficial alternatives to outright prohibition.

You can still have freedom of expenditure within a digitalised system. Opportunity and happiness, too. In fact, it could very well be possible to enhance the merits associated with a free market while mitigating or completely abolishing the evils enabled by capitalism. We can not just uphold innovation, but empower it.

With this in mind, exactly who would be in charge of creating and installing a digitalised economy? How would it work? Who makes the rules?

Moving to a digital system is not entirely without risk. The trending fears over the CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currency) are primarily to do with how it could be used as a manipulative weapon, a terrifying authoritarian tool that dictates exactly how, when, where and what a person can buy. Especially when installed parallel to a social credit system based off questionable values, the ability to purchase may become so limited and controlled that the vast majority will be helpless to the whims of a tyrannical government. Independence and self-sustenance would be in defiance of this all-controlling entity, and growing your own food would be likened to terrorism.

This is a worst-case scenario, but when you cannot trust the controllers of such a system even a little bit, then surrendering sovereignty entirely has, quite literally, life-threatening consequences. If such a system were to be installed, there must be absolute guarantee that it would not be misused. The only way that trust is likely to exist is when the People own and run the system themselves.

One of the only ways we can truly ensure against an oligarchical digital takeover is by putting democracy at the forefront of the design. Open-source coding and democratic calibration of rules and quantities; transparency and live voting put the public at the helm. To prevent this democratic system from being abused, we would also need to have verified identification of the individual, which could and likely should be integrated with one’s profile that contains personal information. Again, this is something that can be supremely useful in the right hands and terrifying in the wrong ones, which is why we need to be very careful with the installation. When there is no one group or individual (or ‘State’) who can access and subsequently misuse personal information, it can be up to the citizen how their personal information is to be used.

The details of such a system can be created intelligently, so that it is not primarily the system that monitors the People, but the People who monitor the system. It is a tool for us to use, and not a privately owned society that uses us as its tools. This flipping of power is exactly what’s needed—in all areas of society. The unwieldy Wild West use of cash has allowed bandits up in the top saloon, and while we might not be able to flush them out per se, we can build our own saloon and make house rules that disallow bandits.

Is this enough to eradicate corruption? Is it the key to correcting Industry as a whole, stabilising the economy, and redistributing the overall wealth of society? Can we even change the psychology of the people within society this way, minimising or ineffectualising greed, even harnessing the self-serving nature of Man for a powerful benefit?

Control of expenditure does not have to be an ugly concept. We might frame it as democratic guidance. To channel finance is to have a more stable economy, to have a more precisely structured evolution, and to elect the principles and methods of transaction across society may have more profound implications when applied to industry and large-scale operations. Democratic dictation of expenditure can mean we the People decide what tools and methods are permitted with consideration to our pollution and wastage problems, animal and human welfare policies, and what could be affecting the physical and mental health of our citizens. An open-source civilisation allows true critique and moral assessment to take place without the shadows of corruption strangling the outspoken and gaslighting the protestors.

It’s very possible and even likely that there would be some turbulence and friction in the beginning of such a system. Any new concept like this will take time for people to adjust and learn and likely for a kind of equilibrium to develop. Who knows how long that would take—months, years, decades . . . ? I stand on the optimistic side of the fence here, as we can have many heads and hands in the development and testing, and not rush into a single-phase implementation. As with the rest of the TTS, we can trial these systems in small populations and work out the kinks, although time may be of the essence. It could be said, though, that democratic involvement—facilitated by functional communications and user interface systems—could make for a world more intuitive than what exists today.

The Dual Currency

Many of us are chained to the treadmill, working tirelessly, sometimes desperately, to survive. There is little time outside of work and duly earned leisure to think about, let alone act on, the greater progression of society or even self.

The average human is always so focused on staying alive and competitive in the concrete jungle, needing precious money to buy clothes, fuel the car, pay the rent, and to feed oneself and one’s family. Anything spare tends to be invested in short-lived joys or collectorship. Many of us are forced to work endless hours, multiple jobs, endure a lifestyle that is based primarily around work and earning just enough to keep our heads above the water. There is little time to consider much else than our financial problems, when we could instead be dancing, creating art, improving our societies, maintaining our health and happiness, developing our individual selves, finding out ways to cure diseases and travel to foreign solar systems... But no, we have both eyes on the ground in front of us, squandering our time on survival rather than actual living.

But if we didn’t have to focus on our bank accounts and be scrambling for pennies our entire lives, imagine how much we could achieve, how much we could learn, and how much we could enjoy our short time on this planet. If we had all our basic needs met—as cited in Maslow’s Hierarchy—we would have the base platform in place to be able to achieve the more profound needs and developments much more easily.

New ideas like universal basic income (UBI) have become popular as a ‘realistic’ solution for this base platform, but it does simultaneously push the socialist agenda, which carries the same basic flaws as simply increasing minimum wage as a quick-fix solution without really considering all the ripples and strings it pulls from other parts of the economy. This idea does have merit, however, and it could be a rough idea to be refined and improved upon.

Money for us is a commodity, an object, where I have this dollar—this physical dollar—and I can spend this dollar however I like. That is the beauty of capitalism, and one with a feeling of freedom that is so relished and protected against the ‘evils’ of communism. But now imagine a world without money. Try to imagine that we do not have individual ownership of money, but rather that there is a collective spending resource we all have access to and are provided in amounts sufficient to our needs. In some ways we could call this a kind of ‘allowance’ or ‘social dividend’ we are given by the [government] for our food, clothing, appliances and recreational activities, without the need to pay it back in taxes (there would be no need for taxes in the TTS). If transactions between people were not so much a bartering or trading system, but more of an allocation and distribution system, the government (or people-owned governing system) could simply act as the lubricant and overseer for the distribution and development of goods.

We who conceptualised the Ten-Tier System considered this way to both eat and have the cake—taking the pressure and immediate responsibility off citizens to earn their next meal and a roof over their head, while still keeping incentives in place to contribute meaningfully.

Living within the Ten-Tier System would firstly create a level of societal efficiency that could provide everyone their basic necessities regardless of contribution. I.e. the average work effort required of the individual would be lower, while the output would be higher. The premise of this provision (“hand-outs”) is that society would be upheld in other ways, which is where socialism and communism fall down. After all, if everyone is given a free ride and total equality of living is mandated, the rewards for effort are minimalised, and society duly collapses. But the TTS does not intend to create total equality of living across the board as socialism does, only shift us closer to equality of opportunity. In this way, we still maintain worthwhile rewards for those who innovate and dedicate.

We do not want, and cannot afford, to provide a luxurious life to everyone without some kind of contribution. We simultaneously want to unconditionally provide people the means to live, while also incentivising people to contribute in a way that benefits both the self and society. And so we have devised the Dual Currency concept.

The first currency we will call Living Credit, which is a standard, set allowance for buying necessities — basic food, health and hygiene products, non-luxury clothes, etc. Living Credit is intended to be a standard amount, and not affected by one’s job, status, gender, race, religion, or geolocation. It may be proportional to the planetary or regional economic conditions, but should not vary between individuals.

As for the difference between Living Credit and Universal Basic Income, the difference is really that the UBI becomes digitalised and is separated from general expenditure. It would have limitations so it would not be spent on things like alcohol and cigarettes, and basically exist as digitalised food stamps that can also be spent on other items—e.g. 21 meal tokens per week (3 meals x 7 days), 10 clothing tokens per year, and 15 home accessories per month (e.g. cleaners and hygiene products).

The perk of Living Credit is that it allows diversification and nuance of use. However, if the dual currency system is considered too complicated or confusing for the individual, we could simply have allocated digital tokens/stamps for food, clothing, hygiene products, etc. that are limited to certain (e.g. budget/standardised) items. Another alternative is that this UBI ‘living’ budget is simply a spending reserve added to one’s earnings that gets used up first when spending, usable only for universal or necessity items. This may reduce confusion, having one currency instead of two, although this simplistic model may have its own downsides.

The second currency, for simplicity, we will call Spending Credit or Economic Credit (we can change the names later on). This is essentially one’s salary. As is the case with modern society, your spending power here is tied your societal contributions, calculated through the Contribution Index. Your job(s), your roles, your innovations, and other miscellaneous activity that benefits society will all be digitally documented, calculated by various markers of value to produce a figure that will, in turn, dictate your Spending Credit.

In essence, being a citizen of a TTS society would seek to keep you alive and well through the provision of Living Credit, and in an ideal cultural context (which may also be achieved through TTS designs) would support your happiness, health, social life, and personal drive. However, the Spending Credit may only afford you limited options for food and supplies, and would not cover specific options for entertainment, pleasure, leisure, fast food or unhealthy treats, vices like smoking or alcohol, or any other form of luxury or privilege. These, only rightly, must be earned. As is the situation in the modern world, a job or some form of value contribution to society is how you can earn spending power, and your efforts will be recognised and reimbursed appropriately, seeking to make it fair, worthwhile, encouraging, and rife with opportunity.

While standard living costs of the individual can vary, having a set Living Credit can create a kind of fairness in society where everyone has the same on-paper privilege. Everyone’s basic medical care, nutrition, hydration, education, housing, can all be covered without a dollar from the individual, although any luxuries and additions would be paid for by working for them. We can look to hybridise some costs if they are considered ‘luxury necessities’, such as costly food ingredients, but let’s just keep things simple for now.

In a resource-based economy, there was the consideration that stockpiling credit could theoretically ‘bankrupt’ the planet if people collectively overspent. The solution initially was to have a time limit for how long this credit existed as an ‘allowance’, and would expire after a time. This might work well for Living Credit. However, this might be too alien and too far of a leap for the individual for their Spending Credit, stepping too far away from the treasure-hoarding we so love. It also encourages people to max out their regular spending, which is also not wise, and may require a lot of difficulty fine-tuning income to keep things fair and functional. To ensure a resource-based economy isn’t bankrupted, we can offset the figures to allow for some economic flexibility and as a safety line. There are also likely to be other solutions available.

And what about water, power, gas? What about housing?

The idea for normal society is that all consumable necessities will be covered—to an extent. Depending on scarcity and cost of production, all citizens will have allocations of free water, electricity, and other such consumables. If the allocation is exceeded, the individual will have to pay from their own pocket. In the future, however, it is highly likely that we will have a smaller planetary population and much greater efficiency and even technology. With the shutdown of corruption and public technology suppression, clean drinking water and electricity are likely to be effectively infinite. In the case that they are not, we can moderate them according to the situation at hand.

As for housing and accommodation, the idea that will be explained better in another post is that there is to be a transition from individually possessed land to a liberation of land, where we as humans become the stewards of the Earth, rather than monetising it to profit from every soul who needs a roof and a bed. One’s Contribution Index is likely to play a part in aligning the individual with accommodation. It makes sense that a high contributor would have earned a priority for larger or more luxurious accommodation, and while even I feel a little strange about surrendering the term ‘property’ in regard to housing, one day I’m sure we will all look back on these primitive times when we have fought over a square of soil we deemed to claim as our own.

Again, we are likely to be working with a smaller population in the future than the present day. Our ability and intention to control our fertility rate will increase with education and technology, and we are already seeing a decline in recent fertility statistics as well as an increase in excess mortality (I will refrain from elaborating or pointing fingers in this article).

A Final Note

The takeaway here is that there’s a myriad of opportunities to consider, as well as a myriad of risks. Digitalisation is almost certainly the next big step we must take for a world that involves the People for collective directorship, terminating corruption once and for all.

The design details of this proposed system may not be exact all the way down to the ground, as we believe not everything should be set in stone at this point. Food for thought, as always.

But the principles remain steadfast. The threats to our existence, more than asteroids and climate change and takeover of artificial intelligence, as always, come from those who see the rest of humanity as expendable. Their perceived elitism comes from the great financial schism that they have created, tilting the game to their own advantage yet still blaming us for losing. Digital or not, our future lies as a penniless populace if we should continue to trade and live within the system that is owned by this small minority. Every day the top-down leverage over our lives grows stronger, and I for one do not see the effects of inflation and scarcity as incidental.

To reclaim the world of finance must be one of our primary strategies. The key is in understanding that the real value of humanity is in the human. With our own brains and backs we have made this world, and we can remake it just as well. In fact, we will make it better. The world cannot operate without us, and this tiny fragment of billionaires has either forgotten what we are capable of, or we have forgotten ourselves.

While I will not say it is an easy or quick task, the design of a digital framework in which we can coordinate ourselves, trade, work, cooperate, think, evaluate and quantify, is well within our means. We do not need a government for such a thing, and we should not seek its permission. Through creating our own economy, we will create governance of it—and at that point, the game is won for humanity.

Thank you for reading.