Origins of Altruistic Economics

To understand one of the fatal flaws of the current money system, you should familiarise yourself with the case of the Intel 486 CPU. Why did Intel deliberately destroy CPU functionality?... If you read that link, you'll know how it increased their profits. Money aside, this is a nonsensical thing to do, so any system which rewards people for doing this is broken. Companies do not have the compassion that people do, so if we wish them to be genuinely interested in helping people, we need a system which rewards them for doing so. Who should be the arbiter of whether someone has been helped?... In general, the person themselves is the best placed to judge that, i.e. a system of self-evaluation. Clearly, for a system to be efficient, it should have some way to record how much effort and resources were needed to make the CPU, something that Intel are best placed to judge, suggesting that they too should use self-evaluation. The notion of multiple dimensions is familiar to anyone who understands coordinates: Every point on the earth's surface has a longitude and a latitude. Altruistic Economics' method of multi-dimensional evaluation of interactions works the same way; each CPU has a 'cost' to Intel, which they judge, and a 'value' to the user, which s/he judges. This is a more complex system than the traditional (single-dimensional) 'price', but it's hardly rocket science. Notice how, even before more is said about how the system works, we can be sure of one thing - Intel will no longer be interested in destroying functionality of CPUs.

If you have only just met this example, you might be inclined to see it as a special case, but in fact it is exceptional only in its clarity. The destructiveness of the money system pervades capitalist societies and goes way beyond companies damaging their own products. To even begin to understand the loss to society that stems from the profit motive, think about the good deeds which are not done because they don't make a profit for someone. The good products which are never launched, the bad products which are sold anyway. How many empty taxis drive past people at bus stops without a thought about whether that person would like a lift? How many people walk instead of getting on an almost empty bus because they can't afford the fare? If these examples strike you as bizarre, you may still be thinking within the current economic framework. Community Currencies are an interesting alternative to conventional money, and have less of the drawbacks, but note that they still assume an oppositional, competitive mindset. If Intel were using LETS, profit maxiomisation would still encourage them to damage their CPU's.

People would be free to try and cheat in a system of self-evaluation, so undoubtedly, some would try. Who is best placed to judge the honesty of people's self-evaluations?... Usually those who are closest to them, such as friends and family members, people who share a common interest. In an altruistic economic system, these are the very people whose credibility may be upset by the behaviour of their friends, encouraging an informal social ethic promoting honesty and altruism.

Self-evaluation doesn't make much sense to the selfish disciples of the current economic order. The zero-sum nature of traditional money teaches its followers daily that the more they give to others, the less they have for themselves, apparently oblivious of the fact that Love doesn't work like that. The philosophy of consumerism is one of the atomised consumers who are independent self-maximisers, drowning in material goods, starved of the love and care of real community and healthy relationships. Altruistic Economics is part of a different worldview. It expresses the post-materialistic yearnings of the disaffected underclass of the overdeveloped nations, from a younger generation who have stuff to give away, and who value instead a natural environment and healthy community. It uses the technology of the information age to give us the freedom to transcend the assumptions of older, more autistic economic models, assuming instead that everyone's welfare is connected. It is a mathematical formulation of a primeval feeling, an altruistic hunter-gatherer spirit of abundance, that recognises that life is not about domination, struggle and fear, but coexistance, peace and Love.