Onement - An Update

During the past two years – since publishing New Currency – I have been immersed in a singular question. In fact, it is probably the most frequently asked question that I have received from readers as well. It could generally be expressed as: “I understand how demurrage could eliminate our compulsion for exponential growth and shift our focus towards a more co-creative and integrated society… But how on Earth can it ever happen?”

The implicit assumption is that the economy is out of our hands, that the powers that be would never agree to such a change due to their investments in the current system, the intense lobbying pressure, the potential backlash and negative impact on their careers or simply due to their inability to agree on pretty much anything.

My standard answer to this problem has always been that the crisis itself is forcing economists and politicians alike to reevaluate everything. Even Alan Greenspan had admitted that his entire intellectual edifice had crumbled. As the economy continues to endure hardship and recurring crises, I would argue that eventually the pain and challenge would force politicians and economists to confront the problems they’ve long relegated to the sidelines because they had no answers and had discounted their importance.

This may still be true. No doubt that global and regional leaders have a critical part to play in truly solving this crisis (as opposed to maintaining a status quo and extending the day of reckoning into the future). But as the economy has stabilized - at least for the short term - the incentive to urgently confront our systemically generated economic problems has evaporated and we have seen a widespread reversion back to the myopic, reactionary mindset that dominates our world and precludes new thinking.

To wake up from this dream, for optimizing our health and for realizing our potential, it is time to end the sense of powerlessness over our economic future, our sense of separateness from our monetary system, and let go of our belief that the answers will come from elsewhere.

This process is easier said than done. With the long-standing cultural separateness from economic power and institutions, it is extraordinarily challenging to engage with our current economic and financial realities without reacting against them and reducing them to their errors and shadows. Yet, to truly solve the problems we have, we have to learn to see them as a whole and meet them where they are with deep compassion and wisdom.

When Einstein introduced the world to an understanding of quantum physics, he didn’t rebel against the current reality. He didn’t focus on the mistaken assumptions and paradigm blindness of the gatekeepers of classical physics and use these limitations as an excuse to tear down their system or to walk away from them and build a new model that didn’t even bother to address their reality. Far from it. His insights were radically engaged with the old paradigm and transcended it precisely because he was neither embedded within it nor reacting against it. He infused the field of physics with new thinking that honored its wisdom, that addressed the barriers and limitations to the new worldview and demonstrated how the new fit in with the old.

This is precisely the approach we need to take in assuming stewardship of our economic future, although it goes without saying that the intensity of ego-involvement in economic and political interests is much, much greater than in physics. Reactive approaches that merely seek to wrest control or tackle limited parts of the problem – no matter how nicely they are dressed with revolutionary, evolutionary or spiritually seductive facades and memes - will divide and lead to potentially devastating regression. Integrative approaches must be based on radical engagement, humility, goodwill and the ability to answer the key systemic & paradigmatic challenges of our times. It is our collective responsibility to ensure these approaches are grounded and free from ideology.

My second book, Onement, will attempt to address this challenge in more detail. It continues the case for a circulation charge but from a more pragmatic point of view. It addresses the current objections and misunderstandings and lays the groundwork for enabling individuals to choose to adopt it, voluntarily, based on the recognition that it is by far the most practical tool for solving many of our most pressing economic challenges: exponential growth, unemployment, rising inequality, boom and bust cycles, snowballing debt, discounting the future and the environment, inflation and valuing national economic performance over a fully functioning, mutually beneficial, global system.

To name a few.

Coinciding with the book will be the launch of the Onement Project – a real-world initiative to build a circulation charge on top of all currency systems. I will be writing a separate post in the near future to explain this project in more detail. For now, I will simply state that many critics of the concept of demurrage make the erroneous claim that implementing it on a broad scale is too difficult, so we should not even bother. While this may have been true sixty years ago, with the onset of digital technologies and the incredibly rapid shift into disruptive electronic payment services such as Square and Paypal, the technical barriers to implementation have already been surpassed. This project will end the argument by building it and leave it in each person’s hands the decision of whether they would actually choose to use it.

In addition to addressing the technical barriers to adoption and the systemic problems a circulation charge resolves, the book will also take a look at the polarized and contentious political environment and illustrate how the full spectrum of isms and positionalities can actually benefit from this approach.

Finally, if you have any thoughts or questions on this work or want to get involved in the project please let me know either through the comment section below or privately by email – info@newcurrency.org.

1 Comment

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  By Matthew Slater, May 25, 2011 @ 3:33 pm

  Look out for Charles Eistenstein’s forthcoming book, Sacred Economics.

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