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The Price of Zero Transition

ZDay 2018 - Online Video

Michael Kubler

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Global Debt $72,236,998,691,949

Oil production peaked in 2006

Ocean Acidification

Global Warming

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Transition to what?

True Cost Economics

Steady State Economics

Participatory Economics (Parecon)

Natural Law, Resource Based Economics

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Capitalism NL/RBE

Will Be

Abundance

Collaboration

Sustainability

Renewable Energy

Scientific Method

Access

Systems Approach

Was

Scarcity

Competition

Waste

Finite Fuels

Politics

Ownership

Band Aid Fixes

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NL / RBE

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Transition options?

Price of Infinity

�Phoenix Model�

Price of Zero�

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Price of Infinity

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Phoenix Model

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Price of Zero

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Education

Food

Water

Electricity

Transport

Entertainment

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Abundance

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Which is the best transition approach?

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Dozen RBE like Communities

You can’t build a global Resource Based Economy instantly. But we can start small and expand.

Like planting seeds all over the place

We would want at least a dozen RBE aspiring communities

which can develop into towns, cities and beyond.

Now, not all will succeed, but we can learn from those that fail.

Through systems based thinking plus automation they will be creating an excess of goods and services which can be sold off to the surrounding monetary system for cheaper and cheaper prices. At the same time allowing the communities to expand, converting our current monetary system into an RBE over time.

Just like it takes years for a tree to bear fruit it could take 10 or so years to go from a tribe of under 150 people, to a city of tens of thousands that's capable of producing a substantial amount of abundance.

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150 - Dunbar’s Number

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Mini-RBE cities

10k - 100k

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During the adoption of new disruptive trends different stages of the uptake are done by different groups of people.�At the start the RBE concept is being developed by ourselves. The innovators and early adopters.

We can see the potential and are willing to work on making it a reality.

Then there’s the chasm, this is where a lot of ideas and trends die out. They don’t become mainstream if they can’t cross the chasm.

Crossing the chasm often requires a combination of providing value as well as a new set of branding designed at attracting the pragmatists.

These are the people who will join the RBE because it provides a tangible benefit, a better life for them than they currently have.

They are likely to be people who have a dream of something they want to do, but are too limited by capitalism.�

After the pragmatists join the late majority will often tag along simply because it's what everyone else is doing,

Whilst the laggards are those still trying to use a rotary phone until they no longer work.

�There’s also a small percentage who are Luddites, and will actively try to suppress or attack the adoption of a Resource Based Economy.

The luddites are the main reason why we will need to defend our cities, ourselves and the core RBE concepts.�

In saying that, we should treat violence like a contagious disease. We don't want to inflict it or spread it.

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Local Resources

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Responsibility

Because the RBE is a post-scarcity, post-monetary society there's not just technical changes but large mindset changes as well.��A big focus will be on responsibility for the systems that support us. The technical systems, social systems and ecosystem.�

With this comes the change in the idea of ownership.

Think about this. You go to the store and buy an apple.

But do you really own that apple?

When you eat it you use the life supporting nutrients which then get passed through into the ecosystem. It’s all interconnected.

In an RBE instead of paying money you would instead have some responsibility to the tree that bore the fruit, the people who helped tend to the orchard and the ecosystem that supports it.

This makes us all responsible for the systems that support us. Not just the environment, but the technical and social systems as well.

��

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Access Abundance

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Systems Approach

The next level up from this is a full systems design.

Why have vacuum cleaners if you can have carpets that are hydrophobic and will also ripple the dirt to the edge and are thus self cleaning?

Systems design thinking works best by zooming out your view on a problem until you see how the whole system works, and think about how could actually work.

Some further examples are Litter.

Most people focus on ensuring everyone puts their trash in the bin.

But imagine instead of garbage bins in the park they have signs saying Please litter here because the packaging is Bio-nutritional and good for the environment.�

Systems design also works hand in hand with automation.

Look at Supermarkets. Taking a basic automation approach to replacing checkout chicks at the supermarket usually means you have self-serve checkouts, or RFID scanning. But by Zooming out your thinking you realise what you want is to have Food in your fridge, or stuff in your cupboards.

Imagine this. Your doing some cooking and take some tomatoes out of the container. By the time you’ve chopped them up and put them in the pan a new set of tomatoes has already been picked from the local vertical farm, delivered straight to your house and into the container.

Now you no longer have a need for supermarkets.

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BlackBox Thinking

That said, I might be completely wrong about everything.

Failure is OK and expected. Failures provide an opportunity to develop better understandings and mental models.

But, you need to be willing to learn from the mistakes and failures.�The aviation industry is one such org which does that. They have black box flight recorders so that if something goes wrong they can investigate and learn from the problems.

We should learn from them and be open and transparent, recording everything we can. From meetings and decisions to the measurements tracked and outcomes of what was being done.��Whenever there is an issue we can do a 5 whys analysis. Asking why a problem occurred and then you ask why that was allowed to happen and keep asking why until you get to the core problem. You then work on fixes for each level of why.��There's lots of other techniques, like randomised controlled trials, A/B testing, dealing with the cultural issues of blame, fear of failure.

�Learning from failures and near misses is probably the most important part of my talk as I can be wrong about nearly everything else and with the right approach we can discover the best solutions.

This is also the core of what the Zeitgeist Movement advocates.

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Revolving Funding Model

For the continued creation of new communities we will need some starting resources.

A great method for this is the revolving funding model.

You get people to donate towards the pool of money and resources. This is used to create the first RBE aspiring communities. As those communities develop they pay back the interest free loan, which can be used to kick start new communities and fund larger projects. �I've been a part of a group in Australia called CORENA who’s applied this thinking to SolarPV installations and we've funded 14 projects so far. If someone put in some money at the start to buy a SolarPV panel then the money from that has have already gone on to fund multiple panels in other projects.

For those that are interested in the idea a crypto currency smart contract could be a great mechanism for orchestrating this.

Of course, the aim is to not need the fund in the future.

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RBE Aspiring Communities

Koto Coop - https://kotocoop.org/ : Jusso

ASIMPAC - https://www.facebook.com/ASIMPAC/ : Léo

Ubuntu Planet - One Small Town https://www.ubuntuplanet.org : Michael Tellinger

RBE 10k project - http://en.rbem.org/wiki/RBE10K : Ziggy

Earth Communities - https://www.facebook.com/earthcommunities.com.au/ : Craig

kotocoop.org

facebook.com/ASIMPAC/

facebook.com/Rbe10k/

www.onesmalltown.org

www.kadagaya.org

The great news is that there’s already at least 6 different RBE aspiring communities, 5 of which are still active.

Koto Coop - https://kotocoop.org/ : Juuso Vilmunen - Will start in Finland

ASIMPAC - https://www.facebook.com/ASIMPAC/ : Léo Caussan - Aiming to run more like a corporation

Ubuntu Planet - One Small Town http://www.onesmalltown.org/ : Michael Tellinger - USA. Been raising funds.

RBE 10k project - http://en.rbem.org/wiki/RBE10K : Ziggy ( Ezequiel Tolnay ) - Queensland, Australia

Kadagaya - http://www.kadagaya.org/index.php/en/ : The most successful, has been running for years in Peru.

Earth Communities - https://www.facebook.com/earthcommunities.com.au/ : Craig Cowling

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And the last being Earth Communities which was a decentralised RBE like community started in my home town of Adelaide, South Australia.

The Live to Give model was inspiring, we had some passionate people involved and over $100k of investment.�

Unfortunately it failed for one main reason:

It tried to grow too quickly and purchased an organics food shop which unfortunately had over $80k in debt.

When you do a 5 why’s analysis you find that:

Due diligence wasn’t properly completed so the debt wasn’t known about.
The decision was done with good intentions but purchasing the organics store was rushed and mostly based on emotions.
Those doing the resource management and financial accounting weren’t consulted.
In fact the decision was made by the small number of founders not by the group of 20+ members, staff and investors, as such it was a decision partly forced upon people.

This all highlights how important it is to use the correct decision making processes.

I suggest trying to identify decisions which are important and lasting and ensure that they are made with quality and consensus, so people have buy-in but also a discussion can happen and better decisions are made.

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Micronations in Europe

The Republic of Saugeais
The Principality of Sealand
Freetown Christiania
The Principality of Seborga
The Kingdom of Elleore
The Kingdom of Romkerhall
The Republic of Kugelmugel
The Kingdom of Lovely
Uzupis
The Copeman Empire

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Fog of War

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Previously Used Slides which didn’t make it into the final YouTube video

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Decentralised

Governance

Our current governance system is a centralised political and legal system.

However a possible approach is a much more decentralised governance.

We do need some basic coordination to ensure we are all aligned, and not doing mutually exclusive things. But that doesn’t mean it always requires centralised control.

I’ll give you an interactive example.

When I put my left hand up I want everyone to start clapping vigorously. As enthusiastically as you can.

When I put my right hand up, I want you to all start clapping in sync. Start clapping in time with each other.

Ready. Go!

Clap, clap, clap away.

< Right hand up>

OK, now start clapping in sync with each other.

And stop.. Excellent. You’ve now all worked collaboratively together. You didn’t clap to the beat I set, but the one you set.

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RBE Aspiration Index

We still have a lot we can learn from existing sustainable communities, transition towns and other projects.

For example Christie's Walk, a sustainable community in Adelaide found that working on building things together, be it buildings, digging trenches and the like helps build such strong connections with people and resilience that they don’t need a formal conflict resolution process. Although that insight is hard to scale up to towns of 10,000 people.

To further the learning the chapter started rating how RBE like the communities are.

That’s why the Brisbane ZM chapter (which also hosted the Global ZDay) has started creating the RBE Aspiration Index. A way of rating the sustainable communities they have been visiting.

Currently the ratings are based upon :

Locality,
Construction
Economy
Society

It’s still in its infancy but ask me if you’d like to learn more.

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Structures and Governance

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Starfish and the Spider