walkaway

(2017) by Cory Doctorow

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notes/quotes from reading book:

for Erik Stewart and Aaron Swartz. first days, better nations. we fight on.

Aaron

on Erik:

https://reason.com/archives/2017/05/25/cory-doctorow-walkaway/2

First of all the arguments seem to me to have that the reek of collegiate mind-game logic games, right? Like, I had a roommate and a dear friend—actually one of the people Walkaway is dedicated to—Eric Stewart, who died unexpectedly a few years ago without any proximate cause, just didn’t wake up one morning. But he was very clever. And in high school one day he sat down and said, “So the universe is infinitely prolonged, right, it goes on forever.”

And I’m like, “That’s what I’m understanding.”

And he said, “We have finite life spans.”

And I said, “Yeah.”

He said, “Anything finite divided by something infinite is zero.”

I’m like, “All right.”

He said, “Therefore the probability of us being alive at this moment is zero.”

I’m like, “Okay.”

“And the only thing that is nonzero when divided by infinity is infinity.”

I’m like, “Yeah.”

He’s like, “Therefore we have infinitely prolonged lives and we are immortal.”

I’m like, “Can’t argue with your reasoning but I don’t think it’s true.”

15

we don’t do barter. this is gifts, the gift economy. everything freely given, nothing sought in return… of course it’s hard to get people out of the scarcity quid pro quo habit.. anyone trying to give or get money around here, we sling ’em out on the butts, no second chance..

sans money and obligation

17

we’re playing a diff game: post-scarcity

this world . if you’re aren’t a success, you’re a failure. if you’re not on top, you’re on the bottom..if you’re in between, you’re hanging on by your fingernails, hoping you can get a better grip before your strength gives out. everyone holding on is too scared to let go. everyone on the bottom is too worn down to try. the people on the top? they’re the ones who depend on thing staying the way they are

23

if a paycheck could change your life, do you think they’d let you have one?..t

making-up money

38

i’m suspicious of any plan to fix unfairness that starts w ‘step one, dismantle the entire system and replace it with a better one esp if you can’t do anything else until step one is done. of all the ways that people kid themselves into do ing nothing, that one is the most self-serving..

what about walkways? huber, etc said.

seems to me that they’re doing something that makes a diff. no money, not pretending money matters.. and they’re doing it right now

if you wanted, you could have all the info you needed to go walkaway in about ten minutes time, could be on the road tomorrow, living like it was the first days of a better nation..

40

tragedy of commons..   commons.. land that belongs to no one… everyone knows that the bastard (who’s sheep graze till just mud) is on the way, so they might as well be that bastard. better that sheep belonging to a nice guy like you

the solution to the tragedy of the commons isn’t to get a cop to make sure sociopaths aren’t overgrazing the land, or shunning anyone who does it, turning him into a pariah. the solution is to let a robber-baron own the land that used to be everyone’s because once he’s running it for profit, he’ll take exquisite care to generate profit forever..t

that’s the tragedy of the commons? a fairy tale about giving public assets to rich people to run as personal empires because that way they’ll make sure they’re better managed .. than they would be if we just made up some rules?

tragedy of the commons

you couldn’t live like you were being observed..

44

in gift econ you gave w/o keeping score, because keeping score implied and expectation of reward. if you’re doing something for reward, it’s an investment, not a gift

49

the menu evolved thru the day, depending on the feedstocks visitors brought..

the point of walkaways was living for abundance,..t  and in abundance, why worry if you were putting in as much as you took out? but freeloaders were freeloaders and there was no shortage of assholes who’d take all the best stuff or ruin things thru thoughtlessness.. people noticed. assholes didn’t get invited to parties. no one went out of their way to look out for them. even w/o a ledger, there was still a ledger,

affluence w/o abundance

50

i got that impression.. you’re not supposed to covet a job and you’re not supposed to look down your nose at slackers, and you’re not supposed to lionize someone who’s slaving. it’s supposed to be emergent, natural homeostasis, right?

asking someone if you can pitch in is telling them that they’re in charge and deferring to their authority.. if you want to work.. do something..  if it’s not helpful, maybe i’ll undo it later, or talk it over with you, or let it slide.

is there… is there really abundance? if the whole world went walkaway tomorrow would there be enough..t

affluence w/o abundance

by defn.. because enough is whatever you make it.. depending on how you look at it, there’ll never be enough or there’ll always be plenty..

enough ness

51

it doesn’t work at all in theory. in theory we’re selfish assholes who want more than our neighbors, can’t be happy w a lot if someone else has a lot more. in theory, someone will walk into this place when noone’s around and take everything. in theory, it’s bullshit..

this stuff only works in practice. in theory , it’s a mess..t

rev in reverse

graeber model law

52

you don’t have to believe it, but it’s the truth

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i admit i don’t have anything to prove it

spaces.. with nothing to prove

that’s what a walkawawy is – not walking out on ‘society’ but acknowledging that in zotta world, we’re problem sot be solved, not citizens..  that’s why you never hear politicians talking about ‘citizens’ it’s all ‘taxpayers’ as thought the salient fact of our relationship to the state is how much you pay.

talking about ‘taxpayers’ means that the state’s debt is to rich dudes, and anything it gives to kids/ol/sick/disabled people is charity we should be grateful for, since none of those people are paying tax that justifies their rewards from govt inc..

54

maybe we’re the easiest of all since we’re ready to walk away. what about people who’re too sick/young/old/stubborn and demand that the state cope w them as citizens – etc

those people can be most easily rounded up and institutionalized. that’s’ why they can’t run away.. it’s monstrous, but we’re talking about monstrous things..

do you really think sottas sit around .. plotting how to separate the goats from the sheep? – etc

of course not.. if they did that, we could suicide bomb them.. i think this is an emergent outcome.. it’s even more evil, because it exists in a zone of diffused responsibility: no one decide to imprison the poor in record numbers, it just happen as a consequence of tougher laws, less funding for legal aid, added expense in the appeals process.. there’s no person/decision/political process you can blame.. ti’s systemic..

too much ness.. begs systemic change..

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being in the death cult of money and status marked you.

59

which was very forward of her and a good walkway kind of question, in that it violated every norm of default

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there are as many walkaway philosophies as there are walkaways, but mine is, ‘the stories you tell come true’ .. if you believe everyone is untrustworthy, you’ll build that into your systems so that even the best people have to act like the worst people to get anything done.. if you assume people are okay, you live a much happier life’..t

devijver assume good law

i don’t have anything to get ripped off. it makes life easier .. walks are a lot more pleasant. no one bothers to rob me..

i had everything in that bag.. let me guess … money. id. food. water. spare wearable stuff. clean underwear.. the girl nodded.. right.. well.. you don’t need money or id here.. t food and water we got.. clean underwear and wearables .. easy..

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getting ripped of happens to everyone who goes walkaway. it’s a right of passage. owning something that isn’t fungible means that you’ve got to make sure someone else doesn’t take it. once you let go of that, everything gets much easier..

let go of the things you have to cling to.. ness

68

the cure had been the realization that everything was everywhere, stuff in walkaway was a normalized cloud of potential on-demand things. the opportunity cost of not having the right salad fork when she wanted a salad was lower than the opportunity cost of not being able to go where she wanted to go w/o hauling mountains of pain-in -the -back stuff..

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making other people feel like assholes was a terrible way to get them to stop acting like assholes..t

out here, you want people to magically not take too much but also not earn the right to take more by working harder and also to work because it’s a gift but not because they expect anything in return… that’s the walkaway dilemma

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if you do things because you want someone else to pat you on the head, you won’t get as good at it as someone who does it for internal satisfaction. .. if we set up a system that makes people compete for acknowledgment we invite game-playing and stats-fiddling, even unhealthy stuff like working stupid hours to beat everyone. a crew full of unhappy people doing substandard work.t if you build systems that make people focus on mastery, cooperation and better work, we’ll have a beautiful inn full of happy people working together well

eudaimoniative surplus

work

the idea that there wouldn’t be leaders in the race to build a leaderless society offended him in ways he wouldn’t let himself understand..

84

she pointed out that getting human to ‘do the right thing’ by incentivinzing them to vanquish one another was stupid. she found videos of skinner trained pigeons who’d been taught to play piano thru food-pellet training and pointed out that everyone who like this envisioned himself as the experimenter – not the pigeon..

incentives

the problem was l’s vagina. it made her unable to understand the competitive fire that was the true motive force that kept humans going

well.. going when we keep perpetuating/assuming science of people .. ness.. not what would keep truly free people/artists going..

competition.. et al

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lovedaresnot: radical or difficult ideas were held back by the thought that no one else had them. that fear of isolation led people to stay ‘in the closet’ about their ideas, making the the ‘love that dares not speak its name.’ so lovedaresnot gave you a way to find out if anyone else felt the same, w/o forcing you to out yourself

pluralistic ignorance.. and finding your tribe ness.. let’s do it via 2 convos that io dance

ie: self-talk as data

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the only way to win was not to play..

waves of new walkaways headed this way, a massive uptick that would overwhelm us unless we had some system to allocate resources..t

ie: hlb via 2 convos that io dance.. as the day.

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as soon as someone started talking about rationing, the urge to hoard became irresistible.. as soon as she shared, the hoarding impulse melted..t

ok.. we’ll build another b and b.. you’re going to give up w/o a fight?.. we’re called walkaways because we walk away..

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when you meet a monster you back away and let it gnaw at whatever bone it’s fascinated with. there are other bones. we know how to make bones. .

we can live like it’s the first days of a better world, ..t

not like it’s the first pages of an ayn rand novel. .

have this place, but you can’t have us. we withdraw our company..

nice.. rev of everyday life.. quiet.. bloodless revolution.. instigating utopia everyday

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everyone would remember.. what happened when the special snowflake disease ran unchecked.. they’d build something bigger more beautiful..

gershenfeld sel

you made that place.. you just let him take it… wasn’t mine, i didn’t make it, i didn’t let him take it..  she practically heard the very refined eye-roll w breeding, money, and privilege behind it…  why would fighting have been preferable to making something else .. t like the b and b but better..?

gershenfeld sel

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the important thing is to convince people to make and share useful things. fighting with greedy douches who don’t share doesn’t do that. making more, living under conditions of abundance that does it

making more? rather.. affluence w/o abundance

129

now we know the reason people are willing to let tech change their worlds is shit is fucked up for them, and they don’t want to hang onto what they’ve got

there’s more people than ever who don’t have any love for the way things are.. everyone of them would happily jettison everything they think of as normal for the chance to do something weird that might be better

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things could be walked away from and made anew; no one would ever have to fight..

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iceweasel tried to learn to relax. the b&b didn’t need that much work to keep going..

affluence w/o abundance

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covered dish person.. if there’s disaster do you go to neighbor’s w a) covered dish or b) shotgun.. game theory.. two hunters together can catch a stag… either hunter alone can only catch rabbits.. unless they trust each other.. they’ll have coney surprise for suppers

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we can all have enough, so long as we’re not fucking each other over..

once you’ve been a shotgun person for a while, it’s hard to imagine anything else, and you start using stupid terms like ‘human nature’ to describe it. if being a selfish, untrusting asshole is human nature, then how do we form friendships.. where do families come from..

human nature ness

156

i think you have to be a mathematician to appreciate how full of shit economists are.. how deeply bogus those neat equations are

of math and men

your dad hires economists for intellectual cover, to prove his dynastic fortunes and political influence are the outcome of a complex, self-correcting mechanism with the mystical power to pluck the deserving out of the teeming mass of humanity and elevate them so they can wisely guide us.. they have a science-y vocab conceived of solely to praise people like your father.. like job creator. as though we need jobs..  if there’s one thing i’m sure of.. i never want to have a job again.. i do math because i can’t stop. because i’ve found people who need my math to do something amazing..

earn a living ness

if you need to pay me to do math, that’s because a/ you’ve figured out how to starve me unless i do a job and b/ you want me to do boring, stupid math with no intrinsic interest.. a ‘job creator’ is someone who figures out how to threaten you with starvation unless you do something you don’t want to do..t

bullshit jobs

slavery

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everyone is a wizard at something. okay, not quite..

yes.. quite.. everyone..  it has to be .. everyone..if we don’t get that.. we’ll not get to equity..

this is huge.. let go

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walkaways walk away.. but what if you’re confined..

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what does a walkaway do when she can’t walk away..

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he’d call this humane, a ‘low impact’ way of ‘bringing me around’ to sanity, which in his world, is the ability to bullshit yourself into believing you deserve to have more of everything that everyone else has less of , because of your special snowflakeness

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if you teach a generation of people they have to step on their neighbors to survive, setting up a society where everyone who doesn’t gets stepped on, the kids of those people will learn to betray their neighbors from the cradle..

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every person has something he’s good at. you find those things and help those people get there and that makes everyone happy ..t..

find thru listening to curiosities.. and facil ing that..

ie: 2 convos.. as infra

and productive and we’ll all be better. you don’t need to order people to do jobs they hate..  once you get hold of this idea, you can turn it into math, model its game theory , find its nash equilibrium. its such a beautiful idea. it models perfectly. under it..everyone is happier. everyone gets nudged into doing the thing they’re best at, which is the best way to make everyone happy

gershenfeld sel

you’d had a place where everyone took what they needed. you didn’t need to police it or give people tokens certifying they’d earned the right to be there. it just.. worked..t

have/need ness.. eudaimoniative surplus

undisturbed ecosystem

264

she welled up with sympathy for jimmy.. she understood him better than he did. under the circumstances, she could be him

i know you ness..

like you did.. no to rescue me. to take care of me because we’re part of the same thing..  i came back to hep you because helping people is what you do whether or not they’re in your thing, because that’s the best world to live in…. first days of a better nation

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what made you walkway – debt… i got this huge push from admin.. like religion for them. they could only keep their charter if they ran a certain percentage of students thru it and they followed its advice. so once you got your career picked by the thing, that was it. every teacher and admin knew their paychecks depended on you doing what it told you.. once it chose your career it had lots of advice about how you get there..wasting time/money.. no one would hire me.. if didn’t take them all.. my parents couldn’t afford it.. they were maxed out on credit for my fancy high school.. this was going to be my debt.. i could get a loan.. they get a cut of your paycheck until you’re dead..

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everyone i met who’d done it said it was slavery

slavery

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you keep bitching about how everything is fucked up and shit and there you are getting ready to play along with it like good debt slaves.. t.. everyone know s there’s an alternative..

no one wanted to say the world ‘walkaway’ because it was a superstition.. couldn’t be trusted…

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they were walkaways because there was nothing for them in default – no rent money, no healthcare, no food..

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it ached inside her. a voice she hated, always louder when she was sad, reminded her she’d once taught at a uni, had a house, a name, and an address. once she’d been able to buy things when she needed them – even if she had to go into det – could pretend there was a future. now she had none of those things least of all a future. she was living as though it was the first days of a better nation, but that nation was nowhere in sight.. instead, she had a no-man’s-land of drone strikes and slit throats..

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everyone with more money than they could spend spends every hour trying to get more.. walkaways, who have nothing, play like no one in default. they play like kids.. before anyone knows about schedules..t

they do things people always think, if only i was rich.. the irony is, rich people don’t get to do that stuff..t

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they could sit together, not speaking. the silence wasn’t distance, it was closeness

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then they threatened parents with jail for not sending their kids to school

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(after .. latest iraq invasion.. and both sides refusing to fight).. once you realize there’s a world that wants what you have to give, well, it’s hard to convince people to kill each other..t

thurman interconnectedness law

337

better nation talk needs to die in a fire. we’re not doing nations anymore. we’re doing people, doing stuff. nations mean govts, passports, borders..t

nationality: human

there’s nothing wrong w a border, so long as it isn’t too rigid. our cells hold in the lift gas, they make borders w the atmosphere. my skin is a border for my body.. it lets in the good and keeps out the bad. you have your borders, like all sims, which keep you stable and running. we don’t need no borders, just good ones

siddiqi border law

375

i know there will always be people like you… rich people.. people who think other people are like them… the question is whether people like you will get to define the default.. we’re not making a world w/o greed.. we’re making a world where greed is a perversion.. where grabbing everything for yourself instead of sharing is like smearing ourself with shit: gross. wrong. our winning doesn’t mean you don’t get to be greedy. it means peope will be ashamed for you, will pity you and want to distance themselves from you. you can be as greedy as you want, but no one will admire you for it..

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while reading..

via @OzKaterji rt

Rafael Behr (@rafaelbehr) tweeted at 2:07 AM – 6 Oct 2017 :

I wonder who will be first prominent leaver to admit to self, then country that Brexit proving impossible to do without breaking everything. (http://twitter.com/rafaelbehr/status/916213228836925440?s=17)

today we can walkaway bloodless ly.. ie: hlb via 2 convos that io dance.. as the day..[aka: not part\ial.. for (blank)’s sake…]..  a nother way

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Cory Doctorow: “Walkaway” | Talks at Google https://t.co/64X4e5zEp4

Original Tweet: https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/916498546324529152

reading from ch 2

an optimistic disaster novel

elite panic – wealthy believing when lights go out poor will come for you

21 min – possible to be getting along yet having irreconcilable diff’s on how to go about getting machine started again

22 min – hope.. not that problem will be solved.. but that can find one way to make it a little better.. and from there.. find another

29 min – signal loss turning into info

47 min – the best hope we have for surviving a crisis – people who know each other.. . .. weak ties as resilience.. t

2 convos .. as the day..

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Loved this story… Good job @doctorow https://t.co/HUBXKXp92G

Original Tweet: https://twitter.com/neilhimself/status/916783140450000896

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via michel fb share:

Elaborate commons economics development via science fiction:

(Cory Doctorow’s Walkaway, which I haven’t read yet, but this reading group is making a masterly analysis of it)

“An attractive element of modern standard economics is that it is micro-founded. First, the individual agent’s behavior is modeled, and an equilibrium for the model is found. Next, economists build mesoscale models (for example, partial equilibrium models for a specific market) and macroscale ones (for example, general equilibrium models for the whole economy). These are built in such a way that the lower-level equilibria generate the upper-level ones: zoom in onto a general equilibrium model and it resolves into individual consumers and firms making their choices.

This consistency is useful and elegant. Alternative economic systems should also be micro-founded to be taken seriously. Walkaway, it seems to me, makes an attempt at building a micro-founded model of a whole system (the walkaway economy), but it comprehensively rejects standard micro. It eventually replaces it with a micro behavior of its own, but of a very different kind. I can see four moves:

Expose standard micro as based on flawed assumptions.
Argue that the behavior of individual agents is based on intersubjective conventions. This shifts the argument from economics as we know it to political economy, the border land between economics and that moral philosophy that it grew out of.
Propose a political economy that works well with digital commons, and re-build a micro model based on that.

Proceed to derive meso- and macro-level behavior founded on those new micro models.”

https://edgeryders.eu/t/the-economics-of-cory-doctorows-walkaway/8828/3

by @alberto_cottica of @edgeryders

1\ Expose standard micro as based on flawed assumptions.. ie: tragedy of commons..t

doctorow city as prison law

Jacob Redwater thinks that wanting to “be that bastard” who will overgraze the common field is human nature.

black science of people

limpopo: If you believe everyone is untrustworthy, you’ll build that into your systems so that even the best people have to act like the worst people to get anything done. If you assume people are okay, you live a much happier life

assume good

As we have seen, Doctorow believes human nature to be less rigid than standard economics makes it to be. But if humans are programmable, what should we program ourselves for? And what, specifically, would be the object of programming?

The answer seems to be this: we should program into ourselves an ethos that supports practices of networked collaboration, aimed at the production of commons. .t

rather.. common ing.. because less focus on the things (commons) more focus on the being together (common ing) ends up requiring less things.. (ie: affluence w/o abundance)

ie: 2 convos.. as infra

as it could be..

Groups of humans get better at cooperating by adopting systems of rules that make cooperation easier.

2 convos.. as infra

graeber: if you really care about getting something done, the most efficient way to go about it is obviously to allocate tasks by ability and give people whatever they need to do them.

No need to keep scores of who got what for what; no need for currencies, value storage, means of exchange..t

these are disturbances/distractions to meadows undisturbed ecosystem

marsh exchange law

 Bucket brigades were a system through which everyone could do whatever they wanted—within the system—however fast you wanted to go; everything you did helped and none of it slowed down anyone else..t

gershenfeld sel

At this point, I think I have made a case that the economics of Walkaway does, indeed, fill our bill of “imagining an economic system completely different from what we have”. . t

as long as we’re bold enough to let go of irrelevants.. ie: money/measure et al

ie: short bp

Gretyl: “I think you have to be a mathematician to appreciate how full of shit economists are, how astrological their equations are. No offense to your egalitarian soul, but you lack the training to understand how deeply bogus those neat equations are.”

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@monk51295 Have you seen this? You might especially like the part about micro-foundationshttps://t.co/B3TxAgEtc4

Original Tweet: https://twitter.com/KevinCarson1/status/1128413836925636613

The economics of Cory Doctorow’s Walkaway

From microeconomics to political economy and back: thoughts on the micro foundations of the Walkaway economy

This consistency is useful and elegant. Alternative economic systems should also be micro-founded to be taken seriously. Walkaway, it seems to me, makes an attempt at building a micro-founded model of a whole system (the walkaway economy), but it comprehensively rejects standard micro. It eventually replaces it with a micro behavior of its own, but of a very different kind.

not diff enough

In these cases, communism is simply more efficient. No need to keep scores of who got what for what; no need for currencies, value storage, means of exchange.

So, walkaways build an economy by the simple expedient of making it easy, efficient and pleasurable to work on common projects..t

only way to do that is if we have a mech to listen to and facil individual curiosities first.. everyday.. all other ‘common projects’ are a form of coercion.. and won’t last

yes.. this sounds ridiculous.. but today we have the means to facil that.. so.. it’s more ridiculous to keep spinning our wheels

ie: curiosity and decision making

*Making it easy, efficient and pleasurable to work on common projects is by no means easy..t Walkaway contains plenty of interaction protocols meant **to make cooperation easier. The bucket brigade concept is presented as a textbook example of how cooperation should work:

Bucket brigades only ask you to work as hard as you want—rush forward to get a new load and back to pass it off, or amble between them, or vary your speed. It didn’t matter—if you went faster, it meant the people on either side of you didn’t have to walk as far, but it didn’t require them to go faster or slower. If you slowed, everyone else stayed at the same speed. Bucket brigades were a system through which everyone could do whatever they wanted—within the system—however fast you wanted to go; everything you did helped and none of it slowed down anyone else. [emphasis mine]

*i think this is false.. it could be easy..  it has to be .. if it’s for everyone.. ie: no prep/train

**best way is to start from 7b individual daily curiosities.. first

At this point, I think I have made a case that the economics of Walkaway does, indeed, fill our bill of “imagining an economic system completely different from what we have”..t

true.. but not completely diff enough.. to sustain itself..

“I think you have to be a mathematician to appreciate how full of shit economists are, how astrological their equations are. No offense to your egalitarian soul, but you lack the training to understand how deeply bogus those neat equations are.”

I don’t completely understand this last one. Still. I rest my case

nothing alive is equal.. ie: can be captured in an equation.. this is why ie: stephen hawking and einstein and et al.. never got that one equation

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