Art of Climbing Trees

Finance without a bank

Businesses will face a cap on profits i.e., taxation/the Shared Prosperity Levy, to guard against the disproportionate accumulation of financial power/access to resources and the creation of monopolies, endangering the wider democratic processes. (A profit ceiling could be set in relation to the number of employees.) 

Since we’re instigating a measured resource-based economy, money is tethered as closely as possible to the actual resources the EAT allows us to use. We’re also democratising access to resources, so we’ll have no need for unelected private gatekeepers such as banks, trusts, shareholders, etc., with a right to fabricate money and control its supply. 

Lending money for interest is effectively selling money for more than it’s worth and this practice is only logical if we accede to inequality and trust the financial gatekeepers. 

Banks tend to divert money-energy to those who need it least, with investment choices informed by a profit motive. (Healthy returns don’t equal a healthy society as discussed here¹⁹⁹). 

Projects, including corporate expansion, can instead be financed through UE and UBS budgets, which are managed by Citizens’ Assemblies, probably civil servants (following Citizens’ Assembly guidance) or by individuals who can support projects with their equally allotted GRREE credits. I trust that true democracies (as Citizens’ Assembly trials have shown) will allocate resources in tune with our emergency, prioritising health, peace, happiness, biodiversity, survival, etc.

Instead of offering loans that should be returned with interest, we award grants, which have no strings attached. However, if a company or individual wishes to apply for resources to expand further again/for subsequent projects, it may help their case if they can demonstrate the prudent investment of previous grants. So, the system is built on incentives but also trust and dignity. 

Traditional investments: loan repayments with interest are proof of success and imply growth.

Grant awards: Funders (usually, but not always) expect a written appraisal of success, or to see evidence of a finished product. However, it’s not always easy to calculate the success of society’s most important efforts. An education project for example, may not see dividends for several decades.

The system could be more liberal with money for research and development vs money for mass production. New ideas are (almost) always welcome.

Blockchain bartering
Individuals and businesses can get things done outside of this system, too:

A business-to-business exchange system that already exists can be found in the Credit Commons, which functions like bartering (without the inefficiency of old-fashioned bartering). It allows companies to trade the materials they need to operate while bypassing banks/middlemen and the negative impacts of speculation and hoarding. (A timber company in Scandinavia trades with a construction company in the UK. The construction company builds an office for a company that manufactures electric haulage vehicles, and at some point, the timber company needs one). A digital ledger is held that keeps track of transactions and each business’s trade balance, and there are clever systems to mitigate anyone taking too much. The UE blockchain could effectively integrate/facilitate this system.

In the UE economy, no company or corporation is an island, but a transparent node within a support network of other transparent nodes, each with access to the sum of all past and ongoing research. (See ‘Resources – Knowledge of Good healthy and Evil destructive practices’, below).

Please try using the (efficient) ‘Six Thinking Hats’ method of parallel thinking for sharing your ideas.
It helps us to organise our thoughts and feelings. Wear the Black Hat for critisism/doubts; the Green hat for creative suggestions; the Yellow for positive responses, Red for gut feelings; White for information. I am wearing the Blue Hat now, when I say we are here to design Eutopia.

Simply write ‘Black’, ‘Yellow’, ‘Green’, etc, before your given response. Then, start a new paragraph for ideas of a different coloured hat.