Value flows
Flows of [[value]] beyond monetary.
Conventional money, as designed and used, cannot express important types of value
– [[Free, Fair and Alive]]
Other flows of value that we care about: e.g. [[ecological flows]], the social relationships of [[gift economies]], people’s contributions to [[commons]].
Dollars, euros, and other state currencies don’t let us see the flows of value that matter most — ecological flows, the social relationships of gift economies, people’s contributions to commons.
– [[Free, Fair and Alive]]
Flows?
"As a society, we have a pretty good understanding of objects and how to manipulate them, but we’re not as good with flows," says [[MetaCurrency]] project founder [[Arthur Brock]].
– [[Free, Fair and Alive]]
What are some value flows?
-
e.g. within a community
- social contributions
- reputation
- work performed
- care work
- community sentiment
- ecological flows (what does this actually mean?)
- the social relationships of gift economies
- people's contributions to commons
DisCO flows of value
[[DisCO]]s have something to say on value flows: Reimagining the origin and flows of value.
- Livelihood work: productive market value (the DisCO’s goods and services are paid for);
- Love Work: productive pro-bono value (the commons created through self-selected volunteer work);
- [[Care Work]]: reproductive work value (towards the collective and among its members, see above).
Implementations
- [[ValueFlows]] as a formal protocol for describing and tracking these other flows of value.
- Holochain?
In other words, the [[Holochain]] protocols would function as a grammar for the system, or language for building apps that name flows of value within a community, such as social contributions, reputation, work performed, care work, even community sentiment.
– [[Free, Fair and Alive]]
ValueFlows
Like [[ActivityPub]] but for economic activities rather than social activities.
Primarily for [[value flows]] other than your standard market-based ones. Aimed more at [[solidarity economy]], [[cooperatives]], etc.
VF in particular embraces this experimentation towards next-economy / solidarity-economy / commons-based-economy / P2P-economy/etc. in this transitional time.
I like the idea and the people working on it, but I don't get it yet - because I've not used it or seen an example in action. I also like the fact there's a big part of it revolves around [[agents]].
I'd kind of like [[Flancia Collective]] to become a [[DisCO]] somehow - and then we might use it there.
What
[[Money]] is an abstraction to represent value. It's not a good abstraction, but it persists because the global economy is in a local minimum because the disadvantages of sharing information outweigh the advantages. An economy with sufficient incentives for economic agents to communicate their values directly without the abstraction layer would be more efficient, assuming the existence of an agreeable language for that communication […] valueflows […] is a grammar for that language
Why
The important thing to know is that the benefits of collectives aren't just for adversarial situations where we interface with capitalism. We have a basis for building economic networks that are competitive with capitalist business units comparable in size while being just to labor, community, and the environment The issue is bringing trust-based networks up to scale with multinational corporations. This can happen, but folks are still working on the software support
How
key concepts
REA (Resources, Events, Agents) - see DisCO and Valueflows.
Agents
perform Economic Events affecting Economic Resources.
Agents can be individual persons or organizations of various types. They can be related in user-defined ways, like “member” or “trading partner”.
Economic events
An Economic Event can take actions like create, change, consume, use, or destroy Economic Resources, or transfer them from one Agent to another, or transport them from one place to another.
Economic Resources
Anything of value, however you define that - examples are
- Useful goods and services
- Money, tokens, credits
- Labor power, skills
- Documented knowledge
- Air, water, soil
- Etc.
Resources
- public document at doc.anagora.org/value-flows
- video call at meet.jit.si/value-flows
2021 12 17
2021 12 20
2023 03 02
flows of value
neil
technology should be liberatory
value flow accounting
valueflows
(none)
(none)