An interview on the nature of money, set to music and images

Kane Hogan my friend at the Magic Mind Lounge’ www.magicmindlounge.com did this video on Youtube. Here’s the link to the magic mind lounge post and video: http://magicmindlounge.com/2012/06/30/a-new-video-from-the-sunshine-poet-on-money/

It does batter away at the wall of assumption, truly! Check it out, and ponder!

Meanwhile, the flowfunder concepts are simmering away. All inputs and mad offers of help are warmly invited 🙂 I know that the best way to fund the startup of flowfunder is to bootstrap it with a beta version of flowfunder itself – cool or what!? I just need – what do I need? To clear the decks enough to begin it from scratch. What is ‘scratch’ and how does one find it?? I guess it’s knowing what one does have, right now – taking stock, getting creative with what one finds to hand. Like the old McGuiver…

Not Anarchy but ‘Panarchy’, enabled by the Web = true Democracy?

New networks enable new things – the global ‘brain’ of the web is enabling true democracy – the individual can truly register their true opinions by ‘voting’ with their mouse, and that vote goes straight to ACTIONS – it gets results not through some central government but directly in the marketplace of ideas and services.

So, if we enable a robust network in the web to let individuals invest frictionlessly in micro-investments in what THEY like, then true democracy will be very near to actualisation. This is the dream of the old anarchists, I guess, but needs no  (hateful) revolutionary violence to try out. We just see how it works for us, and if it does, we tell our friends, and they tell theirs.

Now, about that network… Engineers of the Possible, where are you?

My firend Kane hogan, Sunshine poet, quoted from Thoreau today, and it is prophetic I think:

“Is a democracy as we know it, the last improvement in government?

For we have had progress from an absolute monarchy, to a limited monarchy, then to a democracy.

Which is all progress toward a true respect for the individual.

English: Portrait by Benjamin D. Maxham (daguerreotype), black and white of Henry David Thoreau in June 1856. The writer-collar post a beard and is dressed in a black frock coat, a white shirt and a black bow tie. Français : Portrait par Benjamin D. Maxham (daguerréotype), en noir et blanc de Henry David Thoreau, en juin 1856. L’écrivain poste une barbe-collier et est habillé d’une redingote noire, d’une chemise blanche et d’un noeud papillon noir. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Is it not possible then to take a step further towards recognising and organising the rights of people toward an enlightened state that recognises THE INDIVIDUAL as a higher power, from which all its own power and authority are derived?”

The  flowfunder vision = a new kind of sharemarket which enables the individual, and disables the gatekeeper and the power-broker = Panarchy.

 

 

Music for the overworked and underpaid

Well, I’ve never been a wage-earner except for brief ineffectual stints, but I’ve certainly been ‘underpaid’ most of my life for my entrepreneurial and cranky craftsman efforts! (such as cafe eutopia of course).  I don’t blame anyone, even myself; it is the inefficiencies of our education, upbringing and economic system, and that is no one person’s ‘fault’, but rather our generation’s opportunity to get in there and improve something about it, in a way that lights us up…

So, this song by a new friend Kane hogan, for a worker’s union drive for a minimum living wage,  is what a lot of good, simple people feel about the system – underpaid and overtaxed. They just wanted to be able to work reasonable hours, go home and live and love, nothing much more. Foreign concept to ‘driven’ people like me, but i get it.

So why isnt there enough in the system nowadays for those who choose this wage-earning deal to do it and live? Why can they not quite pay the rent or the power bill even when they give 40 hours a week or often quite a bit more, to work quite hard at jobs not many others would want to do – like cleaning toilets or washing up at cafes?

Without getting into the tangled skein of ‘shoulds’, I want to address the question by removing some of the inefficiencies and distortions in the economic ‘circulation system’. Flowfunder visionaries of the world, unite! 🙂

The Strife of Systems and the Theory of String

Any new thing must in a sense ‘walk on water’ – skim over the deep issues that divide us all, so as to reach a new shore, as it were. The flowfunder concept is to create new transparent conduits, new channels for the creation and exchange of value, transparently, and without the ‘piling up’ of the tokens of that value (i.e., money) in any one place. Real-time speed, zero resistance, and transparency should be the aims of any new money circulation system for the web. This, if I am right, will have the effect of removing many of the grounds for division and unfairness right at the root cause – the money circulation system itself.

So, to change the metaphor to string: Being an inventor, I (happily) don’t feel the need to untangle the rights and wrongs of the PRESENT, let alone the PAST of the capitalist/socialist ideological entanglement. I am looking for the FUTURE possible ideal. Re-invention is so much more doable than untangling a complex status quo. Imagine a thousand kittens (individual thinkers and campaigners) playing with a thousand huge balls of string (their individual ‘takes’ on the several systems out there – socialism, communism, capitalism…) and you can imagine, it’s humanly impossible to untangle them and knit anything. The commentator tries to and just adds to the tangle; the revolutionary tries to cut the Gordian knot with violence and leaves a shredded mess; but the inventor tiptoes past the tangle, and says, how about trying to knit with this NEW ball of string? And if it is indeed usable string, there will be an uptake, a peaceful migration, and the old tangles will be left to compost down of their own accord.

 

The World needs a new kind of capitalism – fast! Can YOU help?

Now I have linked this blog to Facebook: Introducing, yes, another new idea from the wizard of eutopia! This one’s fairly modest – just a plan to change the way the world invests. 🙂

Introducing the vision of  ‘Flux Capital’ and ‘www.Flowfunder.com – Investing in the Flow’ Based on my process theory of the tree of life, of course… The basic assumption is: big hidden piles of cash for power and control = BAD capitalism;  smooth transparent flows of cash circulating for value-creation = GOOD capitalism.

Do have a look at the first two posts in this new blog – and let me know if it rings any bells, moves any dials. If so, do click on the follow button on the site and get email updates. And email me or contact me in whatever way works for you. preferably email – I’m old-fashioned! or comment on the blog itself.

This one’s moving fast… i think! We so need something like this. Do you agree? Working on the blueprint, in the flow, as we speak.

A bit of music to go with the Flow, and introducing the Interflux…

This was a piece of electronic music I found when googling ‘flux Capital’ : I don’t particularly love it, but the title ‘fluxcapital’ i do! 🙂 In the Transit of Venusjust today, when I looked at the brilliant circle cast by the sun focused by a magnifying glass, I actually did see something – just not Venus. This is what I was looking for:

Transit of Venus 2012 New York City (Photo credit: Randy Le’Moine Photography)

What I actually saw was what looked like a sort of fractal triangle reaching across the sun. Only later did I realise – it was the branch of a distant tree; the sun was low in the sky. another sign?  – the tree is the basis for my diagram of all process: Well, I told you I was a ‘Pagan’! We pagans believe in signs and omens… since the world process is all connected, an organism of some kind. The Tree of Life, aka Yggdrasil, and many other names, is a potent symbol of the process of life, and of the central axis about which all life and the world ‘theatre of reactions’  (Charles Peirce,

Charles Sanders Peirce, an American pragmatist, logician, mathematician, philosopher, and scientist. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

an avid platonistic process theorist, referred  to the world process by this phrase) circulates. So, any successful new sharemarket requires new thinking – process thinking. Radical rethinking of value creation, growth, capital, and wealth. I propose the name Interflux (Or the less exotic ‘Interflow)  to describe the network of value-adding transparent nodes (‘businesses’) to be linked by their participation in the flowfunding contract. Peirce would have LOVED all this emerging on the web – it is SO process! More later…

The rivers of life still flow

‘For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreads out its roots by the river, and shall not fear when the heat comes, but its leaf shall be green; and shall not be anxious in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit.’

(Jeremiah 17:8, KJ 2000 Bible)

The painting in the present header for this site is one I did when I was a Christian (now platonist process pagan but that’s another story!). It was of this Bible verse. In the background was the desert, where the rivers do not flow. When I looked in my usual haste for something to use for the header, this leapt to my eye. Funny, all those years later, here it is, and it’s so… current for me now! It IS the Year of Drought, has been for years for many people, the so-called ‘forever recession’  (seth godin),  BUT the rivers of value creation still flow, and those who find them will not be anxious any longer.

This flowfunder vision has expanded just today, and it is very exciting. All ‘the jagged pieces of my life have come together to form a complete, mystical whole.’ (Hook, the film) All the 20 years of thinking about process are coming to a confluence…

If you are interested in how value can be more truly created, expanded, and rewarded, for Jeremiah’s sake click the ‘Follow’ button on this blog, and/or email me, and comment here… The future is being created in places like this. ‘It is the stillest words that bring on the storm. Thoughts that come on doves’ feet guide the world…’ (thus spoke Zarathustra).

We need an accountable capitalism, and that requires that there be no more capital sitting in unholy piles as thrones for the ‘capitalists’ so many thinking people have come to reject as unfair, non-accountable, and enormously wasteful. What is needed, however, is not ‘people’s representatives’ sitting on the same unholy thrones (which sooner or later, like Tolkien’s  One Ring, corrupt those who sit in them), but for the piles of capital to become irrelevant as the healthy life-giving flow of funds begins to replace the old ‘lumpy’ ways.  This requires total  real-time accounting, total and real-time transparency, and total access to real-time individual participation for all with no bottom limit on how much is ‘invested’ – or rather ‘flow-funded’.

(I’ve just been ring to say go out and see the transit of venus – happening right now! A good sign, I’m sure! I went out into the paddock to the west of us and the sunlight was golden. But all i could see on the paper was a very bright circle – the sun… )

So, the future is flowing, I have some big hunches as to how it will happen. Watch this space. The doves are walking, Venus is invisibly crossing the sun… The future is coalescing.

 

 

Flowfunder is born – soon to be funding enterprises in real time

This is a brand new venture, to be evolved, just as all the ventures it will fund need to be evolved. Below is my first statement of the vision, to my brother who is in the TV and film industry  – Greenstone pictures http://www.greenstonetv.com/.

I have changed the previous working title of fluxfunder to the present title – Flowfunder.

“Here goes the elevator pitch:

Flowfunder.com is an open-source crowdfunding initiative to enable multiple micro-flows of funding for startups which are willing to be totally transparent, and (using our amazing new open-source software) show the real-time flow of funds through our aspectually evolving corporation. This software also allows the flow to be automatically reversed (on a pre-arranged percentage) as the enterprise begins to generate profits, and flowfund investors find that their weekly auto payment is balanced and hopefully eclipsed by a dividend flow back to their account. All in realtime, in the flow.

Contrast this with the ‘lumpy’ nature of capitalism in the past – you have a big idea, you do a big plan, go to a big bank, get a big loan, spend up big, make decisions in a closed boardroom, report once a year to shareholders who have bought lumps of shares, and every year if at all, pay them a dividend.

All SO not internet age stuff! All so open to distortion, illusion, and corruption.

so, Flowfunder is [part of] the future of capitalism!

It just occured to me that THIS is the way you cld raise money for films. You’d start with smaller one, get cashflow positive, then pitch on flowfunder.com your next project, and start getting the fans (worldwide on the web) openly pouring money into that fund, getting excited as they see the thing evolving – logging on daily, hourly to watch the progress (sneak previews of scenes etc) and check their ‘flow’ – wild parties when the tide turns and the money begins flowing into their bank? paypal? accounts.

if you doubt the possibility of this model, have a look at http://www.kickstarter.com. Some projects there are hugely OVERsubscribed. Cool concept, but still ‘lumpy’ like traditional capital raising. My idea is all about real-time, continuing beyond the intial ‘kickstart’.

Everyone who funds becomes a defacto shareholder in that flowfund project, and may reap whatever big or small rewards that come. Shares cld be traded as well – the buyer just takes over the seller’s funding circuit, or flow.

🙂

interested?”

There are many things to sort in this model, but as visionaries say, they are (merely?) ‘engineering details’. The vision is clear enough; now to look at those engineering – or architectural – details! If you read this and like the idea and want to help or advise or comment, please do follow this blog, and/or email me peter@eutopia.co.nz.

The architecture of the fund process will be based on my process philosophy which sees all entities as processes with five phases, or aspects. See my ebook ‘How to be Creative’ for a brief description of this:  I see all projects which come though flowfunder as being guided through the five phases, with wisdom from the members and the links provided as we find the best sources for help in the various areas of enterprise.