This is incredibly sweet. I read the whole thing!
It seems to me that something like this might work in a small community and in fact is probably not too far in spirit from how some tribes organized activities and goods.
This is hard to answer because
1. I don’t exactly know how it will function.
2. It will loosely be based on gift economy values.
What I am mostly confident of is the path towards such an economy which will inevitably take us towards a new system and reveal it’s exact workings.
The path I have in mind is an application of an ancient meditation method called Vipassana to the economy. Basically in this meditation, the root cause of suffering is identified to be our cravings and aversions.
I think the economic system suffers from the same (Cravings for infinite growth).
When I apply it to economy I got this : Start zero-profit business in the food sector. And hence I have a plan document here if you’re interested:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tlFSN8bUQ3IQ__h3kct83hqF8pH8pNhGpAU5IMPNKGg/edit?usp=drivesdk
Discussion
Thank you :)
It’s a simple grocery store idea and so, I think it will work anywhere. This is more like a consumer food coop and when Food coops can exist why not this everywhere?
Normal stores - Try to Maximise & keep all profit
Coops - Share it with members as dividends
Zero profit store - Gives it back to customers it took it from.
Simple unexplored business model and doable I think.
And thanks for read it 🙏👍
It just seems to me that you'd need a lot of people on board to not take advantage of it. I'm not quite sure how someone would take advantage of it but it's hard to imagine it working at scale.
This is in fact pretty close to what co-ops do, right? employees are paid but there's no owner that profits.
Someone who organizes it would take a salary?
(ironically, I believe that grocery stores are one of the lowest-margin businesses out there so even though I like your analogy of breath in vipassana to food in society, groceries are not actually a very high-profit business)
On the subject of money: one of the things that's interesting when you study the history of currencies is that humans didn't use them in very small groups. There was just no need. But with trade among tribes, currencies tended to emerge naturally as a way to facilitate exchanges. You might find the study of money quite interesting.
It was hard for me to imagine how Vipassana Meditation centers which don't charge a penny, still exist and not only exist , they grow, Now they have 267 own centers world wide offering 10 day courses for free. The surprising part is once you finish a course, there is no one "asking" you to donate. Sometimes people have to really ask around where the donation counter is. That is the effect of something that is offered selflessly and we living in a system built upon selfishness have forgotten that power. And a selfless organization isn't playing the game of "who is taking advantage of whom" - that game is only true inside a system based on selfishness.
Yes, there are paid employees and also volunteers in co-ops. Both are possible.
You would be surprised regarding margins. This is the recent report on retail sector / Supermarkets in Germany (As its in German, maybe some AI can answer your questions once you upload and ask it): https://monopolkommission.de/images/PDF/SG/SG%20LLK%202025/Sondergutachten%20Lebensmittellieferkette_Monopolkommission.pdf
In summary, there is a kind of monopoly happening in Germany, these supermarkets squeeze the farmers, food processors and also charge customers a lot as they don't pass on the savings. And guess who is the wealthiest person in Germany, owner of a grocery chain, Aldi.
I have read the history of money and those examples. Somehow the assumption is that we would go back to that era when the topic of a moneyless economy comes because it is hard to imagine one and so as I said it is hard to describe for me the final evolved form of the economy without money.
I just try to kickstart this simple zero-profit grocery project and see where it goes 😄 .. I know it wont transform the entire economy in my lifetime, but maybe after 75-100 years - just laying the foundations, sowing the seed for a different kind of economy :-)
I can see how much you have thought about this!
I don't know enough about Germany, but in the US most monopolies exist because of the way corporations lobby the government for rules and regulations that work in their favor and basically create a moat around them that makes competition almost impossible.
I think the most damaging monopoly is of money itself. Only central banks can print money, and the use of each nation's currency is enforced by violence (or the threat of violence). I can imagine that without that, different forms of currency or trade could emerge naturally.
True, it is a really competitive space but its food 🥺, its life, we need to claim it back and make it free from profit. No matter what the currency is (Even Bitcoin), we know how profit ruins any industry, I think this is clear to the world today.
So though I agree theres a monopoly of money but I don’t see how a new form of the same idea (ofcourse free from govt n central authorities) has a different effect on humans in running the same services/businesses , won’t we want more of bitcoin , will profit maximising disappear, will hiding scientific research to make profit go away, will businesses suddenly care , will kindness exponentially increase? I dont see how.
I guess I don't agree that profit itself is bad. What's dangerous is when some people have the leverage of monopoly to impose their will on everyone else.
Without that centralization, you still have human greed (on a continuum - people who want a second set of clothes for their children all the way up to people who want 30 yachts) but you don't have money printing as a tool for the most powerful (who I think tend to be on the pathological side of that profit-seeking range).
So personally I don't think that profit ruins business; it's monopoly and centralization that ruins business and society.
Competition has become a dirty word. I'm not sure why - because it feels harsh or mean? between siblings or partners it can be negative, I suppose but in society it's the basis for so much that works well. I buy little apple seedlings for our land, and I look for varieties that have been selected over the years for resistance to certain diseases, etc. The nurseries that sell them compete with each other to grow better trees, and everyone wins when there are more of those better apple trees out in the world. It means more apples per tree, more food (which, as you say, is life) in the world.
Reminds me of a recent song I wrote/made using my Philosophical notes on Evolution as a Greedy Optimizing algorithm vs Conciousness + Me humming the tune + AI putting it all together, please give it a listen 😃 :
https://podverse.fm/episode/ui6sdtn-g
So .. I think money and its direct consequence, profit, played a very important role - lots of trade, cultural exchange, etc. Just like, Competition has played a very important role in Evolution and therefore Humans exist today. So no, Im not classifying any of them as categorically bad.
I now remember a famous quote "Nature is cruel, but we don't have to be" by Dr. Temple Grandin. By the way, I remeber it from a really good movie based on her life, worth checking out.
So, Yes competition, money and therfore profit are not bad. They were needed in the past. But now they're not well suited to be dominant mechanics or the soul of our economic system, we need to evolve out of it too.
If change is the only thing constant, then maybe we must entertain a bit of change. And I think our economic system needs change.
Let me know how you like the song 😃