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 :-)
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 🙏👍
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
Humans don’t seem to let go of money but the system needs money to be redistributed to keep the consumption economy going.
And so Taxation (and UBI in future) will exist to keep the monetary economic system alive. The only freedom in my opinion is to evolve the system into something non-monetary resource based system.
Oh yea true, I forgot that he is going to raise taxes for the top 1-5% richest I think.
Anyway, I do understand the idea - whenever things are forced, we don’t like it and also makes us dislike things that indirectly cause this forcing (poverty, inequality, food subsidies, etc etc ) and thus reduces kindness in the world.
But also, as long as the concept/tool of “taxation” exists as a system balancing act, guys like him are needed.
Discussions to usurp forcing tools completely from our systems is a different topic - this has been my main point that we should not misplace our disappointments or anger.
My thoughts on “AI and Economy”
https://zanynik.medium.com/analysis-predictions-ai-economy-7974aff578c9
#AI #AGI #Economy #Bitcoin
By theft if you mean taxation that is already happening and he is advocating for using taxes properly for better public services, so it makes sense.
If the issue is about taxation and system itself then it’s a different topic , nothing to do with him I think.
0 1 and Infinity.
An article on these concepts in the context of Spiritual Indian Philosophy and meditation practice of Vipassana.
https://zanynik.medium.com/0-1-f934cb19451a
#Philosophy #Meditation #Article
Thanks for replying on this. I could fix a bug in my project 😁, now I see your post on the project page too.
I follow him on Bluesky, seems like a nice guy, who thinks about the poor people. He is kind I think. Maybe Kindness is about not being so focused on the self (the individual) and hence the word collective maybe.
This motherfucker really said this shit
https://blossom.primal.net/734a70941c98d39f07ca5d41c18f14f750c9c4c9bf35577b54e9151f68e41408.mov
I actually like him 😄
NOSTR Echo Field is an art project to visualize the power of censor-resistance in social media by aiming to create the world largest comment chain. Please checkout the project here : https://zanynik.github.io/echo-field/ and contribute to make it better 😃
#FunProject #NOSTRapp #DigitalArt #WorldRecord
Can someone help me out on how to get visibility for my NOSTR project? Any particular hashtags to use or any particular people to tag in posts ? Link : https://zanynik.github.io/echo-field/
#BuildinPublic #NOSTRapp #Cool #Art #Project
Hi
Hello, NOSTR World!
Hey, testing a post from my new NOSTR echo field project
Published a song:
# Nostr is pro-censorship
In [Keys are meaningless](nostr:naddr1qqyxxc35vdsngdmpqyghwumn8ghj7enfv96x5ctx9e3k7mgzyqalp33lewf5vdq847t6te0wvnags0gs0mu72kz8938tn24wlfze6qcyqqq823cs34ccf) we hopefully made it clear that keys are not central to Nostr's idea, in fact keys are just an unnecessary burden that enables something much more important: relays.
The fact that one user, through their client, can reach out to a huge number of these servers hosted anywhere, and that each user can publish their stuff to any of them, from a modest server at his basement to a big cloud relay hosted by a big company, without anyone having to trust any of these: this is the core of the Nostr idea.
And the fact that Nostr relies on an open ecosystem of privately-owned relay servers is the only thing that ensures a proper incentive structure and gives it a chance of working: while other centralized platforms and protocols in the past -- even those that have tried to be very open and anti-censorship -- ended up struggling against what whom or what should be allowed to be published or not -- because after all they relied on a big common "global" pool of messages that had to be interpreted by apps.
That reliance kills the entire idea because at the very least someone has to host the content, and hosting that content has a cost, it has moral implications and also legal implications, so at some point someone, somewhere, has to make a decision to stop hosting some things, or restricting some users from publishing and so on, and there will never be a global agreement between all the peoples of the Earth about whom or what should be allowed and what should be disallowed. Even a rate-limit, IP blocking or other naïve measures that a server must necessarily take in order to survive on the internet, are a form of "censorship".
On Nostr none of that is a factor because each relay is independent of each other and there is no global pool of content, by definition. Because of that, and because it's the job of the readers to figure out from where to read, no relay has any obligations to please all the peoples of the Earth and is free to impose any limits or policies it wants.
Of course all of that breaks down if apps relinquish their obligation to figure out what relays to read from and decide to read from a static list of relays, but that should have gone without saying.
## See also
- [Constant](npub1t6jxfqz9hv0lygn9thwndekuahwyxkgvycyscjrtauuw73gd5k7sqvksrw)'s [video explanation](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5oXaW1EqbE)
A question on last line of the article : So Do most nostr apps figure out what relays to read from or is it a user's burden to update their relays list ?
I remember around maybe 15 years ago when I was in College, I used to write/draw something on page n send it via bluetooth to a friend in class as a message. Bitchat is its realisation, pretty cool.
Hello Zaps! My First zap perhaps?
Hello World!
#introductions