Markets and Politics: Are they really two separate choices?

I think that Sam Fleischacker makes a good argument for reducing the claim made by many that Smith's biggest contribution was the notion of self-interest (read his post here: Economics and the Ordinary Person: Re-reading Adam Smith.) The role of the individual to know most about his needs, and his ability to temper those selfish needs at the interest of others, are certainly critical notions to our world today and the increased recognition of the "relationship" as being critical to the functioning of our society as a whole and of our commercial lives.

Yet, there is one thing that stuck out for me in Fleischacker's analysis (I have to state that I have not read any of his books) is the assumption that there is a seperation between markets (economics) and politics (politicians); that somehow the market exists without the political influence of the state. I am not sure that Smith saw it this way. From my readings of Smith, he saw the need for a new type of politics that liberated and encouraged a form of market exchange based on private property. This was of course in direct opposition to the ideas of monarchy and the power of the landed class over the merchant class.

If it is not Smith that saw this separation of market/economics and politics, then I get the sense it must be Fleischacker who sees this separation. Fleishacker says, "This respect for the market, as a tool for character development, is unusual among moral philosophers: most of Smith's predecessors, peers, and successors would have favored the political realm, instead, as the best place to develop character." I disagree with this, I believe Smith saw a particular type of political-economics as being a constraint on the development of individual's character and wanted a new form of political-economy to move into one that enabled a form of market exchange based on the individual preferences of the consumer rather then the needs of the monarch or noble.

It is this continued analytical separation between economics and politics that I believe continues to confound many theorists and plays strongly into many of the dialogues and debates currently underway around questions of finance and money creation. Seeing money as something separate from politics or even economics, as something natural and epiphenomenal; as if money will exist without specific socio-political structures. The same assumption seems evident in Fleischacker, one in which the market is natural and will exist in its current form irrespective of political choices.

Perhaps I am overstating Fleischacker's argument and interpretation. However, it is a linguistic question, one that I am sure Chomsky and others would highlight. These false distinctions are something that I don't believe many moral philosophers of the Enlightenment would have supported.

Wikileaks - Aid, China and African Choice

The Guardian newspaper highlighted some of the African cables taht came out of the US Embassy's as part of the Wikileaks. I find these cables very interesting as they in many ways show an honest insight into how African's are viewing the rise of China's economic influence in Africa. The ability of China to offer investments in a way that differs greatly from the Western model of AID development has as the African's rightly point out that this is "giving the African countries options after several decades of a largely "Western" development model."

I think this is a critical insight into how the African's have felt in the decades of Euro-American AID. They have not had a choice, during the Cold War the choice was between Communism and Capitalist-Democracy and either choice came with huge costs and potential conflict. Today's choices come with far fewer consequences, and most of them are in some way positive. There are concerns raised that this Chinese model offers support to corrupt governments. I am not well studied in this arena (my friend Steven Nakana is far better versed in this stuff) but I do know that many horrid dictators in Africa were supported by Western governments over the decades of development AID.

The point is that it opens up the choices and this is a good thing, it increases competition and forces governments to offer a range of choices - a set of diverse options. This is good for Africa, after all Africa is not monolithic and the situations faced by each country are both unique and similar. This is why it is great to see the UK' DFID being identified for its ability to work on small projects in collaboration with others including the Chinese.

Ending with my continued belief that Africa is going to surprise everyone in the 21st century. More on that later though. Oh here is the link to the Guardian article: US embassy cables: African countries prefer Chinese aid to US-China cooperation.

2 Apps that I predicted

Okay so here are two ideas that I knew would come out (and have spoken about these sorts of ideas on several occasions with friends and family as potential business ideas:

www.socialsafe.net

http://dadapp.com/

Look out for the one that revolutionizes our interaction between PDF's, Word Documents, Web Sites and our need to link all this data together into a personalized social graph of our ideas and how they are linking together. This of course is really what scholars need. They need a way to follow their trails of information, where they got quotes, who they first read about someone and how they got the data. Hyperlinking between all documents on our personal computers is what is needed and will emerge very soon. 

I can say more about this idea later but I wanted to put it out there. This is much like what I have said about the lack of data portability of social networks, something that Social Safe is attempting to solve - in a fairly rudimentary fashion. It is a long way to go but the inevitability is that all social networks will operate on the same protocols allowing users to share data across networks.

Three Paragraphs

Growing up in Cape Town, South Africa, in the 1980's and early 1990's, was a blessed experience. I was surrounded by nature, pristine and beautiful, on all sides. Since moving to the USA in 1993, I have returned regularly to Cape Town, always enjoying and relishing the return to that beautiful environment. Yet, something started bothering me over the past five years. Since the end of Apartheid the economy has been growing, the cities have been booming and more and more trash is appearing on the beaches and in the ocean. My daytime strolls along the beaches of Cape Town increasingly began to involve picking up multiple bags of trash – plastic bottles, lids, bags, and other random flotilla.

As a trained political-economist, with a deep interest in questions of sustainability and development, I couldn't help but be concerned by this destruction of value and wealth. I was puzzled by the fact that almost all of this "trash" had at one point represented valuable goods. These goods had cost many, many dollars to produce and purchase - yet the end result was that they had become worthless. This worthlessness didn't make sense to me. Why would something that had cost someone good money, like the container that holds a drink of Coca-Cola, become worthless? And, even more so, how could we prevent it destroying something else of huge and infinite value – a clean and pristine environment that is healthy and resilient?

It is the protection of this beauty and the need to find a way in which our society can operate while protecting and recognizing this infinite wealth, which we are surrounded by and dependent upon for our survival, that became the central focus of my MA research. I am deeply passionate about bringing to the fore the need to recognize this value, the value of the things that our economy and our financial system fail to recognize.

My childhood was built off the very visceral experience of nature. It is something that I deeply desire for my own children, and yet, I understand the need for economic development and an improved standard of living. The challenge of negotiating these different working elements is something that I devote my life to. I want to be part of helping to drive pro-active solutions, solutions that center on the recognition of the environment and the infinite wealth and value that it represents. For me, there is more value in abundance then in anything else. Having an abundant environment - abundant ocean life, abundant forests and abundant clean air - is all more valuable to me and I believe to us as a society, then any scarce commodity or high-priced good.

On the streets of Oakland. So awesome!!

My Little Rant

[Note: this was written in one sitting with very little editing or planning. I hope that it conveys my general disappointment at much historical and monetary analysis] 

I am constantly shocked by the bad scholarship that so many academics produce. In my research of the world of money and specifically community currencies I keep coming across advocates of these currencies who are not basing their arguments on accurate historical research.

A classic misreading of history is that the creation of the Federal Reserve was about the consolidation of the moneyed interests of the USA. But, if you look closer it also has to do with the increased access to credit - something that was a massive problem throughout the 19th century in the USA. That is why President Wilson, who was deeply concerned about the monopolization of money and credit by bankers, called the creation of the Fed, the "democratization of credit". But why the focus on credit? Because at this time the idea that you could "create" money was anathema to all concepts of money - it represented  government attempting to create value, something that was not permissible in the minds of most intellectuals. Money needed intrinsic value and was not the product of any actions of government. This thinking about money came to be fundamentally challenged by Keynes (though he built off a series of work done in the late 1800's) who highlighted the role of
money of account. 

The question becomes what is the difference between credit and money? To explore that answer you have to understand the role of "money of account". Read Keynes, or for a more modern analysis look at the work of Geoffery Ingham. Money is not about the form, though this seems to have some sort of impact on our societal experience of money, money is about the unit of measure that is the measure of money. An authority is needed to impose this unit of measure, and it does NOT emerge spontaneously through barter, but rather requires some sort of consolidation, standardization and enforcement - the State, for example. However it does not necessarily require the State, I think you could have some other sort of authority, but some agreement needs to be enforced and regulated for a currency to become money.

Money is the creation of society. The relative scarcity of money is a socially constructed reality and is actually necessary to reinforce a standard measure of value which forms the basis of money of account. What is important is understanding the implication of who puts the money into circulation - and the importance of this is because money is so much more than just a medium of exchange - money does not just "represent" or "lubricate" the real economy - it is something far more, something that is a fundamental element in our socio-political mindset.

My point is that due to the fact that terms like money, democracy, credit, banks and more have all changed and evolved to mean very different things at very different historical moments thus if you are going to quote some of the great minds of America, then the historical moment in which their speech occurred needs to be taken into account. The shifts in form of money are critical because they have helped highlight the role of the creator of money. They have done nothing to clarify how to create that standard of value, and often the question of how that value is created is ignored. Throughout the history of money in America, one thing has remained constant - the source of money and its value is something that is believed to be beyond the control of the government (and society). When we thought of money as gold we believed that money had to have an intrinsic value - and that this source of value had nothing to do with government. This of course completely ignored the fact that government would create a designated unit of account such as the $, and then say that so many grams of gold were worth a set amount of dollars. Nothing natural there! Today we give money its value via the marketplace - in the realm of free-floating exchange markets. Again, we have no power over the value of money as it is something left to the markets. This alienation of the source of money's purchasing power (which is what allows us to actualize its value) is what we struggle with. How do we give money the kind of purchasing power that enables everyone to have enough financial power to buy all the things that they need for survival, and prevent the destruction of the living ecosystem?

The claim by community currency (CC)advocates is that to achieve this all we need to do is allow communities the power to create their own currency. The fact that it is often referred to as a currency and not as money, betrays a gap or maybe even a conflation between money and currency. In fact, this is what is critical, money can operate without currency. The questions that need to be answered by the CC advocates is how do we maintain this local currency’s purchasing power? How do we create a unit of account? How do we account for the fungibility of the money, and the additional economic costs of multiple currencies with different units of account and fluctuating values? Is the democratization of money about its decentralization? Or, is it about centralizing it in the state, ending the role of banks? If we democratized money via decentralizing its creation, we run the risk of completely destroying our political-economy, because ultimately there will be no reliable currency available. Despite some highlighting the role of "free banking" in Scotland and the US in the 19th century it ignores the fact that all of what these banks created was still in the same money of account - issued as "dollars' of credit off a scarce monetary base - in addition these experiments never prevented economic crashes or banking crises.

Today’s debates over the democratization of money follow two broad threads - one that wants to place the creation of money more fully in the hands of the state, while another group wants to create a form of money that requires no state.

The important distinction to make is that money is more than just a medium of exchange. Anything may serve as a medium of exchange (see the story about pigs being the medium of exchange), but the “moneyness” of money comes from its abstract value and ability to cancel debts. The ability of money to do this is through the authority that reinforces the existence of a relationship between the currency and the money of account. An authority of some regard is needed so that this reliable currency can be used to cancel all debts that are covered within the sovereign space of the state.

Many community currency advocates ignore the role of the state in creating the authoritative money of account and fail to highlight how they might do this in a way that will help to continue the existence of their local capitalist economy. It is this part of the community currency argument that is often ignored - the ideas that they are expressing have no focus on challenging the basis of private property or the focus on the sale of labour as one’s main means to economic survival. If these elements are going to continue to exist, if you are going to continue to operate within a capitalist economy then you are always going to need access to capitalist money. The solution that will emerge on the local community level will do nothing to change this fact - what it may do is reduce the welfare responsibility of the state because of the increased access to means of exchange that in no way enable you to accumulate credit or wealth - unless you accumulate goods that are then transferable into the national money.

What does it mean to democratize money? I have struggled with this question for almost 2 years now and is part of my 15 years of  political-economic research. I have studied what the American democracy has done. Demands for the democratization of money have been around for most of the past 200 years. The government's focus has been on maintaining a scarce supply of money – while boosting the supply of credit. This focus on credit has resulted in an elastic currency that feeds the side of money that is focused on fulfilling the purposes of exchange. The scarcity of currency has also allowed the government to maintain the abstract value represented by the money of account.

The question I now come to is what happens in an economy where there is no real distinction between money and credit? The works of Keynes, Wicksell, Innes, Smithin, Weber and Ingham are critical in this exploration. The idea that money is neutral needs to be dropped, that it is just the product of barter is false - an idea that is shared by most theorists including community currency advocates and Marx. Money and its creation has profound implications - and is a socio-political construct - with the aim of reinforcing particular economic functioning. However, a proposal to end this construct of money needs to account for this history and understand what the actual economic implications may be for the overall political-economy.

The American government has democratized money in a way that works with the dominant economy - the capitalist economy - this is the democratic responsibility of their government. However, if the government were to shift the way it creates money - perhaps ending the role of credit or interest - a new political understanding would need to be instituted. Money is part of a much bigger equation and the question of its democratization ultimately rests on our notion of democracy which ultimately rests on our notion of citizenship and the socio-economic benefits of this shift in ideas of citizenship (see the works of E.M. Wood).

Money is part of a greater revolution, but any assumption that it does not need some sort of authority for it to actually serve as money and not just a medium of exchange - which it cannot fulfil without being backed by an authoritative measure of value. We have to recognize that the democracy we have today is a democracy that has been designed to fulfil and meet the needs of a capitalist socio-economic structure.

Money is not the problem. Recognizing the way in which it is used to reinforce the existing economy is critical. But, the solutions that are proposed need to be grounded in history and in the recognition that money, the full functioning thereof, requires an authority of some nature to define and enable its abstract value.

I am not sure that we can create a moneyless society, now or in the future. For  if we accept that money is actually based in the “money of account”, which is an abstract and somewhat arbitrary value used to settle debts, then it would be almost impossible to imagine this being replaced in the near future.

Money is important. But on its own it does not provide us with much information. We need to see it in the bigger picture. This is where the CC movement is interesting in that they are demanding a different type of democratization - but they are assuming at the same time that this different kind of money will somehow move the local economy to a different type of socio-political space and enable us to reduce the ravages of capitalism. I am quite skeptical of this.

Crises of Capitalism - Animated David Harvey

This is a great 11 minute video of David Harvey's recent talk at RSA in London. David is a great Marxist analyst and has written several books about capitalism and finance. I have to admit that I have not had a chance to read his books cover to cover, only snippets and listened to some of his talks. There are a couple quotes that I find to be fantastic.

The first one goes, "The whole history of capitalism has been about financial innovation, which has the effect of empowering the financiers.” This is a powerful quote for me. It really gets at my inner inspiration and is what drives me to explore the side of our political-economy that deals with this question. In my research I am attempting to highlight this financial innovation by showing how very clear political decisions were taken that would make money compatible with capitalism within the confines of an American style democracy that entrenches the rights of private property.

This thinking falls heavily on Geoffrey Ingham's understanding of money as having its own forces of production. David Harvey is essentially highlighting the same fact, as I am, by trying to highlight some of the historical evidence for understanding money in this way. Money needs to be seen as something that has been built and constructed so as to make it compatible with the functioning capitalist democracies of today (here I am borrowing a term from E.M. Wood).

I believe this is a powerful intervention that is been pushed by those that are exploring Community Currencies and other forms of alternative money. This brings me to the second quote, "We have a duty to change our mode of thinking". Here Harvey is throwing down a particular challenge to academics. He is telling us we have to bring a fresh perspective to our way of analyzing our political-economy.

I know that I am doing this. I know this because most people reject my thinking and assume that there is no real relevance to a discussion of money in terms of building a viable post-capitalist ecologically minded political-economy. My sense, and I think Harvey would agree (though I have not had the chance to ask him personally) that this is a good site for exploration. As Harvey points out, since the 1950's the US and the Bank of England have been siding with the financiers over manufacturing. This highlights clearly the way in which money has its own forces of production and is a tool in and of itself that is most clearly entrenched in our political system.

We have to understand money in a new way. We need to bring a fresh perspective to it. Both in terms of understanding how it got to the position it now holds, how changing it in meaningful ways challenges the entire conception of our current political-economy, and that it is not something that is a result of the economy but is constitutive of the sort of political-economy that we chose in the 18th century to entrench into today's capitalist-democracy.

I believe that the most important direction we can move our monetary system towards is one that is not focused on accumulation of money as a form of wealth, one that has a pricing mechanism that can respond to both abandunce in terms of supply and infinite value in terms of price. These are the innovations we need to think about incorporating into our financial system. Until then we will continue to battle a system that is both controlled, focused on scarcity and has two opposing forces 1) accumulation 2) velocity (aka movement) of money.

Here is the video.

This is the animated video:



And this is the full lecture video:

Positive Press About South Africa

Here are a couple nice posts I received about South Africa over the past couple of days.

The first one is on Huffington Post: South Africa Rolls out the Ubuntu Abundance

Then there is this one my father forwarded to me

Written by Peter Davies…..on the Supersport website this morning…..I think it’s brilliant, x

Dear World Cup visitors, 

Now that you are safely in our country you are no doubt happily realising you are not in a war zone. This may be in stark contrast to what you have been bracing yourself for should you have listened to Uli Hoeness or are an avid reader of English tabloids, which as we all know are only good for wrapping fish ‘n chips and advancing the careers of large-chested teens on page three.

Community Currencies: Fundación Pachamama and the Central Bank of Ecuador

I am re-posting this post from the blog belonging to The Panchamama Alliance: 
The article is really interesting as it highlights a growing trend of Central Banks coordinating and beginning to collaborate with community currency projects. Understanding the deeper political significance of this I think is very important. We are witnessing a trend of deepening of financial markets, but with a very different goal often associated with these new financial services. The question is what does this mean for the larger political-economy. Are we witnessing the emergence of a new form of political-economics or a deepening and expansion of capitalist systems?

Fundación Pachamama and the Central Bank of Ecuador jointly organized a workshop on complementary currency systems that was held on June 3 and 4 in the headquarters of the Central Bank in Quito. Ultimately the goal is to develop new economic models for rural development including new exchange networks and alternative, complementary currency systems, which will help people in Ecuador get access to credit and promote local production, consumption and trade.

The workshop, called “Systems of Alternative Pay and Means of Complementary Pay,” was held to strengthen the conceptual understanding of the diverse methods of complementary currency systems and the key elements for implementing a system on a national level. In addition, the workshop aimed to explain the workings of a successful model developed in Uruguay (called C3U), and the advantages of creating and applying this system. Finally, the workshop aspired to establish work links between administrative organizations and Uruguay project architects with the Central Bank of Ecuador and Fundación Pachamama.

The first day was a planning meeting with personnel of the Central Bank; Javier Félix, advisor from Fundación Pachamama, and the invited participants from Uruguay; Fernando Cetrulo from Foundation STRO Uruguay and Enrique Baraibar, from the Direction of Development Projects of the Uruguayan Presidency. The workshop began with various presentations from the different projects of the Central Bank, discussing alternatives to economic policies with complementary payment means and compensation systems, and the C3U model. Conceptual input was given to widen the vision of those charged with the diverse projects of the Central Bank, based on the experience of peers from Uruguay.

On the second day, the workshop was opened to the public, including members from the Ecuadorian State, the private sector, non-governmental organizations, directors of Savings and Credit Cooperatives, and other organizations related to the Solidarity Economy, and university students studying economics in Quito.

The workshop achieved the planned objectives and culminated with the signature of a cooperation agreement between the Central Bank of Ecuador, Fundación Pachamama, the STRO Foundation, and the Direction of Development Projects of the Uruguayan Presidency, recognizing the importance of the development of alternative currency methods for the participating institutions. This agreement lays the groundwork for cooperation between all the participants for implementing alternative currency methods that benefit an improved distribution of wealth, employment generation, economic stability, and social development for Latin American countries.

Re-Politicizing Money

One of the big arguments made about our current political-economy is that an actual break has occurred where the political and economic spaces are viewed as separate. This is an argument made by many different theorists (though of course right now I can barely remember any of their names) including E. M. Wood in her book, Democracy Against Capitalism. The idea being that what we are all guaranteed in today's democracy are formal political rights that have no direct impact on our economic standing. Wood says, "In that sense, political equality in capitalist democracy not only coexists with socio-economic inequality but leaves it fundamentally intact." (Wood, Democracy Against Capitalism, P. 213) Today's democracy promises you political equality but gives you no economic guarantee - you have no economic rights. Of course there have been concerted efforts, and relative successes, in creating economic rights but in the end inequality, private property and class distinctions remand de facto and accepted without question. A country is democratic regardless of questions of economic inequality. A fairly close reading of the history of democratic ideology will highlight the uniqueness of this idea of democracy as only applying to political rights with no relation to economic rights.

I believe along with these other theorists that the very separation of politics and economics is a false separation. I don't see how they can actually exist as separate spaces. In fact if you think about it, there is no way that any of our economy can exist without political decisions - the decision to protect private property is a political not an economic decision. This is just one example. The one that I find most fascinating is the question of money.

Money has been depoliticized in many parts of the world and certainly in much of the economic philosophy the goal is to frame money as depoliticized. Yet, the construction of money is political - who gets to issue it, with what characteristics, etc.. Much like the idea of private property, money is viewed as being in a natural form. A form that is a product of the economy, which is the product of natural forces. But, I think that the rise of community currency movement and increasing discussion about the way we create money and the impacts of this creation on our political lives has the potential to re-politicize money and make it part of a relevant political discussion. I think that this could lead the re-integration of politics and economics and the rise of series discussions over what our political-economy consists of and what our choices are, which are always political.

My hope is that as research and explorations into community currencies deepen we will see the growth of political-economic research and the recognition that we have far more power as a collective, over the shape of our socio-economy and that we can redefine the system in ways that give democratic citizenship deeper meaning and the ending of the separation of political and economic rights into two separate spaces.

The Wall St. Journal: The coming currency revolution

I think this is a great video showing the organic emergence of currencies around the world and how technology is helping to spread them. I think this speaks a lot about the future and the rise of this as a new economic space. It will bring value to things that have not been recognized as valuable in the past. However, I don't agree that value is all about scarcity. The idea of scarcity as the driving motivation for value in my opinion is flawed and is exactly why we have landed up in such an environmental crunch. We need to think about how to design currencies for abundance. How do we get abundance to be recognized as valuable? This to me is the big question.

I do wonder again about what this means in terms of scarcity and a system that only responds to things that are scarce - surely the freeing up of information and its increasing cheapness due to abundance is not a loss of value. The increased abundance of information is increasingly valuable to society. The more information, the more value this has to us. This is the same question to be explored around the environment and questions of abundant and healthy eco-systems.

I do think what these currencies raise is the question of democracy as Douglas Rushkoff points out the democratization of economics and of money is a movement we are steadily heading towards. However, we have to understand democracy in the way that it has been used to enable capitalism and the role that ideas of scarcity and representation play in limiting the power of the citizen. Perhaps, this currency movement will both highlight questions of scarcity vs abundance and representation vs participation.

However, I love seeing these discussions entering mainstream. I think at some point there is going to be a serious challenge from the state as it attempts to regulate and claim control over the currency space. This is important because our entire capitalist democracy that we live under is dependent on the control over the creation of money. The future will be interesting as is the current moment.

Theory Matters

I remember having an argument with a really good friend of mine (well
maybe argument is a bit strong of a word) about the importance of
theory. It was while I was getting my undergraduate degree at
Berkeley and I found myself completely enthralled by theoretical
thinkers - everyone from Doreen Massey to Weber to Marx to Gillian
Hart and onward. I wanted to be spend my life engrossed in
contributing to our theoretical world. It was then that I realized I
really wanted to be an academic, a thinker, someone that gets paid to
think and give those ideas back to humanity.

For me it is hard to see the distinction between this world of
physicality and our theoretical interpretation of it. I see nothing
more important then theory. Everything for me is in someway grounded
in theory. Call it ideas, call it perceptions, call it your lens into
life. It is all bound up in a theoretical understanding.

For an academic the hardest part is articulating ones theoretical
ideas. I think my blog may give this away to my readers. I struggle
to articulate my ideas, my theories. I have many and often I wish I
could just sit down and vomit them out onto paper and truly express
them. Sometimes words just seem to stumble me - and I think of myself
often as an artist. I like to think of papers that I write as
paintings. I start with a blank canvas and by the time I am finished
I hope to have a story (picture) that others can relate to and that
my sense, my message, my interpretation is clearly expressed and
shared and transferred.

For me the value of theory becomes even more important in the world
of socio-political-economy. How we understand the meaning of economy,
of democracy, of money or any other social construct - these are
things not like trees or water, but things that we as humans have
theoretically constructed and actualized into a having a material
impact on us - is of critical importance.

I am in the throws of writing my Mphil dissertation. I have sat with
it for many months, unable to write anything clear and cogent. Though
I know what I want to say, I have had conversations, written many
many notes and random scribblings but have failed to put something
together that can be called an academic piece of work.

Well, now I am writing it. I sit in my office 35 hours a week in
North Berkeley attempting to write. Sometimes not getting much done
but other times it flows out.

Anyway, back to my original point. The point I wanted to make about
the importance of theory/ideas. I have been reading about democracy
and democracy as it is understood and came to be constructed in the
USA. It is quite incredible when you realize that a word as powerful
and commonly used as "democracy" has had profound shifts in
theoretical understanding that have had massive impacts on our socio-
economic lives. That the theory of democracy matters is beyond doubt.
Understanding how it has changed, why it has changed and the fact
that it can change again is something that I believe truly empowers us.

We can always change our minds. We can always change the way we think
about ourselves, about our lives and those around us. It of course
becomes much harder when that change has serious impacts on our
individual or collective material lives. This is why I believe
certain ideas become stuck and do not change. This is also why
moments of "conjunctural change" (an idea I got from Prof. Gillian
Hart) are of such importance. Those moments represent incredible
opportunities to insert and change theoretical ideas.

I believe we are in one of those conjunctural moments. I believe most
clearly this can be seen in our financial system. What happens next,
what type of money we create and what type of political-economy that
results in will be driven by theoretical understandings.

I hope that I am able to contribute something of value to that debate
and impact the way that we theoretically construct our lives and our
economies so as to actualize new material conditions, through the
creation of powerful theoretical ideas.

In the mean time I hope I can get this dissertation done!

Saving Global Capitalism - IMF and the SDR as a Supra-National Currency

I want to make a prediction.

The global capitalist economy will be saved by the creation of a
supra-national currency housed in the IMF and will in some way be
designed along the lines of the SDR.

Though, I am pretty sure it is not a novel prediction and that there
are others out there that have and will make the same prediction. The
future of money will move towards the SDR (Special Drawing Rights
which allow nations to increase their foreign exchange reserves
without money being borrowed or lent. This facility is provided
through the IMF). What this means is that new money will be created
through the fund replacing the dollar as the anchor currency and
relieving the pressure on almost all states with regards to their
sovereign debt. This will almost certainly be the only way to satisfy
the "markets" (I hate to use the term markets in this way but I do
not want to get into that discussion). Because the SDR will be backed
by the global economy, and not one particular economy, it will return
a certain amount of security and confidence to the global markets.

I can not say exactly how it will look. You can read more about the
SDR on Wikipedia and several other blogs and websites. What I can
predict is that several countries will gain a bigger say in the role
of the IMF - such as China, India, Brazil and most interestingly
South Africa. We have already seen these countries demanding a bigger
say on the IMF over the past 10 years.

This creation of a supra-national currency will change the role of
individual sovereign states and may usher in a completely different
political climate ending a certain mercantilist type of economic
thinking. This is because no one nation will control money and the
global economy. The longer term impact is of course hard to predict
and I am sure that this will raise the heckles of many of the
conspiracy theorists - those that believe in the New World Order or
other such ideas. However, I believe it is the only way we will
ultimately save our global economy from a massive and devastating
collapse that would match or exceed the Great Depression.

The importance of this is hard to over-state. As the work of Karl
Polanyi showed in his book, The Great Transformation, the last time
our global economy collapsed it lead to fascism and global war. We
all want to avoid this possibility especially in a nuclear world.

What it will raise, this shift, is a discussion of money and how we
understand its creation and purpose (by this I mean what type of
political-economy do we want). There are many discussions going on
around the world dealing with the question of the creation of money.
Some of the most interesting look at creating a range of currencies
that serve a range of purposes and a range of spatial communities.
Bernard Lietear is one of the pioneers in this thinking - raising the
importance of building a system of multiple currencies that act from
the local community to the global community. There are deeper
questions of the impact of debt, scarcity and the like. That is all
for another discussion - some of which I have already dealt with in
other blog posts.

In the end saving the global capitalist economy will rest on the
creation of this global supra-national currency.

The Gulf Oil Spill

I have a theory about monetary value. The need for a system that recognizes that which is priceless, that which holds infinite value. That which no money can buy nor pay for. The Gulf oil spill is a very real example. We try to put a price on the cost of this spill. Sure, there are the economic impacts of the loss of business and perhaps of fisheries. This is a real cost that will affect peoples real lives. 

BP may land up paying billions of dollars in damages, but will this replace the ocean? Will this buy us new plankton, new dolphins, fish, whales and most importantly a clean ocean? It most certainly won't. It can not do this, it is an impossibility. Once you pollute something like that it is polluted, no amount of money can fix this. Once the air is polluted that is it, it is dirty. Once the eco-system is destroyed a value that never was recognized in the monetary system is lost. Something priceless has been lost. 

Money has no ability to accept this. It can not deal with that which holds infinite value because infinity is about abundance while money is about scarcity. The two work in direct opposition to each other. This is why we allow drilling in the bottom of the gulf because we actually have not priced in the value of the clean water. If we were to do this, it holds the potential of destroying the very pricing mechanism that enables the drilling of oil.

At the end of the day BP will pay huge fines and then go back to drilling. But, something will have been lost. We will try and put a price on it but in the end it won't even come close to the true value of this disaster.

It is time to recognize that there is value in the abundance of a clean and healthy eco-system. That this value is infinite and that our monetary system fails at taking this into consideration. It is time to innovate and develop a monetary system that knows how to recognize the value of things that are priceless. 

How do we do this? I wanna know! It is something that I puzzle over daily while knowing it is critical to our future as a healthy species. Infinite value and abundance.

Democratizing Money - My Thesis Proposal for my Mphil at UCT

Democratizing Money - Saul Wainwright MA Proposal

Introduction

I am trying to write a thesis. I am trying to sort out my many ideas around money. I have never chosen simple ideas, I never see it as simple, perhaps that is a weakness in my thinking. But, as a political-economist I can not ignore the complex social and historical specificity of all institutional developments. I am exploring money, I want to understand money as something that has been constructed to serve a specific purpose. To do this I have to place it into a specific political history. Money, today's money, is built around a set of particular political-economic needs. I will continue to explore these ideas in the coming weeks and months while writing.

This was a small introduction that I wrote a few weeks ago. It is very loose and will most likely change radically in its final drafts but I think it gives a good launching pad into my work. My first chapter of my thesis is looking at the USA and the way in which the creation of the US constitution reworked the very ideas of democracy away from its original concept of direct towards what can barely be considered democratic - namely a form of representative democracy. Which is essentially built on the idea that our rights as individuals and communities is some how alienable - that we can give them to some one else who can then represent us in some sort of abstract way. This shift in thinking about democracy is not my idea, it is an idea that has been well developed by other academics. My point is to highlight this so that I can then illuminate the way in which money has been theorized and presented within this form of democracy and show how the democratization of money has been built around an effort to support what is known as a capitalist democracy. Ultimately this will allow me to ask what it actually means to democratize money - a claim that many advocates of community currencies make.

Here is the intro as written thus far:

The Finance Lab

I cam across The Finance Lab prospectus today while sitting in my
office (actually a friends apartment). This got me sooo excited. This
is exactly the idea that I recently proposed to a contact at Global
Business Network and am still hoping to continue the conversation.

I hope that I can get my skills into these sorts of discussions. I
hope that I can find a place for me in something like this lab or
something similar and be part of a team of people thinking,
theorizing and putting into action the resulting policy ideas that
lead to innovation and change in our financial system.

I think I can do this. It is all slowly coming together - my deep
interest in political economics, economic development, environment
and sustainability, scenario planning and most importantly financial
systems.

Please let there be an awesome job for me in this space that allows
me to utilize my creativity, my intellectual knowledge and my
passion :-)

Political-Economy or Political Economy

I saw Yaj Chetty's article in the Business section of the CT earlier in the week. He writes very well and manages to convey some of the big issues in our monetary system in clear and concise way. I am surprised that I never came across his work before. Always amazes me no matter how much time you research a field there are always people that don't make it onto your radar!

The one issue that I am noticing in many of the discussions of money, including Yaj's, is the lack of talking about it in a political-economic framework. This split between economics and politics persists in this way. The relationship that money has to a political system is undervalued or under-recognized. What does it mean to change our monetary system? Is this just an economic question? Or just a social rights question? What does it mean for our political system and how can we change the one without the other shifting? I think this kind of thinking dominates because we think we have perfected the political system and all that we need to do now is change the economic system. I think this is us falling into the exact same trap that this split has been set up to do - were we can debate economics as if it is a separate field, something that free-market ideologues have done really well at. Often the way that democracy is talked about reminds me of Fukuyama's famous article, The End of History, where he talks about our having reached the pinnacle of our economic framework. Is this really the best democracy we can design? 

I think this of course raises a much more complex question about what democracy means, what our current democracy does and how it came into existence. There is no way to really separate our monetary system and our political system. Our political system has in many ways been designed to support and reinforce our monetary system. Tweaks have been made that allow the monetary system to operate. This is where the real challenge comes, this is where the real political question rises. How do we create, theorize, advocate a new political system that enables a change in our monetary system? Can we really continue to live in a representative democracy that has been developed to enable capitalist economics with a decentralized non-sovereign monetary system? 

I am not sure that we can. I don't know what to propose yet in terms of what that would look like. But, my hunch is it is along the lines of network ideas - ideas of deliberative democracy via networks and that the economic system and monetary system will replicate this. This is where we have to head, the ending of this limited idea of space and sovereignty, of nationalism and hierarchy. These kinds of shifts are essential to our diversity and complexity of a global humanity.

Conspiratorial Politicization of Money

One of the challenges in my research was raised in a recent email conversation with a fellow researcher, Noel Longhurst.

He asked me the following, "I agree with you about the politics of money and definitely think that it is an area that is rich for further exploration. However, there is another angle to this and that is that fact that elements of the monetary reform movement engage in a different kind of politics. I am thinking here of conspiracy theories / New World Order / anti-Semitism. Such politics form part of the real and everyday lived politics of monetary reform and can do great damage to the wider cause of politicizing money. I wonder whether you have considered how such politics fit into your work? Or how they might be relevant?"

This is a very important and legitimate question and the danger of this kind of politicization of money is apparent. Though, my effort is not to politicize money but rather to show its historical politicization. Money is, has been, and always will be, a political question. What is true is that some of the most vocal critiques of our current monetary system center around a view that there is a massive conspiracy underway that enables this elite group of bankers to control the global monetary system. The most popular or widely disseminated interpretation is found in the pseudo documentary Zeitgeist. And, similar critiques are bantered around on the Facebook and the web more generally.

As with all conspiracy theories there is an element of truth. Yes, a group of bankers along with government leaders have come together several times over at least the past 100 years to cobble together monetary systems that guaranteed the continued existence of the type of banking and political system that they dominate. This is no surprise and in my book certainly doesn't qualify as a conspiracy.

However, what is never asked is the context of these moments. My research is an attempt to contextualize these moments. Giving attention to the political-economic ideas that were available, and the particular issues that they were attempting to solve.

Next Economy Dialogue - Colin Boyles Editorial

Colin Boyle's article in the Next Economy Dialogue series in the Cape Times is exactly the kind of analysis that I find to be rather boring. It is not that the writer is wrong, or that he is not intelligent or even a good writer. I just find it boring. Once again it is someone talking and thinking inside the box. Yes, we often hear about this idea of thinking outside of the box. You hear this a lot in Business Schools or other sorts of creative entrepreneurial conversations. And, there is much validity. I think it is just about the size of the box. I think often people think outside the box, but that box is inside another box much like those Russian dolls that you can keep pulling out a smaller and smaller doll.

So, the central assumption in much of the type of analyses that Boyle presented is that the box is actually fine - the basic size and the sides of the box are correct and naturally given (not socially constructed), therefore barely up for debate. This type of analysis has increasingly become the norm since the fall of the communist experiment in the majority of the world. Let me note here right now that whatever I have to say I am not a communist, and I don't think I am a socialist, in fact maybe I am a capitalist! The point is that I try to interrogate the dominant way of thinking about our economy in the hopes of finding a viable solution that is not based on the same fundamental assumptions that so much analysis takes for granted. 

Back to Boyle, for him what needs to be fixed is the way that the inside of this box is laid out; move this, change that, tweak this and then ultimatley we will free the true and natural economy. And in this case it is quite obviously the capitalist economy which will naturally and "magically" unleash a barrage of job creation and wealth. The solution is just less regulation, more alignment with the private sector and greater business/state cohesion. Perhaps some of these elements are needed, but the assumption is that capitalism and its underpinnings will a) provide these solutions and b) that it is a sustainable and long-term viable path to explore. 

the stoke - our stoke - kelly and I live the stoke

Kelly writes great blog posts. In fact on many levels we couldn't have more different writing styles. I am academic and struggle with all kinds of intellectual ideas. She, well, she plays and has fun and writes in a way that would horrify most English teachers.

But, this post is again, like many others, so true to both her spirit and mine. Kelly and I constantly search for this balance between play and work, making money and enjoying the other priorities. She is a perfect partner for me - we remind each other all the time of what the other sometimes forgets.

Thanks Kelly I am "stoked" to be your husband.

the stoke

May 3, 2010 in Uncategorized

The other night my family & I went to a new restaurant in Muizenberg. While waiting for our food, we discovered a pile of surfer magazines. Upon reading an article or two, my husband said, “Surfers have their priorities straight. They are all about the stoke”. aka – the whole reason for living…the “pinch me I’m alive”…the “sick, dude! just rode a killer wave!” flavor of it all.

I have to say – the first time I went surfing, I did feel the same way. I was Giggling. Literally. I have to say in total honesty that it was one of the most fun days of my entire life.

I grew up water-skiing & downhill skiing a Lot. It was part of life. We ice-skated, swam, & water-skiied in our backyard. We road our bikes to school, etc. etc. We weren’t Trying to “be active”. We just were. It was just part of our lives.

Now that I look back, I am so grateful for all of this, & also recollect that the absolute best times in my life were on top of a mountain, flying on a wave, or sitting next to a campfire. The outdoors. It reminds us again of the “life!” in our lives.

And, this brings me back to “the stoke”, & the whole premise behind every piece of art it seems I’ve ever gone about creating. When drawing an apple, I am celebrating that apple. I am taking the apple out of it’s ordinary context and saying, “Look at this apple! It’s freaking gorgeous! It”s freaking delicious! The flavor! The ripeness! The plumpness! The color!”. When I take a bed into a city street & have a kid, a garbageman, & a famous politician jump on it, I’m saying, “Look at how cool this bed is! Look at this! We can jump on it!”

It’s regaining that fresh perspective and appreciation for it all. To quote myslef again, “My intent is to take something simple like a leaf, or a carrot, or a fat lady’s bum; and give it the glory it deserves.”

And I’ll end with this haiku I wrote one recent morning:

Loving the sufers

Outside my window flying

Salt-crusted soul-food

———————————

Thank you, surfers, for your “stoke” & your inspiration. cheers.

Kelly's Lovely Post

Kelly posted this on her blog the other day. I think it is really awesome and speaks to the deeper essence of her work on the PlayJumpEat project (http://www.playjumpeat.com)

You can see the post here: http://messymonkeyarts.wordpress.com/2010/04/07/original-bed-jump-motto/

I have to admit, when I first wrote this, it made me want to cry!!  ……….

Throw all caution to the wind & Jump, Cape Town!

Jump for JOY!

The Bed represents:

Joy.

A common thread of Humanity.

Whether in Manhattan or the Kalahari, we were all born Humans. Babies. Kids who like to Play.

We are all now Actors, Polititians, Mothers, Fishermen, Surfers, Tourists, & Supermodels – all coming in different shapes & sizes, colors & hues, with different voices and stories for the world.

Nevertheless, we are all still Humans, &

Kids who like to Play.

So Come to the bed & Jump, Cape Town!

Jump for Joy!

Money and my need to write

This is a quick sharing of ideas on money. I have not edited this in great detail. I am trying not to get to caught up in that. I am struggling to get my writing flow back – call it writers block. I need to write an editorial for the Cape Times on money and I need to get my thesis going. So, please recognize that this is more an exercise in writing then an actually constructed paper.

 

I recently attended the first of hopefully many Next Economy Dialogues sponsored by both the Cape Times and the Department of Economic Development. It was an interesting conversation with some key words and ideas being expressed. Yet, I was haunted by one element to all of the ideas, especially those that actually proposed something – from increased infrastructure investment to the green economy to executive pay and dual economies. It assumes two things 1) that these elements are in one sense disconnected – that we can operate with an idea of two economies but not look at the relationship that exists between them and undoubtedly reinforces them – it is a classic dualistic framework. The second issue I have is 2) that the discussion operates from an assumption that the "laws of economics" are fixed and given – essentially natural – and that it is about finding the right combination of variables to allow the capitalist economy to manifest in all its glory, a glory hidden beneath the badly aligned variables; basically capitalist economic laws are a given and we need to find a way to enable them to operate which will result in increasing equality, rising standards of living and a form of happiness and contentment.

This doesn't surprise me; this is often how it is. We assume the system, which identifies the problems, which means we know what the solution is – to enable the assumed system to more fully operate. Where is the relationship in all of this? These problems that we identify are they independent of the system? Does the actual system have anything to do with the creation of these problems? Can the system operate without these inequalities? Can it operate in a way that will be sustainable and holistic? Can it operate in a way that it will guarantee every new entrant into this life a decent place to live to eat to pray and clothes to wear? Why do we assume this system can do this?

I ask this question not to say that this system can't – though I tend to believe that it can't, certainly not in the long term – provide what it promises. But, I think that if we are going to try and solve the problems of this country, South Africa  (which is really just a microcosm of the global picture) then we need to integrate the elements (the variables) not in isolation but in relationship, but not from within the system but from a vantage point that can more objectively look at it. I guess trying to be an alien in your own reality. What happens if we drop the assumptions – that money needs to be created through private banks, that individuality is primary or that the economy is an expression of the natural unfolding of the kernel of capitalism, that the economy is separate from the politics? I am not sure that I am making my point. So, let me try and bring it into my thoughts around money.

You see for me, one of the elements that are often assumed is that of money. It is assumed that its form is in its most advanced stage, that the elements that dominate its creation and reproduction are the best and most viable forms. Money is viewed as a problem, yet is the thing we all want. It is viewed as abundant by some but its quantity is controlled by a system of elite banks (though, my belief is this power of banks is slowly eroding with the rise of virtual currencies and mobile phones). There are so many contradictions to money that we could fill a whole book with the lists. Yet, there is one fundamental question that rarely seems to get asked – it doesn't get asked by Vavi at COSATU, I don't hear Bobby Godsell talking about it when he mentions value and I don't hear Minister Patel saying anything about money when talking about green economies.

This is both strange and not surprising, yet it is important because (taking us back to our earlier discussion of what creates the problem) the question of the creation of money doesn't actually come into the discussion. The assumption might be that we need to expand financial services or create new credit laws – not much different than saying we need more infrastructure investment and more hospitals, right? I mean, this just sounds like a band-aid in all cases and it does not explore the relationships. What relationship is there between the way we create money and the types of inequalities that we struggle with. And, if we can take a step back and ask if the actual system we are living in is creating these problems that we have identified – say inequality and poverty – then what role does capitalist money play in that systems creation and reinforcement and does extending its reach make it more likely to reduce the problems we have identified? If we create money the same way with the same people controlling its creation will it truly resolve the problem? How can we keep trying the same thing and expect different solutions? Yes, I am paraphrasing an oft-associated comment with Einstein but you don't need to be a genius to agree with it and realize the logic.

I argue not for one form of money or another. I argue for the realization that it, money (and all the other "problems" we may identify) are elements in relationship with the other variables and because of money's huge power within this economy we need to understand how it is used and how it (or rather those that control its creation) reuse the economy to sustain itself – as for example a problem of scarcity, and bubbles and crashes. We have to be willing to ask the question of what an alternative form of money would look like? Could changing its characteristics have big impacts on the economy and society? Would it be complementary or in conflict with the dominant money?

There have been many histories of money written through time. No shortage of information about the evolution of money from shells to gold to banking to what it is today. Yet, many of these studies seem to ignore money as something that has not evolved as a result of the economy – it is seen as much as infrastructure, as a necessary element yet at the same time its production is assumed as an outgrowth of the economy. One of the theorist's who has explored money as something that has its own forces of production, as something that is constituted of its own social relations that are not necessarily direct outgrowth of the economy is Geoffrey Ingham in the UK. The importance here is to see money not as assumed, or as naturally capitalist (in that its characteristics underpin the dominant elements of capitalism or essentially we could say, respect or acknowledge those elements) but as something that has shifted and changed in very particular moments. Who then changes money and when has money changed and why and by whom and who has come out in control of the supply of money and has that control of money creation become crucial to the operating of today's political-economy and what would happen, as Keith Hart an anthropologist has proposed, if money became more democratic (in the sense that its production is not controlled by a few but by all or the many)?

I ask this question not because I propose it as an alternative, but because I believe that is exactly what is going on today around us. The proliferation of multiple (numbering in the thousands) community currencies (a generic term I use to cover many different kinds of monetary forms that have not been created by the state or the banks but generally by self-organized communities) is a growing trend. The rise of cheap mobile technologies and the Internet offers great opportunities for the increased production of community currencies with much lower costs and barriers to entry. It also opens up the opportunity for a reconfiguration of ideas of local vs global in this movement. Could currencies be shared with global communities with these technologies? 

Class Inequality and the Social Production of Money

I find Geoffrey Ingham to give one of the best understandings of money. The question of how money operates in our political-economy needs to be understood as more then a neutral veil, or epiphenomenal and our understanding of democracy then needs to incorporate ideas of democracy that reflect directly on our concept of a economic democracy. Money ultimately is not just (if even) a reflection or expression of the economy but its very creation and control is constitutive of the particular class and economic relations that dominate and drive forward the political-economy.

Figuring it all out

Okay I am sending this via email to see if it works and lands up getting posted. I have spent weeks learning how to link everything together - blogs, twitter, facebook, flickr, youtube etc. I tell you it is quite an art of connection.

I hope that this email to blog will enable me to write more regularly about my ideas and thoughts.

Brazilian Central Bank Backs "Social Money"

I don't post much these days about what I find in my explorations around the money space. That is in part because my energies have been focused more on accumulating money rather then on the discussions and explorations into alternatives.

With this in mind I am part of several email lists etc. and this one came across my desk today. I think it is a very interesting email talking about agreements between the Brazilian Central Bank and community based currency projects. This could be one of the first instances in which a central bank has backed a community currency project. It will be interesting to see how this devlops

From: Miguel Yasuyuki Hirota
To: undisclosed-recipients:;
Subject: [cc_research] The Central Bank of Brazil works to strengthen
community currency initiatives
Message-ID: <4BB0885F.6030905@olccjp.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed

Dear all,

I'd like to share the information I've just got from Brazil.

The Secretaria Nacional de Economia Solid?ria (SENAES), which
belong to the Brazilian Ministry of Labour and Employment (MET), has
just issued its news letter

http://www.mte.gov.br/ecosolidaria/Acontece_SENAES_13_ed.pdf
(Portuguese)

and on the page 1 you can read the following article (I translated
it into English).

---------

Title: Coopera??o com banco central (Cooperation with the Central Bank)

The cooperation agreement between SENAES and the Central Bank aims
to realise studies on community banks and on social money, envisioning
the creation of the monitoring and evaluation mechanism and of the
development of this sector in Brazil. After a decade of many
articulation and mobilisation of the solidarity economy movement, with
the support of SENAES, the recognition by the Brazilian State was won,
by way of this terms of cooperation, that territoty-based communities
(small municipalities, neighbourhoods) can build their monetary authority.

For the first time the Central Bank of Brazil recognised the
existence of this tool called "community banks and social money" and
their important as social technology which generates financial
inclusion. With this, community banks will be less vulnerable, both
from the formal viewpoint - as definitions on their function,
methodology, characteristics, attributes, goals and concepts are
established - and SENAES closed a cooperation agreement with the Central
Bank also for the more social visibility to be achieved.

At this moment, a working committee and the work agenda it will
realise by itself are being created. With the concretisation of the
partnership there will be the elaboration of norms which should orient
actors who want to know, support and develop community banks which use
social money. SENAES is proposing the realisation of five public
hearings so that the society should join, together with the solidarity
economy movement, in the sense to warrant the more participation in the
elaboration of referred norms.

On the basis of this agreement, the community bank initiatives
under way win a new institutional framework, enabling the realisation of
new strategic partnerships for their development. On top of that, these
banks will be benefitted with the enhancement of of incentive and
promotion policies, and the institutional environment will be quite
favourable for the consolidation of such policies, which means that
public resources for training activities, technical assistance and
adequate credit lines.

Open Social Networking - The Future

The future of social networking is open source. The idea of not being able to take all your profiles history with you when you leave FB is completely the opposite of the ethos of the web. I foresee that every person will have his or her own profile on a web url that is built on an open source software much as the backbone of the web is reliant on Linux. This would allow your profile to lock in and be rendered through any specific gui interface.

In other words I always log into my web profile at say www.saulwainwright.com and through that I can go to my FB page, Twitter etc. Yet, everything that I have is in one place, at saulwainwright.com and belongs to me. Certain information I can control and limit, certain information can be accessed by certain applications such as FB and other cannot. So, I can have all my videos on my server under my profile and I can share some with say FB and some with Youtube, but the video itself remains mine forever, even if Youtube grabs a copy and places it on their server, the rights remain with me and they, Youtube, has to give me all data related to it – who saw it, when their comments etc. All this information is sent back to me in a standard open source format that allows me to store it and potentially share that data with another network – say FB. This means that what people need to ultimately design is the interface, we the people, own the back end.

Kind of like going to a coffee shop because it has a nice ambiance and good coffee and maybe some good books, in fact you may even meet some people there. But, at the end of the day you go back to your home, with the numbers, conversations and any other “data” you picked up. You may go off to another bar that night and bump into the same person or new person, a person that has never gone to that coffee shop. But, you can easily share all the information you acquired at the first coffee shop because you have it on you, it is in your cell phone your brain your notebook. That is social networking. Not today’s form, this is social control.

Kelly Gets Press

Kelly's project, PlayJumpEat is getting great coverage. People just love her Bed Jump images and the Couture series. It is truly a fantastic series.

There has been lots going on for the project. It is going to be part of the Infecting the City public art event in Cape Town during the week of February 13th through the 20th. Then, she is hoping to have the bed part of the Design Indaba at the end of February. And, there is plenty more to come.

Here are three of the articles that have been written so far. Expect more from Elle Decor and Itch! magazine amongst others.

Kelly Wainwright in Infecting the City

Kelly in British Airway's Horizon Magazine

Oak Article