satisfiable

now we call them the foolish prophets, the misdirected, or to combine two old economist jokes: the dismal philosophers. but at the time they were the keepers of the dominant paradigm. it is unknown, still, how many practitioners believed their own teachings or if they lived as jaded puppeteers, shooing away most with integrals and expensive textbooks while inviting the rest into a lucrative life time of blue button ups and platitudes.

scarcity had long been eradicated, but was obscured by the assumptions within the sacred texts. the keepers of the dominant paradigm asserted that we lived in the best possible world and, in this utopia, there was not enough. the puppets (then called politicians) made sure to remind the populace of this fact in times of high misfortune while also passing resources to the beneficiaries (banks, mostly). by the end of The Invisible Age, the hypocrisy was lazily concealed but this way of life was so entrenched that the cycle continued on far beyond its unmasking.

there were economists then, too, who understood humans as capable of feeling satisfaction. who understood that the only real scarcity was the patience of Mother Earth. but they had been largely discredited by the application of the epithet, “communist,” and as such we continued on this way for a very long time.

the people were pretty smart, though, and when they stopped listening to the keepers of the dominant paradigm and stopped turning to the systems in control for help, they just made some of their own.
ultimately, non generative wealth was abolished. there are loop holes, of course, but, given general abundance, it was largely considered a waste of resources to pursue suspected hoarding in most cases. the exit problem of socialism became less of a threat by allowing individuals to test that edge inside our community. 

there are many theories around optimal “work/life balance” and there are a few movements toward complete time liberty but, at the moment, the prevailing suggested time card is: roughly 10 hours of productive labor per week (gardening, cleaning, manufacture, repair, child rearing etc.) and 10 hours of healing (therapy, doctors appointments, exercise, stretching, meditation, massage etc.) but of course this last category is more widely interpreted. beyond this, individuals are welcome to do more productive labor if they enjoy it but are at liberty to commune, create, rest, play, etc. there are no time cards or managers. like many communities coexisting inspire of the dominant paradigm during The Invisible Age, we find that communal trust and transformative processes of justice are sufficient to maintain sustaining levels of output.

mutual aid networks formed during and before the quarantine have remained in place. hyper local organizing nodes report harvest/output projections when they can. larger nodes work to coordinate large regional disparities (e.g. the solar energy/water trade in desert regions). we haven’t found need to monetize much. with guaranteed access to education, healthcare, food, and shelter, whatever we make in our off the clock time exchanges hands more or less like a gift economy. one-off favor trades are less common. rather than storing money (whose production is also considered a waste of resources) surplus is typically stored as seeds, cloth etc. it took several rotations but we agreed upon surplus allocation shares. we stick to this mostly unless there are excessive accumulations or unexpected harvest/weather conditions.

this isn’t utopia. this is hard fucking work. but its juicy and satisfying. some were worried that without inequality we would become lazy. perhaps we have. but we have also become satisfiable. we have enough and rest easy that there is enough for you, too.

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Day 19 #pandowrimo @adriennemareebrown The Next Economy : describe our lives beyond billionaires as we realize how undesirable productivity is. @taniaottanya @bensmateria