Are “communities of trust” building blocks for a new economy? How to keep these communities alive and able to adapt and evolve?

Thanks for starting this thread. Your questions are crucial and clearly framed.

One thing that is fundamental, it seems to me, is the scale across which different qualities of trust can be generated, sustained and operationalised (apologies for the ugly word).

From direct experience of the various local Covid groups we are engaged with, it is easy to see ones that are 'too big' and also 'too small' . Also to see that there are limitations to the kind of trust that can be generated.

If we wish the trust communities that have sprung up to survive and take on the challenges that we will face post-Covid (more economic, but likely still with virus control constraints for at least a year), then we must consider how the trust which has been built can begin to deliver more consistent and varied benefits - 'value propositions' for participants.

Essentially, these will have to have an economic dimension - or the economic hardships that are about to impact (and in bizarre, asymmetrical ways, I believe) will force us back into our atomised relationships with the economy - which has no space in it for groups of Humans in solidarity - and will quickly make them seem irrelevant (the lack of space is systemic and structural, but also ideological - capitalism experiences human association as a locus of resistance, because it is).

For me, this analysis means two things;

• Socio-technological platforms that are built for federation - so that growth is in ecosytem complexity, not group size - co-ordination happening across groups of groups, rather than en-masse

• Mutual Credit - a socio/economic arrangement whereby currency is a mutual unit, produced at the point of exchange between a willing supplier and a willing buyer on the basis of confidence in the wider network in the context of which the exchange takes place. A basis for developing economic capacity without the say-so of the state, or big business.

These two clearly need to operate in combination. There is a great deal more to be said, but I'll leave it at that for now. Thanks again!

And Dil, you leapt straight in with an appropriate answer! have a listen to this from 14.30 - where the speakers’ perplexity as to why decentralised tools are largely missing/underdeveloped, as their big historical moment arrives, is partly explained by the lack of powerful motivational stories, and social cultures - a gestalt which can bind these “cadres” together into providing ambitious alternatives

Of course, the introduction of new operational modes requires explanation - requires stories. But stories are nothing more than stories if they don't feed people and give people the confidence that their children might live decent lives, that they themselves will not suffer undue humiliation as they age.

There is no shortage of stories - in fact we suffer from insane overproduction of stories - from the well meaning and heartfelt as well as everyone else. Magical thinking about 'care economies', about blockchain, about 'emergence' and a whole host of other ill-thought-through nonsense abounds, and does an enormous amount of damage in distracting good people with strong sense of the need that is present in this moment from wise action.

There is a desperate shortage of good analysis on the back of which wise socio/economic/technical tools can be built, around which viable stories with attendant systemic regenerative feedback loops can be built.

The 'gestalt' must be based in robust analysis that is framed as socially constructed complexity science - not as story. It is all too clear that every effort of the progressive wing of western culture over the last two hundreds years has in fact fed the beast. The Pikettty elephant curve during which the left gained so much ground served, among other things - but with hindsight, most crucially - to supercharge the destructive impact of the capitalist civilisational model on the biosphere.

The great problem with this is that the capacity to analyse well is rare - and thus we find ourselves in a cultural bind.

We know that the positive, life-loving desires of humans must be engaged creatively in the instantiation of whatever will be the reality of the transcendent civilisation which must arise.

But equally, we know that analysis is a small group activity, highly dependent upon domain expertise. The Occupy movement may have raised the consciousness of the people who founded Enspiral, but their analysis was privately developed (later published, of course), and at least in part a strong reaction against the tropes of Occupy.

Alongside Elinor Ostrom I must place Donella Meadows. Her short piece, 'Leverage Points - places to intervene in a System' is of great importance. It supports assessment - both personal and group - of capacities and supports wise decision-making on the basis of that assessment as to what types of system changing activity it makes sense to engage with.

Coordination between groups operating at these different leverage points can only be achieved through a system which incorporates economic processes through what can only be described as markets. These are the only processes yet discovered by humans that are capable of integration of the stupefying complexity of even simple questions about resource allocation.

This is a controversial statement to many here, I assume - markets being seen as synonymous with capitalism. Our analysis in the Mutual Credit domain is that it is the currency which markets use that conditions what characters they can have - that markets built on the use of a commodity currency with hegemonic issuance clearly lead to the economic setup we experience today. But that markets built on a currency issuance that is tied directly to productive capacity, issued at the point of direct value exchange makes markets with the same - or better - coordination capacity, and massively reduced incentive to accrue power through hoarding.

Exchanges using Mutual Credit emphasise the value produced in the exchange and not the number of units attached - since these are more nearly sufficient, rather than systemically scarce, they demand less attention.

Maybe there are two levels of stories here? The stories that form the initial identity of the group "the big story" behind its creation. Why people come together and create a unit of trust? Like forming a group with a purpose to test alternatives to the current economic system, with the identity of being at the forefront of transformation being able to be part of the change that matters.

Then there is the second level story. The evolving story of the group. What happens in the community. And that story is as important as the big story, without a meaningful role in creating a narrative together, the interest to weave the story of a cohesive community might frail. I believe roles and rules, and the ability to shift and change these roles and rules (governance), are as important as the ideology behind the group.

And I guess the story is not something that is necessarily antithesis of a "robust analysis framed as socially constructed complexity science" there is no limit on what comes to different types of knowledge used in building, nurturing and evolving the community. (As long as we acknowledge it as the best possible attempt to make sense, not the only truth :)

Katja, this is the big conclusion Indra and I are coming to - the necessity of a prior culture of trust, based in convivial relationships, before any new form of economic exchange can really operate. The commons tag on The Daily Alternative often grappling with Ostroms 7 rules of commoning, makes this need really clear (even/especially/ironically in the blockchain/ledger sector). Will explore community canvas as another mechanism of trust building. I would note that when people are operating out of a spirit of care in the Covid moment, they reach for standard network tools (Facebook, Google Sheets/Docs) - which just coordinate activity, and don’t need new systems of value. We need maybe a visual graphic that shows this spectrum - of various human exchanges/reciprocation, matched to tools/systems, so we can see what’s an appropriate “economics” to each community need. Thank you Katja, most stimulating!

Crucial here is a conversation around 'care' and 'economy'. This is a really gruesome knot, beautifully surfaced in the 1970s feminist campaign for 'Wages for Housework'.
Is care work to be considered economic? In that case it must be ascribed an economic value! If it is ascribed an economic value, then in what sense is care to be distinguished from making bullets? Can this car-crash of frameworks be reconciled by some new economic system where 'care' is the economy? What sort of an economy could this be? Could it co-ordinate the dizzying complexity of the decision to build a chip-fabrication plant? Where is the 'care' in an automated plant?
The list of questions is endless - in my opinion because the premise is impossible - what Jane Jacobs called a 'monstrous moral hybrid' - a mashup of different modalities that must interact, because they are all human, must be reconciled, because we must make action decisions. The maximum achievable consciousness of these modalities - how they operate, how they interact - is a requirement for civilisational evolution.

https://www.webofwealth.org/2019/11/the-moral-modalities-framework-an-introduction/

What is maybe helpful here (taken from the community canvas) is the selection and onboarding process in the community. The standard networking tools do not offer that possibility. People join and leave but it is clear when they are in and when they are out from the unit of trust?

• The first is a selection, is there a clear process to become a member, and once you are in, are you aware of what is expected from you as a member of this community?

• The second is a transition: when you decide to leave is there a clear ceremony or a ritual to celebrate your contributions to the community? Can you become alumni or have a new role? (supporting the community not from inside but from outside).

We are increasingly part of many communities and we will enter and leave these groups and that is fine. What matters is whether there are meaningful communities that sustain and create value independently from their individual members.