Preventing a Run on the (Food) Banks

A run on the banks accelerated the Great Depression. Panic buying has cleared shelves at supermarkets. Things will get dangerous when food supply is squeezed. An economic which helps us control what we give, will prevent these problems from arising. This article is written middle of March just a few days into the lock-down precautions declared by the UK government; your reading and sharing of this article is part of a distributed solution where the power is in our hands.

Panic at a social level is dangerous. Whether it is mobs in the street, or a run on toilet paper at the supermarket. It necessitates state imposition of force and the spiral into tighter social controls, intensification of social distancing, and greater contrast in the have and have-nots in relation to basic supplies of food, energy, and nowadays information.

The cycle is difficult to break because of the social structures and technology which are triggered. The only way out is to break the cycle with fundamentally different technology. Sqale represents a possible solution. How?

By-Invite-Only

One of the ‘side-effects’ of aligning money with the movement of goods is that the power resides with the giver. I choose to give this article, or a piece of music, or a film, to people I believe deserve it, who may appreciate it, whom I value. There is a harmonious self-supporting psycho-social dynamic of value, for what is shared, our own values, and what we believe others may value too. The action of sharing is human, and the number associated with it (the Sqale equivalent to ‘money’) is an indicator of this human value and action. You are reading this article now because someone thinks you are valued; your balance in Sqale has increased as a result of their evaluation.

This works for music, videos, articles, anything digital. And it also works for invitation to events. If you think a gig or conference or meeting is going to be enjoyable, share your invitation with ‘money-credit’. Instead of paying a ‘ticket price’ to the vendor, give it to the people you invite. The ‘money-credit’ will circulate through the crowd, building audience simultaneously with moneyflow, resulting in everyone turning up at the gig/conference/meeting with the funds to run it. The system runs on ‘by-invitation-only’. A ‘bio’ economic.

All this is operational in the app currently. The power resides with each and every one of us. Not the intermediary, company, or the ‘customer’. It is based on a person’s evaluation and action. The power resides with us. You may choose to share this article with someone you know, or you may not. It is up to you.

Imagine a world where this was normalised. This is how anything was shared. Including food. It would mean that you can’t get your hands on food by ‘buying’ it. It must be shared with you. When you have food, of course you can in turn invite others. Ultimately the power is in the growers of the food and who they choose to share it with, distributors. And the distributors have the power to share with ‘shops’, ‘restaurants’, ‘customers’. The food is given to them, with ‘money-credit’ too. And this ‘money-credit’ is then circulated back to the original food growers who then repeat the cycle.

Whether you understand this cycle or not, or whether you or I believe this is actually realisable in the world, the result is simple: we can’t get runs on the food supplier. Thus, in the unfortunate situation where a virus or some other malady is threatening us, the power resides with the growers of the food, the manufacturers of our machinery, the people who supply water and electricity and gas. A simple matter of controlling supply.

The power is not in the consumer, who can take, which leads to panic behaviour. The power is in the producer (or the ‘originator’), who can give. If we have a system which helps us control what we give, then we no longer will exhibit the systemic errors of taking which we see in panic buying, runs on the bank, and other socially harmful behaviours.