The other currency in Switzerland, the WIR

The whole lecture is interesting, of course.

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A unified theory of civilization must reduce the number of moving parts but it can only do so when it has included the parts observed. The need for complementary currencies such as the WIR is like adding another field to the set of those that must be unified under a unified field theory of nature. What is great about WIR is that it at least admits the existence of observations that must be included in the parts.

In addition to figuring out how one might unify various currencies, there is the glaringly obvious question: “Why in the world do we need ‘votes’ in addition to units of currency?”

Attempts by so-called “libertarians” to answer this essential question of political economy have all been subject to the same fallacy: The non-aggression axiom. If you can’t question your premises, you are guaranteed to fail. Civilization is a quasi-eusocial organization – that valorizes specialization. But toward what end? What is civilization selecting for? Why are “libertarians” so shy about taking responsibility for the artificial* selection regime they’re creating and the long-term consquences of their non-aggression axiom? How in the world can they pretend to be serious when the universe we live in has certain finite limits (eg speed of light) that are simply incompatible with exponential reproduction rates?

Note, I’m among those who has worked seriously on expanding the planet’s food supply by orders of magnitude and also on commercializing space launch services to expand resources beyond the biosphere (AND the first 3D multiplayer game was about expanding resources available to planetary populations by turning away from war toward space, which I actually wrote ([Spasim]Spasim - Wikipedia)) so no one can accuse me of being unsympathetic to those, like libertarians, who address the grotesque failures of current political economy to provide opportunities for positive sum gamesmanship.

*Artificial selection is a biologically-valid definition of the word “culture” as a biological entity. Contrast this with the term “natural decrease” in population. There is nothing “natural” about technological civilization’s de facto extermination of its most economically viable populations.

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