In our inaugural post, we discussed how our public goods suffer due to persistent failures in coordination. In this article, we introduce the concept of programmable money that has the potential to empower those on the spot to solve the problems that matter the most to them. Crypto's misuse for speculation has overshadowed its potential in building solidarity. Technology amplifies intent and is only as good as the hand that wields it. Crypto and the necessary cultural underpinnings are an opportunity to redesign our social, industrial, and political institutions.
An equitable future rooted at the edges
We have been designing our social, industrial, and political institutions with a "control-first" mindset for centuries. This leads to disenfranchisement at the edges. The fundamental change to empower those who can solve problems on the spot must start with power dissipation from the center to these edges.
Elinor Ostrom won a Nobel in Economics in 2009 for her analysis of economic governance, especially the commons. It was long unanimously held among economists that natural resources used collectively would be over-exploited and destroyed in the long term. She disproved this idea by conducting field studies on how small local communities manage shared natural resources, such as pastures, fishing waters, and forests. She showed that when natural resources are jointly used by their users, in time, rules are established for how these are to be cared for and used in a way that is both economically and ecologically sustainable.
The potential of programmable money
“When everything is subject to money, then the scarcity of money makes everything scarce, including the basis of human life and happiness. Such is the life of the slave—one whose actions are compelled by threat to survival. Perhaps the deepest indication of our slavery is the monetization of time.”
Charles Eisenstein, Sacred Economics: Money, Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition
An economy unilaterally focused on financial capital alone renders itself extractive. On the other hand, an economy rooted in solidarity is regenerative. In 2011, Ethan Roland & Gregory Landua expanded the concepts of wealth (and poverty) to include the valuable resources of personal connections, natural resources, land, knowledge, experience, and more in eight forms of capital.
The ability to program our monies opens a new opportunity to (re)embrace our roots in solidarity economics and our history in self-governance. It offers a means to create an ethically designed micro-economy with deliberate mechanisms to build solidarity, drive collective action, and redistribute outcomes.
"With programable money, we can program our values into our money".
The caution
At GreenPill India, we find it impossible to ignore the strands of DNA (beyond just composable technology) across culture, governance, and ethics that are coming together to challenge the status quo. However, tokens must be tethered with value before being attached to economics.
"To take crypto seriously as a trustworthy basis for institutional life, we need to insist that cryptoeconomics is not enough. It is a useful strategy with a fascinating palette of possibilities. But human beings should seek to live by principles other than economic nudges alone: values, rights, solidarity, and, yes, politics. Relying too much on economics limits what self-governance is capable of."
Nathan Scheider, Beyond Cryptoeconomics: Platform Cooperativism and the Future of Blockchain Governance
Web3 will see its fraud, froth, and failures. An alternative to the current system can't entirely depend on it to make it shock-proof. The resilience needs to be within what's emerging. The real yield of programmable money is when solidarity trumps speculation.
It's our shot to miss.
It is our choice to make.
Speculative rug pulls or solidarity?
We will continue to decode programmable money in our next edition of Gulshan.
Subscribe to Gulshan | Join GreenPill India | Visit GreenPill Network