We enjoy reading papers by the Collective Intelligence Project. They seem to be a cohort of well-trained economists and technologists advised by Daron Acemoglu, et. al. We've been inspired by Mr. Acemoglu's work as well, having read a few of his titles:
Our takeaways are always only partial. We're neither economists nor technologists and so we don't always have time to shift the curtains around the jargon of the experts. That said, we also don't admire their craft out of proportion. We tend to study a subject with a methodology allowing us to get to the root of our target and thus take aim to eliminate the problem, even if the solution seems implausible. That is a very indirect description of how we came to the network society movement.
This morning we reviewed CIP's paper on Supermodularity. What we heard (we often listen to improve our access amidst busy lives) is a lot of what we already talk about. We have never used the term supermodularity and don't plan to start. It's not suitable for the audience we've been trained to reach. The Defense Information School trained us to communicate at an 8th grade reading level for the benefit of average Americans, foreign allies who enjoy the accessibility of our expressions, and enemies who got just enough information to fear what we were talking about. We've studied economics with some depth, but more so finance, numismatics and other subjects. As a result we agree with the observations of these scientists, but not necessarily with their prescription.
When we read a biography of John Maynard Keynes, we were forced to note how money is just a communications mechanism. We later found additional evidence of this phenomenon from our favorite Biblical languages scholars, see the links:
We recalled further evidence we'd read in 2019 from another British economist, Glyn Davies. Such arguments are probably common knowledge among economists, but never have I seen one convincingly propose fundamental alteration to the programming of the currency system. Perhaps, they simply do not see any need.
Human-based computation is a term we metaphor very liberally. It is a term we use interchangeably with collective intelligence. In our mind's, computation can be be replaced with calculation and human-based means individual humans are doing the work as opposed to machines. This seems like an anti-reference to AI (artificial intelligence), but not necessarily. States and other bureaucratic bodies, are machines that predate the industrial revolution. They are "human-driven", but so are AI models. Money is clearly the product of a bureaucratic process involving central banks, treasury departments, mints and massive distribution and monitoring systems. Bitcoin changed money by condensing all that into under 20,000 lines of code.
No cryptocurrency, including Bitcoin has changed the essential valuations bureaucracies make on the users of currency products. Scarcity was necessary when stone age villagers began farming in open communes. It gave hunter-gatherers an opportunity to earn a share of the community's surplus in a fair and just manner, rather than just stealing. But that function is rather antiquated nowadays and often used to marginalize particular ethnicities or groups. In the US, European immigrant populations were forced to earn their keep in this way, while resident Native and African Americans (among others) were and often still are repeatedly prevented from accruing their position in the economic commonwealth-- they were reserved as a source of cheap labor for the ruling racial class.
As their capacity for goods and services have increased, America's ruling class has been forced to economically naturalize (some) resident "aliens", but mostly imported what they saw as the best from around the world in both academics and labor. These valuations shifted the scarcity model's use from keeping out anyone who would seek to unfairly take advantage of the commonwealth to suppressing those the commonwealth viewed as invalid, inviting only those it saw as valuable toward their goals. This is why the United States has programs welcoming highly qualified immigrants and barring unqualified ones with exceptions for special circumstances.
The US is not alone in the practice of employing the scarcity mechanism of money against undesirables. In The Internationalists: How A Radical Plan to Outlaw War Remade the World, author Oona Hathaway shows us how these actions essentially amount to sanctions. Sanctions were headlines after the 2016 US presidential election was proven to have been influenced by Russian nationals, and again when an attack was launched on Ukraine in 2022. Other sanctions are not front page news, but have the same effect.
Modern economists don't seem to take any issue with currency having this feature within the tech stack, but having experienced and observed the effects, we do here at Network Theory Applied Research Institute. One of the projects underway in Forge Lab is the Mycelium Settlement System. Modeled after the fungal network that allows plants to communicate and share resources anywhere they reach, Mycelium is a collective intelligence system that elicits value from the consumer-user which in turn allows it to mint currency instantly and without redistribution. Receiving a system prompt for reqest or action requires only that the user has a history of providing value to someone else and therefore has earned Mycillium. We're a long way from completion but the basic ideas are in place (no, we didn't list them all). We just need a few of those high powered technologists to help us program it.
Actually, we recently completed the first module on our own, but we digress. The real reason for this article is to give you access to information that is important to your participation in network society. The concept of mammon is what we want to introduce you to. The Bible talks about it. Jesus himself says, "you cannot serve God and mammon,". The character of mammon is not exactly a god, but it's not exactly without metaphysical form, argument or persuasion. While Mammon as a name or personification is primarily found in Christian scripture, the caution against the worship of wealth is a common theme across many religious traditions.
The Bible Project recently released a short video about this subject, but probably the best depiction of this character (spirit) we've seen comes from Studio Ghibli's Spirited Away in the horrifying character of No Face. If you haven't seen the movie, it is well worth a viewing, but if you don't have time, watch this:
Money and mammon are not evil, but how we use it can be. The Bible also agrees with this:
"For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs."
"And Jesus said to them, “Whose likeness and inscription is this?” They said, “Caesar's.” Then he said to them, “Therefore render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's.” When they heard it, they marveled. And they left him and went away."
Human nature is what economics are all about-- supply, demand, public policy, incentives, externalities, etc. Why they seem to never address the root cause of many of the negative externalities of this technology's employment is beyond me. The folks over at CIP are definitely on the right track to at least realizing a solution. We think we have one here at NTARI already. We're building it and we hope you'll join us in testing it on this journey toward network society.
If you'd like to support NTARI, or learn more visit www.ntari.org/getinvolved
