4. Unleashing the Sleeping Giant: Discovering New Ground and Starting the Dance of the TAO

To note for experts in systems theory: by treating evolution as a thermodynamic process, theorists are able to answer the question of why and how organisms have evolved to cooperate. Selfish behavior (called “defection”) can undergo rapid transformation, with organisms shifting towards cooperative behavior through punishment. This change happens when the individual organism starts mimicking or adopting the behaviors of the neighboring individual organism. The researchers used the so-called Ising spin model, well known in physics. In such a prisoner dilemma situation each individual can act “defectively” or cooperatively towards proxy neighbors, with a reward offered for cooperation and nothing if they do not cooperate. While “defective” and cooperative behaviors balance one another over time, under certain circumstances cooperative behavior spreads like wildfire through the entire population. This is enhanced by introducing some sort of punishment or cost for those who are not cooperating. The mechanism we describe here as the TAO of Finance meets most of these criteria and can be applied to common goods. See Adami and Hintze (2018).

See Hardin (1968).

See Ostrom (1990); Ostrom was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2009.

What is often missing from this list of commons is the fact that the international trading and payment system is also considered a common good. Central banks and regulators have the function of providing tools that can create greater stability, safety, and sound regulation, providing liquidity and operating as a lender of last resort. These are all functions that the free market system cannot provide; also see McIntosh (2015).

See Heckman (2012). The conventional way of financing has been redistributing money through an “end-of-pipe” strategy. There are three reasons why traditionally we have redistributed money: first, it stabilizes our political system; second, personal life risks (such as unemployment, health, poverty) are better managed when pooled collectively; and third, regional and global common goods (security, highways, sewage systems, fresh air and biodiversity) are often better financed through the community. Could it be that we are using the wrong mechanism for our problems? Could it be that the mechanisms of distributing money work well in a stable environment with a high growth rate, strong governance, low externalities and less interconnectedness, but that now we are living in a different era that requires different measures?

Between 1900 and 2010, 20% of the world population increased their wealth, which was associated with an increase in global GDP by a factor of 26 and an increase in the use of energy, material and resources by a factor of 10–12. But this is history. Emerging markets now represent 60% of the world population. Given a use of materials of 70 billion tons in 2010, we should expect an increase to 125 billion tons by 2030 and 180 billion tons by 2050. When talking about a socio-ecological transformation, we should take such data into account. Considering that we have to operate within planetary boundaries, TCA can demonstrate two aspects: first, it will help us to decouple the global economy, as regional value chains might be cheaper. Second, there will be regions on this planet where less of material throughput is necessary, mainly OECD countries.

The Kuznets Curve, an inverse U-curve that describes the relation between the income/wealth of a society and its negative impact (environmental burden) is only valid as long as we do not consider international trade flows. As soon as we consider the import of goods with a high resource (fossil) burden, high-income countries do have high environmental burdens. From a global perspective, OECD countries would only be allowed to have an income/wealth level of countries such as Jamaica or Morocco, because their environmental footprint can be globalized. We need to differentiate between more territorial (production-based) emissions and consumption-based (trade-adjusted) emissions. There is evidence for a decoupling of production-based CO₂ emissions and growth, but none for a decoupling of consumption-based CO₂ emissions, which increases with per capita GDP, using the Kaya sum rule. See Kaya and Yokobori (1997), Obama (2017), Storm and Schroeder (2018), and Kuznets (1955).

To note: CDSs (Credit default swaps) do not eliminate risks but rather shift them from one private agent to another. Once the counterpart risk and associated moral hazard are cleared and the agents can take into account whether the CDS is associated to a physical delivery or remains a nominal delivery, a regulated and tailored CDS market can play a key role in shifting, diversifying and hedging the transformation described in this book.

Any co-financing scenario faces a twofold dilemma: in a market equilibrium, where allocation is already Pareto-optimal, any intervention or redistribution generates suboptimal results. Alternatively, if the market is not yet allocated fully optimally, then every intervention leads to an even greater deterioration of the given equilibrium. In both scenarios, distributing liquidity towards commons means that benefits for the private sector will be disproportionally low. However, the more the commons are financed, the more both the private and the state sector can benefit from their positive externalities. How this would work and how the twofold dilemma can be overcome will be explained in the following sections.

See Heckman, Moon, Pinto, Savelyev, and Yavitz (2010).

When it comes to eradicating poverty, redistribution does not work on a global level. Out of 118 countries, studied over 40 years, the vast majority of the increase of income (77%) is due to general economic growth only (Dollar, Kleineberg, & Kraay, 2013).

See World Bank (2016). Calculations have shown that it would take about 100 years to level out education, health care, and gender issues among others between the global North and the South by redistributing money the way we have in the past, where 95% of any given global growth goes to the North and 5% to the South. There are other ways than redistributing money that can achieve these goals much faster. One of these instruments is explained in this text (see Woodward, 2015).

See Winthrop and McGivney (2015); World Economic Forum (WEF) (2018).

For the historical debate, see Veblen (1899); Hirsch (1977) and Schneider (2007).

In this sense, commons are hybrids. They are public goods with a private or individual liability, like accessing a public park or a collective health care system. In contrast, most private goods are luxury or so-called positional goods, like owning a car or a pool. They are characterized by their relative property value in comparison to others. See Veblen (1899).

A. Dill (2019): https://​trustyourplace.​com; world social capital monitor 2019, https://​sustainabledevel​opment.​un.​org/​content/​documents/​commitments/​6686_​11706_​commitment_​World%20​Social%20​Capital%20​Monitor%20​2019.​pdf

All QE programs (OMT; SMP; ELA etc.) imply some sort of liability, which increases the assets of the donor. Indirectly the taxpayers have become richer, their balance sheets increased. Once the liability has been defaulted upon, however, the balance sheets shrink again. If the donor has to write off 90%, the taxpayer would still have a gain of 10% (Sinn & Wollmershäuser, 2012).

The methodological background to the comparison of the ROI of global commons with the S&P 500 or state bonds can be found in D. Kahneman’s so-called “reference class forecasting” effect: humans have the tendency to be over-optimistic with regard to the future and to misevaluate risks, certainties and probabilities. Costs, risks and time effort are chronically underestimated, whereas positive gains are overestimated. External evaluations and “outside-the-box” perspectives can broaden the spectrum and reset and objectify overall risk and investment strategies. See Flyvbjerg (2008); Kahneman and Tversky (1982).

The ROI of the red sofa is probably zero, showing that in a private setting we have no problem buying something with no ROI.

See Damodaran (2019).

For example: in a complex world where there are no single isolated causal links, the ROIs will benefit as many people as possible: high blood pressure medication (1:47); halving malaria infection (1:36); research on increasing yields in agriculture (1:34); tripling pre-schooling in sub-Saharan Africa (1:33); mobile broadband for developing countries (1:17); reducing domestic violence (1:17); phasing out subsidies for fossil fuels (1:15); modern cooking devices for 750 million people (1:15); increased skilled worker migration (1:15); cutting down indoor air pollution through better stoves (1:10); or eliminating open defecation (1:6): see Copenhagen Consensus (2019b); none of these strategies can be singled out for each individual, but in a world where everything is connected, the community as a whole will benefit hugely. As seen from a labor market perspective, unemployment is not only a waste of human capital, but far more expensive (if we consider all direct and indirect costs) than creating (public/ subsidized) jobs. The point is: the payment system has to adapt to the commons and not the other way around. For general information, see Copenhagen Consensus (2019a).

See Lomborg (2017); Bourguignon and Morrisson (2002).

Preston (1975) evaluated the difference between market-based private initiatives and public interventions across countries over several decades with regard to increase in life expectancy and economic growth. He concluded that only one quarter of the increase in life expectancy is due to general improvement of living standards, whereas three quarters are due to education, vaccination, antibiotics and vector controls, including hygiene measures. This means that public health and scientific innovation are more important than individual improvements in living standards. Also see: The Lancet August 5, 1978, 300–301, “Water with sugar and salt”, where oral rehydration therapy (ORT) is considered the most significant progress in medicine of the twentieth century.

Here, there is a link to the Minsky argument: it is cheaper, economically more efficient and more sustainable for society as a whole to purposefully create jobs than to finance the increasing costs of health care, crime, social exclusion, inequality, and additional negative spillovers of increasing unemployment (Minsky, 1965).

However, the absolute number of humans living on this planet is not a geospatial challenge. If we take the density of population of San Francisco as a benchmark, with 6500 people per square meter, this density would be enough to house over 60 billion humans on the territory of the US alone. It is less the absolute number than the lifestyle we have chosen and the pattern of distribution of the given resources that is critical for our planet and our species (Lammar, 2013).

The original sin of the ecological growth theory is the illusion of the decoupling of resources, consumption and production from energy and material input and throughput. Empirically, however, there is no absolute decoupling of input and output globally, only a relative decoupling: for each USD or Euro spent, we have increased resource efficiency by 1% annually over the last 30 years (Flachenecker & Rentschler, 2018). As all relevant modelings show the world economy growing exponentially up to 2050 (see e.g. Economist Intelligence Unit, 2015), the absolute amount of resource consumption (energy, material, steel, land use, rare materials etc.) will increase further in absolute terms.

This is a kind of prisoner’s dilemma in global governance: on a global level, we find ourselves in a prisoner’s dilemma. We are only prepared to make a change if the others make changes. As we have no institutional incentive that all agents cooperate in, meaning we do not have a global governance structure but nations only, there will be no cooperation. In order to overcome this prisoner’s dilemma, we require a mechanism that allows everybody to act in a potentially beneficial manner for everybody involved, regardless of whether all agents cooperate or not. See e.g. Lempert and Nguyen (2011) or Soroos (1994). Snidal (1985) provides a more theoretical explanation of how the prisoner’s dilemma and coordination modeling can help us to understand the cooperative behavior of global political institutions.

Most natural and human-based commons require forms of economic activities and legal requirements between the conventional dichotomy of state and market regulation. Simple state regulations or free market solutions are second best. It depends on the very nature of the commons themselves. There are rival and non-rival commons. Wikipedia, solar energy or the CO₂ concentration in the atmosphere are non-rival and require a different set of rules than rival commons like biodiversity, access to health care or preschooling. See Helfrich and Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung (2012); Ostrom (1990).

For example: achieving the 2DS only requires investments of 2–3% of global GDP, which is comparable to military expenditure worldwide. The subsidies for the carbon economy, including direct and indirect costs (mainly health care costs), are estimated to lie in a similar range of trillions of USD. Such figures demonstrate how our world economy is locked in to its current trajectory, preventing change towards a low-carbon future. Costs and additional investments sterilize each other and prevent us from achieving real change.

The Nash equilibrium describes a situation where opposing players reach a position in which they are no longer able to collaborate without harming their position due to the given rules. In order to overcome this lock-in, the players have to change the rules of the game. Globally, due to the multiple lock-in effects, we currently find ourselves in such a Nash equilibrium where the commons are concerned. In order to transcend or unlock it, we need to introduce a dual currency system that fundamentally changes the rules of the game and further maximizes the outcome for all agents involved. For the original text, see Nash (1950).

Four monetary tools are available to deal with a debt crisis from a public perspective (the so-called TRAP): first, Transferring money from one sector to another via taxation or fees; second, Restructuring the loans according to different forms of maturity or debt defaults; third, implementing an Austerity policy in some sectors in order to pay back the loans; fourth, Printing or creating additional money via easing, interest rates or direct spending. This approach to deleveraging a debt trap requires us to find the right balance between the four tools. See Dalio (2018).

The losses for the least developed countries (LDC) due to illicit financial flows (IFF) between 2004 and 2013 is recorded as 7.8 trillion USD, with a growth rate double to global output. Every 1 USD in formal inflow—measured in ODA, foreign direct investment, remittance payments or philanthropy—equaled an outflow of more than 10 USD in IFF leaving developing countries over the same time period. See Kar and Spanjers (2015).

On the shadow economy, see Mai and Schneider (2016). On shadow banking, see Adrian and Jones (2018). On the informal sector, see Neuwirth (2011).

See Tiftik and Mahmood (2019); International Monetary Fund (IMF, 2016).

See Edenhofer (2015).

See Shah (2013).

See Knapp and Van der Heijden (2018).

See Laeven and Valencia (2013); Lietaer, Arnsberger, Goerner, and Brunnhuber (2012).

ILO, Department of Statistics (2019); Shorrocks, Davies, and Lluberas (2018).

See Shorrocks et al. (2018), and ILO, Department of Statistics (2019). The income in OECD countries falls into the upper one fifth of the world’s income bracket. The poorest one tenth of Norwegians still fall into the richest one tenth income bracket. By comparison, “dogland” (expenses for dogs) represents a middle-income country (richer than 40% of the world) measured in purchasing power parity (PPP). We have to admit that there is not much to redistribute globally. Korzeniewicz and Moran (2009); Lessenich (2019).

Another example serves to illustrate this: empirically, forced migration from Africa to Europe for economic reasons would cease at an average GDP per capita of 7000–9000 USD per year. At the current level of 3500 USD per head, assuming a growth rate of 3% annually it would take around 25–30 years to level this out. 39 of the 47 sub-Saharan countries with available data have an annual income per head below 7000 USD. In 2030, 35 countries will be still below that benchmark (cf. Dadush, Demertzis, & Wolff, 2017). We need a completely different mechanism to avoid forced migration and all the problems it entails.

Gapminder (2018).

Take health care for all: any collective health care system will always transfer resources from the healthy to the sick, from the young to the old and the very young, from the rich to the poor, from those who have a job to those who are jobless, from those who are trained to those who are not—always (!). However, the gap between the knowledge about medical cures, prevention and diagnosis and its realization in society has never been greater. As a society, we have never known so much about diabetes, hypertension, cancer, COPD, mental disorders, and infectious disease, or about lab findings, surgery, nursing and internal medicine. Despite this, our generation is unable to unleash their potential for the whole of humanity, not because of a lack of knowledge in medicine or education, but because of the monetary system. 50% of the global population do not have access to basic primary care; 9 out of 10 citizens in developing countries do not have access to basic surgical care; 85% of patients with severe mental disorders do not receive treatment; and we still we lose about 20,000 humans to diseases associated with WASH (water/sanitary/hygiene) every day. About one fifth of the health-related SDGs have been achieved, which means four fifths have not. We should be aware that out-of-pocket payment (500 billion USD annually) is a huge waste of money. (Forty percent is directly wasted.) If the system pooled risks, it could cut down costs, and the situation would be much better for everybody. For the 100 most relevant medical/health priorities we require an additional 25 USD annually per capita for the bottom billion. 1 billion humans are spending over 10% of their income on health and about 100 million are forced into poverty because of this. Furthermore, if we take into account a strong bilateral correlation between health and economic growth, we require more targeted liquidity to ensure health for all. A parallel currency system can provide just that. See The Economist (2018).

There are different ways to look at the same phenomena: from a pure market perspective, there are 1.45 billion people suffering from multidimensional poverty (UNDP, 2019), 1.9 billion have to manage on less than 3.20 USD per day for food, shelter and housing (World Bank, 2018a), 170 million are unemployed (ILO, 2019) and an additional 140 million are underemployed. 4.5 billion people lack access to safely managed sanitation services, and 50% do not have access to basic primary care. These stark figures reveal huge underserved, unmet potential and needs. Seen from this perspective, the world is vastly deflationary, requiring adequate liquidity to create additional wealth.

The central findings of experimental and clinical psychology certainly include the findings about so-called “frames” (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). Frames function like maps in the brain and are always selective and context-driven. We speak about what we see, but we see only what we can think and speak about. All frames have a physiological component where the mental property is linked to sensory, tactile, emotional or gustatory experiences. When we speak of “comprehending”, “handling” or “rejecting”, our premotor cortex is actively coded for exactly those physical processes, and when we speak of a “garlicky smell” or a foul-smelling poisoned cesspool, then the corresponding areas of the olfactory brain also become active. This is referred to technically as “embodied cognition” or “embodied thinking” (Niedenthal, Barsalou, Winkielman, Krauth-Gruber, & Ric, 2005). There is no thinking without somatic reference. But this goes even further: when we talk about the future, we tend to lean forward in our posture, when we talk about the past, we tend to lean backward, because we have learned to provide time perception and its conceptual version with a spatial component that is directly expressed in body perception (Miles, Nind, & Macrae, 2010). It is already enough to manipulate chairs in a meeting room in such a way that they are either slightly inclined to the left or to the right in order for a significant political positioning in favor of a rather conservative (right) or rather progressive (left) attitude to be adopted (Oppenheimer & Trail, 2010). If we had different frames, we would have a different language and consequently different actions. Over 200 such frames have been described, most of which are irrational (Wehling, 2016). These mental frames have the purpose of aligning the inner picture with the outer reality. The better the match, the better we are able to cope with reality. Currently our inner pictures do not match outer reality.