Creating Wealth Page 11
At the end of this learning chain, the Sabers would go to a 17-year-old who would then be able to use his or her accumulated Sabers to pay all or part of university tuition. The university in turn would be able to exchange the Sabers for conventional money through the Education Fund (see Figure 2), but at a discount of as much as 50%. This process is possible because most of the costs at a university are fixed, and the marginal cost of an additional student has little impact on those expenses.
In the above example, let us assume that the Saber circulates five times before it reaches the university. The total learning multiplier for the education budget allocated to this project would then be a factor of ten (five times for the exchanges among students of different ages, multiplied by two times for the arrangement between the Ministry of Education and the university). In this way, many more children would benefit from a better education, from a greater involvement with the learning process and from the chance to go to university than would have been possible if the education fund were used only for direct student scholarships.
Notice that this process would automatically encourage the spontaneous emergence of chains of learning by teaching from the bottom up among children of all ages. The Saber system would deliver total learning of an order of magnitude of $10 billion spending on the conventional scholarship model.
Furthermore, factoring in the change of the learning retention rate from 5–10% (normal education procedure) to 90% (teaching others), another tenfold effect becomes available, raising the total learning by teaching multiplier to one hundred. In other words, we estimate that spending $1 billion through the Saber system could produce a retained learning equivalent of $100 billion spent through conventional means . . . these are mind-boggling possibilities!
As this system develops, other ways of earning Sabers could be introduced. For example, why not eradicate illiteracy? Can you visualize an army of eight-year-olds proudly teaching their freshly learned reading and writing skills to grandparents? In the process, they would be developing a higher level of reading skill than any previous generation. Young people could also earn Sabers by helping the elderly and disabled with tasks they need accomplished.
Learning isn’t only intellectual, but also about the social reality of the world of others. Learning beyond schools could become a vast and rich intergenerational game. All this would encourage intergenerational relationships and further learning, not to mention creating extra aid for the elderly without burdening governmental budgets. Given that all countries are expecting a higher percentage of elderly people that will require care, the learning currency could offer one integrated solution to two social challenges: education and elder care.
Rapidly changing environmental conditions, the pace of technical progress and the degree to which working opportunities have been transformed in recent years demand that we find new ways to learn and promote faster learning among all sectors of society. It is not sufficient to merely repeat and imitate old patterns. Learners today must be creating new patterns and ideas. This can only happen if our learning capacity itself is transformed. The introduction of a learning currency could start this process in areas where accelerating learning faces the biggest challenges.
FIGURE 6.2. Saber Complementary Currency System = Learning Multiplier. Note: One Saber is equivalent to one national currency unit redeemable for higher education expenses.
Buckaroos — University of Missouri, Kansas City
Beginning in 1999, The University of Missouri, Kansas City (UMKC) introduced an innovative complementary currency called Buckaroos (named after the University’s kangaroo mascot). Students earn the Buckaroo notes when they participate in community service activities organized by area organizations. Students in several economics classes have to perform community service and earn Buckaroos as part of the course requirements. Each note is valued at one roo hour, representing one hour of a UMKC student’s community service. UMKC’s Center for Full Employment and Price Stability were charged with the administration of the program and issuing the notes.
Community service providers such as public schools, local government offices and nonprofit organizations apply to participate in the program — to be accepted they need to meet specific standards and be approved by UMKC. The organizations receive a number of Buckaroos to hire student workers and pay them one Buckaroo per hour of service. There is no maximum requirement for hours, and there is no need to list the names and service hours of students who work for each organization. Each organization is allowed to attract student workers to fill its specific needs for service hours.
The students can choose from a list of participating providers and are able to switch jobs and work as many or as few hours as they choose with approval of the provider. They are also able to barter, lend, borrow or purchase earned Buckaroos with other students — creating another level of economic activity within the system, because students who do not choose to do the community service have been known to pay cash to other students for the Buckaroo notes. The students need the notes to pay a tax each semester to UMKC’s treasury; this tax can only be paid in Buckaroos. Students may also save Buckaroos for future semesters where course loads may be more restrictive.
FIGURE 6.3. One Buckaroo
In fact, according to Prof. L. Randall Wray who designed the program, the dollar value of the Buckaroo has appreciated over the life of the program, rising from a range of $5–$10 per note to the current value of $10–$20 per note. The value increases near the end of each semester, as procrastinating students scramble to get the notes they need to pay the tax so they can pass the class — their grades are the final value they get from the transaction.
In the future, UMKC may offer that a portion of tuition could be paid with Buckaroos. This would promote not only student involvement within the community, but a stronger network of community relations for the university. Students would have a strong incentive to earn Buckaroos, and the existence of the program would make university education more affordable.
Learning Our Way to the Future
If there will be a theme to life in the 21st century, it will be the need to learn. Rapid change actually requires a new kind of learning, and so creating new currencies that increase both the speed and capacity of learning is critically important. When social and material reality are stable, then learning by repetition and rote is an adequate way to learn — rely on the experts, do things the way they’ve been done over a long period of time because that works. When social and material reality are changing rapidly — climate change, economic dislocation, social upheaval — a new kind of adaptive and transformative learning is required.
FIGURE 6.4. Rapid Change Demands New Ways of Learning
Adaptive and transformational learning is messy, and it requires a new mindset. Unlike normal, incremental learning, it does not rely on old patterns, but rather creates new ones. Mistakes form its pedagogy, and so developing a systematic patience toward mistakes can facilitate rapid learning. Thomas Edison captured this idea when he said: “If I find 10,000 ways something won’t work, I haven’t failed.”10
When systems change is required by the times, learning may involve moving forward without necessarily knowing “the right” solution. Creating systems of exchange (which could function in parallel with official systems) that reward learning at all levels could help stay the course.
CHAPTER 7
The Creative Economy
It is better to create than to be learned,
creating is the true essence of life.
BARTHOLD GEORG NIEBUHR
The Arts: De-cultured Society
The arts shape our lives and provide the warp and weft for our cultures and societies. Without the arts, we would not be human. Yet the scarcity caused by our monetary system twists them beyond recognition. There are two deep human needs met by the arts — our need for self-expression and the need for aesthetic enjoyment or beauty. The arts form the footprints of human consciousness through time. The ancien
t cave paintings show our emergence as a creative species, our connection to divine energy and our aspirations. The graffiti on the walls of modern cities express the artistic voice of a lost generation. The arts open a window into our collective soul.
Sacred art in many religions takes on such symbolic importance that the forms, styles and even the paints are so closely prescribed that in centuries past breaking from traditional rules could result in the death penalty in some societies. Art historians spend a lifetime understanding the subtle gestures encoded in art from the era prior to mass literacy.
The arts have always played a central role in our ceremonial customs and forms of worship. The artifacts we have from ancient times were often created for ceremony — people coming together in shared expressions of joy, hope, sorrow, prayer, awe and power. Kings, queens, high priests and priestesses, chieftains, sultans and pharaohs all commissioned music, visual spectacles, architecture, poetry, theater, jewels, clothing and other adornment to demonstrate their power, their piety and their generosity. Meanwhile, artisans, wives, laborers, children — if they had enough resources and time — created houses, furniture, fabric, clothing, lace, pillowcases, dishes, utensils and tools that spoke to their own creative sensibility. Whenever possible, people have surrounded themselves with beautiful things.
Some of our most enduring human creations demonstrate the link between the arts and everything we hold as sacred. We have used our creative energy to cultivate a relationship with gods and goddesses in the construction of our pyramids, megalithic stone circles, cathedrals, temples, tombs and statues. These endure while the vast majority of human endeavor has turned to dust.
Fast forward to the 21st century, and the majority of our creative workers no longer dedicate their life energy to the creation of enduring beauty and awe-inspiring celebrations of divine energy. Poets are put to work writing syrupy stanzas for greeting cards, visual artists are designing web pages, corporate logos and publications. Sculptors are employed making gravestones, musicians write jingles for television ads and the most lucrative form of theater is the 30-second commercial aired during the Super Bowl. The well-paid artists, in other words, are working for corporations. Recent statistics show, however, that 55.6% of the rest of the “fine artists, art directors and animators” in the workforce are self-employed, compared to 10% of the rest of the population.1 Career advice for students thinking about majoring in the arts in college is clear: “the number of qualified workers exceeds the number of available openings because the arts attract many talented people with creative ability.”2 In short, there are a lot of people who want to be creative, but a real shortage of paid work for artists.
A study done by Michael Maranda, an assistant curator of the Art Gallery of York University in Toronto, Canada, on the plight of Canadian artists revealed the underlying truth of the near cliché image of the starving artist. In Canada in 2009, the average income for a visual artist was $20,000 per year, well below the national average for all incomes of $28,850.3 In the United States, the situation is similar. The median income of all artists from 2003–2005 was $34,800, but this figure includes the income from all sources, not just the artwork they are producing. Full-time artists earned a median income of $42,200, fully $10,000 less than the $52,500 median income for other professionals. For the 45% of other artists who do not work full-time all year, their plight is the same as those in Canada, with a median income of $20,000. By contrast, office clerks in the United States earn an average income of $27,768, jobs which require a lot less training and creativity.4
Yet despite these figures, the creative economy has taken over a leading role in the US employment profile in the last 20 years. In the early 1990s, the people with jobs associated with the creative economy surpassed those employed in traditional manufacturing jobs for the first time in history. This trend is as much due to the decline in manufacturing jobs as it is to a new wave of creative jobs, but the numbers still tell an important story.
FIGURE 7.1. US Class Structure, 1900–1999 (% of Workforce). Source: Academy for Entrepreneurial Leadership, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
There is no shortage of people who want to do creative work and no shortage of creativity. What is scarce is the money to pay them. If the creative class were a marginal, fringe sector of our economy, this apparent lack of collective value might make some sense on a superficial level, but in fact research shows that the creative class is central to economic success.
The shortage of decent livelihoods in the arts can’t help but have an impact on both the amount and diversity of art, music, dance, theater and other work available to us. When the for-profit arts take over the television airwaves and the music companies are able to control the content of music played on radio stations, the ability of smaller artists to have success declines. The increased availability of professional art also reduces the practice of art in general — after all, if you can’t sing like Madonna why would you even try? A society awash in popular culture could actually be starved for authentic culture. The scarcity produced by an economic system based on private money simultaneously homogenizes and eradicates our unique cultural identities.
Art Tokens
What if it were possible to pursue creative endeavors without worrying about the money required? What if every creative person had the opportunity to follow their dream and bring a creative work of some sort into being?
Right now in the United States, if you are a child who is dying from cancer, the Make a Wish Foundation raises money to allow you to experience something you never had a chance to do. Some children, for example, meet their favorite sports hero, some go to Disney World; one young boy was able to go on a shopping spree at Toys R Us.
It would be possible to extend this model, using a complementary currency, to the wishes of other young people and let them do something creative as a key part of their educational experience. In the next chapter, the model for doing just that is discussed: the prefecture of Shiga in Japan has introduced it for environmental improvements, but their model has many applications.
For example, your city decides that attracting people who are involved in the Creative Economy is an important economic development idea. Many cities have already made this decision, since research shows the importance of this kind of initiative in the 21st century economy. So, the city institutes an Art Token system. Imagine a scenario where every taxpayer in the city would need to turn in at least ten Art Tokens when they pay their taxes.
To earn the Art Tokens, citizens would need to participate in some type of creative endeavor. This might be taking a class in music, art, dance or theater, attending a performance or supporting a creative activity a young student was initiating. People with money and no time could buy tokens (using bank-debt money) from people with a surplus. Such exchanges could take place, for instance, through a local e-Bay type electronic market. Artists, students, theaters, studios and galleries would all certainly have a surplus. By valuing the currency on the city level as a partial payment of something like a tax, the city could create an economy in the type of activity it is trying to encourage.
Notice that this approach would ensure that more of the creative activity would take place in town, that its creative people would obtain income in dollars, but that this wouldn’t cost the city any additional dollars. By setting up a foundation, for example, an organization could make the Art Tokens even more valuable to its users than bank-debt dollars.
Living the Dream
The city could offset some of its bank-debt dollar costs by paying people in Art Tokens for work that would normally cost dollars. These dollars saved could go into a fund to support a foundation in the city that supports the arts. Or those in the city who provide opportunities for youth could pay individuals in Art Tokens for participating in their activities. Instead of making grants to organizations as the sole way they achieve their goals, the city could sponsor activities where people earn Art Tokens. In these ways, both the time and money
needed to allow students and artists to engage in a new creative endeavor could be found, where none exists now.
For example, imagine that you are a high school student and your dream has been to go to Rome to study Michelangelo’s work in the Sistine Chapel. Your high school requires that you undertake a creative or community project as part of the requirements for graduation, and they assign an adult mentor to work with you on the project. At the end of the project, you are required to produce a written report, a work of art, a performance or some product that demonstrates you have met your learning objectives.
Obviously, travel to Rome requires two things — money for the journey and time of your mentor to help you understand all that is involved. The mentor could earn Art Tokens for their time, which frees up some of the adult creative energy you’ll need. The money for the journey could come out of the fund created by the foundation or from the city by using real dollar offsets that other people earning Art Tokens have allowed. Another approach could be to have this foundation or city collect unused airline miles for this purpose.
As the recipient of the money and time in the Art Token account, you would engage in a contract for the work. Each contract could reflect the level of mentoring and cost required, and you, the student, would need to contribute as well — either through the more traditional ways of raising funds (finding sponsors, doing a fundraising event, selling things) or by earning Tokens by undertaking activities supporting the arts that normally cause the city, the foundation or the arts organizations in the community to incur conventional money costs. Everything from ushering at the theater to mentoring younger children might qualify as a certified activity that earns you the Tokens you need for your dream to be realized.