Note: The next version of this manifesto can be found at SourceCred Manifesto v1.1.
Capitalism: A Coordination Game
Capitalism
is a coordination game. Capitalism
is built around a virtual environments, called Markets
, and a quantifiable score, called Wealth
. Within a Market
, players can Transact
, exchanging Wealth
for Resource
s. Each Transaction
has a Price
, which determines how many Resources
may be acquired for a given amount of Wealth
.
A player’s Wealth
determines their access to vital Resources
like food, shelter, and healthcare. It also determines their social status. Thus, the main activities of the game revolve around participating in Markets
to acquire Wealth
.
There are two basic character classes in Capitalism
: Owners
and Workers
.
Owners
are players with excess Wealth
. Using the excess Wealth
, they acquire Resources
, and marshall those Resources
to produce more Wealth
. This is called Investing
. Since Investing
turns Wealth
into more Wealth
, it creates a positive feedback cycle. Skilled and lucky Owners
acquire spectacularly high Wealth
, becoming billionaires.
Workers
are players who do not have excess Wealth
. However, they still consume Resource
s. Therefore, they have a perpetual survival need to acquire Wealth
. They do this by selling themselves on the Market
for Human Resources
; such Transactions
are called Employment
. Skilled and lucky Workers
may command a high Price
, and negotiate favorable Transaction
s. These workers may acquire enough excess Wealth
to transition into Owner
s.
Capitalism’s Success
Capitalism
is an incredibly successful game, thanks to two key dynamics:
-
Markets
and prices are very effective for rationing access to scarce resources - Investment leads to a positive, exponential feedback cycle, as wealth begets more wealth
Due to its spectacular strengths, Capitalism
has outcompeted the other social games that humans play. In some cases it has subordinated the game, as when Elected Officials–the key character class in the game of Democracy–are purchased with the excess Wealth
of the Capitalis
ts, creating a Market
for Policy. In other cases, Capitalism
has simply crushed the competing game, as can be seen in the collapse of Small Town Farming.
Capitalism’s Flaws
It is generally agreed, however, that Capitalism
is badly flawed. To start, the character classes are obviously unfair: no one, glimpsing past the veil of ignorance, would willingly choose to play as a Worker instead of an Owner
.
Even more problematically, the Wealth
being maximized by Capitalism
is a narrow and limited metric. Since Wealth
is manifested in Markets
and through Transaction
s, it fails to include any value which is not Transactable, or any value for which there is no Market
. For example, there is no market for friendship, community, natural diversity, or ecological health. Therefore, these values are treated as “externalities”. At best, they are ignored by Capitalism
; at worst, they are plundered for Resource
s.
For several centuries, Capitalism
has been accumulating power and scope in an exponential feedback cycle. It has now reached geological scale, and the actions of its players now imperil the Earth’s habitability. Since there is no Market
in habitability, Capitalism
is incapable of changing course, even to prevent its own self-destruction. Therefore, it has become necessary to change Capitalism
.
Attempts to Change Capitalism
Many attempts have been made to improve or replace this game.
Attempts to improve Capitalism
have met with some success. For example, players of Democratic Politics
produced Environmental Regulatory Agencies, which constrained some of the worst externalities from Capitalism
.
However, Capitalism
superior ability to marhsall resources often leads it to stunning victories. For example, players of Capitalism
achieved Neoliberal Economics, embedding Capitalis
t dogma into the adjacent games of Democratic Politics
and Academic Consensus
.
At present, adjacent games are failing to check Capitalism
; as a result, attempts to improve Capitalism
from the outside are stymied.
Attempts to Replace Capitalism
Unfortunately, attempts to replace Capitalism
have been even less sucessful.
The most ambitious attempted replacement was Statist Communism.
Statist Communism
is best understood as a Capitalism
variant, in which there is only a single Owner
. This Uber-Owner
is called The State, and is nominally subordinate to the Workers
. As Markets
are a two-sided multiplayer environment, it replaced them with Commitees
, a one-sided environment.
In theory, the Uber-Owner
would serve all Workers
, leading to utopia. In practice, the Uber-Owner
was a particularly powerful and rapacious Owner
, whose behavior was unchecked by competition with other Owner
. Fortunately, the switch from Markets
to Committees
greatly reduced the system’s information processing abilities, and Statist Communism
was outcompeted by mainline Capitalism
.
We believe it is time to create a new game to replace Capitalism
. As a design requirement, it must be a better game than Capitalism
. Its gameplay must not be so unfair and unbalanced. And it must be able to recognize values other than Wealth
: values like community, or diversity, or ecological integrity.
However, it is not enough that this game be an ethically better game. It must also be able to outcompete Capitalism
.
SourceCred is a prototype of the game that will outcompete Capitalism
.
(to be continued… explaining how:
- Open source is the birthplace of a postcapitalist paradigm
- The transition from “Wealth” to “Cred” implies recognizing the multidimensionality of value
- The transition from upfront “Transactions” to retroactive “Gratiflows” allows recognizing the value of things which cannot be priced)
Thanks to @flyingzumwalt, as my writing this manifesto was inspired by an offline chat with him.