I guess that means I'm going to have to write the book that Solveig's been on at me about for the last 6 months

I've had Pluto Press lined up to publish it ("The Last Big Thing" is a working title) for two years, but I hadn't really brought all the threads together in relation to investment in land, but now I think I do.

So yes, all will be revealed.

But not in a Diary, grasshopper...

Resources, Events, Agents (REA) is a model of how an accounting system can be reengineered for the computer age. REA was originally proposed in 1982 by William E. McCarthy as a generalized accounting model, and contained the concepts of resources, events and agents.

REA is a popular model in teaching accounting information systems (AIS). But it is rare in business practice--companies cannot easily dismantle their legacy systems to meet REA's radical demands.

The REA model gets rid of many accounting objects that are not necessary in the computer age. Most visible of these are debits and credits--double-entry bookkeeping system disappears in an REA system. Many general ledger accounts also disappear, at least as persistent objects,--e.g., accounts receivable or accounts payable. The computer can generate these accounts in real time using source document records.

...

... Here's an example of the basic REA pattern:

Each ETer also has a job in ETopia.  These jobs are 'baker', 'butcher', 'maker of wind turbines', 'artist', 'banker', 'fabric designer', 'bicycle mechanic', etc.

I think one of the sticking points - not related to Chris's idea, but worth pointing out anyway - is the concept that people have fixed roles.

If you open this out to make it possible for anyone to do anything, subject to reasonable evidence of skills and experience, or at least a have-a-go attitude where first-time success isn't essential, I think it's possible the economy might become much more fun and interesting for everyone.

I've suggested before that work could easily become project-based rather than job or company based.

This isn't possible at the moment because employees are farmed by corporations for their time and effort. This means people have to turn up at certain times and locations even if they'd be better off doing other things, and being managed - or self-organised - by people with better insight into what's needed.

A participative rather than a proscriptive economy would be more flexible.

It would also be more chaotic, and evidence of previous successes would become much more useful.

So in theory if someone decides they want to be a baker today, or help with the baking, or learn how to bake with a view to committing some time to it, they might be able to do that without taking on a job label as a permanent identity marker.  

But that is not to say I'm offended by it: it's a relevant observation. Anyone who trespasses beyond the conventional runs the risk of being labelled a crackpot.

very little I write about did I "invent", apart from maybe the odd phrase and associated concept. And I only came up with these phrases to make sense of what people are actually doing and then suggesting (talking to myself, most of the time) where I think this is maybe leading Society.

I don't mind criticism - particularly constructive criticism - in fact I wouldn't be able to get anywhere without it.

I'm interested first and foremost in explaining things to myself and then if people ask me, I can give a view, which they are free to agree with or not.

If people are prepared to work with me to test that view empirically, then that's cool too, and maybe more fool them as fellow crackpots.

If I'm right, on the other hand, that could be beneficial for everyone.

But it's still an intermediary between agents.

Not if it's a "Custodian" member of a partnership, where the other "member" stakeholder groups are:

(a) the system/service users, and
(b) the system/service providers.

Within a partnership there is no "Profit" and no "Loss" - just creation and exchange of "value" - and there is no "agency" within a partnership either.

ThatBritGuy:

Effectively you'd be splitting the book-keeping and account management function of banks away from the investment and lending function - not a bad thing, but not quite the same as removing all intermediary entities.

And you would - presumably - still need borrowing and liquidity management of some sort.

Exactly. But in this model credit (aka "time to pay") is simply extended from a Seller to a Buyer.

The Seller records an "Account Receivable" and the transfer of title to the Seller of something of value.

The Buyer records the acquisition of title to something of value (ie "money's worth") and also an "Account Payable".

Time to Pay, or "credit" is agreed because the buyer has a "Guarantee Limit" of £x from mutual membership of one or more "Guarantee Societies". Both Buyer and Seller then pay - for as long as the account receivable remains open - for the use of the Guarantee, which protects them both.

This payment or "provision" is made into a "default pool" held by the "custodian".

The point I am getting to is that a Service Provider formerly known as a Bank is responsible for:

(a) setting guarantee limits;

(b) operating the default fund (which pays the seller if the buyer cannot provide money or "money's worth" acceptable to the Seller); and possibly

(c) managing the communications and accounting platform (ie with suitable operating partners).

In this model Banks do not put any Capital at risk as credit intermediaries providing an implicit Guarantee backed by proprietary capital. Instead banks operate purely as service providers and "outsource" the guarantee - which is what Banks have been doing, extremely opaquely:

(a) permanently - by "securitising";
(b) temporarily - through credit derivatives; and
(c) partially - through credit insurance with "monolines".

"Money as Debt" (and as an "Object") no longer exists in this system. Instead, "Money's Worth" - probably involving "fungible" units such as energy and land rental units - circulate backed by mutual guarantees.

It's essentially a "mutualised" banking system operating "Not for Loss" with money implicit in the relationship.

So there is no "interest" for the use of Money as Debt issued ex nihilo: instead, there are shared defaults and operating costs.

The outcome is what Keynes called a "Clearing Union" which would result from the linking together of networked local clearing unions backed by local and functional guarantee societies (which in turn may be members of area and regional societies)

A cooperative cluster of businesses, with shared title and quite possibly already with shared stock records.  The sort of shared ledger system suggested would make perfect sense to record transfers between the partnership entities.

The business I'm thinking of is Tesco.

Of course. That's an "internal" shared transaction repository within the Tesco legal protocol.

It's a "closed" market, where (say) the oil market is an "open" one.

I see the Tesco shared repository gradually extending to their stakeholders....