Timothy Wilken MD writing in 2001: Today, most humans solve their problems as individuals or at best as nuclear families. They meet their individual needs with individual actions. At best they may meet the needs of their nuclear family through family actions, but this is rarely more than a husband and wife both working. The extended family is an organizational pattern rarely seen in modern society.

This focus on individuality results in a massive loss of opportunity to co-Operative strategies that could result in greater efficiency and economy.

Even though we humans are an interdependent class of life, we choose our actions based not on what we are, but on what we think we are. Today, modern humans are convinced they are an independent form of life. This deep belief in human independence means that most modern humans seek to meet their needs as individuals and make their choices independently of their fellow humans.

In our present culture humans meet their needs by purchasing products and services as independent individuals. In today’s fair market there are providers of products and services and there are consumers. Both the providers and the consumers for the most part think of themselves as independent and make their choices without great awareness of what others are doing.

In today’s marketplace, the providers and consumers meet only in the retail space. They have little or no direct relationship with each other. In this ignorance, both are, for all extent and purposes, blind and ignorant. The provider doesn’t know his consumers, let alone what they might need or when they might need it. And often the consumer don’t know the providers. Bird’s Eye View Let us imagine an aerial view of our community on an average evening at 10:00pm. Looking down we notice that within one square mile there are several small convenience stores open from seven to eleven. These small stores are all competing with each other as well as with larger supermarkets now staying open 24 hours in order to compete with them. At this hour of night there are only a few available customers to be divided up among all these providers.

Each store is paying one or more clerks to staff the store, plus the costs for lighting and heating each store. From our view above our community, it is obvious that most of the clerks could be sent home and most of the stores closed and still allow every customer seeking products and services at that hour to get what they needed. This would also produce enormous savings for this group of providers. To all stay open, the providers must pass the costs of doing business on to their customers, so this means that the prices in all of these stores is higher to subsidize this inefficiency.

Why is this happening? In today’s world we mostly ignore each other. After all, we are all independent. Each individual is supposed to look out for himself. So there is little communication between provider and consumer. The providers are keeping the stores open in hopes that someone will need something. If they were communicating with their customers, they would know when to be open and when they could close. They could then operate much more efficiently.

Now imagine that this same inefficient process is going on with many different kinds of products in every community in our nation and you start to sense the enormous amount of wasted time and energy. (01/14/09)
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Dee Hock writing in 1999: One concept that I have puzzled over is an ancient,
fundamental idea, the idea of community. The essence of community, its
very heart and soul, is the non-monetary exchange of value; things we do
and share because we care for others, and for the good of the place.
Community is composed of that which we don’t attempt to measure, for
which we keep no record and ask no recompense. Most are things we
cannot measure no matter how hard we try. Since they can’t be measured,
they can’t be denominated in dollars, or barrels of oil, or bushels of
corn — such things as respect, tolerance, love, trust, beauty — the supply
of which is unbounded and unlimited. The non-monetary exchange of value
does not arise solely from altruistic motives. It arises from deep,
intuitive, often subconscious understanding that self-interest is
inseparably connected with community interest; that individual good is
inseparable from the good of the whole; that in some way, often beyond
our understanding, all things are, at one and the same time,
independent, interdependent, and intradependent — that the singular
“one” is simultaneously the plural “one.”

In a true community, unity of the singular “one” and the plural
“one” extends beyond people and things. It applies as well to beliefs,
purpose, and principles. Some we hold in common with all others in the
community. Others we may hold in common with only some members of the
community. Still others we may hold alone. In a true community, the
values others hold that we do not share we nonetheless respect and
tolerate, either because we realize that our beliefs will require
respect and tolerance in return, or because we know those who hold
different beliefs well enough to understand and respect the common
humanity that underlies all difference. Without an abundance of
non-material values and an equal abundance of non-monetary exchange of
material value, no true community ever existed or ever will. Community
is not about profit. It is about benefit. We confuse them at our peril.
When we attempt to monetize all value, we methodically disconnect
people and destroy community.

The non-monetary exchange of value is the most effective,
constructive system ever devised. Evolution and nature have been
perfecting it for thousands of millennia. It requires no currency,
contracts, government, laws, courts, police, economists, lawyers,
accountants. It does not require anointed or certified experts at all.
It requires only ordinary, caring people.

True community requires proximity; continual, direct contact and
interaction between the people, place, and things of which it is
composed. Throughout history, the fundamental building block, the
quintessential community, has always been the family. It is there that
the greatest non-monetary exchange of value takes place. It is there
that the most powerful non-material values are created and exchanged. It
is from that community, for better or worse, that all others are
formed. The non-monetary exchange of value is the very heart and soul of
community, and community is the inescapable, essential element of civil
society.

If we were to set out to design an efficient system for the
methodical destruction of community, we could do no better than our
present efforts to monetize all value and reduce life to the tyranny of
measurement. (01/14/09)
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