Workshop about dream economies in circles of trust

Research
,
1

I will start exploring with real humans the redistribution experiment. These are draft notes for running a workshop. We can slowly add here materials, results, and insights. Feel free to comment and edit.

Ideal time: 2 hours.
Ideal number of participants: 5 to 10.
Ideal number of facilitators: 2 or 3.
Materials: 1 whiteboard, paper, color pencils, adhesive tape.

  1. Sit in a circle.

  2. Make a big poster with the papers in the center, spread the pencils around.

  3. Introductions. (10 minutes)

    • Name, place of origin, favorite indulgence.
      (My name is Leonardo, I come from a small town in the mountains of Costa Rica, my favorite indulgence is a 30-minute very hot shower/buying expensive bread/not watching the news/eating a whole pizza by myself…)
    • Start with the facilitators.
    • Continue with the participants in the circle.

  4. Collective drawing.

    • Express your emotions with colors all through the session.
    • Some of these topics are highly emotional, for some we don’t have good vocabulary. For those who want to speak, just raise your hand and talk. For those who don’t feel like talking for a while, take the pencils and draw whatever comes.

  5. Share about our relation with money. (30 minutes)

    • Share the experience of one of the facilitators, as an example.
      (The first time I understood the value of money was when the neighborhood shop stop selling fiado […]/One time I got a loan to buy an apartment and I got a 30 year debt […]/At work we were defining salaries and discussed why people in San Francisco have to earn 3 times more than people in Latin America […]).
    • For less than 10 participants, just go one by one in the circle. When somebody finishes, everybody shouts a word that summarizes it.
    • For 10 or more participants, make pairs. Pair with a person who you don’t know. At the end, go in a circle summarizing the experience of your partner with one word.

  6. What gives value to money? (10 minutes)

    • Economy is community. It’s sharing what gives value to the activity.
    • It’s a collective agreement.
    • The current economy is a lie.
    • We can dream a new economy, and just believing in it will make it exist.
    • It can fail. It will be interesting.

  7. Issues of violence, issues of scale, issues of preference, issues of externalities. (20 minutes)

    • It is hard.
    • How to make the connections?
    • How to value different contributions?
    • How to value art? How to value rest?
    • Universal basic income? Base salary? Social security benefits?
    • Inflation, interest rates, unemployment?
    • How do we satisfy our indulgences?
    • Integration with the capitalistic national or global economy.

  8. Tech start ups, luddites, solar punk. (30 minutes)

  9. Departure and integration.

    • Go one by one in the circle.
    • How are you feeling? How are you integrating this into your daily economy?
    • If there’s no time left, just summarize your feeling with one word.
6 Likes