Post with five methods for converting rows to columns.
From the classic 'CASE' construction to the newer PIVOT and ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY) functions.
Some methods presented here can have a severe negative impact on performance. Especially the in-line function with a cursor should be used with the utmost precaution.Check the query plan and the statistics i/o (see this post) of your queries before putting the code into your production environment!
This entry was posted on Monday, August 12th, 2013 at 6:33 am and is filed under SqlServer.	You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.


The article is contributed by Freddy – a freelance writer who loves writing about home & garden topic.
No matter how ultimate your dehumidifier is, or even it is the best dehumidifier you ever bought in 2018 or not, it could also be damaged. First I will explain that occurs, although there are three points you can certainly do to repair it when the circles in your portable dehumidifier begin to ice up. The circles about the back of the equipment get cool whenever your dehumidifier runs. The fan pulls on the atmosphere within the space within the coils as well as the moisture within the atmosphere condenses from the atmosphere and onto the circles. However, when the heat of the atmosphere is also cool-then that moisture within the atmosphere may freeze about the circles. So here are three points you can test to repair the issue: warm up the area the dehumidifier is in, you are able to set the dehumidifier on the stay or desk (the atmosphere is generally cooler close to the floor), and you will switch off the dehumidifier before the area gets hot. Today, if your dehumidifier runs but there's no air coming out the leading it may be from the broken fan blade. If that you don't feel any air coming from the back or the entrance of the system, your fan motor might be burned out or caught too. If that's the situation, edge or you'll have to change the fan motor.
If your device does not operate, however, the light remains about it might just imply that the load tank is complete. Your dehumidifier includes a security system that'll close off the system when the water tank is complete. Usually, the container may push on the change, or a component is mounted on the container that'll turn a switch once the tank is complete. Bare the load tank, and have a look in the area where the tank rests to determine if a change is that requires to be turned when the system still doesn't operate. When the loading reservoir fills up quickly that simply indicates your dehumidifier does what it's designed to. If it fills up quickly for all times then repair that issue in the source and you may wish to discover where the moisture is originating from. Moving forward to a different common issue: the filled container does not complete. You are able to alter the humidistat control to some dryer setting when the moisture within the space continues to be large. When a great deal operates, however, you do not discover much water within the pot, the refrigeration system would be to blame. You find out if that'll repair it, usually, it may be time to contact something guy to correct the refrigeration system and are able to cleanse the dehumidifier.
Home improvement scams are most frequently put into operation through door-to-door contact with homeowners. Legitimate, home repair contractors reach potential customers through advertising or phone solicitation.
Be wary of any salesperson that comes to the door, and puts pressure on you to pay up front, or take the deal on painting or paving right now. These are common homeowner scams and tactics.
Do not pay upfront money to a contractor. Various state laws prohibit contractors from this kind of business transaction. A contractor must provide a service in order to receive consideration (payment).
Coming to your home to give an estimate or even entering into a contract with a homeowner, is not providing a service.
Once work has started and/or materials have been received, that is when a contractor has provided a service that constitutes a payment from the homeowner. And that payment should not exceed the percentage of the contract price that the work performed and/or materials received to account for.
e. A money scam that the homeowner will not be able to recover.
Resist being pressured into signing a contract with a contractor on their first visit. This is a tactic used by some contractors to keep homeowners from comparing them to another contractor and researching their history.
A quality contractor will be willing to make as many visits as necessary to assist a homeowner in their decision. Your home is the single largest investment you will ever make and a quality contractor will want you to be satisfied with the improvements they will be performing.
Con artists frequently zero in on low-income people and seniors. They think these people are especially susceptible to high-pressure tactics. These con artists are persuasive about unneeded or overpriced home improvement scams.
If a contract is signed, the homeowner may land in more trouble with a collaborating financial institution for refusing to pay for slipshod or unfinished work.
Law enforcement agencies and consumer groups are well aware of organized American Gypsies or Travelers. These are most likely the door-to-door salespeople for home repair scams that homeowners encounter.
These Travelers are organized, have new trucks and equipment within or out-of-state license plates, and, if asked, provide in or out-of-state phone numbers and addresses.
Some of these groups have burglarized the homes of distracted owners, or have offered to drive an owner to the bank so the owner can remove money from an account.
No need to use harsh, toxic chemicals, to thoroughly clean the house or apartment. Green cleaning products can be used to clean the house. Safe and effective. Many of them are also quite cost-effective. Some may already be in the cabinet.
Using dissimilar types of small amount can make a dissimilarity. Most cleaners work for some surfaces. This means a different cleaner is not always necessary to clean up in the bathroom and in the kitchen. Read the label prudently to be sure. Completed use or cleaners that are already in the home to avoid waste. When shopping for a new cleanser, try to buy items that are versatile.
Vinegar is an excellent cleaner cheap and very good. It can even be an effective way to remove mold from home instead of bleach. Mix it with a little warm water and almost anything can be cleaned. If the smell of vinegar is too strong or unpleasant, add a little lemon juice to this mixture as well. It is reasonably priced considering the low price of these household items every day. Some may even be in the kitchen cupboard right now.
Baking soda is a low-cost cleaner that has a number of uses. This can help reduce odors, such as from a refrigerator. Like vinegar, can also be used to clean a variety of surfaces when added to water.
There are also a number of man-made cleaners who say they are environmentally friendly. Some may be beneficial. Others may not be a good choice. Read the label carefully. Look for products that are verified. Also, read the fine print and be aware of general terms like "green" or "natural" that may or may not mean the product is actually better for the environment.
Avoid antibacterial products altogether. According to recent research, these products are not better at killing germs than ordinary cleaners. They also may have a harmful effect of creating even stronger germs in the future. Save money and stick with baking soda, vinegar, and biodegradable cleaners that do not use antibacterial formula instead.


Anastasia Lin, a 25-year-old China-born actress who is the winner of Miss World Canada 2015, was stopped in Hong Kong as she was barred from boarding a connecting flight to mainland China where the beauty pageant finals is scheduled to take place on December 19th.
Ms. Lin was born in Hunan, China, and moved to Canada at the age of 13 with her mother. She majored in International Relations and Theater/Acting at the University of Toronto when she became interested in the human rights situation in China, her homeland.
If the government tries to forcibly take it (human rights and religious freedom) away, I take it as an assault on humanity. I'd love to speak up for those who don't have a voice, and use my freedom to advocate for their freedom.
We must overcome fear and courageously continue to speak for those in China who are oppressed. Otherwise, suppression of human rights in China will spread with no end.
The Miss World finals competition will be held in the southern Chinese city of Sanya in December. Unlike all of the other contestants, Lin did not receive an invitation letter from the Chinese organizers of this event, and therefore was unable to obtain a Chinese visa. The Chinese embassy in Canada offered an explanation that it declared her "persona non grata", and refused to grant her a visa.
Nevertheless, she decided to enter China to take part in the beauty pageant finals. She went to Hong Kong with the hope of obtaining a tourist visa upon arrival, but again the Chinese authorities refused to issue a visa to her. Lin gave a press conference in Hong Kong on November 27th, claiming that the Chinese government blocked her from traveling to Sanya for the contest due to her outspoken advocacy for human rights.
The Beijing 2008 Olympic Games sparked global protests against human rights abuses China had been committing against its citizens like the Tibetans. Ironically, the more China tries to make its influence felt by enticing international festivals, the more concerned people become about the country's human rights issues.
It is essential to take this opportunity to cooperate in shaping international opinion that never tolerate China's human-rights suppression.


text:
February 21, 2020, 6:37 PM ET
Toddler Apparently Vanished In December — But Her Disappearance Was Only Reported This Week
The amount of time that has passed without any sight of Evelyn Mae Boswell is "hindering a lot of our investigation," an official said.
Evelyn Mae Boswell Photo: Tennessee Bureau of Investigation
Tennessee authorities have issued a state-wide Amber Alert for a 15-month-old toddler who has been missing for months, investigating multiple leads given the fact that the girl's disappearance was not reported immediately.
Evelyn Mae Boswell hasn't been seen since Dec. 26, her family said, according to the Bristol Herald Courier. "Certain family members" haven't seen the toddler since the day after Christmas, authorities said, and a babysitter last saw Evelyn in early December.
The state-wide alert was announced on Wednesday evening, officials said. The child's grandfather was the first to report Evelyn as missing.
On Friday morning, Sullivan County authorities announced that they possibly had identified a "person of interest." Individuals traveling in a gray 2007 BMW with front-end damage could have information related to Evelyn's whereabouts, and law enforcement said the vehicle's license plate number is 3M9-6W9 and is registered in Tennessee.
So far, there have been few other clues regarding the toddler's mysterious disappearance — or why it it took nearly two months for the disappearance to be reported by the child's family.
The passage of time has obscured the police investigation into the missing toddler, authorities said,
"That's our main worry," Sullivan County Sheriff Jeff Cassidy told reporters on Friday. "This is unlike anything I've ever seen. We usually have to act really quick and usually [on a] one hour or two hour basis... but we're talking two months, and it's hindering a lot of our investigation."
The child's parents, Megan "Maggie" Boswell and Ethan Perry are "involved" in the investigation, although Perry — who an active duty member of the U.S. military — is currently stationed in Louisiana, Sullivan County authorities said at a press conference on Friday, according to an ABC affiliate.
Authorities wouldn't say if Megan Boswell is a suspect in the case.
"We're not disregarding anybody as a suspect at this time," Cassidy added.
The child's father, who claimed he's cooperating with detectives, posted a plea to his Facebook followers regarding the case on Wednesday.
"I'm currently working with authorities trying to find Evelyn," Perry said. "I can't say much more than that at the moment. If anybody knows anything please message me."
Megan Boswell was seen leaving the Sullivan County courthouse on Friday morning, the Herald Courier reported. Trailed by reporters into a parking lot, Boswell did not speak and refused to answer questions from the media.
"Do you know where Evelyn is? Why didn't you report her missing?" reporters repeatedly asked the woman before she got into a silver sedan.
The 15-month-old missing toddler is believed to have been last seen wearing a pink tracksuit, pink shoes, and a pink bow. Evelyn has blond hair, blue eyes, is approximately two feet tall and weighs 28 pounds, authorities said.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is also assisting local agencies with the missing child's investigation.
Police tip lines have received nearly 100 phone calls since being set up on Wednesday, according to the Bristol Herald Courier. The investigation is ongoing as detectives continue to follow up on phone tips.
"All leads have and will continue to be followed up on," Cassidy said. "We are continuing to interview anybody that may have any information on the whereabouts of Evelyn."
Anyone who may have information related to the toddler's whereabouts are encouraged to contact the Sullivan County Sheriff's Office at 423-279-7330 or the TBI Tennessee Bureau of investigation 1-800-TBI-FIND.
Evelyn Boswell
Missing Girl Kamille McKinney Was Suffocated, Officials Say
Houston Man Allegedly Held 15-Year-Old Captive For Months

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


As seen on HGTV's Ellen's Design Challenge, Season 2!
300 metres of Sisal rope, epoxy resin. Resin sponsorship by Whitten Timber, London.
Entire installation weighs 780 pounds.
The installation's title—Apotropaic—consists of three primary visual elements: 300 continuous meters of Sisal rope, bronze cast knots and a functional lounge chair made of rope.
Since 2012, I have maintained a list of words that have sent me to the dictionary; the impetus for the design, materials used and overall installation of Apotropaic comes from that list. Loosely defined as a verb, meaning 'to ward away evil', apotropaic practices have been practiced by a variety of historic cultures. Knots were once employed as apotropaic devices; the more intricate or complex the knot, the more power it held (think of Celtic designs).
The bronze knot fixtures within Apotropaicalter the scale, standing as sculptural objects on their own. They stand as signposts for the directional movement of the larger rope piece.
The placement of this installation, in a corridor, highlights the processional element of the drawing. Similar to that of one's journey up the acropolis, toward the Parthenon, the spatial experience leads an individual from the beginning of the corridor to the end, preparing oneself for what awaits them at the work's culmination.. These initial rope strands function as drawings along the wall, culminating – at the far end – into a continuous braid which wraps itself into a functional lounge chair. Apotropaic is a design drawing that has come to life, visually, and as a spatial experience.
A huge thank you to Whitten Timber, London for sponsorship by their contribution of Resin to make this piece happen!
© 2018 Cristin McKenzie Gibson & McKenzie Gibson Limited. All rights reserved.


My clay sculpture "Pick Your Own" is now on exhibit until January 4. It's a juried show. I was pleasantly surprised to see the photo of my work shown on the award announcement page.
Click on "more" to see the page.


As a freshman in college, my one (moderately) responsible financial decision was setting up a checking account that rounded up every purchase I made to the next dollar and shuttled the extra change into a mini savings account. When a friend from the business school suggested I'd be better off investing that money, I ignored him completely. None of the seemingly complex investing options he proposed made any sense to my 19-year-old mind. I was happy to let my money accrue nickel by dime by penny in what amounted to a glorified piggy bank.
As it turns out, I wasn't all that different from the rest of my penny-pinching generation. One recent study by UBS called millennials the "most fiscally conservative generation since the Great Depression," saying they hold the bulk of their assets in cash and view saving, not investing, as the most sound financial strategy. Often, members of this generation find themselves either unable to come up with a lump sum to meet account minimums for most investment firms, or they're simply unwilling to pay a financial adviser's hefty commission fees.
Now, a startup called Acorns wants to solve these problems with a new smartphone app, hoping it can help millennials outgrow the piggy bank. Much like the checking account I set up all those years ago, the app links to a user's debit or credit card and rounds up on every purchase. But rather than letting the cash stagnate, Acorns invests it. Users can choose one of five portfolios, ranging from conservative to aggressive risk, and the cost is $1 a month, plus anywhere from 0.25% to 0.5% of their earnings. They can also withdraw their funds at any time.
With this app, Acorns joins a growing list of startups attempting to create an onramp for a new type of investor, the under-30 set, which many have referred to as "the recession generation." Companies like Betterment and Wealthfront are using behavioral science and automation to reduce human error in investing and charge lower fees than traditional financial advisors. But Acorns takes a more streamlined approach. Founded by Walter and Jeff Cruttenden, a father-and-son team from Newport Beach, California, the startup is hoping that its dead simple "invest the change" model can serve as a sort of gateway drug to the wider world of investing.
That plan appears to be paying off. Among the more than 10,000 users who tested Acorns before launch, more than one third of them are under the age of 22, and a full 85 percent are under the age of 35. "We're really excited to be engaging this young group," says Jeff Cruttenden, Acorns' COO, a millennial himself.
The young co-founder is unique among his peers in that he's been investing in the stock market since he was in high school, something he owes largely to his father's influence. Before founding Acorns, Walter launched the investment banking firm Cruttenden Roth, now Roth Capital, and also started the investment banking arm of E*Trade.
It was during Jeff's senior year at Lewis & Clark College that he and Walter began discussing how technology had drastically reduced the cost of trading. Walter predicted that this cost reduction would usher in a new age of microinvesting in the U.S. "Jeff held up his smartphone and he said: 'Dad, it's going to happen this way," Walter remembers.
So the team spent the next two years dealing with regulators and becoming their own broker dealer, raising some $9 million in funding along the way. All the while, they worked on simplifying the technology to enable users to set up an account and start investing in minutes. Users sign up using their bank username and password, and provide basic details about themselves, including their social security number, income, net worth, and investment goals. That allows Acorns to recommend the right portfolio for them. Rather than offering an array of investment options, Acorns only offers users so-called exchange traded funds.
Acorns has been called the Tinder of investing. Just as Tinder made online dating as easy as swiping left or right, so too has Acorns simplified the often tedious and complex process of investing. But that doesn't mean the investment strategy is any less sophisticated. The portfolios were designed with help from Dr. Harry Markowitz, a Nobel Prize winner, who is commonly referred to as the father of modern portfolio theory. Jeff met Dr. Markowitz through a friend who was a student of his at the University of California, San Diego.
Of course, all by itself, this approach isn't likely to make anyone rich. The average user invests about $.57 per transaction, with three transactions a day. That's about $50 a month. According to Jeff, the average expected return of these portfolios ranges from 4 to 9 percent. The hope is that as Acorns' users become more accustomed to investing, they'll opt to invest even more of their money in the markets. And when that day comes, the Cruttendens say, they'll be ready.


text:
More and More People Are Buying FAW V2
Chinese Cars, General, Opinions
The oligopolistic automobile market in Pakistan which is long dominated by three Japanese players (referred to as Big3) offers very limited choices for car buyers. The government in order to lose the grip of the Big 3, introduced the Automobile Development policy in 2016 which mainly attracted non-Japanese players to come invest in the country.
Related: Pakistan Auto Policy: What Needs to be Done?
Although it has been three years since the policy was taken into effect, so far its fruits are yet to be reaped. Majority of what that has been offered by newcomers are either commercial pickups or minivans or over-expensive SUVs that simply pose no threat to the existing Japanese players whatsoever.
In these circumstances FAW V2 is the only option among passenger cars that give the buyers a chance to opt for something other than what is offered by the Big3. Introduced back in 2014 as CBU import the V2 got positive response from the consumers which gave ample confidence to the company to begin assembling the hatchback locally.
Ever since the local production commenced in August 2017, sales of FAW V2 have gone up considerably. Today more and more people are buying the car, which has become quite a regular sight on our roads. Its generally unusual for any newcomer to survive in this Japanese dominated resale oriented market as many came and went during all these years. But FAW V2 against all odds have proven to be a reliable and feature-rich option and has already become the choice of many and has developed a decent resale value in used-car market as well.
It has performed well in the toughest of conditions and has gained a solid reputation among the consumers with its nimble acceleration, spacious cabin, ample cargo volume, decent equipment, safety features on offer, FAW's extensive warranty and most importantly its price tag.
FAW V2 in Pakistan comes available with a 1.3 liter engine that is compliant to Euro IV emission standards, as is mated to a 5-speed manual transmission. Key features include Dual Airbags, ABS with EBD, Alloy Wheels, Power Windows, Electric Power Steering, Central Locking and Engine Immobilizer. It is backed by FAW's 3-year/ 60,000km warranty (whichever occurs first).
Related: 5 Things About FAW V2 You Might Not Know
The only thing that V2 lacks is the automatic transmission option. If Al-Haj is able to offer an automatic variant of the V2, its sales are going to be further improved for sure.
Muhammad Muaaz
What about the sales figures of FaW v2 and xpv, why don't we see the sales figures of this company
Hammad
Please also add the bar the of bikes because bike reviews are also important for customers
Tags:Al-Haj FAWFAWV2
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TRUMBULL, Conn. -- A state Board of Education member from Trumbull who has been arrested four times on drunken driving charges this year was held on a large bond after a judge called him a "threat" on Tuesday, according to the Connecticut Post.
Stephen Wright, 62, had been sought by police since late April after failing to show up to court on one of the four drunken driving arrests, according to the Connecticut Post. He was finally taken into custody last week.
While appearing in court on Wednesday, Superior Court Judge Kevin Doyle ordered that Wright be held on a $300,000 bond that could only be posted at the courthouse, according to the Connecticut Post. The judge said that Wright gave evasive answers and violated the conditions of his release, the Connecticut Post reported.
Wright had been arrested on Feb. 22 by Norwalk Police, on Feb. 27 by Shelton Police, on March 17 by state police and on April 10 by Stratford Police, according to the Connecticut Post. In the Norwalk and Stratford arrests, he was released on a promise to appear in court, while in the Shelton and state arrests, he posted $1,000 and $500 bonds, respectively.
A warrant was issued for his arrest on April 20 after he did not show up to court for his Norwalk arrest, according to the Connecticut Post. He was finally taken into custody on May 2.
In addition to now showing up for court, Wright also did not attend court-ordered alcohol education classes, the Connecticut Post reported. He had claimed that he was under arrest at the time of the class, but this turned out to not be true, the Connecticut Post reported.
Doyle said that Wright was a threat to himself and others when ordering him into custody on Tuesday, according to the Connecticut Post. A lawyer for Wright told the Connecticut Post that she expects he will be able to post bond on Wednesday.


This article is for people who don't like capitalism, but who aren't sure that a better kind of society is realistically possible. It is for people who wonder, quite reasonably, "How would the economy work?" and "Isn't the only alternative to a free-market economy a centrally planned one, which means even less personal freedom and probably low productivity and low quality goods, as was the case so famously in the former Soviet Union?"
I am going to describe the outlines of a society in transition from a capitalist one based on profit and the market to a more solidarity-based society which is not based on profit and the market. In this society there are what I call "circles of trust" within which people collectively own the means of production (i.e. what they require in order to make things or provide services in the larger economy) and within which they relate to each other economically by sharing rather than buying and selling. Some people are in circles of trust and some are not. As the circles of trust grow to include more people, the society becomes less a capitalistic one and more like what many of us want.
But first, there is an important "horse before the cart" question that must be addressed. While the society I am describing here is transitional in the sense that some economic relations are still profit/market-driven and some are not, even this merely transitional society could not exist without a prior revolution. I am not, therefore, suggesting that the way to create a better world is simply to start creating economic circles of trust (like food cooperatives, say) and work to expand their membership. The reason why not is this.
Until we make a revolution, by which I mean until a mass movement, aiming for a more equal and democratic and solidarity-based society, overthrows the power of our current ruling class, it is not realistic to talk about circles of trust growing to any significant size. The corporate and government elite who rule society today know very well that they are threatened whenever people try–as they always do in little ways and occasionally big ways–to create more egalitarian social relations. The elite use their power to attack any overt expression of solidarity or deviance from the principle that profit and self-interest are the only legitimate values. Every corporation, for example, is required by the "fiduciary responsibility law" to make all decisions based on maximizing profit to the shareholders, not doing good for others. There are laws against solidarity, such as the laws against "sympathy" strikes. Other laws prevent public employees from bargaining over issues other than narrow self-interest, by restricting the permissible issues to "wages and working conditions," meaning that teachers cannot openly bargain for the welfare of their students by fighting to end the oppressive mis-use of standardized testing for example. Apart from the laws, the elite use their economic power– to hire and fire and to relocate factories and whole industries–to attack people who act on the principle of solidarity. It will take a revolution just to gain the space to begin creating a solidarity economy.
A revolution to politically defeat a social class can take place relatively quickly compared to the task of re-shaping an entire society and economy by very different values. A fundamentally new kind of economy must therefore be able to arise somewhat gradually from the old, or it probably can never arise at all. The society described below can, by its very nature, gradually change from capitalistic to solidaristic, at a speed determined by how quickly people come to trust each other, something which will depend on continued political discussion and struggle after the revolution.
The question I am addressing here, however, is not whether a revolution is possible (an excellent discussion about why it is can be found in We CAN Change the World, by David Stratman) but whether, after we make a political revolution, we will be able to create an economy that provides the things we need and desire in a social framework that does not stifle personal freedom and creativity. I want to convince the reader that the things that capitalism brags about and which Communism so evidently lacked–the ability to achieve great economic productivity without a totalitarian government–are possible to enjoy in a very non-capitalist post-revolutionary society. Capitalism, in other words, is not the "only game in town." Revolution, therefore, is a very sensible goal to fight for. I offer the following discussion of how a post-revolutionary transitional society might operate in order to give revolutionaries (and would-be revolutionaries!) some confidence that they are not crazy for trying to build a revolutionary movement.
The "circles of trust" society I describe is not a blueprint, no more than a discussion of the principles of a free-market economy is a blueprint for what a particular free-market society would look like. It is, however, an attempt to provide just enough detail about the economy and government and culture of a non-market society to enable the reader to use his or her imagination to fill in the blanks with some confidence that the imagined society would be not only feasible but also desirable.
There are probably lots of ways to have a non-market economy and no doubt some are superior to what I describe here. Once people defeat the plutocracy and any other forces that oppose solidarity, there is no limit to what people might create by trial and error, and there is no reason why they could not change things over time. That, again, is why we don't need a blueprint. Nor do we need to know the BEST way to organize a non-market economy. For a revolutionary movement to have confidence, it is sufficient merely to know that there is at least one way to have a much better world than the capitalist one. That's what I hope readers conclude from what follows.
A circle of trust may be a large circle with many members or a small circle with just a few members. Any people who mutually agree to be a circle of trust can do so, regardless of what they may or may not have in common: they may live very close to each other or very far apart; they may all work together in the same office or factory or farm, or work in the same industry or kind of work but live far apart geographically, or even work in completely unrelated kinds of work; they may share an interest in performing music together as a band, or playing sports as a team (or league), or working to solve a certain problem, perhaps involving scientific research; or they may have nothing particular in common except a level of mutual trust for some reason. The typical nuclear family, for example, is a circle of trust that we are already familiar with today.
A person is free to belong to no circle, to one circle, or to many circles, and to enter or leave any circle whenever he or she wishes. The only condition is that to belong to a circle requires the approval (directly or indirectly, as we will discuss shortly) of all the other members of the circle.
Let us assume that between people who are not in the same circle of trust, economic relations are the standard capitalist ones based on a market economy and the profit motive. For example, one group of people (let's call them "shareholders") may, collectively, own some means of production, say a factory with all of its machinery, and a different group of people (let's call them "property-less workers") may live in the town where the factory is located. The shareholders may or may not belong to a circle of trust, but if they do we'll assume it excludes the property-less workers. Likewise the workers may or may not belong to a circle of trust, but if they do we'll assume it excludes the shareholders. Economic relations between the shareholders and the workers is exactly the same as in our current capitalist society: the shareholders say, "We own the factory and everything produced in it, and we'll pay you low wages to work in it if you are willing." Nothing new here. But what is new is the way things start to change when, as we are assuming here, there has been a revolution and the capitalist class is no longer dominant either militarily or politically.
Clearly, when a society contains only very small circles of trust, even if there are very many of them, that society is essentially a capitalist one, because most of the economic relations between people are relations between people who, even if they each belong to a circle of trust, do not belong to the same circle of trust.
The strength of a solidarity culture versus a competition culture at any given time is reflected by how close or far away a society is from being one in which everybody belongs to one common circle of trust.
When a circle of trust is small, like a family, no formalities are generally required. Everybody in the circle of trust knows everybody else in it personally. Everybody knows who is and who is not a member of their circle of trust. Mom and Dad may share a single checking account. Meals are made available to everybody regardless of how much they contribute to the family's income. Family members are expected to "do their share" according to ability and if they don't the price they pay is suffering the disapproval of other family members, not forfeiting their right to meals and shelter. Trust, and a desire to be regarded well by other members of the circle–and by oneself–is what makes it all work. But how can this be extended to large numbers of people who don't know each other personally?
Imagine a society that, on the surface, seems like what we have today. Most people go to work at an office or factory or mine or farm or they drive a bus or a taxi or they are entertainers or athletes or artists or they are children or retired people or people too sick to work, or lazy bums or what have you. They buy things at "stores" (think local market, bazaar, shopping mall, internet, and so forth.) They pay for the services of others–barbers, house contractors, plumbers, physicians, etc.
Now imagine that some people have a "circle of trust card" (call it an S-card, "S" for solidarity), somewhat like today's familiar credit card. When a person goes to a store (either a real building or some web version) to get something, either an object or perhaps a service provided by somebody or some organization, they use their S-card. Like a credit card today, the S-card is read by some device connected to a database and it responds to the proposed "purchase" with the message "approved" or "not approved." If the message is "approved" then the price is zero. If the message is "not approved" then the price is the free-market price or whatever the seller wishes to charge, and the transaction involves the exchange of money, like today, perhaps with an old-fashioned credit card.
What determines if the message is "approved" or "not approved?" The message is "approved" only if the "seller" and "buyer" are both members of the same circle of trust.
At this point two obvious questions arise. The first question is, "If the price of widgets were zero for people in a circle of trust with widget-makers, wouldn't widgets disappear as fast as they could be produced, taken by people with virtually no real need of widgets?" To answer this question, consider how most people in our current capitalist society, where self-interest is promoted and solidarity is attacked, behave when confronted with free items. At the dinner table people are very reluctant to take the last especially delicious item from the serving platter; often it goes unclaimed, or if somebody does take it they typically offer it to others first. At the store by the cash register, the little bowl with pennies ('take a penny, give a penny') is usually well stocked; I've never seen or heard of anybody grabbing all the pennies in it. Where I work (nearly a hundred employees) we have an office supplies room with all sorts of goodies from pads of paper, envelopes, postits, paperclips, very nice pens, pencils, and so forth, and its all free for the taking; there has never been a problem with supplies disappearing. For the kind of people who would be members of a circle of trust, a price of zero would not be an invitation to take more than is reasonable. Could some individuals abuse the trust of others by taking more than what is reasonable? Sure. This is discussed below when the problem of "slackers," and how they would be handled, is examined.
The second question is, "How could two people from, say, distant parts of the world, who don't know each other, end up in the same circle of trust?" The answer involves small circles inside of larger circles. Let's say that Sam works as a research scientist in Boston, and Natasha works in a Vodka distillery in Russia. How could Sam and Natasha end up in the same circle of trust? Let's see.
HOW CAN ONE CIRCLE OF TRUST INCLUDE BILLIONS OF PEOPLE?
Keep in mind that everything said above about what Mary could do if she didn't trust Sam would, in practice, seldom happen. Simply knowing that such actions are possible would more likely result in people raising concerns with each other and reaching subtle compromises rather than expelling members from circles or breaking a large circle into a smaller one. The reason this is so is because, as we will see, the larger a circle of trust a person belongs to, the better their quality of life; conversely it is, as we all know from living in today's capitalist society, no fun to be an isolated individual in a capitalist world where one confronts everybody else as a competitor.
Of course twenty people working together in an office, doing scientific research and/or support work for that research, have economic needs that go way beyond what they can provide to each other. Suppose A, therefore, wishing to be in a gift economy relationship with more people, applies–as a circle, not just as individuals–for membership in a "circle of circles of trust." There might be, for example, other circles of trust (say B and C and etc.) formed by people the way A members formed A. B might be residential neighbors. C might be young people in a musical band. And so on. These circles of trust might, for one reason or another, know enough about each other to decide if they trust each other. Perhaps they are all in the same small geographical area, or perhaps they are geographically distant but collaborate with each other in their line of work, or perhaps they share something else in common (religious beliefs? a love of gardening?). Whatever is the basis of their trust, A and B and C can self-constitute as a larger "circle of circles of trust" (called, say, ABC) if each member circle agrees to trust the other member circles.
Just as individual people can join as many or as few circles of trust as they wish, so also can circles (and circles of circles) join as many or as few other circles of trust as they wish. Furthermore, there is no limit to higher-order circles of trust forming, in other words circles of trust whose members are in turn smaller circles of trust, whose members are in turn are smaller circles of trust and so on and so on until, at the bottom, there are circles whose members are individual human beings. An extremely-high-order circle of trust could include a billion people or more (even everybody on the planet!), but its members might be just a relatively small number of moderately-high-order circles of trust, each of which, by whatever means its own members agreed upon, had decided to trust the other moderately-high-order circles of trust.
Note that the decision by one circle to trust another circle does not require the first circle to have direct knowledge of every single member of the second circle; it simply means that it trusts the second circle as a single entity, most likely based on its overall reputation. A circle's reputation would depend on many things, and might be very good even if some of its members had below-average reputations. This is the way people, today, evaluate organizations like universities and hospitals, and it would no doubt be the way circles evaluate other circles.
It is not hard to see that circles of circles would have an incentive to join circles of circles of circles and so on up the hierarchy. The incentive to join a higher-order circle is to enjoy the benefits of being in a gift economy relation with more people producing a wider range of objects or services. "Benefits," however, doesn't necessarily mean material benefits only; it also means the social/political benefits of living in a society based on solidarity instead of competition; living in such a society, remember, is the reason people join the circles in the first place.
CAN CIRCLES OF TRUST GROW LARGE?
Sure they can. In Seattle during the great general strike of 1919, 110 union locals joined in a strike that grew so fast and so large that it shocked the rulers. In just two weeks Seattle went from business as usual to the point where, for six days, virtually nothing happened in the city except as approved by the General Strike Committee. Mass solidarity broke out. The working class of Seattle was, essentially, a short-lived circle of trust, providing services and goods to each other but not to the capitalists. It didn't last long, but not because it was unworkable or because the workers didn't like it. It was defeated by capitalist violence, specifically the National Guard, 950 sailors and marines sent in by the federal government, and the Mayor's 2400 specially sworn in deputies.
During the Spanish Civil War in 1936-7, in provinces such as Catalonia, more than five million people rose up and overthrew the capitalists and their Catholic Church allies and created a huge non-market gift economy. As in Seattle, it was defeated by a violent attack, in this case led by fascists and aided by Stalin.
Seattle was PRE-revolutionary; the capitalists held state power. Spain was only post-revolutionary temporarily. The society being outlined here, in contrast, is assumed to be a long term POST-revolutionary one; the capitalists, at least politically, have been defeated and are assumed to remain defeated. They cannot attack expressions of solidarity with governmental violence anymore. Under such conditions it is entirely reasonable to expect that circles of trust will grow larger and faster than in a pre-revolutionary society.
It is not inevitable, however, that circles of trust would grow larger; they could even shrink and disappear. The outcome would depend on who waged the continuing class war more successfully, people who want a more egalitarian and equal society based on solidarity, or people (presumably many of the old capitalist elite, and others) who want to go back to "the good old days" of capitalist inequality, exploitation and competition.
The net result of people joining circles of trust and circles in turn joining higher order circles is that Sam in his office in Boston would belong to a higher-order circle of trust and Natasha in a vodka distillery in Russia would also likely be in a higher-order circle of trust. If the orders of their circles of trust were high enough then Sam and Natasha could very well end up both being a member of the same higher-order circle of trust. A bottle of vodka from Natasha's distillery could be in a Boston store for Sam to take for free. And Natasha might go to her local drug store and take for free a pill that incorporated knowledge made possible by Sam's research. The more the culture of solidarity gained over the culture of competition the more likely that Natasha and Sam would indeed end up in a common higher-order circle of trust.
We have discussed the incentive to join higher order circles of trust, but there is also a disincentive. The disincentive, of course, is the quite reasonable fear of entering into a gift economy relationship with "slackers," meaning people who take far more than they reasonably ought to, and/or give far less. Note that a person who can give virtually nothing and who takes quite a bit is not necessarily a slacker; the person might be old and infirm and in need of a lot of medical care, or a baby. Most people will distinguish between a baby, say, and a real slacker. But a slacker could also be not just an individual but an entire circle or even a circle of circles or an even higher order circle. Also, one person's (or circle's) "slacker" might be another person's (or circle's) valuable member of society; it's a judgment call and people will disagree. A heavy metal musical band might be a slacker in the eyes of some and the best thing since sliced bread in the eyes of others.
To the extent that people wish to avoid being in a gift economy relation with those whom they consider to be slackers (and only to this extent), the existence of slackers is an important problem. And to the extent that this problem bothers people, then people who, or circles of trust that, specialize in providing trustworthy information about who is, or what circles are, a slacker would be highly regarded. Let's call such people "journalists." Journalists would probably form circles of trust made up of journalists, or, as individuals, enter other circles of trust whose members include non-journalists; in other words they would enter circles of trust just like anybody else, and they would apply for membership in circles of circles etc., on the basis of their journalism being a valuable contribution to society. If respected journalists exposed a person, or a circle of trust, or even a higher order circle of trust as, in the opinion of the journalist at least, a slacker, then other circles might ask the slacker circle to withdraw its name from circles that they belonged to in common, or they might leave such circles and form new ones that excluded the slacker circle, or they might ask the slacker to shape-up, or (and this is not to be dismissed as unreasonable) they might say "to hell with it, let them be a slacker and live with the public disapproval." And, of course, some circles could respond one way and other circles a different way to the same slacker. Again, as discussed in connection with Sam and Mary, in practice there would be a process of sharing concerns and negotiating subtle compromises.
Notice that a "slacker" – a person or circle or circle of circles etc.-- is not necessarily a slacker because of the QUANTITY of what he, she or it takes and gives; the slacker label might very well be earned because of the QUALITY of what is given. A person might operate a little restaurant, and serve lots of food, but prepared terribly. Or maybe it is prepared well, but it is Russian cuisine and nobody in the region likes Russian cuisine. Whatever the reason, journalists might report, and word might just spread independently of journalists, that the restaurant is a slacker restaurant. If that happened, the people operating the restaurant, whose membership in a circle of trust depended upon others trusting them (on the basis of the restaurant providing a reasonable contribution to society) would be in jeopardy of losing their circle of trust membership. To avoid this (as well as simply to avoid feeling like nobody appreciated what they were doing in society), they would most likely try to ensure that the cuisine they provided was enjoyed by enough people to ensure their membership in a large circle of trust.
Notice also that the behavior of the restaurant workers described above adapts to the needs or desires of their "customers" in a socially desirable manner and yet this happens in the absence of a capitalist market or profit or even money. Something besides the famous "invisible hand" of capitalism operating through the motive of self-interest, and yet different also from a central economic plan as in the Soviet Union, plays the role, in this solidarity society, of providing rapid feedback to economic producers so that the economy produces what people really want. We will discuss this in greater detail below.
In this regard, it is quite possible that journalists would not only expose slackers, but also praise people/circles that deserve special recognition for doing something great. Why not? Which leads to the question, who will do the unpleasant work?
WHO WILL PICK UP THE GARBAGE?
There may be some work that society needs to be done and which everybody would consider unpleasant. Before discussing this, it is important to note that many things that one person would consider unpleasant another person would not. Being a garbage collector may not be Sam's cup of tea, but Susan might consider it a pretty good way to make a contribution to society while getting some great exercise or fresh air or knowledge of one's neighbors. Roger might think that having to learn a lot of academic mumbo-jumbo is not his idea of a good life and that he'd rather clean the building where academics work. Pat would rather stick her nose in books. So the problem of "who will do the unpleasant work" may not be as big a problem as some would think.
But suppose that nobody wanted to pick up the garbage. What then? One solution, of course, is for society to tell Tyrone and Miguel, "Here's the deal: we will deprive you of food and shelter unless you pick up our garbage." That, essentially, is the capitalist way. What might happen in a more solidaristic society? One possibility, of course, is that the garbage would go uncollected and start to become a nuisance and eventually a health hazard. Before things got too bad, however, some people, presumably, would decide to collect the garbage. They might decide to do it by working only 10 hours a week, and request membership in a large circle of trust on the grounds that it is such an unpleasant task. The memory of the smell of rotting garbage would be a strong inducement to members of a large circle of trust to welcome the 10-hours-per-week garbage collectors. Eventually, some arrangement would come about, unless everybody agreed to live with no garbage collection–unlikely. Quite likely, people who were known as slackers for producing what nobody wanted would be the kind of person who would consider becoming a garbage collector, because most people don't want to be known as slackers. Of course there is no limit to the ways people could deal with the problem. Perhaps people who hated collecting garbage and who were already members of large circles of trust would agree to each do a little of it and enjoy special praise or cut back on the work they were doing before. The point is that it is not hard to imagine that even in a 100% gift economy the problem would be solved one way or another.
This society requires databases with lists of circles and their members. Stores and any other venue in which people engage in economic transactions would subscribe to a data base to determine, for each transaction, if the response to the "purchaser's" S-card is "approved" or "not approved." As with the "journalists," people who helped create and maintain such databases would join circles like anybody else. Stores would subscribe to whatever database or databases they desired. Journalists would expose fraudulent databases. People operating stores, and others "selling" their services would, if they wished to be members of the gift economy, have an incentive to be well-regarded by others and therefore to subscribe to the largest and most accurate databases. If a store was in the same circle as the provider of a database, the database would be available to them for free; otherwise they would have to pay for it.
WHAT ABOUT WIDGETS IF THERE IS NO PROFIT MOTIVE?
What about scarcity? What would happen if there were not enough of something to meet the demand? Conversely, what if too much of something was being produced for the actual demand. How would corrections be made analogously to the way the "invisible hand" does this in a market economy by means of prices rising or falling as a function of supply and demand?
In a market economy people produce widgets in order to sell them to whomever will pay the most for them. Widget makers decide how many widgets to produce, and whom to sell them to, on this basis. As long as one doesn't mind the fact that people who desperately need widgets but have no money to buy them must go widgetless, this system "works"; supply tends to match demand, as Adam Smith with his "invisible hand" so famously argued. The "invisible hand" is a relatively good feedback mechanism that allows the overall economy to adapt to all sorts of changes: changes in technology, in consumer tastes, natural disasters like Katrina and so forth.
Within a circle of trust how would this occur? Take a small circle of trust, a family for example, to start out with. How does Mom or Dad know how much food to prepare for a meal? In the absence of a market place within a family, children don't buy their meals. There is no price feedback mechanism. Does everything go haywire? Do the kids find nothing on their dinner plate one night and twenty pounds of mashed potatoes on it another night? Obviously Mom and Dad rely on past experience and common sense to decide how much food to prepare. If Mom and Dad stray too far from mark there will be non-price feedback mechanisms: the kids will complain if they are hungry, or mounds of food will remain on the plates after dinner.
When we "scale up" to very large higher-order circles of trust there will be similar analogous feedback mechanisms as well as experience and common sense at play. Like Mom and Dad preparing meals, the people making economic decisions are motivated not by profit but by solidarity–a concern for others in the circle of trust. If widget makers hear that there is a scarcity of widgets somewhere, by reading the newspaper (remember those journalists?) or by phone calls from widgetless people (or factories or whatever) and if they hear that un-taken widgets are piling up in stores somewhere else, then they would naturally direct widgets to where they are more needed. If they didn't do this, it would be a kind of incompetence that would put them at risk of being labeled slackers.
What if there was a shortage of widgets everywhere? The answer to this is essentially the same as the answer to the question about what happens if nobody collects the garbage. Widget makers might work harder to cover a temporary scarcity of widgets and then take a well-deserved vacation after the emergency, or they may issue a call announcing that they need more people to help them make more widgets on a longer term basis, and either people would join the widget makers and their circle of trust for some reason (they need some way to avoid being a slacker, they want to help widgetless people) or some people would become independent widget makers, or society would have to put up with a permanent shortage of widgets.
What if there was an oversupply of widgets everywhere? Then the widget makers could take a holiday, if the oversupply was temporary. They would not likely be labeled slackers for this. If the oversupply seemed to be a long term one, then widget makers, or at least some of them, would have to get out of the widget-making industry and find some other way to make themselves useful if they wished to remain in a large circle of trust. If too many widget makers all remained a widget maker but hardly any of them did much work, then they would be at risk of being labeled as slackers. The point is that, just as within a family preparing meals, supply and demand feedback mechanisms can operate by means other than market-determined price. Largeness of scale does not prevent people from using past experience and common sense, and it does not prevent information about supply and demand from reaching the appropriate people.
In a market economy business decisions must, ultimately, be based only on price in order to maximize profit. A business that behaved differently would eventually lose to the competition and go out of business. Furthermore, the "fiduciary responsibility" law in a capitalist society obliges the managers of "publicly owned' corporations to maximize profit, which means making decisions based on price. The significance of the "invisible hand" playing a positive role for society even though individual decisions are based on self-interest (profit and price) is not that a feedback mechanism based on price is superior to other feedback methods. The only "wonderful" thing about the "invisible hand" is that, in a society that perversely makes profit the ONLY motive, and market-determined price the ONLY feedback mechanism, some positive social consequences can nonetheless be expected (at least theoretically) due to the "invisible hand." Just because people in a market economy respond ONLY to price and profit, however, does not mean that people in a more natural and common-sense gift economy cannot or would not respond to other forms of supply and demand information, of which there are many.
WHAT ABOUT REALLY BIG WIDGETS TAKING THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE TO MAKE?
To the criticism that a large complex economy cannot operate with circles of trust and that an efficient economy requires a market place and the logic of profit, it is only necessary to note that huge chunks of the American economy are not at all market-based. Some corporations are larger economies than some nations, and yet within these corporations goods and services are shared, in a sense, rather than bought and sold for profit. The American military is, itself, a huge economy, but it doesn't operate on the basis of a market/profit logic. When troops and supplies are needed (for bad purposes, but that's another story) somewhere they are moved there; nobody waits to see if somebody there will "buy" them. The publicly financed American medical research economy, funded by the National Institutes of Health (with its budget determined by Congress) allocates almost thirty billion dollars per year to hundreds of different laboratories and researchers and universities with a system that relies mainly on people or institutions making either unsolicited grant proposals or proposals in response to specific NIH requests. NIH-appointed committees of experts (peers of those asking for the grants) decide which applications to fund, on the basis of scientific merit and social usefulness. Within this process, the only way that the logic of the market and profit play any role is insofar as the NIH exists within a capitalist society in which what is "socially useful" is determined by the people who are powerful in a capitalist society, such as the owners of big pharmaceutical corporations who might find a pill for hair loss more "socially useful" than a pill to cure a disease that afflicts only very poor people. Other than this external influence of capitalism on the process, the allocation of resources within the publicly funded scientific economy is not market-driven and quite efficient, and it does not prevent scientists from being very innovative and creative.
The failure of the Soviet Union's non-market economy was due not to its not being a market/profit economy, but to the fact that it was an extremely undemocratic society ruled by an elite Bolshevik Party upper class. People were treated essentially like slaves, and slaves have no incentive, obviously, to work or be creative or do anything except be what the slave-owner regards as a "slacker." This is the source of the old joke about the Soviet economy: "They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work."
Will there be Rolex watches or mansions or psychotherapy for one's pet dog after the revolution? And if so, who will get these things? The answer to the first question is, "Yes, if enough people want such things to be produced and enough people are willing to produce them." And the answer to the second question is, "Whomever the people producing these luxuries give, or sell them, to."
We've already discussed the non-circles-of-trust money economy in general, how it can exist next to the circles-of-trust gift economy but without the ability of owners to coerce workers that prevails before the revolution in a capitalist society. Luxury items, like any other item, could be produced in this money economy and sold to whomever can afford to pay the asking price.
But luxury items could also be produced in the circles-of-trust gift economy. Say that some people form a circle to produce Rolex watches. Besides producing the watches, they would presumably have some policy for deciding what to do with the watches they produce--whom to give them to, or where to make them available for the taking, although--who knows--they might decide to make the watches only for themselves. The point is that, in order to be accepted into a larger circle-of-trust, they would need for their policy on this matter to be approved by the members of that circle of trust. If the policy was one that seemed like a good and decent one, they would likely be admitted to a very large circle. For example, the policy might entail giving the watches to people who, for some reason, seemed the most deserving of a Rolex watch--perhaps people who did very dangerous work, or who lived in a region where life was very harsh, or who had suffered terrible misfortune, or who were just very well-liked for some reason. On the other hand, if the Rolex-makers' distribution policy seemed like an immoral or stupid one, they would likely remain excluded from large circles, and therefore unable to carry out their plan. The "journalists" of course would write about how luxuries were distributed, and the public discussion would be reflected in decisions to include or exclude those who wished to make and distribute luxury items.
WHO OWNS THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION?
As described so far, I have implicitly assumed that the people inside a circle of trust collectively own the means of production that they use to produce the goods and services that they share amongst themselves. If this were not true, then (as is the case today in our capitalist society) those who produced things or provided services would not have the rights of an owner over what they produced (or over the service they provided) and would not be in any position to share the fruit of their labor with others. Therefore, for a circle of trust to exist, its members must own the means of production that they require to produce the things or services that they freely share with each other.
How members of a circle of trust might acquire ownership of the means of production will be discussed next. But first, let us continue to look at the implications of the assumed ownership of the means of production by the members of a circle of trust. Since members of the circle freely share the fruits of their labor with each other, then for all practical purposes everybody is an equal owner of the circle's means of production. Within the circle of trust the concept of individual ownership of means of production is meaningless, because the only practical meaning it could have would be to provide legitimacy for one member to claim ownership of the fruits of another member's labor, which contradicts the assumption that members share the fruits of their labor freely based on concern for one another. It would be as contradictory to the circle-of-trust principle as if one parent in a family, claiming personal ownership of the stove, told the other parent who just cooked the family meal, "I own this meal."
Between two circles of trust that are not both members of the same larger circle of trust, however, economic relations are the same as between two independent businesses today, and from the point of view of each circle, the other circle holds exclusive ownership of its own means of production, be they land, machinery, buildings, tools or what have you. Each circle is a potential customer of (or subcontractor to) the other, in the old-fashioned sense. Likewise, we assumed at the beginning of this description of a circles-of-trust society that some people, "shareholders," might be classic capitalists who own substantial means of production and use wage labor. The question is, in a post-revolutionary society such as this, what is likely to happen with respect to ownership of the means of production? This leads to the answer to the question posed above, "How might members of a circle of trust come to collectively own the means of production that they require?"
Imagine how the world would look to the wage workers at the factory owned by the shareholders. They know very well that the goods or services that the shareholders sell are made possible entirely by their own labor, not the shareholders' labor. The only claim the shareholders have to owning the goods or services they sell is their assertion that they own the means of production (and hence everything that is produced with them.) This claim by capitalists has always been controversial among working people, but it was enforced by the police and military troops because the capitalists controlled the state. In a post-revolutionary society, however, where capitalists no longer control the state, the only reason that workers would honor the capitalists' claim to own the means of production is if they were convinced that the claim was morally valid, or if they were convinced that even if the claim is not morally valid it makes for a better world somehow to act as if it were.
Let us assume that our circles of trust society is one in which, at minimum, wage workers are free to discuss questions like whether capitalists should own the means of production, and that they are free to act on their conclusions. If the wage workers decided to constitute themselves as a circle of trust, and claim collective ownership of the means of production where they work, and exclude the shareholders from their circle of trust (except for those who might start doing their share of useful work for a change) what would happen?
Immediately, the question would arise: should the goods or services produced by the workers be given to those whom the workers freely decided should have them (like what happened during the General Strike in Seattle), or should the goods or services be exchanged for money with whomever would pay the most, and the money (minus a fraction that covers the workers' wages) given to the shareholders? What will happen? Who will decide? Obviously the answer depends on what the workers think is right, and how forcefully they assert themselves if they think the former choice is the right one. There is no guarantee what will happen. But in a post-revolutionary society we know that if the workers constitute themselves as a circle of trust that owns the means of production where they work, there would be much less (compared to a pre-revolutionary society) that the shareholders could do to prevent it. And once the workers did become a circle of trust, the shareholders would be under a lot of pressure to join a circle of trust themselves; and, lacking ownership of any means of production, they would probably have to agree to do some useful work with some means of production in order to gain membership in a circle of trust that was large enough to permit them to live decently.
A related question concerns what happens when somebody (or some circle of trust) ends his or her (or its) membership in a circle of trust: do they take some of the means of production with them? One possibility here is that when a person (or circle) joins a circle of trust they negotiate an agreement with it about what material things (if any) they are giving to the circle and what material things (or money equivalent) they will be owed by the circle if they leave it--sort of like a pre-nuptial agreement.
To say that the circles-of-trust society is a post-revolutionary one means that the monopoly of violence can no longer be used on behalf of capitalists to attack expressions of solidarity, as it is in our current society. Whatever else a government is, in any society, it is the organization that has a monopoly of violence. If any organization, for example, claimed to be the government over a certain territory but it could not enforce its will (regardless of whether its will was called a "law" or a "decree" or acknowledged to be merely the whim of a dictator) on everybody inside the territory who refused to willingly obey that organization, then that organization would have no practical claim to being the government in that territory. For an organization to enforce its will on everybody in a region, it is necessary that the organization be able to win any contest of wills in that region, including any violent contest. Having this power is what it means to hold a "monopoly of violence" in a region. It is equivalent to being the government, for better or for worse.
Therefore, whatever else is true about the government in a circles-of-trust society, it must not be under the control, formally or otherwise, of those who would use violence to attack expressions of solidarity. I believe that the more democratic the government is, the less likely it would use violence against expressions of solidarity, because most people believe in solidarity, as shown by the fact that in today's world they can only be persuaded to support attacks on solidarity (like wars such as the U.S. invasions of Vietnam or Iraq) by lies that make violence against solidarity appear to be violence to protect good people from bad people.
Any formally democratic government can, however, be subverted and turned into the mere shell of a democracy that, in reality, is anti-democratic. No constitution or clever structure can make a government immune from subversion. The only thing that can protect a democracy is the public being well informed and clear about the forces in society that want to subvert the democracy, and prepared to take whatever actions are required to prevent its subversion, by using governmental or non-governmental means or both.
Assuming that the people have and continue to take such actions to prevent subversion of democracy, there are many different forms that a useful and adequate government could take. A system of delegates to higher bodies which in turn send delegates to higher bodies, with the delegates able to be recalled at any time, is one method. The system of representative government in the United States, even, could probably serve well enough in the absence of covert control by the wealthy. The higher-order circles of trust, themselves, would have their own internal decision-making arrangements and this would constitute a government-like component of the society, just as the major corporations in a capitalist society today make decisions that have enormous public consequences (like whether to move a plant) even though the corporations are not formally a part of the government. There is no need to say more about the government here because the intent of this article is mainly to address the feasibility of a non-market economy, not to provide a description of a government. It is worth noting, however, that the operation of the economy as described here has no need for any particular government intervention except, if necessary, to defend the circles of trust from a violent pro-capitalist attack.
The mechanics of a circles-of-trust society–the S-cards and circle of trust databases–would not be at all hard to implement, considering that what already occurs with credit cards is as complicated if not more so.
Life in a society like this would be pretty nice, and more so the closer it became one in which everybody was in the same huge circle of trust. Most people want to lead lives that give them the satisfaction of knowing that they are doing something that makes the world a better place for themselves and others, and so most people would behave decently. Furthermore, it would be a world in which people helped each other and came to trust each other. It would be a world in which people could discover the truth about each other instead of being subjected to lies designed to pit them against each other.
Some people may indeed be slackers, but there is no reason to believe that so many people would be slackers that the society would not be able to provide for people's needs and many of their desires. Some circles of trust might let slackers be included in them and others wouldn't. Slackers would have to decide to live with what they were offered for free (along with the public disapproval) or stop being a slacker.
There is no reason, either, to suppose that such a society would produce only drab low-quality products like those for which centrally planned 'Communist" economies in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe were famous. Most people take pride in what they do, and don't want a reputation as somebody who creates junk or as somebody who is incompetent. In a society where people help each other instead of compete against each other I believe people would be far more creative and come up with far more ideas and outstanding products and services than we are offered in today's capitalist society with its built-in obsolescence and "enriched" Wonder Bread and so many other outright scams carried out only to make a profit.
While there would be no effort in this society to ensure absolute equality (as if that were even possible), there would be a limit to inequality. Somebody who took a ridiculous amount of things or enjoyed a ridiculous amount of services would likely be labeled a slacker and suffer the consequences.
The society described here can, at least in terms of the economy (the political reality is a different question), exist at some in-between level between 100% market and 100% gift economy, which means that it is not impossible on the grounds that everything would have to suddenly completely change. When the circles of trust are small, then people would continue to work pretty much as they do now. Gradually the circles of trust could grow larger if and when people came to trust each other more, which is far easier in a post-revolutionary society than the one we live in today.
Q. My worry while reading the article is that I'm pretty much of a loner and am I going to have to negotiate to get into these circles in order to eat? It just seems like this could be very time-consuming. I really don't like the voting in or out. Sounds too much like high school. I see somebody with the personality of a Bill Clinton belonging to everybody's circle. But what about the Dennis Kucinich-type? All of us vying for memberships makes me very nervous.
A. It is already the case today, under capitalism, that you must negotiate in order to eat; you have to negotiate getting hired at a job or getting paid as a consultant or sub-contractor or author to a publisher etc. In a circles-of-trust society you would also have to negotiate, but instead of having to prove to some capitalist that your work will enable them to maximize their profit, you will have to demonstrate that your work is socially beneficial. Which would you prefer? There is no reason why the latter would be more "time-consuming" than the former.
You refer to people "vying for membership" as if circles of trust were exclusive clubs, in which the admission of "popular" people would squeeze out "unpopular" people. But the circles of trust would have every incentive to admit as many people as possible (or, equivalently, to join a larger circle with as many people as possible). The more people in the circle, the greater the benefits of being inside it, as discussed in "AtR,W?" People don't "vie" with each other to enter a circle; this is a concept based on the capitalist view of society that has everybody competing with each other. The point of the circle is to allow people to help each other, not to compete with each other.
A. "AtR,W?" says, "Note that a person who can give virtually nothing and who takes quite a bit is not necessarily a slacker; the person might be old and infirm and in need of a lot of medical care, or a baby. Most people will distinguish between a baby, say, and a real slacker." Even today, under capitalism, most people already distinguish between a slacker and "the sick, infirm, retarded" etc. That is why most people support programs like Social Security in the United States, and welfare payments for disabled people. There every reason to believe that in a post-revolutionary society people would continue to feel the same way. Circles of trust, at least most of them, would view "the sick, infirm, retarded" as people deserving to be full members of the gift economy, not as "slackers." If I thought this were not true, then I would give up on the human race and stop talking about building a revolutionary movement. If you believe it is not true, then there is no way I will convince you of the desirability of building such a movement.
Q. Where's the money going to come from when I go buy something from a place that's not in my circle? I don't quite see how the economy is and isn't money-based at the same time.
A. Before delving into this question, it is interesting that most people today know where babies come from, but not where money comes from. Our current fiat currency (what U.S. dollars and virtually all other foreign currencies are) is created out of thin air, from literally nothing, whenever somebody borrows money from a bank. When Mr. Jones borrows $100 from a bank, the bank simply increases the number (of dollars) in his account by 100, and increases the number that he owes the bank by 100.
To the extent that you are in a larger circle, you would need money for fewer things. But the same principle would apply. When the circle of trust is larger, however, more options become available to its members. The members could decide that they would each, on their own, be responsible for obtaining whatever cash they needed to participate in the non-gift economy; or they could decide to operate more collectively, as if they were co-owners of a business operating in the capitalist economy. This is another example of how people are free to do things in different ways, in a circle of trust society. Of course, whether in this scenario the society evolved towards one large circle of trust for everybody or it de-evolved back to present day capitalism, or remained at some in-between status, depends entirely upon the political struggle between the pro-capitalist and pro-solidarity forces.
Lastly, if you were in a very large circle (one with billions of people) you probably wouldn't need money at all.
Q. I thought it was funny where you declared " Journalists would expose fraudulent databases." Are journalists going to be more accurate and trustworthy in your brave new world than they are now?
A. First of all, there are accurate and trustworthy journalists today. For example there are people who write articles and books exposing how things the capitalists do purportedly to benefit society are actually done to strengthen the control of capitalists over ordinary people so the capitalists can remain rich even though they are the biggest slackers of all. A person, for example, who exposes the oppressive misuse of standardized testing in our public schools is a good journalist. In a capitalist society, of course, good journalists (meaning good for ordinary people and bad for the capitalists) don't get jobs in the mainstream media, and no doubt many good journalists, or would-be good journalists either never enter, or they quickly leave, the profession for lack of being able to get decent remuneration for decent honest reporting. In a circles-of-trust society there is every reason to expect that decent honest reporting would be valued by the circles, and far more good journalists than today would find it possible to earn a living by doing good journalism. Bad journalists who were found to be untrustworthy would gain bad reputations and, like anybody else with a bad reputation, would have a hard time gaining membership in a circle of trust on the basis of their "slacker" work.
Q. Would having huge (billions of people) circles of trust prevent people from creating a more environmentally sensible economy based on local production and simpler technologies?
A. To the extent that local production meant no economic exchange of goods or services between distant locales, then there would probably not be any point to people in distant locales belonging to the same circle of trust, and such circles would probably not form. But to the extent that there were economic relations between distant locales, being in the same large circle of trust would make sense even if only the most localized production methods and primitive technology were used. Circles of trust, in other words, can accommodate very different kinds of economic production methods, ranging from local/primitive to global/high-tech. Which economic production method people chose to implement would, of course, be a political decision. The point here is simply that no matter how people resolved the local/global, primitive/high-tech questions, they would not have to do it on the basis of a capitalist market economy--it could be done on the basis of a gift economy.
Here's another person's description of how a society without money could work: "Abolish Money"
Back to "World of Revolution"


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Posts Tagged: piracy
Other Barks & Bites, Friday, September 20: CAFC Issues Precedential Decisions on Patent Term Adjustment, DOJ Announces Trade Secret Charges, USPTO Urges CAFC Deference to POP
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Presumption of Guilt: How Microsoft Won a Protracted Battle on Unlicensed Software in Ukraine
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Senate IP Subcommittee Hears from Sports Industry Reps on Need to Step Up IP Protections
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By Michelle Sara King
USTR: Counterfeit and pirated physical products valued at nearly half a trillion dollars
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INTA Keynote: 'We want to raise an anti-piracy generation'
Íñigo Méndez de Vigo, Spain's Minister of Education, Culture and Sport began by explaining talent must always have a price and that it should be …
Other Barks for Wednesday, April 5th, 2017
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The shocking dangers of buying fakes
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An Awareness Crusade Against the Online Piracy of Books
According to the Association of American Publishers, the publishing industry as a whole has lost $80 to $100 million dollars to online piracy annually. From 2009 to 2013, the number of …
By Rhonda Rees
Game of Thrones, Interstellar and Drake among 2015's most pirated digital media
Digital piracy was alive and well in 2015. Not surprisingly, the incredibly popular HBO television series Game of Thrones was the most pirated TV show with 14.4 million downloads, …
Kim Dotcom extradition case highlights de facto SOPA, PIPA rules
New Zealand Judge Nevin Dawson handed down a ruling that would allow the United States to move forward with the extradition of Kim Dotcom, the founder of …
Why Brands Need to Pay Attention to Unregulated Domains
The '.bit' domain, a new decentralized domain structure, has secured a small but loyal following, and could one day change the way brands operate online. .bit registrations …
By Monica Talley
Seventh Global Congress on Combating Counterfeiting and Piracy Opens in Istanbul
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Though they are unlikely to take center stage during the truncated session before elections or the post-election lame duck session, lawmakers will have to contend with several …
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Will Congress Break the Internet?
We must find reasonable ways to stop infringement of intellectual property on the Internet. Such a solution must be fair to the victim of the infringement. It …
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London Wildlife Trust manage over forty nature reserves across the capital. On-site information on species and habitats is a basic public communication tool. Species illustrations are used across their sites in this way.


A first ever for Subaru, the 2019 Crosstrek will be available as a Hybrid Plug-In. Read more!
The long awaited, third row 2019 Subaru Ascent starts production providing approximately 200 new jobs! Read the full article for complete details for on how Subaru of America celebrated!
Do you have a pet? Read this article to see what Automaker and Center for Pet Safety recommend for Pet Parents as temperatures rise and road trip season continues!
Check out what Subaru of America did to celebrate with the owner of this milestone purchase!
After announcing it's plans to do so in 2014, Subaru of America opened their new Headquarters which more than 550 employees will occupy. Read the full article here.
Awarded models include: Best Sporty Car: Subaru BRZ; Best Wagon: Subaru Outback; Best Subcompact SUV; Subaru Crosstrek; Best Compact SUV: Subaru Forester. Check out the full article here.
This year Subaru of America, Inc.celebrate the company's 50 years in the United States. To honor this milestone, they debuted special 50th Anniversary Editions for each vehicle in its 2018 line-up at the Chicago Auto Show. The limited edition models are based on a high-level trim and come in an all-new exclusive Heritage Blue color with unique badging and exterior and interior accents. Production quantities will be limited. Read more here.
Kelley Blue Book calculates total ownership costs for new vehicles by applying a sophisticated valuation methodology along with critical financial data from third-party providers. This is the second consecutive year that Crosstrek has received this award. Click here to read more.
The much anticipated 3-row SUV was debuted November 28, 2017 by Subaru of America. Built on an extended version of Subaru's new Global Platform, the Ascent is the biggest Subaru built and is designed for active families on the go. It offers the choice of seven- or eight- passenger configurations with a maximum towing capacity of 5,000 lb and comes standard with Symmetrical AWD. The Ascent is set to be built at Subaru's plant in Lafayette Indiana. Click here for complete details about the debut and the 2019 Subaru Ascent!
During the recent Subaru Loves Pets initiative, Cross Creek Subaru partnered with local animal organization Tilted Acres Rescue & Adoption (TARA) to find homes for 14 dogs/puppies. Among the new owners were members of the local Fayetteville-Fort Bragg community, the Cross Creek Subaru family, Subaru Ambassadors who volunteered at the Pet Adoption Event, and even one of Cross Creek Subaru's employees!
Click here to see some of the pictures from the event.
Subaru Corporation has a goal to be the number one brand for overall safety in the world. They want to make the new 2019 Subaru Ascent 3-Row, along with all their models, the safest vehicles on the planet. Here's how they might pull it off.


Use the verification message sent from Zendesk to verify the account owner email address. If you can't locate your original email verification message, you can resend the verification email.
Locate the verification email message sent from Zendesk when you first established your account.
You should find this message in the email inbox you used to sign up for your Zendesk trial. The subject typically starts with "Welcome to Zendesk support..." See example below.
Follow the instructions in the email and click the email verification link.


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Optical Engineering publishes peer-reviewed papers reporting on research and development in optical science and engineering.
Biomedical Signal Processing Journals. This is an incomplete list of Biomedical Engineering Journals that I would consider you submitting to (and searching through).
IJAEEE -Internal journal publish on many topics. You can submit international engineering journal for publishing. Our motto is to provide best publication.
The main goal of the scientific journal is to present high quality research developments in all areas of production engineering and production management.
The online version of Chemical Engineering Journal at ScienceDirect.com, the world's leading platform for high quality peer-reviewed full-text journals.