Cosmolocal Production

Transcript

Close the curtain first. Marcel, right where you are. >> Maybe the door. People are still trickling in. Okay, I guess more people will come when they will come. So, I want to first start with a few announcements.

Number one, can I can I please have all your attention? >> If you want to have a conversation, please take it outside. Um the first announcement is that Liisa who's not here right now. Oh, she's here. Lisa has offered to do uh morning. What is it? Embodiment movement. >> Yes. Tomorrow at 8:00 a.m. near the gym area. So, if you want to feel like you want a bit of exercise and good energy

to start your day, meet Lisa at the gym area tomorrow at 8:00 a.m. Tonight, Dana has offered to give two sauna sessions, which means she's going to collect herbs from the areas around and she's going to offer that as a session in the sauna. There are going to be two sessions. It is there on the live schedule. If you just scan the QR code, you can see what times they are being offered at. Um there is space for 10 people at the sauna at the same time. So if you're interested in joining one of the sessions, comment on the thing to register yourself. If you are the first 10 people to comment, then

yes, you would be one of the 10 people that get to experience that. If there is more interest then she will offer more runs in the next days. Okay. Third announcement that the morning circle which we have every day at 9:30 a.m. that is the place for us to have collective agreements which means if you have certain needs, if you want the group to listen to certain requests, this is the place to come and voice them out. This will also be the time that we collectively decide on any agreements. So if you're not present, this means you are saying that it's okay for you to decide for me. So

we will make the agreements per you and we will basically announce them in this time here. So today the agreement was made one about the music. Um so there has been a bit of tension on people uh wanting to jam in the evening but also people wanting to sleep upstairs. So new agreement that came up was at 11 p.m. the music will be turned down the volume really low. There would be no drums and hopefully after 12 it will be a hard shut off. But we will see how that goes.

um lunch cleaning shift has been moved from 2:30 to 4:30 to 1:30 to 2:30. This has been done because people have FOMO for missing the beautiful open sessions that are being offered and they don't want to clean during that time. So we said okay as far as the dishes are clean and the place is not a complete mess it is fine to do it in the time that you want. So the suggested new time it's a suggestion the new time for post lunch cleanup can be between 1:30 and 2:30 so you have enough time to join the sessions that are proposed after we have some great open sessions that are

proposed for today evening. uh please check the live schedule so you will know where each of them are happening and what you would like to attend with that today's keynote is a bit special because we have two speakers not one and they have beautifully somehow managed to spontaneously converge their presentations into one which is very interesting so I'm excited to see what comes out of it the first speaker is going to be Michelle Bowens introd reducing the cosmol local production.

The second one would be Stefan on local interventions also like the Kimgau experience and the local production mechanisms. Stefan has also been building a fab lab in Rosenheim where he lives. So maybe he will have some extra insights to add on that as well. Okay. So very excited and with that I'll give it to the first speaker. Oh, also who here has not signed up for any shifts?

>> Anybody else here that has not signed up for any shifts? Okay, this is the good crowd. Amazing. >> All right. Um yeah, let let me start with a a bit of history maybe that's not so known um to kind of uh give you a bit of historical overview. So just as a reminder I did a very long historical overview like three weeks ago here uh going to details uh then we had the launch of the cosmological initiative where we explained the cosmological production quite in detail um and then we messed up the first of September

um I thought it was the third of September but it was the 1st of September so that's why the 25 minutes instead of the hour uh two days ago. Okay, a bit of history. Um, very few people know that the internet was invented in Russia. I'm sure almost nobody knows this, right? In the 1960s, there's a really fantastic book about it called Red Plenty. And it's a book that basically re retells the story of this invention of not the internet but a internet in Russia. And the reason it failed was that it uh appended the central

hierarchy and they didn't want that. And so my theory is that the Soviet Union did not fail because it failed in industry it failed in cybernetics. This is important because you know there's all the propaganda because of the cold war and stuff but really look at the stats. Russia and China were growing three times as fast as the west. This is just a fact. So saying you know it didn't work is a bit short. Of course it was cruel. Lots of people died in the gulag. But look back in the 19th century uh in UK and what happened with the potato famine and when the Bengal in India is not the picture is not that much more beautiful in terms of early

industrialization. But so they didn't what they didn't achieve was this shift to cybernetics. So then there's another episode which is not so fairly known maybe more on the left is better known which is cyberin in in Chile. So Aende gets selected uh was it 1970 or something uh he calls to Stafford Beer which is an English cybernetician who drives a rolls uh like a really elite person actually in the beginning uh and they create this war room uh in Santiago de Chile to try to do democratic planning. a lot of stories uh about this experiment, but eventually it got stopped with the coup. And so

those were the Santiago boys and they got replaced by the Chicago boys who used Chile to experiment the early neoliberal world order and that's cybernetics on a global scale right so they succeeded where the Soviet Union and cyber sin did not succeed which is to create this global cybernetic order where instead of having only big factories uh you know now we have like lots of small factories working together and then you have these really fake companies like Apple. I say fake not because they don't exist but because they actually don't produce anything themselves. They're just like branding ex encapsulation was really like a very

complex cybernetic uh management system underneath with loads of small companies collaborating in the whole world. And then I should tell you something about China because that's also special. So if you look at the history of the Soviet Union um so okay you have the Bolevik revolution October 1917 and then we get something called war communism. This is when Trosky with the train uh organizes the Red Army. Uh and of course this is a highly centralized system because it's war. You have to know where everything is. People have to listen and obey or they get shot. Uh so very centralized. But after that there's

something called a new economic policy. And this is like a period of liberation. Uh yeah, liber liberalization. That's the word I was looking for. And why is this so interesting? Because if you look at the images on YouTube, like look at Odessa in the 1920s, it looks like Paris. This was working. This was really working. So this kind of relative liberalization aroundmemes and you know like a market sector within Russia was actually working and it's basically Stalin that stopped it and then you know for industrialization purposes created the five-year plans.

Um so China when the Soviet Union collapsed they said oh we don't want this and this is what Deng Xiaoing did right he looked at the NEP and he said let's do the NEP here in China new economic policy and special economic zones like Shenzhen which was a first was directly inspired by the and so this is important because a lot of people in the west say oh you know it shows a market uh the market did it yes the market did market but the contained market right it's very important to understand that in China the market is contained there were like 600 special economic zones right so only 3% of people in the party can be cap cap

capital owners right this is it's a minor part 70% of high heavy industry what the Marxists call the commanding heights are still in the hands of the party the land is collective you can lease it can't sell it. So this very important to understand that China is just not the same as the west. And yes, just yesterday I was reading a Substack or Len Len Liao and you know it was about Gping's uh vision on finance right and it's very clear finance cannot cannot be the cannot be the command in China. Finance is the servant. They can't really decide where capital goes.

So just so so this is the three systems we have today in China. I may sound a bit too positive about it. uh I was there for five weeks uh in November but it's basically this unique combination of planning five-year planning cycles markets very strong market dynamics and cybernetics right for example you know what they say uh sometimes in the west we can vote for whatever party we want but nothing changes and then in China you can vote for the party but things change like you know just 100 people remember after COVID like 200

people with white boards and they changed their covid policy right so cybernetics is very important in China because that's how they manage public opinion they look at all these threshold and say oh we can't do this people are not h becoming unhappy right so they have this idea in China to so not to get problems get political that's their priority if things get political and the party may be challenged then they do something about it because they don't want the problem to become political. So this is for the moment a very competitive system works very well is growing very rapidly uh is exporting to the rest of the world to Africa to the to the BRICS countries they just created

the world AI cooperative agency so now they're doing the same that they did with the bell and road they're doing the same with uh AI and deploying AI globally uh open source versions of AI and then of course we have the western uh method which I think maybe you would agree with me that the key now is these tech bros with their platforms right because that's what Yaruaki says and I agree with this is even if you're a capitalist today you depend on these platforms if you're not on the platforms you can't sell so even capitalism itself in a way is now dependent on these cybernetic platforms they're like the key

coordination structure in the west and that's the big difference between China where the state and the party is still in command and in the west where I would argue a private class is managing the public good and that's usually not a good thing. We used to have a labor movement to keep things in balance. We no longer really have it and so things are not looking too good for us. But here's the thing. Even China, although they're making huge progress, they're not solving the fundamental the term dynamic crisis, right? The fact that modern systems are just using too much matter and energy for the planet to regenerate at the same level. So there's

more more extraction than regeneration. And so we going further down even though they actually do make uh substantial progress in the last few years. And so I think there is a third option. This is of course what we talked about today. So let me now go to the nitty-gritty uh of the change. And I'm probably already over time. Uh let's go. >> Um yeah, >> say that again. >> Yeah, I forgot how to do that. Believe it or not, I I'm on the slideshow but uh >> from beginning right

is that yeah okay let me go to the to the right one here we are is this it so very quickly um if you look at the history of coordination and I think it's very important to look at the world in terms of coordination. So first we had sharing commoning and gifting in the tribal systems market totally marginal no planning uh but gifting commoning I'm not going to details so then we break through that limitation of hunter gathering there's no writing so you can only do it live in small groups right small groups like the

dun famous dunar number that was discussed a few times but then once we do agriculture once we have the temples that store the rice. Then we invent accounting. We shift to an a new way of of coordinating which is basically the state and then the market. And this is for 5,000 years what we've done. And so here's the the key argument for me will be obviously market and state are not able to solve our thermodynamic problem. They just don't. Nothing is working. Planning is not working. Uh carbon markets are not working. I think uh Marcel is already gone. He would have challenged me. Uh but I just saw an

article this morning to challenge him. Uh and it says, "Yeah, it's not working. Ecos ecosystem evaluation is not working. It's just not working." Um and so this means that we now have the tools, I think, to break through again. So this is the third information barrier and this is not abolishing markets and states just as we don't we still have gifting and sharing but basically stigm digital commons and bio regional coordination are the three new tools that in my view this is where we go with commonsbased cybernetics right state cybernetics private platform cybernetics

and then I'm arguing for this third stage in human history which is commonsbased cybernetics. Okay. So let's see um oops no >> yeah so so what is stick mergy is the capacity to coordinate through mutual signaling. So how do I know what to do on Wikipedia on Linux? Because they are open whole optical systems that allow us to see everything from our personal perspective and then say I'm going to adhere my skill to this collective system. So under capitalism we have

distribution of labor like you're a carpenter, I'm a plumber. when you look at how it happens in free software peer production and all these new methods it's distribution of tasks it's I can do this and it's permissionless and you see the hierarchy changes from a command hierarchy to a control hierarchy right the maintainers the editors they don't tell you what to do but they can say no they protect the ecosystem in a good or a bad way we can discuss this I think like in Wikipedia it's been hijacked uh this is another discussion right but definitely it's not a even even if it's badly done it's not a command hierarchy they don't tell

people what to write in Wikipedia you do it yourself so it's like we have this global billboard that is available to all of us and we can say yeah I can do this so this is stigma like the bees and the not the birds the bees and the ants right through signaling they know what to do Um, okay. I'm not going to talk about the reticulum. Sorry for the fans. Um, and uh, stigma digital commons. So that's where we store the common knowledge. So why is this important? We don't need a state bureaucracy.

We don't need private IP necessarily to keep the records of our coordination. We have digital commons that keep the record of of our coordination. So it can be done in a third way, right? You can still do it one or two, but we now have this third way and by a regional this is I I get this from Michael H very recently is basically his argument and I agree with this like this is where the buck stops, right? So the states the international system they can all say oh let's let's deplete this.

Yeah. So a state for example, nation state can can sacrifice its working class or a region or some demographic. They can because they have this higher level abstraction and they can get accumulation there. But if you go down to it, there's the bio region. This is where it stops. This is where if you destroy the watershed, we go hungry. We have to move out. Right? So the bio region is like the new node of of coordination not the market the stock market and you know all these financial flows which is now the node of coordination but the new node is going to be in my view the bio

region this is where like no externalities here they have to be accounted for right but as soon as you move up it's stigma G and it's digital comments that that do the job of coordinating at larger scales. Um, and this is what I call the co the cosmological uh revolution, cosmological production. It's really the inversion of the world order where so now what we do is we think that material stuff which is actually scarce like if you look at the earth the sun uh looks pretty uh infinite although we don't we only use a small

part of it so it's it's not as infinite as we think because we need to transfer it and that depends on our level of technology but the matter in the earth is fairly stable. You know, we get some stardust, but we have a limited level of matter and energy in the material planet, right? And this is what we need to work with. Uh and then we have knowledge and we think knowledge is scarce or should be scarce. So, we put IP on it and so it can't flow, right? Either you need permission or you need to pay, but it can't flow. And this is what we turn around, right? We say no no we need to have a system where matter is preserved

is regenerated. So extraction and regeneration need to be in balance. We need extraction you know we need to eat we need clothes we need shelter. So it's not a question like that we can't we cannot do without extraction but the extraction has to be in harmony with the regeneration. And since analytic until now, that's not what we've done. We believe value is created through extraction, right? Scarce good comes out of the ground or labor out of people is scarce. So it's subject to market pricing. We make a profit. We tax the profit and then we can do a bit of generation with that.

We're going to have to turn that around. So you know about assetbacked currencies this is not enough because you can still deplete an asset backed currency. The real measure is going to be bio capacity. Am I improving the soil, the water, the air, uh the biodiversity or am I damaging it? If I'm improving it, I can do more extraction. If I'm damaging it, I have to diminish the extraction. So exact opposite and that's why we say in cosmolocal production what is heavy is local and what is light is global and shared right so that's the the the big uh difference

so I'm not going to go in too much detail um maybe one thing I want to do is this um so the basic argument here is we we have everything we have everything there's like all the tech we need to do this is available. We don't have to wait to people like you, the tech wizards, you know, who who are going to come up with the next solution. I mean, it's been nice and you know, if you have solutions, it's nice, but we don't have to wait for you, right? And so, one of the things we need to do with web with what happened with web 3 is uh I'm going to put on my mauist hat.

I'm not a mauist but just for sake of uh the film uh is we need barefoot doctors. I don't know if you remember this. I'm old enough to remember this. So in China they train a lot of people with basic medical skills and then send them out to the villages right to do all the basic babies being born you know injuries. So, we need barefoot technologists. We need to send you guys out there to the regenerative villages, right? So, this is what I'm calling for the archipelago of regenerative villages.

We don't wait anymore. We just do it now, right? We do it locally with the skills and the technologies we have and we interconnect and reinforce this kind of new coordinated sector where we do gener we do regeneration already. We don't wait. We just do it. Uh is it going to be easy? No. Is it going to difficult? Yes. Uh are we going to get rich doing it? Probably not. Um, and this is just, you know, think about the the monks, right, who left the Roman Empire. And yesterday I looked it up.

The Buddhists, they did it 500 years before the Christians and the James. Nana is gone, but she maybe like to hear this. Uh, even before. So, so this is not the first time that societies disintegrate, create an exodus and then people change the mode of production and and come up with something entirely new. This is where we are today. This is what Cosmolo production is is about. So, just to give you one example and I know I have to wrap it up.

Uh, I was in touch a long time ago with a group called Las Indas. really weird people uh organized as a guilt uh a bit cultish um they were doing great stuff in Spain and then they completely disappeared and then two years ago I tried to look them up and somebody wrote to me don't do it don't look them up okay I didn't look them up but now there's AI so I I couldn't stop I couldn't help myself I I looked them up and I found them and they're doing great work in Extra Madura Fund republic repopulation they're doing high techch rural reindustrialization

this is what we need this is what we need to look for you know what are the waste materials in this region that are not being used right now this is an industry right uh we can do so much more uh it's going to be difficult because there's an economic factor like it's not because we can do it technically that it's actually economically viable to do. So this is like the challenge like in China uh you know I was talking about this um and they say yeah we can't do this everything is so cheap here like we can't do anything local it's we have a tuk tuk an an electric tuk tuk for $1500 like no right so it's not going to work for now there Europe is a bit of a

different story because we are being de-industrialized we're going to make weapons now instead of uh plow plows and what do you call it plow shares or you know this this thing uh so this is not going to feed people it's going to be a minor part of our uh economy so we are actually in a prime position to do cosmological transformation right we are the ones here in precisely because it's not going well with us we we because we can't do old style industrialization anymore we have to do this new style Um so yeah so um you probably remember this maybe not

uh with Jeff EMTT we decided to talk about P4pier instead of P2P you know P2P was the capacity of individuals to coordinate on a global scale and create new ecosystems and value systems but now I think we are at a stage where we need to interconnect communities right the hubs network with Roberto working with here working with Ashaka what is it no Akasha Akasha in Barcelona this is the stuff we are now this is the agenda um yeah so we have all of this we have uh you know we have globally scalable cryptocurrencies that we can program ourselves so we can have value

sovereignity we we just had an interview with Roberto he talked about this that we can decide what the value is in our project. Of course, then we need to find ways to exchange and share with others. But we have the tooling. We we we can do this if you want. We can do this with tokens. We have a universal ledger. That means we can have 3D ecosmic accounting. We couldn't do this before. Uh we have contrib contribution based accounting. We have impact accounting.

Um, yeah, we it just, you know, we have a thousand ways to mutualize transport, housing. Check the wiki. It's all in there. Uh, just we know how to do this, right? Um, all right. So, I think I'm almost finished. Uh, yeah. So, maybe I'll stop with this. Um, so I'm, you know, I come from a leftwing background, as you may have heard. I know a lot about, you know, certain history that you that you wouldn't know if you're libertarian. Let's put it that way.

Um, but if you if you look at what happened to the left, which was like the emancipatory tradition, uh, they have a hangover, right? their utopia collapsed in 8991 and since then it's like degrowth uh deep adaptation collapse awareness it's all good by the way it's you know I'm saying this this is fake this is but this is not going to help mobilizing people you need a politics of paradise right whether you believe in heaven or in socialism or in these this great

anarcho capitalist market. Uh whether it comes out or not is not the point. But you need a mobilizing politics of paradise. Um and so I think this is why I changed the paradigm of the P2P foundation wiki towards reconstruction. So we know every civilization has collapsed guys. This is not like just one like there's not a single society which has survived in human history. If you tell oh what about China? Yeah. It had three dark ages. Yeah. So China is not like one continuous story is three different Chinese civilizations which collapsed and were reborn. And the

interesting to look at is reconstruction. How did they come back? How did they come back? This is what this is what is interesting. And also like contemporary seed forms what are we doing already to come back right what are all the people doing or exiting the system and reinventing the new and yeah 98% is going to fail guys but the 2% is not failing that is what we need to learn from and let's be honest this is not happening yeah in you know in these types of circles including I see this all the time like we are rewriting software that has been like done 600 times, 700

times like why why don't you look at what's already happening? Why don't we learn from other people doing the same? Yeah, this is such a huge waste of because you know the others are learning right in in their in their way. We if we're not learning like we're not playing. So this is my uh my little chitchat, you know, to get you guys uh on board. Um yeah, join us in the Cosmological Initiative. I can't say more right now, but I was planning to offer maybe 530. I didn't look at the board. Actually, never looked at the boards in a month.

I'm really sorry about this. I'm just busy. Uh but if there is a free slot, I would say if you want to join me just in the in the bar and you know have a conversation with me, I leave tomorrow so this would be your last chance. Thank you. And so now comes the practical man Herman. I I I'm going to do the joke that I did in my lunch as you know this is my wife and she says why do people keep inviting you? You can't do anything. So he's the man who can do everything, Herman. And uh you are the perfect balance uh for me.

Thank you. [applause] We just have to do some technical adaption to change the cable. So, I've I've been here long enough. Um,

I'm Stefan. I'm I've been involved in the original money team for 24 years, maybe the first 10 years only as a customer and then also on the board of directors. So the Kima is the longest standing regional currency in Germany and Europe and well no not Europe but Germany and we have shown tremendous resilience which is one of our well features I would say many others die after four to five years. So I just give you an over overview how it works.

Uh, and before that, not everybody knows where Kingo is. It's in this little area southeast of in the southeast of Germany. Um, half about half a million people living there on a 780 square kilometers. Um, so where did it start? It started in a local Waldorf school. Uh, our founder Christian Gallery. um wanted to teach his students about money and money systems and how their designs work and affect our everyday lives. So he started a playful game and had a cog group of

actually seven girls. It were all girls who started the thing. They started to print vouchers and just exchange small things within the school like a a sandwich or maybe a pencil or whatever. Eventually the parents of the pupils picked it up, picked the game up and started said, "Well, okay, we we are we will also accept these vouchers at our shop." Yeah. And so it expanded beyond the school. And I will show you some data later. And um so about six seven years ago we um developed it even further. We had it

we had at our peak time we had about eight 7 to 8 million turnover a year um and then it went down um to about 5.56 million euro turnover a year and so Christian thought well we have to do something about it and came up with the idea to connect it the money system more to the ecological limits of the planet and he brought up this idea of a climate bonus currency And since he's a well-trained academic, he wrote a 50page application to a state fund. None of us none of us could have done that. I barely understand it. I

just get the general sense, you know, with statistics and this and that. And he got we got about 550,000 euro subsidies. But not only we alone but an um a group of five initiatives all over Germany but the king was like the lead partner because we have already the experience in organizing like a circulating money system and this is not easy money. The the state doesn't give you like half a million and then go and do something about it. It's it's benchmark money. So you make a plan and say okay 3 months after this we will have 20 businesses joining that and we

have so and so many events and we have press events. So each time you fulfill the benchmark you get a chunk of the money. So it's it's quite stressful actually but it worked out well. Um we there were goals set how many tons of CO2 are saved or not emitted emitted and we surpassed them by far. Yeah. And so we got a second module the the first module of climate bones went on for three years and the second modus a model another three years we got 1.6 million. So they see it works and we get more and repeated it. And now the

third thing now is um called act here v here like regional local and so we have um business and organization workshops where um regional businesses and sometimes people from the commune meet and discuss and inform each other and help and show best practices how to be more energy efficient basically. Yeah. So I now I step back I um to give you an idea. So if a consumer says oh I'm interested I want to take part in this Kimgawa um initiative you have to apply.

You just write a form or call us and then you get if you are a consumer you get a re uh read your card for free. That's like a like a euros shake card. Yeah. same functionality and so you can go to an exchange office and um change or withdraw kimgows which are then withdrawn from your bank accounts in euros. So this is the exchange or you can also pay digital with this like every other card can do.

This money goes into circulation. Oh no, there's one step if you join the initiative. One of the rules is 3% of all the money that you exchange goes to social purposes or or cultural purposes. Yeah. So you we have about 300 initiatives that are in the system. So you say well I want to support this soccer club or I want to you know um support that garden or or the public uh fire fire brigade whatever you can choose. And then 3% of everything that you exchange goes to to that initiative. You decide that.

Yeah. And we track that through the card. Yeah. So this goes into circulation and it does have effect. um it circulates three times faster than the euro and a lot of scientific research and also papers have been written about that and research that. So because we have a circulation impulse the money is devalued 6% per year and this is usually a big psychological hurdle. So and me and my wife we have been using it for 20 years.

Um never anything has been devalued. Why we because we spend it. Yeah. And like in our situation 90% of the money that comes in leaves our bank account anyway after relatively short time. So and most of the people I would say and it's not it's m it's a money made for use. It flows. It's not something you would, you know, put the savings in for your pension. Yeah. It's a flowing live money. And um let's say a computer dealer. We have computer. You can buy computers in King, but of course they don't come from King.

So the computer dealer may have, you know, collected 5,000 kg and he needs to resupply. he um asks his supplier in in Hamburg to send him more computers. So he has to change back. He the computer dealer loses 5%. So the re exchange we want to encourage that the people stay locally and have the money circulating. Um but in some or some cases it's not possible. So he changes back and loses 5%. But 3% um again goes to social purposes and 2% goes to us for the organization for the office and so on and so forth. Um so

um the legal structure is also important of course so at the heart is the [clears throat] uh association from the common good. It's nonprofit and for educational purposes. It holds the principles and ideas. You cannot you cannot sell them. You cannot well you can you could change them because we are based democratic. So we have a a meeting every year and if like a great majority of the people say you know we want to change this rule they could. Yeah. Um we make a little threshold. So, if you want to be an active member that has voting rights, you have to pay like around €30

membership fee a year, which is also not much, but you know, we don't want free riders that never do anything and then appear at the meeting and want to vote, you know. Um after this goes back many years like the Kima started as a as an uh association for the common good but eventually more you know activity economic activity was going on. So the office of finance said you know you need now a legal body to do that too much economic activity going on. So we formed a small unit called Gazelle shaft like a small that's small easy to put up um um legal entity

which we have abandoned meanwhile and then later on a cooperative the reg is the data processing and the servers the accounting and microloans and also we offer other um other regional currencies the service to run their currency on our service because we have made the or we have done the work already. We know we know the legal obstacles. Not everybody has to invent the wheel again and this is a big thing. This is a big thing. So our servers are connected to the banking system and you must make many mistakes in there more than a few and then you are out. Yeah. So this is a very difficult part. you have to know the

rules and do the um regular checkups and so on and so forth. And the the newest baby is now the climate bonus also an association for the common good that um brings the money a step for further. Um so what does help what does help? The main thing is a dedicated and stable core team. Actually it was about 10 to 12 people in the core and a circle of you know sympathetic supporters around that that core circle stayed stable for a long time. Maybe one or two changed and others came in and there is a strong

human trust. So interactions are easy. Yeah. you trust a phone call or whatever and no not long discussions and contracts and all of this. Yeah. Then of course clearly defined objectives, the mission statements, the the rules must be transper transparent and rigorous. You can look them up on the website. Attractive public events. It's also very important to get keynote speakers like Michelle or others. Donations helped a lot. Yeah, we got some from um foundations as well as businesses and private individ individuals.

The cooperation with regional banks and local authorities is also important. So you can have a bank account in Kimawa, but it's like a a second layer under an existing Euro bank account. Yeah. on a on a local cooperative bank. Um, if you want to set up a financial services institute, it's like a €100,000 euro the license and you have to have another person that is trained and certified to operate that. So big costs there. We haven't done that. Of course, publications and evaluations by universities and especially today like convenience uh convenient cashless payment. So I mostly pay like online or

with a card. We have two apps now. One for Kima and one for climate bonus. Um I can show them later but we can do that after the presentation. Um well what stands in the way? The big the big platforms. Yes. Um it's easier to you know buy from Amazon than local. It's it's appealing to the convenience of customers. Then we have the paradox situation that the economic situation is still quite good. You feel the pressure now but it's still quite good to compared to many other regions. Then small businesses like one one person

businesses or two person businesses they say oh I don't want to deal with like some extra bookkeeping um I don't want it. Um the geographical expansion of the Kimgawa region is a point. So if I need something like from um what is a Balmark building market um that that takes Kimower and um I need to drive like 60 kilometers to get it and have it in the local one. I go to the local one. Yeah. just for if I can't plan it in another way then elusive management decisions also are standing sometimes in the way let's say the the local supermarket um operator says oh yeah this Kima is a

great thing I want to accept it as a payment but he's part of a chain and then the management in Disseldorf says no don't do that that takes away too much time from you we can't do much about Sometimes we have political resistance from two cons conservative channels and sometimes also legal legal hurdles. One example we are bound into a European market and also bidding system. So if let's say a mayor of a local um community wants to his the roof of the city hall to be renovated, he can't just nowadays he can't just give it like to to the carpenter in the

village. He must uh officially publish it in official channels. So the carpenter from Czechoslovakia has also a chance to make a bid. Yeah. Um and some um communities had gathered some amount of kimgars and they are surveyed from time to time from a legal body where they um perform according to the laws and they found out you know if you have kimgau you can't pay the Czechoslovakian carpenter who does the work maybe cheaper so you can't use it and then they stepped out. These are the is the nitty-gritty of like legal stuff local um Germanywide and also Europewide.

And also um the exhaustion of volunteers is a thing which we watch also in other currencies like some enthusiasts start as a currency and after four or five years they are really exhausted and it collapses. So numbers um just about a million Kimgars are circulating um most of them digital and this is the second one is something we are really proud about. So I think this year we'll hit the million. So we we created a million euros or Kim Gaus for social and purposes and idealistic per

purposes about 4,000 consumers 350 businesses 290 associations. We have 20 issuing locations and nine communes who are in the system. What does it cost? It's free for consumers and associations. businesses pay €144 uh euros or quima per year that's not much I would say and they get something they are in the they are on the website they they have a reputation that they care about the region and they can advertise like uh in the written king um brochure and also online and we have a nice website where you can really filter results so I need a bicycle

trader in Rosenheim I look up and I find it with communes we have individual agreements so each is different this is our founder Christian Gallery so um here in the middle um he is practically Mr. Kim Gawa and an academic and he just did his PhD this one it's 300 pages just came out uh complimentary currency what do they contribute to the social economic transformation I wrote to him whether it's um somewhere published in English could be online he's I think he's on holidays he didn't answer yet

yeah but I leave it here for the ones who can read German Um interestingly his first um we call it Dr. father what is it PhD father like the scientists he was bullfinger one of the um so-called um economic economic uh wise uh economic wise men counseling the German government and he let him like work and work and after he had done like twothirds of the work he says no I'm not going to sign this so they he had to retry go to another professor among them is now Nikop like the pope of postgrowth economy in

Germany and finally he he got his PhD through so it's Dr. Christian Gallery. Um, a short thing about the climate bonus. How does it work? So, basically, you make an audit. You make it as a private person, a family or a commune or a business. Um, it's it's uh done with scientifically approved methods. and you know find out where where there are things that you can improve like insulate your house, get another heating system, get an electrical car or whatever. So reduce uh but inevitably there is a rest amount that you have to compensate. So we and

we call for people, businesses and the communes to compensate for that in our local climate bonus fund. It was started with donations and also some of the government money and the hope is that we get a self- sustaining climate fund locally. Yeah. After a time because these subsidies won't go on forever. So we hope the educational effect and the societal effect is strong enough to establish a local climate fund which then rewards climatefriendly behavior of others.

So it's it's not about punishment but mo more about you know incentive. For for example we got this quite substantial shake about €7,500 from a a company who runs a crerematory in our region. So it has to do something with fire climate and maybe transcendence. So now the latest activity is called uh like act here and in um so we are three uh initiatives now and that's practically the same same thing. It it's also acting in fenceburg

and also in Saxony. So it's going farther than the region but the same principles apply. Um this is one of our workshops. Um this is me the second from the left. Um yeah well and this informal part is quite important. I underestimated it like meeting in a friendly and cooperative atmosphere brings up things chances and possibilities. It's it's very important. Um so a few numbers about the rewards.

They are not not huge but at least something. Yeah. And if there's more money in the fund it could be more. Yeah, depends on what is available. Um, so I'm going on to the next part. Um, local production here. This is my hometown, No Boy. And it's actually not Rosenheim, but outside of Rosenheim. And on the left side, the small house. Um, so I have it here. Here, this one, Lex Church, is my house.

It's about 400 years old. And N Boyan is quite famous in certain circles. So we have an international boarding school in this castle up there. Um so if you have some spare money and want to send your kid there, it's about3 to4,000 a month. I'm sure many can do that here. And we have we have a old watchtowwer from the 12th century. However, one of the nice things is that people from all over the world comes come there. So you see, you know, all skin colors you there are Chinese there, Russians, Africans, Japanese. Um so that's contributes to the general

atmosphere of the city and it's quite traditional. So we have brass band and what is that in English? What is it in English? Can anybody Yeah. Oh okay. And um there's something else for which um Noan is quite famous. There is this one quirk man of noan. It actually started in the house where I live but before my time. So this this guy is a an aristocrat and of Gutenberg and he he was studying um music and conducting and rented the

attic of the house here as a student flat and the the former father-in-law of my wife said to him, you know, An's a beautiful local small choir. Go and look at them, listen to them. and he went and they actually fell in love with each other. And so a 50-year story started and that choir, that local choir from from a four 4,000 um inhabitants village went to a worldclass choir. They performed in China. They performed in Seoul. They performed in Hong Kong. They performed in the United States and all the other venues in Europe.

Grew up to 110 people. Not all from from you know Ban of course some from the surrounding villages some from Rosenheim and when it was quite professionalized they also hired external people and he's a wealthy guy put a lot of money in it and they the the village the people sorry and um you know [clears throat] they started a upward spiral of mutual enforcement. So they it went up and up and up. Yeah. Unbelievable. Yeah. And the the the

most thing or or the like the thing that maybe is different than in other choirs, the people mean it more. So there may be professional choirs who can sing a little better, but they they took on the big classical sacred music like Bach and the B minor mass mass and um handle Messiah and so on and so forth. So [clears throat] you see what the people wrote and he um died in 2018. the the choir decide that they abandon the project

because it's it was a very close relationship of of the choir to exactly this person. But there is a follow-up choir. They they do um ac capella work and it's different. They decide we can't be like a bad copy of the the unique one. So we have to do something differently. Um so I wouldn't say that this was commons but uh both parties knew like Enorne knew he entirely depends on these guys and the these knew like we need this we need both ends to make it happen. Yeah.

And we have a black Madonna but unfortunately she wailed her face. So this is also something unusual. Uh this is an artist uh from No Boyan who is now or has been a professor for uh sacred art in Vienna, Elizabeth. And she carved a beautiful black Madona and um I I looked on the internet. I didn't find it. I didn't find it in my arch archive. So I asked a friend, you know, just take a photo and send it to me. She look what happened. So her face is wailed. maybe um it's it's like mother earth, you know, with animals and crops and very nicely done. Made from a solid trunk of wood. Um well, maybe Gaia

is, you know, a bit angry about what we do to her. So may may be looked at in a symbolic way. But I find it also quite unique that people they are they go with it. Yeah. they don't say no that's not we don't want this in our village although it's a Catholic village so um another example for um remarkable local production talking about soil this man is a powerhouse so his name is Christopher um he has a company that's called amima he works with effective microorganism

organisms breeds them they They have workshops, they have online workshops and he also does international work for example with Dutch farmers a group and he also invited Vandana Shiva like the um Indian activists to to Rosenheim like to a big audience. It was full many farmers many locals um and you can I actually brought some of the products that um they make here. It's it's for cleaning purposes and he works a lot with farmer to re regenerate the soil and also with um cattle breeders and um animal farmers who have a lot of poo you know a lot of very

aggressive um feces from the cows or the chicken and with effective microorganisms you can improve that a lot. Yeah. So they are not so aggressive to the soil and don't um like dripple into the ground ground water flows. Um you might look this up you I will put the whole presentation on um the telegram channel so you have chances to look at the web pages. Um one little anecdote that refers to what Michelle said before. Um Kristoff was traveling in South America in the in a region which is called the um a region

where the supposedly potatoes come from there like the potato valley and he there was a landslide on the side of the road and he he saw the enormous amount of soil and good earth humus. What is humus in in English? But do you understand? Yeah. that that is that was there and those tribes there they have the principle each generation has to leave 20 20 cm more fertile soil to the next generation though it's actually really reversed. Yeah. So we we have maybe 30 or 50 cm and use it up extensive agriculture. So it it just gets dirt. Yeah. It's not a living

organism anymore. And they they do it the other way around. I found it quite impressive. Um I want to bring up a few examples for good attitude and positive vision against defeatism. So we have a um citizens energy cooperative in Kingo that started in 2017. A few people were dissatisfied with the speed like how rem um renewable energy was expanding too slow from the government side and also too slow on the local level. Why? Because maybe they have in a city council fighting factions or political parties. Nobody wants that

the other party has a success. Maybe they think oh you know next year I don't know whether I will be reelected. I don't want to start a project that might damage my political heritage or whatever. And they found a very good way to go around it. They say, "Okay, we do everything." They go to a local village or to the administration say, "Okay, you have a nice sports hall that has just the right roof like facing in the right direction. We put up a solar panels there. The whole thing we operate it and we maintain it. You have to do nothing except sign a contract with us that you take the power that we produce the electricity in a long term for 20 years.

Yeah, that's the security and and the administration is rid of anything else and this worked out quite well and it's it's put um set up as a cooperative. Um my wife for example has€ 10,000 euro in that. I have just one share. One share is €250. So many people can afford it and you can have many more shares. It works in a very for me I would say very intelligent financial way. Um you call them and say okay I I would be interested to take part in that. I have some spare money.

Um that would be like €10,000 for example in that example. And they they you know take a note of that. So person A wants to give 10,000, person B 5,000, the other one 20,000 and then they develop the next project and they might need 50,000. So they share it among the applicants. So you for example, you may have the 10,000 now, but the project is fully developed two years later. So they don't take your money and then only two years later something happens. They only ask it when the the project is full is ready for implementation. Yeah, I found

it quite quite nice. And they also moderate it. So not like one party gets all the thing and it's created towards um having an impact. So it's not about creating an revenue but some years produce a revenue of two or 3%. Like this year my wife gets 2.6% 6% on her 10,000. Yeah. And it's democratic. So they have produced uh 3.6 megawatt so far. Uh 1 million invested. I find that a quite welldeveloped model that works locally. Yeah. And there's another one

city a city of wood which we have like a whole settlement that is only wood houses. Yeah. And we had we had an airfield from the second world war. Then it was a prison camp from the Allied forces. Then it was a spy station with huge you know domes from the Americans I guess CIA or NSA who listened into behind the iron curtain. And later on they abandoned it and I think one of the domes is still standing. They have it now as an event location for raves and things things like this. But the the other area was available for development. So some um creative businessmen and professors from the

local um technical high school said we're going to develop a city of wood there being only wooden houses with a very low impact. Yeah. And as far as I know it has been the biggest project of this type and it's now surpassed by one in Stockholm that's like ready next year 2027. I that now you can look it all up and see the pictures. Um this is another one. Um this is a an old um church seminary and also boarding school here and uh also our later pope was there.

It's still it's still a boarding school and there's a kindergarten and in 2014 the church decided we have to do something about it and people are leaving and we have to adapt um [clears throat] going more with time and they wanted to create an innovative Christian relational educational campus with a national national reach grounded in sustainability and the spiritually of creation. This whole house is entirely built of clay. Yeah. Ex except the the ceilings. You cannot do that. And um it's Germany's first self-supporting clay building. It took 10 years of work and struggle to get that done also with

all the you know static thing and and the church spent 50 millions on that. And now it's a very beautiful place, very worthwhile a visit. It has a roof garden and it has the first impact hub in rural area worldwide. Yeah. And it the atmosphere is just amazing in there. You you it's lovely calm. I love to go there. Um and the lady who did it is doesn't work. Okay. Is Anna Heringa. Um she is she's an architect and she has this beautiful motto form follows love you know isn't that something else than

for this I would say could be cold uh form follows function yeah that's also important but form follows love she did a lot of work in the global south and I even asked her to come here to give a presentation but she is asking for €3,000 and they explained she she uses that money to develop her projects in the glo global south where people don't have money and she's very much in demand you know among architects uh it's a marvelous building yeah this is another thing um this is going beyond our region she's from Axburg Sena Trinwalda I met her couple years ago at a conference so she created or I want to

go there from another way you know we have this defeatism you know you can't you can't produce clothes anymore in Germany or in Belgium or in Europe. It's it's too expensive. It all goes to Bangladesh. It goes to Africa. It goes to China. Um so everybody that's a public opinion. But she says no. Uh Axbook has a long-standing textile tradition. Everything was gone and she started a new plant even with socially disadvantaged people. Yeah. And she produces jeans. She produces t-shirts and all of that and it's it's it's it's working. It's not as cheap as the one from Bangladesh. Yes. But it's not very expensive, I would say. So, she proves

that it's possible. Yeah. She wrote five books and when she was awarded a certain prize for you know social social entrepreneurship she made an exercise with the audience you know made them do silly things like this and touch this and that and then they say why do you guys just do every damn thing you are told to do. Yeah go go out there and think for yourselves. Yeah. So she is very provocative at times. um my own project which I've been talking about here I got two sources of inspiration I met uh I've been at a public presentation of Fred Bergman who developed the concept of new work um 10 years ago or so

and I also saw um a documentary about the future of work on art this um European um French German TV channel where They showed like sociologists, um people from the unions, philosophers, um historians, you know, talking about work, how it was done in former ages, how it's been done since the industrial revolution. And one one of the there was a 15 minutes clip in it about the Fabl in Barcelona and I was so thrilled that I um just brought an email to to them. can we visit? They said yes, come by. So, we

visited. I can show you a lot of pictures later on on on my uh iPad if you want. And we visited also a special place, the first world's first open-source restaurant called Leica. and all the interior design and also the um recipes and also the dresses of the cooks and of the waiters are were designed by um the university in Barcelona and put up open source online.

So, there's a little you can't see it, but on each of them is a is a little Q QR code, and if you scan that, you you can it directs you to the to the files, to the technical drawings, to the um software. So, you can replicate them, and you're invited to do so for yourself. you're you're not allowed like to to make a business out of it and to sell like a hundred, you know, um of these chairs for your profit, but you're allowed to replicate it. Um also the, you know, sound insulation and uh it's it's a modern design, but I find it quite, you know, beautiful.

Um so for example here you see the technical drawings you see how they produced the um sound insulation panels and here in the back you see the remnants it's it's cut off cut out with a CNC router from flat material. So how does it how does it look? Yeah. You have a big sheet of plywood and you have like the drawings on your computer and the screen and it looks like this.

And then the machine cuts it out, drives around. Yeah. And you take it apart and glue it together or stick it together. Um, so this this is on the market. You can find the the internet. You can just buy CNC router cutting files. It's 7 to99 euro for for a file that can get you such a beautiful desk. I would say on the right side and more simple one than the left side. You have one license to do that. Yeah, you are I I would say it's they can't control that you do like 30 of them. But if you

advertise for it, you might get in trouble. And it's also um I would say a matter of fairness. So designers put a lot of work in it. So but let's say you like the the one on the right side um um produce one look at it and then you apply the principles and design your own one that has you know this filigran under construction a bit different then nobody can sue you or do anything about it. Yeah. Um yeah this is my own space now.

basically um two small rooms in the first um ground floor of my house. This is my uh workshop on the left side and um another room that was my former office. These um yeah this construction on the side is for the CNC router. Um it's it's movable so you the space is not wasted behind it. You you use a machine and if after you you have used it, you can push slide the construction to the side. So you have access to the workbench on the back.

And we have built already workbenches that can be have all the same size. You can group them together so you have one big thing and so on and so forth. Most of that is is just scrap wood that we had. Yeah. It's we didn't buy much new. Yeah. So it's has an aspect of upycling. There's a laser cutter under here. It's the same one that Felix has here. And this is me and my partner. Um I'm very very grateful for this guy. He's a master carpenter, master cabinet maker and master wood carver. So with a lot of experience and one of the only bosses that I worked with uh 40 years ago. So I was working in his workshop at the time

and we have kept this relationship loosely and 10 years ago he moved to my region and we picked it up and now we are partners. So uh good to have a you know well competent guy in your back or at your side. Um his name is Gman like German Gman. And so we looked well which CNC router should we get? We first one we discovered was this Goliath. It's a little robot that drives on the on the surface of the plywood. Um but you can only operate it horizontally. It costs about 3,000 to€3,500.

Then we um discovered this one which we have been building. Hopefully we can get it. We think we can get the mounting process uh finished today. And um a little thing if if people are interested in practical things. Um this um Maslo costs about €500 and you have to buy a um standard router machine from a

known um company de um but it's more for development and prototyping. And if you want to go more into production, it might be more sensitive to or may make more sense to have a one of the rigid frame like the one in the middle. This is also open source. The low rider. I find that quite interesting. And you can adapt the length of these tubes. So if you want want to have like a table sized one, it's fine, but it can be bigger. Yeah, I find that concept also very very nice.

Um, so I had to ex build an extension to my house to move my office from the second room. And this was the most exhausting part. That took about 3 years. I did about 70% of the work. 30% was done by friends and helpers. But now I have a nice office as you see. And so the project plan somebody No, Jesse caught me. What is your business plan? Yeah, it's important. So at first I wanted to have a protected legal space. I I had a company together with my wife and we you know what shall we say um we announced it publicly and then like a few days later

you get letters from the administration. Okay. You have to be member of the uh enong I don't know what it is like the um like the guild. That's a modern version of the guild. You have to be member. Yeah. And you have to then you have to be um member of a certain security cooperative like for insurance reasons. And it depends on the dangers that you are facing in that business. So it it went up it started with for me with um €100 and 300 then €800 a year just to be able to do that business and so on and so forth. And I didn't want to have that in the beginning. So we set it up as as an Austrian association for the common good and the headquarters is

actually meanwhile here. We moved it yeah from another place and since Austrian associations for the common good are allowed to do international projects. We have a project room in Noan. So it's a it's a our business entity and protected legal space. And if we have as a spin-off spin-off one or more companies that produce a certain thing that we develop, they can uh create up to 35,000 um euros turnover per year that supports the goals of the association with its revenues. That's also a good step. And I've heard that this is also a common practice in France. Um, so people have a

good business idea, but they want to try it out on the market first. They don't, you know, take a huge credit and then maybe it fails and then you have the debt. But try it out. Yeah. And then if you see it's catching up, it's getting traction. You you change it into a business entity. And we want to follow this same pattern. Um we start with service and education mainly and products can emerge from that. We have already established a good um um relationship to the university in Kubstein which is just around the border. Why? Because one of the the mother of a pupil of mine is professor

there. So that was very convenient and also to Rosenheim that has to be developed developed and well a print farm might be might be a possible spin-off or production of furniture for special places and I will come to that. Um so two more then I'm then I'm done. I think I'm still in my time. Um we have a um workshop in our region that is from the kitas from the church and there people with special needs can find work. Yeah. Like down syndrome and also some handic people or

autists. Also one of my pupil is an artist and he works there and they have they they have a what is it unique point of selling yeah which is they work together with designers and make really really beautiful products that's find their way also to downtown London or Tokyo. Um my wife for example is very generous so she donates to about 20 initiatives and one of them is a workshop for the blind. So they they called her up and you know can can't you buy another kitchen towel? But she said you know we have 20 kitchen towels from you already so I can't buy another kit or another pack of kitchen towels. I

must say no she doesn't like but she says and I call this um mercy marketing. I'm not judging this. This is also important but like you you buy things that you actually don't want to buy but because you care. Yeah. And these um I hope I can go now there. These are really nice products. Oh no, I I knew it. Okay, we have to do it later. Um the the internet is too slow because too many people are working on it here.

Uh well, we can do it later. Um and the last thing I want to come now I have seen um knitting machine years ago on the internet which basically said it's a desktop machine. You draw the pullover that you want to have knitted on your computer and then the machine produces it. Um and I found that on the spot on the spot. I I found that quite intriguing that idea stayed in the back of my mind and three months ago on the on the market in in our village. I saw a young lady just with a you know table having some scarves and hoodies and so on and we started to talk

and she said, "Yeah, we have a knitting machine uh and we do this." Um so I we got in contact and um it's a young couple. They have a baby boy and they have a knitting machine called nit kniterate from it's a startup from Barcelona which is about 25 to€28,000 and it's a the quarter of the price of the next competitor. So this is doable for well middle class people. I would say they have set it up in their living room and the the husband of this wife is a computer programmer, software developer

like many of you are and he has worked about 10 months intensively on on this project and he said it's not easy. So it's not like they advertise you just push the button and then the machine makes a thing. you still have to deal with maintenance, you know, clean the things. Sometime the yarn um you know gets twisted, you have to oil it and so and he learned everything from scratch. He didn't know anything about knitting or like programming the this type of programming and he showed me also the software. You basically have to tell the machine like every loop every loop.

Yeah. Um, but he worked through all of this. Batsi is a kind of weird guy, Bavarian slang. And um, so I brought products from them here, something real that you can touch and look at. Um, they they use it uh they use marino wool, the finest marino wool. And the the the things are are quite nice, I would say. I would say. And they also do something which I find also very you know valuable. They make sure that the sheep are not subject to a process that's

called mool mulin. I I it's a um the marino sheep have have been bred for a certain type of wool. They had have a lot of skin wrinkles. Yeah. And the skin wrinkles around around the anus and and the genitals they are usually dirty. Some feces are there and a certain type of fly gets in there, puts their eggs in there and this makes the sheep sick or they even die from it. And so um farmers have developed a pretty brutal method. They just cut it off. Yeah. on the lamps which is a very cruel uh procedure but

there are ways to get around it and it's there are concerns worldwide and more and more you know the farmers now tried a different way it it can be done so they make sure that the all the yarn is um from sheeps that have not been subjected to this procedure and I asked the guy also well would you come here to present and he He was a bitclusive. You know, we we spend so much money and I, you know, we have to make a revenue first before we pass it on. Yeah. And I totally can understand that. So I said, you go give me some of the things, look at them, you can buy them for me. I I don't get provisions.

It's all goes to them and supports their their thing. But it has the whole project has this idea of on the spot local production. And I really like that. Yeah. Um so this is for me one way to reduce the econ um the ecological impact. Yeah. Not producing so much produce the right thing the nice thing that you can even influence. You can talk to them if you want to have another design. Yeah. You can develop your own designs and they produce like the one good thing on the spot. I recently he heard a uh a woman on a podcast who is doing working in um textiles and the worldwide textile

industry and she says one really good thing that you can do just have a few pieces that you really love. You don't have to have 50 shirts like have five or 10 that you really love. Wear them and if one wears out buy one new but don't have this huge stock. And this is the idea. And personally I also don't like to shop. I have an idea. I want this like looking so and this is the way to get it. So I guess I'll get my future pullovers and hoodies and headbands from them.

Um yeah. So today I didn't find the CNC files for the files that stand yesterday. the metal and the breakfast and craft But they they are going to replicate some of the stuff

here. Maybe here not not this week but next year. Um actually well actually I I'd like to stop now. Um, and we can have a little Q&A with uh Michelle who has uh no it's it's absolutely fine. I'm I'm I'm really honored to be on stage with you. So, here's a worldwide mapping general overview. I have some practical projects that I think are worthwhile um noticing. Yeah, please.

Yeah. Here. Here's another mic. You might want to come up. Where do you want to sit? Here's the other mic. >> Want to sit or stand? >> Yeah. >> So, >> thank you. I wanted I actually happened to have some Kimgar with me. I don't know if you do have some, but I can pass them around so you can have a look and see it's actually real. >> You saved my day because I forgot them. I just have my card with me.

>> There we go. You know, I I have we we have each other's back in this community, right? So, you can pass it around. Um, and I also have here I mean, I've been collecting I don't know if you know, but there are more than 5,000 local currencies in Europe. Uh, most of them don't work, but it's an interesting experiment. The other one that works is the Ursko. They also have more than 1 million of them. And then I can also pass it around. >> And we had to create them. They visited us. So they modeled our our way to do it. >> And then I'll pass around a couple of others to have a look. Those are actually real money. So please return.

Thank you. And uh and then the other thing I wanted to mention on the last thing that you shared um in Belgium, what we've seen happening in the past couple of years, I think it's super interesting is we produce a lot of potatoes. And so potato producers being so much squeezed by the market, they decided to invest in their own local production of potato chips. >> And so that's the exactly the same thing where at some point they say like well actually all the value is in the steps above. >> Yeah. >> And then they the I love what you said on the on the local on the spot >> production. Yeah.

>> Based on what you can find locally because this is where most the margins are made. >> And so it's beautiful to see more and more. That's a good example of cosmolo. >> Yeah. >> No. Does somebody else have a question? >> Just to mention that tomorrow on this topic there will be farmlab.at. There will be present here. Sylvia Brandy. >> Great. >> Would be good to >> Yeah. Lastly, I've also here replicas from the 1932 war girl which is the kind of the original. It's a great story.

There's a movie documentary about it really worth watching. It's an engineer that became the mayor of that city in Austria and introduced money with a demorage as well like the Kim Gower >> and it really helped restart the local economy in deep crisis. >> The the video the film is called the money maker. You can find it on YouTube I as far as I know and it happened in Burgle and Burgal is not so far from where I live like 30 kilometers 40 kilometers and the Kima in general >> there's a great museum if you go to the area >> I just want to mention I definitely recommend you come to listen to Farm Lab I went to visit them they're in Sisteria and they're doing fantastic work fab lab

devoted to the rural uh tech and learning and skills It's a really great project. >> I put the whole presentation on Telegram. So you have all the links. You can um step by step look it up if you want to. Yeah, I have a question and um so you've been sharing a couple of these projects and people who um craft local things and

I'm wondering um what kind of steps these people have to do so they attract more customers than just the customers that buy out of care um but because they really are Um because I think that's one thing you addressed, right? >> And >> you mean um companies that work with um like people with special needs? >> Well, they they you mean they those guys here >> for example? Yeah.

>> Well, they go to local markets. They they are on the internet and they do like the regular business thing. Yeah. just advertise and word of mouth and um yeah, maybe I can get them to get into the cosmological network. But this guy, you know, I love to be on the edge of theory and practice. So, we have all beautiful things, but if you put them in practice, there's always something. Yeah, it's not as easy, especially as the companies advertise.

So, but this then it gets real. Then it gets real and he invested I mean Daniel in he has the same as you by the way invested a lot of effort into this and so he he is now very skilled in it and I could imagine him coming like two years from now here and show something or even bring his machine or whatever. Yeah. But at first I mean he has to get his business going. Yeah. And and get some you know return. Yeah. Or he might or he might not like the idea then I can't do anything about it. But the principle is nice. It's it's desktop. It's doable.

Doesn't have a you know doesn't need a lot of space. They set it up in the living room. That's also I would say a bit uncomfortable but they did so anyway. Yeah. And lo and behold beautiful things. Finest marina. Please check them out. touch them, but don't like um pull them away or touch them with greasy fingers because I have to return them or I sell one or two or several items here to people who are interested. Yeah. >> Yeah. I I'm gonna have to leave soon to to attend the call. But I wanted to

express my appreciation for both of the presentations. They're very so visionary, grounded, and like heart from the heart. Uh it feels it feels safe to to to have you and to have this um yeah just your presence and the way you um inform what what is to be um what is the right action and both in thinking and like so tangible like Stefan what you shared um I think I don't have questions at the moment I'm just inspired and it's just that um maybe c questions will come up later so I'll ask

in the maybe now what I'm kind of what is coming is maybe from uh Michelle I think one of the things you mentioned is that we already have the kind of the technology that is needed and what is needed now is that people like in this room go actually in these local places and do what that was like a bit unclear do what uh uh if if you want to add. Um well I think the general point I want to make is that you know we we've been tinkering a lot and I think that was necessary because actually one of the things that the system is doing today is

deskkilling on a massive scale and think about what AI is going to do you know like copying human skills taking it to the machine and then not needing the skills that the people have right and I used to work with Bernard Stigler who were the forward of my my book was a technology philosopher and he said the big danger today is a politarization of knowledge. So skills are very important and I think a lot of examples that we're given are about skills like farm labs uh maker spaces they're all about skills but what I'm talking about is like a step up is we need to think about like where is our food coming from right if

there is war and supply chains disruption where is our food coming from uh do we have enough energy locally uh what's the situation of renewable energy for example So it's all these things I think that we need to start taking care of and I know it's not easy uh because you know there's also an economic issue like we produce you know we we are still not producing at a at a cost that can compete with these global supply chains which of course in our view don't pay the cost right because they they externalize and they push it away and then if you voluntarily really take up

externalities, you're more expensive. So that's that's like a structural issue that is very hard to solve at this stage. Um but so the reason I'm optimistic is because I'm pessimistic right is that we believe that this system is in decline and and in this integration and so we are moving towards situations where supply chains are will be disrupted things will get a lot more expensive and then you know this is the time to prepare for this like even if we're not successful immediately like especially commercially but we've got to build the skills now. Um, and then be ready.

That's kind of my idea. So, I'm I don't have illusions that this is, uh, easy to do. Uh, I think a lot of us here are quite precarious in our uh, lifestyles, but we we've chosen it, right? We kind of, you know, like the monks basically, you know, thousand years ago, they left and they didn't have much, but you know, you you take a few generations later and they're doing pretty well and they're actually the core of the new economy for a long while. So, this is kind of what I'm predicting.

Um, it's certainly not an easy way forward, but maybe, you know, we I think what you can see is when you have more meaning in your life and more relationships and more love and friendship, there's a lot of stuff that you don't need as much, right? It's like you you find your happiness in another way. You don't need to compensate by buying stuff to feel happy. you you you so I'll just give an example because I think it's a great example. When I go to Lven in Belgium, uh I stay with this couple. Of course, they they own their house. That's important. That's an advantage they have. They have a 100 square meter

garden and they only need to spend 300 euro per month for for food. like they and you know and I go there and I get their food every day. Everything is fresh and organic and non-polluted and non-toxic and it's such a joy and they go on a bike and on a on a walk every day like these these people really have a lifestyle that I admire that you know they uh you know they they have very low material needs but they have a extremely rich life.

I also would like to express an invitation. So I I've been thinking about like in the spring people could come to to to us. I [clears throat] can I could accommodate three in in my house and the other ones have to stay in other places and we make just a tour and visit the places in other ones also if you want to. So I would be open to that. I'm just thinking of something um just an idea I came up uh you know in the middle ages and until actually quite late in the 19th century and maybe it still exists in some places. So if you were like a a skilled master like a carpenter and you know these jobs you

had to do a tour to the France and to the tour of Germany and I only know the situation of the carpenters in France but they had to visit seven masters and do what's called their shedver their masterpiece. Um, and maybe we should do something like this, you know, like just invent like uh a collective learning process where you go to different places and you pick up skills from each place differently. Maybe that's something that the hubs network could do. I mean, that would be fantastic. >> For sure. I I pick it up. Uh, now I do think it's uh very important to get

local. Although I see there is a scalable like economical scalabilities u costs are much higher energy is much higher when we produce one single artisal item and instead of factory efficiency but I do think we can actually value more this objects and this stuff if we do in the case that uh we all uh throw away chairs from IKEA maybe but we don't throw away our grandma chair that's been there for 100 years maybe so we you want maybe to recover and you need one chair not 10 in

your life um so maybe that's a value transition we have to go through and uh in in parallel you mentioned about how difficult is it to actually get this local um independent a way uh situation where you can produce you have your energy, you have your food, you have your product. Uh what you need is possibly all uh made locally. I do think it's uh very difficult but we have a lot of initiative uh all around the world.

We can learn from each other. We have tools that we can prepare one side and reproduce in the other side. There is a lot of opportunity especially when connected to this willing of new echo villages, new situation that creates themsel um most of the time is rural areas and you generate this situation where um the value of creating together is much higher than >> go buy something. So it's some kind of might be also even cool, nice, enjoyable to uh generate even less but uh together

I I also think there's a really power in combining things. So I went to Boulder some years ago and you know because of the drug uh deal the drug trade which is legal I mean the soft trucks so re so they can't spend the money federally so they buy housing and the housing prices went up like really really fast there and so now they're making housing co-ops like the housing co-op I went to was 40% cheaper in terms of rent than anything else around it but then they connected to a community supported agriculture.

They pay only $5 a day for all their vegetables. Then they created a car sharing, not Uber but like mutualizing uh you know like a dozen cars within this building. And again they saved 80% on on on the cost of having a car. So this is the way to start thinking about it, right? is is think like you know you have all these building blocks that alone may not be enough but if you start combining them you have like another lifestyle you you spend a lot less you have more community and more relationships uh and this is from from there you can actually start growing because then you become attractive to other people like

well how are they doing this right uh how come they have such a good life and they only spend spend a third of what we are spending. So then even within the capitalist logic you start becoming an interesting uh player and you know I think the hub should be probably you know one of these knowledge nodes where this kind of thing is is being spread uh efficiency or resources when resources are not private but commonized. So when you get access from different parts, >> you can actually monitor or manage in a a fair way the resources. You can

actually generate a more efficient system where the resources are shared and so they don't get uh a car parked the whole time or a drill parked the whole time. Actually it makes more sense to share it. Yeah, that's that has been the original ideas of the fab labs. You have access to machinery that you won't have access to usually. Yeah. That only universities have. And so this is a beautiful idea. I think one another term that I don't know in English what is grosten like they say if you if you if you producing something and you have to put up a big assembly line which costs you $10 million and then you have

to put the costs onto the product. So you have to sell a lot to to you know reimburse for this initial um costs and and with this modern machinery you can lower that extremely. However, if it's just about having a chair the cheapest way is to go to eBay and buy a used EKR chair. You can't beat that. I mean we can't get even the material by far. But how much value does does it have? So yeah, I I really things have a symbolism like you mentioned the chair of the grandmother that has a value for you. Yeah. And the chair that you built yourself or in corporation has big value at least for me.

>> Hello. Okay. Um, so Michelle, you were talking about um like these different components that if we put them together, they can start to create a whole system that can compete. And I know that you've been cataloging them on your wiki for a long time. There are other people that are working on like knowledge commons and how to share that. like where we're at right now, what would you say is the critical missing piece or pieces that allow for this kind of knowledge comments to actually be operationalized?

Like the pieces are have been recorded. There's people that have things to share knowledge, but it's not quite there yet. What's missing? >> Well, maybe I'm going to surprise you. Uh but I think uh AI is coming just at the right time because I have enough time in my life and you know I work pretty hard at this uh like I woke at 5:00 a.m. and I I think I did 30 entries in my wiki uh in an hour and a half. Uh so I can do this but I cannot update everything. I cannot synthesize everything. I have to be really careful about you know where I synthesize and over time I've done a few but but I think uh this is basically what I'm need a little bit investment for is to create this machinery of synthesis where you

know you think okay what do what do we already know about mobility commons housing commons like it's in the wiki but I have 500 700 900 items and I I can't do this right so this is I think uh we need a few pamphlets like really h how to commonize or how to mutualize your housing, how to commonize, how to mutualize your transportation and just show people like this is what's available. This is how it's being done there and there and there and you know and some historical and contextual knowledge so that they can insert it in a in a narrative.

I think uh yeah with a little bit of support I think we are right at the point that we can start like really spreading the word about this it's time that it goes out of these smaller uh you know venues and it gets into the world as it were. I think this is this is the P2P to P4 pier right it's like at being at the service now of the people and their communities quick sorry one quick thought on that which is that yes I I think you're right that AI is going to be incredibly helpful for that and also I'm wondering about the human curation that can happen um where you know like Wikipedia if you had I know you have some other

contributors on your wiki but if you had many many people swarming and saying, "Oh, this this could be used over here if we connect these two things." So, I think there's a real need for human curation, too. I'm curious, do you think about >> Yeah, if I can just say something, Sam, I will give you and you actually Simon is an example of somebody doing what you just said with the growing the comments project. Um, but you know, I'm I'm a librarian from my original profession. I did this for 40 years and it's it's an underestimated profession like you need librarians really because you know people think oh we'll just search no like the things they leave out like the the if you look at the quality of of

like Google it's anchification right it's like so much worse than it was they literally like I don't know if you tried it but like now now if to go after two pages, they just repeat the top pages. So all the good stuff that was buried, you you won't find it, but you'll find it on my wiki, right? And you'll find it on Simon's wiki. So we need a lot more people and you know, maybe we need a common guild of librarians or something like that. This is this would be great.

Is that on? Yes, it is. Um yeah, the project uh Michelle just referred to what I'm working on growing the commons in England is uh we're we're approaching some of these issues and one of the things that just to refer to what other people have mentioned the social dimension the social fabric um to get people together the people that know that people have experience to actually be contributing to uh the wiki and um and you know some of them aren't tech aren't technically enabled. So we need to put them together with the people with the technical ability and form little teams if you like. I think the other thing I'd like to say is that um

coordination between knowledge comments between different wikis is really is is really going to make a big difference now and I think we need to uh be thinking about how to do that first how to learn from each other and also in the end because the technology isn't really there very well yet but how in the end we can actually combine the wikis into a big knowledge uh into into a larger knowledge commons um without erasing differences but actually enabling the the cross referencing which is going to help people navigate around.

>> I so I just want to reinforce that. Sorry if I intervene but so you know Jeff EMTT has just made this kind of P2P universe thing which is like a whole galaxy um and you know so this should be extended to yours right maybe a little button like extend the search to similar wikis so we need this meta level now we need this meta level and uh because you know we each have our own specific way of the way of looking at the world I'm you know I'm a bit more theory driven and and and analysis driven, but maybe Simon is more like practical driven. And we have fantastic things like how to pedia. What's the other one called?

>> Appropedia. They're just so amazing. Like the amount of like howto stuff that's in there that you can just like learn in five minutes how to do certain things, how to keep water in the desert. um you know I mean really amazing stuff that's available and if we could combine these different forms of knowledge in a in an ecosystem yeah this this is great on that saying that one of the things that growing the commons is is doing is um both the very practical how to do stuff and also um not just how to do stuff uh practically in terms of you

know how to set up how to grow vegetables but also how to set up will be I think increasingly how to set up housing commons how to set up other commons and yeah and and and I think also Roberto's work is going to be very important in that the common legal structures and um >> and all the kind of toolkit for doing it all we need to just link it all together and make sure that that people can find what they want when they want it as easily as possible and that's quite a task and that isn't just AI I think AI can help but isn't but it's also um really the design for humans which is really important.

>> Um may I point out that Deca has um >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Uh how about if we make his little app you know with a quiz about our presentations? I would love to see that like few minutes and then we go for lunch. >> Yes. Do you have the No, I thought you [laughter] have it. I swear. >> Yeah.

>> Okay. >> Yeah. Right. Right. Fine. on this topic um sorry just briefly on this topic actually uh access to how to generate a cooperative or a house a co-housing also an automation maybe and that's where AI may come and we can maybe push a button generate association a cooperative >> that would be very nice or administration bureaucracy that is very painful sometimes So there is this process of going from the knowledge that we can share with each other to the actually manifestation in spot right okay I want to start a fab

lab or I want to start I want to start a community I want to start a community currency project so there is a lot that people need and somehow the making it is actually the hardest part right it's like we all need this and yet I don't have time for this because I need to go to work. Oh, I I don't have time or I can't risk. And this is actually the biggest issue, the biggest blockage for me is that the people that really really badly need this stuff >> don't feel comfortable in trying it because if they fail, they're even worse than before.

>> How can we solve that? Um, that's one of my motivations. I'm I'm okay. I We own that house. Yeah. I'm middle class. I'm I'm But I have to do something. Yeah. I could go, you know, on a cruise or whatever, play golf, but it's boring to me. It's much more fun here. [laughter] Much more joy. Joy is deeper. Yeah. >> Yeah. I I second that. I think people have privileges. We need to stop complaining about that and just with great privileges come great responsibility.

>> There is enough people who have enough privileges if they were doing it. Not everybody needs to be able to do that and that's okay. Uh the other thing I wanted to quickly add is that actually I mean this is all great all of those wikis and stuff and but don't make no mistake like this is not going to solve the fact that people actually I mean we have already have so much information >> like I don't what what I need we also need a cooperative for the common Brussels we also need like a bunch of those other things the ideas not what's missing the knowledge is not missing >> what is missing is actually people who take responsibilities to actually make them happen. And the other thing is that those wikies are great, but you know what I really want is put me in touch

with someone who has done it before >> and who's going to come do a residency or whatn not to actually make it happen. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> I don't need yet another page that's going to tell me how to do it. I need a human being I can relate to that has the lived experience of it >> and say like, "Hey, actually, oh, you are searching for how to do this. Hey, why don't you contact Roberto?" Why don't you go there? >> Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. >> Yeah. And this sort of relates to what you were saying about like doing a tour like masters or who are doing a tour that part of the knowledge commons needs to be human mentorship.

>> Yeah. >> Right. And and also a way that those humans who are mentoring can be compensated for their time. So there needs to be an economy built around it as well. And I think that can be done with the technology. I just want to say maybe that what you just proposed can also be you know I think the wiki can help with that because everything is sourced like all the people that I site they're sourced and maybe there can be a little app you know that actually extracts the people and creates like a map of the people doing this right there not impossible to do I I also want to this is a bit of self advertising but I I want to do it.

Um you know the reason the P2P wiki is a bit original is that we are multiperspectal and just look around there are not many around like so this is not a critique Simon but I think you guys you know want to arrive at the consensus and they have a easy to read page for everyone and this is fine or maybe not. Okay. Um, so I work more quickly by assembling different viewpoints from different people and over time constructing an article. But I think this is important.

So I think it's important to uh have wikis that don't say we're neutral, which actually doesn't exist really, and then impose like a consensus that's not there. So like if you use my wiki, we are not hiding that there are different people having different visions on blockchain, on Bitcoin, on this and on that. So you can actually see that it's you know a world that consists of multiple perspect perspectives and that you know you so I I just want to to mention that because this is kind of unique uh you know most AIs don't do it. They'll just give you the synthesis. They don't really say you know that there are different viewpoints which are opposed to each other.

>> Okay, let's wrap up >> right now actually. Absolutely. you know on on on collaborative finance particularly we're just getting together a group of people uh to to to curate it and absolutely the the image that I have in my mind is to have the different positions clearly set out and that's the the lovely thing about is about knowledge commons is you can have a page for each different perspective it's not a problem and then you interlink them and you've got a place where you can say to people look have you read the Have you actually done your background research? And that will that will be a great help.

>> One more thing, we just launched a full universal translation on our wiki. So just try it out. See if it works. Uh every page has a button uh translated in any language. Uh this is this is not a minor thing. Yeah. So we'll see, you know, we we're in test phase, but please check it out if you have your own language. see if it works out in Slovenian or you know whatever language that that you speak next to English. So I think we and I I misnamed you Heramman for some reason. Uh but Steven, right?

>> Stefan. Okay. Oh, okay. Stefan Hermon. [laughter] So why don't you uh close up uh for us? >> Yeah. Thank you for attending. Thank you for your attention. It was a great privilege for me to be on stage with M Michelle Bowens. So I'm grateful for that. I'm grateful to the event and I'm grateful that you listen to my presentation. I hope it inspired you and you feel will find the rest of the information on the Telegram channel afterwards. But I have to eat now and put IT [applause] >> [clears throat]

>> POUND. SO, we really curious specific reason Christian. I'd like to see one journey.