Deep reading, premises readied for questioning: "Money must become our servant, rather than our master."

Gahan's okay with money as we know it. 

Just about the first lesson any philosophy student learns is to question all the premises. Do the things one takes for granted survive scrutiny? I became a philosophy student at IU Southeast in the fall of 1978, it got real very quickly: Do grades mean what we think they do?

We gathered at a classroom in Hillside Hall, and Prof. McCarthy greeted us with a warning, which I now paraphrase:

“Welcome to Philosophy 101. If you’ve chosen the university experience as a means of compiling a perfect 4.0 GPA, then I recommend you drop this class and choose another, because I do not award perfect scores. There is no such thing as perfection, and if you disagree with me, be prepared to argue your case logically. It won’t matter, because you’ll still not receive an A for this class. Would anyone like to discuss the nature of perfection?”

Does money mean what we think it does?

Neoliberalism has tricked us into believing a fairytale about where money comes from, by Mary Mellor (The Conversation)

There is nothing natural about money. There is no link to some scarce essential form of money that sets a limit to its creation. It can be composed of base metal, paper or electronic data – none of which is in short supply. Similarly – despite what you may have heard about the need for austerity and a lack of certain cash-generating trees – there is no “natural” level of public expenditure. The size and reach of the public sector is a matter of political choice.

Which puts austerity, the culling of expenditure in the public economy, under some question. For some countries, such as Greece, the impact of austerity has been devastating. Austerity policies still persist despite numerous studies arguing that they were entirely misconceived, based on political choice rather than economic logic. But the economic case for austerity is equally mistaken: it is based on what can best be described as fairytale economics ...

Cashlessness: “Young people use cash relatively little. They use it to buy marijuana.”

I suppose Gahan and Duggins can rig up some sort of Square.

STEINBERG: A bakery that wants your dollars but not your dough, by Neil Steinberg (Chicago Sun-Times)

 ... I would feel naked without money, wouldn’t leave home without some. The fear being that I would encounter places that don’t take credit cards. When exactly the opposite is increasingly true: businesses are beginning to no longer accept hard money.

“THE GODDESS IS GOING CASHLESS ON AUGUST 1st” read signs on the revolving door of the Goddess and the Baker at LaSalle and Wacker, an upscale coffee bar and sandwich shop that on Tuesday stopped accepting dough for its products (completely legal — no laws require a business accept cash).

“We’ve had theft, and we’ve had robbery,” she said. “There’s an increase in counterfeit dollars. The time supervisors take to count money, between shifts, after shifts, getting money to the bank, paying for an armored car service. Then there are hygiene reasons. Our cashiers touching money and then touching baked goods.”

You already know the conclusion.

 ... technology wins, and expect cash to vanish along with the internal combustion engine. In a sense, this is a dream come true for me. I always resented that we as a society couldn’t get rid of the penny. Now we can, though we have to also scrap all coinage and currency while we’re at it.

This is for you, self-styled local 'progressives': "To Find Alternatives to Capitalism, Think Small."

It's a long read, but worth the effort.

To Find Alternatives to Capitalism, Think Small, by David Bollier (The Nation)

Why co-ops, regional currencies, and hackerspaces are pointing the way toward a new economic vision.

In the aftermath of Donald Trump’s shocking election victory, a shattered Democratic Party and dazed progressives agree on at least one thing: Democrats must replace Republicans in Congress as quickly as possible. As usual, however, the quest to recapture power is focused on tactical concerns and political optics, and not on the need for the deeper conversation that the 2016 election should have provoked us to have: How can we overcome the structural pathologies of our rigged economy and toxic political culture, and galvanize new movements capable of building functional alternatives?

Since at least the 1980s, Democrats have accepted, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, the free-market “progress” narrative—the idea that constant economic growth with minimal government involvement is the only reliable way to advance freedom and improve well-being. Dependent on contributions from Wall Street, Silicon Valley, Hollywood, and Big Pharma, the Democratic Party remains incapable of recognizing our current political economy as fundamentally extractive and predatory. The party’s commitment to serious change is halfhearted, at best.

While the mainstream resistance to Trump is angry, spirited, and widespread, its implicit agenda, at least on economic matters, is more to restore a bygone liberal normalcy than to forge a new vision for the future. The impressive grassroots resistance to Trump may prove to be an ambiguous gift. While inspiring fierce mobilizations, the politicization of ordinary people, and unity among an otherwise fractious left, it has thus far failed to produce a much-needed paradigm shift in progressive thought.

This search for a new paradigm is crucial as the world grapples with some profound existential questions: Is continued economic growth compatible with efforts to address the urgent dangers of climate change? If not, what does this mean for restructuring capitalism and reorienting our lives? How can we reap the benefits of digital technologies and artificial intelligence without exacerbating unemployment, inequality, and social marginalization? And how shall we deal with the threats posed by global capital and right-wing nationalism to liberal democracy itself?

Or, what most self-styled local "progressives" aren't doing as they emphasize gestures over content.

Instead of trying to reassemble the broken pieces of the old order, progressives would be better off developing a new vision more suited to our times. There are already a number of projects that dare to imagine what a fairer, eco-friendly, post-growth economy might look like. But these valuable inquiries often remain confined within progressive and intellectual circles. Perhaps more to the point, they are too often treated as thought experiments for someone else to implement. “Action causes more trouble than thought,” the artist Jenny Holzer has noted. What is needed now are bold projects that attempt to demonstrate, rather than merely conceptualize, effective solutions.