DESPERADOS THEORY: Stories about 2050 and how to go there

LOCALISATION OF ECONOMY

By 2050 the tendency to globalization has turned into a tendency to localization. This will have the principle of subsidiarity at its heart. In political terms, subsidiarity is widely accepted as meaning that everything is best decided and implemented closest to the people who will be affected. In economical terms it means that by 2050 the appropriate size for industries, resilience and permeability towards have reversed the economies of scale to make local much more efficient.

Conditions/drivers

By 2050 petrol has become extremely scarce and can only be used in special cases (Space Rockets, manufacturing of some materials); transport of heavy goods is very expensive. Sea transport is done by kite-vessels.
By 2050 ITER is still not operational for mass production, electricity is also very expensive, except electricity produced by local renewables or micro-renewables; long distance earth transport of heavy goods is very expensive even for Electric Vehicles (trains).
Some dramatic climate change disasters (Venice under the waters?) have finally made mandatory a tax on all products that includes all life-cycle costs, including waste and recycling. Recycling cannot be done in the third world.
Political demand for more equality pushes towards gains in local control.

What remains global

some industrial productions (chips, pharmaceutics, large solar air-globes) remain global or continental (EV motor-wheels, large kite sea transport vessels, electronic instrumentation)
information remains global: knowledge building, open science, digital libraries, engineering, design, social networking. Hyper-presence has reduced the need to travel.

Localizations

A.- Production

By 2050, minirobots, ultra-automation, 3D printing, self-growing materials make many local industries very efficient. DO IT YOURSELF has now a 30% of all production (your clothes, your furniture, your tableware, your configured Electric Vehicle)
By 2050, most population has returned from big Macro-cities to medium size agro-urban conglomerates. Vertical Automated Farming controlled by bio-ICT provide local food; taking also care of recycling of water.

B.- Distribution

By 2050, intermediaries about to disappear. Robotized EV of all sizes take the teleshopping home.

C.- Finances

By 2050, all money has become crypto money. Global crypto money is only used for mayor investments. All M1 money is regional, local and even by sector (Energy, Agriculture, etc). Payments done through the phone. Most loans are local, associated to local interests, and raised as P2P cloud-funding.

D.- Democracy

By 2050, most of the GDP is local, so that Gross Domestic Wealth discussions engage now everybody. eDemocracy has multiplied citizens participation in policy to 10% of their time; eDemocracy and Social Networking have become undistinguishable.

THE GREAT TRANSITION

The means for the Great Transition (the way the New Economics Foundation names it) will, at the end, be political. A party o parliamentary coalition will need to win elections at each country to make it become law with full democratic legitimacy.
In most countries, the Great Transition will require a constitutional change. A referendum will need to be formulated and won.

It will take some time for the current "Indignados", or OWS, or similar movements, to give birth for such a structured party or parliamentary representation and fuel it until parliamentarian victory.

The risk before

Desperation

Turns into fascism and xenophobia

and easily into war

COMMUNITY CURRENCIES

The monetary system after the Great Transition is a relatively uninteresting, almost technical, discussion. We have already very solid proposals for alternatives to the Fractional Reserve Banking system.

http://www.neweconomics.org/publications/towards-a-21st-century-banking-and-monetary-system

http://www.transaction.net/money/book/

http://beyondmoney.net/

http://www.monetary.org/

The only pending discussion is a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) approach of the meta information of the electronic money, so that all wallets can manage all electronic currencies. Its a question of interoperability. Some proposals already exist, like the Ricardian contract and the INTERNET-DRAFT Ko Fujimura XML Voucher: Generic Voucher Language.

The relevant discussion is about the Community Currencies and the Monetary System model we need to pump solidarity to the poor before the transition.