Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Basics First: Let Money Buy Happiness and a Central Store that Provides Essentials for All
    Basics First: Let Money Buy Happiness and a Central Store that Provides Essentials for All
    Basics First: Let Money Buy Happiness and a Central Store that Provides Essentials for All
    Ebook110 pages1 hour

    Basics First: Let Money Buy Happiness and a Central Store that Provides Essentials for All

    By Sema Dube and Manu Dube

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Basics First introduces an innovative way of thinking about money. Sema and Manu Dube argue that we do away with regulations, allow people to travel wherever they want and trade freely. Simple enough, but trade will never be free if one party cannot walk away because to do so would threaten their survival. This book aims to be a seed for a discussion where everyone can participate, by showing that it could be possible to change our systems for the better if we focus on the basics first. It is all about money. About how we choose to define it.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJohn Hunt Publishing
    Release dateOct 27, 2017
    ISBN9781785355905
    Basics First: Let Money Buy Happiness and a Central Store that Provides Essentials for All
    Author

    Sema Dube

    Sema Dube has a Ph.D. in Finance with a minor in Econometrics and Quantitative methods from the George Washington University, and an MBA in Finance from Binghamton. She is currently Vice Chair of the International Business and Trade department at Yeditepe University, Istanbul, Turkey.

    Related authors

    Related to Basics First

    Related ebooks

    Finance & Money Management For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Dancing Across Horizons

      Apr 5, 2023

      Dancing Across Horizons
      8 min read

    • Article

      How Inequality Imperils Cooperation

      Jan 9, 2020

      Last year news came that Indian billionaire Gautam Adani was set to exploit Australian coal reserves. The deal, The New York Times reported, was the result of a successful campaign by the Adani Group, a vast conglomerate with diverse interests, to ca

      8 min read

    • Article

      Disrupters

      Apr 2, 2022

      Disrupters
      11 min read

    • Article

      Disrupters

      Apr 1, 2022

      Disrupters
      11 min read

    • Article

      The Problem with Self-Control

      May 1, 2019

      OVEREATING, UNDER-SAVING, over-borrowing and under-exercising are just a few of the short-sighted behaviours that we are often guilty of. Now the bad news: Acting in our own long-term interest is only getting more and more difficult. Why? Because our

      7 min read

    • Article

      Heat of the Moment

      Aug 1, 2017

      Heat of the Moment
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Future Of Work

      May 10, 2021

      The Future Of Work
      9 min read

    • Article

      The Power of Human-Centred Strategies

      May 1, 2020

      A FEW YEARS AGO, I was working with the talent management team at a large financial organization. The firm was struggling with retaining its top talent. Far too many of its identified high-potential employees were leaving at the VP level. We set out

      8 min read

    • Article

      How Stories Influence Investment Questions

      Aug 6, 2021

      humans are meaning-making creatures. We see patterns where there are none; create inferences where there are only associations and distil intent where there is only coincidence. Making meaning is why we have both religion and science: two different f

      3 min read

    • Article

      Aim For A Thriving Planet

      Jul 26, 2021

      Aim For A Thriving Planet
      10 min read

    • Article

      Q&A

      May 1, 2017

      You have found that people don’t always have well-defined preferences—and that we often ‘make up the rules’ for a decision on the spot. Describe how this works. When people make choices, they don’t simply refer to a ‘master list’ of preferences in th

      6 min read

    • Article

      How Social Media Encourages Consumption

      May 1, 2020

      When it comes to making decisions about saving money for the future, many of us are ‘grasping at straws’. Why is that? Figuring out how much to save for the future is no easy task — and the fact that many of us will now live to be 100 makes it even h

      6 min read

    • Article

      Aim For The New Frontiers Of Work

      Sep 25, 2021

      Aim For The New Frontiers Of Work
      9 min read

    • Article

      Your Post-COVID Business Plan

      May 1, 2021

      Right now, every company in the world is facing the same question: What’s going to happen when this pandemic is over? Over the last several months, we’ve been working with management teams in a variety of sectors, including retail, entertainment, fin

      4 min read

    • Article

      Aim For Fairness

      Nov 25, 2021

      Aim For Fairness
      9 min read

    • Article

      We Are Running in 'Degraded Mode'

      Nov 23, 2021

      Welcome to Galaxy Brain -- a newsletter from Charlie Warzel about technology and culture and big ideas. You can read what this is all about here. If you like what you see, consider forwarding it to a friend or two. We're still figuring things out in

      8 min read

    • Article

      The Timeless Power of Social Norms

      May 1, 2020

      How do you define ‘social norms’? Social norms are our understanding of what is expected of us and what is appropriate in particular situations. Some people describe them as informal ‘rules of behaviour’. We learn these over time as we encounter othe

      6 min read

    • Article

      Secrets of Sustainable Investing

      Feb 25, 2022

      Amy Domini is founder and chair of Domini Impact Investments. She has authored several books, most recently Thoughts on People, Planet & Profit. Kiplinger: You are a pioneer in what is often called socially responsible investing (SRI). How and why di

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Critical Role of Context in Behaviour Change

      Jan 1, 2022

      WHETHER IT’S A NEW PROJECT management platform or a complete company restructure, when organizations attempt to implement change, more often than not they are met with resistance. The question is why. The fact is, there is always a portion of people

      7 min read

    • Article

      When Nudge Comes To Shove

      Oct 27, 2023

      When Nudge Comes To Shove
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Behavioural Issue

      May 1, 2017

      AT ITS CORE, every organization is in the same business: changing behaviour. For-profit companies try to sway consumers to buy their products; governments try to convince citizens to pay their taxes on time; and an NGO might want to encourage familie

      2 min read

    • Article

      Knowing Our Power in Tumultuous Times

      Mar 24, 2022

      Kelly O’Shanassy, CEO of the Australian Conservation Foundation, spoke these words to me last year, during an interview for The reMAKERs podcast about climate change and what gives her hope. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had just

      3 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Basics First

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Basics First - Sema Dube

      First published by iff Books, 2017

      iff Books is an imprint of John Hunt Publishing Ltd., Laurel House, Station Approach,

      Alresford, Hants, SO24 9JH, UK

      office1@jhpbooks.net

      www.johnhuntpublishing.com

      www.iff-books.com

      For distributor details and how to order please visit the ‘Ordering’ section on our website.

      Text copyright: Sema Dube and Manu Dube 2016

      ISBN: 978 1 78535 589 9

      978 1 78535 590 5 (ebook)

      Library of Congress Control Number: 2016951899

      All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publishers.

      The rights of Sema Dube and Manu Dube as authors have been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

      A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

      Design: Stuart Davies

      Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY, UK

      We operate a distinctive and ethical publishing philosophy in all areas of our business, from our global network of authors to production and worldwide distribution.

      CONTENTS

      Preface

      1. Modeling Financial and Economic Systems

      1.1 Fundamental Issues

      1.2 Libertarians and Egalitarians

      1.3 Outcomes

      1.3.1 The good

      1.3.2 The bad

      1.3.3 The unknown

      1.4 So What Now?

      2. Revisiting Mr Crusoe

      2.1 Wealth and Money

      2.2 Key Considerations

      3. The Crusoes

      4. A Broader Socioeconomic System

      4.1 Proposed System

      4.1.1 Currency

      4.1.2 Distribution of essentials

      4.1.3 Currency-based transactions

      4.1.4 Net money

      4.1.5 Problems

      4.1.6 Available money

      4.2 Characteristics of the Available Money System

      4.2.1 Stability of currency

      4.2.2 Economic regulations

      4.2.3 Wage restrictions and motivation to work

      4.2.4 Government spending, taxes and inflation

      4.2.5 Fairness of currency

      4.2.6 Disparity

      4.2.7 Efficiency and productivity

      4.2.8 Observations and predictions

      4.2.9 Policy decisions

      4.2.10 Large investments

      5. Resolving the Debates

      5.1 Libertarians versus Egalitarians

      5.2 Practicability of Free Markets

      5.3 Impact of Technology

      5.4 Cash versus In-kind Assistance

      6. Conclusions

      6.1 Comparison with Existing Systems

      6.2 Foreign Trade

      6.3 Starting towards the New System

      Endnotes

      References

      To all our furry, feathered and finned friends

      We owe you a gentler, happier world

      Preface

      Is it virtuous to work harder if there is not enough work? Can individuals be responsible for themselves if their fate is determined more by others’ actions than their own? Where would self-improvement end when doctorates no longer offered protection against automation? Can we preserve jobs without discouraging innovation and restricting the free markets that have made our lives better? Soon we will have to answer these questions even as our complex financial and economic models are unable to predict effects of policies reliably. Policies which affect billions of lives.

      Then there are the right-left debates. They have been going on for several hundred years and seem no closer to resolution today than when they started. The problem is that both sides have some aspects of the truth and miss other elements. Phoenix is north and west of Tucson. If you believed you had to go north to get there, you would not get there any sooner than Go west, young man would take you there. Computer models can actually make things worse. It is like having a supersonic jet. Depending on your north versus west beliefs you could end up in Canada or over the Pacific, farther away than when you started. As the race to prove one side right heated up, would anyone stop and ask if we even needed to go to Phoenix in the first place? We have to revisit the fundamentals of financial and socioeconomic systems to ask the most basic questions rather than complicate the situation more.

      We explore the concept of money starting from what we can and cannot say about what an individual could want. Free markets, in a sense, consist of isolated individuals who make decisions for their own benefit in an environment that includes additional individuals. When individuals agree to be a part of a system, and such agreement is essential for maintaining a stable system, they agree to give up several freedoms. They agree to respect property rights and by doing so they give up the ability to exploit their natural environment freely. In return for such restrictions the system must provide them with some benefits. We do not need to assume that everyone wants to live solely to support others any more than everyone wants to spend all their time trying to earn more. Simply accepting that everyone would be happier if their own survival was made as easy as possible, and beyond that different people want different things, may be sufficient. Our results would show it is, and that it is possible to construct a simple financial system where no one is forced to do anything but it is in everyone’s own interest that the essentials for survival are provided to all.

      The analysis is easily accessible to non-specialists. It has to be. If we aim to describe decisions that people make consciously, it makes little sense to come up with a mathematical model most of us would not pretend to understand. It is we, after all, who supposedly carry out these analyses to make our conscious decisions.

      No one can presume to have the final word on such a subject. Our main aim is to have the book be a seed for discussion where everyone can participate, by showing that it could be possible to change our systems for the better if we were to focus on the basics first. It would have been too painful to attempt, but for the good people at John Hunt who somehow made the dreary task of publishing the book a pleasure each step of the way.

      1

      Modeling Financial and Economic Systems

      There are no known laws of nature that govern human behavior in the same sense as physical laws govern the motion of particles. This makes it difficult to model socioeconomic and financial systems mathematically. We can always find equations that explain past observations but it is increasingly clear that such models may not have predictive power.¹ If we did have a model that could predict the effects of policy decisions on the economy, would the Board of the Federal Reserve need to vote?

      How can a model that explains the past be unable to predict the future? Consider a

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1