Economics
Economics has been called “the dismal science” because of how inaccurate and seemingly disconnected from reality it is. Operating at the intersection of social science and mathematical empiricism, the inconsistencies in academic economics are often obvious as it deals with the material needs and wants of people, physical realities that can to a large extent be quantified and compared.
A handful of cosmopolitan institutions including the IMF, the WEF, the BIS, the World Bank and the leading central banks exercise immense political power in order to create and maintain the conditions which the hegemonic economic paradigm proclaims natural laws. One of the key instruments of this doctrine is to distort and obscure the role of money and credit. Karl Marx’s investigations of accumulation, labor-value and the socioeconomic relations of the capitalist production process became a cornerstone of economic theory, but he did not manage to refute or replace the classical paradigm as such. On the question of money and credit in particular he largely adopts the definition of Adam Smith.
In practice, both states described as capitalist and socialist respectively rely on a high degree of centralized economic planning and authoritarian control over markets, money and productive resources, maximizing their monopolies through the continuous accumulation of surplus value. Today even the shrewdest advocates of this system recognize that its premise of continuous growth inevitably means destruction and extinction.
Due to their reliance on abstract axioms rather than physical reality, classical and neoclassical economics are unable to explain this dilemma, much less to provide a solution. The proposed fixes for the most part ignore the field of economy and amount to the imposition of more centralized authority in the hands of governments, central banks or other extra-national autocratic institutions. The supposedly unchangeable flaws of the economic system are used as an excuse to eradicate civil rights, accountability and any opposition to total state power.
We fight this threat by studying, developing and implementing democratic economics. Once we understand that the prevalent economic system is designed by humans to fulfill specific objectives we are able to imagine and develop tools and systems that serve different objectives, and recognize where such alternatives already exist in practice.
Irregular economies - so-called black markets - sustain millions of people around the world without government intervention or enforcement. Community banks encourage innovation and prioritize long-term benefits for the entire community over short-term profits. Cryptocurrencies allow for fully transparent and democratic monetary policies while shielding economic actors from state intervention and censorship.
We strive to accurately understand the macroeconomic reality and to devise courses of action to build an effective and scalable counter-economy. We place a central focus on DeFi, decentralized blockchain-based finance, due to the vast array of tools it provides and enables to design monetary instruments, coordinate markets and organize complex economic systems.
We are looking for skilled and experienced people to teach and study macroeconomic and monetary theory, the study of financial and monetary instruments, research into markets and decentralized distribution systems, economic ethics and philosophy regarding risk, trust, speculation and hedging, market analysis and token economics. It is an objective of the academy to develop and distribute education materials that give a comprehensible overview of economic history and counter-economic strategy and contribute to the emerging paradigm of democratic economics.
Read reports from the academy's economics research group here.