A couple of answers from #11, Gregory Dean
I only got answers for two of the scenarios so far from #11, Gregory Dean, but they are quite extensive and (I think) interesting so I will post them already:
Scenario 1: A considerable improvement in efficiency allows Vancity to mantain revenue and operations with 30% less work hours.
From my conversations with people in Vancity about the Information Communications Tech (ICT), this is not a wholly unrealistic gain in efficiency if the archaic and disparate IT systems were to be revamped intelligently via certain kinds of research and development well known to software/network designers. Keeping old systems that do not communicate across many boundaries within Vancity has been a penny wise – pound foolish bungling in my view. It prevents all kinds of efficiencies, not to mention preventing branches being able to deal with people based on personal considerations instead of fairly blunt institutional formula.
The latent question that is obvious to me here is; would you layoff a whack load of employees? The answer is well, it depends on how much growth we can achieved by keeping on a fair few workers for creative and strategic growth development, and restructuring pilot projects. I think we could keep on a lot of employees if we shifted work to planning strategic growth amongst the subsidiaries along with some kind of Eastward expansion.
My and Douglas Gook's overall position is that Vancity needs to have the scale and power to take market share from the no-ethics, for (obscene) profit banks. This strength is needed especially because we propose Vancity (N.America's 2nd biggest Credit Union) as a flagship in a Federation of Participatory Co-ops (FPC). We want to build FPC as a fleet to transfer us to participatory economies - where the people engaged and affected by issues are structurally guaranteed to be the one's making and implementing decisions. The state of our civilization and eco-systems is proof enough of the need for systemic change. Let's have it be change that requires intelligent deliberation by stakeholders in networked democracy.
Scenario 6: US dollar plummets, change oscillates between 1 CAD = 1.0 USD and 1 CAD = 2.0 USD during your three-year position.
This is a very complex question to explore, for latent in it is the end of the economic order as we know it. It wouldn't just be the loonie' appreciation but the general tanking of the US Dollar (USD). The massive consumer market of the U.S. would be gone and global production would also tank, putting millions of people out of work and much of the globe into a deep recession. This is what this question actually posits as a scenario if it's not completely hypothetical and disconnected from reality. I unfortunately cannot say that this is an entirely unlikely scenario as per the host of problems in the U.S. economic and credit system, and an increasing number of countries decoupling from the dollar as well as ceasing to trade their commodities in the Greenback. The United Arab Emirates have just announced their de-coupling from the USD with Saudi Arabia likely to follow suit that their people's purchasing power and savings might be kept from sinking like a stone. If the USD is no longer to be the currency of exchange for commodities, then the US financing system and dollar is right properly screwed. There'll be little to keep all that debt and high expenditures financed, not to mention keeping all the U.S. bond holders from heading for the exits, which would precipitate one of the greatest losses of 'wealth' ever recorded. It would be like a financial bomb going off in every bank in the world. Hopefully the world's central banks and governments keep buying up US debt paper (t-bills, bonds, etc.,) with their own fiat paper to keep it all afloat a little longer; economic collapse with no alternative to fill in hurts real people.
In the case of collapse there is one major thing I'd like to have laid out ahead (although the int'l banking system could be on the verge now) of time to keep Vancity afloat and not eaten by everyone rushing the banks for their cash, and the bigger banks eating it: That is to federate with all the credit unions of BC, which can either lobby as a big block to be included in the likely emergency monetary system that Ottawa and the Bank of Canada would try to implement, or create a new exchange and value paradigm here in BC as a federation.
I think the most democratic and moral 'currency' system would be Remuneration based on Effort and Sacrifice (RES) (Albert & Hahnel. 1997). With RES no one group or person can amass asymmetrical wealth and power with which to buy out integral decisions in communities. People who exert more effort and sacrifice might make even %80 more than those who don't work that hard, but leveraging thousands of times what most everyone else has just can't happen in participatory economics (parecon.org). We'll get intelligent, balanced economic and thus ecological decisions when there are no super-powerful entities who can come in and buy out real democratic process in communities who have to live with and implement their decisions. In participatory economics (parecon) even the value of 'currency' is democratically determined, not just printed arbitrarily to finance some war, or keep the big financial and corporate players happy. (Each unit of RES is hopefully just an even fraction – divisor - of total wealth in a trade network).
There are many balancing considerations and features required in implementing RES, including working with credit unions and co-ops internationally to create large networks of trade, by which we can achieve the strength and independence to not do business with those economic players who simply prey on communities and ecosystems. I've figured out many strategies and mechanisms to achieve the independence of a truly democratic economy in my book (which is only in its 2nd draft). All the challenges inherent in such a lofty goal as shifting to economic democracy must be tackled if we are to survive, for certainly this current system of competitive greed isn't going to magically start coordinating economic decisions well enough that we'll be able to turn the planet around in time. We need sane economics if we want a sane planet.
