Flatlander - a report from New-Borderland

As a utopian writer I sometimes feel like Abbott’s poor friend from Flatland whose reports from Spaceland were condemned by his fellow citizens. It consoles me that this was the fate also of those visionaries whose imaginations later proved to be facets of our present two-dimensional, dual economy.

Beyond the former totality of the global system economic transactions are nowadays also facilitated in local markets, an institutional arrangement which has probably become too self-evident: Sales are recognized only as far as they level with expenditures; at the end of the year the balance is drawn and treated like a non-local credit or debit – subject to income or value-added tax it is payable in global currency. Certainly, local markets depend on the global system - only the traditional economy generates both, the capital base which is necessary for local production as well as the minimum income in global currency guaranteed to anyone. But there is also a reverse dependency - only the local markets offer sufficient opportunities for occupation, and thus the social stability which again is a precondition for the efficient operation of the global market.

Since any of our local currencies is absolutely non-convertible, these markets form a second dimension of our economic structure. The comparison to the one-dimensional structure of the last century where high-tech production or financial services were treated like labour-intensive ecological food production or social services reminds us of the first voyage of Abbott’s friend to Lineland where the message of a second dimension also remained unheard.

S. Flor, 2029

 (Flor refers to Edwin A. Abbott "Flatland. 
A romance of Many dimensions" originally published 1884)