The Utopian World Championship

T.R.O.Y. : The New World Disorder a global network of direct democracy and community currency

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Summary

The free market economy collapsed in the year 2007. Along with it went traditional governments and institutions that were based on it. In the vacuum that reigned grassroots organizations emerged to fill the functions that the nation-state had previously been assigned.

The World Social Forum, along with many other NGOs, gathered up the remains of the United Nations and formed the Global Alliance (GA) - a network of international organizations representing a large chunk of the world and organized along the principle of direct democracy. Some of its central documents are the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Agenda 21. Now, with the force of the world behind the GA, these documents are being enforced. Both nuclear weapons and national armies have been banned.

No longer is the United States in control. In fact, the United States no longer exists. It, as well as the vast majority of nation-states, has been replaced by Community Networks -networks of small communities. Thousands of these Community Networks (or Networks for short) have taken the place of what used to be countries. Along with political pluralism and direct democracy came a pluralism of economic democracy.

Where the traditional economy failed to function, systems based on community currencies such as LETS and interest-free exchange began to thrive. Now there have been two additional forms of currencies added. One is the global TERRA system which is an electronic currency with a negative interest rate thus preventing the hoarding of wealth while encouraging cooperation and long term investing. The third form is the Aqua which functions regionally as an eco-centric paper currency. It has its greatest value in the region that produces it and loses value slightly the farther it goes from its point of origin. This encourages local commerce, community development, and environmental sustainability.

"Today's great opportunity is that any community -any community- can, with access to knowledge, develop a technology perfectly appropriate to its needs and moreover, perfectly appropriate to its resources....It has been my observation that when people begin to take a new active part in any segment of their lives, it becomes a self-feeding passion, urging a person on for more and more responsibility, more and more self-reliance, more and more action as a whole person and not merely as a spectator."
-Karl Hess, Community Technology

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POLITICAL ORGANIZATION

"Civilizing capitalism will only be possible globally, if at all."
Elmar Altvater

The Global Alliance
The Global Alliance (GA), is the name given to what arose from the World Social Forum http://www.worldsocialforum.org as it, and other NGOs gathered up the remains of the United Nations. Many grassroots organizations participated and structural advice on the new alliance came from groups such as the Campaign for a More Democratic United Nations http://www.oneworld.org/camdun
The GA came to provide a much-needed stability for the new structure of worldwide interaction and cooperation. All decision-making is now made through direct democracy wherein all participants engage themselves as equal members in a system of rotation that enables a minimum of bureaucracy.
Furthermore, it has maintained, from the very start, a highly flexible membership policy.

The GA allows for the creation and recognition of new nations and new 'states' according to a very basic criteria:
1) that it agree to the constitution of the Global Alliance which includes the ratification of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights http://www.un.org/overview/rights , International Covenants on Civil and Political Rights http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/a_ccpr and on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/a_cescr as well as Agenda 21 http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/agenda21
2) that it consent to monitoring by fellow members, and
3) that it sees to provision of the needs and welfare of its membership. Under these guidelines, nearly any community or group of communities has the possibility to be recognized as an autonomous entity.
Peacekeeping forces, comprised of GA members, are used no more often today than they were during the days of the United Nations and when they are used the emphasis is decidedly on dialogue and peaceful conflict-resolution. All parties are brought into dialogue and not, as was the case in Somalia 1992-95, only those parties who have military or economic power. Internal grassroots organizations, cooperatives, clan/tribal leaders, and cultural consultants as well as non-partisan mediators from outside the area are taken in. It is through the continual networking that goes on in today's direct democratic process that enables early warning s of tension build-up to be quickly addressed. Focus is thus more on pre-conflict resolution as opposed to the direct use of peacekeeping forces.
Immediately after the Great Fall disarmament became a top priority. If any sort of global security was to be established, it had to be free of the threat of military power and large scale war. The achievements of a universal ban on nuclear weapons followed by a ban on national armies were major victories. The model of Costa Rica which hadn't had an army in ages proved to be the shining example which everyone else followed. As the bans were simultaneous and universal there was little room for the military to protest. And as this coincided with the collapse of profit-oriented economy there was hardly any economic incentive to maintain military power and the arms industry.
Furthermore the GA, unlike the UN was neither dominated by nor dependent upon the United States nor did it include any sort of permanent Security Council membership as the UN once did. Direct democracy ensured that the voice of the GA was that of the people of the world and not merely certain heads of state.

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