Living in the spread

The ECSA project is designed to open a spread between capitalist and post-capitalist futures. We try to use capitalism’s historically consolidated capacities (which actually are our capacities), including the power of financial instruments and computing, to wager on postcapitalist outcomes. Contrary to capitalism, ECSA’s arbitrage on intelligence is to reduce the cost to the planet for collective re-imagination and re-organization, while also collectivizing the returns on the benefits of creating more convivial forms of life. By utilizing the accumulated knowledge implicit in financial instruments and computing derived from, but not beholden to, capitalism, we are creating a grammar for postcapitalist economic expression. We believe that a clear spread will open between what the old and the new economic grammar make possible - there is a clear difference in their expressive capacity, accessibility, stability, adaptability, scalability, privacy, functional equality and programmability. Now, besides politically and technically, we can frame this as a spread also financially. Investing in the creation of new economic grammar is trading the spread, taking a long position of an alternative to capitalist modes of valuing. But we also depict it as a short position: those who recognize pointers to capitalism’s loss of legitimacy may want to place a bet against it. Bitcoin may be a short position on capitalist money. But the ECSA token offers a short position on the capitalist economy and culture. The ECSA token holders retain the option to support the build-out of postcapitalism or cash out. We call this “living in the spread.” Can you afford to risk building a different economy; can you afford not to risk building one? Full financialization has made precarity and risk part of life. The ECSA token allows us to meaningfully risk together on a different future because it helps us build it.