Technorama

Inspired by Gandhi's walk to Porbander (India), Mark Boyle planned to walk from Bristol to Porbander as a "Community Pilgrim" to promote his Freeconomy community movement. Unfortnately for him he failed and returned from France this week.

To me it looks incredibly stupid to set off abroad to France in light of not being able to speak French! No wonder everyone thought he was a freeloading backpacker or illegal migrant. It's pretty rude to expect people to speak English when French is such a significant language itself. Setting out on a walk with such a complete lack of planning is simply stupid. His community didn't yet exist, and no wonder no one understood what he was aiming to achieve. Had he marketed his mission in advance online, and got local media involved it would probably have been more successful.

However, setting off with no money at all is pretty silly, if he wants to get things to move to a "freeconomy" there has to be some intermediary phase (like the difference between socialism and communism, no country ever reached communism).

From his site:
"So what is The Freeconomy Community about?

It's about making the transition from a money-based communityless (sic) society to a community-based moneyless society."


What Mark wants has been tried before, the socialist countries in Eastern Europe, CCCP and Asia all operated barter trading agreements. Putting a numerical value on things just seems to work better though, because you can't often work out how many sheep you need to barter for a car..! the free market is pretty good at deciding prices. In CCCP there was a state managed economy, where Gosplan would "predict" demand, and set prices. The problem with predicting is that they would ramp up production for say "fashionable shoes", and then it would turn out that people didn't like them. The moral is, you can't predict what consumers what to buy. In addition, there needs to be the "success factor" that is capitalism, otherwise there bad ideas and bad products last for ever, when, like in evolution only the successful products and services should survive.

It's odd that Mark expected to rely on others food and shelter while on his trip, which those people would obviously foot the bill for.

At least the media have highlighted the need for schools to educate in modern popular languages which people like Mark will need when they are on trips abroad.

The Landshare idea on his website is pretty silly, making everyone run an allotment. It reminds me of domestic iron production in CCCP.

These days Mark would probably make more of an impact on the world if he got on Wife Swap somehow.

Telegraph article. Mark Boyle website. Funny commentary on the walk.

Labels: UK