About a decade ago, I was living in what I called “The Ivy League District”, a collection of warehouses on Cornell, Princeton, and Harvard Streets. From a small bedroom in the loft, I was the Director Of Operational Development (DOOD) at The Flow Factory. It was an incredible couple of years turning this warehouse into a community space that celebrated the arts, music, food, and community. Although it only lasted for a brief time, it was an incredible time, and a friend recently suggested I make another Flow Factory.
Out of curiosity, I wanted to see what was happening with the domain we used to use and I happened upon another Flow Factory in Sweden. Their website says they “enable people to create their digital change almost as fast as they can imagine it.” So I decided to write them a letter about collaborating.
Dear Flow Factory,
I am curious about working with you on a project I’ve been building toward.
Just over a decade ago, after challenging myself to live for a year without the use of money, I moved into a friend’s warehouse and turned it into a community center also called The Flow Factory. I lasted for about a year and a half in the space and created a lot of wonderful creative and community building experiences. You can watch a highlight video here (https://youtu.be/5_GHSH_yW9M). However, as a multi-faceted artist, management has never been considered one the of sharpest tools in my skill set.
Nevertheless, since my experience with The Flow Factory, I have been developing a theory I call ABC Squared Economics. It’s based on the notion that we all participate in the world as the Artists of our lives through the service of our Business as we engage our world as Citizens and develop our Communities. My hope is that ABC Squared Economics can help cultivate a more balanced and democratic economic system.
While ABC Squared Economics also has a bit of a philosophical component with a holistic heart/mind/body/spirit approach, I believe that one of the greater possibilities in its application is toward the future of finance, or more particularly, the future of financial transactions. Basically, for an artist who can create online media that can be reproduced ad infinitum, that content has the capacity to produce an economic exchange of currency, be that a dollor, euro, bitcoin, or whatever digital bundles of energy and information we use as currency. I believe that as the artists of our lives, people need the freedom to choose where that economic energy goes and what it’s used for so that it might create a healthier flow.
Since I’ve started using money again, I get paid largely for being the artist of my life. So that money goes into my Artist account, and I then put a percentage in my accounts for my Business, Citizenry, and Community (with a percentage also being put into a savings account as well). My vision is software that empowers us to channel the economic energy we create toward the endeavors we support in each of these aspects of ours lives and disperse it automatically with the ability to interact with it dynamically to change the flow as we need to.
Besides getting to use my Artist account to live the life that I want, everything I do also goes to supporting those Businesses that empower me to live that life. As a Citizen, I want a part of all that I do go toward investing in the society I live in, but I think people are entitled to much more of a say than our current governmental tax and spend procedures allow. And through my Community account, I’ve been able to invest in GoFundMe campaigns, help friends pay rent and fix cars, and support a number of my favorite non-profit organizations.
A few years ago, I published my eighth book and called it Steve McAlphabet Explains ABC Squared Economics. As you can imagine, it wasn’t a runaway best seller, but I do think it poetically describes the notions behind my theory. To move forward, we have to consider how far we’ve come and what we’ve used to get to where we are as I attempted to do in my seventh book Money, Sex, Power, and Faith: Questioning The Building Blocks of Civilization, oddly enough, also not a runaway best seller. Nevertheless, I’d be glad to send you both of the ebooks if you’d like to read them.
While I stumbled onto your site through sheer nostalgia, I think your Flow Factory may be a significant piece of the puzzle I’ve been trying to put together and would truly appreciate the opportunity to discuss the possibilities. I look forward to hearing from you soon.
Steve McAllister
Hopefully, they’ll write back soon.
