I had a dream that inspired me to write. An acknowledgement before I get into it: I used to be a physicist and frequently attended colloquiums and conferences where physicists from all over would gather. My journey began as a student at the University of California, Santa Cruz, continued as a graduate student at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and finally brought me to Stanford, where I conducted research at the Stanford Linear Accelerator. It was at one of these conferences, disillusioned by the endless arguments over scarce research funding, that I decided to leave physics.
In my dream, I was transported back in time 20 years, standing before a colloquium of physicists. Caught off guard, I recognized my old graduate professors and several Nobel Prize-winning physicists, all looking a bit impatient. Noticing Carl Sagan in the back I relaxed a little.
"Suspend disbelief," I began.
Imagine that 20 years from now, particle physics has reached a standstill. The Higgs boson was discovered at nearly the exact mass we predicted. Neutrinos from outside our solar system have been tracked using large icy detectors, but they haven’t revealed the secrets we hoped for.
In this future, people carry around powerful computers in their pockets, using them for games, chats, and sharing Carl Sagan memes. Yet, most technology has become increasingly centralized in powerful companies. Instead of supporting humanity and life on Earth, it is used to maximize profits for shareholders. Our food production systems are becoming more fragile due to degrading topsoil. The world is in a spiral of late-stage capitalism, with continuous wars.
These issues were part of the reason I left physics 20 years ago to study and improve our economic systems. Only now am I beginning to understand what would have helped me back then.
As I awoke from this dream, I found myself thinking more about what I would tell my younger self and the scientists of today—more than the grumpy, stressed-out, funding-scarce physicists I remembered.
I wish I knew 20 years ago what I've started to study now. Resource coordination, as seen through rotational labor associations (ROLAs), has given me a glimpse into the very physics of syntropic systems. In physics, we spend too much time on entropy and breaking things apart, neglecting how they might be put together. (We often leave this messy work of building things to chemists and engineers sadly.)
What is needed for the coordination of our resources to build a healthier world? This may sound like a social or ecological question, perhaps one about soil health. But as a former physicist, I believe it can be viewed through the same lens. When matter and antimatter come together, energy is released, quark pairs begin to form, and fermions and mesons briefly exist in our world. We study in particle physics how these particles come together and decay. Is this so different from a community coming together to build a house? Consider all the ways resources of sovereign agents can be combined. Think of the efficiency of direct barter swapping versus having a swap space that can be reciprocally drawn from.
Most physicists I knew and know were and are also computer scientists. Understanding how fundamental particles might combine is often left to simulation. Similarly, I took to simulating different resource coordination systems with various forms of conservation of energy, intention, commitment, fairness, and more. Now, consider a swap space where offers of service are publicly known. If my offer is accepted into that basket, I can pull out an offer I need, and mine stays there until someone else needs it.
In such framing we start from something much more basic: no longer need a coincidence of wants or currency. Our ancestors figured this out long ago - how to connect commons of valuable offers (commitments for resources). In the world of blockchain, we call this liquidity pooling. More broadly, we might call it commitment pooling.
How does this relate to particle physics? Can we look at particle creation similarly to how someone draws upon the commons of commitments? Can we draw upon the commitment of the up quark to build a muon? And, of course, we will have to repay the favor - following conservation laws like the golden rule? What would a ROLA or merry-go-round look like from the view of particle physics? Translating across these frames and languages is extremely rich.
This dream reminded me of what I would say to my younger self. While my journey from physics to economics has been wonderful, I would tell myself to focus more on resource coordination than on money or community currency. Learn from nature and ecological systems, and specifically from our ancestors.
Econophysics sadly never took off as a field, because it faced rejection from both physicists, who viewed economic systems as too messy and unpredictable for their models, and economists, who saw the methods as overly simplistic and not accounting for the nuanced human behaviors central to their field. We tend to box ourselves into silos—physics only is about fundamental forces and particles, and economics is only about money and exchange.
I encourage my younger self, as I was just starting to study econophysics and community currencies, to keep trying, failing, and looking deeper into peering and pooling.
Carl Sagan once said, "Science is not only compatible with spirituality: it is a profound source of spirituality." And, "We are made of star stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself." If we apply this across physics and economics, we see that our efforts toward healthy coordination of resources are deeply scientific and spiritual acts. By understanding and harmonizing with the natural systems around us, we are not just building economies; we are connecting with the very fabric of the cosmos.
Thank you for allowing me to share this dream and vision. Together, perhaps we can find new pathways to create a better world.