16. Ten million people working for the Supplementary Economy comprise a very large number of people working for what could quickly become “big brother.” Would freedom and privacy problems not soon emerge?

Once again, looked at globally the figure is extremely large. Yet, so are the total number of postal employees or airline personnel. The reason why the latter seem less threatening, is because we seldom think of them as belonging to one group or infrastructure. Yet like the World Marshall Plan, they are all subject to the same international agreements.

We see postal, telephone and airline services as consisting of local branches, or separate companies. This, too, is true of the Supplementary Economy, which is built up of small discussion groups, and regional barter groups, etc., which will have grown into a global system, much like the worldwide telephone network has. The Supplementary Economy would be more transparent than these systems, because everyone would personally beworking with the same guidelines, and the same amount of credit, and would eventually, as technology became more widespread, have access to the data of the worldwide system.