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    21st Century Ideas: Community Currency Discussion

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    Started by: maastrictian Raves:15 Badge Winner! Longbroading

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    I'm trying to think about how this idea can be made more concrete:

    http://superstructgame.org/SuperstructView/152

    Replacing conventional currency with some other option is a powerful idea, but a dangerous one as well. A cash-less economy was tried in the Soviet Union in the early 1920s, for instance, but did not succeed there. And its clear that Pamela is talking about something even more fundamental than eliminating cash, as she talks about removing barter as well.

    She makes two suggestions, the first is education for work. This is certainly a good idea. Education is fundamental to a productive and progressive society. But that certainly can't be the only thing that people work for. Books can't fill an empty stomach! What about requiring that educational benifits be part of a more conventional salary? That was a program that NYU offered when I worked there ten years ago, that employees could take one class every semester for free.

    Then there is the idea of rewarding people for ideas, not for material good or labor. This seems to get at Corrie Doctorow's idea of "wuffie". This is a neat idea, but is not necesarily consistant with the world we live in the year 2019. We know that there are millions, maybe billions of people going hungry every day. We need more food, and we need to reward the people who produce it, not just the people who think of better ways to produce it.

    It seems that a new system of commerce should supplement, not supplant, the existing monetary system.

    First few thoughts that come to mind are that by changing the general population\\\'s goals to a more mental rather than material is a good way to begin. Expand the mind, not the items that are carried. This would tie into the techology that is in place, using VR to get updates on the current weather patterns and a collective group to adjust the structures over the growing crops. How about bartering the growth of crops/time share for the education. Kind of like when you have to sign up for the military service. Each person has to spend time learning how to grow food, in order to further their education the longer they spend doing it, the more they will earn to learn. Earn to Learn.

    To start I\\\'d suggest having a look at one of the most effective local currencies of this era http://www.ithacahours.org/. The model is sound. If it could be updated with technological concerns it could prove quite useful, even in a global context.

    I\\\'ve been thinking of gift economies, to supplement monetary ones. The basic Idea of a gift economy is that instead of trading your goods and services for other goods and services, or IOUs for such, you are trading them for social status. This only really works in small groups, because it requires that everyone is aware of your generousity and respect you for it. Unless we use social networking sites to track favors done with a reputation score, which is the focus of the Exchange superstruct. More importantly, though, local currencies and gift economies and the larger global economy are not mutually exclusive things. If we want to create structures that can survive disasters, then we want core functions like the trade of goods and services to be handles by multiple, redundant and varied systems. That way if the dollar tanks, people can trade in Ithica Hours instead. If the internet goes down, then there are non-digital means of exchange. Multiple currencies backed by varied means, plus barter and barter aids, plus gift economies, all work together to make a healthier overall economy.

    I\\\'ve set up a new SuperStruct called CurEx (http://superstructgame.org/SuperstructView/165) that looks at one approach for building an \\\"open source\\\" distributed currency exchange system. Keep in mind that any type of currency system places you in direct competition with national entities, which claim the sole right to create currencies as part of their govenmental mandate. Of course, after the collapse this year and next (due in great part to abuse of the US Dollar as a reserve currency) the concept of building alternative currencies begins to have a lot of appeal. I\\\'d appreciate comments and critiques, as I think that in the event of increasing collapse of governmental entities, a distributed currency system will become a necessity.

    If Virtual Currencies are Legitimate and can be traded for other Currencies, we are legally in the clear.

    I think you\\\'re totally right! And I don\\\'t think that we\\\'d actually be able to supplant the current currency system. I suppose I want to suppliment it in a way where we can think of currency as something that can cause an \\\"upward spiral\\\" of some sort, rather than economies that perpetuate sameness. (Sorry, I\\\'m not too good with the lingo, I\\\'m more of a \\\'visual thinker\\\'). Realistically, in 2019 there would not be an overhaul of major economies. But if there were to be enough mutual collaboration, we could slowly work in a community currency. I think! I basically want everyone else\\\'s ideas to help me make my original idea something realistic and concrete.

    The hot one now is carbon credits. For fuel or electricity or to trade for manufacturers goods.

    @Morganism: I don\\\'t believe resource credits is the same as CCs. The belief is that we would have some community based currency system that would reward those who educate, innovate, and create. Thus creating a system that will benefit the members of a community as well as the whole. This doesn\\\'t require a change in how a political state\\\'s currency would work, but presents at interesting socialist institution at a micro level. However would this work in a free-market society where competing CCs could come to fruition?

    Is it our Right to exist or is it our Privilege to?

    AVOID CREDIT!!! It\\\'s the slippery slope to economic collapse. The reason I used the Ithaca Hours example above is because it is really autonomous. Value is placed on time and each person\\\'s time valued the same. If you need something you have to be willing to put in some time for it.

    I agree that world economies and currencies will not have changed a great deal so I think there will be community based "grey markets" where people use trade for food and services and other needed goods outside the paper money economy (just like today). But on a larger scale. I think the EXCHANGE is a good model of this and I'm remembering that back around 2000 there was something like this set up in Ottawa...it was a bulletin board system that linked up people with skills to offer and wants - the individuals involved worked out the value between them....kinda like Craigslist. Governments WILL attempt to either co-opt it or eradicate it (like they did in the Soviet Union).

    lets see if im getting bits and pieces of this interesting idea. So the intrinsec value of proposed said currency is a persons time that is used in positive activities for the community? with all time being considered equal? not very fair from my point of view. sorry.

    it is very interesting nevertheless to grasp such a concept and try to adapt it to the emergent needs we have this year. But what is so unfair or unfunctional about the system we are using? Does it not reflect the fair value of any one currency under the present situations?

    I do think our existing money system is unfair - unfair is the wrong word - unbalanced and unsustainable - thats better. Why do we live in a world where a stock broker's work is considered to have more financial value than a farmer's? Why is a university professor paid better than an early childcare teacher? Why is a garbageman's work paid less than a website designer? But lets take this out further and see how we got in this mess...why is a factory worker in China's contribution valued less financially than a factory worker in Germany? Why do coffee, sugar, chocolate, tea, cotton etc etfc etc workers get paid so little they are essentially slave labour while sales clerks in suburban malls complain that their wages are too low too? Why is a western worker's health and safety considered more important than a worker in a developing nation? We buy on the backs of the developing world. It isn't sustainable and that is what is wrong with the current monetary system....capitalism....materialism.

    well it has more financial value becuase it adds more value to that who uses it (clients etc) in the case of a stock broker vs a farmer and such. It has more risk (financial) and is a more intellectual oriented work that involves much more preparation in order to achieve the making of that particular job correctly. Same case with the university profesor, takes much more preparation and is "more useful" from a specialized in something orientation point of view. The wages different in other countries are due economic situations of countries, they are not valued less in China, it is just that Germany´s economic situation reflects those wages (besides the euro "was" a more expensive currency in relation to the yuan which reflected more international buying power, and perhaps they are less labour intensive jobs and require a bit more intellectual work)the point is that it is not a system or something that determines how much we have to value some thing, we ourselves value this things in the amount that they "mean something" to us, however much or little that may be. What i mean to say is that the amount of value we recieve from certain activity or product is what we percieve fair for paying for such said activity or product. Until today, it is the fair-est system and adecuately and for the most time reflects in true balance the worth of things.

    by the way, it is not that developed nations are in full advantage of developing nations. It is true, a free market instantaneous like a bandaid kaboom that fast approach will really leave them with no competitive advantage, but developing nations were given the chance of strenghthening their competitive advantages in a compassive globalization approach (phased out trade liberalization), some countries took that chance and some did not.

    by the way, it is not that developed nations are in full advantage of developing nations. It is true, a free market instantaneous like a bandaid kaboom that fast approach will really leave them with no competitive advantage, but developing nations were given the chance of strenghthening their competitive advantages in a compassive globalization approach (phased out trade liberalization), some countries took that chance and some did not.

    "in the case of a stock broker vs a farmer and such. It has more risk (financial) and is a more intellectual oriented work that involves much more preparation in order to achieve the making of that particular job correctly" Okay clearly you don't know much about farming or farmers :-) Can you really say that workers in China or Indonesia, or Pakistan.... have the same "value" as a worker in a western country??? Isn't the reason western companies move manufacturing to these developing nations because they don't have to pay living wages, health care, for health and safety standards? What they care about is their bottom line and they have actuaries figuring out just what the cost/risk/benefit is of turning a blind eye to what is happening in the plants they utilize. That's why sweatshops still exist, thats why child labour is an onhoing issue in these factories. hat's why chocolate coins and baby formula are poisoned with melamine being used as a "filler". It has nothing to do with their cost of living being lower because of the value of their dollar. WE in the west are setting the standards. As to the safety of products from these plants...if we squeeze them so tight that they are forced to start making "adaptations to recipes" and using up old banned lead filled paints isn't that OUR responsibility. We want the product for pennies. We want our dollar stores, we want our Walmart. I will give you one thing - I will pay more for what I value. I pay a premium for fair trade goods because I value the people who do the work to bring these items to the market. I will pay more for local organic foods because I know they the producers aren't getting farm subsidies and the cost reflects the real cost of that food production. We're facing famine in 2019, do you still value your stock broker more than the farmer who can feed you? I think what this ramble comes down to is transparency. There is an honest transparency in community currency that simply doesn't exist with the paper money system. I feel more in control of who and what I support with community currency.

    I would like to collaborate with this SS. My perhaps relevant SS is Natural Currency. It doesn't supplant existing currency, it just re-values their relative worth--country to country-- by defining the value of each unit of measure (dollar, Euro, etc) in terms of the amount of renewable energy per produced per capita. This is proposed as a measure of long-term sustainability. National renewable energy accounts begin to be referenced by the financial markets, and this drives renewable energy development. The idea is to begin to force existing currencies to reflect ecological costs. Perhaps social costs could be internalized through some similar accounting?




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