Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by KingofthePaupers on January 2, 2010 at 1:14pm

"Each Boulder Colorado silver coin is worth $30 in barter value."

Jct: It's nice to have big 3-Hour chips in a system for a change. But you adopt some of the old Boulder 1/2 Hour paper notes and even some paper or plastic 6-minute $1 Greendollar chips too. Too small to counterfeit with your silver being used for the big chip most would want to counterfeit. But $10 1-Hour notes have as yet never been counterfeited in ithaca or other timebanks so why not use both? And there is a definite advantage to having a Berkshares-type chip window taking cash for a premium in local chips that helps you defray real world costs like online services, phones, documentation.
So the cash-buy-in systems work great, the time buy-in systems work great, the metal buy-in systems work great, but a combination of all three would work best! Leading to:
Online accounts for really big trades, like when I paid for 39/40 nights accommodations with $195 Hours = $1950! I've saved interest on that for the past 10 years and am always prepared to honor those IOUs if someone comes to Brantford. I created my own rudimentary 1-person online account 10 years ago which is still valid today: http://johnturmel.com/unilets.htm and anyone else can too.
In a sense, the main difference between systems is what collateral is accepted as base for the chips.
Makes sense to accept it all.

But best of all is on the way when we can use our phone minutes as currency. The app is in Africa, can't be too long before the ultimate timetrading wallet is here.

Permalink Reply by Constantine Faller on December 29, 2010 at 4:57am

Thanks for taking the time for all your contributions throughout this discussion.

Permalink Reply by Sunny Hilliard on January 2, 2010 at 6:35am

We have a silver barter club starting here in Boulder Colorado. We build membership from various sources but our transition group is the main one. We use the information from Opencurrency.com to print and circulate our dollars. Each silver coin is worth $30 in barter value. This is just starting so I will keep you posted on how it is going. In the meantime, I posted a discussion on Iver's reply to some issues about farming. Here is my list of the top five things to do in your community. This is just my list. If anyone has more, let us know. I am sure there are thousands of things that we should be doing.

1. Get to know your neighbors. Become solid friends with them and share what you can about transition. Both conservatives and liberals like the idea. Liberals because it seems so "green" and counter culture, and conservatives because they are watching the business reports and see what is happening to the dollar, not to mention, they have a seven deadly sin rage for what is happening in the Obama White House.
2. Get your money out of banks. It is best in silver for a local currency barter fund or join the Open Currency group www.opencurrency.com and prepare for monetary collapse. This is the only way they will get us to the Amero and the North American Union by their 2012 deadline. Yrading is good too but to restrictive.
3. Learn how to do it all and fast. This will take more than tapping maple syrup. You need goats, chickens, veggies, fruit trees, water, composting toilets, wood stove,(especially when our energy bills go through the roof due to cap and trade) and a lot more. Join a CSA as a last resort.
4. Help your local politically minded rah rahs petition for tenth amendment rights. The state will be the only way to block the Fed once major legislation starts to control us. FEMA camps are coming, surveillance is here. Your local neighborhood and town are really your best bet for group protection but nullification does not hurt.
5. Educate yourself on the transition movement and stay in touch with others around the country that are starting up programs. We have to re-educate the populous quickly. They may not all get it, but Rudolf Steiner was no dummy when he put a transition-like curriculum in the Waldorf schools. He saw what was happening in Germany in the 1920's It is here. We need to teach others to farm, cook, raise livestock, card wool, knit, save seeds, etc.... But we cannot do this thing alone.
I hope I do not sound too alarmist.

Permalink Reply by David Braden on May 14, 2010 at 8:11am

I have been thinking about alternative currencies since 1984 when I met Michael Linton at the first North American Bioregional Congress. It seems to me that the critical issues have to do with 1) recognizing value apart from the "cost in money" and 2) the issue of trust in the alternative one is proposing.

In 2009 we experimented with a different approach with our gardens in Broomfield and Boulder, Colorado. The idea was that we would give credit for contributions to the garden - labor, materials, money for materials, etc. - and then share what we produced based on relative contribution. It didn't work - but I think it was the recognizing value issue rather than the trust issue that is usually the problem. People contributed for the educational experience (a permaculture gardening system) but did not recognize the value of their ownership interest. We ended up giving most of the produce to the local food bank and homeless shelter.

This year we are using a more traditional approach and assigning individual garden beds in exchange for contributions - and retaining a smaller portion of community production. We will see how that works - but I'm hoping to get a group of people returning in 2011 and to talk about pooling our beds for more efficient production . . .

I think about what transition is trying to accomplish as developing a new technology - the know how to organize ourselves, to provide for ourselves, that which we need to thrive. When we talk about an alternative "currency" people tend to think of an alternative to the dollar to enable the same kinds of transactions that you can accomplish with dollars. One of the problems is that those kinds of currencies operate in "markets" and the market values things differently than you and I would.

Consider that, in every community, there is human potential and biological potential that is not valued in the market. (We call these poverty and environmental degradation) This other approach I am talking about is to exchange those undervalued resources for a share in the production realized from employing those resources.

It seems to me that the key is in this idea of owning the capacity to produce what we need.

Permalink Reply by Constantine Faller on December 29, 2010 at 10:54am

It is not so much that I want to start a topic on this additional approach to alternatives to money as I am interested in a discussion of how we organize the way we do things to create the world we want . . .
one thing is related to another and all . . . It is more the currents
that we want to create than it is the currency that we would use to
measure them . . .     from  "THE RESILIENT COMMUNITY: SCRIP"

 

David, thanks for the interest.

 

It is challenging sometimes to figure out which is the appropriate "room" for a particular discussion. 

 

Even here for instance, (Introductions and Experiences with Local Currencies) we see progression of a discussion go from local to local exchange concepts that could be universally applicable.

 

Paper, metal, electronic, etc. are, among other things, currencies that attempt to enable exchange.  In addition, our business also needs appropriate means of tracking, for
triple bottom line quantitative analysis*, as well as for compliance with IRS.

 

*profit-loss, social environmental financial cost-benefit, etc

 

Permalink Reply by David Braden on December 29, 2010 at 11:46am

So here is the issue that I think is missing in most discussions on alternative or complementary currencies . . .

 

Money is a measure of "market value".  Market value is based on relative scarcity.  When a thing is abundant it has no "market value".  That does not mean that the thing has no value.  In particular, being unemployed does not mean that a person has no value, it just means that there is a limited "market" for that person's skill set.  The same goes for clean air and water.  The reason we subsidize food is that farmers regularly produce more food than required to meet demand and they would all go bankrupt without the subsidy.   

 

If we could arrange the relationships between the people, plants and creatures within our locality any way we wanted, we would arrange for an abundance of certain things.  My list is food, clothing, shelter, education and health care, but it assumes clean air and water, toxin free land, a thriving local ecosystem . . . 

 

The fact that none of those things would have market value . . . because of their abundance . . . means that producing and maintaining the flow of that abundance will require a different kind of measurement.  We want to incentivize and reward contributions to the creation of that abundance, and that cannot be money (or a money substitute) because there is no market value.

 

My personal opinion is that the money system works just fine the way it is for allocating scarce resources, even with the way it is issued as debt based and all the other reasons that people site for alternative currencies.  Rather, the need is for a new way to measure this other kind of value.  We have the physical capacity to produce an abundance of those things we would want adundant - we just don't know how to organize ourselves to do that.

Permalink Reply by Constantine Faller on January 9, 2011 at 7:05am

1/9/2011

David, I so agree with you, and our list are very similar -food, water, shelter, wellness, air, and education.  A yardstick to value in these terms would be very helpful to us.   Here’s why.   Healthy community is in our HolisticManagement holisticgoal quality of life statement™.  Meeting everybody’s  basic needs is essential for community resilience, and therefore healthy community.   Such a tool would be extremely helpful in evaluating decision alternatives against one’s holisticgoal™.

 

First, we have found that current sustainability and carbonfootprint yardsticks are too myopic, and second, the tool needs to be easy to use. 

Permalink Reply by Constantine Faller on January 11, 2011 at 5:28am

Hi David, finding if and where there are folks already discussing these matters is a challenge of social networking sites.

Here is one on value-based economies

It seems to be looking at why it is needed.

 

Forth Corner Exchange seems to be looking more at how.

 

Have you looked at others, or found any ready to use yardsticks?

Permalink Reply by John Comeau on April 22, 2011 at 1:27pm

That makes sense. Lawns should instead be gardens, and trees lining the roads should be fruit trees, but there is no incentive for Joe Average, or Average Town or Average City, to do that. Instead he fertilizes his toxic lawn and his toxic flowers, sprays pesticides on what he does want growing, and sprays herbicides on what he doesn't; and all those toxins go into the ground, air, and water for us all to enjoy.

 

But the debt-money system could in fact be one of the things that are holding us in these destructive patterns. Thomas Greco explains it better than I can.

Permalink Reply by Jackson W Barnett on January 8, 2011 at 4:01am

Hi all,

 

I live in western Maine -- rural, farming, about 12 miles to our local metropolis, Lewiston/Auburn. LA is on old mill town straddling the Great Falls of the Androscoggin River. The shoe and textile industries are gone and the new mill work -- tele-centers -- is springing up in its place.

My place is to the west -- an old farmhouse with attached barn on the 3-1/2 acres that remain of the farm.

My interest in local currency stemmed, at first, from fear that the dollar would lose all value and paralyze all commerce. Since I've learned more, I am excited at the prospect of a "new" money system based on and facilitating free trade amongst equals and embodying "neighborliness" or "community".

 

I have zero practical experience with alternative currency, other than barter, shared favors and simple giving. I look forward to participating here!

Permalink Reply by Matthew Slater on March 31, 2011 at 6:52pm

I came here looking for a free laptop!

My aim is to help build the infrastructure for a digital, community currency economy.

I choose as far as possible to live by reciprocal gifting, and not to exchange money.

As part of Community Forge, and by working to build the Cc movement, I do not have to rent a house because I have sufficient hospitality options. The voluntary contributions (mostly from communities using our software) coming into Community Forge cover many of my expenses also. I find the less I use money, the less I worry about it.

Anyway, if you want to do online mutual credit, or similar, please talk to me. Do you know any software people who might be thrilled (as I am) at the prospect of giving exchange systems and other community building software to local communities? Put them in touch!

By the way I hope everyone here is at least aware of the CC Mag. You can print it and pass it on! Or write for it!  New one out tomorrow.

Permalink Reply by John Comeau on April 23, 2011 at 12:53am

Hi Matthew, I just tried creating an account at communityforge.net, using Google Chrome on Linux, and after filling out and submitting the form, simply got returned to the home page, no account created and no error message indicating what I might have done wrong.

• ‹ Previous
• 1
• …
• 3
• 4
• 5
• 6
• Next ›
• Page