You don't need a 'supply' of money to meet your needs

[Johan]

I read the following and thought this is the ideal:

The CES is an attempt to break the money monopoly by providing an alternative way of 'doing' money. So long as you have limbs that move and a mind that works, you can provide for yourself by exchanging your specialisation in life for the specialisations of others. You don't need a 'supply' of money to meet your needs; all you need is a supply of energy, good will and a promise to give back to the community the equivalent of what you receive. As more of us become involved and experience the liberating effects of a public exchange system, the more we can reduce our dependency on the life-threatening money monopoly.

Interesting and it will happen. But there will be enormous resistance by the people who do not appreciated our ideals.

[Chris Caston]

We need to be careful that the biggest weapon used against us may indeed be our own words. If it were up to me i'd remove all mention of words like money and currency and suggestions that community exchange may may be equivalent to x amount of money from the site.

If they can in any way link community exchange to their own currencies they'll think that its for them to control and and expect their cut but in their own currency.

If it is impossible for them to link it then they can't ask for a cut. If I give someone 100 rocks in exchange for them mowing my lawn the government can't ask my lawn mower for $10 gst unless they can establish legally that each rock is equivalent to $1

My lawn mower might not have a problem with giving the government 10 rocks but the government wants $10

I see a possible solution to this is to determine how many rocks my lawn mower charges me according an algorithm using variables and factors that only come from within the community exchange system such as the availability of lawn mowers. It cannot be based on any factors around how much my lawn mower would have charged me if it were in dollars.

[Simon Cole]

Chris,

I see your point... We may have to be prepared to deal with a heavily censored Internet and even postal system. I think that's why it's important to start teaching ever more people as soon as possible WITHOUT charging too much for it (i.e. like Aaron Russo's freely available From Freedom to Fascism - which unfortunately gets the money message wrong by promoting a gold-backed currency... and unlike www.themoneymasters.com, which gets it right, but charges too much for their DVDs).

However, I also see you getting awfully knotted up in maths and legalities.

My take on it is that, one way or another, we have got to confront the problem head on... I know they're incredibly powerful, but my efforts are going into educating people about money and spreading the word. For example, as a teacher, I am employing my skills in study groups with Paul Grignon's DVD Money as Debt. It's important to try and draw in people who are sleep-walking, too. One way or another, we have to build a global political movement to reform money. There are many organizations
- in the US next month's 10th Annual Freedom21 National Conference in Mid-West City, Oklahoma, will bring together a kaleidoscope of groups
- Money Reform Party in the UK
- People's Bank Party in Australia
and many more
The challenge is to raise awareness to a level where people understand that money best serves the needs of people when it is produced by genuinely democratic governments at minimum cost (without gold backing).

I doubt I'll see a change in my lifetime, but I see no other alternative, and I'm happy to deal with it.

[Chris Caston]

Simon,

Actually this reminds me of an idea i've had lately. I want to setup a cinema perhaps a home or outdoor cinema. We could even re-create the old drive through experience using a big screen a projector and a short range FM transmitter!

At this cinema the movie would need to be commission or royalty free but we charge people to see it in community exchange points.

An example of a movie we could show would be Rip: a remix manifesto

http://www3.nfb.ca/webextension/rip-a-remix-manifesto/

The next step of course is to get independent film makers signed on to community exchange and we get people like aspiring actors, boom box operators, video editors and the like all on the community and we make films using the local exchange as the currency and profit from them by selling seats to watch the film in local exchange currency. The films may be funded by exchange admins using the proceeds of levies as VC.

If more trade is generated the film soon pays back the VC!

It would need to be planned like a business of course and all people involved (ticket collection and ushers for instance) would be paid in community exchange points.

[Simon Cole]

Chris,

This is exactly what I've been thinking, as far as media is concerned... it would be good to get it all done on community exchange if possible, too. I think there are all sorts of creative ways of telling the story of money through film... just imagine a "Da Vinci Code" or "Angels and Demons" version of Bill Still's "The Money Masters"... the intrigue, drama, suspense... it's endless!

[Simon Cole]

I had another thought; We cannot entirely reduce our dependence on the debt-based money monopoly as long as we rely on public (and ever increasing private) infrastructure. So how do we overthrow this insidiously undermining money system? GET OUT OF DEBT _ EVERYONE! We HAVE TO destroy this money system. We can do that by getting out of debt, because in this system, MONEY IS DEBT (see Paul Grignon's "Money As Debt" documentary if you don't understand that). What we need is a movement to abolish the current system that attacks on two fronts: 1/ political pressure to restore money supply to Treasury by supporting a Monetary Reform Act in parliament. 2/ a popular movement of people to get out of all forms of debt.

[Simon Cole]

Facinating. I agree there could be worse scenarios than the debt-based national currency we have, but, deregulating it would take us back to the colonial days when multiple private bank-issued currencies competed ... I can see it could be better if they were not debt-based and more 'efficient', too. However, is that really the way to go? It would mean signing on to multiple exhanges... and inevitably people would want to be able to convert their credit... it could become logistically difficult and I doubt people would bother. We might as well invest at least some our time and energy trying to reform the national currency into a system of social credit, difficult as the task may be. We have become used to the convenience of a national currency.

Do you use Bartercard much? I thought it was mainly for businesses with considerable stockpiles of unwanted materials to exchange.

Great to hear you're setting up a Perth branch of CES, or have I got that wrong?

Another thing to be wary of it that multiple local currencies can lead to inflation, because it increases the overall supply of money... that's another advantage of a single, monopolisitc, debt-free national currency IF it's in the hands of a democratically elected government that manages it in the interests of the people; i.e. to keep inflation at 0%. Under this system, governments would rise and fall at elections based on how well they've managed the economy, much as they do now, but without the deception that it actually does have that much influence and that banks don't have the influence they actually have.

[Chris Caston]

Simon,

Yes I am in Perth. The exchange is called Perth Community Exchange.

I use bartercard a quite bit but I'm finding it challenging at the moment because I'm not getting enough work in the national currency. You're supposed to do about 80% work in the national currency and about 20% on barter. I'm going to the UK next week and will be using it there for some accommodation and maybe even some meals. I've bought kitchenware, clothing, dental work, presents, bedding, restaurant meals, hotels stays and various other things on it before.

I have a lot of reading to do of history and economics such but i'd glad you raised the point about pre-cononial banking systems. I think that it's ok to be zero sum as long as it's not based on usury and hoarders are heavily discouraged rather given unholy powers to rape and pillage the world as they are under the federal reserve system.

I've also been listening to the Wizards of money series since I last spoke to you.
http://www.antiscia.com/wizardsofmoney/

I just finished listen to part 7 and it is fascinating.

It compares the water cycle to the economic cycle. It even suggests that the Sun is the ultimate reserve bank and we use markets to manage energy. It used to be money was based on gold but today it is probably more likely based on oil, coal, natural gas. We use markets to decide who gets the most of the earths limited trust fund of energy from the sun (including oil that is mostly dead plant matter) that has taken many thousands of years to build up.

"Nature has figured out some excellent ways to moderate the flow of water to manage flood and drought risk and also to clean water so that the waste of one process can get all cleaned up and ready for another process. This all happens through water's interaction with the land and with the ultimate Central Banker - the Central Banker of Energy, the Sun.

Humans have absolutely no control over the Energy Central Banker. All they can control is the things that store the sun's energy like plants and animals that eat plants, and also they can go find the sources of other stored solar energy in the form of old squashed dead plants and animals, called oil and coal. All these activities plus all of the human monetary-system driven development of land effect the land on earth, not the Energy Central Banker. So the land is what we focus on in considering the link between the water cycle and the money cycle that forms the basis of our economy. "


Attempts to design new exchange systems would ideally be based on the community cost/value of renewable energy sources.

"Citigroup and other large international financial conglomerates have been fairly active in UNEP's Finance Initiatives group established in 1997. You can find more information on this initiative at unepfi.net. The Swiss Bankers Association has also come out with some very nice statements about doing business in an environmentally friendly manner.

While all these nice words from the banking sector might make some sleep more soundly, others might be concerned about leaving monetary system reform up to the bankers themselves. Especially since land alteration pressures lie right at the heart of foundations of our mainstream monetary system.

Unfortunately the approach of the concerned bankers and the various Finance Initiatives groups has been to see everything through profit and money tinted glasses. They think of environmental problems in terms of dollar cost and often think of solutions in terms of getting more profits in monetary terms. Thus, much work in the field of sustainable economics often gets reduced to converting all natural processes into monetary equivalents. Continuation of this practice could very well lead to a situation where economic sustainability looks great on paper in terms of long term sustainable profits but completely misses the prediction of, say, catastrophic alteration to the water-cycle - increasing flood, drought and contamination risks.

To move from contemporary economics, which has historically ignored natural destruction, and to a more ecologically sensitive "Ecological Economics" we MUST move away from the practice of converting anything and everything to dollars terms in order to analyze them. The necessity for this can be seen in the observation that money is an abstract human invention that doesn't obey natural laws, but Nature does! For example, when it comes to water, the PRIMARY measure for analysis should be water indicators - say probability of flood, drought, contamination - NOT money. We can also use energy itself as an indicator, since distribution of energy is so much of what our markets are about.

After such analysis, and given that nature is the most efficient user of energy shouldn't we use natural solutions (preservation, conservation) to complement and mitigate the effects of human development, rather than energy intensive human mitigation efforts. Having established the right balance between human development and natural land features based on purely ENVIRONMENTAL indicators we can then bring money into the picture based on ENVIRONMENTAL CONSTRAINTS and not the other way around, as happens today. This approach finally would constrain the monetary system to recognizing the Laws of Nature, which it has never done before. Finally money would begin to respect the Entropy Law, the Second Law of Thermodynamics!

In summary, this would result in fundamental changes to the monetary system itself right at the point of money origination - a much more radical approach than proposed by any of the finance industry dominated groups such as the UNEP Finance Initiatives group. But it is an approach that seems necessary. "

http://www.antiscia.com/wizardsofmoney/transcripts/Part07-MoneyCycl...

[Simon Cole]

Hi Chris,

Have you seen Paul Grignon's "Essence of Money" and "Digital Coin" - both 7 min animated docos available on his website moneyasdebt.net

They are awesome - and I think along the lines of what you are thinking of... an online market place currency that is self-issued. Have a look and let me know what your thoughts are.

Simon

[Tim Jenkin]

Machiavelli pointed out that "He who introduces a new order of things has all those who profit from the old order as enemies, and he has only lukewarm allies in all those who might profit from the new" (The Prince, 1532)