Paul Krugman has no concept of money as something that can be designed, but his argument on the social aspect of money can’t be ignored: “The similarity to goldbug rhetoric isn’t a coincidence, since goldbugs and bitcoin enthusiasts — bitbugs? — tend to share both libertarian politics and the belief that governments are vastly abusing… Continue reading
Searched for "Social Currencies"
The maturation of alternative currencies in Brazil
Republished travelogue from Shane Hughes of the REconomy project: When it comes to the great global transition to a better world some places are completely fascinating to observe. For example, Bhutan and its policies of Gross National Happiness or Germany and their spread of community renewables. Brazil’s story of community banks and currencies is also… Continue reading
Should we go for “Metabolic Currencies” ?
Excerpted from a proposal by Brian McConnell, designer of the Joule Standard: “Metabolic currency, money denominated in or pegged to energy reserves, may make more sense in a highly mechanized economy because it’s rooted in the same physics that governs the machines. The inventor Buckminster Fuller first proposed the idea of a currency based on… Continue reading
The post-Westphalian implications of phyles and peer to peer currencies
Internet socialisation and practices are inherently global, and are creating new global institutions, argues Kevin Carson, author of the upcoming Desktop Regulatory State. This article is one year old but still an excellent argumentation about this thesis. Kevin Carson: “Neal Stephenson’s “The Diamond Age” was set some years after encrypted currencies and e-commerce removed most… Continue reading
Your thoughts: Helping sustainable currencies to scale
Matthew Slater writes: For the forthcoming International Social Transformation Conference on energy currencies, Community Forge is preparing a paper on grass roots strategies for sustainable currency implementation. We wish to solicit opinions from readers of this blog on this draft version (9 pages). It explains the why and the how of Community Forge’s striving for impact by offering free… Continue reading
Charles Eistenstein: Currencies, Governments, and the Commons
Excerpted from the book, Sacred Economics, chapter 11. We recommend you follow this up with an excerpt from chapter 12, i.e. Money, the Self, and Negative Interest Money.? Charles Eistenstein: “In this chapter I will refer to “government” in the context of currency issue, but keep in mind that like all of our institutions, government… Continue reading
Jean-François Noubel on Defining Free Currencies
Noubel first distinguishes currencies from money, and free currencies from complementary ones, before diving into a detailed explanation of what free currencies are, and are for. Recommended explanation: JF Noubel interview about money – Social Media week Sept 2011 – raw footage from Collective Intelligence Research on Vimeo.
Contact Summit: How Can Technology Accelerate Social Evolution?
Posted by Venessa Miemis on her blog Emergent By Design What is the true potential of a networked planet? How do we use all this great social technology to develop a new operating system for society – one that creates abundance, sustainability, and lasting value? What do we need to do to improve the… Continue reading
Alf Hornborg: We need an economy with two incommensurable currencies
What we need is an economy with at least two incommensurable currencies, to distinguish between values that should not be interchangeable, such as local subsistence and survival versus globalized entertainment Excerpted from an interview with Alf Hornborg: Q: “Following David Harvey’s analysis of money, you have suggested that money is a social institution that generates… Continue reading
More Thoughts on Social Currency, Part II
How do social currencies differ from money as a measure of value? As well as working as a kind of social means of exchange, social currency is also a tool for measuring value. In that respect, it resembles money’s traditional function as a “unit of account.” Although money can be used to store and exchange… Continue reading
Transitioning (6): Re-thinking Money Creation and Fostering a new Ecology of Currencies
Sixth and last in a series on the transition to a sustainable economy. Excerpted from Christian Arnsperger: “One of the areas which transition activists need to invest in urgently is the area of money creation and the circulation of currency through bank credit. Sure enough, as many alternative economists from Herman Daly to Douglas Booth… Continue reading
Transforming corporate forms through currencies
Excerpted from Arthur Brock: “The failure of change agents to re-encode social systems (especially ones with as much influence on everything as money has), is what keeps us on this intolerable trajectory of destruction. So far, the biological equivalent to our most “successful” social organism pattern is cancer. Corporations are structured as a cancer. They… Continue reading
The P2P of Zion (2): Social Economy developments within the Mormon Church
The second part of a series by Alan Avans. This part discusses the role of Mondragon type coops and permaculture within a policy centered on city-region centered development. It makes an explicit linkage between the social doctrine of the Catholic Church, which inspired Mondragon, and the Zionic tradition within the RDLS. Alan Avans: “To summarize… Continue reading
How should social movements respond to the crisis in Europe?
What is at stake in Greece is a core aspect of the political tradition of the Enlightenment that made it worthy to be called universal and inspired the national and social revolutions of modernity: that is the commitment to social egalitarianism rather than social privilege, to the redistribution of wealth rather than its accumulation. The… Continue reading
Introduction to the New World of Alternative Currencies
First in a series by Eli Gothill: (find out more here) “The words ‘money’ and ‘currency’ are used synonymously in everyday language. However, the rising importance of collaborative consumption and social networks is bringing another, broader definition of ‘currency’ into focus. To understand the impact of new social technologies for trading and sharing, an analysis… Continue reading
Findings on the positive role of complementary currencies (thesis of the week, part 2)
Ivan Tsikota has produced an interesting Master’s Thesis confirming that complementary currency systems (broadly conceived) have positive economic effects, and under which conditions these effects can be stimulated. Also of interest is that Ivan proposes a new taxonomy of economic systems. * Master’s Thesis: Complements to Economic Systems: Increasing Local Economic Sustainability. Ivan Tsikota. 2011-05-14…. Continue reading