Joined: Apr 03, 2004 Posts: 6547 Location: My Grandkids' Farm
Posted: Wed Jun 01, 2005 8:42 am Post subject:
Certainly there could be a time such as in the great depression where there was simply no money in circulation or the opposite German example of rapid inflation where a script of some sort could help a community - sort of a formalized barter.
I think that is different from the other idea discussed were each persons skills are valued equally. _________________ Make a plan and work it:
Joined: Sep 30, 2004 Posts: 975 Location: On one of the blades of the fan
Posted: Thu Jun 02, 2005 2:44 am Post subject:
Pops, I was going to suggest cheekily that I'd happily do my techno-nerd job that I love for a basic wage, but you'd have to pay me highly to paint a fence!
<Back to seriousness>
Here’s a bit of synchronicity:
This appeared on FTW yesterday, I’ve snipped a few relevant bits from an informative article:
Quote:
Post-Soviet Lessons for a Post-American Century
(PART ONE OF THREE)
By Dmitry Orlov
Since there was nothing better for us to do, my friends and I decided to take a road trip, to visit the ancient Russian cities of Pskov and Novgorod, taking in the surrounding countryside along the way. For this, we had to obtain fuel. It was hard to come by. It was available on the black market, but no one felt particularly inclined to let go of something so valuable in exchange for something so useless as money. Soviet money ceased to have value, since there was so little that could be bought with it, and people still felt skittish around foreign currency.
Luckily, there was a limited supply of another sort of currency available to us. It was close to the end of Gorbachev's ill-fated anti-alcoholism campaign, during which vodka was rationed. There was a death in my family, for which we received a funeral's worth of vodka coupons, which we of course redeemed right away. What was left of the vodka was placed in the trunk of the trusty old Lada, and off we went. Each half-liter bottle of vodka was exchanged for ten liters of gasoline, giving vodka far greater effective energy density than rocket fuel.
There is a lesson here: when faced with a collapsing economy, one should stop thinking of wealth in terms of money. Access to actual physical resources and assets, as well as intangibles such as connections and relationships, quickly becomes much more valuable than mere cash.
And
Quote:
St. Petersburg was a shock. There was a sense of despair that hung in the winter air. There were old women standing around in spontaneous open-air flea markets trying to sell toys that probably belonged to their grandchildren, to buy something to eat. Middle-class people could be seen digging around in the trash. Everyone's savings were wiped out by hyperinflation.
In my view, the above is just the sort of thing crying out for the alleviation remedies I detailed above. I have taken the point that alcohol might well be a currency, but I never ruled it out!!!! (Note to self, make a still).
I also note that two countries that have ridden out economic crises not too badly, are Cuba and Argentina, with traditions of co-operative endeavours, and two that smacked into the ground, without those traditions, were the USSR and North Korea. Ok that's an over simplified view but I hope you take my drift.
Joined: Dec 08, 2004 Posts: 921 Location: 145'2"E 37'46"S
Posted: Thu Jun 02, 2005 8:07 am Post subject:
I find it tempting to not care less about the medium of exchange so much as about usury and externalities, but can't help worrying about impacts of that medium, e.g. alcohol in a society of chronic alcoholism. 'Whatever works' in an extreme situation, but if trying to plan or design a medium, would hope to do better.
Is there a thread for suggested convenient & durable tradables (specifically not issued currency)? e.g. alcohol, MRE's, bullion, seed, solar panels, water rights, crop shares, car batteries... am sure its been mentioned, but i couldn't find a specific thread.
And yes Pops, its precisely the situation where nobody has any of the customary folding stuff to pass around, however much labour & produce they have to offer, that has spawned many alternative currencies, and will i am certain spawn many more, with any luck.
They don't of course of themselves solve all problems, but they do reduce the flow of resources & proceeds out of an area, allow more smaller transactions to take place (theoretically optimising resource use) and build intangible but invaluable community spirit. Worth a punt i reckon.
With respect think the prob of how to value time (equally, different by agreement or via a market, ..?) is overrated - a mix, for different situations and stages seems likely to be best. Have to admit am an avid student of these arts rather than a learned scholar or experienced practitioner.
Joined: Sep 30, 2004 Posts: 975 Location: On one of the blades of the fan
Posted: Sun Jun 05, 2005 11:31 am Post subject:
I just thought I'd like to add:
I think I'm an aware person - I don't think that television is Value Neutral; I don't think that buying things shipped from a long way away in the supermarket is Value Neutral...etc etc...
But until I read Douthwaite and Lietaer, it never occured to me that the pound in my pocket might be actually corroding the planet by sucking resources from one place to another - I thought it was just a medium of exchange, but it ain't so!
In my entire life, not one person, left or right, has mentioned that national currencies might be a really bad idea. It's that they are completely invisible.
And part of the problem, not part of the solution.
Incidentally here's a link. Feasta - the Irish Sustainability /Peak Oil & Climate change organisation believes that we cannot get thought this without a new global currency:
Joined: Dec 27, 2004 Posts: 12529 Location: zombie horde wonderland
Posted: Sun Jun 05, 2005 12:24 pm Post subject:
I take issue with solutions which claim "we have to do this one really impossible global thing or we'll fail!" Because it takes the ability to work at solutions out of the hands of ordinary people and puts it into the hands of some "global" organisation. If we have to wait around until something happens globally, nothing will happen.
Joined: Sep 30, 2004 Posts: 975 Location: On one of the blades of the fan
Posted: Sun Jun 05, 2005 1:16 pm Post subject:
Ludi: did I say that?
No, I don't think I did - my whole post was about local solutions. The bit about Feasta is an afterthought. And also to bump the thread as it needs to get more visibility
One thing is for certain. Debt-based, growth-dependent currencies cannot be sustained over the long term. Some medium that is NOT dependent on eternal growth. _________________ UNplanning the future...
http://unplanning.blogspot.com
Mayor Ken Livingstone is a radical and might well go for this, especially if we put pressure on - my recommendation to our members. London, despite being one of the richest cities in the world, (or because of!) has a vast gap between rich and poor, and also thre are the concomitant lack of services in some areas because they can't be paid for by conventional means, just the sort of task for a CC.
Quote:
Once every decade at least, the creaking financial system seems to keel over dangerously far, threatening to capsize completely with disastrous consequences for the world. Between those crises, in too many corners of the world - and too many corners of London - there are the classic symptoms of economies short of cash. There is work that urgently needs to be done, idle people willing to do it and with the skills to do it well, but no money to bring these elements together. It is not surprising, therefore, that many people - from leading businesses to community groups - are experimenting with new kinds of money that can do that and other jobs too.
Obviously a London-wide currency backed by the Mayor would have immediate credibility and wide use, obviating the problems that smaller less credible local alternatives would. Like the Congestin Charge, its success would set down a marker for others to emulate.
One other thing from this proposal: The Swiss are using the most successfull CC in the world - hold on to your drawers...if the Gnomes like it, its gotta be good!
Quote:
Wir - short for Wirtschaftsring ('economic circle') - is Europe's oldest bartering operation, aiming specifically at smaller companies, and it is now so widespread in Switzerland that it amounts to a virtual currency in parallel to the Swiss franc. Wir started in 1934, the brainchild of two followers of the economist Silvio Gesell, who urged the creation of negative interest currencies. By 1993, it had a turnover of £12 billion and 65,000 corporate members. Wir is a barter system, but using a currency all of its own, so that people exchange goods and services inside the circle, without using Swiss francs. They create the money by going into debt to each other, and then must pay it off by providing services for others.
See that figure: GBP12 billion? That ain't small potatoes.
It would function in a recession too, as long as the confidence was there.
One final afterthought, off topic, I just found out what the Ecological Footprint of London is: 49 million Global Hectares...that's the size of Spain!
I just can't see what's the advantage of an alternative currency, except perhaps that you can get a small amount of credit under circumstances that you normally couldn't. I still can't see why this would make a huge difference.
Posted: Mon Dec 19, 2005 11:32 pm Post subject: Re: Co-operatives, local currencies, as recession proofing
What I would issue if I was in charge of creating a new monetary base in a small to average sized town is use old out of use currencies coins which had silver in them. Doing that would limit inflation. Currency there is alot of pre-decimal silver coins all over the world being held for their silver value. In england they could use their old coins again such as florins and the other set of coins which contained silver. In America they could use the pre 1963 dimes as a currency.
Posted: Tue Dec 20, 2005 8:46 am Post subject: Re: Co-operatives, local currencies, as recession proofing
dukat wrote:
What I would issue if I was in charge of creating a new monetary base in a small to average sized town is use old out of use currencies coins which had silver in them.
There aren't a hell of a lot of them left. Certainly not enough to create a new currency with.
Posted: Wed Dec 21, 2005 7:44 am Post subject: Re: Co-operatives, local currencies, as recession proofing
Actually local currencies is not a bad idea; the benefits are certainly there and even free-riders will find that there are no free rides with this system.
In reality , the monetary system of the ancient Greeks was based on a local currency and they seemed to be doing much better then compared to their modern denscendants
But since we cannot/should not be 100% local a global system should also be in place. _________________ "Nuclear power has long been to the Left what embryonic-stem-cell research is to the Right--irredeemably wrong and a signifier of moral weakness."Esquire Magazine,12/05
The genetic code is commaless and so are my posts.
Posted: Wed Nov 15, 2006 11:11 pm Post subject: Re: Co-operatives, local currencies, as recession proofing
Quote:
I think that if you are going to start an alternative currency it should be called something different than the Green Pound, or Dollar, or Euro
I vote for the g-Au (gram of gold). It doesn't sound that bad (it cost 10 gaus, 50 gaus as salary, etc) and has potential to be universaly accepted. It isn't based on funny printers and is not tied to a culture.
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