Alternate Currency
Mar
10
Written by:
3/10/2010 8:55 AM
Any interest in this subject is welcome, and the current by Dan Schumacher very much so (see March 9 VMIGP agenda). As a disabled veteran of the great non-events of 2008 and 2009 I herewith add two cents. The first is that reading the principal authors of books on the subject gets one ahead much faster than individual journeys into the web. Viz: William Greider, Ellen Brown, Bernard Lietaer, Tom Greco. The second is that the topic is so branching, so bottomless, so, so, uh, sticky, that no amount of study gets one ahead faster than hands on experience. This is why my project at the outset dropped the idea of study and proposed instead a fifty person six month trial of a working currency based in Bellingham. I still think that should be done and that it would be an invaluable contribution to study at Vashon College. Final comment, a bad penny perhaps, be careful with the word currency. To the extent that a narrow meaning is conveyed so is the main benefit of a community currency forgone: the main benefit is a rebuilding, a reinforcement of social ties. It is therefore a mistake to presume that the alternate for Vashon will entail folding money. For example, nothing in the issuance of folding money will supply the enhancement of trading that is furnished by membership-type "currencies". The VMIGP should immediately organize a mass trial of Fourth Corner Exchange.
