Reliance on the dollar will devastate Vashon’s economy when the approaching perfect economic storm hits Puget Sound. This is because we have not the farming, medicine, nor industry adequate to survive high ferry fares and loss of off-island wages. What we do have is a lot of hard to heat bedrooms. Yet the single most vital step towards self sufficiency has not been taken and that is institution of an alternate currency. There are two reasons. One is cultural, we are not about to push back from the smorgasbord of goodies that only the dollar provides, make that provided. The other is financial, the best available alternate lacks a feature essential to transition: a consensus value. Having that value would allow the investment of dollars in Vashon life: vastly increased farming, single payer healthcare, new high school, fabrication of electric transport, fabrication of solar energy systems, and purchase of tooling to make use of what’s dumped. The path to self-sufficiency is a dual currency.
Credit for developing this idea goes to the Transition Handbook, and to the forum by Vision for Vashon April 25th. It was first proposed by a Vashon grower who wondered about the value of a plant.
A search of the web for the value of alternate currencies has found none that have the absolute value basis needed for consensus equivalence with the dollar. What then might serve Vashon as such a value? Redeemability is not necessary; the dollar is not redeemable for anything but another dollar. The key is this question: what has the same value for every Vashon resident? In answering that, one has to be a bit careful with that word value. When a ship loaded with gold founders off Hatteras and passengers are being packed into the few lifeboats, how valuable is their gold when the lifeboats start to founder as well? Put it this way, is it the value expressed in dollars that matters, or the value expressed in quality of life? Here’s a candidate for careful thought: energy, electrical energy in particular. The currency unit in the Vashon Exchange would be a unit of electrical energy.