Evolver Spores: "Beyond Money: What Comes Next?"
"Beyond Money: What Comes Next?"
The current financial meltdown has revealed deep structural flaws in the Capitalist system that have yet to be addressed by governments or institutions. What alternatives do we as individuals and communities have when faced with money issued by a centralized authority that props up military expansion, maintains artificial scarcity, and feeds the insatiable greed of a tiny financial elite?
For our second Evolver Spore, we will investigate the current economic paradigm and explore workable alternatives to it, such as time banks and complementary currencies, that communities can use now. We also look at the broader systemic solutions proposed by economic theorists like Tom Greco and Bernard Lietaer.
Check the list below to find a Spore in your area. If there is not yet an Evolver Spore in your local community, kick-start the evolution by emailing jonathan(at)evolver(dot)net to get one started. Links to helpful articles on this subject are also included below.
AUSTRALIA
CANADA
SOUTH AFRICA
USA
Articles on Going "Beyond Money"
Money and the Crisis of Civilization
by Charles Eisenstein
http://www.realitysandwich.com/money_and_crisis_civilization
Evolving Toward Local Credits
by Thomas H. Greco
http://www.realitysandwich.com/evolving_toward_local_credits
http://www.realitysandwich.com/ad/redirect/12270/t179/
Money and the Turning of the Age
by Charles Eisenstein
http://www.realitysandwich.com/money_and_turning_age
Local Wealth [Video]
by Lewis Kofksy
http://www.realitysandwich.com/local_wealth
The Capital is Personal
by Anya Kamenetz
http://www.realitysandwich.com/capital_personal
Program Your Own Money
by Douglas Rushkoff
http://www.realitysandwich.com/program_your_own_money
Thomas Greco will be giving a talk about local credits to Sustainable Tucson on 8/12
http://www.sustainabletucson.org/2009/06/the-global-financial-meltdown-i...
The current financial
The current financial meltdown has revealed deep structural flaws in the Capitalist system that have yet to be addressed by governments or institutions.
Government is what caused the meltdown, not capitalism.
Banks were forced to make irresponsible loans, the interest rate on credit was pushed down artificially, creating a housing boom that those exercising the M-M aspect of life took full advantage of, creating an artificial housing bubble of inflated prices along with state and local government regulations on development creating artificial housing shortages further inflating prices, requiring a utopian spring time of economy to maintain, which is not realistic, and like so many times in the past the house of cards fell in on itself. Did you know that the government has been doing this for decades creating a fairly reliable 18 year cycle of boom and bust in the housing market? To top it off, the Enron scandal and their accounting misdeeds caused congress to create economically ignorant new financial accounting legislation called mark to market, putting the historical standard of evaluating assets on it’s head which is directly related to the failure of most banks; Per the new law, assets that realistically had value did not, solely because they did not have current value! Funny, that law was recently rescinded to help the banks which bumped up the market within days! Ultimately in this example, as in so many others, government manipulation of the economy is the cause yet the media enforces herd think to convince us it was all the fault of evil capitalism and evil money. Of course, government is then begged to fix the very problem it created.
The mis-information and insanity of it all!
BeanPole Money
I am a participant in the creation and evolution of the nature of my personal and shared reality.
My generation put on patched blue jeans, so the establishment sold us patched blue jeans and we (appeared) to disappear. The world is full of abundance. Wealth is created by communities, working together. Use the financial tools developed over the last decade to the advantage of all rather than a few.
Visualize a role based global virtual reality game in which participants benefit by helping other participants identify and manifest and realize their objectives in life (birth visions).
Visualization plus intent times duration times energy equals an exchange of information which creates a transformation in the field of potentiality.
wait a tick
Capitalism has not failed, some capitalists failed.
To make it worse, their failures and the pain of their decisions will linger as the socialist tendencies of the developed nations string them along with bailouts.
Also, the lesson of Enron has not been learned as the Federal Reserve set up "Maiden Lane LLCs" to hide all the toxic debt bought from the big banks. Those are off-balance sheet items to circumvent the articles of the Fed that do not allow them to own anything but Treasury bonds.
In the spirit of this site, money and fame made many drunk with power so they failed to see their role in the larger world order. I wonder if the value of hindsight would make mortgage bankers or sales people or AIG act any differently. I can only hope.
Vince Regan, CMT
Notable Open Money & Complementary/Alternative Currency Projects
http://metacurrency.org/
Welcome to the Metacurrency Project
We are building platforms and protocols necessary for an open source economy. This requires new technology capacities which need to function in a non-monopolizable manner.
* Open Identity: Create, manage and own your identity in a trustworthy manner, independent of any central authority.
* Open Rules: Know the rules of any currency you participate in and see when they change.
* Open Transport: A protocol to enable a participant to transact with any other participant and a currency to interact with any other currency.
* Open Data: The ability to share, decentralize and distribute data (like your account balance) and ensure its integrity and privacy… also, to allow you to be a reliable authority of your own data. (You can represent your own accounts, and I can validate your data.)
Our design document provides a technical introduction to the Metacurrency platform.
http://wikiwikimoney.com/
What is WikiWikiMoney?
WikiWikiMoney is a subsidiary of Twollars. It started as a small experiment but we quickly realized it needed its own home on the web. What you see is the first move of the system. There is a lot more to come so please bear with us and enjoy experimenting with your own currency on Twitter.
Do you have a group of friends or neighbours that could benefit from tracking favors? Are you a business who wants to attract twitter-savvy customers? WikiWikiMoney may be right for you. But how does it work?
Thank-you money:
Let’s say you and some friends want to use your own unique thank you money. Simply define a “WikiWikiMoney tag,” choose "regular" as the currency type, decide on a starting balance, and you are ready to tweet. Your Custom WikiWikiMoney balance will be unique for each “Custom WikiWikiMoney tag.”
Mutual-Credit:
Let’s say you and a group of fellow parents want to save money on babysitters by exchanging hours of childcare with each other. Just define a “WikiWikiMoney tag,” and choose “mutual-credit” as the currency type. By choosing “mutual-credit,” you can see who has contributed more than they’ve received (positive balance), and who has received more than they’ve contributed (negative balance). Since you know who has contributed what, you all feel more comfortable and appreciated.
Coupons:
Let’s say you have a business and you are looking for a fun, low-cost way to bring in new customers. By defining a “WikiWikiMoney tag,” you can issue coupons to anyone who uses Twitter. Just choose “regular” as the currency type and set the amount you are willing to accept as the starting balance. You can set any acceptance policy you want; just make sure and tell folks what it is in the description. Then when people come to your store, they can tweet you the coupons directly from their phone or a pc you've setup!
Find you soul...it's the one thing only you can do.