Outline for Community Currencies Workshops version 2.0

Story 0: In the beginning: pure gift economy

  • Bernard Lietaer's Yin-Yang spectrum of currencies with visual aids
  • Exercise: organize bag of visual aids along the spectrum from pure gift currency all the way to pure yang currency
  • Exercise: find local examples of gift economies transformed into yang currency and its side-effects
  • Exercise: design the return of a non-gift currency back to pure gift; pre-requisites: trust, healthy community

Story 1: Irish Banks Strike 1970: undesigned community currency

  • are banks really too big to fail? In what way does life change if they disappear?
  • what are banks useful for: settling payments (clearing), providing information (risk assessment), setting incentives (interest rates), pooling resources, transferring resources (import/export from community), i.e. creating and maintaining currency,.
  • how can local people do all that without a bank?
  • exercise: create cheques ; what makes a cheque acceptable common and/or legal tender?
  • exercise: create minuto vouchers;

Story 2: Egyptian Ostraca 2000 BC: designed dual currency

  • exercises: How to end, accelerate destruction or rekindle and speed up people's wealth and healthy communities?
    • impose taxes only in scarce legal tender (gold, roman coins, 2014 dollars) + facilitate compound interest
    • allow tax payments in abundant common tender (ostraca, bracteates, local currencies) + facilitate demurrage
    • charge rent on land (+roads, patents, copyrights, EM spectrum, natural resources) and redistribute to people (Alaska, Norway)

Story 3: Medieval Bracteates 1000 AD: the mystery of addiction

  • exercise: how to be consciously or unconsciously illegible under harsh yang conditions
  • exercise: how to help yang currency rule-makers reach their goals by being yin currency allies
  • exercixe: how to use addictive drug currency to heal our communities

Story 4: Designed People Money:

  • review local history: co-ops, consumer unions, credit unions, food banks, micro-credit, opensource, crowfunding, sharing, etc
  • review local mutual credit history: TimeBanks, LETS, CES, Regioweld, Barter Rings, Openmoney, etc
  • design or improve a local currency: matchmaker + catalog + transparency + dunbar#

Story 5: [Optional] Future Money:

  • exercise: what kind of currency is Bitcoin in terms of yin-yang indicators?
  • exercise: how to improve a currency using the Block Chain Protocol. pros + cons
  • exercise: how to improve a currency using chiralkines. pros + cons

Conclusion: back to pure gift economy

  • in the end, what is money, really?
  • exercise: the paradox of "measuring into existence" gift economies
  • exercise: what are some metrics that indicate successful currencies (or not)
  • end with a conscious potluck
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