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; mystery of the billion who live on < $2/day
- 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 (e.g. childcare, education, healthcare)
- 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 and without any organisation?
- 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
- unmatched 2000 years of wealth and health for ordinary people;
- How do govt's accelerate destruction OR rekindle people's wealth and healthy communities?
- impose taxes only in scarce legal tender (gold, roman coins, dollars) + facilitate compound interest (esp. in no-growth economy)
- allow tax payments in abundant common tender (ostraca, bracteates, local currencies) + facilitate demurrage (negative interest)
- charge rent on land (+roads, patents, copyrights, EM spectrum, natural resources) instead of income, business and sales tax; redistribute to people (Alaska, Alberta, Norway)
- exercise: create a todo list for designing your regional dual currency system
- decision 1: relationship to national currency? unit of measurement? spectrum from hours to dollar-equivalent
- decision 2: brainstorm catalog's keystone offers and requests (comox dentist story)
- decision 3: brainstorm matchmaker(s) and how to compensate them (eat own dogfood?)
- decision 4: relationship to the internet: online and/or paper currency, catalog and accounting
- decision 5: succession planning (in the event of natural death or scaling up)
Story 3: Medieval Bracteates 1000 AD: the mystery of addiction
- 300 years of accidental wealth and health for ordinary people in Western Europe due to Renovatio Monetae
- exercise: find pros and cons of: regular jubilees in which all debts are cancelled vs. steady demurrage
- exercise: suggest policies for dealing with members who are way off balance.
- exercise: brainstorm ways to increase the speed of circulation
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#
- exercise: where does your designed regional currency fit in with the history of people money in your area? What lessons have been learned?
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 [1]
- exercise: how to improve a currency using chiralkines. pros + cons [2]
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