Adventures in mutual credit

Transition towns gathered in London to advance their thinking on money and the economy, to continue their work with Transition Pounds.

The day opened with a presentation about the problems with the money supply, which was an excellent grounding for many delegates who were more interested in the economy or local economies. Positive Money and NEF are becoming very proficient at explaining these matters.

I have now designed and implemented (in drupal 7) an API suitable for mutual credit sites to 'intertrade'. This means that exchanges can coordinate payments into and out of accounts nominated for the purpose of external trade. The API links up mutual credit exchanges into a mutual credit network of mutual credit exchanges. This is unlike normal money because each exchange, just like each user, must vacillate around zero balance within the network.

Happily my suit and I are in the same city, and together we slipped in to the launch of The Corporation of the City of London's £200,000 report on the 'capacity trade' industry. This was my first brush with the politicised side of commercial mutual credit systems. Daniel from Ormita who had contributed to the report warned me that many people in the industry don't actually understand mutual credit, and were putting the collapse of some exchanges in several countries down to other causes than the massive deficits being run up by the franchisee.

Yesterday I surveyed 12 occupier-volunteers (from kitchen, medicine, pastorial, IT, Library, and info) as I could find at St Pauls, London.

1 There are enough people doing my work. 4 agree
Apart from some people whose work was light, or self selected, many volunteers felt that if they took time for themselves, important work wouldn't be done.

2 Everything in the camp should be equally available to all occupiers 5 agree