Adventures in mutual credit

After some excellent discussions at Den Hague in June, and lots of talk on a mailing list, 6 of us met in Berlin to hammer out this intertrading protocol [below].

This is based on what I published eighteen months ago, but with a few tweaks and a whole social side as well.

This protocol includes a sort of template for intertrading communities to decide how they work, and the API to implement.

Not often am I the richest person in the party, but in Berlin's bitcoin district last month, Meals at Room 77 were on me.

This photographic memento shows me logging in to blockchain.info where my wallet is hosted.

I was struck by a sentence in a paper by Warren Coats,

Natural market behavior in the face of an excess supply of money held by the public is to spend more...

It asserts that there is a 'natural' behaviour and that economists can understand it. I think a very careful examination of nature is required especially in the light of the profession's poor track record on predictions.

Have you realised that the world, if not the universe, is a single organism and all the people, all the organisms are inter-connected and depend on each other for their welbeing? Do you feel a greater responsibility to the universe than just to replicate the molecular patterns and social memes which make you you? Have you perhaps devoted large chunks of your life to some Work? This mystical experience is sometimes called a 'dissolution of ego' but unfortunately most egos don't stay dissolved for long!

Politics have no relation to morals. - Niccolo Machiavelli

There is a lot happening right now, and I sense that for coordination purposes it needs presenting more widely. It is always tempting to plough our own solitary and often unyielding furrows, but I believe we should be looking around more and appreciating supporting and connecting to what works.

A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn recounts an almost constant stream of dissent, protest, uprisings, revolts, strikes, walkouts since Europeans discovered the New World. For every action the wealthy elite reacted with greater violence, legislation, propaganda and war-mongering.
This concluding chapter, written in 1980, reflects on this pattern of dissent and asks what has been learned and what would a successful revolution in the United States look like.

Thanks to Stephanie for the 'loan'.

This is a proposed API to allow a mobile phone to connect to a community exchange platform. The essential functions are concerned with browsing, and later posting offers and wants, and with registering exchanges with other members of the system.

Since 2008, when the financial collapse began, I have been acutely aware that in the event that things get out of control, and complementary currency solutions cease to be an appropriate response, I have no bolt-hole to run to, and no special skills that would endear me to those who had the foresight to buy land and learn to produce food on it.

I've been reaching out with Drupal to the LETS movement for five years and to the time banking movement for three. I focused on these because I believed that they had the power of collective decision making, they needed good advice and because getting them all to use the same software framework would be efficient, enabling them all to put more resources into core activities.