Adventures in mutual credit

I am working with groups who understand the need to re-localise our society and re-build community. In this context it is tempting to imagine pre-industrial landscapes where every village was mostly self-sufficient. But only a cataclysm would bring that about given that half of us live in cities, and our love of technology favours an economy with intense specialisation.

Dear Josh, Rob et al.

Writing an RFI was exactly the right thing to do, since it shows everyone where you are, and that you are seeking consultation and collaboration, and are open to suggestions.

As far as possible I will stick to your prescribed response format, but my most important messages don't fit it. However, I don't think you'll find anything here irrelevant.

I just wanted to share this chapter of Charles Eisenstein's seminal work, the Ascent of Humanity

Download 4.2 Alone in a Crowd (audio file, 22 mins)

It explains how our present money contributes to the breakdown of community by making people anonymous and replaceable part of a machine. The implication is that to build back community we need to rely less on money for our goods and services.

Service and 'resources'

I supposed that I should use hook_service to define services as in the node_service module. However it turns out that there is another, similar but completely undocumented option, as epitomised in the node_resource module.

Many activists that I know recognise that small town currencies are simply not very useful in a globalised economy. One current response response in UK is Bristol which is soon to launch a regional currency. It's very conscious that most celebrated project in Germany, Cheimgauer is regional, and perhaps less conscious of the role of regional banks in that endeavour. Otherwise the strategy sounds to me like a host of other projects which aren't thriving. Insanity has been defined as repeating the same action and expecting different results.

It has been my pleasure to hang out with Collin Ferguson and the Xchange Stewards team in the North West USA. After some changes of direction over the last few years, Collin and the XS team now have a clear idea of what needs doing, a strategy, and two hardcore software engineers on-side.

Individuals

I was just privileged to spend some time with Arthur Brock and, to a lesser extent, with Eric Harris-Braun. (less time, not less privileged!).

After some years of failing to properly explain it, and many prototypes, they reckon to have nailed down the mechanical details of metacurrency, and are starting to build in ernest!

While the problems faced by Western economies can be thoroughly explained through monetary policy, the solutions clearly do not lie in simply promoting economic alternatives. People don't want to engage with economics, they don't understand it, especially when experts disagree. Only the disenfranchised - the least influential people - will listen. CC Advocates need to be more strategic than to talk about economics - the world and his wife is talking about economics. Instead, I propose, they should be working more closely with those who are already building communities.

Guillaume Lebleu worked for 8 years in the banking system and he really understands how credit creation works, and why the system is like it is. Most of my economics education comes from things like 'The Money Masters' and 'Money as Debt', which paints an alarming picture of a corrupt system ravaging the earth and indenturing its people using debt instruments. Guillaume understands why the currency system is the best of all possible worlds so far, although it has its faults.