Adventures in mutual credit

Two years ago I posted a bemused article on Faircoin, which was trading between some members of Faircoop at five times the price it was available on the free market. This was a social experiment being run by Enric Duran as part of his attempts to build a new financial system.

As readers of my blog you'll be aware of a new initiative, the Credit Commons Collective, to connect three of the larger complementary currency networks, and invite others also to connect.

I invite you to sign up to a new mailing list, on which news of that initiative will be broadcast.

https://lists.riseup.net/www/subscribe/creditcommonscollective

Thanks for being there...

E C Riegel quotes pop up all through the Money as Debt series, and he is a favourite of Tom Greco as well. This short book ( 50 pages) shows how, by adopting his alternative currency, the Valun, the peoples of the world can be free of government counterfeit money and hence the other evils of government.

• CES has been providing community currency software-as-a-service since 2002
• Community Forge has been providing free web sites for LETS and timebanks since 2009
• CES Australia became independent from CES in 2011, to run its own local web server.

Despite their social impact, these networks find it very hard to enga

Does cooperativism work?

Since 'political economy' became a subject in the 18th century, the predominant political dichotomy has been framed as labour versus capital. Marx talked about 'control of the means of production' as the essential political power that the workers needed to wrest from the capitalists. A great deal of activism and political theory continues in that vein: Gar Alpowitz work What then must we do? is all about rebuilding worker-owned coops and similar institutions.

It is my pleasure to offer you this seminal book in audio format, and my tribute to the authors. It cuts to the root of the linguistic, semantic and structural paradoxes not only of modern fiat money, but its several 'paradigm-of-liquidity' precedents; and reminds us of Keynes' genius in showing us a way towards a stable financial system.

In the complementary currency movement most of us have been so preoccupied with our software platforms that we haven't had the capacity to build apps; when apps are built, they are tightly coupled to one platform, making them difficult to share.