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.
I recently came across Silicon Valley startup Rentalic.com - which encourages neighbours to rent stuff to each other instead of buying it. They are clear that community building is part of their mission, but know nothing about ccs, instead they have invested in an elaborate way of agreeing a price and paying neighbours via credit cards. Another scheme in Portland, Bright Neighbour, provides all sorts of tools to stregthen local relationships, but does not address money. The list is endless. Community Tools in Estonia. Transition towns are talking about money, but they don't have the expertise or the energy.
Local money advocates should be working with these initiatives from the beginning.
Another problem we have is lack of resources, and credibility. Our web sites look amateurish, and most of us are working as individuals. We are mostly too busy and too focused on our own private utopias to engage with others. I'm now looking for suitable partners who will work with me to provide
- economic development solutions to local governments,
- local accounting services to local community building start-ups
- energy-token trading systems to local energy generating projects.
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I've arrived at around about
I've arrived at around about the same place. Currencies work better in strong communities with vision and energy. A community in Bega (southern NSW, Australia) has used their LETS system to build a house, and more recently contribute a huge amount of labour to an eco-development project. In the case of the eco-development project, partial payment was accepted in LETS currency to balance the account. Very inspiring projects!
Sydney LETS is trying to get traction in the Permaculture community, but it's been a slow start so far. There's also interest from our Transition groups. Lots of goodwill, but all the group leaders are very stretched already, so it's hard to organise the events that are needed to demonstrate the potential of LETS to the members.
I've also tracked down an interesting group of people in my area called Community Economies Collective - communityeconomies.org. Sounds like they get into places and make good projects happen. I love their 'Diverse Economies Framework' which looks at all the different ways we exchange time and energy. I've noticed interesting tensions where community currencies seem to risk stepping on the toes of other ways of transacting (eg: favours and volunteering). It looks like these folks suss out the main modes of transacting, and work with them when they set up programs and community enterprises. So they may have good ways of negotiating the tensions between the different ways of 'producing, transacting and distributing values'.
When we meet up face to face I'm going to update them about the state of local trading systems around Australia.