In this issue:
* Chapter 8—The Separation of Money and State
* Upcoming interview on TNT Radio
* Six Lessons Learned About Community Currencies
* Mutual Credit Panel Discussion
* Symbiotic Culture
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Readers have already seen the first two items in the posts below.
Here are the remaining three items:
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6 Lessons Learned from 40 years of experimentation with local and community currencies.
Over the past several decades, many local and community currencies have come, and most of them have gone. By observing all that, and by my own research and experience with Tucson Traders and LETS Sonora, I’ve discovered several fundamental principles that have led me to the prescriptions I have been offering. Here is a partial list:
1. A community currency, to be truly effective, must be more than a local version of the existing political fiat currency.
2. A community currency must be created independently of the banking system.
3. A community currency can be created by local producers of real value in the form of vouchers that they can spend into circulation.
4. The amount of vouchers spent into circulation must not exceed the amount that an issuer is able to redeem by delivering goods and services within a few months’ time.
5. Such voucher currencies may wander away from the local community, but they must eventually return to the community to be redeemed by the issuer.
6. Voucher currencies must have an expiration date or demurrage fee to stimulate a healthy velocity of circulation, and to guarantee their timely redemption.
For more details about all that see my article, Local Currencies— What Works: What Doesn’t.
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Legends in Alternative Currency talk Mutual Credit
Zachary Marlow, founder of the Moneyless Society initiative, has recently posted the video of a panel discussion on mutual credit which he hosted several weeks ago. I was one of the panelists, along with Matthew Slater, Dil Green, and Matthew Schutte. You can view it on YouTube.
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Birthing the Symbiotic Age
Here is something that is truly different from the way most of us are accustomed to thinking about positive social, economic, and political change.
Richard Flyer has been working for decades to facilitate the emergence of what he calls a “Symbiotic Culture.” Inspired in large part by his involvement with the Sarvodaya movement in Sri Lanka, Richard has been describing in his new book an “Ancient Blueprint for a New Creation.” The book, which is being published in sections, goes beyond theoretical reasoning or wishful thinking, it is a story or Richard’s journey of discovery and his real-world experience in acting as a catalyst to help that “new creation” to come about. In a recently published section titled, Chapter 7, Part 2, The Conscious Community Network and Local Food Ecosystem,Richard describes how the Northern Nevada Local Food System Network was able to emerge out of his one-on-one conversations with six “super connectors,” showing them how their common interests could be served by connecting their individual “silos” and cooperating for the benefit of all. He reports that, “Through these six people’s networks alone, we expanded the playing field for our food network to almost one hundred organizations and the fifty thousand people they were connected to!”
In explaining the success of the network, Richard described it this way:
“A Symbiotic Network is not a separate organization. Instead, it is a community-wide, multi-hub, network-centric ecosystem — really an “organism” — where power is shared by the stakeholders.”
- It’s a virtuous, purpose-based network for mutual benefit, where participants ask, “What can I give?” It’s not a fixed coalition where each organization only wants to “get” something.
- It’s a unique “umbrella” or “meta-network” designed to enhance the work and provide tangible benefit to each member organization and the whole community – not just another competing silo.
- It’s a completely independent network, not controlled by an existing non-profit, business, or local government.
- It’s an informal consortium that connects and proliferates the good in a region in one or more multiple domains (e.g., around food, education, health care, neighborhoods, arts and culture)—not a formal organization with a formal board of directors, executive director, CEO, employees, and budget.”
I am confident that if you read or listen to all three sections of his Chapter 7, you will want to go back to the beginning of the book to hear the rest of Richard’s remarkable story.
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Wishing you a pleasant summer,
Thomas
The entire newsletter can be viewed at https://beyondmoney.net/newsletter-2024-05-monetary-meta-structures-and-symbiotic-culture/.
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