= free currencies embody this fundamental and universal claim that any citizen, any community, any organization has the right to create tools for wealth to flow. No individuals, no community should be dependent on monopolistic and private currencies, unless they have decided so. [1]

This section's theme are generally the monetary aspects of P2P trends, and more specifically, aspects of monetary reform, that aim to make the monetary system into a participatory resource that more broadly benefits larger sectors of the world population.

Human and social wealth is never reducible to its translation in money, see the Wealth Typology.

A very good summary of: What's Wrong with the Current Monetary System, by Mark Joob.

Recommended experts:

• For Credit Commons oriented solutions at the local level, see Thomas Greco [2]

• For Public Credit and credit-free financing solutions at the national level, see Modern Monetary Theory and Ellen Brown

• For solutions relating to a global monetary commons, see Bernard Lietaer

• For Money of the Commons, see Andrea Fumagalli: How Can Crypto-Money Become a Money of the Commons

Status

The Five Monetary Reforms Movement Active Today

The following typology and citations, come from Brett Scott [3].

Please note that we believe all these movements bring something useful to the table, they are not mutually exclusive.

Our interest for the moment is into category five below, i.e. scalable crypto-currencies based on mutual credit, or backed by assets that indicate their limited use linked to planetary boundaries.

First, a reminder, how is money created today ? Bret Scott writes:

"Our money system is underpinned by national central banks and treasuries that issue foundational “base” money. This includes the physical cash in our wallets and also reserves, the special forms of digital money that commercial banks hold in their central bank accounts, which are inaccessible to us.

These commercial banks then boost the money supply by issuing a second layer of money on top of the central bank money layer, through a process called credit creation of money (sometimes called “fractional reserve banking”) to create commercial bank money, which we see as bank deposits in our bank accounts."

Five monetary movements exist that want to improve different aspects of this process:

Tackling Government-Issued Money Creation

"Modern Monetary Theory argues that a similar delusion occurs in our thinking about government money ― we often claim that a federal government “raises money” through taxation and then spends it, but actually it is government institutions that originally issue money by spending it into existence and then withdrawing it from circulation by demanding it back in taxation. If the government issues money, then why would it have to raise money by asking for it back? The idea that a federal government can run out of money like an ordinary household or business is an illusion, argue advocates of modern monetary theory. ... Under modern monetary theory, if there are unemployed people who want to work and material resources for them to work with, a federal government can issue new money without causing inflation because the increase in money supply will be met with an increase in production. "

Bank Money Reformers

"Other reformers target the commercial bank money system. They argue it creates economic instability, over-indebtedness and concentration of power in the hands of banks ― the very banks that led us into the 2008 financial crisis.

Bank money reform groups include the American Monetary Institute, Positive Money, and the International Movement for Monetary Reform."

Cryptocurrency

"Cryptocurrency crusaders not only reject both national and bank money systems, but also reject the entire concept of credit money (money that is “created from nothing” through law or social agreement), calling for it to be replaced with “commodity money” (money that is “created from something” through production)."

Local Complementary Currencies

"They believe small-scale communities should take control to issue money locally. Unlike cryptocurrency advocates, they have no problem with money being “created out of nothing.” Rather they have a problem with who gets to do that and at what scale. They believe large-scale systems alienate people and dissolve close-knit communities. A mutual credit system like Sardex in Sardinia, for example, does not reject the idea of money expanding and contracting, but it brings together an island community to decide on what terms that occurs. While the other movements are outspoken, local complementary currency enthusiasts are often humble and below-the-radar, working for low pay to build resilient community structures."

Mutual credit meets blockchain technology

"Nascent initiatives, such as Trustlines, Holochain, Sikoba, Waba and Defterhane, seek to hybridize older alternative currency systems like mutual credit with the blockchain architectures that underpin cryptocurrencies. They share common ground with both modern monetary theorists, who also see commodity money as regressive, and cryptocurrency advocates, who wish to bypass the government."

See also, the Duniter project, with its G1 currency.

The Way Forward, a P2P commentary

1. Bernard Lietaer:

"Specifically, I believe that we need to support the introduction and expansion of three different kinds of currencies alongside our national currencies: (1) an inflation-proof global complementary currency designed to stabilize the world economy; (2) business-to-business currencies designed to counteract the effects of conventional money shortages during periods of economic crises and contraction; and (3) community currencies that address a variety of social problems and strengthen the fabric of society." (http://www.lietaer.com/birdseyeview/)

2. Richard Douthwaite, FEASTA:

(Chapter 4 of the Ecology of Money)

"At least four types of money are needed.

One is an international currency, playing the role taken by gold before the collapse of the gold exchange standard.

The second is a national or regional (sub-national) currency that would relate to the international currency in some way.

Thirdly, we would need a plethora of currencies which, like LETS, the WIR and the commodity-based currencies, could be created at will by their users to mobilise resources left untapped by national or regional systems. Many of these user currencies would confine their activities to particular geographic areas, but some would link non-spatially-based communities of interest.

And fourth, as our current money's store of value function can so easily conflict with its use as a means of exchange, special currencies are needed for people wishing to see their savings hold their value while still keeping them in a fairly liquid form." (http://www.feasta.org/documents/moneyecology/pdfs/chapter_four.pdf)

Michel Bauwens

"The blockchain is first and foremost a tool of the anarcho-capitalist propertarians (https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Bitcoin#Political_Aspects), i.e. a tool for hyper-capitalist competitive markets, which we know lead to oligarchies; moreover, interlinked data through such universal ledger can easily lead to more control by the state and large corporations, who are already heavily investing in these technologies. In other words, the emancipatory aspects of the blockchain are not a given, and could lead to hyper-state or hyper-market outcomes, not to a libertarian-propertarian utopia, and certainly not to the commons-centric society we wish for at the P2P Foundation.

But this is not so say that the idea of a universal ledger, linked to the capacity of creating globa-local virtual currencies and tokens, has no value at all or no potential for a more just, sustainable and open commons economy.

The key is not in the currency, but in the value regime that is adapted and which value regime the tokens or currencies represent. Do we accept that value is only generated as a commodity with commodified labor, or do we accept that communities can be value sovereign and recognize all value contributions ?

Within the context of commons-based value sovereign communities, explored in our report on Value in the Commons Economy [4], with 3 cases studies of how specific communities chose to operate the boundary between the commons and the external market. An earlier study of 300 peer production communities (P2P Value, is also highly interesting as it documents that 78% of the communities studied have implemented, or were working on, open and contributive accounting systems. The key will then to link the new emerging value regime, with actual physical production, and it is in this context of the 'open circular economy' (see our report, The Thermodynamics of Peer Production), and the need for participatory and open supply chains, that the blockchain , as a universal ledger, can play a vital role in the emergence of a mutual coordination economy that will rely much less on planning and market pricing signals, and much more on network resource planning amongst interlinked commons-oriented entrepreneurial coalitions (I prefer to use entre-donneurial, meaning giving in between, rather than 'taking in between').

Interesting projects in this sphere are:

• The Economic Space Agency proposes Commons-Oriented Decentralised Programmed Organisations. cDPOs "are frameworks to bootstrap, develop & sustain commons projects"., aka, the commons-oriented version of DAO's. More info in the article: Programmed Decentralised Commons Production.

• The Metacurrency Project with Arthur Brock et al. propose a Sovereign Accountable Commons which is related to their Holochain project, an alternative to the blockchain that does not require exponential energy usage

• The FairCoop/Freedom Coop people, the creators of the Faircoin, are working on a Open Collaborative Platform, which intents to merge both open contributive accounting mechanisms and open supply chains; Faircoin also has a low energy footprint*

In relation to the money world, and how it represents value, I think we should aim for monetary biodiversity:

• the world of national sovereign currencies will continue to exist, but could be reformed/transformed by progressive coalitions, on the lines suggested by Mary Mellor, Positive Money, Modern Monetary Theory etc..; but all these solutions stay in the redistributive sphere and recognize only commodity value. We should also aim for some universal money standard, linked to ecological concerns, to keep monetary creation within the bounds of the carrying capacity of teh planet.

• the world of complementary local currencies continues to expand to protect and stimulate local economies against global instabilities and extraction; there are a number of global Credit Commons initiatives which aim to make these interoperable if they so wish (see the work of [[Jem Bendell and Matthew Slater on Protocol Cooperativism); however, these currencies are territorially based and are not very appropriate for global productive coalitions

• thus we need the third sphere: the world of commons-based current-sees (concept from Arthur Brock, seeing the currents of contributions) operates for the virtual territories of globa-local productive communities, (distinguished from the hypercapitalist cryptocurrencies based on the libertarian blockchain which will soon be able to determine their relative value to each other via the Bancor protocol, if it succeeds)". This is a sphere of pre-distribution and not redistribution, where value is created differently from its inception, this is not a sphere of re-balancing a fundamentally ill-conceived economy.

Please read:

• Towards the Democratization of the Means of Monetization: The Three Competing Value Models Present Within Cognitive Capitalism. by Michel Bauwens

Introduction

The P2P Foundation supports the direct social production of money, such as for example through Open Money and other P2P Exchange Infrastructure Projects systems. This marvellous presentation by Robin Upton explains how this can work.

Key distinctions: Currencies ; Free Currencies ; Wealth

For starters, read Eric Harris-Braun key argument: Why Monetary Design is Important

The following guide has all the essentials on Open Money and Complementary Currencies and is really recommended, for beginners and practitioners alike:

• Community Currency Guide. by Bernard Lietaer and Gwendolyn Hallsmith. 2006 [5]

It explains the following basics: 1) The Function of Money; 2) the Purpose of Money; Cost Recovery Mechanisms for Complementary Currencies‎ ; Currency Issuing Procedures, and much more.

• Updated state of the art review of Complementary Currency Open Source Software in 2010. Matthew Slater IJCCR Special Issue, State of the Art of Complementary Currencies: D 82-87 [6] "This report briefly covers the field of non-commercial mutual credit software, discussing the issues and challenges the projects collectively face in meeting the needs of the movement."

• A comparative table of alternative currencies by SocialCompare [7]

Introductory Video

• very clear intro of both what is wrong with the current financial systems and how citizens can rebuild a functional one: Jem Bendell on Rebuilding a Financial System by Ourselves

Introductory Articles

1. The Co-Belongingness of Money and Community
2. The Design of Money is not Neutral. By Bernard Lietaer, Gwendolyn Hallsmith.
3. Read this excellent introduction to the negative role of interest-based money by Charles Eisenstein
4. Best current report on the topic: Creating New Money: A monetary reform for the information age. By Joseph Huber & James Robertson. New Economics Foundation
5. Arthur Brock: Differences between Open Source and Open Currencies
6. Kevin Carson introduces the Peer Money debates
7. Michel Bauwens on the Importance of Peer Money
8. Alan Rosenblith: We need P2P Architectures for Money!!
9. Jean-Francois Noubel: Economics of Flow vs Economics of Accumulation
10. Ellen Brown on the Case for a Public Credit System: Money today is simply credit. When the credit is advanced by a bank, when the bank is owned by the community, and when the profits return to the community, the result can be a functional, efficient, and sustainable system of finance. See also: Money is Not a Thing, but a Relation
11. Eric Blair: The Greenback vs Goldbug Debate
12. Charles Eistenstein: Money, the Self, and Negative Interest Money. From Sacred Economics, Chapter 12.
13. What Should Peer-to-Peer Money Be? By Eli Gothill.

• Get Rid of Banks and Build Up a Modern Financial World. Rainer Lenz [8]

Goals and Policies

• see: History of Monetary Reform in the Context of the Commons

1. Better redistribution of the existing money
2. Transformation of the monetary system through the social production of money
3. Alternatives to money: Peer Production ; Gift Economy ; Sharing; and other ways to assist in a transition to a more Resource-Based Economy through Peer to Peer Exchanges and P2P Exchange Infrastructure Projects

From Local Community Credit to Global Credit Commons

Jamie Brown-Hansen:

"Community credit, however, is currently a global landscape of local credit facilities. This is not yet a global credit facility. It is easy to offer community credit within a local network of trust. It is much harder to offer community credit for something you’d like to order from China. So the interconnection of these facilities is the next piece in the puzzle that can make this a viable alternative to bank credit as a global medium of exchange, and that’s what we’re focused on today.

Like the natural world itself, the community credit landscape is diverse and dynamic and will never be fixed in a single pattern. That said, it is possible to recognize three distinct cultures that have emerged among these systems so far. They areLETS (Local Exchange Trading Systems), Business-to-Business (B2B) trading systems, and TimeBanks. Each of these groups organizes somewhat differently and uses different systems, but they’re all premised on the same basic principle of mutual credit exchange. A community credit facility results any time a group of people or organizations comes together and agrees to directly issue credit to each other for their own goods and services. (Some groups have a different way of describing this, but the result is the same.) This is usually called mutual credit, and it’s the most democratic form of credit creation: we issue credit ourselves backed by our own promises to redeem it in the future. Organize these promises together, and you’ve got a bottom-up credit facility.

There are now thousands of these worldwide, but they are not yet interoperable with each other. The next great design challenge facing the system engineers in this space is to develop import/export software extensions and protocols that would be compatible with each of the major systems currently used by the three trading groups. Their goal is to leave the design elements of the local systems intact, meaning the extensions wouldn’t compromise the sovereignty of communities over their local design choices. What they would do is allow the systems to communicate with each other using another connecting system, most likely Ripple. The result will be to achieve a larger “credit commons” through the interconnection of local credit facilities as long envisioned by mutual credit advocate Tom Greco. The developers estimate that this could be technologically feasible within the next two years." (http://biomimicry.org/community-credit/)

Current Hot Projects to monitor

Key digital Open Money projects are: 1) Bitcoin ; Ripple ; 3) Open Coin; 4) Open-Universal Digital Currency Project‎; 5) Circular Multilateral Barter

See also:

1. Banco Palmas, in Brazil, emits a local currency and supports the local economy. Video: The Story of Banco Palmas in Brazil
2. The Common Good Bank initiative [9]
3. The Metacurrency Project: the tci/ip platform for diverse currency creation: see the Flowspace project as first attempt to establish sucn an infrastructure for Free Currencies
4. Open Coin: an actual published open specification for creating distributed digital currency
5. The creation of the Open Source Hardware Reserve Bank. Details here
6. Multiswap.net: A free platform for circular barter exchange

Longstanding historical experiments:

1. WIR Economic Circle Cooperative: this 70-old Swiss mutual credit clearing system is getting traction as a model for the rest of Europe
2. The historical experience of the Worgl Shillings
3. The Swedish interest-free JAK Bank [10] [11]

Comparison chart of alternative currencies

1. SocialCompare - overview chart of key characteristics of alternative currencies (editable)

Tools:

Tools to create People-Produced Money:

1. Community Forge
2. Community Exchange System
3. Cyclos

Under development:

1. Open-Universal Digital Currency Project: Open-UDC is based on TRM (Théorie Relative de la Monnaie,by Stéphane Laborde) and Universal Digital Currency project (UDC project), which aims to create a new digital currency based on individual members and the digital world. [12]
2. OSCurrency,
3. Cclite, [ GETS] (commercial),
4. Ripple
5. Regenerosity, Local Exchange
6. Money 2.0

Also:

1. Comparison page at http://www.communityforge.net/compare
2. Software overview page: http://www.complementarycurrency.org/software.html

The open money software playing field: an overview

See: Overview of the Open Money Software Playing Field.

We strongly support the Grassroots Economics efforts of Will Ruddick in Kenya and elsewhere.

Please read: Will Ruddick of Grassroots Economics on the Characteristics of a Fair and Decentralized Currency System

“The technologies of community credit have reached the point where the experience of creating a credit facility is a lot like creating a website. You don’t need any prior technical experience; if you want a website, you can go to WordPress or Squarespace or the like, sign up for an account, start making your design decisions, and within two hours you’ve got a website. If you want a community credit facility, you can go to Community Forge or CES (Community Exchange Systems) or Cyclos or the like, sign up for a system for free, start making design decisions like unit of value, credit limits, and whether you want an element like a tax, an interest rate, demurrage or a transaction fee; and within a couple of hours you’ve got a credit facility.”

- Jamie Brown-Hansen [13]

See also: Timebanking Software Platforms

Citations

See also: Quotes on Open and Distributed Money Systems

"What we are being asked to reconsider is our perception that money runs the world exclusively. While it is “the one metric to rule them all”, it isn’t actually – and never has been – sufficient for running functioning societies or even markets by itself. Consider the emergence of labels like “organic”, “free-range”, “GMO-free”, “grass-fed”, etc. in recent years. What are these? Through that lens we just introduced, these are nominal currencies, or complementary currencies to money. Clearly, for many people price is not enough to determine whether they want to purchase a good. They rely on other symbols to inform their choices every single day, and so do you."

- Moritz Bierling [14]

To survive and thrive, human systems *need* a not just a network view, but a multi-dimensional, multi-scaled view and definition of systems. this will help us see how many, many people can operate and multiply many forms of wealth within systems that previously seemed easily depletable. Peer networks are vital to creating the multi-dimensional maps and models and views that will allow all of us to see the cornucopia of options that now exist, provided we can shift out focus from exploitation and control, to existential symbiosis with everything that is around us, on as many scales as possible.

- Sam Rose

”That which is for me through the medium of money – that for which I can pay (i.e., which money can buy) – that am I myself, the possessor of the money. The extent of the power of money is the extent of my power. Money’s properties are my – the possessor’s – properties and essential powers. (…). I am ugly, but I can buy for myself the most beautiful of the women. Therefore, I’m not ugly, for the effect of ugliness – its deterrent power – is nullified by money."

- Karl Marx [15]

Short Citations

"Current attempts to develop new kinds of cryptocurrencies must be judged, valued and rethought on the basis of this simple question as posed by Andrea Fumagalli: Is the currency created not limited solely to being a means of exchange, but can it also affect the entire cycle of money creation – from finance to exchange? Does it allow speculation and hoarding, or does it promote investment in post-capitalist projects and facilitate freedom from exploitation, autonomy of organization etc.?"

- Tiziana Terranova [16]

Long Citations

On Open Money

You treasure what you measure, and you measure what you treasure. Open money provides the tools to implement this maxim. What should we be treasuring in our culture and on our planet that we so far have no way to measure?

- Open Money [17]

Money is making a fundamental evolutionary step into community currencies. Conventional money as we know it has a built in architecture that leads to scarcity, centralization, concentration, secrecy, proprietarization. This conventional monetary system is not appropriate to dealing with today's global systemic challenges (harmonizing local and global needs, creating ecological sustainability, enabling the information economy, leveraging the open source paradigm, etc). Just as there are now millions of media outlets today, currencies will follow this same evolution by shifting from centralized authoritative models to distributed ones that allow better sustainability, distribution, transparency, and regulation mechanisms.

- Open Money [18]

How to best transcend the current economic mess? Put Jeff Bezos, Pierre Omidyar, Elon Musk, Tim O’Reilly, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Nathan Myhrvold, and Danny Hillis in a room somewhere and don’t let them out until they have framed a new, massively-distributed financial system, founded on sound, open, peer-to-peer principles, from the start. And don’t call it a bank. Launch a new financial medium that is as open, scale-free, universally accessible, self-improving, and non-proprietary as the Internet, and leave the 13th century behind.”

- George Dyson [19]

The Necessary Ecological Function of Money

“If we say that money comes from ecological function instead from extraction, manufacturing buying and selling, then we have a system in which all human efforts go toward restoring, protecting and preserving ecological function. That is what we need to mitigate and adapt to climate change, to ensure food security, to ensure that human civilizations survive. Our monetary system must reflect reality. We could have growth, not from stuff, but growth from more functionality. If we do that and we value that higher than things, we will survive.”

- John D. Liu [20]

Depression Economics

"During periods of so-called economic depression, societies suffer for want of all manner of essential goods, yet investigation almost invariably discloses that there are plenty of goods available. Plenty of coal in the ground, corn in the fields, wool on the sheep. What is missing is not materials but an abstract unit of measurement called ‘money.’

- Tom Robbins [21]

Leakages from the local economy

"Poor liquidity and leakage (money flowing from the local economy) are key causes for floundering and/or disappearing regional economies. To overcome these shortfalls local communities should be increasing local liquidity and plugging the leakage through the introduction of complementary community currencies thereby re-building their respective local communities in the coal mining area of Wales. When local residents within their respective communities changed the agreements they had about conventional money, by creating and spending complementary community currencies locally instead of spending only diminishing amounts of federal currency with giant corporations, it commenced re-birth in the local communities. Molly used the term local multiplier when she discussed how local liquidity increased proportionately to the amount of complementary community currency being circulated by those who were choosing to participate."

- (from a summary of) Molly Scott reporting on complementary currencies in Wales [22]

Aristotle on unnatural wealth

"There are two sorts of wealth-getting, as I have said; one is a part of household management, the other is retail trade: the former necessary and honorable, while that which consists in exchange is justly censured; for it is unnatural, and a mode by which men gain from one another. The most hated sort, and with the greatest reason, is usury, which makes a gain out of money itself, and not from the natural object of it. For money was intended to be used in exchange, but not to increase at interest. And this term interest, which means the birth of money from money, is applied to the breeding of money because the offspring resembles the parent. Wherefore of all modes of getting wealth this is the most unnatural."

- Aristotle [23]

The Disintermediation of the Banks

"First, the distribution monopoly of the Postal Services was hit hard by the Net as people discovered they didn’t need to buy stamps. Then, the copyright industry’s distribution monopoly was flatly and unceremoniously run over. As a third and fairly recent victim, we find the old centralized journalism with its tightly controlled news distribution. As fourth and coming victim, there’s an information distribution few people have thought of in terms of information: the money in our society."

- Rick Falkvinge [24]

On the End of Banking

“There is no reason products and services could not be swapped directly by consumers and producers through a system of direct exchange – essentially a massive barter economy. All it requires is some commonly used unit of account and adequate computing power to make sure all transactions could be settled immediately. People would pay each other electronically, without the payment being routed through anything that we would currently recognize as a bank. Central banks in their present form would no longer exist – nor would money.”

– Mervyn King – Governor of the Bank of England [25]

Introductory Material

Michael Linton: Money as Matter vs Money as Information

Raymond Aitken:

• Money derives from credit, not barter: Money is a Creature of Fiscal Accounting and Law‎‎

• On the Distinction Between Money and Currency‎ : "The fallacy of money being a thing with intrinsic value, instead of a social relationship"

• Fiduciary vs Fiat Notions of Money

Other authors:

1. Money is not the Only Value Measurement System . By Geoff Chesshire .
2. Why Peer to Peer Currencies will Grow
3. Bernard Lietaer: The Four-tiered Monetary System of the Future
4. In his landmark essay, Valuing the Ethical Economy, Adam Arvidsson explains why we need Wealth Acknowledgment Systems for the Ethical Circuit of Value
5. Must reading: Charles Eisenstein on Why Demurrage needs to replace interest (see the entry on Demurrage). Also: Money and the Crisis of Civilization on why the current crisis is also an endgame.
6. The case for open money. See also: Open Money Manifesto]
7. Ran Prieur: Fire vs. Water Economies, and the role of Demurrage in this tradition.
8. Essential theoretical and historical introduction to the long term history of money and debt, as rooted in social violence, by David Graeber at http://www.metamute.org/en/content/debt_the_first_five_thousand_years
9. Eric Harris-Braun on the necessary Difference between Multi-currency Platforms and Market Making Platforms
10. Thomas Greco: Why Exchange Alternatives Fail to Thrive
11. Robin Wood: Shifts in Value Exchange and Human Development: applying the spiral dynamics model to value exchange
12. The three modalities of Production Sharing, i.e. working together for a common pool, without individual exchange or barter: 1) Labor Quota System‎; 2) Fair-Share Labor System‎; 3) Anti-Quota Labor System‎
13. Why Matrifocal Societies Use Dual Currencies. Bernard Lietaer. [26]
14. Steve Keen on Why We Need to Tackle Debt Pushing, not Money Creation
15. Introduction to the Eight Forms of Capital‎

Also:

1. Rationale for Monetary Reform by Greg Martin.
2. Monetary Transformation, not Monetary Reform, is What is Needed. By Thomas Greco.
3. Why the Growth Imperative is Linked to our Monetary Format
4. Declaration Of The Universal Right Of Monetary Creation and the Open Money Manifesto
5. Peter Koenig's summaries on the History and Future of money
6. The Future of Money by Paul B. Hartzog
7. Capital, Profits, and Interest. Benjamin Tucker.
8. Chris Cook: a proposal for Open Capital

How-to:

1. Process of Designing a Complementary Currency System. How-to recommendations by Stephen DeMeulenaere.

Discussions

Via: http://groups.google.com/group/metacurrency

Key Resources

Funding for Open Money and Complementary Currencies infrastructures via: the Fund for Complementary Currencies

1. The Re-Inventing Money site, at http://reinventingmoney.com/
2. The Book: "Money; A Mirror Image Of The Economy" by Dr. J.W. Smith - full text at http://IED.info/books/money Applying Henry George’s philosophy across the economic spectrum transposes monopoly rent values into equally-shared use-values. Quality of life increases as working hours drop by half.
3. The consultancy: Value for People, helps local communities initiate complementary currencies
4. CoinDesk Guide to the World’s National Altcoins

Key Articles

See our collection in our page on the Democratic Money Initiative.

• Whose money is it?. GEOFFREY INGHAM: excellent historical introduction to the power of money creation

• Joseph Huber on the Case for Sovereign Money ; for other articles see the Democratic Money Initiative

• Pat Conaty on Distributed Money Creation Without Central Banks

* Money as the Potential Cause of the Tragedy of the Commons. By Kozo Mayumi [27]: "issues of money and money equivalents that defy the first and the second law of thermodynamics under the legal arrangement."

See also:

• How to start a community currency?. By Mira Luna.

• The Morality of Moneylending: A Short History. Yaron Brook. TOS Vol. 2, No. 3. Fall 2007

[28]: The author defends the practice of moneylending and gives a useful history, see for excerpts Attitudes to Usury - History.

• Kevin Cox: A proposal for Removing the Time Value of Money.

• Arguments for Demurrage-Based Post-Growth Currencies, a proposal by Charles Eisenstein

• The Fiscal Myth of Tax and Spend. Chris Cook.

• Currency is Destiny: new currencies for new times: an article by John Rogers in World Economics Association Newsletter, Volume 5, Issue 4, August 2015

• Rachel O'Dwyer: Considering the Bitcoin Digital Currency as a Commons

Guido Preparata's Essays on the Pioneers of Monetary Reform

• Of Money, Heresy and Surrender, A Plea for a Perishable Currency. By Guido Preparata. Anarchist Studies, Vol. 18 n.1 (2010): 9-39 [29]
• Rudolf Steiner on Threefold Social Economics and the Role of Perishable Money
• Free-Economics Vision of Reformer Silvio Gesell‎‎
• Reflections on the Heresies of Social Credit‎‎

Key Blogs

Of key importance is the work by Eric Harris-Braun and friends on meta-currency platforms, see here

Also:

1. New Currency Frontiers: very thoughtful new money blog with Eric Harris-Braun and others working on the Metacurrency Project
2. Beyond Money: Thomas Greco's blog on monetary transformation and mutual credit
3. Evolution of Money
4. Open Source Currency
5. Coverage of social money trends in Guillaume's blog
6. Trust is the only currency: excellent analysis

Key Books

• What Comes After Money? Essays from Reality Sandwich on Transforming Currency and Community, edited by Daniel Pinchbeck and Ken Jordan. EVOLVER EDITIONS/North Atlantic Books, 2011.

* Stefan Heidenreich. Money. Merve Verlag, 2017. [30] See: Stefan Heidenreich on the Post-Currency Non-Money Economy

Bernard Lietaer

• "Money and Sustainability: The Missing Link" by Bernard Lietaer, Christian Arnsperger, Sally Goerner and Stefan Brunnhuber. Triarchy Press, 2012 [31]. A report from the Club of Rome to Finance Watch and the World Business Academy

• The trilogy by Bernard Lietaer:

1. Bernard Lietaer, The Mystery of Money (Munich: Riemann Verlag, 2000).
2. Bernard Lietaer, The Future of Money (London: Random House, 2001). Full text [32]
3. Bernard Lietaer & Stephen M. Belgin, Of Human Wealth: Beyond Greed and Scarcity, Galley Edition Version 2.1. (Boulder, Colorado: Human Wealth Books and Talks, 2004.

From other authors:

1. Thomas Greco. The End of Money and the Future of Civilization. Chelsea Green, 2009
2. Money and Liberation. The Micropolitics of Alternative Currency Movements. Peter North. University of Minnesota Press, 2008
3. Interest and Inflation Free Money. Margrit Kennedy.
4. Peter North: Money and Liberation: The Micropolitics of Alternative Currency Movements. [33]
5. Creating New Money: A Monetary Reform for the Information Age, by Joseph Huber and James Robertson. New Economics Foundation (2001) [34]
6. The Ecology of Money. By Richard Douthwait
7. Money in an Unequal Society. By Keith Hart.

Guidebooks:

1. Community Currency Guide. Workbook by Bernard Lietaer

Also:

1. Money and Magic
2. Money in an Unequal World
3. Monetary Theory
4. 30 Lies about Money

Key Concept Pages to read

1. Abundance vs. Scarcity and Monetary Scarcity vs. Monetary Sufficiency - Non-scarcity based monetary systems
2. Monetary Reform, Demurrage and Seigneurage, the Credit Commons
3. Four conditions for Open Money: Open Data Currencies ; Open Identity Currencies ; Open Rules Currencies ; Open Transport Currencies
4. Wealth Typology,Because we need Wealth Acknowledgment Systems for the Ethical Circuit of Value

Key Conferences

• International Conference on Complementary Currency Systems

Conference: Multiple moneys and development: making payments in diverse economies. 2nd International Conference on Complementary Currency Systems (CCS) ; 19 – 23 June 2013; Amsterdam

Key Social Bookmark Tags

In diigo dot com ( user / mbauwens / )

1. Abundance, mbauwens/Abundance
2. Complementary Currencies, mbauwens/Complementary-Currencies
3. Monetary Reform, mbauwens/Monetary-Reform
4. Open Money, /mbauwens/Open-Money
5. P2P Money, /mbauwens/P2P-Money

Key Directories

1. Online Database of Complementary Currencies Worldwide ; Online Database of Complementary Currency Systems Worldwide
2. Global Resource Exchange Groups and Localized Exchange Communities
3. Peer to Peer Exchanges and P2P Exchange Infrastructure Projects
4. Electronic currencies in the Wikipedia

Key Documentaries

1. The Money Fix: video by Alan Rosenblith shown at PBS stations in the U.S. in 2009/2010 [35]
2. Money as Debt
3. The Wealth of Neighbors
4. The Money Masters
5. In Debt We Trust, remarkable documentary about personal aspects of debt crisis

Key Essays

1. Peer to Peer Lending, June 2007 overview report by Brad Slavin.
2. Raoul Victor: Money and Peer Production, a marxist perspective

Bernard Lietaer

• The Future of Payment Systems. By Bernard Lietaer.

Two key essays/proposals by Bernard Lietaer et al:

1. Is Our Monetary Structure a Systemic Cause for Financial Instability? Evidence and Remedies from Nature. By Bernard Lietaer, Robert E. Ulanowicz, Sally J. Goerner, and Nadia McLaren. Accepted for publication in Journal of Futures Studies Special Issue on the Financial Crisis (February-March 2010)
2. Options for Managing a Systemic Bank Crisis. Bernard Lietaer, Dr. Robert Ulanowicz, and Dr. Sally Goerner. Sapiens-journal Volume 2, number 1, March 2009

"The sustainability of any complex flow system can be measured with a single metric as an emergent property of its structural diversity and interconnectivity; it requires a balance in emphasis between efficiency and resilience. The urgent message for economics from nature is that the monoculture of national currencies, justified on the basis of market efficiency, generates structural instability in our global financial system. Economic sustainability therefore requires diversification in types of currencies, specifically through complementary currencies."

Thomas Greco

1. Thomas Greco: Why Exchange Alternatives Fail to Thrive: The State of the Alternative Exchange Movement, Excerpt from The End of Money and the Future of Civilization, Chapter 13,
2. Thomas Greco: Towards A Complete Web-Based Trading Platform Excerpt, End of Money, Chapter 17,

See also

• How Barter Followed and Did Not Precede the Creation of Money. David Graeber.

Key People

1. Alan Rosenblith
2. Arthur Brock [36] [37]
3. Edgar Cahn [38]
4. Eric Harris-Braun [39]
5. Thomas Greco
6. Fernanda Ibarra
7. Margrit Kennedy
8. Bernard Lietaer
9. Michael Linton
10. Jean-François Noubel [40]
11. Elf Pavlik
12. Jay Standish
13. Peter Koenig

Key Podcasts

• Michael Hudson and Stephanie Kelton on Modern Monetary Theory

See also:

1. The Open Money Blogtalk Radio

Key Statistics

Ellen Brown, summarizing the research of Margrit Kennedy [41]:

• "According to Margrit Kennedy, a German researcher who has studied this issue extensively, interest now composes 40% of the cost of everything we buy. We don’t see it on the sales slips, but interest is exacted at every stage of production. Suppliers need to take out loans to pay for labor and materials, before they have a product to sell.

• For government projects, Kennedy found that the average cost of interest is 50%. If the government owned the banks, it could keep the interest and get these projects at half price. That means governments—state and federal—could double the number of projects they could afford, without costing the taxpayers a single penny more than we are paying now."

(http://ellenbrown.com/time-for-an-economic-bill-of-rights/)

Key Webcasts

Recommended:

• The Money Fix, excellent documentary by Alan Rosenblith

• Douglas Rushkoff of Getting Past Free Through Radical Abundance: the current monetary system is an obsolete legacy system, no longer corresponding to contempary needs.

• David Hales on P2P Currencies.

• 97 Percent Owned: probably the best documentary on how monetary creation works, though based on the situation in the UK

• 4 part course: Mary Mellor's Introduction to Understanding Money

Documentaries:

1. Money as Debt II: great explanation
2. Introductory Animation to Complementary Currencies

Also:

1. Alan Rosenblith on Open Money ; Alan Rosenblith on Open Money Protocols and Agreements
2. Chris Cook on Peak Credit and Open Capital: excellent video presentation
3. Arthur Brock and Eric Harris-Braun's Introduction to The MetaCurrency Project ; Arthur Brock on Open Data Currencies
4. Bernard Lietaer Interviewed on a New World Currency ; Bernard Lietaer on Complementary Currencies for Social Change ; Bernard Lietaer on Currencies for Cooperation ; Bernard Lietaer on Human Wealth
5. Christian Nold on the Bijlmer Euro
6. David Karsbol on Virtual Finance
7. David Korten on Monetary Reform
8. Douglas Rushkoff on Medieval Money
9. Ellen Brown on the Web of Debt
10. Giles Andrews on the Evolution of the Zopa Social Lending Project
11. James Robertson on Monetary Reform for the Mainstream Economy
12. Jean-François Noubel on Free Currencies
13. Mohammad Yunus on Microfinance
14. Peter Koenig on What is Money
15. Philippe Van Parijs on the Basic Income
16. Richard Douthwaite on Debt-based Money
17. Sarah Hearn on the Berkshare Local Currency Program
18. Thomas Greco on Monetary Transformation ; Thomas Greco on the End of Money ; Thomas Greco on the Importance of Mutual Credit Clearing ; Thomas Greco on the State of the Monetary Reform Movement m Thomas Greco on the History of Money and Debt

See also:

• Extensive collection of Videos on complementary currencies. More videos on the Network Economy YouTube channel

Deutschsprachige Ressourcen - German Ressources

• Neues Geld