An excerpt from Money, by Thomas H. Greco:
Summer Reading
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| Money: Understanding and Creating Alternatives to Legal Tender - By Thomas H. Greco and Vicki Robin |
| "Money will decide the fate of mankind" --Jacques Rueff
THE FOUNDATION OF POWER and centralized control in today's world is the power to create and manipulate the medium of exchange. Because money has the power to command resources, and because most of us take current monetary practices for granted, those few who control the creation of money are able to appropriate for their own purposes vast amounts of resources without being noticed. The entire machinery of money and finance has now been appropriated to serve the interests of centralized power.
The key element in any strategy to transform society must therefore be the liberation of money and the exchange process. If money is liberated, commerce will be liberated; if commerce is liberated, the people will be empowered to the full extent of their abilities to serve one another; the liberation of capital and land and the popular control of politics will follow as a matter of course. Once equitable exchange mechanisms have been established, it will no longer be possible for the privileged few to appropriate the major portion of the land, productive resources, and political power.
Why Community Currencies?
Community currencies are complementary to, and operate in parallel with, the dominant national money systems. They are intended to serve purely as a medium of exchange that circulates among a limited group of associated traders who may be geographically proximate or widely dispersed.
The need for community currencies stems from the fact that the mechanisms of money, banking, and finance in the dominant political-economic reality are designed to promote the accumulation of capital (wealth) in the hands of a few corporate entities that serve insider interests at the expense of the mass of society and the physical environment. As these entities become ever more powerful, the traditional countervailing forces of government and other organized societal groups (such as labor unions) are either neutralized or co-opted and become ineffective in asserting the interests of the majority of people.
Usually, within most community economies, there is plenty of demand for goods and services that remains unfulfilled, and there are plenty of skills and talents which go unused. Why can't the unused resources be employed to fill the unmet needs? Mainly, it is because there is a general lack of money circulating within the local economy, and what money there is does not reach those who are most in need. Official money can, and does, flow anywhere. But it does not remain in circulation for very long within the local economy. Rather, it provides a means by which absentee owners can extract their gains from the local economy and allocate them to more profitable investments elsewhere.
Everyone who works for a livelihood is thus forced to compete in markets that are increasingly global in scope and are dominated and controlled by the biggest players in the global monopoly game. With the increasing mobility of capital, workers are being driven to the lowest common denominator of wages, working conditions, and environmental quality, and communities are increasingly deprived of control over their own quality of life. The result is a race to the bottom" that everyone is forced to enter.
Is there no escape? More and more creative thinkers are saying that there is, and that community money must be part of the solution. Humanizing globalization requires that money be reinvented, so that the new rules work in harmony with deeper values that most of us cherish.
The New World Order
It was a close friend and colleague who first impressed upon me more than thirty years ago the truth of the saying, "The chains that bind are in the mind." It is what we believe, or refuse to believe, that limits us, both individually and collectively. But it is not belief alone that limits us. We must also have the courage of our convictions. We must be willing to act on our beliefs if we are ever to realize our dreams. While it may appear that our liberation is mostly constrained by external forces and the material aspect of our being, we are actually more powerful than we are willing to admit.
Many of us have a sense that all is not right with the world, that maybe we can do something to make it better. My own struggle has taught me some important lessons, the most important of which is that I cannot change anything without first changing myself. Freedom is not free. It has to be earned. Freedom cannot be had without taking responsibility. When we seek to make change in the world, we must make it at every level, beginning with ourselves. Change at the personal level then enables change at the inter-personal level, then at the societal, structural, and institutional level, and maybe even at the biological level...
I believe that there is something beautiful trying to be born in the world. The new world order will not be dictated from the top down. It will not be something arranged in private by some global elite. It will emerge from the bottom up, revealed by a higher Spirit accessible to everyone. We humans, in our role as cocreators with the "higher power," have plenty of work to do. There is work to be done at the personal level, confronting our own fears and doubts and taking responsibility for resolving our dilemmas; at the community level, using inevitable conflicts as opportunities to transcend our petty selves and limited perceptions; and at the societal level, building new structures that support and nurture rather than coerce and brutalize.
...In order for us to realize that vision, we must believe that it is possible; then we will find a way to make it happen... Economics drives politics, and money is the central mechanism through which economic power is exerted in the modern world. The history of the United States shows how power has progressively migrated from the people, local communities, counties, and states toward the federal government in general and the executive branch in particular. It is only through a study of monetary history, however, that a clear picture can be gained of how this has happened...
Humanizing globalization requires that money be reinvented, so that the new rules work in harmony with deeper values that most of us cherish.
MORE FROM THIS BOOK: Read more of this excerpt and an abridged PDF version of MONEY online.
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OLD NEWS:
CityBeat April 13, 2005
WKRC TV 12: May 1, 2005 11am - Mackey McNeill and Randy Weeks discussed Complementary Currencies with Dan Hurley on his Sunday Morning Show, Newsmakers
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