This is a great 11 minute video of David Harvey's recent talk at RSA in London. David is a great Marxist analyst and has written several books about capitalism and finance. I have to admit that I have not had a chance to read his books cover to cover, only snippets and listened to some of his talks. There are a couple quotes that I find to be fantastic.
The first one goes, "The whole history of capitalism has been about financial innovation, which has the effect of empowering the financiers.” This is a powerful quote for me. It really gets at my inner inspiration and is what drives me to explore the side of our political-economy that deals with this question. In my research I am attempting to highlight this financial innovation by showing how very clear political decisions were taken that would make money compatible with capitalism within the confines of an American style democracy that entrenches the rights of private property.
This thinking falls heavily on Geoffrey Ingham's understanding of money as having its own forces of production. David Harvey is essentially highlighting the same fact, as I am, by trying to highlight some of the historical evidence for understanding money in this way. Money needs to be seen as something that has been built and constructed so as to make it compatible with the functioning capitalist democracies of today (here I am borrowing a term from E.M. Wood).
I believe this is a powerful intervention that is been pushed by those that are exploring Community Currencies and other forms of alternative money. This brings me to the second quote, "We have a duty to change our mode of thinking". Here Harvey is throwing down a particular challenge to academics. He is telling us we have to bring a fresh perspective to our way of analyzing our political-economy.
I know that I am doing this. I know this because most people reject my thinking and assume that there is no real relevance to a discussion of money in terms of building a viable post-capitalist ecologically minded political-economy. My sense, and I think Harvey would agree (though I have not had the chance to ask him personally) that this is a good site for exploration. As Harvey points out, since the 1950's the US and the Bank of England have been siding with the financiers over manufacturing. This highlights clearly the way in which money has its own forces of production and is a tool in and of itself that is most clearly entrenched in our political system.
We have to understand money in a new way. We need to bring a fresh perspective to it. Both in terms of understanding how it got to the position it now holds, how changing it in meaningful ways challenges the entire conception of our current political-economy, and that it is not something that is a result of the economy but is constitutive of the sort of political-economy that we chose in the 18th century to entrench into today's capitalist-democracy.
I believe that the most important direction we can move our monetary system towards is one that is not focused on accumulation of money as a form of wealth, one that has a pricing mechanism that can respond to both abandunce in terms of supply and infinite value in terms of price. These are the innovations we need to think about incorporating into our financial system. Until then we will continue to battle a system that is both controlled, focused on scarcity and has two opposing forces 1) accumulation 2) velocity (aka movement) of money.
Here is the video.
This is the animated video:
And this is the full lecture video:
Showing posts with label alternative currency. Show all posts
Showing posts with label alternative currency. Show all posts
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Friday, June 25, 2010
Community Currencies: Fundación Pachamama and the Central Bank of Ecuador
I am re-posting this post from the blog belonging to The Panchamama Alliance:
The article is really interesting as it highlights a growing trend of Central Banks coordinating and beginning to collaborate with community currency projects. Understanding the deeper political significance of this I think is very important. We are witnessing a trend of deepening of financial markets, but with a very different goal often associated with these new financial services. The question is what does this mean for the larger political-economy. Are we witnessing the emergence of a new form of political-economics or a deepening and expansion of capitalist systems?
The article is really interesting as it highlights a growing trend of Central Banks coordinating and beginning to collaborate with community currency projects. Understanding the deeper political significance of this I think is very important. We are witnessing a trend of deepening of financial markets, but with a very different goal often associated with these new financial services. The question is what does this mean for the larger political-economy. Are we witnessing the emergence of a new form of political-economics or a deepening and expansion of capitalist systems?
Fundación Pachamama and the Central Bank of Ecuador jointly organized a workshop on complementary currency systems that was held on June 3 and 4 in the headquarters of the Central Bank in Quito. Ultimately the goal is to develop new economic models for rural development including new exchange networks and alternative, complementary currency systems, which will help people in Ecuador get access to credit and promote local production, consumption and trade.
The workshop, called “Systems of Alternative Pay and Means of Complementary Pay,” was held to strengthen the conceptual understanding of the diverse methods of complementary currency systems and the key elements for implementing a system on a national level. In addition, the workshop aimed to explain the workings of a successful model developed in Uruguay (called C3U), and the advantages of creating and applying this system. Finally, the workshop aspired to establish work links between administrative organizations and Uruguay project architects with the Central Bank of Ecuador and Fundación Pachamama.
The first day was a planning meeting with personnel of the Central Bank; Javier Félix, advisor from Fundación Pachamama, and the invited participants from Uruguay; Fernando Cetrulo from Foundation STRO Uruguay and Enrique Baraibar, from the Direction of Development Projects of the Uruguayan Presidency. The workshop began with various presentations from the different projects of the Central Bank, discussing alternatives to economic policies with complementary payment means and compensation systems, and the C3U model. Conceptual input was given to widen the vision of those charged with the diverse projects of the Central Bank, based on the experience of peers from Uruguay.
On the second day, the workshop was opened to the public, including members from the Ecuadorian State, the private sector, non-governmental organizations, directors of Savings and Credit Cooperatives, and other organizations related to the Solidarity Economy, and university students studying economics in Quito.
The workshop achieved the planned objectives and culminated with the signature of a cooperation agreement between the Central Bank of Ecuador, Fundación Pachamama, the STRO Foundation, and the Direction of Development Projects of the Uruguayan Presidency, recognizing the importance of the development of alternative currency methods for the participating institutions. This agreement lays the groundwork for cooperation between all the participants for implementing alternative currency methods that benefit an improved distribution of wealth, employment generation, economic stability, and social development for Latin American countries.
Friday, June 18, 2010
The Wall St. Journal: The coming currency revolution
I think this is a great video showing the organic emergence of currencies around the world and how technology is helping to spread them. I think this speaks a lot about the future and the rise of this as a new economic space. It will bring value to things that have not been recognized as valuable in the past. However, I don't agree that value is all about scarcity. The idea of scarcity as the driving motivation for value in my opinion is flawed and is exactly why we have landed up in such an environmental crunch. We need to think about how to design currencies for abundance. How do we get abundance to be recognized as valuable? This to me is the big question.
I do wonder again about what this means in terms of scarcity and a system that only responds to things that are scarce - surely the freeing up of information and its increasing cheapness due to abundance is not a loss of value. The increased abundance of information is increasingly valuable to society. The more information, the more value this has to us. This is the same question to be explored around the environment and questions of abundant and healthy eco-systems.
I do think what these currencies raise is the question of democracy as Douglas Rushkoff points out the democratization of economics and of money is a movement we are steadily heading towards. However, we have to understand democracy in the way that it has been used to enable capitalism and the role that ideas of scarcity and representation play in limiting the power of the citizen. Perhaps, this currency movement will both highlight questions of scarcity vs abundance and representation vs participation.
However, I love seeing these discussions entering mainstream. I think at some point there is going to be a serious challenge from the state as it attempts to regulate and claim control over the currency space. This is important because our entire capitalist democracy that we live under is dependent on the control over the creation of money. The future will be interesting as is the current moment.
I do wonder again about what this means in terms of scarcity and a system that only responds to things that are scarce - surely the freeing up of information and its increasing cheapness due to abundance is not a loss of value. The increased abundance of information is increasingly valuable to society. The more information, the more value this has to us. This is the same question to be explored around the environment and questions of abundant and healthy eco-systems.
I do think what these currencies raise is the question of democracy as Douglas Rushkoff points out the democratization of economics and of money is a movement we are steadily heading towards. However, we have to understand democracy in the way that it has been used to enable capitalism and the role that ideas of scarcity and representation play in limiting the power of the citizen. Perhaps, this currency movement will both highlight questions of scarcity vs abundance and representation vs participation.
However, I love seeing these discussions entering mainstream. I think at some point there is going to be a serious challenge from the state as it attempts to regulate and claim control over the currency space. This is important because our entire capitalist democracy that we live under is dependent on the control over the creation of money. The future will be interesting as is the current moment.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Community Currencies - From von Hayek to Linton and back again
As I dig further into my research of money and the varied ways we could organize our currency system I have come across an interesting convergence. It is a convergence that I have seen happen in other arenas, but the starting points are vastly different.
I have been researching alternative/complementary currencies (I use the term "alternative" as a loose definition. Effectively meaning a complementary currency, however one that acts as an "alternative" to the national currency) for over 6 months, and political-economy for many years. I have read large amounts of literature with the majority of it coming from groups of people who make the argument for local economies.
These authors include Thomas Greco, Michael Linton, Eric Harris-Braun and many more. What all of these people are trying to do is present the opportunity for communities to create there own medium-of-exchange. And, ultimately, to challenge the monopoly of money creation that the state has aquired. Many of these writers are focused on the "local" and of, "reinvigorating" these local economies with the aim to building new social relations, creating value around community and small businesses. One can see this as a push back, a Polanyian double movement, against the multi-national corporate driven globalization. The argument is in part grownded in the belief that these alternative currencies could capture some of the ground back from the advance of globalization. I have written about my issues of conceptions of the local that dominate much of this literature.
The part that does excite me about it is the idea of actually being able to create your own medium-of-exchange as a community. That this in its own way is paradigm shifting - Keith Hart talks about this, though I don't think he uses the term "paradigm shifting". Eric Harris-Braun, Art Brock and Bernard Lietear also touch on this. It certainly challenges one of the most taken for granted elements of the economic systems - money creation. The goal is to really redefine what currency means and how we view our economic system. Each one of these thinkers/writers deserve a much deeper analyses, but for now I am mearly trying to set the stage for a type of convergence that I want to highlight.
Until recently I had not come across any other main-stream economists making an argument for the creation of alternative currencies. I have heard that Greenspan has talked about the rise of alternative currencies in the 21st century (I have yet to see the actual quote). However, my recent discovery of the book by Frederich von Hayek called, "Denationalising of Money" calls for the end of the state monopoly of money creation - the separation of money creation and government. His argument is founded on the belief in markets and free competition. That these two elements will lead to the creation of multiple, stable (but flexible) currencies and will end the ability of the government, through its monopoly, to create inflation/deflation by printing more money.
One thing that von Hayek does not say in his book is if the government will still be permitted to create money? Or, if all money creation, is left to the private sector. I am inclined to believe he would have defaulted to the latter.
What I find extremely interesting here is that we have, on the left - the community based local economy activists and on the right we have the neo-liberal free-market economists - all coming down to the same conclusion; freeing up the right to create a medium-of-exchange.
What, of course, is critical here is how these alternatives are framed and what, if they are to be created, these alternative currencies look like. This leads to the next, and what I think is probably the harder and more complicated question to answer; what are the critical elements of an alternative currency? What attributes does this currency have? How is it valued? Is it backed by commodities? Assets? These questions are all very murky and are talked about by many different schools of thought.
At this point I believe that a zero-interest (Silvio Gesell and Margrit Kennedy), non-debt based (James Robertson and others) currency offers the greatest possibility of enabling a type of capitalism that does not require continues growth , and helps address the issues of compound interest and exponential growth (Steady State Economics, Herman Daly and many others). The ultimate goal being a reduction in the environmentally destructive nature of our current economic system, and reducing those that live in absolute poverty.
I am not fixed on these attributes, I may discover that there are serious flaws in them. I continue to explore and dig around. The place that this has brought me to is an exploration of the explosion of the mobile phone in Africa and the concurrent development of mobile-banking and airtime bartering/transfers. With a grant that I recently received from the Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion I hope to explore this intersection between global networks, virtual currencies, under-monetized economies and alternative currencies. My feeling is this intersection offers an incredible opportunity to explore the multiple elements of the issues raised.
More to come....
I have been researching alternative/complementary currencies (I use the term "alternative" as a loose definition. Effectively meaning a complementary currency, however one that acts as an "alternative" to the national currency) for over 6 months, and political-economy for many years. I have read large amounts of literature with the majority of it coming from groups of people who make the argument for local economies.
These authors include Thomas Greco, Michael Linton, Eric Harris-Braun and many more. What all of these people are trying to do is present the opportunity for communities to create there own medium-of-exchange. And, ultimately, to challenge the monopoly of money creation that the state has aquired. Many of these writers are focused on the "local" and of, "reinvigorating" these local economies with the aim to building new social relations, creating value around community and small businesses. One can see this as a push back, a Polanyian double movement, against the multi-national corporate driven globalization. The argument is in part grownded in the belief that these alternative currencies could capture some of the ground back from the advance of globalization. I have written about my issues of conceptions of the local that dominate much of this literature.
The part that does excite me about it is the idea of actually being able to create your own medium-of-exchange as a community. That this in its own way is paradigm shifting - Keith Hart talks about this, though I don't think he uses the term "paradigm shifting". Eric Harris-Braun, Art Brock and Bernard Lietear also touch on this. It certainly challenges one of the most taken for granted elements of the economic systems - money creation. The goal is to really redefine what currency means and how we view our economic system. Each one of these thinkers/writers deserve a much deeper analyses, but for now I am mearly trying to set the stage for a type of convergence that I want to highlight.
Until recently I had not come across any other main-stream economists making an argument for the creation of alternative currencies. I have heard that Greenspan has talked about the rise of alternative currencies in the 21st century (I have yet to see the actual quote). However, my recent discovery of the book by Frederich von Hayek called, "Denationalising of Money" calls for the end of the state monopoly of money creation - the separation of money creation and government. His argument is founded on the belief in markets and free competition. That these two elements will lead to the creation of multiple, stable (but flexible) currencies and will end the ability of the government, through its monopoly, to create inflation/deflation by printing more money.
One thing that von Hayek does not say in his book is if the government will still be permitted to create money? Or, if all money creation, is left to the private sector. I am inclined to believe he would have defaulted to the latter.
What I find extremely interesting here is that we have, on the left - the community based local economy activists and on the right we have the neo-liberal free-market economists - all coming down to the same conclusion; freeing up the right to create a medium-of-exchange.
What, of course, is critical here is how these alternatives are framed and what, if they are to be created, these alternative currencies look like. This leads to the next, and what I think is probably the harder and more complicated question to answer; what are the critical elements of an alternative currency? What attributes does this currency have? How is it valued? Is it backed by commodities? Assets? These questions are all very murky and are talked about by many different schools of thought.
At this point I believe that a zero-interest (Silvio Gesell and Margrit Kennedy), non-debt based (James Robertson and others) currency offers the greatest possibility of enabling a type of capitalism that does not require continues growth , and helps address the issues of compound interest and exponential growth (Steady State Economics, Herman Daly and many others). The ultimate goal being a reduction in the environmentally destructive nature of our current economic system, and reducing those that live in absolute poverty.
I am not fixed on these attributes, I may discover that there are serious flaws in them. I continue to explore and dig around. The place that this has brought me to is an exploration of the explosion of the mobile phone in Africa and the concurrent development of mobile-banking and airtime bartering/transfers. With a grant that I recently received from the Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion I hope to explore this intersection between global networks, virtual currencies, under-monetized economies and alternative currencies. My feeling is this intersection offers an incredible opportunity to explore the multiple elements of the issues raised.
More to come....
Monday, March 2, 2009
What Bruce Sterling Actually Said About Web 2.0 at Webstock 09
I just read this article by Bruce Sterling on the Wired Blog and there are several paragraphs I wanted to highlight because I think that they get at the heart of where we are heading as a global society:
When Bruce talks about the "clouds" in Web2.0 he makes a very interesting analogy with financial thinking and the rise of "securitization" pointing out some of the connections and inherent contradictions:
In this next quote Bruce points out some of the inherent stupidity in much of the West's thinking about global connectedness and the role of the web. It is about "networking" it is about "communicating" it is not about what we think - creating viable monetized business models. Hell, the sharing of ideas is what is viable.
The people of the world are building a new global network and it doesn't require the fastest and best computer in the world with fat high-speed connections. What it requires is very simple technology - remember when the phone came to the west how that revolutionized our worlds? How it allowed us to grow a new set of relationships? This is what is going on in the world - in Africa, India, Asia, S. America. People are able to make phone calls - that is powerful stuff. And focusing on this is what will maybe give us a sense of the direction we are headed in.
Bruce points out that we don't even know what we are creating next. This is what is so exciting we don't have a blueprint but we have a sense we know that the last system and what it was built on is non-sustainable and it will and has collapsed. Time to network to talk to share and to communicate.
What can we do about the way our money behaves? Can we design multiple currency systems that are able to meet our needs as a global society? What role does "credit" have in all of this? What about creating money without creating debt?
Oh I am sure there will be many market fundamentalist arguments against this. That is okay it needs to be tested. However, we are moving into a new territory of economic systems and this needs to be recognized. We don't know exactly what it looks like but we know how we want it to work.
As Bruce says it needs to be about "visible hands" not a groping around for some "invisible force" that operates beyond our control.
When Bruce talks about the "clouds" in Web2.0 he makes a very interesting analogy with financial thinking and the rise of "securitization" pointing out some of the connections and inherent contradictions:
Imagine that this was financial thinking [referring to clouds in Web2.0 world] -- instead of web design thinking. We take a bunch of loans, we mash them together and turn them into a security. Now securities are secure, right? They are triple-A solid! So now we can build more loans on top of those securities. Ingenious! This means the price of credit trends to zero, so the user base expands radically, so everybody can have credit!
Nobody could have tried that before, because that sounds like a magic Ponzi scheme. But luckily, we have computers in banking now. That means Moore's law is gonna save us! Instead of it being really obvious who owes what to whom, we can have a fluid, formless ownership structure that's always in permanent beta. As long as we keep moving forward, adding attractive new features, the situation is booming!
In this next quote Bruce points out some of the inherent stupidity in much of the West's thinking about global connectedness and the role of the web. It is about "networking" it is about "communicating" it is not about what we think - creating viable monetized business models. Hell, the sharing of ideas is what is viable.
The people of the world are building a new global network and it doesn't require the fastest and best computer in the world with fat high-speed connections. What it requires is very simple technology - remember when the phone came to the west how that revolutionized our worlds? How it allowed us to grow a new set of relationships? This is what is going on in the world - in Africa, India, Asia, S. America. People are able to make phone calls - that is powerful stuff. And focusing on this is what will maybe give us a sense of the direction we are headed in.
Bruce points out that we don't even know what we are creating next. This is what is so exciting we don't have a blueprint but we have a sense we know that the last system and what it was built on is non-sustainable and it will and has collapsed. Time to network to talk to share and to communicate.
Ultimately Bruce gets at one of the fundamental questions I am asking in my own research and I think many others are asking:
Gosh, we're really sorry that we accidentally ruined the NASDAQ." We're Internet business people, but maybe we should spend less of our time stock-kiting. The Web's a communications medium -- how 'bout working on the computer interface, so that people can really communicate?
That effort was time well spent. Really.
A lot of issues that Web 1.0 was sweating blood about, they went away for good. The "digital divide," for instance. Man, I hated that. All the planet's poor kids had to have desktop machines. With fiber optic. Sure! You go to Bombay, Shanghai, Lagos even, you're like "hey kid, how about this OLPC so you can level the playing field with the South Bronx and East Los Angeles?" And he's like "Do I have to? I've already got three Nokias." The teacher is slapping the cellphone out of his hand because he's acing the tests by sneaking in SMS traffic.
"Half the planet has never made a phone call." Boy, that's a shame -- especially when pirates in Somalia are making satellite calls off stolen supertankers. The poorest people in the world love cellphones. They're spreading so fast they make PCs look like turtles.
Digital culture, I knew it well. It died -- young, fast and pretty. It's all about network culture now.
We've got a web built on top of a collapsed economy. THAT's the black hole at the center of the solar system now. There's gonna be a Transition Web. Your economic system collapses: Eastern Europe, Russia, the Transition Economy, that bracing experience is for everybody now. Except it's not Communism transitioning toward capitalism. It's the whole world into transition toward something we don't even have proper words for.
After a while you have to wonder if it's worth it -- the money model, I mean. Is finance worth the cost of being involved with the finance? The web smashed stocks. Global banking blew up all over the planet all at once... Not a single country anywhere with a viable economic policy under globalization. Is there a message here?Can we not design as system of economic interaction that doesn't require us to "monetize" everything in order for it to get some semblance of value? Can we create a system that recognizes "abundance"? That there are certain things that hold an "infinite" value - that there exists no right to destroy or purchase this value?
Are there some non-financial structures that are less predatory and unstable than this radically out-of-kilter invisible hand? The invisible hand is gonna strangle us! Everybody's got a hand out -- how about offering people some visible hands?
What can we do about the way our money behaves? Can we design multiple currency systems that are able to meet our needs as a global society? What role does "credit" have in all of this? What about creating money without creating debt?
Oh I am sure there will be many market fundamentalist arguments against this. That is okay it needs to be tested. However, we are moving into a new territory of economic systems and this needs to be recognized. We don't know exactly what it looks like but we know how we want it to work.
As Bruce says it needs to be about "visible hands" not a groping around for some "invisible force" that operates beyond our control.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
The Local In Alternative Currencies
My biggest concern since my foray into the world of alternative/complementary currencies is the almost constant focus on a particular concept of the "local". The type of local that these ideas are operating out of is a local that is defined by a physical geography - local with defined space and boundaries (when using the term local I am operating based on this type of definition unless otherwise stated). This is a physically bounded and situated concept of local and does not seem to pay attention to broader concepts of local - virtual networks, Diaspora communities, personal and business networks and more.
The emphasis on this type of local is based on the belief that small, locally based economies are more stable and resilient when they are not dependent or financially integrated into the global economy. This is a thinking of the global and local within a dichotomous framework - seeing the global as something separate from the local and therefore something to separate from or become distinct from. What is true is that globalization operates differently in every space and is geographically and historically constituted and therefore different facets and experiences of globalization are produced in every local economy.
The understanding that the local currency movement operates from assumes that globalization "impacts" local communities and is largely a-historical and is therefore something that is imposed upon us and must therefore be fought against. This is like talking about our different organs from the perspective of the "impact" that the human body as a whole has on a particular organ. This, as we know, is folly and is not the most constructive way to handle an issue that is "localized" - if my lungs are giving me problems I don't look at the entire body and say that we need to remove the lungs from the "impact" of the body. The two can not operate separate from each other. Globalization is local as much as it is global - it takes the local to produce the global. We, the people, are the ones that have created and continue to create globalization and we can create it in any and all forms that we may desire. It is not something that is predestined and designed - it is not something that operates separate from us.
The logic that is used to go from a critique of the monetary system to a critique of globalization is problematic to me. I, personally, see nothing wrong with globalization - especially the type of globalization that is rooted in interconnectedness and flows of information and goods across "physical" boundaries (I also think that globalization is an experience that is part of human existence - the sharing of ideas, goods, languages, etc) . I do not believe that we can, nor need to, end "globalization". Ultimately globalization is made up of many, in fact an infinite amount of "local economies". What is problematic is that the blood (money) that is pumping through these economies is somewhat toxic - as if the economy has drunk too much alcohol and is self-destructive.
Globalization is not the problem, nor is the loss of the "local". Rather the problem is the incentives and values that are rewarded and promoted within the current economic system which in great part are guided and driven by the way we create and construct our current monetary system. The alternative currency movement will find greater success in finding ways to integrate and relate to the global economy rather then viewing itself as in "opposition" to or in a process of "re-localization" as something that is against the global economy.
The emphasis on this type of local is based on the belief that small, locally based economies are more stable and resilient when they are not dependent or financially integrated into the global economy. This is a thinking of the global and local within a dichotomous framework - seeing the global as something separate from the local and therefore something to separate from or become distinct from. What is true is that globalization operates differently in every space and is geographically and historically constituted and therefore different facets and experiences of globalization are produced in every local economy.
The understanding that the local currency movement operates from assumes that globalization "impacts" local communities and is largely a-historical and is therefore something that is imposed upon us and must therefore be fought against. This is like talking about our different organs from the perspective of the "impact" that the human body as a whole has on a particular organ. This, as we know, is folly and is not the most constructive way to handle an issue that is "localized" - if my lungs are giving me problems I don't look at the entire body and say that we need to remove the lungs from the "impact" of the body. The two can not operate separate from each other. Globalization is local as much as it is global - it takes the local to produce the global. We, the people, are the ones that have created and continue to create globalization and we can create it in any and all forms that we may desire. It is not something that is predestined and designed - it is not something that operates separate from us.
The logic that is used to go from a critique of the monetary system to a critique of globalization is problematic to me. I, personally, see nothing wrong with globalization - especially the type of globalization that is rooted in interconnectedness and flows of information and goods across "physical" boundaries (I also think that globalization is an experience that is part of human existence - the sharing of ideas, goods, languages, etc) . I do not believe that we can, nor need to, end "globalization". Ultimately globalization is made up of many, in fact an infinite amount of "local economies". What is problematic is that the blood (money) that is pumping through these economies is somewhat toxic - as if the economy has drunk too much alcohol and is self-destructive.
Globalization is not the problem, nor is the loss of the "local". Rather the problem is the incentives and values that are rewarded and promoted within the current economic system which in great part are guided and driven by the way we create and construct our current monetary system. The alternative currency movement will find greater success in finding ways to integrate and relate to the global economy rather then viewing itself as in "opposition" to or in a process of "re-localization" as something that is against the global economy.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)