Local Currencies - Replacing Scarcity with Trust

Peak Moment 49: Francis Ayley established over a dozen local currencies in the UK before moving to the U.S. He contrasts our standard, scarcity- and debt-based money system with local currencies in which "there's always as much as you need." Local currencies like his Fourth Corner Exchange issue money when members trade goods and services. Communities with local currencies will be less affected when recession or depression hits the mainstream economy. www.fourthcornerexchange.com

Category:

People & Blogs

Tags:

• Fourth
• Corner
• Exchange
• alternative
• currency
• local
• exchange
• trading
• system
• LETS

[rationalityRules]

I'm all for monetary libertarianism, but the issue I have with this is he says he's from the UK when he clearly isn't. Why lie? Kind of spoils the rest of what he says...

I'm from the UK, and I can guarantee that is not an accent familiar to our shores! Germany, maybe; Afrikaans, possibly. Who cares.

I've no problem with where somebody is from, until they feel they need to cover it up.

[peakmoment]

@rationalityRules, Francis has been in the US a long time, so his accent may have gotten ....blurred. He described to us a number of local currencies he helped set up, I believe along the western side of the UK. Does where he come from alter his message?

[steviewonder417]

still waitin for that peak! oil is abiotic and the industry and those protecting them are just fixing prices!

[peakmoment]

@steviewonder417. The International Energy Agency acknowledged the peak of conventional oil in fall 2010. Pretty much downhill from here -- that is, we've gotten the cheap and easy-to-get oil. They wouldn't be drilling thousands of feet down in the gulf or offshore Brazil or the Alberta tar sands if there were a cheaper way to go.

[biocida]

you should everybody read about Silvio Gesell

[peakmoment]

Thank you for this reference: I just learned he was the author of "The Natural Economic Order", who suggests "a medium of exchange that does not gain in value from year to year, but rather loses value progressively, so that anyone who has obtained possession of the medium of exchange has no other interest than to exchange it again as soon as possible for the produce of others." "So we must make money worse as a commodity if we wish to make it better as a medium of exchange."

[MillionthUsername]

I'm all for it, but he said current banking is "free market". It is NOT! Good grief! If it was, who would use it? What he's doing is free market. He can't "close down" the international bankers, but they can close him down - because their system is based on force and fraud. Alternative systems are voluntary, hence free.

Is it "legal"? Like he said, it depends on how successful it is. Local and state governments need to protect these efforts. A successful currency is revolutionary.

[nathan49nathan]

excellent interview. local currency is an extraordinarily powerful tool. I hope there are more interviews on new paradigms that also have practical tools to implement them.

[RoosterTreeComicLit]

So, do the disabled starve?

[stevenwagner]

Google Bitcoins

[philoplatt]

@philoplatt I meant to say that when you "sell" something for money, you don't think of yourself as a lender because you can transfer the debt easily.

[philoplatt]

we can change the whole US to this system if we just understand that a dollar is an IOU. the owers name is not on the dollar - it's at the bank on a balance sheet. the bank gives you a bunch of IOU's and charges you interest for borrowing from someone else! you don't think of it as a loan because you can transfer the debt conveniently

[shogu666]

If that would happen it would actually be step forward and i am for it.

But much better way would be Resource based economy.

Thumbs up for progress whatever would happen !!

[Castle3179]

@tmackintl Your friend is very profound.

[decycle1]

Dollar bills are the bars that hold you captive in the debtor prison

[steviewonder417]

@peakmoment so what is this about the tenth time weve had a so called peak? do some research on well recovery rates and their relation to abiogenic oil to get a clearewr picture on why peaks come and go and how its related to price fixing.