Rethinking Money
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“This will ensure sustainability and ensure decisions based on their wisdom. This conscious full-spectrum approach truly supports the growth of economies and local communities, enabling everyone’s deep participation in technological and system shifts, while being sourced in their wisdom and culture. This is how the new paradigm will be created for sustainable development to become a reality and genuinely thrive.”
Sharma points out: “The persistence of poverty and the lack of opportunity to live and thrive for so many is a measure of our response to date. Our sense of scarcity, no matter how much we have; our definition of ‘success,’ where the proxy is basically money or ‘wealth’ without any sense of sufficiency; our rhetoric of partnership in the midst of systems set up for competition preclude creative responses. Our future depends on the choices we make. Will we continue doing the same things again and again, hoping to reverse the situation, or will we choose to generate a different reality?”
There is a deep yearning for a new context, a new story, a new mythology in which to interpret and play out the human experience.
Scholar, philosopher, and researcher in human capacities, Jean Houston, muses, “The new myth would be a myth of exchange. It’s not simply the world monetary system with its multitrillion-dollar casino that runs around every day, which is the current mythos. The core of the new mythos is the world Mind—a world Spirit. This is where the ecology of the world spirit can be only partially financial. It has to be the spirit, the culture, the dance, the music, the generosity of people toward each other, and I think this is happening because of the rise of the women to full partnership with men in the whole domain of human affairs with a new emphasis on process rather than on product, on making things grow, cohere, relate. This is already the biggest shift, I think, in human sensibility.”
She continues: “Take the fact that the Arab Spring, whatever happens with it, became the basis of the Occupy Movement, and what has happened there, the end of which we neither have seen nor can imagine. And it will end up in many movements, leading us into a deeper exploration and communication of the steps toward radical democracy and the gradual arising of a world civilization with high individuation of culture. This is a shift that is changing everything. As the great civilizations 4,000 years ago grew up along the great rivers—the Tigris, the Euphrates, the Ganges, the Nile, the Yellow River—so a whole new order of civilization is finding its outer mythic base in the Internet and social media and on the innernet in its inner mythic expression of psycho-spiritual growth and development.”17
The new mythology is one of emancipation, the liberation to express in word and in deed each individual’s gifts and abilities. This is fostered by a truly cooperative space of infinite possibilities, unlimited potential, and immeasurable creativity. Cooperative currencies are the ideal facilitator of this new mythology and its technologies, allowing regular folks to make an extraordinary difference in their own lives and in their communities.
To paraphrase the insightful words of the late Irish politician James Larkin, when tackling the issues facing a nation going through monumental changes, having just discarded the shackles of 700 years of colonialism: It is not so much the bread on the table, but also the rose. What Larkin was saying is still poignant and relevant today, almost a century later, that there is a deep yearning in all of us that goes beyond the practicalities of providing one’s daily bread. There is a profound hunger for decency and beauty in such a seemingly graceless age.
And in the midst of all this, the good and the not so good, what continues to triumph is human ingenuity and the indomitable nature of the human spirit. History is full of incredible selfless acts of human kindness and bravery. On the other side of the coin, it no longer needs to be a game of apparent chance with victors and the vanquished. Rather, through intentionality, rigor, responsibility, and even forgiveness, it is possible to transmute the base metal of hypercompetitiveness, the bankrupt denomination of the obsolete, into golden opportunities for all who so choose.
The dominant system of money has already been rethought, reengineered, and refashioned by ordinary people as they strive toward a more just civil society. Consequently, what is emerging is a civil society in which true wealth is defined not only in terms of financial assets but also as capital inherent in the spirit, creative genius, and unbounded potential of the ever-evolving human species.
Scarcity is indeed relative. Humanity may hit limits in material growth but there is unfathomable room for growth in work and creativity, and this for many future generations! By rethinking money, it is possible to enjoy even more than a period of prosperity but rather a new era of genuine sustainable abundance.
NOTES
Chapter Opener Currency Images
Chapter 1: Euro
Chapter 2: British Pound
Chapter 3: Japanese Yen
Chapter 4: Hands, New Zealand
Chapter 5: Brixton Pound, London
Chapter 6: Hanbat LETS, South Korea
Chapter 7: Madison HOURS, Madison, Wisconsin
Chapter 8: NOPPES, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Chapter 9: Salt Spring Dollars, Canada
Chapter 10: Wörgl, Wörgl, Austria
Chapter 11: Talente Tauschkreis, Vorarlberg, Austria
Chapter 12: Boon Kud Chum, Thailand
Chapter 13: Doole Bon, Senegal, Africa
Introduction
1. Alan Wilson Watts from his talk titled “From Time to Eternity.” Transcript published in The Culture of Counterculture (Rutland, VT: C. E. Tuttle, 1999), 59.
2. Gerard Caprio and Daniela Klingebiel, “Bank Insolvencies: Cross-Country Experience,” Policy Research Working Paper, no. 1620 (Washington, DC: World Bank, Policy and Research Department, 1996); J. Frankel and A. Rose, “Currency Crashes in Emerging Markets: An Empirical Treatment,” Journal of International Economics 4 (1996): 351–366; Graziela L. Kaminsky and Carmen M. Reinhart, “The Twin Crisis: The Causes of Banking and Balance of Payment Problems,” American Economic Review 89, no. 3 (1999): 473–500; and, for the data after 2006, Luc Laevan and Fabian Valencia, “Resolution of Banking Crises: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly,” IMF Working Paper 10/146 (Washington, DC: International Monetary Fund, 2010), 4. www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2010/wp10146.pdf/.
3. www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2012/wp12202.pdf and www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/9623863/IMFs-epic-plan-to-conjure-away-debt-and-dethrone-bankers.html.
4. Edward Luce, “America’s Dream Unravels,” Financial Times, March 31, 2012.
Chapter 1
1. Kimberly Palmer, “Do You Live in a High-Debt City?” Yahoo! Finance, September 8, 2010. http://finance.yahoo.com/.
2. Gary Becker, “Will the Next Generation Be Better Off Than Their Parents, Generation?” Becker-Posner Blog. www.becker-posner-blog.com/2010/08/.
3. “$22,350 a Year for a Family of Four or $10,890 for an Individual in the 48 Contiguous States and DC,” Federal Register 76, no. 13 (2011): 3637–3638.
4. Tami Luhby, “Government Assistance Expands,” CNN Money, February 7, 2012. http://money.cnn.com/2012/02/07/news/economy/government_assistance/index.htm.
5. Jason Deparle, Robert Gebeloff, and Sabrina Tavernise, “Older, Suburban and Struggling, ‘Near Poor’ Startle the Census,” New York Times, November 18, 2011.
6. Richard Cranium, “Almost 80% of Americans Are Living Paycheck to Paycheck,” Daily Kos, October 30, 2010. www.dailykos.com/story/2010/10/30/915125/-Almost-80-of-Americans-live-paycheck-to-paycheck-w-poll.
7. Matt Krantz writes, “More than half of all workers have less than $25,000 in savings, according to a survey by the Employee Benefit Research Institute” in “Many Have Little or No Savings as Retirement Looms,” USA Today, December 4, 2011.
8. Haya El Nasser writes, “Today, you are one of 7 billion people on Earth. About half were added just in the past 40 years, and 3 billion more are expected by 2100” in “World Hits 7 Billion,” USA Today, October 31, 2011.
9. Tran
slation by Dr. Alexander Tsoucatos.
10. Paul J. Davies, “Downturn in China Spreads to Key Sectors,” Financial Times, September 9, 2012.
11. According to the U.S. government official poverty figures, 8.9 percent of those 65 and older were living in poverty in 2009. But when out-of-pocket medical costs and other expenses are taken into account, the elderly poverty rate nearly doubles to 16.1 percent. See Philip Issa and Sheila R. Zedlewski, “Poverty among Older Americans, 2009,” February 2011, Urban Institute, Program on Retirement Policy. www.urban.org/uploadedpdf/412296-Poverty-Among-Older-Americans.pdf.
12. Dennis Cauchon, “Student Loans Outstanding Will Exceed $1 Trillion This Year,” USA Today, October 25, 2011.
13. www.nytimes.com/2011/11/03/education/average-student-loan-debt-grew-by-5-percent-in-2010.html: “Students who graduated from college in 2010 with student loans owed an average of $25,250, up 5 percent from the previous year. … The average debt—once again the highest on record—came as the class of 2010 faced an unemployment rate for new college graduates of 9.1 percent, the highest in recent years, according to the report by the Project on Student Debt, which pointed out that unemployment rates for those without college degrees were still higher.”
14. Jeevan Vasagar, “Graduates Warned of Record 70 Applicants for Every Job,” Guardian, July 5, 2010.
15. Paul Krugman, “Oligarchy, American Style,” New York Times, November 3, 2011.
16. Bernice H. Hill, Money and the Spiritual Warrior (Boulder, CO: Five Centuries Foundation, 2004), 56–59.
17. Jacob Needleman, Money and the Meaning of Life (New York: Doubleday Currency, 1994), 239.
18. “Boy in China Reportedly Sells Kidney to Purchase iPhone and iPad,” Fox News, April 6, 2012. www.foxnews.com/world/2012/04/06/boy-in-china-reportedly-sells-kidney-to-purchase-iphone-and-ipad/#ixzz1tT3mSNV5.
19. The female participants range from primarily school-aged girls to housewives. Enko () means “compensated dating” and is a practice that originated in Japan, where older men give money and/or luxury gifts. See www.chinahush.com/2011/11/24/young-compensated-dating-girls-in-shanghai/. Also, an anonymous girl posted on San Francisco’s Craigslist site that she will offer herself to get tickets to Coachella. See http://elitedaily.com/elite/2012/girl-offer-sex-coachella-tickets/.
20. “Policymakers, cognizant that 44 states project budget shortfalls in 2012, were exploring ways to let these states declare bankruptcy” in “States Most Likely to Go Bankrupt,” Daily Beast, January 26, 2011. www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/01/26/states-most-likely-to-go-bankrupt.html. Also, see “50 States in Debt,” Daily Beast Business Section. www.thedailybeast.com/galleries/2010/06/14/50-states-in-debt.html.
21. “Unlike cities, the states are barred from seeking protection in federal bankruptcy court. Any effort to change that status would have to clear high constitutional hurdles because the states are considered sovereign,” in Mary Williams Walsh, “A Path Is Sought for States to Escape Their Debt Burdens,” New York Times, January 20, 2011.
22. Regan Morris, “Californian City of Stockton Files for Bankruptcy,” BBC News, June 27, 2012. www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-18605326.
23. Ken Orski, “The Promise and Risks of Public-Private Partnerships,” Innovation NewsBriefs 21, no. 6, April 5, 2010.
24. François Morin, Le Nouveau Mur de l’Argent (Paris: Seuil, 2006), 228.
Chapter 2
1. Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics (350 BC), 1133.
2. Its official name was the solidus. It was first issued by Emperor Constantine (306–337 AD) and circulated widely, even beyond the Byzantine Empire in both Europe and Asia, until well into the Middle Ages.
3. The true conspiracy saga of how this law was passed in the United States on the eve of Christmas 1913, just before World War I, is the topic of Edward Griffin, The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve (Westlake Village, CA: American Media, 1994).
4. A governor of the Bank of England (a private company at that time) was being questioned by the British Parliament:
“Can you please inform us about how much gold there is at the Bank of England?”
“In ample sufficiency, Sir.”
“Can you be more precise?”
“No, Sir.”
5. L. Randall Wray, Understanding Modern Money: The Key to Full Employment and Price Stability (Cheltenham, England: Edward Elgar, 1998), viii–ix.
6. Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (New York: William Morrow, 2005), 15.
7. Eric Beinhocker, The Origins of Wealth: Evolution, Complexity and the Radical Remaking of Economics (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2006). Beinhocker is a senior advisor to McKinsey and Company, and was named by Fortune Magazine as “Business Leader of the Next Century.” Chapters 2 and 3 of that book should be required reading for anybody who ever took or gave a course in economics.
8. Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer, The Gardens of Democracy: A New American Story of Citizenship, the Economy and the Role of Government (Seattle, WA: Sasquatch Books, 2011).
9. Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind (New York: Ballantine, 1972).
10. Clifford Cobb, Ted Halstead, and Jonathan Rowe, “If the GDP Is Up, Why Is America Down?” Atlantic Monthly, October 1995.
11. Ibid.
12. There have been two exceptions: Friedrich Hayek and Maurice Allais both received the Nobel in Economics, and both severely criticized the prevailing monetary paradigm. However, they expressed such criticism several years after having received the award.
13. John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1997). See Encyclopedia Britannica, September 10, 2012. www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/315921/John-Maynard-Keynes/315921suppinfo/Supplemental-Information.
Chapter 3
1. Regulations specify that roughly 10 percent of a deposit needs to be kept as a reserve in case the customer withdraws the funds. Therefore, up to 90 percent is available to make new loans. Changing that percentage is one of the techniques whereby the Federal Reserve controls the quantities of credit money the banks will be able to create. The exact percentages also vary with the kind of deposit made: The longer the term of the deposit, the lower the percentage of “reserves” required. The 90 percent rule of this example, enabling a “multiplier” of about nine to one, is an illustrative average.
2. Emeka Chiakwelu, “Nigeria Payment of Foreign Debt: The Largest Transfer of Wealth in Modern Time,” Africa Political and Economic Strategic Center (Afripol). www.afripol.org.
3. Anup Shah, “Poverty Facts and Stats,” Global Issues, September 20, 2010. www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats#src22.
4. Geoffrey Ekenna, “Nigeria’s Debt Back to $37b, Says Okonjo-Iweala,” [Lagos] Nigerian Compass, August 27, 2011.
5. The exact formula is (1 + i)(n –1), where i is the interest rate and n the number of years of the deposit.
6. R. Putnam, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993).
7. F. Fukuyama, Trust: Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity (New York: Free Press, 1996).
8. M. Castell, Das Informationszeitalter Bd.II (Leverkusen, Germany: Leske & Budrich, 2002), 275ff.; and M. Castell, Das Informationszeitalter Bd.III (Leverkusen, Germany: Leske & Budrich, 2003), Chapter 3.
9. G. Rodgers C. Gore, and J. B. Figueiredi (eds.), Social Exclusion: Rhetoric, Reality, Responses (Geneva: International Institute of Labour Studies, 1997); and E. Mingione, Urban Poverty and the Underclass (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 1996).
10. J. Coleman, Foundations of Social Theory (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), especially Chapter 12; and R. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of the American Community (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000).
11. John E. Yellen of the National Science Foundation in Washington, DC, has excavated !Kung ar
chaeological sites with colleague Alison S. Brooks of George Washington University.
12. John E. Yellen, “The Transformation of the Kalahari !Kung,” Scientific American 262, no. 4 (1990): 96–100. See also www.ralph-abraham.org/articles/MS%2383.Kung/kung2.html.
13. The best works on the topic of gift economies are the classic by Marcel Mauss, “Essai sur le Don: Forme et raison de l’échange dans les sociétés archaiques,” L’Année Sociologique 1 (1923–1924): 30–186; and Lewis Hyde, The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property, 3rd ed. (New York: Vintage Books, 1983). See full details in Bernard Lietaer, The Future of Money (London: Random House, 1999), Chapter 6.
14. George Soros, On Globalization (Oxford: Public Affairs, 2002), 14.
15. Joseph E. Stiglitz, “Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%,” Vanity Fair, May 2011.
16. Correspondence with the authors via Margrit Kennedy.
17. Report by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), ABC News, October 26, 2011. http://abcnews.go.com/Business/income-doubles-top-percent-1979/story?id=14817561.
18. Arnold Toynbee, A Study of History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1960).
19. Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Choice: Global Domination or Global Leadership (New York: Basic Books, 2004), 217.
20. Richard Duncan, The Dollar Crisis: Causes, Consequences, Cures (Singapore: John Wiley & Sons, 2003).
21. Putnam, Making Democracy Work.
22. Fukuyama, Trust.