Reposted from Community Currency Magazine
Why would I want to use Shire Hours when I can
use regular money?
Three reasons:
1. Shire Hours is more efficient, and therefore
cheaper for payments than regular money.
2. Shire Hours is more community-oriented
than regular money.
3. Shire Hours is not prone to inflation.
The explanation will involve delving into what regular
money is and how banks actually work.
To understand why Shire Hours is more efficient than
regular money, take into account that when we say
“regular money”, we’re not talking about paper money,
but rather bank account money, which accounts for
over 95% of money out there. Banks charge fees
to lend and take care of this money. Think of all the
people who work directly and indirectly for the banking
industry. Someone has to pay all these people’s
salaries, not to mention the profits that banks regularly
rake in. Whether you are charged directly or not, you
pay for bank fees because they are factored into the
price of every item you purchase. How come Shire
Hours doesn’t need to charge fees? Read on:
When you have money in your bank account, you
probably realize that the bank doesn’t actual have a
little bundle of paper money in their vault with your
name on it. Instead, what they have is a little number
in their computer with your name on it that tells them
how much they owe you. You trust that if you should
ask for a cash withdrawal, the bank will be able to
come up with the money. A bank account is really the
bank’s IOU, or obligation to you. And if you think about
it, paper money is just the government’s obligation to
you, redeemable as payment for taxes.
Since we trust that our banks will be able to issue us
useful government obligations at any time, we are
generally content to pay one another by having them
shuffle their obligations from one person’s account
to another, using checks, or more recently, debit and
credit cards. Often obligations must be shuffled behind
the scenes to a different bank through a central bank,
or through several banks in the case of international
transfers. This shuffling is exactly what Shire Hours
mimics, except instead of shuffling obligations only
between banks, it shuffles them between anyone,
including banks, if they wish to participate.
Banks take the money they get in deposits and lend it
out. Actually, since most payments are made without
ever withdrawing actual cash, and since most cash
simply gets deposited right back in a bank anyways,
they may lend out up to 10 times the amount of
deposits they have. This is how most money gets
created: banks simply bring it into being by adding
to someone’s account balance and calling it a loan –
money is nothing but bank obligations, after all.
Banks owe many times what they have in cash, and
yet stay solvent because every borrower promises
to pay back the amount they have borrowed. When
a loan is paid back, that bank obligation is fulfilled –
in other words, that money is destroyed. To earn the
money to pay back the loan, a borrower must perform
some service of value to someone else who has
money to spend. That is what gives money its value:
borrowers want to take it in exchange for their services
in order to pay back their loan. If a bank can’t recover
the money from a loan, the bank must deduct the
unpaid amount from its profit or risk going bankrupt.
Banking regulations ensure that banks follow a strict
accounting code. The whole arrangement is a rather
ingenius way of keeping score of who is doing their
part in society, especially given that it was developed
well before the advent of computers. To ensure that
it is profitable, then, a bank must only lend to people
who are going to be able to reliably earn money and
who can be trusted to pay back what they owe. So for
a bank to lend you money, it must learn how you are
going to earn money in the future, and how well you
have fulfilled your obligations in the past. Often this is
a time-consuming and labor-intensive process, which
is one reason that banks employ so many people: The
borrower-lender relationship is fundamentally a trust
relationship, and forming a trust relationship takes
time and energy.
Shire Hours is a financial system that recognizes
existing trust relationships between human beings
and works within that structure, instead of imposing a
structure by demanding that we all put in the effort to
form trust relationships with institutions that we would
otherwise have nothing to do with.
But more importantly, when a bank lends you money,
it is making a value judgement, not only on you and
whether your activities will be valuable, but on society
at large and whether they will judge your activities
as valuable. A bank is an institutional entity, and as
such it can only value what it can measure: things like
income, profit, rates of production, forecast growth,
etc. It cannot value things that are truly important
to human beings such as love, community, and
relationships. Human beings working at banks might
do the best they can, but ultimately the relationships
between bank employees and bank clients are rarely
very deep because they are formed solely for financial
reasons. And bank employees can only exercise
discretion within the tightly controlled framework of the
bank’s corporate regulations.
We have a system where nearly all economic activity
depends on the presence of sufficient money to
enable it. 95% of that money is created by banks for
people or purposes that they deem valuable. Yet what
banks value is at best a shadow of what we truly value
as human beings. Is it any wonder that our economic
lives are so out of balance? That what we feel we must
do for money so rarely seems to be in harmony with
what we truly want to do? That the more successful
we become economically, the more the fabric of our
communities seems to break down?
With Shire Hours, the point is to keep track of who
is contributing to the things most valuable to you, by
those who are closest to you, who share your values
the most, and who are most familiar with your personal
situation. Money is a fantastic way that we have
invented to organize cooperation among ourselves,
and using it, we have been remarkably successful at
exploiting natural resources to produce an abundance
of material goods for our enjoyment. But as important
as it is, there is more to life than the enjoyment of
material goods. Technology makes it possible to
adapt our economic systems to better reflect what we
actually want out of life. Shire Hours is one of the many
new systems that have become possible because of
the internet.
So, by all means, continue using regular money. But
give Shire Hours and other new systems a try where
you can and see if new possibilities don’t open up for
you. https://www.shirehours.com/ Shire Hours is a
part of the Ripple project to develop a peer-to-peer
network protocol for making decentralized Ripple
payments between users on different computers. To
learn more, please visit the Ripple project homepage.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Sunday, December 6, 2009
It’s the Core Economy stupid: An Open Letter to the Non-Profit Community
Reposted from Timebanks USA, by Edgar Cahn, founder of Timebanks USA
Emblazoned on the wall of Clinton’s 1990 campaign war room was the mantra: “It’s the economy stupid.” But for beleaguered non-profits and NGO’s, here and around the world, that in-your-face reminder is only half the message. The wake-up call needs to add one key word: “It’s the Core Economy
Stupid.” Understanding why that supplies the missing link is the key to the turn-around we need in
priorities, in outcomes and in political climate.
In the United States and in both post-industrial and developing nations, there is an invisible economy
under girding all economic and social development. Regardless of whether GDP grows, or as the markets
pulse, that economy is perpetually under assault in the richest and poorest economies. It’s the “Core
Economy.”
WHAT IS THE CORE ECONOMY?
The Core Economy is not Wall Street or Main Street; it is the economy of family, neighborhood, kith and kin. Recently more and more economists acknowledge that something like 40-50% of productive economic activity takes place outside of the market and is not measured by traditional indicators. But even those percentages do not begin to convey either the scale or significance of an economic system that
is pervasively ignored. Futurist Alvin Toffler captured the implications of what economists overlook with a question he puts to CEO’s of Fortune 500 companies: “How productive do you think your work force would be if it was not toilet trained?” That’s a useful if disconcerting starting point for re-assessing what we value and measure as “productive labor.”
A physician at a nationally renowned medical school puts this question to first year medical students: "What group of people do you think delivers the most medical care and treatment in this country?” Doctors? No. Nurses? No. Allied health professionals? No. The correct answer is “mothers.” Just compute the number of days school children are sick; then add infant care, preventive medicine, and chronic conditions, and a different profile of health care practitioners emerges. Who teaches children to walk? To talk? To obey the rules? To tell the truth? To avoid harming themselves? To avoid harming others? Who produces a workforce that gets up in the morning, gets places on time, and knows it is wrong to steal and lie? Mothers, fathers, grandparents, families and those institutions that impart moral values. Who keeps neighborhoods safe, keeps violence down? A $51 million study extending over ten years by renowned researchers from Harvard, Columbia and the University of Michigan finally pinned down the critical factor. They called it “collective efficacy” – which when translated into language we all understand turns out to mean: neighbors stopping kids from painting graffiti, having fights, hanging out on street corners. It is an invisible local culture that boils down to looking after each others’ kids.
When an economist undertook to quantify the replacement value of just one function of this Core Economy, he found that the unpaid work done by family, friends, neighbors and kinfolk to keep seniors out of nursing homes totaled $196 billion in 1997. By 2000, when he updated his computation, it had risen to $257 billion. The value of just the informal care giving portion of the labor produced by the Core
Economy was six times greater than the money spent in the market economy to purchase formal home health care services for the elderly; it is over twice what the federal government spends on nursing home care. Consider the monetary implications of even a small drop in the productivity of the Core Economy if we were obliged to buy those services at market prices with increased private insurance or increased taxes
for Medicare and Medicaid
In recent decades, highly respected economists have undertaken to include the value of unpaid household labor that does not get included in the GDP or other standard economic measures of productivity. Rigorous estimates of the value of household labor have ranged from one-quarter to one-third of the
GDP.
Feminine economists have tended to focus on Caring Labor as an essential component of productive labor missing from official economic indicators. But there are at other kinds of labor that are equally essential and equally absent: Civic Labor, Social Justice Labor, and Environmental Labor. And then there is another kind of labor that goes into Knowledge Acquisition that might be called Learning Labor.
Interesting theoretically. But so what? Who cares? And what difference does it make?
Rebuilding the Core Economy means that non-profits will have to partner in a new way with the very communities they serve. Clients will have to be viewed through a lens that defines them as assets with untapped capacity; client contribution will have to be honored and rewarded as work; services provided will have to become catalytic interventions that enable clients to give back by helping others; and individual clients will have to become part of the “village” in ways that transcend traditional agency client boundaries. That’s what it will take to rebuild a Core Economy depleted by disinvestment and loss of its most energetic, upwardly mobile human resources.
Consider this: the Core Economy is under assault - partly from material values that erode basic moral values – and partly from progress that has removed the hidden subsidy supplied by the subordination of women, the economic dependency of the elderly, and the exploitation of ethnic minorities, immigrants and children. How does that labor get replaced as we embrace equality and opportunity and independent
living? How do the critical functions of the Core Economy get discharged? It is the failure to properly understand the significance of the Core Economy and the labor it takes to for it to function and to regain vitality that lies at the heart of the crisis facing the non-profit world. When the Core Economy is either undervalued or overlooked, the problems that come from its erosion are dumped on the non-profit world. And somehow, the non-profit world is then blamed if it can’t fix those problems with whatever crumbs are left on the table by the “truly productive” members of society: those who are busy making money and whose activities are officially recognized and measured by monetary transactions. The prevailing discussion of economy misses this point.
Now, increasingly, non-profits are being told they must learn to launch businesses and create money-making social ventures. A social venture seems to mean anything that makes money for a non-profit and does not peddle something that is morally or
environmentally repugnant. As a result, non-profits are trying to compete in a world where they are amateurs. Priorities shift to proving they can launch a break-even business – and the more they equate their organization’s credibility to funders with their entrepreneurial zeal, the more all their creative juices and energy get diverted into competing in an arena where they are least competent.
The message that non-profits need to get is: “It’s the Core Economy and that’s not stupid.” That’s the economy they need to rebuild; that’s the economy they need to partner with. That’s the economy which, if healthy, will dictate priorities to funders that translate into quality of life gains and real learning aboutreducing externalities. Rebuilding the Core Economy is going to involve a real shift in how non-profits think and act. We believe it is going to take a different kind of currency – because exclusive reliance on money imposes unnecessary limits on what is possible now. Markets driven by monetary exchanges cannot put supply and demand together to rebuild the Core Economy because of the way that market price defines value. If quantity is scarce compared to demand, then market value is high. The opposite applies: if supply is abundant, then value goes down. We say something is dirt cheap or worthless if it is abundant.
That definition of value devalues those very universal capacities that enabled our species to survive and evolve: our ability to care for each other, to come to each others' rescue, to learn from each other, to stand up for what’s right and to oppose what is wrong. In market terms, those capacities, if abundant, are worthless. In terms of rebuilding the Core Economy, those values are literally price-less. We take them for granted – in roughly the same way we took clean air and clean water and the ozone layer for granted – until the toxicity we unleashed jeopardized our health and survival. Much the same is true for those very social problems that non-profits are charged with addressing. Like clean air and water, we have always taken families and neighborhoods and community for granted. After all, families are supposed to function; children are supposed to be resilient; trust is supposed to be present
whenever intentions are good; people do what they are supposed to do. Collectively self-interest can be counted on to advance public well-being. And altruism like the ozone layer will always shield us from destructive selfishness. Public policy constructed on logic in defiance of reality is not going to restore the moral and social ecology we require. The Core Economy is our species’ habitat. And a monetary definition of value that devalues our intrinsic, universal capacities cannot generate transactions on the scale needed to address the range or depth of social problems that programs and non-profits are supposed to remedy. We need to grasp what a different perception of value would make possible.
First, we are going to have to start looking at those human beings now defined as problems and liabilities through a lens that sees them as assets. When a senior tells me: “I have nothing left to give – but love,” we need to say: You have what we most need. Instead, we see seniors as fiscal liabilities. All we can say is: Can you co-pay for your prescriptions and how can we possibly cope with seniors’ disabilities on the scale that baby boomers will present? There are women coming out of prison paying for their therapy by teaching teen-age females about HIV, AIDS and violence. There are fifth graders labeled Special Education and Attention Deficit students who are teaching math and reading to first and second graders. There are juveniles delinquents who are staffing the juries of a youth court that has reduced recidivism far more effectively than judges, prosecutors, police and probation officers ever did. There are high school students charged with truancy who are now becoming learners by being sentenced to tutor in elementary schools. All it takes is looking through a different lens to see at-risk problem human beings as a vast source of wealth, capacity, talent, energy, love, caring, experience and common sense.
Second, we are going to have to redefine work to include whatever labor we need to build strong families, safe communities, to care for the frail and elderly, to hold officials accountable, to make democracy work, and to fight for social justice. That means we are going to have to abandon the binary code that says: you are either paid staff or a volunteer. Money imposes a false dichotomy, unjustified status hierarchies and impossible restrictions on the labor that is available and needed to rebuild the Core Economy. No society has the money to buy, at market prices, what it takes to raise children, make a neighborhood safe, care for the elderly, make democracy work or address systemic injustices. We pay foster care families ten to times what we used to provide mothers on welfare – and all too often, we still see
child abuse – and extensive, predictable human tragedies once the foster care is terminated at 18. The only way that the non-profit world is going to address the social problems that are dumped on it is by enlisting the very people who are now classified as clients and consumers and converting them into coworkers,partners, and rebuilders of the Core Economy.
If money can not do the job of enlisting that workforce, what can? Utilizing a tax-exempt barter currency called Time Dollars, we have demonstrated one way in which non-profits can provide a form of compensation that enables people to get what they need by helping to rebuild the Core Economy. Every hour spent helping another earns one Time Dollar and that enables non-profits to provide a reward forclient contribution. Habitat for Humanity figured out how to mobilize an army of homebuilders: they require that every homeowner help build homes for others. The Brazilian government figured out how to convert mothers into “attendance officers” to see that their truant children actually got to school and actually studied and did their homework. Different experiments have proven how “patients” can be enlisted as partners in coping with asthma, diabetes, hypertension, depression and obesity.
Redefining Work might even entail a new kind of tithing: earmarking funds and resources for rewards for this workforce that every non-profit truly needs. The return on that investment will be the creation of a genuine constituency for the work, for the program, for the agency – and a new leverage in securing critically needed funds. In every context, the bottom line in redefining work is: mobilize and enlist the labor you need by recording it, acknowledging it, validating it and rewarding it. Add respect for what that consumer workforce can tell you as co-workers. Their perspective -- about staff or practices that are unproductive, condescending, paternalistic, and culturally insensitive – is solid gold. Without those feedback loops, nonprofits will end up isolated – unappreciated and unfunded.
Third, reciprocity needs to replace unilateral beneficence. If non-profits are going to turn their clientele from consumers into partners and co-producers, the most compelling way to do that may seem most unthinkable: calling upon those they serve to contribute in return by helping others. All too often, lip service is paid to client participation – but exclusive focus on trying to meet client needs often precludes genuine mutuality. If non-profits embrace the mantra: It’s the Core Economy Stupid, then every client can pay back by doing something to rebuild that Core Economy. There are teenage females who may need all kinds of services – but who can provide shampoo and hairdressing for seniors who have a hard time lifting their arthritic arms to wash and set their own hair. There are seniors who can provide telephone companionship to bed-ridden seniors, guidance and support for latchkey children, and counseling and affection for teenage mothers. If paying back by helping someone else can turn every helping transaction into a catalyst that triggers
contribution by the recipient, then the non-profit world will be able to quash the indictment that it perpetuates dependency. But so long as it simply provides help to those in need without asking for anything back in return, it is sending two fatal messages to those it helps. It is saying: “I have something you need – but you have nothing I need or want or value.” And it is also saying: “The way to get more
help is by coming back with more problems. And the worse those problems are, the more help you will get.”
For those who have become accustomed to one way giving, the change to reciprocity may be traumatic. But home, family, and community can thrive only when the pitching-in is mutual. The bottom line remains: It’s the Core Economy.
Fourth and finally, rebuilding a healthy Core Economy necessarily means setting forces in motion that one does not control. A healthy Core Economy does not mean keeping client families alone, isolated, separate and unconnected based on the constraints of a professional-client relationship. It means investing in ways to bring people together so that their interaction can help to rebuild the village. And yes, there will be things happening in a healthy village that simply do not fall within the stated mission or the outcomes which agencies are traditionally funded to produce. That’s the Core Economy that the nonprofit world has to rebuild.
In the Core Economy things happen weekends and holidays and after office hours. In the Core Economy, families and clients talk to each other – regardless of how confidential case files are kept and regardless of how rigorously professional and legal requirements to protect privacy are enforced. In that Core Economy, people eat meals in each others homes, meals that were not cooked in accordance with regulations governing food preparation. In the Core Economy, couples go out on dates without having been screened, without a reference check, without a police or FBI field clearance and without liability insurance.
Putnam observes that social capital requires trust, reciprocity and civic engagement. That’s not what nonprofits are funded to produce. In fact, present practice means that non-profits must scrupulously avoid just the kinds of unauthorized, unprofessional interactions which historically have produced social capital. But the bottom line is: It’s the Core Economy. Until non-profits get that, they will be part of the problem,living off of social problems, consuming scarce resources to address symptoms while contributing to a pathology that erodes social capital and ultimately turns neighborhoods and communities into colonies whose resources are being systematically strip-mined.
If we are going to get real about problems, we need to remember: It’s the Core Economy. Maybe then, non-profits will find new ways to partner with those whom they serve; together they will make the pie bigger – and by doing so, both will earn the status they deserve to enjoy as stakeholders, shareholders and turn-around specialists for the human enterprise.
Emblazoned on the wall of Clinton’s 1990 campaign war room was the mantra: “It’s the economy stupid.” But for beleaguered non-profits and NGO’s, here and around the world, that in-your-face reminder is only half the message. The wake-up call needs to add one key word: “It’s the Core Economy
Stupid.” Understanding why that supplies the missing link is the key to the turn-around we need in
priorities, in outcomes and in political climate.
In the United States and in both post-industrial and developing nations, there is an invisible economy
under girding all economic and social development. Regardless of whether GDP grows, or as the markets
pulse, that economy is perpetually under assault in the richest and poorest economies. It’s the “Core
Economy.”
WHAT IS THE CORE ECONOMY?
The Core Economy is not Wall Street or Main Street; it is the economy of family, neighborhood, kith and kin. Recently more and more economists acknowledge that something like 40-50% of productive economic activity takes place outside of the market and is not measured by traditional indicators. But even those percentages do not begin to convey either the scale or significance of an economic system that
is pervasively ignored. Futurist Alvin Toffler captured the implications of what economists overlook with a question he puts to CEO’s of Fortune 500 companies: “How productive do you think your work force would be if it was not toilet trained?” That’s a useful if disconcerting starting point for re-assessing what we value and measure as “productive labor.”
A physician at a nationally renowned medical school puts this question to first year medical students: "What group of people do you think delivers the most medical care and treatment in this country?” Doctors? No. Nurses? No. Allied health professionals? No. The correct answer is “mothers.” Just compute the number of days school children are sick; then add infant care, preventive medicine, and chronic conditions, and a different profile of health care practitioners emerges. Who teaches children to walk? To talk? To obey the rules? To tell the truth? To avoid harming themselves? To avoid harming others? Who produces a workforce that gets up in the morning, gets places on time, and knows it is wrong to steal and lie? Mothers, fathers, grandparents, families and those institutions that impart moral values. Who keeps neighborhoods safe, keeps violence down? A $51 million study extending over ten years by renowned researchers from Harvard, Columbia and the University of Michigan finally pinned down the critical factor. They called it “collective efficacy” – which when translated into language we all understand turns out to mean: neighbors stopping kids from painting graffiti, having fights, hanging out on street corners. It is an invisible local culture that boils down to looking after each others’ kids.
When an economist undertook to quantify the replacement value of just one function of this Core Economy, he found that the unpaid work done by family, friends, neighbors and kinfolk to keep seniors out of nursing homes totaled $196 billion in 1997. By 2000, when he updated his computation, it had risen to $257 billion. The value of just the informal care giving portion of the labor produced by the Core
Economy was six times greater than the money spent in the market economy to purchase formal home health care services for the elderly; it is over twice what the federal government spends on nursing home care. Consider the monetary implications of even a small drop in the productivity of the Core Economy if we were obliged to buy those services at market prices with increased private insurance or increased taxes
for Medicare and Medicaid
In recent decades, highly respected economists have undertaken to include the value of unpaid household labor that does not get included in the GDP or other standard economic measures of productivity. Rigorous estimates of the value of household labor have ranged from one-quarter to one-third of the
GDP.
Feminine economists have tended to focus on Caring Labor as an essential component of productive labor missing from official economic indicators. But there are at other kinds of labor that are equally essential and equally absent: Civic Labor, Social Justice Labor, and Environmental Labor. And then there is another kind of labor that goes into Knowledge Acquisition that might be called Learning Labor.
Interesting theoretically. But so what? Who cares? And what difference does it make?
Rebuilding the Core Economy means that non-profits will have to partner in a new way with the very communities they serve. Clients will have to be viewed through a lens that defines them as assets with untapped capacity; client contribution will have to be honored and rewarded as work; services provided will have to become catalytic interventions that enable clients to give back by helping others; and individual clients will have to become part of the “village” in ways that transcend traditional agency client boundaries. That’s what it will take to rebuild a Core Economy depleted by disinvestment and loss of its most energetic, upwardly mobile human resources.
Consider this: the Core Economy is under assault - partly from material values that erode basic moral values – and partly from progress that has removed the hidden subsidy supplied by the subordination of women, the economic dependency of the elderly, and the exploitation of ethnic minorities, immigrants and children. How does that labor get replaced as we embrace equality and opportunity and independent
living? How do the critical functions of the Core Economy get discharged? It is the failure to properly understand the significance of the Core Economy and the labor it takes to for it to function and to regain vitality that lies at the heart of the crisis facing the non-profit world. When the Core Economy is either undervalued or overlooked, the problems that come from its erosion are dumped on the non-profit world. And somehow, the non-profit world is then blamed if it can’t fix those problems with whatever crumbs are left on the table by the “truly productive” members of society: those who are busy making money and whose activities are officially recognized and measured by monetary transactions. The prevailing discussion of economy misses this point.
Now, increasingly, non-profits are being told they must learn to launch businesses and create money-making social ventures. A social venture seems to mean anything that makes money for a non-profit and does not peddle something that is morally or
environmentally repugnant. As a result, non-profits are trying to compete in a world where they are amateurs. Priorities shift to proving they can launch a break-even business – and the more they equate their organization’s credibility to funders with their entrepreneurial zeal, the more all their creative juices and energy get diverted into competing in an arena where they are least competent.
The message that non-profits need to get is: “It’s the Core Economy and that’s not stupid.” That’s the economy they need to rebuild; that’s the economy they need to partner with. That’s the economy which, if healthy, will dictate priorities to funders that translate into quality of life gains and real learning aboutreducing externalities. Rebuilding the Core Economy is going to involve a real shift in how non-profits think and act. We believe it is going to take a different kind of currency – because exclusive reliance on money imposes unnecessary limits on what is possible now. Markets driven by monetary exchanges cannot put supply and demand together to rebuild the Core Economy because of the way that market price defines value. If quantity is scarce compared to demand, then market value is high. The opposite applies: if supply is abundant, then value goes down. We say something is dirt cheap or worthless if it is abundant.
That definition of value devalues those very universal capacities that enabled our species to survive and evolve: our ability to care for each other, to come to each others' rescue, to learn from each other, to stand up for what’s right and to oppose what is wrong. In market terms, those capacities, if abundant, are worthless. In terms of rebuilding the Core Economy, those values are literally price-less. We take them for granted – in roughly the same way we took clean air and clean water and the ozone layer for granted – until the toxicity we unleashed jeopardized our health and survival. Much the same is true for those very social problems that non-profits are charged with addressing. Like clean air and water, we have always taken families and neighborhoods and community for granted. After all, families are supposed to function; children are supposed to be resilient; trust is supposed to be present
whenever intentions are good; people do what they are supposed to do. Collectively self-interest can be counted on to advance public well-being. And altruism like the ozone layer will always shield us from destructive selfishness. Public policy constructed on logic in defiance of reality is not going to restore the moral and social ecology we require. The Core Economy is our species’ habitat. And a monetary definition of value that devalues our intrinsic, universal capacities cannot generate transactions on the scale needed to address the range or depth of social problems that programs and non-profits are supposed to remedy. We need to grasp what a different perception of value would make possible.
First, we are going to have to start looking at those human beings now defined as problems and liabilities through a lens that sees them as assets. When a senior tells me: “I have nothing left to give – but love,” we need to say: You have what we most need. Instead, we see seniors as fiscal liabilities. All we can say is: Can you co-pay for your prescriptions and how can we possibly cope with seniors’ disabilities on the scale that baby boomers will present? There are women coming out of prison paying for their therapy by teaching teen-age females about HIV, AIDS and violence. There are fifth graders labeled Special Education and Attention Deficit students who are teaching math and reading to first and second graders. There are juveniles delinquents who are staffing the juries of a youth court that has reduced recidivism far more effectively than judges, prosecutors, police and probation officers ever did. There are high school students charged with truancy who are now becoming learners by being sentenced to tutor in elementary schools. All it takes is looking through a different lens to see at-risk problem human beings as a vast source of wealth, capacity, talent, energy, love, caring, experience and common sense.
Second, we are going to have to redefine work to include whatever labor we need to build strong families, safe communities, to care for the frail and elderly, to hold officials accountable, to make democracy work, and to fight for social justice. That means we are going to have to abandon the binary code that says: you are either paid staff or a volunteer. Money imposes a false dichotomy, unjustified status hierarchies and impossible restrictions on the labor that is available and needed to rebuild the Core Economy. No society has the money to buy, at market prices, what it takes to raise children, make a neighborhood safe, care for the elderly, make democracy work or address systemic injustices. We pay foster care families ten to times what we used to provide mothers on welfare – and all too often, we still see
child abuse – and extensive, predictable human tragedies once the foster care is terminated at 18. The only way that the non-profit world is going to address the social problems that are dumped on it is by enlisting the very people who are now classified as clients and consumers and converting them into coworkers,partners, and rebuilders of the Core Economy.
If money can not do the job of enlisting that workforce, what can? Utilizing a tax-exempt barter currency called Time Dollars, we have demonstrated one way in which non-profits can provide a form of compensation that enables people to get what they need by helping to rebuild the Core Economy. Every hour spent helping another earns one Time Dollar and that enables non-profits to provide a reward forclient contribution. Habitat for Humanity figured out how to mobilize an army of homebuilders: they require that every homeowner help build homes for others. The Brazilian government figured out how to convert mothers into “attendance officers” to see that their truant children actually got to school and actually studied and did their homework. Different experiments have proven how “patients” can be enlisted as partners in coping with asthma, diabetes, hypertension, depression and obesity.
Redefining Work might even entail a new kind of tithing: earmarking funds and resources for rewards for this workforce that every non-profit truly needs. The return on that investment will be the creation of a genuine constituency for the work, for the program, for the agency – and a new leverage in securing critically needed funds. In every context, the bottom line in redefining work is: mobilize and enlist the labor you need by recording it, acknowledging it, validating it and rewarding it. Add respect for what that consumer workforce can tell you as co-workers. Their perspective -- about staff or practices that are unproductive, condescending, paternalistic, and culturally insensitive – is solid gold. Without those feedback loops, nonprofits will end up isolated – unappreciated and unfunded.
Third, reciprocity needs to replace unilateral beneficence. If non-profits are going to turn their clientele from consumers into partners and co-producers, the most compelling way to do that may seem most unthinkable: calling upon those they serve to contribute in return by helping others. All too often, lip service is paid to client participation – but exclusive focus on trying to meet client needs often precludes genuine mutuality. If non-profits embrace the mantra: It’s the Core Economy Stupid, then every client can pay back by doing something to rebuild that Core Economy. There are teenage females who may need all kinds of services – but who can provide shampoo and hairdressing for seniors who have a hard time lifting their arthritic arms to wash and set their own hair. There are seniors who can provide telephone companionship to bed-ridden seniors, guidance and support for latchkey children, and counseling and affection for teenage mothers. If paying back by helping someone else can turn every helping transaction into a catalyst that triggers
contribution by the recipient, then the non-profit world will be able to quash the indictment that it perpetuates dependency. But so long as it simply provides help to those in need without asking for anything back in return, it is sending two fatal messages to those it helps. It is saying: “I have something you need – but you have nothing I need or want or value.” And it is also saying: “The way to get more
help is by coming back with more problems. And the worse those problems are, the more help you will get.”
For those who have become accustomed to one way giving, the change to reciprocity may be traumatic. But home, family, and community can thrive only when the pitching-in is mutual. The bottom line remains: It’s the Core Economy.
Fourth and finally, rebuilding a healthy Core Economy necessarily means setting forces in motion that one does not control. A healthy Core Economy does not mean keeping client families alone, isolated, separate and unconnected based on the constraints of a professional-client relationship. It means investing in ways to bring people together so that their interaction can help to rebuild the village. And yes, there will be things happening in a healthy village that simply do not fall within the stated mission or the outcomes which agencies are traditionally funded to produce. That’s the Core Economy that the nonprofit world has to rebuild.
In the Core Economy things happen weekends and holidays and after office hours. In the Core Economy, families and clients talk to each other – regardless of how confidential case files are kept and regardless of how rigorously professional and legal requirements to protect privacy are enforced. In that Core Economy, people eat meals in each others homes, meals that were not cooked in accordance with regulations governing food preparation. In the Core Economy, couples go out on dates without having been screened, without a reference check, without a police or FBI field clearance and without liability insurance.
Putnam observes that social capital requires trust, reciprocity and civic engagement. That’s not what nonprofits are funded to produce. In fact, present practice means that non-profits must scrupulously avoid just the kinds of unauthorized, unprofessional interactions which historically have produced social capital. But the bottom line is: It’s the Core Economy. Until non-profits get that, they will be part of the problem,living off of social problems, consuming scarce resources to address symptoms while contributing to a pathology that erodes social capital and ultimately turns neighborhoods and communities into colonies whose resources are being systematically strip-mined.
If we are going to get real about problems, we need to remember: It’s the Core Economy. Maybe then, non-profits will find new ways to partner with those whom they serve; together they will make the pie bigger – and by doing so, both will earn the status they deserve to enjoy as stakeholders, shareholders and turn-around specialists for the human enterprise.
Saturday, December 5, 2009
Living Without Money
Living somewhere between a gift economy and time exchange and barter system...I've been doing this to some extent for a while...there a few things that are difficult like traditional medical care which can break the bank...
From The Times, by Stefanie Marsh
November 24, 2009
reposted from http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/article6928744.ece
Twenty-two years ago Heidemarie Schwermer, a middle-aged secondary school teacher just emerging from a difficult marriage, moved with her two children from the village of Lueneburg to the city of Dortmund, in the Ruhr area of Germany, whose homeless population, she immediately noticed, was above average and striking in its intransigent hopelessness.
Her immediate reaction was shock. “This isn’t right, this can’t go on,” she said to herself. After careful reflection she set up what in Germany is called a Tauschring — a sort of swap shop — a place where people can exchange their skills or possessions for other skills and possessions, a money-free zone where a haircut could be rendered in return for car maintenance; a still-functioning but never-used toaster be exchanged for a couple of second-hand cardigans. She called it Gib und Nimm, Give and Take.
It was always Schwermer’s belief that the homeless didn’t need money to re-enter society: instead they should be able to empower themselves by making themselves useful, despite debts, destitution or joblessness. “I’ve always believed that even if you have nothing, you are worth a lot. Everyone has a place in this world.”
But the homeless of Dortmund seemed not to take to Schwermer’s plan, few ever turned up to the Tauschring. Some, they told her angrily to her face, felt that a middle-class woman with some education would never be able to relate to the circumstances of the dispossessed. Instead it was mainly the unemployed and the retired who began, in snowballing numbers, to flock to the Tauschring, their arms full of things that had been lying around their homes unused for years, or skills that they possessed but no longer exercised: retired hairdressers volunteered to cut the hair of out-of-work electricians, who would wire their kitchens in return; retired English teachers gave language lessons in return for the services of a dog-walker. The point was, not a single pfennig changed hands.
The Tauschring grew exponentially, was written up glowingly in a couple of local papers and turned into something of a Dortmund phenomenon. Its success also prompted Schwermer to ask serious questions of herself and her way of life. “I began to realise that I lived with so many things I didn’t need. So I decided that I wouldn’t buy anything without giving something away. That’s how it started. Then I began to really think about what I needed, clothes for example, and noticed that I could easily get by with what I could hang on ten coathangers. Everything else I gave away. I had so much stuff in the house that was superfluous. Getting rid of it was a relief.”
After a while even her vast collection of books began to assume an excessive presence in her home and one day Schwermer marched to a second-hand shop with her entire library. “The woman in the shop was upset. But I felt that giving them away was a good thing. I love books but I knew I had to get rid of them. I didn’t miss them, which surprised me. I just wanted to pare things down to their essentials.”
What had, in part, led Schwermer to her conclusions about “stuff” was a year of psychotherapy after the breakdown of her marriage in the mid-1980s. It was a difficult year, she remembers: “I was in floods of tears nearly every session, but at the end of it I felt so happy and decided that I wanted to live more simply. I also wanted to pass on what I learnt in therapy to other people, and that’s when I began to train as a psychotherapist.”
Other things changed. She took up meditation and began to realise how dissatisfied she was in her job. “I was always ill with flu or had backache and never realised the connection between my physical symptoms and my unhappiness at work.”
In the wake of setting up her Tauschring, she began to experiment with other sorts of jobs on the side. “I was working in a kitchen for ten deutschmarks an hour and people were saying to me, ‘You went to university, you studied to do this?’ But I thought, well, every person has an intrinsic value, why should I be valued more for being a teacher or a therapist than for working in a kitchen?”
The more ascetically she lived, the happier she became. By 1995 she was deeply involved in the Tauschring, house-sitting for short periods in exchange for cleaning or light maintenance work. She was buying virtually nothing: “When I needed something, I found that it would just come into my life. My glasses, for example. There was an optician who was a member of the Tauschring and he gave them to me in return for some therapy sessions.”
It was in 1996 she realised that “I had to go farther” and took what would be the most radical decision of her life: to live without money. She gave up her apartment and teaching job and resolved to live nomadically, an “extreme lifestyle”, she admits, moving from house to house, in return for menial work. Her new way of life was intended as a short-lived thing: she had given herself 12 months. But she found herself enjoying it so much that it never really ended.
Thirteen years on, she continues to live according to the principles of Gib und Nimm. “Life became much more exciting. More beautiful. I had everything I needed and I knew I couldn’t go back to my old life. I didn’t have to do what I didn’t like, I had a more profound sense of joy, and physically I feel better than ever. Living without money was just the first step. I realised that I wanted to change the world and I wasn’t going to do that by looking after someone’s cat while they were on holiday.”
She still lives — a week at a time — in the spare rooms of members of the Tauschring, cleaning or working in return for accommodation. Only very occasionally has she had personality clashes with her hosts and she tries to resolve any tension within herself “by going for a walk”. She has emergency savings of €200 (£180) and any other money that comes to her she gives away. “I decided it was OK to collect my pension but I give most of it away, except for what I need to pay for train tickets.”
She has no health insurance because she didn’t want to be accused of scrounging off the state. Instead she relies on what she calls the “power of self-healing. When something hurts, I put my hand on it and say to myself I have the power to heal myself and the pain goes away.” What if she becomes really ill? “Cancer? Then I suppose I’ll die. I’ve already prepared myself for death several times — times when I thought, ‘This is it, it’s over’. But then I got up the next day and everything was fine.”
Her entire material world is now contained in a single black suitcase and a rucksack. No photographs because, she says, “I don’t need them”.
In the flesh Schwermer is charming and engaging as well as lively and youthful-looking with strong jutting teeth and eyesight that she says she has halfway managed to correct herself with exercises she has picked from the people she meets. She is well dressed, neat and tidy and, it may come as a surprise given her lifestyle, 67 years old. Her two children — now a music teacher and a therapist — support what their mother does although the family don’t spend Christmas together. Though single, she has relationships every now and again, but is adamant that any love affair will always come second to what she calls her ideological work with Gib und Nimm. “I can imagine having a serious relationship with someone who is spiritual and who believes in what I’m doing, but not one where I live in a nice big house. I can fall in love but I can’t imagine living with someone. ”
Given her constant roaming about the country, it is almost impossible pinning her down. We met in the Greenpeace offices in Münster, near Cologne, where she was to address a group of young people who had been inspired by her work to live without money for week (Schwermer spends much of her time giving lectures about her lifestyle). Accompanying her was an Italian/ Norwegian film crew and we watched as successive teenagers stumbled in and out of the office, having been given the task of bartering for food with the offer of work. “We already live in a barter economy. We go to work to get money. I want to go farther.”
What is farther and how far is far enough? Ideally, Schwermer would like to lead by example and give other people courage to change their attitudes towards money and how they live in and contribute to society. The pressure to buy and to own, she feels, has intensified in recent years. Consumerism is essentially about “an attempt to fill an empty space inside. And that emptiness, and the fear of loss, is manipulated by the media or big companies.” There is a fear, she says, that in not buying or owning an individual will fall out of society. The irony, she claims, is that material goods can never plug a spiritual hole and shopping and hoarding are more likely to isolate people than bring contentment. Does she intend to start a revolution?
“No, I think of myself as planting the seed,” she says. “Perhaps people come away from my lectures or seeing me being interviewed and decide to spend a little less. Others might start meditating. The point is that my living without money is to allow for the possibility of another kind of society. I want people to ask themselves, ‘What do I need? How do I really want to live?’ Every person needs to ask themselves who they really are and where they belong. That means getting to grips with oneself.”
Does she really think that she can convert other people to her life philosophy? “Yes, that’s our future. One day we will all live without money, because we don’t need it and because it is only a burden. We’re the way we are because it’s how the system allows us to be. We can buy everything we want but we need so much less than we realise. If you think that the capitalist system we live in now is the only system, well that’s just ridiculous.”
Though she no longer owns any of her own, she has written two books on her adventures (and has given away her royalties). The first, My Life without Money, turned her first into a minor hero in Germany in some quarters, the kind who, last week for example, was invited on to a late-night TV forum to discuss whether Money Can Make You Happy. Surrounded by dot-com millionaires and lottery winners, she spoke while the other guests peered at her, visibly disconcerted to meet a woman who had given up everything and who claimed to be happy. “I live completely normally, only without money,” she said. “There are people who do so in Siberia. And in Africa there are many people who survive only because they all help each other.”
Schwermer knows from experience that not everyone will take her seriously. When she began with her project, “I was attacked frequently by people telling me that I wasn’t living without money at all, that I was just being provocative or scrounging, which made me cry! But then I realised it isn’t just about giving and expecting something back, or about giving and allowing oneself to be taken advantage of, or becoming a victim. It is about the possibility of having another life, of letting go of the stuff around us and examining our deepest fears.”
She tells me about an episode three years ago when she became convinced that she was going to starve to death: “But I really asked myself what that was about and realised it was about my childhood, and it had no bearing on reality.” (Schwermer is the child of refugees who lost everything after the war). Her only real terror now is appearing in the media. “I hate being on TV because it makes me so nervous but I know I reach a lot of people that way.” The people she does get through to, judging by the demographics of the lecture halls she visits, tend to be women. Why? “Because women are more open to new ideas.”
Is Schwermer a lunatic? Certainly she has been called “naive” and “idealistic” by the author of an article in the right-wing Die Welt newspaper, who asked her whether she was pursuing a communist-lite agenda when communism has been proved to be a failure. “It’s true that communism didn’t work,” she says, “but human beings need to learn to be a little bit different before we can learn to share what we have. We are going to run out of oil in ten years. We don’t have infinite resources. That just isn’t sustainable.”
Is her own itinerant lifestyle sustainable? She thinks so. She feels young but, in the event of death, she has organised her own funeral. She’s “paid” for it by striking a deal with an enlightened clergyman, who agreed that she would cover the costs of the burial by offering counseling sessions for the bereaved. Such deals are a regular feature of her new existence: only the managers of the German rail network seem to be immune to her formidable powers of persuasion, hence the few euros she still needs at her disposable to travel long distances.
Schwermer often talks enthusiastically about “the new world” she is in the process of discovering. She is esoteric but not mad or prone to ranting. Most people find her to be engaging and likeable: there are now many members of her Tauschring. What about those who live without money but not through choice? What about the poor and the homeless? Has she ever converted a homeless person to her way of thinking?
“I haven’t managed to reach the homeless,” she says. “I did hold lectures for the homeless but only six or seven showed up. They didn’t want to hear it. One of the men there accused me of having ‘connections’, that I’d only been able to do what I have been able to do because I knew people. I do have contacts, that’s what this new world is all about, forging links and contacts. Otherwise it wouldn’t work.”
She never managed to convince her interlocutor and not long after their conversation he had resumed his place outside on the pavement begging for spare change.
From The Times, by Stefanie Marsh
November 24, 2009
reposted from http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/article6928744.ece
Twenty-two years ago Heidemarie Schwermer, a middle-aged secondary school teacher just emerging from a difficult marriage, moved with her two children from the village of Lueneburg to the city of Dortmund, in the Ruhr area of Germany, whose homeless population, she immediately noticed, was above average and striking in its intransigent hopelessness.
Her immediate reaction was shock. “This isn’t right, this can’t go on,” she said to herself. After careful reflection she set up what in Germany is called a Tauschring — a sort of swap shop — a place where people can exchange their skills or possessions for other skills and possessions, a money-free zone where a haircut could be rendered in return for car maintenance; a still-functioning but never-used toaster be exchanged for a couple of second-hand cardigans. She called it Gib und Nimm, Give and Take.
It was always Schwermer’s belief that the homeless didn’t need money to re-enter society: instead they should be able to empower themselves by making themselves useful, despite debts, destitution or joblessness. “I’ve always believed that even if you have nothing, you are worth a lot. Everyone has a place in this world.”
But the homeless of Dortmund seemed not to take to Schwermer’s plan, few ever turned up to the Tauschring. Some, they told her angrily to her face, felt that a middle-class woman with some education would never be able to relate to the circumstances of the dispossessed. Instead it was mainly the unemployed and the retired who began, in snowballing numbers, to flock to the Tauschring, their arms full of things that had been lying around their homes unused for years, or skills that they possessed but no longer exercised: retired hairdressers volunteered to cut the hair of out-of-work electricians, who would wire their kitchens in return; retired English teachers gave language lessons in return for the services of a dog-walker. The point was, not a single pfennig changed hands.
The Tauschring grew exponentially, was written up glowingly in a couple of local papers and turned into something of a Dortmund phenomenon. Its success also prompted Schwermer to ask serious questions of herself and her way of life. “I began to realise that I lived with so many things I didn’t need. So I decided that I wouldn’t buy anything without giving something away. That’s how it started. Then I began to really think about what I needed, clothes for example, and noticed that I could easily get by with what I could hang on ten coathangers. Everything else I gave away. I had so much stuff in the house that was superfluous. Getting rid of it was a relief.”
After a while even her vast collection of books began to assume an excessive presence in her home and one day Schwermer marched to a second-hand shop with her entire library. “The woman in the shop was upset. But I felt that giving them away was a good thing. I love books but I knew I had to get rid of them. I didn’t miss them, which surprised me. I just wanted to pare things down to their essentials.”
What had, in part, led Schwermer to her conclusions about “stuff” was a year of psychotherapy after the breakdown of her marriage in the mid-1980s. It was a difficult year, she remembers: “I was in floods of tears nearly every session, but at the end of it I felt so happy and decided that I wanted to live more simply. I also wanted to pass on what I learnt in therapy to other people, and that’s when I began to train as a psychotherapist.”
Other things changed. She took up meditation and began to realise how dissatisfied she was in her job. “I was always ill with flu or had backache and never realised the connection between my physical symptoms and my unhappiness at work.”
In the wake of setting up her Tauschring, she began to experiment with other sorts of jobs on the side. “I was working in a kitchen for ten deutschmarks an hour and people were saying to me, ‘You went to university, you studied to do this?’ But I thought, well, every person has an intrinsic value, why should I be valued more for being a teacher or a therapist than for working in a kitchen?”
The more ascetically she lived, the happier she became. By 1995 she was deeply involved in the Tauschring, house-sitting for short periods in exchange for cleaning or light maintenance work. She was buying virtually nothing: “When I needed something, I found that it would just come into my life. My glasses, for example. There was an optician who was a member of the Tauschring and he gave them to me in return for some therapy sessions.”
It was in 1996 she realised that “I had to go farther” and took what would be the most radical decision of her life: to live without money. She gave up her apartment and teaching job and resolved to live nomadically, an “extreme lifestyle”, she admits, moving from house to house, in return for menial work. Her new way of life was intended as a short-lived thing: she had given herself 12 months. But she found herself enjoying it so much that it never really ended.
Thirteen years on, she continues to live according to the principles of Gib und Nimm. “Life became much more exciting. More beautiful. I had everything I needed and I knew I couldn’t go back to my old life. I didn’t have to do what I didn’t like, I had a more profound sense of joy, and physically I feel better than ever. Living without money was just the first step. I realised that I wanted to change the world and I wasn’t going to do that by looking after someone’s cat while they were on holiday.”
She still lives — a week at a time — in the spare rooms of members of the Tauschring, cleaning or working in return for accommodation. Only very occasionally has she had personality clashes with her hosts and she tries to resolve any tension within herself “by going for a walk”. She has emergency savings of €200 (£180) and any other money that comes to her she gives away. “I decided it was OK to collect my pension but I give most of it away, except for what I need to pay for train tickets.”
She has no health insurance because she didn’t want to be accused of scrounging off the state. Instead she relies on what she calls the “power of self-healing. When something hurts, I put my hand on it and say to myself I have the power to heal myself and the pain goes away.” What if she becomes really ill? “Cancer? Then I suppose I’ll die. I’ve already prepared myself for death several times — times when I thought, ‘This is it, it’s over’. But then I got up the next day and everything was fine.”
Her entire material world is now contained in a single black suitcase and a rucksack. No photographs because, she says, “I don’t need them”.
In the flesh Schwermer is charming and engaging as well as lively and youthful-looking with strong jutting teeth and eyesight that she says she has halfway managed to correct herself with exercises she has picked from the people she meets. She is well dressed, neat and tidy and, it may come as a surprise given her lifestyle, 67 years old. Her two children — now a music teacher and a therapist — support what their mother does although the family don’t spend Christmas together. Though single, she has relationships every now and again, but is adamant that any love affair will always come second to what she calls her ideological work with Gib und Nimm. “I can imagine having a serious relationship with someone who is spiritual and who believes in what I’m doing, but not one where I live in a nice big house. I can fall in love but I can’t imagine living with someone. ”
Given her constant roaming about the country, it is almost impossible pinning her down. We met in the Greenpeace offices in Münster, near Cologne, where she was to address a group of young people who had been inspired by her work to live without money for week (Schwermer spends much of her time giving lectures about her lifestyle). Accompanying her was an Italian/ Norwegian film crew and we watched as successive teenagers stumbled in and out of the office, having been given the task of bartering for food with the offer of work. “We already live in a barter economy. We go to work to get money. I want to go farther.”
What is farther and how far is far enough? Ideally, Schwermer would like to lead by example and give other people courage to change their attitudes towards money and how they live in and contribute to society. The pressure to buy and to own, she feels, has intensified in recent years. Consumerism is essentially about “an attempt to fill an empty space inside. And that emptiness, and the fear of loss, is manipulated by the media or big companies.” There is a fear, she says, that in not buying or owning an individual will fall out of society. The irony, she claims, is that material goods can never plug a spiritual hole and shopping and hoarding are more likely to isolate people than bring contentment. Does she intend to start a revolution?
“No, I think of myself as planting the seed,” she says. “Perhaps people come away from my lectures or seeing me being interviewed and decide to spend a little less. Others might start meditating. The point is that my living without money is to allow for the possibility of another kind of society. I want people to ask themselves, ‘What do I need? How do I really want to live?’ Every person needs to ask themselves who they really are and where they belong. That means getting to grips with oneself.”
Does she really think that she can convert other people to her life philosophy? “Yes, that’s our future. One day we will all live without money, because we don’t need it and because it is only a burden. We’re the way we are because it’s how the system allows us to be. We can buy everything we want but we need so much less than we realise. If you think that the capitalist system we live in now is the only system, well that’s just ridiculous.”
Though she no longer owns any of her own, she has written two books on her adventures (and has given away her royalties). The first, My Life without Money, turned her first into a minor hero in Germany in some quarters, the kind who, last week for example, was invited on to a late-night TV forum to discuss whether Money Can Make You Happy. Surrounded by dot-com millionaires and lottery winners, she spoke while the other guests peered at her, visibly disconcerted to meet a woman who had given up everything and who claimed to be happy. “I live completely normally, only without money,” she said. “There are people who do so in Siberia. And in Africa there are many people who survive only because they all help each other.”
Schwermer knows from experience that not everyone will take her seriously. When she began with her project, “I was attacked frequently by people telling me that I wasn’t living without money at all, that I was just being provocative or scrounging, which made me cry! But then I realised it isn’t just about giving and expecting something back, or about giving and allowing oneself to be taken advantage of, or becoming a victim. It is about the possibility of having another life, of letting go of the stuff around us and examining our deepest fears.”
She tells me about an episode three years ago when she became convinced that she was going to starve to death: “But I really asked myself what that was about and realised it was about my childhood, and it had no bearing on reality.” (Schwermer is the child of refugees who lost everything after the war). Her only real terror now is appearing in the media. “I hate being on TV because it makes me so nervous but I know I reach a lot of people that way.” The people she does get through to, judging by the demographics of the lecture halls she visits, tend to be women. Why? “Because women are more open to new ideas.”
Is Schwermer a lunatic? Certainly she has been called “naive” and “idealistic” by the author of an article in the right-wing Die Welt newspaper, who asked her whether she was pursuing a communist-lite agenda when communism has been proved to be a failure. “It’s true that communism didn’t work,” she says, “but human beings need to learn to be a little bit different before we can learn to share what we have. We are going to run out of oil in ten years. We don’t have infinite resources. That just isn’t sustainable.”
Is her own itinerant lifestyle sustainable? She thinks so. She feels young but, in the event of death, she has organised her own funeral. She’s “paid” for it by striking a deal with an enlightened clergyman, who agreed that she would cover the costs of the burial by offering counseling sessions for the bereaved. Such deals are a regular feature of her new existence: only the managers of the German rail network seem to be immune to her formidable powers of persuasion, hence the few euros she still needs at her disposable to travel long distances.
Schwermer often talks enthusiastically about “the new world” she is in the process of discovering. She is esoteric but not mad or prone to ranting. Most people find her to be engaging and likeable: there are now many members of her Tauschring. What about those who live without money but not through choice? What about the poor and the homeless? Has she ever converted a homeless person to her way of thinking?
“I haven’t managed to reach the homeless,” she says. “I did hold lectures for the homeless but only six or seven showed up. They didn’t want to hear it. One of the men there accused me of having ‘connections’, that I’d only been able to do what I have been able to do because I knew people. I do have contacts, that’s what this new world is all about, forging links and contacts. Otherwise it wouldn’t work.”
She never managed to convince her interlocutor and not long after their conversation he had resumed his place outside on the pavement begging for spare change.
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Sweden Embraces Negative Interest (Demurrage)
Negative interest rate to boost growth: Riksbank
Published: 3 Sep 09 19:29 CET
Online: http://www.thelocal.se/21868/20090903/
Sweden's central bank has taken the unusual step of keeping its fixed interest rates pegged below zero in a bid to stimulate the economy.
* Stockholm falls as Dubai shocks global markets (27 Nov 09)
* Rate concerns shake up Swedish housing market (12 Nov 09)
* Riksbank keeps interest rate at 0.25 percent (22 Oct 09)
The Riksbank also kept is main benchmark rate on hold at 0.25 percent on Thursday as it raised its economic growth forecasts for this year and next, chiming with similar
moves in neighbouring Norway and by the European Central Bank.
"The signs of a turnaround in the economy have become increasingly clear but the recovery is from a low level," it said in a statement.
In July, the Riksbank fixed interest rates at minus 0.25 percent on certain deposits kept by the commercial banks at the central bank.
With the negative rate, banks are effectively fined if they hoard unused funds in the central bank's coffers -- a way of punishing them for a conservative lending policy at a time when the authorities want to ensure the economy gets easy credit.
Banks are usually paid interest on these deposits.
"It's better for a bank to be active... (rather) than just sit on the money," Riksbank governor Stefan Ingves told AFP.
Invges at the same time noted that the move was largely symbolic, being only a small element in the central bank's armoury while its other interest rates were above zero.
"It is more symbolic because it's a system which de facto isn't really used," he said. "It shows that this is technically possible to do but it's in no way a major component in the way we execute monetary policy today."
Lars Svensson, deputy central bank governor and an expert on low interest rates, said in the minutes on the July decision that hoarding cash was costly and that there was "nothing strange about negative interest rates."
Central banks around the world have slashed interest rates since the onset in late 2007 of the worst global slump since the 1930s sparked by an unravelling of speculative investments linked to property, especially in the United States.
With rates in many countries at or near zero, governments have also pumped hundreds of billions of dollars into their economies, with some officials openly contemplating the possibility of using negative interest rates to drive money held in the banks back out into the system.
Bank of England governor Mervyn King recently refused to rule out following the Swedish example.
"It's an idea we will certainly be looking at, whether the effectiveness of our asset purchases could be increased by reducing the rate at which we remunerate reserves," King said on August 12th.
"The (Swedish) central bank has done all it could to persuade banks to lend money to companies rather than to deposit it at the central bank," said Henrik Mitelman, chief strategist at Stockholm-based bank SEB.
"From that viewpoint, it was a bold, brave decision, a bit of an experiment," he said.
As it held rates unchanged, the Riksbank said it now expected the economy to shrink 4.9 percent this year before recovering to growth of 1.9 percent in 2010.
In July, it forecast that the economy would shrink 5.4 percent in 2009 and then grow 1.4 percent next year.
The Riksbank warned that although the economy was showing signs of recovery, "the labour market will lag behind and employment will not begin to rise until 2011."
AFP/The Local (news@thelocal.se)
Published: 3 Sep 09 19:29 CET
Online: http://www.thelocal.se/21868/20090903/
Sweden's central bank has taken the unusual step of keeping its fixed interest rates pegged below zero in a bid to stimulate the economy.
* Stockholm falls as Dubai shocks global markets (27 Nov 09)
* Rate concerns shake up Swedish housing market (12 Nov 09)
* Riksbank keeps interest rate at 0.25 percent (22 Oct 09)
The Riksbank also kept is main benchmark rate on hold at 0.25 percent on Thursday as it raised its economic growth forecasts for this year and next, chiming with similar
moves in neighbouring Norway and by the European Central Bank.
"The signs of a turnaround in the economy have become increasingly clear but the recovery is from a low level," it said in a statement.
In July, the Riksbank fixed interest rates at minus 0.25 percent on certain deposits kept by the commercial banks at the central bank.
With the negative rate, banks are effectively fined if they hoard unused funds in the central bank's coffers -- a way of punishing them for a conservative lending policy at a time when the authorities want to ensure the economy gets easy credit.
Banks are usually paid interest on these deposits.
"It's better for a bank to be active... (rather) than just sit on the money," Riksbank governor Stefan Ingves told AFP.
Invges at the same time noted that the move was largely symbolic, being only a small element in the central bank's armoury while its other interest rates were above zero.
"It is more symbolic because it's a system which de facto isn't really used," he said. "It shows that this is technically possible to do but it's in no way a major component in the way we execute monetary policy today."
Lars Svensson, deputy central bank governor and an expert on low interest rates, said in the minutes on the July decision that hoarding cash was costly and that there was "nothing strange about negative interest rates."
Central banks around the world have slashed interest rates since the onset in late 2007 of the worst global slump since the 1930s sparked by an unravelling of speculative investments linked to property, especially in the United States.
With rates in many countries at or near zero, governments have also pumped hundreds of billions of dollars into their economies, with some officials openly contemplating the possibility of using negative interest rates to drive money held in the banks back out into the system.
Bank of England governor Mervyn King recently refused to rule out following the Swedish example.
"It's an idea we will certainly be looking at, whether the effectiveness of our asset purchases could be increased by reducing the rate at which we remunerate reserves," King said on August 12th.
"The (Swedish) central bank has done all it could to persuade banks to lend money to companies rather than to deposit it at the central bank," said Henrik Mitelman, chief strategist at Stockholm-based bank SEB.
"From that viewpoint, it was a bold, brave decision, a bit of an experiment," he said.
As it held rates unchanged, the Riksbank said it now expected the economy to shrink 4.9 percent this year before recovering to growth of 1.9 percent in 2010.
In July, it forecast that the economy would shrink 5.4 percent in 2009 and then grow 1.4 percent next year.
The Riksbank warned that although the economy was showing signs of recovery, "the labour market will lag behind and employment will not begin to rise until 2011."
AFP/The Local (news@thelocal.se)
Greens Launch ‘Cooperative Tasmania’ Initiative
Venezuelan national govt has been doing something similar for a while...
Nick McKim MP
Thursday, 26th November 2009
For Comment: State Parliamentary Offices of the Tasmanian Greens, (03) 6233 8300
The Tasmanian Greens today released in Smithton their election policy initiative Cooperative Tasmania, which will provide practical assistance to local communities seeking to establish a cooperative, including provisions for the government to intervene to prevent asset-stripping.
Greens Leader Nick McKim MP, who was joined in Smithton by Greens’ Braddon candidate Paul O’Halloran, said that cooperatives have the potential to empower regional communities, by allowing producers, workers and local businesses take back control and responsibility for their employment and future.
Mr McKim has long advocated for greater recognition of the role cooperatives can play in securing local economies and regional communities, and has supported a cooperative model to be developed for the King Island abattoir following JBS Swift’s threat to leave.
“Cooperatives can be very successful, particularly in the agricultural sector, by giving local communities more power over their job security and economic future,” Mr McKim said.
“The Greens’ Cooperative Tasmania election commitment seeks to shift the government’s focus to supporting producers and communities, rather than companies simply being offered taxpayer funded bailouts as a knee-jerk reaction.”
“The Greens’ policy will put the onus onto the government of the day to work with local communities to investigate the viability of a co-op alternative as an initial response to any company quitting Tasmania.
“Then a range of practical assistance options will kick in to help in the establishment of a coop including the ability for the government to prevent the company from asset-stripping.”
Mr McKim again suggested that a tripartite approach be adopted to respond to the recent decision by McCain to close its Smithton vegetable processing plant.
“Mr Bartlett should not be playing politics here. We all should be working together to try to deliver solutions.”
The Greens’ Cooperative Tasmania policy will create a unit within the Department of Economic Development to:
- Establish the impact of a company’s decision to quit either Tasmania or its operations;
- Ensure the cooperative option is fully explored before any taxpayer funded bailout is offered
- Involve the Valuer-General in valuing the Tasmanian assets of a company to ensure a fair value deal is made between any new cooperative and the company;
- Prevent asset stripping by providing for the State Government to acquire plant and equipment;and
- Facilitate start-up financial assistance to newly formed cooperatives.
Nick McKim MP
Thursday, 26th November 2009
For Comment: State Parliamentary Offices of the Tasmanian Greens, (03) 6233 8300
The Tasmanian Greens today released in Smithton their election policy initiative Cooperative Tasmania, which will provide practical assistance to local communities seeking to establish a cooperative, including provisions for the government to intervene to prevent asset-stripping.
Greens Leader Nick McKim MP, who was joined in Smithton by Greens’ Braddon candidate Paul O’Halloran, said that cooperatives have the potential to empower regional communities, by allowing producers, workers and local businesses take back control and responsibility for their employment and future.
Mr McKim has long advocated for greater recognition of the role cooperatives can play in securing local economies and regional communities, and has supported a cooperative model to be developed for the King Island abattoir following JBS Swift’s threat to leave.
“Cooperatives can be very successful, particularly in the agricultural sector, by giving local communities more power over their job security and economic future,” Mr McKim said.
“The Greens’ Cooperative Tasmania election commitment seeks to shift the government’s focus to supporting producers and communities, rather than companies simply being offered taxpayer funded bailouts as a knee-jerk reaction.”
“The Greens’ policy will put the onus onto the government of the day to work with local communities to investigate the viability of a co-op alternative as an initial response to any company quitting Tasmania.
“Then a range of practical assistance options will kick in to help in the establishment of a coop including the ability for the government to prevent the company from asset-stripping.”
Mr McKim again suggested that a tripartite approach be adopted to respond to the recent decision by McCain to close its Smithton vegetable processing plant.
“Mr Bartlett should not be playing politics here. We all should be working together to try to deliver solutions.”
The Greens’ Cooperative Tasmania policy will create a unit within the Department of Economic Development to:
- Establish the impact of a company’s decision to quit either Tasmania or its operations;
- Ensure the cooperative option is fully explored before any taxpayer funded bailout is offered
- Involve the Valuer-General in valuing the Tasmanian assets of a company to ensure a fair value deal is made between any new cooperative and the company;
- Prevent asset stripping by providing for the State Government to acquire plant and equipment;and
- Facilitate start-up financial assistance to newly formed cooperatives.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Sacred Economics 101
by Chris Lindstrom, reposted from http://taoofmoney.wordpress.com/2008/10/14/sacred-economics-101/
It might be said that the proverbial emergence of humanity, in the form of Adam and Eve within the Garden of Eden, was, in fact, the emergence of the self-aware human being. By ‘self-aware’, I do not mean in the sense where someone is feeling insecure or out of touch, but someone who is connected to the source of one’s own being, both within one’s own consciousness and also permeating throughout all of nature, the cosmos, the totality of physical and non-physical existence. This primordial enlightening occurred thousands of years ago. The cultures, knowledges and ways of life assumed by these ancestors has been past down to the remnant of indigenous cultures and tribes scattered across the earth. But in modern ‘civilized’ times, these people are dismissed as primitive charlatans; naive savages, who, unable to come to terms with the perilous forces they were confronted by in the wilderness, projected imaginary visions of supernatural beings into the world. Because they did not have the faculties of reason to understand the world around them, or to accept what they didn’t know, these supernatural beings were the result of make-believe stories and myths to satisfy their desire for meaning. However, there is much evidence that there is another side to it. These peoples were, in fact, communing with the deepest depths of their own consciousness — a consciousness that was intimately one with the rest of Creation. They were adept at willingly entering states of consciousness that gave them access to another reality, an alternate reality, yet one that was inseparable from the one of waking consciousness. The Aborigines call this state ‘Dream Time’, because it was literally connecting with the same lucid state that we often encounter in our dreams, where we are connected with a myriad of characters and visions. For these ancient people, it was Sacred knowledge. It gave them, not just faith, but an experiential connection with what may be called the spiritual forces animating the physical cosmos. With this direct experience of a transcendental force, behind the veil of space and time, comes a profound respect for nature and the awesome and mysterious powers, rhythms, and patterns that sculpt its perpetual transformation.
In the world of modern cities, a whole other side of our consciousness reigns supreme. The shamanic and revelatory consciousness has warped into a new perverse form — the religion of Economics. Yet, conventional economics has a fundamental error: it has narrowed our relationship to nature from one being based on a primary respect and recognition to the integration and interdependence of living systems, to a sense that we are somehow disconnected from this rudimentary fountain of life, and that it exists solely to fulfill our unquenchable thirst for material pleasure and our personal pursuits for power and prestige. So, the modern economic system is designed to do just that. It is the proverbial ‘Ring of Power,’ placing God-like abilities to dominate nature and other human beings into the hands of a relatively small group of unspeakably immature and irresponsible individuals. It is unapologetically biased towards the dominance of private finance over all aspects of the economy, the rest of humanity, and of nature in general.
If economics is the religion, then money is the god. After all, what is money but an unholy faith? It puts trust in a system that fundamentally erodes the livelihood of those who are not strong or clever enough to compete, erodes the very ecological system that we depend on for our ultimate survival? Nearly all religions and spiritual traditions bear warnings to humanity. The greater we exercise our powers of creation upon the earth, we must, at the very least, assume a much greater respect and reverence for the cosmic and unknown forces at work. Buried in scriptures and mythologies is an awareness of humanity’s fated, perilous clash with the God of nature — a recognition that should we open up the Pandora’s box of money, capital and economic growth upon the world, we would be fatally undoing the natural balance of things. Yet, whether you believe in religious prophesies or not, our times are wrought with looming catastrophes of apocalyptic proportions: global warming, mass species extinction and species loss, peak oil, global warfare, financial meltdowns. What’s more, they all appear to be moving toward a common, imminent convergence point.
In the face of these disturbing truths, our only hope is to radically transform the systems that are largely responsible for this destruction. Even more importantly, we must transform the elements in ourselves that bind us to the unholy will of global corporatism, militarism and private finance. This economic transformation can be synthesized by creating a new economic practice: the practice of sacred economics.
This new discipline is the inclusion of knowledge and respect of the sacredness of all living beings, of all life, directly into our economic institutions. The means for measuring and valuing wealth must also be designed to account for the health of the environment that we live in, as well as the collective wealth and vitality of communities. Of course, it is essentially impossible to quantify all of these values in numerical terms. Nor is it essentially necessary to account for their transfer. Nature provided for all life forms without the written means of accounting for the exchange of energy. People can live with this in mind. Those who have discovered the art of ‘paying it forward’ have shown that magical transformations can occur in a person, when they awaken to the power and possibility of giving (see groups like www.charityfocus.org).
Here are a few principles of sacred economics. It is a concept and practice I am still evolving, and I would love your feedback on it.
Giving and Receiving
Life is a constant act of giving and receiving. In order for life to thrive, energy must circulate. It is a general principle that in any system the energy that goes out of that system must be replenished. This is true for our breath when we breathe in oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide, and it is true when we consume food and drink and expel human waste. This ecological reciprocity is key to life. In nature, every bit of waste becomes the food of another organism. In our rape and pillage economy, we have overloaded the environment with wastes that it cannot use, so they become toxic and destructive. And so it must be with money, if indeed, money remains a part of human society. Money must be made to account in some way or another for the generosity of the sun, the air, the waters. It must be real reflection of nature, and it must be sure that all things that we extract from nature go back in a way that nature can assimilate in a life-sustaining way.
Land
Chief Seattle said in a famous speech, “How can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the land? The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them?” This principle is shared amongst all indigenous peoples and is central to an economics of the sacred. Putting land, or the rights to land, in the marketplace creates a cultural disconnection from nature, because people become preoccupied with an artificiallyprescribed monetary value, rather than understanding that land’s real value cannot be measured, only experienced by relating to it with gratitude and reverence. ‘Property-fication’ also forces us to relate to land in terms of ‘plots’ and artificially created borders, thereby negating the natural seamless-ness and interconnectedness of ecology.
Knowledge
Information is only scarce, when people make it scarce. If I have knowledge, sharing it does not deprive me of it; it only makes everyone better off. Unfortunately, the modern education system operates on the opposite principle: putting a price on knowledge, so only a few can access it, thereby keeping it scarce. Part of Sacred Economics will be dismantling this scarcity of learning in our lives. It will mean breaking out of the monopoly of schooling, and instead exploring and creating a myriad of learning spaces to connect to the passions, dreams, needs, questions, of each person and community.
Usury
Sacred Economics cannot have interest as the principle means by which money is created. Very few people know this, but the fact is, all money is created as interest-bearing debt. This creates a fundamental burden on society to work under stress, to keep ahead of the compounding of compound interest. If you think about it, the mathematics of interest dictate that those who have more money earn greater profits on their money than those with less. This very simple yet profound reality is at the core of our social woes. Nearly all religions have in them some prohibition against usury. Islamic countries, in fact, have instituted this prohibition into their laws. Yet, these warnings have been completely ignored in western society. The recent financial bubble bursts are simply what is destined to happen when we base our system on usury. The bubbles of debt, financial speculation, and real estate grow so big that they overwhelm the physical economy, essentially eating away at it, just like cancer depletes the life force of the body until it collapses completely.
Oneness
The modern economy is very good at making people feel separate and alone. By creating an intrinsic wealth gap into the system, it tends to build resentment and depression into the minds of those who have less, and it creates a fear of that resentment in the minds of those with excess wealth. It also compels people to exploit the land, so as to get ahead in the market. The result is social and ecological alienation and degradation. This way of being is illusory and pathological. Einstein once said,
“A human being is a part of the whole that we call the universe, a part limited in time and space. And yet we experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest — a kind of optical illusion of our consciousness. This illusion is a prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for only the few people nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living beings and all of nature.”
I believe that this task is the only thing that will allow human beings to continue living on this earth. To be here, to be alive, is a blessing that needs to be appreciated through the way we interact with one another, by bringing forth generosity and love, consciously, into all dimensions of life. Dismantling the systems of domination that perpetuate the illusion of separation, most notably, the neo-liberal system of economics, but also religion and politics, is the most important step in the liberation of humanity.
However, this cannot be done by any activities that oppose the system. We must do it through dis-engaging from it. We can do this gradually by creating new systems, new social organisms, that, like the emergence of a butterfly out of a caterpillar, will feed off of the energy, resources and knowledge generated by the old system. Once this process begins, it will be unstoppable. I believe that it has, indeed, already begun.
It might be said that the proverbial emergence of humanity, in the form of Adam and Eve within the Garden of Eden, was, in fact, the emergence of the self-aware human being. By ‘self-aware’, I do not mean in the sense where someone is feeling insecure or out of touch, but someone who is connected to the source of one’s own being, both within one’s own consciousness and also permeating throughout all of nature, the cosmos, the totality of physical and non-physical existence. This primordial enlightening occurred thousands of years ago. The cultures, knowledges and ways of life assumed by these ancestors has been past down to the remnant of indigenous cultures and tribes scattered across the earth. But in modern ‘civilized’ times, these people are dismissed as primitive charlatans; naive savages, who, unable to come to terms with the perilous forces they were confronted by in the wilderness, projected imaginary visions of supernatural beings into the world. Because they did not have the faculties of reason to understand the world around them, or to accept what they didn’t know, these supernatural beings were the result of make-believe stories and myths to satisfy their desire for meaning. However, there is much evidence that there is another side to it. These peoples were, in fact, communing with the deepest depths of their own consciousness — a consciousness that was intimately one with the rest of Creation. They were adept at willingly entering states of consciousness that gave them access to another reality, an alternate reality, yet one that was inseparable from the one of waking consciousness. The Aborigines call this state ‘Dream Time’, because it was literally connecting with the same lucid state that we often encounter in our dreams, where we are connected with a myriad of characters and visions. For these ancient people, it was Sacred knowledge. It gave them, not just faith, but an experiential connection with what may be called the spiritual forces animating the physical cosmos. With this direct experience of a transcendental force, behind the veil of space and time, comes a profound respect for nature and the awesome and mysterious powers, rhythms, and patterns that sculpt its perpetual transformation.
In the world of modern cities, a whole other side of our consciousness reigns supreme. The shamanic and revelatory consciousness has warped into a new perverse form — the religion of Economics. Yet, conventional economics has a fundamental error: it has narrowed our relationship to nature from one being based on a primary respect and recognition to the integration and interdependence of living systems, to a sense that we are somehow disconnected from this rudimentary fountain of life, and that it exists solely to fulfill our unquenchable thirst for material pleasure and our personal pursuits for power and prestige. So, the modern economic system is designed to do just that. It is the proverbial ‘Ring of Power,’ placing God-like abilities to dominate nature and other human beings into the hands of a relatively small group of unspeakably immature and irresponsible individuals. It is unapologetically biased towards the dominance of private finance over all aspects of the economy, the rest of humanity, and of nature in general.
If economics is the religion, then money is the god. After all, what is money but an unholy faith? It puts trust in a system that fundamentally erodes the livelihood of those who are not strong or clever enough to compete, erodes the very ecological system that we depend on for our ultimate survival? Nearly all religions and spiritual traditions bear warnings to humanity. The greater we exercise our powers of creation upon the earth, we must, at the very least, assume a much greater respect and reverence for the cosmic and unknown forces at work. Buried in scriptures and mythologies is an awareness of humanity’s fated, perilous clash with the God of nature — a recognition that should we open up the Pandora’s box of money, capital and economic growth upon the world, we would be fatally undoing the natural balance of things. Yet, whether you believe in religious prophesies or not, our times are wrought with looming catastrophes of apocalyptic proportions: global warming, mass species extinction and species loss, peak oil, global warfare, financial meltdowns. What’s more, they all appear to be moving toward a common, imminent convergence point.
In the face of these disturbing truths, our only hope is to radically transform the systems that are largely responsible for this destruction. Even more importantly, we must transform the elements in ourselves that bind us to the unholy will of global corporatism, militarism and private finance. This economic transformation can be synthesized by creating a new economic practice: the practice of sacred economics.
This new discipline is the inclusion of knowledge and respect of the sacredness of all living beings, of all life, directly into our economic institutions. The means for measuring and valuing wealth must also be designed to account for the health of the environment that we live in, as well as the collective wealth and vitality of communities. Of course, it is essentially impossible to quantify all of these values in numerical terms. Nor is it essentially necessary to account for their transfer. Nature provided for all life forms without the written means of accounting for the exchange of energy. People can live with this in mind. Those who have discovered the art of ‘paying it forward’ have shown that magical transformations can occur in a person, when they awaken to the power and possibility of giving (see groups like www.charityfocus.org).
Here are a few principles of sacred economics. It is a concept and practice I am still evolving, and I would love your feedback on it.
Giving and Receiving
Life is a constant act of giving and receiving. In order for life to thrive, energy must circulate. It is a general principle that in any system the energy that goes out of that system must be replenished. This is true for our breath when we breathe in oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide, and it is true when we consume food and drink and expel human waste. This ecological reciprocity is key to life. In nature, every bit of waste becomes the food of another organism. In our rape and pillage economy, we have overloaded the environment with wastes that it cannot use, so they become toxic and destructive. And so it must be with money, if indeed, money remains a part of human society. Money must be made to account in some way or another for the generosity of the sun, the air, the waters. It must be real reflection of nature, and it must be sure that all things that we extract from nature go back in a way that nature can assimilate in a life-sustaining way.
Land
Chief Seattle said in a famous speech, “How can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the land? The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them?” This principle is shared amongst all indigenous peoples and is central to an economics of the sacred. Putting land, or the rights to land, in the marketplace creates a cultural disconnection from nature, because people become preoccupied with an artificiallyprescribed monetary value, rather than understanding that land’s real value cannot be measured, only experienced by relating to it with gratitude and reverence. ‘Property-fication’ also forces us to relate to land in terms of ‘plots’ and artificially created borders, thereby negating the natural seamless-ness and interconnectedness of ecology.
Knowledge
Information is only scarce, when people make it scarce. If I have knowledge, sharing it does not deprive me of it; it only makes everyone better off. Unfortunately, the modern education system operates on the opposite principle: putting a price on knowledge, so only a few can access it, thereby keeping it scarce. Part of Sacred Economics will be dismantling this scarcity of learning in our lives. It will mean breaking out of the monopoly of schooling, and instead exploring and creating a myriad of learning spaces to connect to the passions, dreams, needs, questions, of each person and community.
Usury
Sacred Economics cannot have interest as the principle means by which money is created. Very few people know this, but the fact is, all money is created as interest-bearing debt. This creates a fundamental burden on society to work under stress, to keep ahead of the compounding of compound interest. If you think about it, the mathematics of interest dictate that those who have more money earn greater profits on their money than those with less. This very simple yet profound reality is at the core of our social woes. Nearly all religions have in them some prohibition against usury. Islamic countries, in fact, have instituted this prohibition into their laws. Yet, these warnings have been completely ignored in western society. The recent financial bubble bursts are simply what is destined to happen when we base our system on usury. The bubbles of debt, financial speculation, and real estate grow so big that they overwhelm the physical economy, essentially eating away at it, just like cancer depletes the life force of the body until it collapses completely.
Oneness
The modern economy is very good at making people feel separate and alone. By creating an intrinsic wealth gap into the system, it tends to build resentment and depression into the minds of those who have less, and it creates a fear of that resentment in the minds of those with excess wealth. It also compels people to exploit the land, so as to get ahead in the market. The result is social and ecological alienation and degradation. This way of being is illusory and pathological. Einstein once said,
“A human being is a part of the whole that we call the universe, a part limited in time and space. And yet we experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest — a kind of optical illusion of our consciousness. This illusion is a prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for only the few people nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living beings and all of nature.”
I believe that this task is the only thing that will allow human beings to continue living on this earth. To be here, to be alive, is a blessing that needs to be appreciated through the way we interact with one another, by bringing forth generosity and love, consciously, into all dimensions of life. Dismantling the systems of domination that perpetuate the illusion of separation, most notably, the neo-liberal system of economics, but also religion and politics, is the most important step in the liberation of humanity.
However, this cannot be done by any activities that oppose the system. We must do it through dis-engaging from it. We can do this gradually by creating new systems, new social organisms, that, like the emergence of a butterfly out of a caterpillar, will feed off of the energy, resources and knowledge generated by the old system. Once this process begins, it will be unstoppable. I believe that it has, indeed, already begun.
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Psychology of the New Economy
I have come across many people in working on the new economy, mostly in currency work, that bring to the work both lots of hope and just as much fear.
The timebank is probably the most idealist currency project I have been working on, second only to the Really Really Free Market. The Really Really Free Market requires gestures of unreciprocated generosity, but in a way the risk is low for most people. They put in usually only a small amount that they feel comfortable giving away without asking anything in return. The rules of the game are pretty clear and expectations of conviviality are high, but most people don’t come and expect to get lots of high quality services and goods. Though sometimes they are pleasantly surprised by a nice wool jacket or a professional massage or some organic vegan soup. Trust actually doesn’t need to be that high since the risks are low. If someone comes and takes half the stuff being given away, well it needed a home and people wanted to get rid of it anyway. The disproportionate take is not too big of a deal and we all might think to ourselves, “this person probably needed this stuff badly, probably to sell.” Let us not judge too harshly. Though even at the RRFM, I’ve had a few fear-based, distrusting interactions, usually around people having to clean up other people’s junk or accidental theft (people taking things that thought were free but were personal belongings). However, it seems the event builds trust over the long term through positive interactions and generous exchanges.
A significant amount of fear came up when the timebank, still in pilot phase, had its first beta launch party and orientation for testers for the online system. The timebank is a somewhere between an organized gift economy system and a more rigid accounting reciprocity system. We keep score with everyone’s hour of service being equal, but we don’t enforce balance limits on accounts. We only flag high or low balances so we can contact these members and help them spend or earn if they are able. People are putting in anywhere from very low (pet sitting) to very high (plumbing) skilled services and they don’t know for sure how or when they will be reciprocated. The members on the system don’t all know each other and no certifications for performing any services are required to post, as with craigslist, although we ask people to be clear about their qualifications.
During the timebank launch party all kinds of fear-based questions came up. How do we know we will be able to get things we want out of the system if we put a lot in? How do we know people are qualified, certified, experienced, etc? How do we know people on the system are safe? How do know if they are Muslim- or eco-friendly? At the Money Fix screen and alternative currency presentation similar questions came up about counterfeiting (a very common question), legal problems, corruption, etc. People immediately jump to questions about potential problems, usually around breeches of trust, rather that the hopeful possibilities of using the system. You could feel all their past economic and other related traumas bubbling up to the surface and they needed to be urgently heard. While their concerns are useful to hear, I am concerned that we will get stuck in the old paradigm of fear, distrust and alienation.
We can create systems that offer some reassurances that facilitate some trust through integrating reputation systems (ratings, reviews, thankyous, references, certification requirements, etc.) Although sometimes this can provide a false sense of security or undermine the use of other interpersonal, individual assessments of safety, quality and trustworthiness. I think part of where we want to be going is towards a more village or tribal model, where people know each other well enough to make their own judgments in addition to or instead of these abstracted online reputations, though they can be helpful in metropolitan areas. There is really no good substitute for real life interpersonal relationships with trust, compassion, and love. Although creating online reputations systems can help build a bridge from extreme alienation and lack of trust to building caring community, but we need more.
I’ve been talking with some investors who might want to donate or invest in alternative currency projects and they wonder “what’s in it for me" an "what will my return be?" I usually answer, you will be helping your community, then your community will be healthier and help you, directly or indirectly. Usually when people invest in the stock market, they expect high risk and also high returns. There is quite a lot of risk in investing in community projects, unless you known your community well enough to know on a personal basis who to trust (this seems less risky than an abstract stock rating), and also high returns, but they are long-term, slow and ten d to be indirect. But in slow money or local investing, the trust does not usually come from ratings, it comes from first-hand knowledge of the businesses or community projects they are investing in. And the desire to invest comes out of love and compassion and other personal values, like justice and sustainability.
Trust, love and compassion, can be built through interpersonal interactions. Sharing food, conversation and touch can create these feelings. Sharing goods and service can, too. It seems at least as important in these new exchange systems that people pay as much attention if not more to the quality of the interactions with people – being as nice, generous, reliable, etc – as with the quality or quantity of things exchanged. This is how we can shift the real economy.
However, we also need healing from the trauma of the old economy - prenuptial agreements, aggressive telemarketing and credit card company calls, “rip-offs”,divorce settlements, ruthless market competition, manipulative advertising, thefts, commodified relationships, commodified life. People can continue to act in these new systems, even in worker cooperatives, in the old pattern of maximizing individual gain, competition, feelings of economic fear and scarcity. We need to retrain people to legitimately trust each other and care about each other. Every call, every trade, every economic interaction is an opportunity for creating a new economy and healing from the old.
To some extent, we do need opportunities for people to recognize and express and address their legitimate fears around the economy and lack of community. We also need to create many opportunities for people to connect in positive ways that are less commodity based and take care of each others’ needs through activities like: potlucks, community gardens, yard sharing, childcare clubs, tool sharing libraries, community healing centers, swap parties, gift markets, timebanks, and other forms of direct community service. Focusing on sharing food and healing and meditation could be especially helpful for people coming from a very wounded place.
We need to pay more attention to all of our interactions and focus on listening, caring, compassion, rather the person we are serving or who is serving us as just a client or just a service provider in a role. We are all human beings deserving of love and until we jump out of our alienated roles, we will never have this new economy or strong community bonds. We just won’t feel that motivated or even know how to take care of each other. Ask people how they are doing, what their dreams are, if they need help or a hug. The world is transformed greatly by people who care and people who feel sincerely cared for. It helps people get out of the mindset that they have to earn money until they can’t any longer at any cost in order to have a safe and happy life. It helps shift people from the me to the we consciousness.
I helped with some Food Not Bombs servings at different locations with different cooks and servers (different chapters). Some provided food with much conviviality, care and conversation and some provided food with a no conversation and a snarly face - servers very separated from people being served. I don't see how the latter is changing the world. People knowing that there is one more place they can get vegan soup once a week will not have nearly as much impact as group that engages and tries to understand and help in other ways the people that they are supposedly helping. (Of course I also understand it's a form of protest.) Reproducing an alientaed charity service doesn't seem very transformative to me.
On another front, if we are going to have some large scale currency systems like the Fureai Kippu time exchange elderhcare system in Japan or possibly for healthcare here in the US, perhaps we do need a reputation system built in. In a large scale state, national or international systems with high stakes like a persons’ health, reputation could be extremely important. I think it’s great to know that that our food is most likely organic through reputation systems like quality assurance international, although it’s better to know your farmer and know how s/he treats the animals, soil, and whether s/he needs help also. And it’s better to know the person who is taking care of your elderly mother or at least a friend who knows that person. They will also probably feel more responsibility of being a good helper if they are connected in some way other than online.
At some point though, you have to have to let go and hope enough to trust people (you can often do this by getting to know them in low risk situations). And if they don’t completely meet your expectations, you have an opportunity talk to them about it and try again. Give people the benefit of the doubt, and realize that they are coming from a wounded place and we need to try to understand that. If an exchange doesn’t work out with one person, that doesn’t mean it won’t work out with everyone. If there are repeated systemic problems (like here in the Bay Area people are notoriously flaky), then we need to address this issue repeatedly in our work so that problems are reduced and people can start to sincerely trust each other again. And we need to be conscious to not repeat these patterns ourselves. Every new pattern you create has the potential for the butterfly effect. Be kind and generous to one person and they make be inclined to reciprocate indirectly to three more people and so on.
It is a long road to change our consciousness and cultural patterns. New systems of exchange other forms of economy can go a long way, but we need to deliberately create ways of thinking and being together, to heal, and to make that great leap of faith that we could build a new economy based on love, trust and compassion. Every day and every interaction is a precious opportunity to make the shift. Have block parties, share food, share healing, offer to help those in need, help build a garden for a neighborhood park, school or clinic, lend someone your car or a ride or a spare room when they need it. All these things help build the new economy one small step at a time.
It's not just about how many organic apples you trade or give away it's also about how you give them away.
The timebank is probably the most idealist currency project I have been working on, second only to the Really Really Free Market. The Really Really Free Market requires gestures of unreciprocated generosity, but in a way the risk is low for most people. They put in usually only a small amount that they feel comfortable giving away without asking anything in return. The rules of the game are pretty clear and expectations of conviviality are high, but most people don’t come and expect to get lots of high quality services and goods. Though sometimes they are pleasantly surprised by a nice wool jacket or a professional massage or some organic vegan soup. Trust actually doesn’t need to be that high since the risks are low. If someone comes and takes half the stuff being given away, well it needed a home and people wanted to get rid of it anyway. The disproportionate take is not too big of a deal and we all might think to ourselves, “this person probably needed this stuff badly, probably to sell.” Let us not judge too harshly. Though even at the RRFM, I’ve had a few fear-based, distrusting interactions, usually around people having to clean up other people’s junk or accidental theft (people taking things that thought were free but were personal belongings). However, it seems the event builds trust over the long term through positive interactions and generous exchanges.
A significant amount of fear came up when the timebank, still in pilot phase, had its first beta launch party and orientation for testers for the online system. The timebank is a somewhere between an organized gift economy system and a more rigid accounting reciprocity system. We keep score with everyone’s hour of service being equal, but we don’t enforce balance limits on accounts. We only flag high or low balances so we can contact these members and help them spend or earn if they are able. People are putting in anywhere from very low (pet sitting) to very high (plumbing) skilled services and they don’t know for sure how or when they will be reciprocated. The members on the system don’t all know each other and no certifications for performing any services are required to post, as with craigslist, although we ask people to be clear about their qualifications.
During the timebank launch party all kinds of fear-based questions came up. How do we know we will be able to get things we want out of the system if we put a lot in? How do we know people are qualified, certified, experienced, etc? How do we know people on the system are safe? How do know if they are Muslim- or eco-friendly? At the Money Fix screen and alternative currency presentation similar questions came up about counterfeiting (a very common question), legal problems, corruption, etc. People immediately jump to questions about potential problems, usually around breeches of trust, rather that the hopeful possibilities of using the system. You could feel all their past economic and other related traumas bubbling up to the surface and they needed to be urgently heard. While their concerns are useful to hear, I am concerned that we will get stuck in the old paradigm of fear, distrust and alienation.
We can create systems that offer some reassurances that facilitate some trust through integrating reputation systems (ratings, reviews, thankyous, references, certification requirements, etc.) Although sometimes this can provide a false sense of security or undermine the use of other interpersonal, individual assessments of safety, quality and trustworthiness. I think part of where we want to be going is towards a more village or tribal model, where people know each other well enough to make their own judgments in addition to or instead of these abstracted online reputations, though they can be helpful in metropolitan areas. There is really no good substitute for real life interpersonal relationships with trust, compassion, and love. Although creating online reputations systems can help build a bridge from extreme alienation and lack of trust to building caring community, but we need more.
I’ve been talking with some investors who might want to donate or invest in alternative currency projects and they wonder “what’s in it for me" an "what will my return be?" I usually answer, you will be helping your community, then your community will be healthier and help you, directly or indirectly. Usually when people invest in the stock market, they expect high risk and also high returns. There is quite a lot of risk in investing in community projects, unless you known your community well enough to know on a personal basis who to trust (this seems less risky than an abstract stock rating), and also high returns, but they are long-term, slow and ten d to be indirect. But in slow money or local investing, the trust does not usually come from ratings, it comes from first-hand knowledge of the businesses or community projects they are investing in. And the desire to invest comes out of love and compassion and other personal values, like justice and sustainability.
Trust, love and compassion, can be built through interpersonal interactions. Sharing food, conversation and touch can create these feelings. Sharing goods and service can, too. It seems at least as important in these new exchange systems that people pay as much attention if not more to the quality of the interactions with people – being as nice, generous, reliable, etc – as with the quality or quantity of things exchanged. This is how we can shift the real economy.
However, we also need healing from the trauma of the old economy - prenuptial agreements, aggressive telemarketing and credit card company calls, “rip-offs”,divorce settlements, ruthless market competition, manipulative advertising, thefts, commodified relationships, commodified life. People can continue to act in these new systems, even in worker cooperatives, in the old pattern of maximizing individual gain, competition, feelings of economic fear and scarcity. We need to retrain people to legitimately trust each other and care about each other. Every call, every trade, every economic interaction is an opportunity for creating a new economy and healing from the old.
To some extent, we do need opportunities for people to recognize and express and address their legitimate fears around the economy and lack of community. We also need to create many opportunities for people to connect in positive ways that are less commodity based and take care of each others’ needs through activities like: potlucks, community gardens, yard sharing, childcare clubs, tool sharing libraries, community healing centers, swap parties, gift markets, timebanks, and other forms of direct community service. Focusing on sharing food and healing and meditation could be especially helpful for people coming from a very wounded place.
We need to pay more attention to all of our interactions and focus on listening, caring, compassion, rather the person we are serving or who is serving us as just a client or just a service provider in a role. We are all human beings deserving of love and until we jump out of our alienated roles, we will never have this new economy or strong community bonds. We just won’t feel that motivated or even know how to take care of each other. Ask people how they are doing, what their dreams are, if they need help or a hug. The world is transformed greatly by people who care and people who feel sincerely cared for. It helps people get out of the mindset that they have to earn money until they can’t any longer at any cost in order to have a safe and happy life. It helps shift people from the me to the we consciousness.
I helped with some Food Not Bombs servings at different locations with different cooks and servers (different chapters). Some provided food with much conviviality, care and conversation and some provided food with a no conversation and a snarly face - servers very separated from people being served. I don't see how the latter is changing the world. People knowing that there is one more place they can get vegan soup once a week will not have nearly as much impact as group that engages and tries to understand and help in other ways the people that they are supposedly helping. (Of course I also understand it's a form of protest.) Reproducing an alientaed charity service doesn't seem very transformative to me.
On another front, if we are going to have some large scale currency systems like the Fureai Kippu time exchange elderhcare system in Japan or possibly for healthcare here in the US, perhaps we do need a reputation system built in. In a large scale state, national or international systems with high stakes like a persons’ health, reputation could be extremely important. I think it’s great to know that that our food is most likely organic through reputation systems like quality assurance international, although it’s better to know your farmer and know how s/he treats the animals, soil, and whether s/he needs help also. And it’s better to know the person who is taking care of your elderly mother or at least a friend who knows that person. They will also probably feel more responsibility of being a good helper if they are connected in some way other than online.
At some point though, you have to have to let go and hope enough to trust people (you can often do this by getting to know them in low risk situations). And if they don’t completely meet your expectations, you have an opportunity talk to them about it and try again. Give people the benefit of the doubt, and realize that they are coming from a wounded place and we need to try to understand that. If an exchange doesn’t work out with one person, that doesn’t mean it won’t work out with everyone. If there are repeated systemic problems (like here in the Bay Area people are notoriously flaky), then we need to address this issue repeatedly in our work so that problems are reduced and people can start to sincerely trust each other again. And we need to be conscious to not repeat these patterns ourselves. Every new pattern you create has the potential for the butterfly effect. Be kind and generous to one person and they make be inclined to reciprocate indirectly to three more people and so on.
It is a long road to change our consciousness and cultural patterns. New systems of exchange other forms of economy can go a long way, but we need to deliberately create ways of thinking and being together, to heal, and to make that great leap of faith that we could build a new economy based on love, trust and compassion. Every day and every interaction is a precious opportunity to make the shift. Have block parties, share food, share healing, offer to help those in need, help build a garden for a neighborhood park, school or clinic, lend someone your car or a ride or a spare room when they need it. All these things help build the new economy one small step at a time.
It's not just about how many organic apples you trade or give away it's also about how you give them away.
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