Do you believe we have significant unmet needs and unused human capacity?

[BelgianMadCow]

Then, complementary alternative currencies can connect both, on OUR terms.

Consider this example, From Popularresistance.org:

Local Currency, Berkshares, Gets International Attention

GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass.

People can now walk into five banks across the county and change dollars into BerkShares. More than 400 businesses accept the alternative currency. Now 140,000 bills are in circulation, in denominations of 1, 5, 10, 20 and 50 that bear images of local heroes and landscapes.
...
“Partly as a result of the financial crisis, people no longer believe in banks, and banks are no longer willing to support many of the small, medium-size enterprises,” Doen’s director, Nina Tellegen, said from its headquarters in Amsterdam. “So by introducing this loan system within the BerkShares currency, that’s a very important next step.”
...
“I think we’re really on our way to being embraced,” she said. “It’s not like all hippie-dippie businesses taking BerkShares. There are excavators and dentists and lawyers and accountants.”
...
“It does undeniably add to business,” Rubiner said. “It does let everybody know we’re trying to add value to this community.”

Happened across this bit of good news, and wanted to use it as an occasion to point out the possibilities of local alternative currencies. After all, money is nothing but an agreement. And we currently have only one type of money: bank-issued, interest bearing fiat currency administered by central banks. That is a monoculture, and an "agreement" that isn't working out too well for most of us. Like all monocultures, it's not very resilient (even if it can be efficient).

The good news is, complementary currencies can be adopted that have very different properties. They can be issued without interest, can have extra conditions attached (like a condition that money becomes useless unless used regularly - against piling it up, as an example) and, most importantly, can connect unmet needs with unused capacity. It's easy to see we have a lot of both. All the young unemployed and all the needs of the elderly, for example. All the factory space lying abandoned, etc. Detroit.

And the best news: we don't have to wait for the government to accept these currencies. If local government accepts it to pay for taxes, that's a huge plus, but it's not needed.

There are many examples already, and they are growing by the day. I'd like to point you to the site and the books of Bernard Lietaer, who is advocating for their use. Below is a primer on the why & how of alternative currencies:

"Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation and I care not who makes the laws." Mayer Amschel Rothschild, founder of the Rothschild international Banking Dynasty, 1790

Two can play that game. Or 99 vs 1

[BelgianMadCow]

1. kick

who knows, maybe some people are interested in solutions.

[panader0]

2. Yes, I believe both.

I am an idealist at heart.