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Money and sustainability

Submitted by James Samuel on 23 July 2010 - 12:35am | Blog entry

Deirdre Kent's offers a succinct summary of why we need a revolution in our money system.

I say the money system is the missing element in sustainability.

Why is this?

Because now when banks create money as interest bearing debt they create the loan but not the interest to pay it off. So borrowers end up competing with each other and the losers have to return to the banks for further loans. This widens the gap between net borrowers and net lenders. It also drives the imperative for continual economic growth. When money is created as interest bearing debt it has all these disadvantages. Environmental destruction (like species loss and climate change) eventually becomes inevitable. But other serious effects include a growing total burden of debt, financial instability and a growing concentration of wealth in the hands of a few.

So monetary literacy at all levels is as vital to building a sustainable future as eco-literacy. Talk of sustainability is largely futile while we have a global monetary system whose very design widens the gap between rich and poor and forces continual economic growth. To struggle for social justice and reversing of the destruction of our habitat without introducing a diverse and benign money system is largely misdirected effort. This flawed system is at the root of the growth imperative, and the consequent corporate globalisation is destroying life on this planet.

Tragically the universities, whose economics departments are isolated from other disciplines, do not teach this.The form of each local currency will vary widely. Some will be a mutual credit circle recorded on the Internet, some will be recorded on electronic cards and some will occur as printed notes. Some will be local vouchers bought with national currency, which circulate fast because a circulation incentive is built in to encourage local trading.

Each currency will have a specific purpose. Some will be designed to increase volunteering, others for increasing local trade, others for reducing youth unemployment. Read more...


Deirdre Kent is author of Healthy Money Healthy Planet, the Joy of Lobbying, with interests and activities in civic participation and societal values.

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Local Currencies

Submitted by Millie Pickle on 23 July 2010 - 2:15pm.

I think the time has come for another effort to establish local currency on Waiheke, although having said that, I don't personally have the energy to spearhead said effort. I think we should put it up for consideration though, perhaps at the next TTW gathering.

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Monetary Systems

Submitted by committed on 26 July 2010 - 5:27am.

I read Dierdre Kent about three months ago, and welcome the opportunity to get together with others to work on our "literacy". The idea of starting up a local currency again on Waiheke is a good one and I believe needs to accompanied by developing our own understandings of alternative economic arrangements further.

I note from HMHP that commodity based local currencies were created between the World Wars in Germany and Austria, and were hugely successful. They were closed down by Central Government at the behest of Central Banks. At the same time in NZ social credit was created by the first Labour Govt to meet community needs for housing and employment. Unfortunately the farming economy was in the hands of overseas banks and beholden to the needs of shareholders. WW11 saw NZ more firmly locked into thatt hen current form of "globalization".

In the process of education of ourselves and others a shifting of savings and investment into local credit unions, and cooperative investment institutions such as PSIS and Phoenix could be advocated as well as local currencies.

I would also recommend a recent posting, a critigue of Growth and the Steady State Economy. It lays out with devastating logic the impossibility of pulling back from the brink of ecological and social destruction under capitalist organization of the economy. What was missing from the article was any mention of the centrality of the monetary system to the growth imperative.

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Money system

Submitted by Future Bright on 26 July 2010 - 8:10pm.

Hey all, really nice to see some peeps getting into the very route of the problem we collectively face, considering this debt/IOU's to foreign is created in our name whether we like it or not!

Debt free money has been created many times before throughout history (tally sticks et all...)and used, but doesn't seem to last funnily enough.

In fact this entire crisis, some real/ much dramatised or imagined is the result of the system chewing on its own leg - so to speak...

There is lots I could say here, but essentially its down to all of us to remove the blinkers and see the truth in plain sight.

FB

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New Bank of England act

Submitted by chris.olson on 30 July 2010 - 10:26am.

Hi Everyone,

I just came across an article discussing a proposed new Bank of England act which gives only the Bank of England the right to create money, and also removing the ability of commercial banks in the UK from creating debt from nothing. This seems to be a really positive step forward for the British government and relevant to the conversation regarding money and debt. The link is at

http://yourfreedom.hmg.gov.uk/restoring-civil-liberties/enact-the-bank-o...

There is also more detail at http://www.bankofenglandact.co.uk/

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bankofenglandact.co.uk

Submitted by Kevthefarmer on 2 August 2010 - 12:03pm.

This is just about the most important thing that needs to happen. the structural need for an ever enlarging money supply based on interest bearing debt under the present system is at the root of most of the worlds problems, financial, social and environmental. One problem is that the vast majority of people find it incredulous that the banks create almost all the money supply from debt and there is never enough money in the system to pay it off without creating further debt. Most believe that loans etc. come from money held on deposit from savers and that all the debt in the world must be balanced by an equal amount of credit somewhere else-it is not. Any other scenario seems counter-intuitive to the vast majority. It is, in fact, a form of legalised counterfeiting.

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a critigue of Growth and the Steady State Economy, etc

Submitted by npeterson on 15 August 2010 - 1:00pm.

Where do I find this?

Also what is HMHP?

Nancy

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Monetary system

Submitted by committed on 22 August 2010 - 4:11pm.

Hi to Nancy,

HMHP is Healthy Money Healthy Planet. by Deidre Kent. She is a NZer who has been active in this area for some years. It is a most useful book. Growth, Capitalism and Steady State Economy is to be found in realeconomics review I believe. It was posted on the Transition Towns site about a month ago.

I haven't quite sorted out how to use this system, so I hope that this information gets to where it is wanted.

Carol Weitzel, Waiheke (committed)

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