Posting by Philip Brewer of Wise Bread to the Metacurrency Project Yahoo Group

[Steve B.]

Happy Thanksgiving!

Philip Brewer posts on Wise Bread (http://www.wisebread.com/philip-
brewer). He shares many of the principles and values we espouse.
Philip is also a member of the Metacurrency Project Yahoo Group
(http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/Metacurrency_Project/) setup
earlier this month by John Robb (http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/
about.html).

This past weekend, John posted an intro about metacurrencies on Global
Guerrillas (http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/
2010/11/journal-lets-build-some-metacurrencies.html). It precipitate
a series of exchanges under the subject line: "Packets of Seed --
Basket of Vegetables". You can follow it in its entirety once you
join the group, should you choose to do so. It's open.

Philip posted the following (http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/
Metacurrency_Project/message/48) in the string:

"I don't think the farm or the tailor shop are good candidates for a
meta currency (in the sense that John Robb seems to be talking about),
because there's not much scope for other people to contribute to the
production of the business.

But imagine something like an amusement park, which needs people to
pick up litter, people to trim the topiary, people to design the
attractions, and people to build and maintain them. Currently, parks
hire people for all these tasks, but that makes it a capital-intensive
activity.

Suppose, instead, the enterprise offered to pay people with a meta-
currency—one whose value was tied to the value of the enterprise.
Everyone who took a shift doing grounds-keeping (or designing or
building or maintaining) would get paid, but the currency that they
received would only have value if the enterprise were successful. (But
might have high value, if the business were highly successful.)

Businesses already do this in small ways, but not in a way that offers
to share out a large fraction of the profits with the people who do
the work. (Instead, they keep the profits for the people who provide
the capital.)

If I understand what John is proposing, the idea would be to offer to
share most of the profits with the people doing the work. This would
never fly for any sort of capital-intensive business, where the people
putting up the money would insist on keeping the profits. But for a
business that didn't require much capital, but did require steady work—
and especially if it was the sort of work that could be performed by a
changing mix of people, some of whom worked only a little, or only in
short bursts—it might allow the creation of enterprises that would
otherwise never get started (because of a lack of capital to get the
thing off the ground).

The win would be valuable work being done—things produced and the
workers paid—that simply wouldn't happen if everyone had to be paid in
regular money."

Philip's "amusement park" analogy describes the use of a medium of
exchange among members of what could be cast as a service
cooperative. Not only does he posit an argument for a metacurrency,
he associates that currency with value of the enterprise. People who
do not have capital to invest, instead put their skills, talents,
labor, etc. into it. As the value of the organization increases
through the impact of peoples' investments of themselves, the
significance and applicability of the metacurrency as a measure of
ownership also increase. The revenue that comes in from customers of
the amusement park provides the return on investment that can be
distributed to members or held as retained earnings for use when
capital investments are unavoidable. Anyway, thought you might find
it useful.

All the best to you and yours!

Steve B.