Re: Credit Bank Development Model -> Common Good Bank

[Richard Moore]

Hi William,

Many thanks for writing! 

My own ideas have converged very much toward the Common Good Bank Model.

Michael Richardson wrote to me and told me about his experiences with community currencies and the IRS. A very sad story, where the more successful a community currency is, the more it becomes non-viable due to taxes. Sad, but reality must be faced. 

Upon rethinking, I realized that the basic ideas and development strategy in the Credit Bank model could also be pursued with a real dollar bank. The Common Good Bank concept is very similar to that, but doesn't have all the features, and isn't as aggressive about pursuing systematic development up to the point of a sustainable level of optimum local productivity. 

I am pleased that you say:

You have several excellent specifics to add, but please join us rather than reinventing the wheel and competing.

I hereby accept your invitation and look forward to discussing with you and your cohorts how specifics of the Credit Bank model could be incorporated into the Common Good model. It would be great if we could end up joining forces. 

I like the way the Common Good concept was born:

The idea for common good banks began in 2002 in Ashfield, Massachusetts, a small rural community in the foothills of the Berkshires. It began with a spiritual imaging exercise and informal theoretical discussions on how our society – especially our economic system and governance – might be restructured to work better, to create a more peaceful, just, and environmentally sustainable world. Inspired by dozens of other economic systems, through many surveys, discussions, experiments and detours, the common good bank model evolved. Hundreds of professionals and volunteers have contributed to the design.

A 'spiritual imaging exercise' is in some sense what Creative Insight Councils are about. They both break free of in-the-box thinking and enable people to explore together what they really want to achieve for the common good. 

best wishes,

richard

________

William Spademan wrote:

Hi Richard,

The common good bank model also divorces itself from the dollar economy and can have complete fiscal freedom. We tried much of what you are suggesting, back in 2002 and found that growth was VERY slow, because (1) people did not want to keep two sets of books and (2) it was too radical for most people so they were not interested. 

But as soon as we designed a mainstream way to get quickly from here to there, almost everyone got enthusiastic about it.

Again, I hope you will recognize that we have already spent seven years with hundreds of people all over the world working to design the sort of system you describe. You have several excellent specifics to add, but please join us rather than reinventing the wheel and competing.

Yours,
William

On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 4:39 AM, Richard Moore <r...@quaylargo.com> wrote:

Greetings,

I gotten lots of useful comments and critiques on earlier versions. This version is quite a bit different, though the underlying model is pretty much the same. 

The model is based on what is known about community currencies, but it goes much beyond that. It's a comprehensive development model, to be compared to capitalism, socialism, etc.  William asked if I knew about the Common Good Bank system. There are considerable similarities, in that they both employ banking, but the Credit Bank model is much more powerful as it divorces itself from the dollar economy and has complete fiscal freedom. And no, the Common Good system did not borrow anything from the Credit Bank model, as the Credit Bank model was invented over the past month.

The Credit Bank Development Model

http://groups.google.com/group/credit-bank-model/files