Re: [Village Post] new barter website (NY)
John Stoner
I like the intention of this article, but I find it uses a categorical mode of criticism. Modernity has its great deficiencies, don't get me wrong. But it also has given us great gifts, like the shower you took this morning, or the network we are using to have this conversation. Modernity is the first mode of consciousness that can criticize itself. The most modern thing you can do is criticize modernity.
Moreover, I think this guy is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Yes, money as we currently use it has all the problems he enumerates (and more), but money as a general concept has a lot more degrees of freedom than he acknowledges. Consciously designed, it could counteract a lot of the issues he mentions without the sacrifices he omits (which would be substantial).
I do forsee things falling apart for modern capitalism. Fast or slow, it's moving in that direction. I see it as an opportunity. However, I don't think the right answer is to move backward towards a more primitive mode of existence, for a lot of reasons.
Barter is fun. Gifting is fun. I'm not opposed to either. I think they can be ways to enact art and be playful, and great for creating social bonds. But I live in a city of almost three million people, in a nation of about three hundred ten million, on a planet of almost seven billion. My interest in alternative currencies is, well, not un-playful, and not un-artistic, but always with the burden of those numbers in mind.
Much as I enjoy and applaud barter and gifting, they seem appropriate for small-scale exercises. I think they're great to do on special occasions, but I don't see how they'll keep the hot and cold water running in my house. And an economic order that doesn't manage that is not something I would build intentionally.
I don't necessarily expect to deliver that next economic order, but I'm not interested in something that doesn't try. If we investigate previous projects, and we do something that fails in a new way, and we learn by it, and the next group that tries learns by our experience, that would be fine with me. It would be better than sitting on my butt waiting for the SHTF. It would be better than going out to the country and buying a bunch of land and guns.
More food for thought along the same lines, from this article by Charles Eisenstein:http://www.realitysandwich.com/circle_gifts
From: wildper...@gmail.com
Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2010 15:39:12 -0600
Subject: [Village Post] new barter website (NY)
To: villa...@googlegroups.com; simm...@gmail.com; laura...@gmail.com; hent...@gmail.com; cbree...@gmail.com
from an article in GOOD: http://www.good.is/post/ourgoods-new-york-s-new-barter-network/the new website itself is http://ourgoods.org/pan
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blogs:
http://johnstoner.wordpress.com/
http://boogiepants.typepad.com/
'In knowledge is power; in wisdom, humility.'
Bruce Gould
I’ve always wondered what kind of gift would be appropriate in exchange for the services of someone who spent 4 years in grad school learning nonlinear optics so we can have a new generation of solar cells. Maybe a few chickens? A free massage?
Better:
“Prosperity Without Growth – Economics For A Finite Planet” by Tim Jackson.
Steve the Ghost
effort (I'm a project manager w/ an MBA) for a competent massage that
fixes the splinched muscles in my back (and foot rub). And ice
cream. .
On 12/1/10, Bruce Gould <bcg...@rcn.com> wrote:
> I've always wondered what kind of gift would be appropriate in exchange for
> the services of someone who spent 4 years in grad school learning nonlinear
> optics so we can have a new generation of solar cells. Maybe a few chickens?
> A free massage?
>
>
>
> Better:
>
>
>
> "Prosperity Without Growth - Economics For A Finite Planet" by Tim Jackson.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --
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Bill Doze
Two or three chickens a week and a comfortable room sounds fair with spa passes thrown in if the project exceeds expectations.
The pros or cons of commodity based economy aside, at a certain scale the feds step in and assign a cash value to private exchanges. Stepping away from a dollar accounting system is a tax dodge and illegal.
The question becomes whether you want to escape the system or transform it. If you're only concerned with decentralized social cliques then the application to high tech cash intensive engineering feats is irrelevant. For infrastructure the underground will always piggy back on the mainstream. If you want to dismantle consumer capitalism at its base and unleash the creative potential of the masses then be ready to be labeled a terrorist and I will gift you a hiding place in my attic while you de-bug a rational currency mechanism.
hope to see you soon comrade Bruce
Bill
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John Stoner
this country right now. Here's a list:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
List_of_community_currencies_in_the_United_States>
Ithaca Hours has a particularly interesting website:
http://www.ithacahours.org/
So, it's been done before. It's being done now. It doesn't need to be
some kind of secret thing, or some illegal conspiracy. There are
problems, and people have solved a lot of them. Maybe not all of them,
but a lot of them. We just need to do our homework. I've done some and
I could do more.
I don't see a problem with using dollar-based pricing, as long as the
dollar is reasonably stable. I do expect it to become unstable, hard
to say when, which is why have this conversation in the first place.
If (when) that happens we'd want to switch to some basis that's more
stable. I'd be ready for that, and prepare participants for it. At
that point, if they want to send federal marshals to arrest us,
they'll have to pay them somehow. If we have something that works
better, we'll be in a good position.
On Dec 2, 8:52 am, Bill Doze <morepr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Two or three chickens a week and a comfortable room sounds fair with spa
> passes thrown in if the project exceeds expectations.
> The pros or cons of commodity based economy aside, at a certain scale the
> feds step in and assign a cash value to private exchanges. Stepping away
> from a dollar accounting system is a tax dodge and illegal.
> The question becomes whether you want to escape the system or transform it.
> If you're only concerned with decentralized social cliques then the
> application to high tech cash intensive engineering feats is irrelevant. For
> infrastructure the underground will always piggy back on the mainstream. If
> you want to dismantle consumer capitalism at its base and unleash the
> creative potential of the masses then be ready to be labeled a terrorist and
> I will gift you a hiding place in my attic while you de-bug a rational
> currency mechanism.
> hope to see you soon comrade Bruce
>
> Bill
>
Bruce Gould
the New Yorker has written a piece questioning just what the hell Wall
Street is doing - do we really need these guys or are they, in the words of
Rolling Stone's Matt Taibi, just a bunch of "vampire squids wrapped around
the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything
that smells like money"? (well, we know the answer to THAT one).
"What Good Is Wall Street? - Much of What Investment Bankers Do Is Socially
Worthless":
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/11/29/101129fa_fact_cassidy
Besides the instability of our financial systems and the limits to what the
planet will support, I think capitalism has another problem - it's insane
productivity. Basically a small percentage of the population can crank out
all the material goods we all need, which leaves the rest of us trying to
survive by selling each other [insert your favorite type of junk in this
space: healing crystals, magnetic insoles for your shoes, Christmas trees,
coupons for life coaching lessons...anyone I haven't offended yet?].
Rob Robinson
> all the material goods we all need, which leaves the rest of us trying to
> survive by selling each other [insert your favorite type of junk in this
> space: healing crystals, magnetic insoles for your shoes, Christmas trees,
> coupons for life coaching lessons...anyone I haven't offended yet?].
sex workers?
seriously though, Frank Rich had an awesome line in sundays op ed page:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/28/opinion/28rich.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
“During a period in which American companies have created iPhones,
Home Depot and Lipitor,” Cassidy writes, the industry reaping the
highest profits and compensation is one that “doesn’t design, build or
sell a tangible thing.”
John Stoner
One thought I've had is that the financial industry is ready for the Craigslist treatment. Think about what Craigslist did for classified ads. I wouldn't try to do something as centralized as Craigslist (that would be worse than Wall Street), but lowering its profile and distributing it into a more community setting would be a great service to humanity.
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Bill Doze
This is going back a lot of years, but I recall a PBS panel discussion on bartering in the pre-internet days.
More than one panelist complained of IRS harassment when they reached the point where they had all but dropped out of the cash economy.
Maybe those folks won a court case and opened the door for innovations in alternate currencies.
I notice that Illinois specifically is not on that list.
I know Linden Dollars got a lot of attention when they became used as a back door to online casino wagering but no one declared "game" currencies illegal even though they are liquid and can be converted to $ at in-game ATMs.
I see one application of Bit Coins that spiral linked to is also casinos.
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John Stoner
derby
Qualitative Easiing; the printing of money, or so they say.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTUY16CkS-k
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Bruce Gould
touches on a topic that most Americans have no experience with (at least
since the Great Depression): deflation. Deflation is when prices go down,
and it's economic death. The Japanese have been dealing with deflation since
the early 90's, and a lot of economic data in the last few years shows
trends in our economy that mirror Japan's. The cartoon points out that many
prices have been rising - education, healthcare, gas and so on - but I think
that's misleading and represents a small sample of what's going on. (poke
around in Paul Krugmans writings to get some columns on this).
It's counterintuitive that falling prices are very, very bad - after all,
wouldn't it help people if they could buy things at lower prices? This is a
whole other discussion, but the New York Times ran a series on deflation
recently - http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/17/world/asia/17japan.html .
I think all of this underscores the need for new thinking about currencies
and economics.....the same old same old just isn't going to work anymore.