Community Currency Systems

Community Currency Systems are not new, in fact, they preceded the current financial system by, say, 50,000 years. The focus of this blog resource is to investigate all currencies and reflect them upon the image of a vast new technological breakthrough called social media.

Our hope is to discover, specify, and influence the formation a new financial system that allows communities to trade among each other for basic goods and services before, during, and after the “reboot” of our current economic system.  We are optimistic that the current economic system will ebb in favor of a next economic paradigm that reflects social priorities as a means of meeting Wall Street Priorities. We’ll be posting several articles on the subject in the coming days.

Here are some of the earlier resources to get you started on local currency and other aspects of community economics.  I like the early systems because their rationale was independent of more recent influencers such as 9/11, TARP, GWB, etc.

Hometown Money Starter Kit

http://www.lightlink.com/hours/ithacahours/starterkit Ithaca Money
Hometown Money: How to Enrich Your Community with Local Currency, 100pp. By Paul Glover paul5glover@yahoo.com, 1995.

Explains step-by-step start up and maintenance of a local currency barter system. Includes forms, laws, articles, procedures, and samples of Ithaca’s HOURS. They’ve sent the Kit to over 300 communities in 45 states.

LANDSMAN Community Services
1660 Embleton Cres.
Courtenay, BC V9N 6N8, Canada
(lcs@mars.ark.com)

Start-up information for LETS (Local Economic Trading System), a computer barter system trading Green Dollars, invented by Michael Linton.

New Money for Healthy Communities
Tom Greco; http://www.reinventingmoney.com/

Box 42663, Tucson, AZ. 85733 (000569074@mcimail.com)
$15.95 plus $2.00 shipping

The first book about the main benefits and types of local currency.

E. F. Schumacher Society
The E. F. Schumacher Society |  140 Jug End Road  |  Great Barrington, MA 01230 USA
TEL 011.413.528.1737  |  FAX 413.528.4472  | efssociety@smallisbeautiful.org

Initiated Berkshares and store notes, promotes “small is beautiful” economics with its newsletter, and maintains a library.

Here are a bunch more – excuse duplicates – I am still reviewing them myself.  Thanks

• Ithaca HOURS
  http://www.lightlink.com/ithacahours/
  hours@lightlink.com
  founded by Paul Glover
  Box 6578, Ithaca, NY 14851
  607/272-4330
• BerkShares!
  www.berkshares.org
  Local Currency launched September 29, 2006 by the E.F. Schumacher Society in their local community.
• LETSystems
  http://www.gmlets.u-net.com/
  Michael Linton (designer of the LETSystem) and Ernie Yacub
  Landsman Community Services, Ltd.
  1600 Embelton Crescent, Courtenay, BC, V9N6N8, Canada
  250/338-0213 (fax)
• E.F. Schumacher Society
  http://www.schumachersociety.org/
  Susan Witt and Robert Swann
  140 Jug End Road, Great Barrington, MA 01230
  413/528-1737
  (Many links to local currecies, they also publish Local Currency News, a quarterly about local currencies.)
• Time Dollar Institute
  http://www.timedollar.org/
  Edgar Cahn
  P.O. Box 42160 Washington
  202/686-5200
• Reinventing Money
  www.ReinventingMoney.com

  Community Information Resource Center

  http://circ2.home.mindspring.com/tgbro.htm
  Thomas H. Greco, Jr., Director
  Author ofNew Money for Healthy Communities (1994)
  P.O. Box 42663, Tucson AZ 85733
  520/795-8930
• Community Currencies in Asia, Africa and Latin America
  http://www.appropriate-economics.org/
  Wealth of information links to countries outside the U.S.
• The Gigafree Network Listing of Barter Exchanges Worldwide
  http://gigafree.com/barter
• Global Barter Network in Argentina
  This is an article entitled- The rise and fall of the great bartering network in Argentina, November 2, 2002
  http://www.agrnews.org/issues/200/culture
  At the World Social Forum, a dynamic workshop on creating this “Social currency,” took place. At the time the model had evolved organically from one woman with too many pumpkins, to a government supported network of over 400,000 people in many countries.
• Bernard Lietaer
  http://www.transaction.net/money/book/
  Author of The Future of Money: Beyond Greed and Scarcity.
  The book will be published in German in September 1999.
  English is most likely in Spring 2000.
• Main Street Cash – Community Currency
  http://www.mainstreetcash.org
• Prosperity– Freedom From Debt Slavery
  The Bromsgrove Group
  • …make Money Reform a big issue — that is, to bring the debt-free money proposal into the political debate, and to put Money Reform firmly on the political agenda. We spread the message that the money system is unjust, that it can be reformed, and that this is urgent. We have the solution, we deal with the technicalities and we emphasise spreading the word and organising for change.
    www.prosperityuk.com

  Their aim is to:

• Money – Past, Present & Future
  http://www.ex.ac.uk/~RDavies/arian/money
  Sources of Information on Monetary History, Contemporary Developments, and the Prospects for Electronic Money
  This is a brilliantly organized site with a wealth of information from ancient times, to insight into the shady derivatives scandals yet to come…
• Fourth Corner Exchange
  http://www.fourthcornerexchange.com/index.php
  Local Exchange System based in Washington State
• Barataria
  http://www.barataria.org/
  Developing local exchange trading systems between businesses, public institutions and socially oriented third-system enterprises in Ireland, Scotland, Amsterdam and Madrid.
• Community Currency in Thailand
  http://members.tripod.comasiaccs
  An interesting site. The first Thai community currency was closed by the government as a “threat to national security.”
• Friendly Favors
  http://www.favors.org/
  A friendly way to account for the favors we do for each other, Friendly Favors is a new model of community currency located, but not restricted to, the San Francisco Bay Area.
• Ukiah Hours
  http://www.greenmac.com/hours
  Inspired by Ithaca Hours, this Northern Californian Currency is in the process of getting started.
• Open Money
  http://www.openmoney.org/
  The website of Jean-Francois Noubel who has begun applying his work on Collective Intelligence, Wisdom and Consciousness to the monetary system. He hopes to seed technology allowing the flourishing of community or complementary currencies which will facilitate the transformation from a debt based, hierarchical, dysfunctonal system towards a sufficient, transparent, cooperative, evolutionary, life serving system.
• Story of a Lost Civilization
  http://www.ceptualinstitute.com/uiu_plus/revered.htm
• The Chaordic Alliance
  http://www.chaordic.org/
• The American Monetary Institute
  Actively holding monetary reform conferences on a yearly basis since 2005, the AMI has labored to refine The Monetary Reform and Financial Security Bill which should be introduced into Congress this year.
  http://www.monetary.org
• Institute for Economic Democracy
  http://www.slonet.org/~ied/
  J.W. Smith
  3057 S. Higuera #77, San Luis Obispo, CA 93401
  805/786-0307
• Global Reserve Bank
  http://www.grb.net/
  John Pozzi, Acting GRB Manager
• Community Currencies
  A positive, possible, practical, and fun way to help birth the 21st century
• Muriel E. Mobley’s Work on Money
  http://www.nationaleconomy.net/muriel_mobley
  Memorial Site for peace and monetary reform activist- Muriel E. Mobley
• Green Money Network
  http://intraforum.com/money
  The Founder of a LETS system in London, who has been actively promoting monetary reform in London, Sabine McNeill’s interesting site.
• Global Exchange
  http://www.globalexchange.org/
  2017 Mission St. #303
  San Francisco, CA 94110
• 50 Years Is Enough-U.S. Network For Economic Justice
  http://www.50years.org/index
  The U.S. coalition of 205 groups committed to making international financial institutions democratic and accountable to those who have to live with the effects of their policies and practices.
• The Simultaneous Policy
  http://www.simpol.org
  Transformation of the international economy such that it operates in a manner more compatible with the global natural environment and with the needs of human nature. Firstly, the re-regulation of global financial markets and transnational corporations such that genuine democracy can be restored to nation states…
• Genuine Freedom
  http://www.mattengelman.com/contents/
  An excellent online book and articles by Matt Engelman which looks at social control mechanisms, the global monetary system, the media, wars and depressions, corporations, fear, respect, responsibility, creativity, empowerment, freedom. I think it is a testimony to the transformative power of truth.
• Association for the Taxation of Financial Transactions for the Aid of Citizens
  http://attac.org
  Acknowledging and educating about the destructive flow of currency around the globe, ATTAC seeks to reduce the damage by implementing a small tax on foreign exchange transactions that could be used to meet the most urgent human and environmental needs.
• Beyond the Matrix-Find Silvio Gesell
  http://www.systemfehler.de/
• Hazel Henderson
  http://www.hazelhenderson.com/
  Author, Independent Futurist, Activist
  Hazel Henderson’s Library
  Attn: Brenda Gale
  P.O. Box 5190, St. Augustine, FL 32085
  904/826-1381
  904/826-0325 (fax)
• Love or Money.org
  Comparing LOVE and MONEY, and their impact on the well-being of the human society.
  http://www.love-or-money.org
• The Gift Economy
  A portal towards understanding the Gift Economymoving us away from hierarchical, inequitable exchange systems towards respectful, cooperation.
  http://www.gift-economy.com/
• Catherine Austin Fitt’s Solari
  http://www.solari.com
• John Turmel’s Global Online Unilets
  http://www.cyberclass.net/turmel/urlsnat.htm
  An amazing list of contacts to an array of local systems/articles/sites(some obsolete)
• Max Keiser’s website– highly recommended.
  http://www.maxkeiser.com
• Bear-River-Dollar
  One man is taken with the idea of Community Currency and has a novel approach to spread the idea, (But I don’t think he quite has figured out the nuts and bolts, yet.)
  www.bear-river-dollar.com
• Norfed- The Liberty Dollar
  This silver backed currency has done much to educate people of the flaws in our existing monetary system. While I don’t believe in silver/gold/or oil backed currencies on principle, to help us transition from where we are now to where we want to go, The Liberty Dollar has a role to play.
  http://www.libertydollar.org/
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