Adventures in mutual credit

I know many practical people doing amazing work but who hold and are held in disdain by the world of finance because of their small size and inconventional approaches. Conversely folk who accumulate a thousand Euros here or there have no standard ways to invest it in small projects in a way that is fair to both saver and producer. A different kind of finance is needed - so what would it look like?

My recent research into societal collapse (watch this space) lead me to John Michael Greer, who offered an uncommonly wise perspective, so I purchased this book to update myself on his post-peak oil thinking.

It describes progress as a 'civil religion' and examines how deeply ideas and more importantly assumptions about progress lie in our civilisation's narrative compared, say to other civilisations which reified the past or the unchanging nature of things.

I’ve always supported Basic Income (BI) in principle. It is probably the most direct possible strategy to address the perennial problems of poverty and inequality.

At the Basic Income Earth Network 2019 Congress I had a chat with Kang Nam Hoon, designer of the Young Person's Basic Income in Geonggi, in the Suwon province of South Korea. This Basic Income is not paid in the national currency, won, but in a token issued by the regional government and 100% backed by won. Each young person is given a plastic card, and their balance is topped up every month.

The usual mechanism of exchange in daily life and in cryptocurrency markets is using an intermediate commodity called money. If you want to swap the goods and services (G&S) you produce for other G&S you put your G&S on a bilateral market and swap it for money with whoever wants to pay the most for it. Then you take your money into another market and swap your money for the G&S that you want. Since money is a commodity like any other, you don't have to swap G&S for G&S but can move money in and out of the exchange.