I like Mamading’s quotes website Quotessence.

I’ve already pointed him at Dancing with Systems and Permaculture Principles, encouraging him to include the wisdom they contain.

Now I want to share Dee Hock’s MiniMaxims from his great book, Birth of the Chaordic Age.

Birth of the Chaordic Age

Dee Hock. Berrett-Koehler 1999, Hardcover, 345 pages, £16.99

• “Particularity and serparability are infirmities of the mind, not characteristics of the universe”
• “Desire to command and control is a death wish. Absolute control is in the coffin”
• “Only fools worship their tools”
• “Life is a gift, bearing a gift, which is the art of giving”
• “The doing of the doing is why nothing gets done”
• “Management expertise has become the creation and control of constants, uniformity, and efficiency, while the need has become the understanding and coordination of variability, complexity, and effectiveness”
• “Compelled behaviour is the essence of tyranny. Induced behaviour is the essence of leadership. Both may have the same objective, but one tends to evil, the other to good”
• “Lead yourself, lead your superiors, lead your peers, employ good people, and free them to do the same. All else is trivia”
• “Success, while it may build confidence, teaches an insidious lesson: to have too high an opinion of self”
• “The most abundant, least expensive, most underutilized, and constantly abused resource in the world is human ingenuity”
• “There isn’t any poor work; there’s only work poorly done, poorly recognized, or poorly paid”
• “You can learn much from what people say, but more is revealed by what they do not say. Listen as carefully to the silence as the sound”
• “Haste never made time, and waste never made abundance”
• “The past is ever less predictive, the future ever less predictable, and the present scarcely exists at all”
• “Life will never surrender its secretes to yardsticks”
• “Healthy organizations induce behavior. Unhealthy organizations compel it”
• “People deprived of self-organization and self-governance are inherently ungovernable”
• “Perspective is the Achilles heel of the mind, distorting everything we think, know, believe, or imagine”
• “True power is never used. If you use power, you never really have it”
• “If you think you can’t, why think”
• “Heaven is purpose, principle, and people. Purgatory is paper and procedure. Hell is rules and regulations”
• “Until someone has repeatedly said no and adamantly refuses another word on the subject, they are in the process of saying yes and don’t know it”
• “I am as great to me as you are to you, and you are as great to you as I am to me, therefore, we are equal”
• “Corporations are a great place to make love to capitalization of gain in one bedroom and socialization of cost in the other”
• “You can’t count the steps to heaven, or calculate the slide to hell”
• “Never confuse activity with productivity. It’s what come out the other end of the pipe that’s important, not what you push into it”
• “Given the right circumstances, from no more than dreams, determination, and the liberty to try, quite ordinary people consistently do extraordinary things”
• “Beware the Four Beasts that inevitably devour their keeper: Ego, Envy, Avarice, and Ambition”
• “Substance is enduring, form ephemeral. Preserve substance; modify form; know the difference”
• “A clear sense of direction and compelling principles about conduct in pursuit of it are far more effective than long-term plans and detailed objectives”
• “The greater the capacity to receive, store, utilize, transform, and transmit information, the more diverse and complex the entity”
• “Fear is an internal narcotic that paralyzes mind, body, and spirit. The power of things we fear lies solely in our opinion of them”
• “When we fish for absolutes in the seas of uncertainty, all we catch are doubts”
• “If life on earth depends on wolf or man, take the wolf every time”
• “Language, invented to reveal meaning, is more often used to confound or conceal it”
• “Making good judgments when one has complete data, facts, and knowledge is not leadership – it’s bookkeeping”
• “Change is the thief of identity. We can never be sure of our place or value in a new order of things”
• “A bit of carbon in iron makes powerful metal; a bit of truth in a lie makes powerful deceit”
• “It is enough that error be corrected. It is excessive to insist it be admitted”
• “With the will to succeed and the grace to compromise, all things become possible”
• “Money motivates neither the best people nor the best in people. It can move the body and influence the mind, but it cannot touch the heart or move the spirit”
• “People must come to things in their own time, in their own way, for their own reasons, or they never truly come at all”
• “Judgment is a muscle of the mind, developed by exercise. There is nothing to lose by trusting it”
• “Wool should be grown on the hide, not in the head”
• “Leadership is to go before and show the way”
• “Failure is not to be feared. It is from failure that most growth comes; provided that one can recognize it, admit it, learn from it, rise about it, and try again”
• “Mistakes are toothless little things if you recognize them. If you ignore or defend them, they grow fangs and bite”
• “You can’t tickle yourself. It’s a social act”
• “Fame is fool’s gold of the ego; as soon threadbare and out of fashion as a suit of clothes”
• “All distinctions are useful, but none are truth or reality”
• “The surest way to satisfy the greed of the few is to arouse it in the many”
• “Money is not the measure of man”
• “A life can’t be made of denial. A life is made of affirmation”
• “The eternal, internal light casts no shadow”

See also:

• Go placidy amid the noise & haste…
• Dancing with Systems
• Money
• Designing an Open Organisation
• You and I

As part of the Sustainable Land Use course I recently completed we had to do a short piece of work on Permaculture Principles. I put together this little list of principles compiled from the following books (and website)…

Earth Users Guide to Permaculture

Rosemary Morrow. Kangaroo Press Pty.Ltd 2006, Paperback, 264 pages, £19.95

Attitudinal Principles

• Work with nature not against it – results in minimum negative impact on long term sustainablilty
• Value Edges and Marginal and Small – small and different can be vital
• See solutions inherent in problems – overcomes blockages to design and implementation
• Produce no waste – move towards a closed ecosystem
• Value people and their skills and work – draws people in, enables, appreciats and supports them
• Respect for all life – the delights of all natural and cultural diversity and valued
• Use Public Transport and Renewable Fuels – move toward people-scaled sustainable urban planning, friendlier places and less pollution
• Calculate ‘Food Miles’ – Support local farmers, bioregional produce, lower food costs, truck-free roads.

Design Principles

• Preserve, regenerate and extend all natural and permanent landscapes
• Water: conserve and increase all sources and supplies of water, and maintain and ensure water purity
• Energy: catch and store energy by all non-polluting and renewable means
• Biodiversity: preserve and increase biodiversity of all types

Strategic Principles

• Focus on long-term sustainability – careful thinking
• Co-operate don’t compete – share best knowledge and practice
• Design from patterns to details – see the whole picture first
• Start small and learn from change – avoid expensive errors
• Make the least change for the largest result – efficient and economical detail
• Make a priority of renewable resources and services – establishes a feedback loop to long-term sustainability
• Bring food production back to cities – empowers food security and rish avoidance

Introduction to Permaculture

A. Jeeves (Illustrator). Tagari Publications 1994, Paperback, 224 pages, £58.97

• Relative location.
• Each element performs many functions.
• Each important function is supported by many elements.
• Efficient energy planning: zone, sector and slope.
• Using biological resources.
• Cycling of energy, nutrients, resources.
• Small-scale intensive systems; including plant stacking and time stacking.
• Accelerating succession and evolution.
• Diversity; including guilds.
• Edge effects.
• Attitudinal principles: everything works both ways, and permaculture is information and imagination-intensive.

Permaculture

Andrew Jeeves (Illustrator). Tagari Publications 1988, Hardcover, 576 pages, £193.00

• Work with nature rather than against.
• The problem is the solution.
• Make the least change for the greatest possible effect.
• The yield of a system is theoretically unlimited (or only limited by the imagination and information of the designer).
• Everything gardens (or modifies its environment).

Permaculture

David Holmgren. Holmgren Design Services 2002, Paperback, 286 pages, £18.49

1. Observe and Interact – Observation is interaction and Beauty is in the eye of the beholder
2. Catch and Store Energy – make hay while the sun shines
3. Obtain a Yield – You can’t work on an empty stomach
4. Apply Self-Regulation and Accept Feedback – Take Personal Responsibility
5. Use and Value Renewable Resources and Services – Nature knows best
6. Produce No Waste – Waste not – want not
7. Design from Patterns to Details – Don’t reinvent the wheel and See the forest before the trees
8. Integrate rather than Segregate – Together We Achieve More
9. Use Small and Slow Solutions – Small is beautiful, slow is sane and Slow and steady wins the race
10. Use and Value Diversity – Don’t put all your eggs in one basket and The key to intelligent tinkering is to save all the pieces
11. Use Edges and Value the Marginal – The action is at the edge
12. Use and Respond to Change Creatively – Everything evolves, is succeeded but comes around (again)

See also, the excellent Permaculture Principles site for lots more on these.

From http://www.heathcote.org/PCIntro/4Principles.htm:

1. Conservation – Use only what is needed.
2. Stacking functions – In permaculture we speak about getting many yields (outputs) from one element (thing) in your system.
3. Repeating functions – We meet every need in multiple ways.
4. Reciprocity – Utilize the yields of each element to meet the needs of other elements in the system.
5. Appropriate scale – What we design should be on a human scale and doable with the available time, skills, and money that we have
6. Diversity – We want to create resilience by utilizing many elements.
7. Give away the surplus – Create systems that are abundant and share the abundance rather than hoarding it for ourselves.

From

The Earth Care Manual

Patrick Whitefield. Permanent Publications 2004, Hardcover, 482 pages, £27.86

(with examples by me, although many are no doubt are straight out the book – this is actually what our assignment was to do, write a couple of examples each for a selection of the principles below)

Wild Soil
- No till e.g. raised beds and thick sward of grass on Fordhall Farm
- Covered soil e.g. mulching and green manures.
- Perennials e.g. fruit and nut trees and perennial vegetables such as Nine-star broccoli or Daunbenton’s Kale.

Diversity
- Species e.g. a small garden with many different crops is both much more productive more resilient against pest and disease than a large monoculture. Bicroping on large farms (e.g. white clover and wheat) is also possible and helps significantly reduce energy use, stop soil erosion and keep down pests and disease.
- Genetic e.g. growing lots of different types of tomatoes or lettuce, for example, can greatly increase production throughout the year (with early/ late varieties) as can the production of many different types of apples (or any fruit) in an orchard. Large losses to pest and disease are also much less likely (because different varieties and be more or less resilient)
- Ecological e.g. creating a pond to attract beneficial predators such as birds and frogs, a leaving an undisturbed area for bees and other insects to live in.
- Cultural e.g. respecting and valuing different people’s way of life. But also not expecting everything to go smoothly when working in a very diverse group where starkly different views and values are represented. Diversity is needed, but so are shared values.

Multi-dimensional Design
- Stacking e.g. the different layers in a forest garden/ food forest, or growing tall beans together with short squashes.
- Succession e.g. radishes and parsnips together, or alley cropping (i.e. growing veg in the alleys of young orchards before they cast significant shade)
- Edge e.g. Chinampas in lakes (as famously done in Mexico), key hole gardens, hedges.

Relative Location
- e.g. chicken-greenhouse and tender fruit trees growing up a south-facing wall

Key Planning Tools
- Zone e.g. herbs and salads closest to house, timber woodlands further away.
- Network e.g. placing paths and tracks along desire lines connecting multiple areas of human activity.
- Sector e.g. placing pretty blossoming trees in live of sight with windows, but not if that is where there is very strong wind.
- Elevation e.g. placing water storage higher up than where you need to irrigate and using shallow slopes and swales/ dams to store maximum water. Also avoiding frost pockets in valleys and strong winds on hills.

Small Scale
- & yield e.g. small scale farms are much more productive than large ones, in terms of total amount produce per acre, value of food per acre and energy inputs needs for energy outputs. A recent study of Turkish Farms found small farms to be 20 times more productive than large ones!
- & diversity e.g. it is easier to manage diversity on a small scale. Harvesting lots of different crops from a home garden is still a small job. Doing the same on a large scale quickly become commercially unviable because of the time it would take. The same goes for irrigation. It is quite easy to hand water different plants/ beds different amounts of water according to need on the small scale, but much harder to achieve on a large scale.

Input-Output
- Linking i.e. placing things so that the output of one thing can easily become the input of another, e.g. on a well designed small farm poultry could be used to help cultivate vegetable beds, control pests in an orchard, make use of household food scraps and even heat the greenhouse – assuming their relative location was suitable and a network or paths/ tracks was in place to move them from area to area.
- Multiple Outputs i.e. every plant, animal and structure in a permaculture design should serve as many functions as possible e.g. the many outputs of the poultry mention above, a roof collecting water and providing shelter, a wall a place to grow food up or paint a mural, not just the structure that holds up the house.

Energy
- In use e.g. despite the overall energy efficient of electrical appliances in Europe increasing, so too has the total amount of energy used by appliances (to meet new energy efficiency requirements manufacturers have built larger machines that do use energy more efficiently, but more of it). Solar PV panels have a high embodied energy, but with no moving parts are pretty much “fit and forget” and cost almost nothing to maintain (in contrast, for example, to a Wind Turbine than has lots of moving parts constantly under the stress and strain of high winds)
- Embodied e.g. concrete is long lasting but takes lots of energy to create in the first place. Using reclaimed and other low embodied energy materials (e.g. Earth, Straw) when building can greatly reduce the overall energy used by a home.
- Biological resources e.g. using a horse and cart to move things and poultry for pest control.

Wholes
- e.g. the sum is greater than the parts. None of the pieces of a bicycle can move you from one place to another, only the complete bicycle system can. Everything is connected. There are always unintended consequences of actions. There is no “away”.

See also:

• Permaculture
• An Introduction to Planet Earth…
• Oil companies to buy the world!
• The Permaculture Concept
• Commons Creation Collective

Here you will find links to all the great money resources on this site

Basic Info:

• Money Today
• A Brief History of Money

Money Books:

• Money Books
• More money books
  • see also Money downloads

Money Videos:

• Money as Debt
• The Matrix – A Poem by Paradox
• Zeitgeist Addendum
• Zeitgeist – The Movie: Federal Reserve
• The Money Masters
• New American Currency
  • see also http://delicious.com/uniteddiversity/money+video

Money Downloads:

• Money downloads

More

• http://delicious.com/uniteddiversity/money
• http://p2pfoundation.net/Category:Money

See also:

• Zeitgeist – The Movie: Federal Reserve
• More money books
• The Money Masters
• The Matrix – A Poem by Paradox
• Money as Debt

Contrary to popular belief, when banks make loans, they are not lending out money that people have deposited with them, but are instead creating completely new money, out of nothing. Absurd as this may seem, the fact is that 97% of our current money supply is created in this way – by private banks, out of nothing.

What’s more, in order to make a guaranteed profit, the banks create money out of nothing, lend it to us at interest, and then demand we pay back more money than exists! Collectively we are left in the impossible situation of always owing more money than actually exists.

Instead of telling the banks where to go (by creating our own money systems based on collective mutual advantage and reciprocity), we then scramble to the banks and beg them to lend us more money. This situation is utter madness.

Money for nothing.

Creating money out of nothing first emerged in the 13 century, at goldsmiths’ benches (or bancos) in Italy, when receipts issued for deposits of gold, goldsmiths’ “tokens of promise to pay”, began to be used for trade because they were much easier to exchange than the gold itself. Goldsmiths soon realised that depositors would never try to retrieve all of their gold at the same time, and so cleverly, or perhaps deviously, began to issue tokens (i.e. create money) for gold they didn’t have (i.e. out of nothing).

This was the beginning of both western “promise to pay” paper currencies and of the so-called “fractional reserve banking” systems that persist today – “fractional reserve banking” being the fancy name given to the process that enables banks, like the goldsmiths before them, to create more money than they hold, out of nothing.

Money and War

The ability to create money out of nothing inevitably gave bankers, and the banking system as a whole, a significant amount of power – a power that was increased substantially during the 17th century when “a deal was struck between the governments and the banking system. The banking system obtained the right to create money as “legal tender” in exchange for a commitment always to provide whatever funds the government needed” – Bernard Lietaer, Future of Money

This power was first granted to the Riksbank in Sweden (then called the Bank of the Estates of the Realm) when in 1668 the crown needed urgent money to fund a war against Denmark. Similarly, the Bank England was founded in 1694 when King William of Orange needed an extra £1.2 million to fund a war against the French.

At Bretton Woods, 250 years later, war was again instrumental in the shaping of today’s global economic (dis)order. A year before the end of World War II, on July 22nd 1944, the Bretton Woods Agreement was signed in New Hampshire, USA and the US dollar became the de facto currency of the world. Under this agreement, 44 countries “had to fix their currencies to the US dollar, and the US committed in counterpart to keep its dollar convertible into gold upon request from any central bank at the fixed rate of US$35 per ounce of gold.

A new institution – the International Monetary Fund (IMF) – was created to police the system…(and it) worked well for over two decades until President Johnson introduced his “guns and butter” strategy during the Vietnam War…This triggered an unprecedented dollar outflow from the US … (and) it was these substantial dollar holdings in the hands of foreign central banks that were to force President Nixon in 1971 to renege on the convertability promise of dollars into gold” – Bernard Lietaer, Future of Money

Thus, when Britain and France wanted to convert dollars into gold, and Nixon said “no”, dollars – the linchpin of global economic system – were no longer backed by a fractional reserve of gold, but by nothing. Since that time, the dollar has represented a promise from the US government to redeem the dollar with – another dollar. This further increased US influence in global monetary policy and, with currency exchange rates left to the whims of the market, inaugerated an era of unprecedented monetary instability; today’s “global casino” of international trade, completely dominated by speculation, had been born.

So, under the present banking system, we allow banks to create money out of nothing, so long as they hold a fractional reserve, not of gold, but of money previously created out of nothing. This is a pretty clever a trick (more devious even than the Italian goldsmiths), but it’s still only half the picture: modern banks don’t just create money out of nothing, they create it by lending it to us at interest, insisting that we pay back more money than actually exists! – we have to pay back what we’ve borrowed (i.e. the money we’ve allowed the banks to create out of nothing) plus interest (i.e. money that doesn’t even exist).

Paying back more money than actually exists is, of course, impossible – unless, that is, more money is created, by issuing more loans and creating more debt. This “debt imperative”, the perpetual need for more money to pay back our ever-expanding and constantly spiralling debt, leads in turn to a “growth imperative”, the need for perpetual economic growth. Unfortunately, we now know conslusively that perpetual economic growth is neither possible nor desirable.

See also:

• Money Today
• More money books
• The Money Masters
• Money as Debt
• Money

I wrote this a while back on the old united diversity wiki as a simple (as in simplified) introduction to how money works today:

How money works today.

How money works today is completely ludicrous.

It pits people against each other and guarantees that the rich get richer while the poor get poorer.

To understand how, imagine there are only 2 friends and a bank, and that in order to buy food, pay their rent, and trade amongst themselves, the 2 friends need money that only the bank can create.

The bank (actually an already wealthy 3rd person) creates £20 and gives £10 to each of the 2 friends.

All the bank asks is that both pay back £11 next year. Since the 2 friends need the money to eat, they agree, gratefully accepting the £10 that helps them to fulfil their immediate needs.

They even promise (because the bank insists that they do) that if they are unable to pay back the £11 next year, they will allow the bank to take some of their belongings as payment.

The problem is, it is totally impossible for both to pay back £11, because the bank only created £20, and 2 x £11 = £22 – more money than actually exists.

The only way either of the 2 friends can pay back the £11 is to get the extra £1 they need off the other.

This leaves their friend with only £9, unable to repay their £11 debt.

The 2 friends are now pitted against each other, both desperately trying to get the extra £1 they need off the other in order to avoid having to hand over some (or all) of their belongings.

Whatever happens, in the end at least one of them is going to lose some of their belongings, and it s the bank (the already rich 3rd person) that is going to get them.

Basically that s how banking works, and that s why bankers (the rich) get richer and the poor get poorer.

See also:

• A Brief History of Money
• Money
• More money books
• Money as Debt
• Money Books

A while back I posted Money Books, a collection of my favourite books all about money.

Now, with the global economy struggling on all sides with economic collapse, climate change and peak oil very much beginning to kick in, I thought I share a few more good reads on the subject.

Hopefully lots and lots of people will read these books and we can finally move away from Money as Debt madness towards a saner banking system. :

Money and Liberation

Peter North. University of Minnesota Press 2007, Paperback, 240 pages, £15.50

“A firsthand view of local currencies that are providing alternatives to global capital.

Is conventional money simply a discourse? Is it merely a socially constructed unit of exchange? If money is not an actual thing, are people then free to make collective agreements to use other forms of currency that might work more effectively for them? Proponents of “better money” argue that they have created currencies that value people more than profitability, ensuring that human needs are met with reasonable costs and decent wages—and supporting local economies that emphasize local sustainability. How did proponents develop these new economies? Are their claims valid?

Grappling with these questions and more, Money and Liberation examines the experiences of groups who have tried to build a more equitable world by inventing new forms of money. Presenting in-depth profiles of the trading networks that have been constructed both historically and more recently, including Local Exchange Trading Schemes (England), Green Dollars (New Zealand), Talente (Hungary), and the barter system in Argentina, Peter North shows how the use of currency has been redefined as part of political action, revealing surprising political ambiguity and a nuanced understanding of the potential and limits on alternative currencies as a resistance practice.”

Funny Money

David Boyle. HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 1999, Hardcover, 320 pages, £132.66

“Only our limited ideas about money are keeping us poor…”

Funny Money is written like a travelogue and features the new alchemists of the USA who have found new ways of conjuring money out of next to nothing. After reading this book, you will never think about money in quite the same way again.

It was this book where I first read about Deli Dollars, a precursor to Berkshares (which has recently inspired the Totnes Pound and the Lewis Pound here in the UK).

See my draft proposal for Sustainable Enterprise Agency (.pdf) that I wrote back May 2002 after reading this book

The Web of Debt

Ellen Hodgson Brown. Third Millennium Press 2008, Paperback, 528 pages, £13.30

“Our money system is not what we have been led to believe. The creation of money has been “privatized,” or taken over by a private money cartel. Except for coins, all of our money is now created as loans advanced by private banking institutions — including the private Federal Reserve. Banks create the principal but not the interest to service their loans. To find the interest, new loans must continually be taken out, expanding the money supply, inflating prices — and robbing you of the value of your money. Web of Debt unravels the deception and presents a crystal clear picture of the financial abyss towards which we are heading. Then it explores a workable alternative, one that was tested in colonial America and is grounded in the best of American economic thought, including the writings of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln. If you care about financial security, your own or the nation’s, you should read this book.”

No More Throw-away People

Edgar S. Cahn. Essential Books Ltd 2000, Paperback, 226 pages, £11.99

Civil Rights lawyer Edgar Cahn came up with the idea of Time Banking whilst ill in hospital feeling useless. It occurred to him the as a legal expert he wasn’t useless but that whilst in hospital he was totally reliant on the nurse’s and doctor’s time.

He thought about it some more and realised there are probably thousands of older people who feel useless but aren’t. He convinced Elderplan (a health insurance company for old people in US) to give the idea ago and they got some of their customers to try it out.

The results were amazing. Just getting old people to earn time credits by calling each other up to check up on each other had a radically positive effect on their health – so much so that Elderplan started letting those that participated in the system part-pay the insurance premiums in time credits!

And its not just old people either. Everyone can benefit from building new trusting social relations and the sense of community belonging that time banking can induce.

Which is why now, time banking has become one of the most widespread models of community currency/ mutual credit systems in the world.

The Coming First World Debt Crisis

Ann Pettifor. Palgrave Macmillan 2006, Paperback, 232 pages, £8.39

“In this book, Ann Pettifor turns her attention away from the debt crisis affecting developing countries and examines the issues of debt affecting the first world or OECD countries. She examines the history and roots of where the current international debt crisis stems from – economic liberalization – and the restructuring of the international financial architecture in the early 1970s. The book goes on to explore the implications of high international indebtedness for governments, corporations, households and individuals. An important and unique contribution is Pettifor’s discussion of the justice and morality of debt, particularly for individuals.”

The Political Economy of Social Credit and Guild Socialism

Frances Hutchinson. Jon Carpenter 2005, Paperback, 212 pages, £17.60

“The contribution of Douglas-Orage to the incorporation of the non-market sectors of the economy – health, education, social security, the environment – is crucial. The power grab of the banking system that Douglas and his associates identified almost a century ago, have come into a lethal flowering. In the long-overdue reassessment for what passes as economic science, their ideas will require careful attention. The Hutchinson Burkitt book is mandatory for preparing ourselves for the task.”

Debt Virus

Jacques S. Jaikaran. Glenbridge Publishing, Ltd. 1995, Paperback, £13.42

“Dr. Jaikaran has made a compelling case that our civilization is piling up too much debt, causing debt inflation and creating dangerous monetary conditions. He also provides intriguing information about who owns the Federal Reserve (it’s not who you think), how banking really works, the history of money, where our money comes, what banking systems might offer safer alternative systems from and other important facts.”

The Final Crash

Hugo Bouleau. Pendula Press Limited 2007, Hardcover, 246 pages, £13.63

“Here is a disquieting dispatch from someone deeply embedded in the financial world and all us amateur punters should sit up and take note. Do not say later you were not warned.” –Lord Desai, Emeritus Professor of Economics, London School of Economics

Rethinking Our Centralized Monetary System

Lewis D. Solomon. Greenwood Press 1996, Hardcover, 184 pages, £65.00

“We must rethink our centralised monetary system as part of a larger re-examination of existing political economy, according to Solomon. In questioning the passive acceptance of a federal monopoly in producing money, the author challenges prevailing notions of “progress” and “economic life”. Advancing the idea of local currencies to promote a political economy based on empowerment, self-reliance, and ecological permanence, the book discusses three viable systems, all of which are possible under federal and state laws: barter, customer discounts, and local scrip not pegged to the US dollar. The business and practical aspects of each of these systems is considered. This work should be of interest to scholars, students and policy-makers in political economy, money and banking, public finance and public policy.”

What Everybody (Really) Wants to Know About Money

Frances Hutchinson. Jon Carpenter 1998, Paperback, 224 pages, £9.24

An early title written by Frances Hutchinson who worked on the book with Mike Rowbotham (author of the excellent Grip of Death, see Money Books)

See also:

• Money
• Money Books
• The Money Masters
• A Brief History of Money
• Money as Debt

A while back I came across this excellent talk by John Jordan (of Reclaim the Streets, Clown Army, The Take etc).

You can watch the talk online:
http://www.tate.org.uk/onlineevents/archive/live_culture/live_conference.htm

(its in Day 2, 12:05 – 13:25 Activations Alan Read, Alastair MacLennan, John Jordan)

Or read a rough transcript:
http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0304/msg00016.html

See also:

• Ending Poverty with Open Hardware
• Housing Co-ops
• The War On Democracy by John Pilger
• Some of my favourite websites
• Links for November 13th to November 18th

Widespread debt slavery created by an insane banking system is undoubtedly one of the biggest problems we all face.

This video animation, Money as Debt by Paul Grignon, is undoubtedly one the most important films ever made.

If you don’t yet understand why money is such a big problem, WATCH THIS VIDEO.

Please help spread this video far and wide.

I’ve embedded it here, but you can watch and download it on Google Video too.

Further introductory reading

• Ecology of Money and Short Circuit by Richard Douthwaite
• Community Currency Guide (pdf) by Bernard Lietaer and Gwendolyn Hallsmith
• Interest and Inflation Free Money by Margrit Kennedy
• Extract of Money: Understanding and Creating Alternatives to Legal Tender (pdf) by Tom Greco
• Draft of Healthy Money Healthy Planet:Developing Sustainability through new Money Systems by Deirdre Kent
• Chapter One of Grip of Death (literal meaning of mortgage) by Michael Rowbotham
• Money Debt and Banks essay by Richard Greeves, Dr. John Courtneidge and David Soori
• Openmoney.info and the Open Money Manifesto by Michael Linton and friends
• The inspirational article A Tale of Two Ecovillages by Jonathan Dawson, that looks at Damanhur’s Credito currency and Findhorn’s Eko

Some of the many examples of successful alternatives to the Money as Debt madness:

• Bartercard
• The Totnes Pound
• Berkshares
• Toronto Dollar
• Salt Spring Dollars
• Ithaca Hours
• WIR Bank – Economic Circle Co-operative that has been running in Switzerland since 1934
• Damanhur’s Credito
• Findhorn’s Eko

See also:

• Timebanks.org
• Time Banks UK
• The LETSystem Design Manual
• LETS Link UK
• The ccSyndicator
• Complementary Currency Resource Center
• The Workgroup on Solidarity Socio-Economy’s sub-site on Social Money
• Interra Project
• LOADs more really good money links can be found via all the sites above, here, here, here and here

Again, please help to spread this video and information far and wide.

Thank you.

Further reading:

• a_changing_money_system.pdf by Margrit Kennedy
• Beyond Greed and Scarcity.pdf – an interview with Bernard Lietaer by Sarah van Gelder, editor of YES!: A journal of positive futures.
• breadhoursnewsletter.pdf – a nice newsletter from the now defunct www.breadhours.org (anyone know what happened?)
• ccClearingHouse.pdf – a proposal for an “Internet-based clearing system that would enable complementary currencies of different types from anywhere in the world to be exchanged among themselves. It would be an important next step to empower the complementary currency movement.”
• Comment on the Wörgl Experiment with Community Currency and Demurrage.pdf by Thomas H Greco, Jr.
• Community Currencies in Japan.pdf by Yasuyuki Hirota
• community currency for solving social issues.pdf by Akio Doteuchi
• Community_Currency_Guide.pdf – an excellent guide by Bernard Lietaer and Gwendolyn Hallsmith
• Community_Exchange_Systems_screen.pdf – a Community Exchange Systems in Asia, Africa & Latin America newsletter from 2002
• Complementary currency systems and the new economic paradigm.pdf by Stephen DeMeulenaere for Strohalm Foundation
• decentralizedcurrency.pdf – Money as IOUs in a Social Trust Network and A Proposal for a Secure, Private, Decentralized Digital Currency Protocol by Ryan Fugger, founder of Ripplepay,com
• FEASTA Proposals 4 Gobal Monetary Reform.pdf by Feasta: The Foundation for the Economics of Sustainability
• How to Build Healthy Community Economics.pdf – a presentation by Thomas H Greco, Jr.
• InternationalExperienceInCommunityCurrencies.PDF by Gill Seyfang and Ruth Pearson
• interraproj.pdf – an introduction to the Interra Project
• InWhoseInterest.pdf – an article by Mark Kinney for http://www.terratrc.org/
• Islamic Banking and its Importance in the Emergence of Economic Democracy.pdf by Thomas H Greco, Jr.
• keeping_the_gp_away.pdf – a nef (new economics foundation) briefing about community time banks and health
• local_currencies_catalysts.pdf – “Local Currencies: Catalysts for Sustainable Regional Economies” by Robert Swann and Susan Witt
• Local Currencies in European History.pdf by Jerome Blanc for LEFI
• MoneyABriefHistoryDeeHock.pdf – “Money – A Brief History” by Dee Hock, founder of VISA
• money debt and banks.pdf by Richard Greeves, Dr. John Courtneidge and David Soori
• money_guide.pdf – United Diversity’s Money Guide
• pictorial_history_of_CCS.pdf by Stephen DeMeulenaere
• Plugging the Leaks – Handbook.pdf – Making the most of every pound that enters your local economy, published by nef
• Presentation of Tucson Traders for the Forum Social Money.pdf by Thomas H Greco, Jr.
• Public Involvement in Health-Timebanks.pdf by nef
• Report of the Worldwide Database of Complementary Currency Systems 06.pdf by Stephen DeMeulenaere
• Setting Up a Credit Union.pdf from the Association of British Credit Unions Ltd
• Social_Money_as_a_Lever_for_the_New_Economic_Paradigm.pdf, summarised by Heloisa Primavera
• Social Money the experience of Friendly Favors.pdf by Sergio Lub
• Social money – Well timed permanence or break from normality.pdf by Heloisa Primavera
• The SANE Community Exchange System.pdf by Tim Jenkin
• the_time_of_our_lives.pdf – Research findings about Time Banks in the UK, by Gill Seyfang
• Time Banking – A briefing.pdf by nef
• Time Banks – A Radical Manifesto for the UK.pdf by nef
• Time Banks in the UK-Building Sustainable Communities.pdf by Gill Seyfang
• Wealth money and power.pdf by Heloisa Primavera
• What is a credit union flyer.pdf by ABCUL

See also:

• Money downloads
• A Brief History of Money
• In Debt We Trust
• Money
• More money books

In my last post about Transition Towns I mentioned that Gloria and I decided to try and write a post a day throughout May about inspiring people and projects. She’s done a pretty good job so far, having covered Maya Angelou, Ruth Cox, Muhammad Yunus, Charles Drew, Jane Goodall, and Mark Johnson.

I’ve not managed to keep the one post a day pace at all, so to make up for it I’m going to link to all my favourite land, money and media project on this page… (but its now gone 3am so I’m hitting the sack and will actually finish this page at a later date! Typical!)

Land
Some of my favourite land projects:

• Community Land Trust website from Community Finance Solutions
• Land for People – a network of welsh Community Land Trust who have also developed model rules for CLTs.
• The Village – a very inspiring Ecovillage project in Ireland.
• Lammas – an equally inspiring Ecovillage project in Pembrokeshire, Wales.
• Institute for Community Economics – a national US community development organization promoting economic justice through community land trusts (CLTs) and community investment.
• The Land is Ours – campaigns peacefully for access to the land, its resources, and the decision-making processes affecting them, for everyone, irrespective of race, gender or age.
• Art for Land’s sake – Land Roots cooperative land network’s project to raise funds for land by selling art and music.
• See my land links for more inspiration.

Money
I’ve covered most of my favourite money links over at Money as Debt, but repeat a selection of them here too…

• Bartercard
• The Totnes Pound
• Berkshares
• Toronto Dollar
• Salt Spring Dollars
• Ithaca Hours
• WIR Bank – Economic Circle Co-operative that has been running in Switzerland since 1934
• Damanhur’s Credito
• Findhorn’s Eko
• Timebanks.org
• Time Banks UK
• LETS Link UK
• Interra Project
• Lots more good stuff is listed in the Money as Debt post, also check out my money links.
• Also check out the inspirational article A Tale of Two Ecovillages by Jonathan Dawson, that looks at Damanhur’s Credito currency and Findhorn’s Eko

Media
It is time for everyone to stop watching TV, stop reading the paper and Be The Media!

• Indymedia (UK) – the original open publishing site.
• Undercurrents – an inspirational award winning media charity based in Swansea. I reckon their forthcoming Ecovillage Pioneers DVD is gonna be essential viewing and their Vision on TV project looks set to rock the world
• Make Internet TV – a fantastic site that has step-by-step instructions for shooting, editing, and publishing online videos that can be watched and subscribed to by millions of people. Brought to you by the wonderful people at The Participatory Culture Foundation who also make the excellent Democracy Player
• Project Censored – all the important news that didn’t quite make the news.
• Z Communications – best known for Znet “a community of people committed to social change”.
• Popping out to lunch now, will have to finish this post later this afternoon…

See also:

• Money as Debt
• We Have Land!
• Money downloads
• Transition Towns
• Money

UPDATE: the first Commons Creation meeting was held at Limehouse Town Hall on Sunday 21st January, 2007. A copy of the presentation given can be downloaded here as a PDF (1.1Mb) file. Enjoy!

Introduction

The Commons Creation Collective is all about harnessing the wealth and power of our networks and working together to raising funds and awareness.

It will initially bring together conscious event organisers, radial media publishers, and their supporters, to collaborate on two complementary projects:

1. The Commons Creation Fund
   Lots of people contributing a minimum of £5 a month into a common fund and deciding together how to best to invest it in shared infrastructure. Purpose: to create a commons; a pool of collectively owned/ shared resources (thereby building the foundations for a scaleable community banking and exchange system).
2. The Commons Creation Flyer
   A regular A3 (folded to A6) flyer, distributed by members, that encourages people to become a member of the collective (i.e. contribute £5 a month, help distribute flyer, promote the collective), give details of all the events organised by members, and links to news and issues they deem important.Purpose: to ensure the success of the Commons Creation Fund, and to inform as many people as possible about all events organised by members, and all the news/issues they deem important.

So, what’s the deal?

INDIVIDUALS

To become a member of the Commons Creation Collective, individuals agree to:

• Contribute a minimum of £5 per month to the Commons Creation Fund
• Help distribute the Commons Creation Flyer/ promote the Commons Creation Collective (this can be as simple as inviting friends and forwarding e-mails, or getting involved with day to day admin jobs etc.)

In return, members:

• Become shared owners of The Commons, our pool of collectively owned/shared resouces
• Decide together (using Dotmocracy?) how best to spend the money contributed to the Commons Creation Fund
• Are kept informed about all the latest news and events relevant to the collective
• Can submit and rate news, events and short articles to be included on the flyer
• Get FREE entrance to exclusive member gatherings and parties
• Get discounts from other members of the collective (eg. concessionary ticket prices, cheap books, CDs etc)
• Get fair access to use of the resources in The Commons (obviously, you own them)
• Get connected to other people and groups who share similar values and/or are interested in the same things (all the other members and the wonderful people you’ll meet at member events)

GROUPS

If a conscious event/radical publisher/other group wants to get involved they agree:

• To put a link to commonscreation.org on their website
• To put a link to commonscreation.org on all their flyers/mailouts/publications
• To offer discouts and/or special offers to members of the collective

In return, groups will get:

• A profile on commonscreation.org highlighting all the good work the groups does, including details about how to get involved and links back to their own site etc.
• Details of all events organised by the group included on the Commons Creation Flyer
• A link to the group’s website on all copies of the Commons Creation Flyer
• Additionally, and perhaps most significantly, groups will gain discounted access to and use of the resources held in The Commons (eg. web experts, CD burners, printers, vans, lighting rigs, staging, land, venues, etc.)

Who needs to be involved?

Event Organisers:

• uniteddiversity – signed up!
  Josef, Oli, Tom
• Peace Not War – signed up!
  Mudge, Katie, Rob, Sarah, Katie, Fidel, etc.
• One Taste – signed up!
  Dannii, Jamie
• The Synergy Project – signed up!
  Dom, Gian, Daniel, Alex, Rowly, etc.
• Movimientos – signed up!
• Neo-Dogma-Non – signed up!
  
• Creative Forum
  Alan, Teresa, Shane, Gareth etc.
• Art Music Politic
  Will etc.
• Guerilla Zoo
  James etc.
• Small World Solar Stage
  Pony, Emma, etc.
• The Synergy Centre
  Steve, Matt, Jo, etc.
• Kingston Green Fair
  Bernadette, Des, etc.
• NODE London
• Big Green Gathering
• Sunrise Celebration
  Daniel etc.
  
• Buttercuts
  Andy etc.
• Raison d’etre
  Yvan, Crystal
• Needle and Thread
  Len etc.
• Signs of Life
• Crystal Field
  Enoch etc.
• Sangita Sounds
  Darren etc.
• Planet Angel
  Pete, Angel, etc.
• etc.

Radical Media Publishers and Bloggers

• Red Pepper
• Bulb Magazine
• Resurgence
• Undercurrents
• Peace News
• Green Events
• City Hippy – signed up!
• Shorno.net
• Leighton Cooke
• Ceridwen Devi
• Indymedia
• i-conscious
• germination
• contaminant media
• media venture collective
• etc.

How will it be financed?

The aim is for the whole thing to be self-financed by member contributions (we encourage those who can afford to contribute more than £5 a month to do so). Some seed funding will also be sought, but there is nothing stopping a group of co-operatively minded people from pooling £5+ a month straight away.

Next Steps:

• Gather some of the people who need to be involved and get agreement on the above (or at least something very similar to what is outlined above)
• On the back of this initial agreement, get more of the people who need to be involved signed-up, whilst also working on the initial website and flyer

APPENDIX
Suggested Initial SMART Goals/Objectives (specific, measurable, acheivable, realistic, time-based)

• Get first version of http://commonscreation.org up (a nicely designed site explaining the idea, who the existing members are, how and why to join, etc.) no later than one month after getting initial agreement from some of the people who need to be involved.
• Design and produce the first version of the flyer no later than one month after getting initial agreement from some of the people who need to be involved. Start to distribute flyers.
• Get 400 members to sign-up and start contributing £5 a month by December 31st, 2006.
• Hold a monthly member’s gatherings (meal and jam session), starting no later than Januray, 2007.

Suggestions about where to put/invest money

• La Base – “Some seek to destroy the pyramid by taking the power of the top. La Base creates by giving power to the base. When the base rises, a new structure rises with it.”
  

  What is La Base
  La Base is rooted in the idea that real democracy and human rights can only be meaningful when accompanied by economic rights and autonomy.

  La Base is not an organization, but a fund of productive capital owned in common. Access to this resource is universal but entails an obligation to ensure its sustainability for all, now and in the future. Those who use La Base are free to create their world as they will.

  La Base’s resources are currently used as fair loans to individuals to help them pursue their economic independence in democratic collectives. Loan repayments go back to the common fund to be used by others. To learn more about loans and other practical applications of La Base, please see the actions.

• Rootstock – “supporting co-operatives working for social change”
  

  Rootstock is a social investment society set up as an initiative of the Radical Routes network of co-operatives. Radical Routes is a growing network of housing and workers’ co-operatives working for social change.

  Radical Routes co-operatives are active in many fields, including:

  Sustainable land use through permaculture, land restoration, woodland creation, and growing and distributing organic food.

  Communal housing – co-operatively owned housing is a resource for the whole community rather than a commodity for the profit of a few.

  Resource centres for communities

  Information through publications, radical bookshops and practical support for new co-ops.

  Campaigning on issues such as ecological preservation, animal rights and housing.

  International peace work

  Home education

  Electrical, plumbing and small scale building work

  Support services including Book keeping and accountancy, Computer services, Training and consultancy, Mediation and group working

• Triodos – Europe’s leading ethical bank that only finances projects wtih affect positive social, environmental and cultural change.
  
• Ecology Building Society – a mutual building society dedicated to improving the environment by promoting sustainable housing and sustainable communities.
• London Rebuilding Society and other CDFI’s (Community Development Finance Institutions)

See also:

• Commons Creation Collective
• Commons Creation meeting
• We Have Land!
• Very Exciting News
• The London Fund