Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Local currencies of the kind described here are more revolutionary than may first appear, not least because they amount to a rejection of the most fundamental neoliberal principles – the primacy of the market and the monetisation of human values.
Time is money – so the saying goes. Now you can donate and even exchange your time to help people.
The Swiss WIR (“We” in German) is the longest surviving social or community currency, sometimes called a complementary currency.
In October 2009, while expecting another futile climate summit in nearby Copenhagen, a small group of friends in the Kumpula neighborhood of Helsinki got together to discuss practical alternatives.
Do digital currencies like Bitcoin have the ability to change the global economic order?
Banks. We can’t live with them, we can’t live without them. Yet.
Community currencies created by groups in Spain in response to the economic crisis alter fundamental aspects of the economic system and favor a more just society.
Writing for Roar magazine back in 2014, Jerome Roos pointed out that money is a social relation, not a real thing.
The basic idea of interest is simple. It’s a special type of rent.
Prosperity Parade, funded by the Barrow Cadbury Trust, includes eight tales about the new entrepreneurial spirit, where people are finding ways of kickstarting their local economic engines, often in very poor areas, and by doing so increasing their independence from central and local government.
I’ve given up on fixing the economy. The economy is not broken. It’s simply unjust. There’s a difference.
Global developments in finance and geopolitics are prompting a rethinking of the structure of banking and of the nature of money itself.
