Complementary currencies - Sat 4th July show

[jockox3]

I noticed you had an interesting discussion with a caller on Saturday about him wanting to use a complementary currency in his store.  This is a real live issue and one that libertarians could usefully pursue in any community.  It doesn't even need to use a silver backed currency - if you are a local enough network you can use virtually anything - usually paper or nowadays electronic transfers of tokens.

Mark, or perhaps it was Ian, mentioned that this could enhance the caller's business - there is an international trade barter system and several organizations that help match 'buyers' and 'sellers' - and some of these reckon that they can help increase a business's turnover by 15%.

During the depression there were apparently over a thousand local currencies in the US that the New Deal and Banking acts put an end to (allegedly because the folks in DC felt that it was unconstitutional for anyone other than the Federal Government to print money).  In Europe there was the WIR Bank system established by followers of the "Libertarian Socialist" Silvio Gessel in Basle in Switzerland to help keep the network of medium sized mostly locally owned businesses going at a time when there was no state money circulating.  It still exists today and trades many billions of Francs a year.

I believe that "free money" is the only way we're going to prevent a crunch like we are having at the moment in future and that these local networks are one of the ways we can work without troubling the state money institutions as much as we do now!

I'm working on one for my county in the UK, so we'll see how it goes.

[TimeLady Victorious]

Here in Detroit we have "Detroit Cheers." Not many businesses use them and I've only seen a few myself.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/29/Detroit_cheer.jpg

They're exchangeable for FRNs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit_Cheers