It’s a simple and long-overdue upgrade of the most powerful technology in human history, to resolve our complex global resource crisis, providing the resources to reverse global warming, end poverty, and much more.
This simple upgrade of money — Reconomy — is completely legal and free to every nation and community, placed in the public domain in 2011.
How did things get this bad?
Today’s complex global emergency evolved in spite of our seeking a better future for ourselves, as we repeated with good intent the same destructive action since the dawn of civilization. The destructive action is competing for low prices to win in the marketplace without rewarding good stewardship equally — disastrously rewarding consumers and producers for avoiding the added costs of good stewardship.
Reconomy introduces a new kind of money that rewards good stewardship without taking the old kind of money away.
We can empower and reward ourselves — literally, pay ourselves — for sustainably developing local human and natural resources everywhere through simply adding a second kind of money that pays for good stewardship and circulates locally forever, resulting in sustainable prosperity for everyone everywhere.
(above:Elinor Ostrom was an unusual choice for the 2009 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.)
Elinor Ostrom’s excellent summary in her Nobel lecture:
The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2009
Ostrom describes the trap we are in as analogous to “the prisoners dilemma” in game theory, in which prisoners are isolated from each other, because when groups can not communicate they are more likely to exhaust and pollute common resources. Our separation from our actual neighbors by the global marketplace results in huge hurdles to effective regulation of local resources everywhere. Empowering local connection is proven to result in collaborative stewarding of local resources.
Solution: Empower and reward good local stewardship everywhere.
Specifically:
We can accomplish this most easily the way it’s been proven to work:
UPGRADE MONEY to create powerful local currency that works right beside global currency: Reconomy (this strategy is in the public domain).
How:
There are far more than 250 million persons around the world seeking decent work (unemployed, involuntarily underemployed, etc),
and more than two billion hectares of land requiring restoration to be productive.
Those are the two greatest wastes in all of human history.
With this second, powerful local money, we can combine these wasted resources, to make them our greatest asset, so communities anywhere and everywhere can truly engage anyone and everyone who wants the work in local sustainable development of all human and natural resources.
Focusing this new money on development of local marketable commodities, from food to education, and backing it with what it produces, as it circulates locally forever in virtuous circuits of sustainable production and consumption, creating a self-funding, self-managing, and self-scaling path to sustainable prosperity everywhere.
The results include (but are not limited to):
- restores all human and wild habitat that can be restored
- prevents further damage that can be prevented
- prepares us as quickly as possible for the consequences of what can neither be repaired nor prevented, nor even predicted, such as possible loss of global access to some essential resources…and here is how:
- accomplishes the fastest possible solution to poverty, hunger, unemployment, and homelessness
- accomplishes global reforestation and restoration of two billion hectares by midcentury, by funding continuous sustainable management of all forests, limiting loss to fire, reversing climate change ,and ending the Anthropocene Extinction, without taking any resources away from other needs
- accomplishes a permanent and more equitable redistribution of wealth without taking wealth from anyone
- funds and completes transition to renewable resources everywhere as soon as possible
- empowers communities everywhere to create local self-reliance to provide the most resilient protection from regional and global disasters such as flood, pandemic, and war
- creates a resilient supply line of sustainable resources to the global marketplace from everywhere to provide the most resilient foundation possible for global civilization and deepest resources for global response to local emergencies
- creates the compassionate civilization we practice being
- leaves no one behind
(above: view of sunset from El Cerro de la Muerte in Costa Rica)
How does this new kind of money accomplish all this? How is it produced? How does it circulate?
Reconomy’s new money works right beside the old money but stays in communities:
We can back the guarantee of the value of the new money in a variety of ways initially, until it is backed with what it produces. For fastest implementation, back the new money with acceptance in payment of taxes so everyone immediately trusts and uses it. The taxes paid with new money can be returned to local community development organizations. Alternatively, guarantee local community currency against default with a secured deposit of national currency (from donations, sale of art prints of local currency designs, etc) to exchange for local money if local system closes for any reason.
More details on implementation and related issues are posted in the public domain at the Reconomy website and through posts linked from the Reconomy Quora space. And implementation of Reconomy from the ground-up is now in development, including design and installation of a glocal art contest to design local community currency at Kind.Voyage open to everyone under 18 years of age, with a weekly prize of up to $1000.
Curitiba: Unilivre / Free environmental University:
(1) most make the error of backing their local money by redeeming it for national currency, so it’s continuously redeemed out of circulation by persons who need national money to spend in the global marketplace, thus continuously wasting the costs of placing it into local circulation and disrupting the local circuits of production and consumption; or
(2) some local systems are introduced as speculative crypto (Ponzi) schemes that generate volatile trading value that results in hoarding and dumping, and experience eventual decline and collapse of value and systems; and
(3) the most widely employed local money systems are mutual exchange systems (MES), such as local employment trading systems and other forms of time banks, that struggle against unsecured debt. These involve credits (of local money or hours of time, etc) recorded in the accounts of members when providing goods and/or services, and debits recorded in the accounts of members when consuming those goods and services — thus a mutual exchange. These types of systems can be easy to implement because they are self-funding (by definition), but they are generally backed only by the debt of members and thus may stagnate or wither due to default on unsecured debt. MES can do well when the debtors are obligated in some way to repay. Perhaps the best example of a successful mutual exchange system is Fureai Kippu in Japan, in which members trade time spent on elder care, which has extraordinary success due to deep cultural roots related to ancestor worship, high value of community, and dishonor to those defaulting on debt.
In contrast: Reconomy creates local money by paying for sustainable development of goods and services, and thus can guarantee the money with the value of what is produced, (not leaving it as unsecured debt like MES) establishing secure and continuous circuits of sustainable production and consumption.
(1) workers spend the earnings in the same old way that rewards people for offering low prices through ducking the costs of good stewardship, undoing the good work,
and
(2) thus the national/global money leaves communities and accumulates continuously into fewer and fewer pockets, rather than continuing forever in virtuous circuits of local production and consumption that build sustainable prosperity for everyone.
Genuine local money continuously circulates locally forever, building local intra-dependent wealth for everyone by continuously funding every kind of sustainable local development because the shareholders (owners of local money) are the stakeholders (the ones affected by it), empowering communities
- to fight PANDEMIC: Pay people with local money to make face masks, which can be sold for local and national money, so there is money for buying imported materials and tools; and the workers can buy the face masks at a significant discount (e.g. 50%) to wear and/or to sell in their own businesses, providing work and a business opportunity for many and face masks for everyone.
- to develop water resources: For example, pay people with local money to dig wells and to pump the water — then sell the water for the local money, establishing virtuous circuits of sustainable production and consumption that create a demand for the local currency — a strategy that leaves no one behind.
- to grow food: Plant gardens and harvest the produce — Proven tactic: offer discounts for the food when purchased with the local currency to multiply the demand for both the food grown with local money and the local money itself, and thus multiplying the empowerment to employ persons in sustainable development of all kinds to earn the money.
- education: build schools and pay teachers.
- renewable energy: build local energy plants that keep energy money local, produce renewable fuels.
- sanitation: build public restrooms and pay for management with local money, and recycle waste for additional profit.
- housing: build with local natural materials using local labor, such as with bamboo and cob harvested/produced and installed locally.
- reforestation: a small percentage of labor to plant and steward forests for food, fuel and other materials.
- child care: build local facilities and use local caretakers.
- elder care: create local networks of support.
- transportation: exchange stuff collected for recycling for transportation tokens.
- local health care programs: network local caretakers.
- and much much more — everything that can be accomplished locally when communities have continuous access to money, energy and a global network of mutual support (Reconomy).Local money recirculates forever…unlike national money that leaves to fetch stuff:
Sustainable prosperity for everyone everywhere requires only a stable second money to pay for good local stewardship, backed by the goods and services it produces — and we become the compassionate civilization we practice being because we are able to network our communities to share and promote their deep solutions: That’s Reconomy: self-funding, self-managing, self-scaling.
The great strength of the global marketplace is it enables us to combine all the world’s human and natural resources and share them, but its fatal weakness is it impels us to exploit those resources unsustainably to compete in that marketplace. The great strength of local marketplaces is they empower us to protect local human and natural resources, but their fatal weakness is they isolate the communities.
Any community, anywhere, can combine these two marketplaces — global and local — now, by creating a parallel local currency, to enjoy the benefits of both marketplaces as each corrects the fatal weakness of the other, without taking money away from other needs.
As an idea (Reconomy) with a network of support, we are preparing a plan for implementation as a fun and profitable game that everyone wins. The planning, including seed funding, is nearing completion, and it operates exactly as described:
It creates a local currency that combines global and local marketplaces without taking money away from any other needs, and does this by rewarding and empowering individuals, organizations, and communities for their participation in creating beauty and sustainable prosperity. It will be introduced as a functioning system, and everyone will be invited to implement this in their own communities as part of our network.
Thanks,
We the people of our beautiful Earth
Click here to see Spanish translation of this answer by Kattia Montenegro
Reconomy’s Quora advertising campaign: April 3rd, 2020: This answer has been shown through an advertising promotion on Quora more than 2.9 million times (often to same persons repeatedly) resulting in more than 125 thousand clicks on the link to the answer, more than 1800 upvotes, and more than 80 of the more than 100 shares. The image below shows Quora’s report.
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