Communicating community currencies - please add your ideas!

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Jordan B on January 16, 2011 at 10:35am

Hi Boaz, thanks for adding your suggestions! Yes, you may be right that two weeks might be a bit short to get things out to print, but I think that we should at least be able to gather together some good material by then that we can then, as you say, try to get some feedback on. Janet Morris-Reade from the Dunbar Village Business Association has told us that she would be happy to assist in this regard, and she happens to have a background in communications.

Permalink Reply by Tom Walker on January 21, 2011 at 4:46pm

I viewed this video last night of a talk by Charles Eisenstein to the Sante Fe time bank. I must confess that I have had some skepticism about "alternative currencies" until seeing Charles's explanation that it isn't just another kind of money but is a "gateway" to a gift economy.

 

http://vimeo.com/18513825

 

Living in the Gift from Charles Eisenstein on Vimeo.

Permalink Reply by Jordan B on January 23, 2011 at 12:30pm

Hi Tom,

 

Thanks for posting the link, and I will definitely check this video out the first chance I get!

 

You are absolutely right that community currency isn't just another kind of money. There is some almost intangible quality to it that seems to be able to enable different types of transactions than traditional money, and indeed brings us closer to a sort of gift economy characterised by the abundance that can be unlocked by enabling each and every one of us to contribute the best of what we can offer.

 

Last Thursday Cabot and I met with Michael Linton and his fellow Comox Community Wayers Pieter Vorster and Caila Holbrook, and this idea that community currency enables very different types of transactions came up a lot during that meeting. As Michael said, he had never before been able to purchase art with traditional money, but has with Community Way Dollars. Same thing for contributions to a political party. Pieter spoke of how he has become a "patron of the arts" by using CW$ to pay a local, underemployed DJ to create custom mixes for him, something that just doesn't tend to happen in the traditional monetary economy, even though it theoretically can. And Community Way has unleashed the generosity of a community because it makes it easier and less risky than ever before to be generous. Why? To quote Michael, "when you donate Canadian Dollars, you know it isn't coming back". Community currency, on the other hand, will return again and again because it has nowhere else to go. More CC in circulation equals an equivalent increase in demand for the local goods and services that it can purchase. 

Permalink Reply by Jordan B on January 23, 2011 at 12:43pm

On the slogan front, I've been turning over a couple of ideas in my head recently, with a few variants possible:

 

Community Way: Made where it's paid OR Paid where it's made

Community Way: Money that stays where it pays

Community Way: Pays local, stays local

Permalink Reply by Hella Dee on January 24, 2011 at 5:35pm

So glad to see this movement growing in Vancouver. I think it is really important. I am happy to help any way I can. I was going to do an online course about how to get a community currency started. I will have to see if I can track down what website that was on again, that was a few months ago.

Permalink Reply by Hella Dee on January 25, 2011 at 3:35pm

Another great website www.reinventingmoney.com 

With some links to case studies and current community currencies.

The End of Money and the Liberation of Exchange

There is also the LETS system, wasn't that created in Canada?

Permalink Reply by Dave Myers on January 29, 2011 at 8:38am

any advance strategies for handling the inevitable 'tension' between this and the bankers and lawyers who might take exception?

Permalink Reply by Jordan B on January 29, 2011 at 4:47pm

Actually, at our last meeting we discussed the idea of approaching some local accountants and/or bankers to explain Community Way, hopefully putting their minds at ease and, if we're lucky, obtaining their endorsement or at least acceptance as well. That way, when business owners hesitate because they think their accountant might have issues, we can cite the accountants with whom we have already spoken.

Permalink Reply by Kathi Prochotsky on February 7, 2011 at 8:45pm

I did talk to my accountant Stan Lee and he stated that it would not be difficult for him to do my tax forms if I'd brought him a list of all transactions made with each having a fairmarket value attached to it. So skills used, hours worked, material needed, produce traded all listed with a fairmarket value.