this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2024
379 points (94.2% liked)
Asklemmy
43940 readers
451 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy π
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- [email protected]: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Doug Rushkoff had a talk where he called out local currency as a thing heβd like to bring back from the medieval.
Exclusive to the community, and only valid for a short period of time, so you canβt hoard it or siphon the wealth to another community.
Edit:
Found a blog post about it: https://archive.rushkoff.com/articles/local-money.html
It doesn't say anything about it being temporary, although he does mention that in his talk here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRWzOdUiqQE
Good luck having global trade with that.
I think Rushkoff's notion was that new local currencies would be in addition to central currency. It just allows businesses to give a discount to transactions that will keep the wealth inside the community.
It's a neat idea, I just don't know how you would protect it from financial services turning it into yet another abstract tradable asset that undermines the original purpose.
Why would someone prefer that over money that can hold value over time? When I die I don't want my wife to have to jump through hoops.
Added some links to my original comment.
It's not instead of central currency, but in addition to it.
The advantage is that businesses can transact with less conventional liquidity so they don't have to rely on bank loans. This allows them to charge less to customers who use the local currency.
In the long term, this makes money [in general -- both kinds] move slightly faster within the local market, which makes the money [both kinds] more valuable [within the community]. And since the money [again, both kinds] is staying in the local market, the community's wealth is less likely to be drained by external speculators.
Doesn't that already exist in parts of the US? I know the UK and Germany have it.