The last beings to comprehend the nature of water are fish. Similarly this is true of people and the nature of money. We allocate a great proportion of our physical, emotional, and mental energy to getting, keeping, and spending money–but how many of us really know what money is or where it comes from?
Reproduced from: https://philoma.org/wp-content/uploads/docs/2009/09_10_24_-_Texte_-_The_future_of_Money_-_B._Lietaer.pdf & http://www.philosophie-management.com/docs/2009/09_10_24_-_Texte_-_The_future_of_Money_-_B._Lietaer.pdf The Future of Money © Bernard Lietaer August 1998 Table of Contents INTRODUCTION 8 Three Promises 8 Underlying Viewpoint 9 CHAPTER 1: MONEY – THE ROOT OF ALL POSSIBILITIES 12 The Time-Compacting Machine 13 1. Age Wave 15 2. Information Revolution 18 3. Climate Change and Biodiversity Extinction 20 4.… Read More
4. May 2016, Brussels
Q 1– 0:07 – Where does money come from?
Q 2 –1:04 – Is money neutral?
Q 3 –2:41– Why is money scarce?
Q 4 –4:57– Can this monetary system work sustainably?
Q 5 –7:46– Does the financial system need growth?
Q 6 –9:11– Why are you interested in monetary-systems?
Q 7 –10:41 – Do we have just one monetary system at the moment? Like a monopoly?
Q 8 –12:32 – What would you propose regarding the monetary system?
Q 9 –15:31 – Are there alternatives to the current monetary system?
Q 10 –17:30 – Why is there this speechlessness about money-topics?
Q 11a –19:22 – What kind of behaviour does our money-system create between people?
Q 11b –21:49 – Does the scarcity of money harm only the poor people?
Q 11c –25:56 – What does money do to people and their relationships?
Q 12 –31:55 – How did you discover complementary currencies?
Q 13 –34:42 – Did the knowledge of complementary currencies effect your life?
Q 14 –35:49 – What do you think your co-author Margrit Kennedy achieved in regard to monetary systems?
Q 15 –37:33 – Are there changes to this financial system?
Q 16 –41:09 – What do you think about internet-based currencies like Bitcoin and the new technology Blockchain?
Q 17 –42:30 – You observed the global financial development for decades. What do you conclude from your experience?
Q 18 –44:34 – Where do you see practical progress concerning complementary currencies?
Q 19 –48:00 – What would you propose for countries which are in Euro-crisis like Greece?
Q 20 –49:02 – If you were in power, what would you do?
Q 21 –50:40 – What do you think about the Euro?
Q 22 –52:21 – For which task do we need the Euro?
Q 23 –55:02 – Could a currency have influence on the question of war or peace?
Q 24 –58:10 – Are there “currency-wars” or wars because of currencies?
Q 25 –59:43 – Does the money-system polarize?
Q 26 –1:01:10 – Can a national lead-currency deprive other currencies and nations?
Q 27 –1:02:00 –What is the motivation for your work?
Q 28 –1:03:45 – Do you like to give a message to the next generation?
Introduction to an Alternative History of Money Author(s): L. Randall Wray Download: Working Paper No. 717 http://www.levyinstitute.org/publications/introduction-to-an-alternative-history-of-money This paper integrates the various strands of an alternative, heterodox view on the origins of money and the development of the modern financial system in a manner that is consistent with the findings of historians and anthropologists. As… Read More
New Economic Thinking Published on Feb 2, 2014 The financial crisis that ran from 2007 to 2009 has been called a “Minsky Moment,” meaning it offered a much-needed reminder to all economists of Hyman Minsky’s neglected dictum that “capitalism is essentially a financial system.” But even with this reminder, it is hard to know what… Read More
The precursors of money, along with language, enabled early modern humans to solve problems of cooperation that other animals cannot – including problems of reciprocal altruism, kin altruism, and the mitigation of aggression. These precursors shared with non-fiat currencies very specific characteristics – they were not merely symbolic or decorative objects.
This is a revised version of my talk for the 2017 Festival of Ideas for Change, on why we need to reform laws governing the way money is repeatedly created, destroyed and created again for the benefit of those seeking wealth and power.
In a previous post entitled Is our credit creation system the father of all pathogenic human interferences?, I endeavoured to compare and contrast the delocalized mitochondria that sufficiently powers our cells in our bodies via ATP production (without debt and interest production), and our centralalized banking system that insufficiently disempowers our communities in our nation-states via debt-producing compound-interest… Read More
Imagine a world where governments can borrow huge amounts of money created by private corporations (for their own profit) and charge the debt to taxpayers (without any say-so from those taxpayers); then use the money to do whatever they like, including buy arms, make wars and laws and payments to benefit themselves, their supporters and friends.
Imagine a world where the entire money supply is created as debt, and rented out at interest. Debt rented out at interest? Can such a devious a form of robbery even exist?
It can and does; for this is the world we live in today…
How do we begin to explain the total mess the world is in, and why money is the root of it all?
Energy in living systems is all too often equated with money in economy, and vice versa. This has misled generations of biologists and economists alike. As we have seen, living energy transactions are always tied to real interactions and exchanges between molecules with minimum dissipation. For money to be equivalent to energy, it too, has to be tied to exchanges in real goods and services. Unfortunately, money has become more and more decoupled from real goods and services, and hence more like entropy than energy. It becomes entropy in unequal exchanges when the price paid is too low, as in exploitative labor or between currencies that are grossly overvalued on the side of the purchaser. The money market is especially entropic [25,44,48], because it is not based on any real-valued goods or services; furthermore, it artificially inflates the purchasing power of the rich, leading to greater exploitation of environmental resources. This becomes more explicit when the medium for energy exchange in the living system is considered.
