ecurrency
Upon awakening today, had an idea, Mother always gives at the right moment.
Now at this time, the website is basically, roughly ready for presentation. A few tweaks needed, but these can be done as time permits and need dictates.
The letters I wrote quickly on the back of an envelope are SSECMM. Stands for Super Simple Electronic Currency for the coMmon Man. (or Modern Man). But the letters could also stand for something else.
Then I went on the net and tried to find the reference site of iWat. There I downloaded a very interesting paper. In that paper they were talking about a system called SSEC.
They Japanese are very experienced in these systems. I once read or heard a story of a German woman who lived in Japan in a coastal region during a hurricane or taifun. Her home was washed/blown away. But in the aftermath, the community took care of them. Immediately they were put up in someone’s residence. They were given good blankets, food, clothing etc. Their lives were re-built immediately along with everyone else who had lost their homes. The local community absorbed the impact of disaster. And it was highly organized.
I particularly remember this story, because of the attitude of the German lady. She told this story to illustrate how “nothing in life comes free” in a negative sort of way. After some years, there again was a disaster, but this time the woman and her family were safe. Other’s homes were lost. But the German woman was incensed, perplexed that the Japanese woman, who originally had organized all the materials and household items for them, came to her with a list. She said, this is what we have given you, now you must give something back. You must help.
I am assuming the German woman did not understand that in a situation such as this it is natural to offer help. She just looked on and said “oh, those poor souls” without even thinking, “I have to do something. I have been helped, now let me also help.” This is what necessitated the Japanese woman coming to ask. The Japanese organizer, social coordinator was just giving the woman an opportunity to reciprocate. But the German lady was dumb-founded. She thought it was mean-spirited of the Japanese not to give “freely”.
The main reason any system of mutual credit clearing fails, says Thos. Greco, is that reciprocity fails. That is, people fail to redeem their tickets, their currency notes, which are obligations. If people do not redeem the tickets, the system has to absorb that debt.
The Japanese have studied this over thousands of years, living as they do on a relatively small island. They have had to function very efficiently as communities. Now there are some IT people who have been working on the problems and possibilities associated with peer to peer currency using electronics, p2p e-credit. They have developed some very interesting models and some interesting software.
It is documented on a website here: http://www.media-art-online.org/iwat/
http://www.media-art-online.org/pdf/csac2005-rot.pdf seems particularly interesting.
For my own mind, I am thinking, in my own very limited way, how people can simply use their cell phones to transfer files and use this as a system for circulating “credit notes”.
But there is the issue that the notes need to remain in circulation a length of time and should move quickly, should not be hoarded or saved.
This is an interesting thing.
After reading some of these papers it occurred to me, it just kind of popped into my mind. The reason today we are not aware of what we are doing to our environment, that we personally do not see the consequences of our actions is that money is so distant, so removed from us.
The way money functions right now, we are several steps out of the picture. The whole system functions to cache the effects of our choices long enough to lull us into complacency about the problems we see around us. All the problems are naturally a result of the choices we are making, when we see the root of the problem. But we won’t be forced to look at the root, if our money is far removed from us as an instrument, if trade is not autonomous and local.
If our money, on the other hand, is something we ourselves produce, we will immediately be forced to see what we are doing wrong.
A situation happened just the other day. It was quite banal. But it still served to wake me up. I received a call from a young man who wanted me to perform some service for him. Now, I rarely get this kind of call. In fact, I have just returned to the area, having lived practically in seclusion for several years, and no one knows where I am. So, I was not prepared for the call. The man wanted me to do some editing work.
I was so arrogant on the phone that the young man was completely turned off and uninterested in working with me. But he did not say anything. Only just after I put down the receiver did I understand that my tone of voice was inappropriate.
Every businessman and woman knows what I did not know in that moment, of course. It’s clearly my lack of experience and foolish behavior that penalized me, that I did not get to work for that man. People will say it’s common sense. But for me it just opened up another area.
How often have people complained about the impersonal nature of big business and gov’t? Only a centralized currency allows this kind of behavior. Only a currency that removes the user several steps from the source or the producer of the product or service allows people to abuse the earth and it’s peoples. Only a huge central apparatus allows some people to commit atrocity from the comfort of their armchairs in board meetings.
Come down to the community level and start to live with each other, not shielded from each other by such a displaced and dysfunctional credit instrument. That is where real life and real exchange happens.
It just flashed upon my consciousness that when we have a personal, autonomous credit, each and every person, individual will be forced to immediately deal with and correct their social behavior towards responsibility for the whole of the community. It cannot but function so. Make currency as individual and diverse as possible. Allow each person to issue their own personal credit notes and this will give back the greatest good to society.
To the degree you allow intermediaries into the systems, you insulate and isolate the original creditors (producers) and debtors (users) from each other and separate them from the opportunity of immediately FEELING their mistakes and making course corrections.