Local Money

How to Make it Happen in Your Community

By Peter North

Green Books Ltd

Copyright © 2010 Peter North
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-900322-52-2

Contents

Foreword by Rob Hopkins,
Introduction The vision,
PART ONE: THE JUSTIFICATION,
Chapter 1 The money we have,
Chapter 2 What is money – and can we change it?,
Chapter 3 Localisation,
PART TWO: ALTERNATIVE CURRENCY MODELS,
Chapter 4 A brief history of alternative currencies,
Chapter 5 Local Exchange Trading Schemes,
Chapter 6 Time banking,
Chapter 7 Ithaca and other ‘Hours’,
Chapter 8 Argentina’s barter networks,
Chapter 9 German regional currencies,
Chapter 10 BerkShares,
PART THREE: TRANSITION CURRENCIES,
Chapter 11 The first Transition currency: the Totnes Pound by Noel Longhurst,
Chapter 12 Build the world anew: the Lewes Pound,
Chapter 13 The Stroud Pound Co-op: a local currency for the Five Valleys with Molly Scott Cato,
Chapter 14 Local money in a global city: the Brixton Pound,
Chapter 15 How to do it: starting and building a local currency,
PART FOUR: TOWARDS RESILIENT LOCAL ECONOMIES,
Chapter 16 Towards a deeper ecosystem of currencies and local finance,
Chapter 17 Some closing thoughts,
References,
Resources,
Index,

CHAPTER 1

THE MONEY WE HAVE

If we are to transition our local economies and provide new ways to make a living that do not cost the Earth, money will become more central to the process. I hope this book will be a resource to help us understand how money works, and what makes good and bad money.

Perhaps the place to start is to ask: Why bother? Why set up a local currency? What’s wrong with the money we have now?

If you have enough, probably nothing is wrong, and the money we have isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Complementary currencies are complements to, not replacements for, the money we have. As we see in more detail later, to use a complementary currency you don’t have to have a critique of money at all. Many people can and do see them as a way to help others out and use their skills. Many businesses see them as just another promotion, as a way to get footfall through the door. They don’t see complementary currencies as a tool for building resilient localised economies as a response to peak oil and climate change.

You can also, of course, opt to do good things with the money you have. You can invest in and buy ethical products; spend it with sustainable and local businesses. You can avoid spending money with unethical or exploitative businesses, or on environmentally damaging products or things produced under oppressive working conditions. The money we have could work better.

But as long as there is grinding poverty next to extreme wealth, financial crises that destroy livelihoods and ruin lives, and needs being unmet even though we have the skills and resources to meet them, it’s hard to argue that everything is rosy and the type of money we have today can’t be improved upon. It has its problems.

Money is artificially scarce

Conventional thinking has it that the basic problem of economics is: how do we decide between competing demands in a world of unlimited wants and desires and deep, engrained problems, given finite resources – including money? Would it be better, Bjorn Lomborg argues, to spend our limited amounts of money on fixing malaria now and leaving climate change to richer future generations? Nicolas Stern, writing for the UK government, argues pretty conclusively that the co