[wsfii-discuss] Worldchanging article on Complementary currencies

Wed Oct 5 07:47:55 UTC 2005

On Wed, Oct 05, 2005 at 03:28:54AM +0200, Harm Luebben wrote:
> A money sytem defined by a currency, may it be the Lime, Pound, Euro,
> etc. should not make a difference.

Saul's choice phrase in this context is "cvs commit for cultural
activity" (or should that be svn commit really). In this sense the
currency provides an accounting for the exchange or flow of value;
something that in the art economy is often distorted or hidden.
Perhaps this is part of the new science of protecting everything by
labelling it. 

Hugh's spoken in the past of the many 'non-financial' values or
perhaps messages carried by money. My favourite thing about the Lime
was as an isolatable subsystem one could perceive the activity within it
more clearly. It made the accounting process between the organisers
*much* more straightforward. The Lime made some local food retail 
establishments very happy to know that they knew us. 

> Adding an interest rate to a worth described in 'money' (which never
> runs out of style, has no costs for storage, etc.) should result in a
> exponential growth of where the money is, and a loss where it is not.

i know some systems (like the 'T' in livingdirectory.net) have
negative interest or depreciation on 'savings' (i wonder if this
implies or should imply depreciation on 'debt'); the aim is to
encourage flow. 

i tried to invent a traffic congestion charging scheme based on p2p
value exchange but i am not sure that it would not actively encourage 
people to become congested in the hope of making a small profit:
http://frot.org/bus/wiki.cgi?TheMachineJams

-jo