THE FUTURE OF MONEY Bernard A. Lietaer - library.uniteddiversity ...

that many have jobs but are not doing the work they are passionate
about. And that they are all waiting for money. Imagine the Martian
asking us to explain what is that strange 'money' thing we seem to be
waiting for. Could you tell him with a straight face that we are
waking for an 'agreement within a community to use something -
really almost anything - as a medium of exchange"?
And keep waiting?
Our Martian might leave wondering whether there is intelligent life
on this planet. 2But how about changing the monetary framework
itself?
What this game illustrates is what Edgar Cahn, the creator of Time
Dollars, means when he says: 'The real price we pay for money is the
hold that money has on our sense of what is possible - the prison it
builds for our imagination.'
The fact is that there is enough work to be done for everyone in
your community to keep busy for the rest of his or her life. Work that
expresses our specific creativity. Have we become so hypnotised by
our fear of the scarcity of money that we are also fearing lack of
work?
So what can we do? The short answer is: create complementary
currencies designed to fulfil social functions that the national
currency does not or cannot fulfil. A variety of such non-traditional
currencies already in operation in over a dozen countries will be
described below. Here I will just outline the new possibilities such a
strategy would create.
Imagine what becomes possible when two complementary
economic systems are allowed to operate in parallel. On the one side
a competitive global economy driven by the mainstream existing