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Conclusion: complementary currencies as ‘Early Prototypes’. In conclusion, complementary currencies make sense socially, economically and from a business viewpoint. It should also be noted that many of the current complementary currency systems should be considered as being at the stage where aeronautical engineering was when the Wright Brothers made their first flying attempts. The remarkable feat of the Wright Brothers was that their contraption flew at all. But it was nevertheless their and their 'crazy' colleagues' pragmatic demonstrations that ultimately has made possible that we and our most perishable products today fly routinely around the world. It is also significant that The New York Times mentioned the Wright Brothers' achievement for the first time only four years after the fact, and then only because the President of the United States was present at such a demonstration The real understanding of the theory of why these contraptions could fly had to wait for many more years after that. There should be no shame attached to considering the current versions of complementary currencies as 'early prototypes'. Almost all of today's systems remain obviously marginal in terms of total economic volume, for instance, just like the Wright Brothers, they are typically being ignored, or when noticed sometimes ridiculed, by mainstream academic or media pundits. Most are still waiting to be recognized by some 'Presidential witness' to be taken seriously. But what matters for us here is that they have already proved that they can 'fly', that they actually produce the intended effects at the scale for which they were designed. Specifically, the following findings have already been demonstrated in practice: 1. Complementary currencies make possible transactions and exchanges that otherwise would not occur. This means in practice
that more economic activity - implying more work and wealth is being created than would otherwise be the case. In one field survey, more than half of the people interviewed actually started to provide their services as a direct result of availability of the complementary currencies in their community. 2. This additional work and wealth is being generated where it is most needed without the need for taxes, government bureaucracy and without the risk of inflation in the mainstream economy (this last point will be developed in detail in Chapter 7). Note that this is additional wealth, not a result of redistribution of existing wealth. Therefore, complementary currencies are not a new form of welfare. Welfare is a compulsory transfer of resources from the rich to the poor via taxes. In contrast, the use of complementary currencies is voluntary for everyone; it creates new wealth and once started becomes a completely self-funding -mechanism to address many social problems without requiring permanent subsidies or taxes. 3. Complementary currencies make not only social sense, but also business sense. They enable locally owned businesses to compete better against the large chain distribution systems. Small local businesses can more easily accept the local currency, because they can spend them in the community -as is the case for small farmers who can use local labour at harvest time. In contrast, large chains have suppliers that are typically far away, and are therefore less likely to be interested in local currency participation. In this sense, complementary currencies can also contribute to making the local economy more self-reliant, a modest but healthy counterweight to the relentless globalisation of the economy. This creates a more level economic playing field, ensures better competition and therefore overall benefits to the consumers and society. 4. The WIR case and the one of Curitiba show that complementary currency systems can be scaled up to quite substantial volumes in the
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THE FUTURE OF MONEY Bernard A. Liet
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*Monetary Instability; * and an Inf
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First and foremost, these money inn
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Stories There will also be stories
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1992, remarked. ‘I used to think
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to entirely computerize the traditi
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All four of these megatrends will b
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The following hard 'money question'
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important factor of production is b
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he or she would be ruthlessly punis
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Cardon Cartoon 'Remaining locked in
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system in our own bodies (see sideb
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Please note that none of the approa
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All four cameos are set in the year
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official national clearinghouse to
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With the growth in productivity tha
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hundred such grass-roots projects a
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Cathedrals' (the 'Central Middle Ag
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Without throwing away the positive
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But let us begin at the beginning,
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Less obvious is the mechanism of th
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The Arab scholar Ibn Khaldun claime
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Matters of belief and social conven
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paper that stated where the metal w
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and imagination, launched or comple
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What happened instead was a slow an
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arrangement has serious negative co
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anker has an additional veil. In th
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The story from Australia (see box)
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the eleventh round - as part of the
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A third systematic effect of intere
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ealistic possibilities for graduall
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Just one facet of it - the Internet
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the more of us have it. Government
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intervene in (or muck up, depending
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automatically to crowd out competit
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$29.95 CD ROM version of the game h
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paper books, a printer-binder - loc
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The real revolution of possibilitie
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In Open Finance, the financial inst
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'We can be knowledgeable with other
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They just evolved and ended up refl
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Peter Schwartz, president of the Gl
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with this Official Future is that i
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the remaining 5% will succeed at pe
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with him, perhaps because this was
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payment and phone call made with tr
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He continued, 'The turning point fo
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these cyber-terrorists. "Love it, o
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financial deal in history so far, a
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specialised issuing corporations wi
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their goods. CUC presents that info
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demographic, and transaction data H
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The most effective solution for avo
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· Since May 1998 in Berlin, German
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mysteries of the universe they live
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· However, there is also a growing
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will have enough money to run an el
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In 2WO, my folks moved to idaho to
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I think I'll try to take you to Eur
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Professor Robert Guttman of the Eco
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as a monetary problem in the late 1
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2020: The girl in the nightmare on
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parents. Most of them had either be
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what was left of his hair. The comb
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long as they could remember. Their
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Figure 4.5 shows that the number of
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that 23% failed to participate beca
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street in our cities could become a
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occurring. And they are not the onl
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the ride over the next couple of de
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This topic will be tackled by explo
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There are two ways by which our hea
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ecame competitive with the Third Wo
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Page 155 and 156: Socio-political consequences Within
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Page 179 and 180: have this power should not amaze us
Page 181 and 182: In contrast, a complementary curren
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Page 193 and 194: asset. As is true with all currenci
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Page 197 and 198: type currencies, others Hureai Kipp
Page 199: The Cafe de la Paz in Berkeley, CA,
Page 203 and 204: society provide the elderly with th
Page 205 and 206: Anthropologists have found that com
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Page 213 and 214: currencies. Practice has demonstrat
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Page 217 and 218: In a world where pensioners are bec
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Page 237 and 238: All the pieces of the puzzle, inclu
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There are several significant reaso
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mind, it may well be currency,' sai
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What is at stake is quite substanti
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Furthermore, there is a growing con
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different reactions to the same com
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The US went one step further by hav
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2 Such improvements do not require
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The hard part of creating currency
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table should help in such a selecti
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is the ROCS, because it brings toge
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· 'Faced with widespread destructi
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We should start by acknowledging th
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the rate at which humanity destroys
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The importance of realigning financ
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ick wall with his forehead, he was
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duration of the project. (All value
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· and an adjustment reflecting the
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‘sustainability fee'. Now, what w
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(Note: the specific commodities, th
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just as today's decision of which n
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Revenue' in determining the demand
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as early as Pharaonic Egypt. It was
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therefore be fully backed, ensuring
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Such a strategy can be initiated as
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alliance among businesses would be
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The site was familiar - I could per
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dozens of names involved in Chaos a
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evolutionary step. Well, to us now
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other she wasn't. This amounted to
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circumstance. Convertibility among
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A Taoist viewpoint: All is about ba
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The Yin-Yang coherence I will now i
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Yang Yin Effects on Scarce/Competit
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competition among the participants
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Two important studies on Sustainabi
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The 'Cultural Creatives': the only
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knew each other. Ah of this was tru
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'Out of 88,000 practicing acupunctu
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This section will deal with the det
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will predictably kill the very inno
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My purpose in this book has been to
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1960s: Development of large-scale p
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each maturity only when a single cu
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2005: The last European holdout, Br
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1990’s: Age of corporate downsizi
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Both 'Mr Yamada's Retirement Plan'
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If Toffler is right, and if a monet
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This book delves into our collectiv
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'When I was young, I thought that m
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As the nation-states became the pow
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enterprises', a definition quite co
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usiness or consumer loans. This is
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A stock is a fraction of ownership
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perspective. Such volume amounts to
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whose values would be determined pr
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you know what you are doing, the re
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demonstrated time and again - from
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arrangements have made any signific
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developments in the currency market
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Stable or unstable, that is the que
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We started this Primer with the que
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Watutsi in Africa -'He is worth one
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national currencies); changes in ke
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Floating Exchange Rate: Rate at whi
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LETS: Acronym for Local Exchange Tr
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Scrip: Private currency usually ini
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