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

I roved to me classroom next door, overhearing what appeared to
be an introductory course in Economic History.
'During the early stone age, humans used the same tool for many
different purposes: a broken stone fragment would be used for
everything from killing prey to cleaning one's nails afterwards.
During the 19th and 20th centuries mere wens to have been a similar
fixation with trying to use the same monetary tool - national
currencies – for everything from global trade to paying for someone's
education a for elderly care. To use another metaphor, this would be
similar to assuming that the nervous system is the only information
carrier in the human body, ignoring the role of the circulation of the
blood, the lymphatic system and a wealth of biochemical links.
'This idea of “ one fits all" in monetary systems finally had to be
abandoned when information and nano-production technologies
ensured that the majority of the population had no production
related 'jobs". Today, less than 30% of the world's population still has
full-time jobs of that type. This has freed the vast majority of the
people to dedicate themselves instead to whatever they feel most
passionate about - their "work" - mostly in their local or virtual
communities. The old scarce national currencies had never been
designed to support such an explosion of random creativity.
‘Of course many of the Industrial Age economic concepts such as
Gross National Product (GNP) had to be revised. It originated as
ways of measuring military potential in the earlier decades of the
20th century. Among other flaws, GNP measured only those
activities, which involved exchanges in national currencies. This led
to increasingly strange anomalies. For instance, identical activities
(someone taking care of a sick child) would be classified as
'employed’ and part of the GNP - or not - simply because in one case
the carer was paid for the service in national currency and in the