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

"Oh, come on back, Yin,
I was only kidding:'
There is a growing awareness of the need for 'social capital' in a
healthy society. Co-operative currencies are simply a tool to foster it.
Exactly as the Yang cycle is the space where financial capital is taken
care of, in the Yin cycle the social capital is being nurtured and
developed. It is time to recognise that both types of capital - financial
and social - are indispensable for human activity to flourish.
To summarise: the Integral Economy has as purpose to make
available Integral Wealth. I therefore define wealth not as an
accumulation of money. Integral Wealth is developed only when all
four types of capital - natural, social, financial and physical are in
appropriate balance (see sidebar). By confusing wealth with only
financial capital, we run the risk to believe that we can run down our
natural or our social capital indefinitely. Below a certain level of
natural or social capital, however, it is obvious that financial capital
has no relevance any more: a huge bank account in a wasteland of
social disorder or ecological collapse is meaningless and would soon
become worthless.
The Three Waves towards Sustainable Abundance
Opportunities seem to come in bunches, like grapes or bananas.
The three waves are indeed building on each other. The Value-Shift
Wave has been until now largely unreported, but underlies the entire
process. It provides the fuel for the mutation, while the Information
and Money Waves contribute the technological means to unleash the
necessary creativity.