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

Without throwing away the positive contributions of the existing
system, we can add new possibilities. It is often said that all crises
contain hidden opportunities. The Chinese ideogram for 'crisis' even
contains explicitly the root 'opportunity'. The opportunity that will be
described in the pages following may seem as extraordinary as the
crisis itself. You will discover how it is possible to turn the Time-
Compacting Machine into a Sustainable Abundance Machine. This
can be accomplished by revisiting the prevailing interpretation of
money, by understanding how money actually operates, and by
acting upon that knowledge.
The core thesis of this book can now be restated more pointedly as
follows: proven money innovations can solve the four 'money questions'
summarized in Fig 1.3 and engender Sustainable Abundance within one
generation. The key is to introduce in parallel with the existing
money system complemo2faty currencies that have already proved
that they can contribute to solving these uncompromisingly tough
questions.
A complementary currency refers to an agreement among a group
of people and/or corporations to accept a non-traditional currency as
a medium of exchange. They are called complementary because their
intent is not to replace the conventional national currency but to
perform social functions that the official currency was not designed
to fulfil.
Together, the exchanges facilitated by the conventional national
currency economies and the complementary currencies form what I
will define as the Integral Economy. The Integral Economy includes
the processes studied by traditional economic theory, and goes
beyond it. For instance, it includes transactions in the 2,500
complementary currency systems already operational today in local
communities in a dozen countries around the world.