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

intervene in (or muck up, depending on your viewpoint) the highspeed
train of social transformation that is headed our way.
The positive forces
Harlan Cleveland states most succinctly the positive implications:
'A society suddenly rich in information is not necessarily fairer or
more exploitative, cleaner or dirtier, happier or unhappier than its
industrial or agricultural predecessors. The quality, accuracy,
relevance, and utility of information are not givens. They depend on
who uses this new dominant resource, how astutely, for what
purposes. What is different is that information is, in all sorts of ways,
more accessi6le to more people than the world's key resources have
ever been before. It was in the nature of things that the few had
access to key resources and the many did not. The inherent
characteristics of physical resources (natural and human-made) made
possible the development of hierarchies of power based on control (of
new weapons, of energy resources, of transport vehicles, of trade
routes, of markets, and especially of knowledge); hierarchies of
influence based on secrecy hierarchies of class based on ownership;
hierarchies of privilege based on early access to particular pieces of
land or especially valuable resources; and hierarchies of politics
based on geography.
‘.. Each of these five bases for hierarchy and discrimination is
crumbling today because the old means of control are of dwindling
efficacy. Secrets are harder and harder to keep, and ownership, early
arrival, and geography are of declining significance in accessing,
analysing and using knowledge and wisdom that are the really
valuable legal tender of our time.
'· · . In the agricultural era, poverty and discrimination were
explained and justified by the shortage of arable land. Women and