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

1992, remarked. ‘I used to think that if there was reincarnation, I
wanted to come back as the President, or the Pope. But now I want to
be the financial market: you can intimidate anybody.’
Nevertheless, this transition offers us also an unprecedented
opportunity. When money changes, a lot more changes. Almost
everything can become possible. With such a fundamental shift will
come the opportunity for innovation far beyond what previous
generations could even imagine. Money matters. The way money is
created and administered in a given society makes a deep impression
on values and relationships within that society. More specifically, the
type of currency used in a society encourages - or discourages -
specific emotions and behavior patterns.
Our prevailing system is an unconscious product of the modern
Industrial Age worldview, and it remains the most powerful and
persistent designer and enforcer of the values and dominant
emotions of that age. For instance, all our national currencies make it
easier to interact economically with our Fellow citizens than with
'foreigners', and therefore encourages national consciousness.
Similarly, these currencies were designed to foster competition
among their users, rather than cooperation. Money is also the hidden
engine of the perpetual growth treadmill that has become the
hallmark of industrial societies. Finally, the current system
encourages individual accumulation, and ruthlessly punishes those
who don't follow that injunction.
However, after centuries of an almost complete hegemony of our
'normal' national currencies (US$, pound, yen, Deutschemark, etc.) as
the exclusive means of economic exchanges, the past decade has seen
a reappearance of various forms of private currencies.
For starters, up to one quarter of global trade is now done using
barter: i.e. using no currency at all, national or other. Pepsi Cola, for