Solutions to the Crisis

So far, there seems to be little news about the G20 meeting in Washington this weekend. However, it's increasingly evident that governments cannot keep on pumping money into the system with little or no effect. There are always consequences to all actions.

We need to be thinking about new solutions. Once you have protected yourself best you can, then it's time to join in with the global movement for change. This is a time for participation from the masses and for us to start to take control of our lives. In my view, we need to move toward sustainability and community and then design a money system that takes us in that direction.

Let's look at this seriously. Information technologies increasingly allow us to attain very good economic growth without increases in employment. It is quite likely that jobs are not going to be there any more for the majority of the population. What does this mean???

This is potentially very exciting. No longer will you have to stick it out at a job that you do not enjoy, but there is the opportunity for you to be working and exchanging skills that you enjoy doing for services that you need. I would like to make a distinction between jobs and work. A job is what you do for a living. Work is what you do because you enjoy doing it. I expect that jobs will become increasingly obsolete, but there will still be an almost infinite amount of fascinating work to be done.

The way of the future could well be in creating local currencies. How would they work?

For example, in Italy you find people offering piano lessons and requesting lessons in French. Neither would pay in Euros. What's great about local currency is that when people create their own money, they do not build in a scarcity factor. They do not need to get the currency from somewhere else in order to have a means of making an exchange with a neighbour.

With all the redundancies and job losses happening round the world - today Citigroup announced it was cutting another 26,000 jobs, making the total loss so far a massive 75,000. We have to start to find other ways to create what we need. For example, there are lots of people who enjoy gardening, but who cannot make a living from it in the competitive world. If a gardener is unemployed, and I am unemployed, in the normal economy we might both starve. However, with complementary currencies, he could grow my vegetables, which I pay for in local currency earned by providing piano lessons to someone else. By using a local currency you create greater local sustainability.

One of the biggest issues that humanity is facing today is sustainability and the inequalities and breakdown in community. In many towns and cities, people do not even know their close neighbours. These issues can be addressed by creating currency systems that will enhance our communities and our sustainability.

Exciting times ahead!