Community currencies are perfectly legal. Lewis Solomon, professor emeritus
of law at George Washington University has written the most comprehensive
study of the relevant law. With respect to the WTO and the questions
concerning how it fits into globalization, you're absolutely right but I
don't think the powers that be are paying any attention to these systems
right now, except in a few, regional cases. Who notices the first few
gnats that fly in the house early on a summers evening. At present there
are thousands of systems world wide but they only account for a fraction of
a percent of trade in most systems, some places they have a lot more
presence but those are exceptional cases. However, a recent model that
links businesses to local non-profits (called Community Way) has the
potentiality to break through into a more sizeable percentage of local
exchange. How much really depends on the amount that what I call
"microregional production-consumption circuits" account for in terms of the
total area product. Nevertheless, the internet based Multiple Registry
Systems for LETS have the possibility to link community currencies in
different localities allowing something of inter-regiona trade to occur.
The general tenor of the community currency movement is resistance to the
community destroying aspects of globalization. It's a very interesting and
international movement. The IMF doesn't dig it at all when it moves to
larger frameworks. There are incredible cases, such as the Argentine state
of Cordoba which created a regional currency when IMF/World Bank- imposed
policies dried up all the available "internationally backed" currency.
Everyone was fully able to keep working, avoiding the hypocritical
"austerity policies" used to pump surplus value out of dependent countries.
Hell, what are people going to do? They're producing the goods and have
the skills needed to maintain a livelihood and some international agency is
going to deprive them of the ability to exchange because it would upset the
conditions for maintaining corporate domination of the world economy??? As
the Vancome lady on Mad TV might say, "Chaa, think again monopoly man, don't
believe we need the latest little commodity to live a meaningful life in our
neck of the woods." Cholo mechanics, the bricolage of the poor, keep cars
running for a really long time, even in the absence of the means to "buy
from the factory."
Almost all of the good material on community currencies is available through
the internet. The Schumacher Foundation's (Small is Beautiful) home page is
a good place to start a search if you're interested.
Paul H. Dillon
-----Original Message-----
From: nate <schmolze who-is-at students.wisc.edu>
To: xmca who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Date: Saturday, September 18, 1999 6:59 AM
Subject: Re: personals, practice, genre, feeling, blocking
>Paul,
>
>Just to say both the community currency, and cyber centers caught my
>attention. Please do keep us updated they seem very interesting.
>
>Along the lines of community currency, I was always under the
>interpretation that this was not legal in the states. Awhile back (in my
>area) there was talk of a community currency and it was argued that it
>violated the commerce clause of the constitution. Now with the World Trade
>Organization it seems community currency would be a global issue.
>As an example, if community (A) wanted money to stay in their community
>they would trade in $ for the community currency, but not the other way
>around. I like the idea, but it seems the commerce clause is politically
>designed to stop those kind of revolutionary ideas, and with currency like
>the Euro that kind of thinking is going global.
>
>Nate
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: Paul Dillon <dillonph who-is-at northcoast.com>
>To: <xmca who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu>
>Sent: Friday, September 17, 1999 1:03 PM
>Subject: Re: personals, practice, genre, feeling, blocking
>
>
>> Dear XMCA,
>>
>> I appreciated reading Bill's discussion of the sentencing/execution
>boundary
>> sentence and its possible meaning. There are many questions I have about
>> that but instead I want to take him up on his request.
>>
>> >
>> >It would
>> >be nice if people who presented would send brief summaries of
>> >their own work, relating it to CHAT.
>>
>> I am currently involved in three projects areas: research on student
>> pathways through community colleges, establishing a system of
>cyberculture
>> centers , and nursing along the development of community currencies. The
>> first I do thanks to the wonders of the internet in that virtual
>> collaborative space it allows. I pursue both of the latter projects in
>the
>> Humboldt Bay area of California .
>>
>> All of these projects benefit from the discussions and research carried
>out
>> on XMCA from CHAT and related sociocultural approaches. My principal
>roles
>> in the cyberculture center project are grant writer and evaluation
>> coordinator. In the latter capacity I make proposals on how to evaluate
>the
>> success of the project. The discussions of Zones of Proximal Development
>in
>> all of the permutations that it emerges in the specific threads of XMCA
>or
>> the articles I can access via internet or afford have all provided me
>with
>> good frameworks for those proposals. Perhaps in one year I will have
>some
>> interesting research to report on. The cyberculture center project is
>aimed
>> at pre-teen and teen age youth. These kids are primarily the sons and
>> daughters of the last generation of people who enjoyed the blue collar
>> prosperity generated by the exploitation of the old growth redwood
>forests
>> that used to fill the coast and coastal mountains. Being able to get a
>job
>> at the mill, the parents generally didn't need more than a high school
>> degree to enjoy a good life. Their kids can't work in the mills anymore
>> since they're virtually closed and gone. I work on the project with a
>large
>> local arts organization, The Ink People. One part of the project will
>set
>> up public access broad band/wireless public access "cyberculture centers"
>> located in schools and teen centers throughout the area. Call it putting
>> down the piers for bridging the "IT gap", These centers will provide any
>and
>> everyone in the neighborhoods with email, webpages, and free access time.
>> The second part of the project will provide art based
>multi-media/internet
>> instruction at the centers primarily for the kids. We are hoping to
>> stimulatestimulate an interest in manipulating more symbolic, less
>material
>> tools, among these kids. Call it the developmental anthropology of
>> technology transfer. If I try now to explain how CHAT relates to this, I
>> would end up writing on and on, looking in references, etc.
>>
>> The relation of CHAT to my other project areas is less direct. The
>> community currency system we are developing will be totally computer
>> mediated: smart cards for business, web and email transactions for
>> non-business exchanges. This approach presents some interesting issues
>from
>> CHAT perspectives. First of all, money itself is a very interesting
>> instrument that mediates many important relationships. The state and
>banks'
>> defacto monopoly on the creation of money leads many to not even realize
>> that it is tool they can create for themselves. Interestingly it is a
>tool
>> that is always overty collective in its co-creation. Second, money
>itself
>> is a funny kind of tool since it is totally symbolic but, as Marx pointed
>> out, presents itself in a reified form--which is why people forget that
>they
>> make it each time they accept it for payment. This shows up in funny,
>> culturally distinct ways. Once Americans, for example, get past the
>> feeling that they can't just "make money" they usually want to have
>> something physical and tangible: a paper community currency. This is an
>> interesting "cultural prejudice" since the British and Australians have
>> created many electronic based community currencies (LETS) which are
>cheaper
>> and easier to start and run. Three years ago I began to research the
>> message archives of the community currency mailing list, econ-lets, but I
>> was unable to follow that project up. Reading Eva's work on multilogue
>has
>> rekindled that interest but the time for it isn't available right now.
>But
>> I'm sure that as the project develops here CHAT will provide a framework
>> for my thinking about the activity systems chained through the creation
>of
>> the community currency.
>>
>> I worked for seven years as a tie-wearing, community college
>institutional
>> researcher. I continue to work on projects in that capacity (without the
>> tie), the most recent being a long-term research/institutionalization
>> project to improve remedial education in math and english. My work in
>this
>> project is the development of computerized systems for analyzing the
>> movement of students within and through high schools, community colleges
>and
>> four year institutions. The level at which I work on this is both macro
>> and micro. One on hand I look at broad demographic relations between the
>> colleges and their service areas. On the other extreme I analyze
>specific
>> student transcripts (we have about 2,000,000 individual course records
>in
>> the cohort data we're currently analzying). This level of data is very
>> secure since one can rest assured that most students will make every
>effort
>> to ensure that the grade on their record is the correct one. Since the
>> geographic area studied is extremely diverse, numerous issues of teaching
>> and learning in such diversity arise. Here as well, and obviously, the
>> CHAT theories and discussions have significance. In fact Genevieve, with
>> whom I collaborate on the student pathways research, was the first person
>to
>> tell me about XMCA and "zoneheads" (which made me think of Dan Akroyd the
>> first time I heard it).
>>
>> (Un)fortunately, I don't go in straight lines for very long. I burst
>> sporadic like the multilogues Bill models. I guess that's one reason I
>love
>> the XMCA virtual seminar: the short term collective memory, that always
>> nevertheless seems to circle around a basic set of topics, fits me well.
>In
>> the past week I have carefully studied both of Eva's papers, Bill's paper
>on
>> the dynamic model, and read several of Gary Shank's papers. The entire
>> question of the nature of the multilogue and the virtual community in
>> general has direct significance for my work in the cyberculture center
>> project. But several weeks ago, as the result of some other discussion,
>I
>> was sent in the direction of restudying Volosinov and Ilyenkov. So it
>goes
>> . . .
>>
>> The question: what is learning? looms greater and greater as a central
>> theme reflecting in all of my work and I think CHAT and the related
>> approaches that are discussed on XMCA make an important contribution to
>> answering it, or at least formulating it more coherently.
>>
>> Paul H. Dillon
>>
>