Sustainability and self sufficiency have meaning

[lostboystoy]

I think peoples eyes are now open, their not quiet ready, to really see. What normal should be..

but they are awakening, is a good sign for this country.

keep things simple,live happy.[8D]

setting my soul free....

[Guest]

What would be cool is a plant/produce swapmeet with is own script for currency.

It would be a neat experiment.
The idea would be that people could show up with produce and goods that have a value.
A banker would issue script or chits depending on what ever the owner of the goods sets it's value at.

Let's say a dozen eggs could be 4 or 5 chits.
A head of bok choy would be 1 chit
a pound or pork sausage would be 3 chits

People could all buy and sell with the chit system.

Of course people could bring stuff that they just want to give away too.

Having an area where cuttings and starts could be traded, sold for chits or given away.

[pslamont]

Why create money? Why not just do what was proposed 4 or 5 months ago? Make a weekly meeting place and do a swap/ punatic farmers market. Bring what you have and barter. "I will give you half a dozen eggs for two heads of lettuce" syle. No set prices as supply and demand dictates value. If there are 6 heads of lettuce available they will be more pricey than if there are 46... that is natural. Will change every week.

We just need a central location and a day/time
(like Maye Thursdays at XXX FROM 4 to 6 PM)

[AlohaSteven]

"Why create money? Why not just do what was proposed 4 or 5 months ago? Make a weekly meeting place and do a swap/ punatic farmers market. Bring what you have and barter..."

"Money" is a collapsed distinction as this concept subsumes within itself the qualitatively separate forms of commodity money, representative money, credit money, and fiat money (details of each form at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money ). Even so money --as opposed to the real goods, services, and obligations it represents as a symbolic token-- is historically useful by virtue of being portable, transferable, and providing a solution to the "coincidence of wants" bind (well described at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_coin...e_of_wants ).

Creating money based on debt (as is the current system) is a distortion of energetics and natural law with the result inevitably leading to a dismal juncture of system-wide economic collapse. By sharp contrast, however, money created through a rational basis in value could have excellent durable constructive utility. [Please see the 47 minute film at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=...2583451279 for details, particularly the Hawaii-specifically and Puna-specifically relevant points at 31 and 35 minutes into the film, respectively).

There will be times when for one reason or another (maybe Madam Pele rolled over in her sleep and the productive farm of the most virtuously hard-working family in Puna is now a bed of smoking lava?) there will be members of our community who come to the market with nothing "real" in the sense of fruit, meat, et cetera to trade. What do we do then? Are they to be excluded from participation in the local economic system by reason of being dispossessed at that moment of tangible trade goods? Lets take it another step: say Pele paved not just the land this family lived on but that of a whole bunch of other people, too, and yet they were all able to grab bags of gold, silver, and gemstones on their way fleeing out the door. Hunger neigh unto famine sweeps the island and the dispossessed masses come to the market with said bags of (inedible) precious metals and gemstones looking to trade them for food. Trying to swap metal and stones for food in a famine will not go very far, even if the gold and so on are highly durable tangible goods. Money as most people (quite mistakenly) think of it is just script representing such tangible precious metals. Does such money actually have value even when actually backed by metals?

Much more likely than a total community-wide catastrophe is an individual or familial need for medical services or somesuch -and in such a circumstance having money which actually retains its value in the community would be a tremendous boon to anyone whose crop fails or who is experiencing a coincidence of wants. This is part of the utility of money, per se, versus tangible "stuff" if the money itself is based in a rational basis of value rather than upon either a dubious chunk of metal or a totally irrational con-artist scheme of shifted debts.


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"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence."

Pres. John Adams, Scholar and Statesman


"There's a scientific reason to be concerned and there's a scientific reason to push for action. But there's no scientific reason to despair."

NASA climate analyst Gavin Schmidt

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[Guest]

Say for instance you have :
1. a person that has eggs to trade and needs lettuce.
2. a person that has lettuce and wants mangoes.
3. a person that has mango that wants eggs.
In this scenario products wont be traded. That is why some form of script could be used so each person now has, let’s say 3 Puna-bucks and each person can buy what ever he wants.

[Andrew]

I agree that this is what is needed in order for this to really work. the problem is who will be in charge of printing the "Puna Bucks"? Daddy Goldbucks? Why not just use US dollars?

quote:

---

Originally posted by esnap

Say for instance you have :
1. a person that has eggs to trade and needs lettuce.
2. a person that has lettuce and wants mangoes.
3. a person that has mango that wants eggs.
In this scenario products wont be traded. That is why some form of script could be used so each person now has, let’s say 3 Puna-bucks and each person can buy what ever he wants.

---

[JWFITZ]

If you want to see local power, you will need a local currency.

There are many successful models out there. Probably the most successful and counter intuitive is the "free shillings" model of the village of Worgl, Austria, during the '30s, for the same reasons. It was spectacularly successful, and worth looking into if you're not familiar with money that's designed from the start to favor working people, rather than the idle wealthy.

[pslamont]

Sorry but I just see a can of worms in which someone is taken advantage of with script. I agree with Andrew...trade and barter can certainly include good old American dollars. It seems some have the need to re-invent the wheel here when simplicity in a small town would suffice.

[Guest]

Yeah, It would be unwieldy.

I have a cousin that is quite the horse trader.
I was visiting him once and saw that he had awesome classic Camero. I complimented him on it, and he said yeah there is a story behind that.
He went in to telling me how he got it for free. The story went something like:
A neighbor of his was throwing away a weight set, he asked if he could have it. Then he traded it for a small outboard boat motor that didn't run, so he fixed that and traded it for something else. Each time he traded he got something of a little greater value until he traded the last thing for that Camero, which he restored.

Things like that never work for me.

[AlohaSteven]

Now that the dust is settling from the recent elections it would be great to hear from those elected to office on whether or not they support the notion of some demonstration gardens near public offices, showing by example how food may be grown in Victory Garden style.

Here is a brief clip and a link to a site where a petition may signed advocating for the idea; whether on the White House lawn or at the State House or at a county building or buildings more locally at different elevation zones in Puna, the notion is the same in essence:
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/11/24/pla...c-gar.html


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"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence."

Pres. John Adams, Scholar and Statesman


"There's a scientific reason to be concerned and there's a scientific reason to push for action. But there's no scientific reason to despair."

NASA climate analyst Gavin Schmidt

)'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'( )'(