Post by evm111 on Jun 3, 2006 18:02:31 GMT -5
TYROLEAN HOUR: Known as “Tiroler Stunde”, this is a regional project based in the Austrian province of Tyrol (also known as Nordtirol). The coordinator of this endeavor is Mr. Georg Pleger, who is based in the village of Voels. Their first piece was called the Mozart-Hour-Coin, thusly named because it commemorates the 250th anniversary of the composer's birthday. “The institution behind the Mozart Hour Coin is my company together with a network of colleagues, focussing on OpenSource — OpenContent — OpenMoney. I started with my OpenSource agency four years ago and then extended my activities to OpenContent. I'm also coordinator of Austrian part of Creative Commons. For me and some colleagues it is quite ovious that for regular structures of information sharing as in Open Source and Open Content projects it would be quite helpful to have an exchange system which is designed to support collaboration. So the idea of an hour-based complementary money has grown.” The piece is used as a way of showing appreciation to producers of OpenSource and OpenContent, whereby their efforts towards the “production of digital commons will be rewarded with hour coins. One coin is worth 20 Euros. At the moment the coins are accepted within a small network of companies and educational institutions.” Their “main circulation is planned for but not restricted to the Austrian State Tyrol.” It should be noted that Tyrol is also the name of a broader region, divided into 3 parts: Nordtirol, Osttirol (another Austrian province), and Südtirol (in Italy). The Mozart-Stunden-Münze piece was in fact “only the starting point in a series of coins. The coin was a special edition out of the bigger project of hour coins”. Mr. Pleger was the “Projektinitiator” who introduced this 1 Stunde/hour/horo piece, but Mr. Michael Graf, “Tyrolean mentor of the idea of complementary currencies,” minted it. The second piece, a 15-Minutes-Coin (the equivalent of 5 Euros), was coined “by the Tyrolean bishop”. On this piece, the image of Mozart is replaced by the Tyrolean Eagle. For the purposes of thanking “someone who has worked for 15 minutes”, it has the following text in German, English and Italian: “Danke für — 15 — Minuten, Thanks for — 15 — minutes, Grazie per — 15 — minuti”. Both pieces, dated 2006, were struck by the Hall Mint (“The birthplace of the taler and the dollar”). I obtained them both from Mr. Pleger. The official Web-site of the Tiroler Stunde is:
"http://www.stunde.at/muenzpraegung"
Digital Commons is a catch-all term that describes digitized information (words, numbers, pictures, sound) and digital resources (such as the Internet) that can be accessed by all members of a community. This digitally-encoded information allows new possibilities of social interaction to flourish, including unlimited communication in virtual space and time. The existence of a Digital Commons is made possible by the advent of Open Source and Open Content. Each developer in this community is able to take from and contribute to the Commons. This shared social domain in cyberspace may one day become the global equivalent of the ancient Athenian agora. If so, then its unit of currency could very likely be something that is referred to as “open money”. The term “open money” was defined by Michael Wade Linton and Ernie Yacub.
The official Web-site of the Openmoney project ("http://www.openmoney.org/top/omanifesto.html") contains a “manifesto” that is both “an active document” and “a declaration of intent”. Because the notions of open money aren't really owned by anyone, “The manifesto is an open set of ideas — the concepts are there for extension, development, refinement”. This mission statement outlines their beliefs, which they intend to act upon and implement. “Open money is a means of exchange freely available to all.” Any community, network, association, organization, business — “indeed, any body” — can have their own money. This is central to their convictions. Open money was designed to work as a complement to the conventional money we use on a daily basis. The problems (pertaining to supply, distribution, cost) with this “official” money stem entirely from how it “is normally issued — it is created by central banks in limited supply.” There are three things we know about this money. “We know what it does — it comes and it goes” in all directions, flowing erratically in and out of our communities. “We know what it is — it's scarce and hard to get. And we know where it's from — it's from ‘them’, not us.” These characteristics, “common to all national currencies, determine that we constantly have to compete”, often ruthlessly, “for a share of the limited amount of the ‘stuff’ that makes the world go round. This money can go anywhere, and so it inevitably does, leaving the community deprived of its means of exchange.” It is merely the nature of conventional money that by its coming and going (driven by the patterns of everyday social interactions) it creates harmful conditions of competition and scarcity, within and between communities, regions, and nations. The inescapable outcome, at every level, is an economic context in which strategies of rivalry dominate. Individuals and groups of people, steered by the rhetoric of the marketplace and cynical self-interest, “have scramble for money to survive” and they suffer because our imperfect money gives rise to dependencies that are detrimental to the economy. “But above all, at a cost beyond counting, our monetarily driven behaviour has utterly disastrous effects on our society and the global environment.” Up until recently, we've had no other choice but to be subservient to this money, “despite its evident failings.” Basically, money has value only because it has the “right” markings on it. “A purely imaginary, social valuation, money is merely a promise,” an unnatural item “that provides its carrier with the expectation of something real. But yet it still is thought of as real — by economists and bankers, by adults and children.” As a generation, our reliance on this problematic and ephemeral “money of theirs” is far too great. We ignore the “consequences our excesses and negligence bring for others, now and in the future.” But this crisis can be resolved. The “good news”, in spite of all the inherent deficiencies of conventional money, is that the familiar monetary quandaries they cause can be easily fixed “with money that's better designed.” After all, “There is no good reason for a community to be without money. To be short of money when there's work to get done is like not having enough inches to build a house.” Imagine you are prepared to build something, and you already have the materials, the bricks, the wood, the tools, the time, the inclination, the training, the skills, the blueprints, the space, the necessary permits, and whatever else you might require. But today, there are no inches available! You used too many yesterday, and now all the inches in town are over at the big construction site on the south side. “This is obviously absurd — but it is just exactly the way we talk about money.” Why should a person be short of inches? Why be short of money? If someone told you there were no inches, you would use a different way to measure. Money is just a measuring device; why should a community be short of measures? By the same logic, “you can use a money of your own when the one from ‘them’ isn't coming to hand.” Ultimately, “Money is just information, a way we measure what we trade...we can make it ourselves...It's just a matter of devising a scoring system for those who consent to using it — money is simply a social arrangement.”
As evidenced by their writings, Linton and Yacub are also not fans of the local money systems that have existed throughout history, either. Because these have simply been small-scale versions of the larger national currencies, they don't tend to function any better at the local level than they do at the national level. Issued in narrow supply by some regional authority, “they are inherently even less stable than their national counterparts, and prone to embarrassing and irrecoverable collapse. To paraphrase Einstein, the problems we face cannot be resolved using the tools that created them. There is nothing positive that can be done within the current context. The form of any design for a new money should avoid any of the faults of the old.” Open money, on the other hand, exists in sufficient supply, it can only be used within a specific community, and it is created by its users. It is “virtual, personal, and free”. It is also “flat money”, meaning it “confers no power of one over another...Exploitation is no problem...And there's no monopoly, all systems coexist in the same space. Flatter than flat — open money is superflat.” This new money will still need to be earned — just like “old” money — in order to be respected. “When you issue it, you are obliged to redeem it — your money is your word.” It is your commitment, which you honor at your own rate. “It's just a matter of your reputation in your community.” Open money can then successfully “meet our needs, and in an open context so that all can contribute and be acknowledged.” The new complementary money will circulate and re-circulate, thereby enabling business and trade “within the networks and communities it serves, quite legally and virtually free, by design.”
Open money is synonymous with LETS (Local Exchange Trading System), the first of which was designed by the Vancouver-based Linton in 1982. His active role in the development of a community currency for the Comox Valley of British Columbia led to a breakthrough, and the primary prototype of the project began operating in 1983. The LETSystem “is a new form of economic organization applicable to any community. It is a self-regulating economic network which allows its members to generate and manage their own (completely legal) currency system independent of and parallel to the federal money system. It offers communities everywhere the tools to stabilize and support their local economy without diminishing their participation in the whole. It allows members of the local community to exchange goods and services on a ‘green dollar’ basis when federal dollars are scarce or unavailable. Being a member of a LETSystem is as simple as having another bank account. Member accounts hold green dollars, a quasi-currency, equivalent in value to the federal dollar, but no money is ever deposited or issued. All accounts start at zero and members can use green dollars only with other members. If you provide some product or service to another member, your account is increased and his/hers is decreased by the value you agree on. The system is thus always exactly balanced with some of the members in credit and the others in debit...In the LETSystem the money I issue never leaves the community. It's always available for me to re-earn,” and since there is never any shortage, “it is less likely that competition for it will exclude me from earning.” The LETSystem connects “people to people, business to business, each to the other.” Because it enables people to trade equitably and efficiently, it has become the best known and most widely used open money system anywhere on the globe, resulting in thousands of LETS communities worldwide. One of the most recent developments of the LETS project are smart cards (memory microchips on plastic cards), which employ the open source software development model. Smarter than credit/debit cards, “One smart card can carry many independent virtual community moneys, just as a normal wallet can hold several sorts of money bills — Yen, $, Francs — but the smart card doesn't get them mixed up. A network of on-line internet accounts and off-line smart cards creates a perpetual money machine — a friction free energy circuit for all the moneys needed for a fully functioning community economy.” The open money project is basically a continuation of the LETSystem. For this listing, in addition to the information I obtained from the “manifesto” mentioned above, I also quoted certain other passages penned by Linton and Yacub ("http://subsol.c3.hu/subsol_2/contributors0/lintontext.html"). The alternative currency system they jointly pioneered is clearly described as a non-material, simulated currency, as opposed to tangible specie or paper that can actually be held in one's hands. The Tiroler Stunde (in the form of three-dimensional coins), while paying ample tribute to open moneys, does not seem to fully adhere to the strict criteria its authors have established. Nevertheless, as a complementary currency, the Tyrolean Hour still deserves a great compliment!
The official Web-site of the Local Exchange Trading System is:
"http://www.gmlets.u-net.com/"