I'm surprised and saddened to realize, with the help of Google, that I've never posted to LJ about my fascination with alternative means of exchange. Economies based not on the US Dollar, but on other systems - systems based on time, or local resources, or whatever. I went through this period a while back when I was reading a lot of
Bernard Lietaer and I got pretty excited. I even interviewed some of my neighbors in Bloomington about the
BloomingHOURS project, trying to discover why it never really went anywhere.
It will come as no surprise then that I was pleased when I was browsing the web the other day, reading about the onrushing economic apocalypse, and I came across one reference after another to alternative exchange systems. Oh, don't get me wrong - I think we'll all have to be standing in bread lines before something like
IthacaHOURS takes off in most of the country. But I still think it's a strong set of ideas, and I like to see good memes spread. Perhaps we'll end up in some middle way, infecting honest, hardworking Americans struggling to get by with the technocratic meritocracy of the free software community.
An article on WorldChanging about alternative currencies. They claim that local exchange systems are on the rise in these tough economic times.
(Hi
kellix!)