a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment by user-inactivated
user-inactivated  ·  3148 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Is the local economy the solution to a post-capitalist world?

Ohhhhh, Tucson had an alternative currency in the 90s. My design class did a case study, on how it collapsed from too many maseuses and not enough car mechanics with faith in it. The idea is to make the people self sufficient enough to tell the rich, the have the wrong paper. When I have my old teachers critique my work, I will have to have someone look at the bussiness model too. Great reminder.





kleinbl00  ·  3148 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Sounds like the Craigslist problem: the people wishing to pay via barter generally have the least financially-valuable skills and products. I think this is where most microcurrencies fall down: those whose products and services are adequately priced in regular currencies have no incentive to adjust to a microcurrency that suddenly makes one massage worth five oil changes.

pyrrhonic  ·  3148 days ago  ·  link  ·  

It's weird to me that so many alternative/local currencies are denominated in time units. As if the time spent to do something were the only metric to take into account for its value.

user-inactivated  ·  3148 days ago  ·  link  ·  

The COOP I worked at took the currency, and gave it to the employees. That was way before I worked there. At the end of it there was a dentist burried in a colapsed note.

Reading about MMORPG economies and balancing them sound impossible to me, can't imagine pulling strings on actual markets.