What are we not talking about? Where are we stuck?

Money.2

Transforming Money:  Catalyzing Wealth

Convenor: Charles Terry
Participants: Henri Lipmanovicz, Chris Corrigain, Tim Murphy, Pauline Le Bel, Paul Taylor, Jean Francois, Aubrey Hornsby, Glenna Gerard, Marilyn, Tree Fitz, Dana, Joy Moulton

Chris asked Charles to tell us a story.  Charles told story of his Ivy League education, then high-powered corporate law firm, six figure salary.  Switched to poverty law for four figure salary (earning $8,000).  He turned away from the root of wanting & family expectations to make a lot of money but in fact money continued to follow him.  I found myself managing fairly substantial money my whole life.  I was intrigued at the nonlinearity of money.  I've been involved in many projects for which money showed up, almost magically, because it was needed.  Then about four years ago, a group of us started a series of gatherings of people interested in doing innovative and creative things with money for social benefit.  How can we change money systems, innovate around philanthropy, socially responsible investing, complementary currencies, consumerism, social banking. 

 We begin to research and talk with individuals and organizations working to transform the way the world works with money and catalyze the release of accumulated money in society for the public good.  A group of us then began to convene a series of gatherings called Transforming the Way the World Works with Money (Transforming Money/Catalyzing Wealth for short), which have involved more than eighty leaders and organizations to date and have covered a wide spectrum of issues and "domains" related to money.

One outcome was a series of principles, still evolving, called "The Sequoia Principles for Transforming Money"  (added below) which embodies some core values about how we could be different with money and make it something that benefits hunmanity in a wider sense, particularly dealing with gap between haves and havenots.  They are a work in progress.  We are trying to connect the many people, organizations and movements who deeply care about the "wealth gap," and are seeking to help heal the human suffering caused by lack of financial resources.


General discussion notes:

There are hierarchical forces. . . . one is money

There are forces that would control money for greed kind of purposes, but there are and can be counterveiling forces.

Aurobindo proposes a new evolutionary construct based on descent of new consciousness with a new evolutionary intent.  Unless we learn how to work with money, we are not going to get to evolutionary consciousness.

We have tried to establish a different set of ways that money actually enteres the world, money entering world with a dif set of constructions and structures based on consciousness instead of scarcity.

“The Mother” name of Aurobindo book

wherever there is force there is being, wherever there is being there is force    whenever we choose to do something, it will be expressed as a force.

Money is a collective thought form.  

We are trying to call on a gravity of sorts, gravity is a pulling to a center.  

How can we attract a new consciousness around money that holds its as a resource for the common good as opposed to greater common good than my individual wellbeing, safety and power.  That is one of the things in an evolutionary sense of what is needed because money has become such a powerful force in our world.  It feels like it has to change.  It can’t carry itself:  will either change us or destroy us.  To become conscious enough of its oneness.

Money is unlimited.  Those who have it have the energy to attract it.  

Much of my time is spent considering how I can get enough so I could do what I really wanted to do.  I made choices not based on my purpose but based on something outside of me that dictated my behavior.  So here we are, having this discussion.  There is a systemic construc of the system whereby there is a limited number of dollars in existence.  Pareto Effect: masses of anything attract more of it.

I.e.  if I own a lot of real estate, there is a tendency for me to own a lot more of it.

If I step into a game, I don’t even know what the rules are of what I am playing.  It is not that something has been done to us.  We say there is only enough but we only consider money the green stuff in our wallet, we are deferring to theprocess of where money comes from, which currently is a centralized system of pyramidal structure for command and control systems.  I catch myself all the time wanting to pay allegiance to a source of money.

We can construct new notions of what wealth is.  There are efforts underway to make use of that kind of value as a complementary money system.

The system that we operate in is one that we created; we do not have to be bound by it; we can change it.

We can look at it by separating money and wealth.  Our current money system addresses a narrow range of wealth.  In order to work, this wealth has to be scarce.  What are the new money architectures to address a wider range of wealth, currencies, not barter.  Four principles of a new money architecture:

1.    move from scarcity to sufficiency
2.    move from centralized money power to peer-to-peer/community money
this is occurring everywhere today, we are seeing it in the media, now everyone can generate info so it has become peer-to-peer.  It could also happen for money.  We will have millions of currencies.  There will be all kinds of currencies, local, global, mini, medium. These currencies would be taxable because they are real currency.
3.    move from top down to bottom up emergence
4.    moving from proprietary to commons.  85percent of money now is private money. Money should be a commons.

This shift is not going to happen overnight but it could happen in less than two years.

These currencies tend to operate in an intimate way, intimate relationships, mediated not by price but mediated by care.  We have a relationship not because we’ve iinvested money in each other but because we are invested in each other.  What it allows you to do in a philanthropic endeavor, it brings microleanders and micrograntors together.  If I have fifty dollars to give away, I can find someone in my community of interest to give to the person who needs it.  After Hurricane Katrina I gave money to the friend of a friend instead of to the Red Cross. This can connect local communities.  

What does this new money thinking do for poor people?

The current monetary system is based on core property.

Pareto Effect again:  Pareto was an Italian and went all around world studying economy.  He observed twenty percent of population tended to hold eighty percent of the wealth.  He asked why.  Monopoly game illustrates this self-aggregating effect.  These equations have now been generalized into quantum physics.  If we counted the relationships in this room, we would find a pareto effect in terms of relationships.

Built in to the monetary system we have today, the accumulation effect is built in, the incentives for accumulation are built in; but this was not always so, and in fact collecting interest on loaned money was illegal and immoral in many/most cultures in the past.  Our system demands that there be winners and losers, accumulations of money. . . but only if we play by the rules.  There will be rich and poor simply because of the architecture of money.  If we practice interest, it is a strong accelrator.  In the end, there are only losers because the winner cannot play with the losers.  Our money systems not sustainable by design.  

Most communities are now under monetized.  

How can we build new monetary architectures that provide sufficiency rather than scarcity.  The mutual credit system is one answer.  Steadily recalibration of the exchange.

How does accumulation effect not happen?  The real wealth in this kind of mutual credit system is the breathing, it is about the quality of the breathing and the trust.  

What stops someone from going negative?  The community decides how positive or how negative a person can go.  We might decide you cannot go further than minute one thousand, for example.  We might say no one can be more negative than a certain percentage of the monetary mass that is in circulation.  Trust.  It is a reputation system.

As a reminder, in the current system, elderly and vulnerable are already kicked out.  In this new system, the fact that there is a sufficiency there is a very strong incentive for taking care of one another.  Apart from that context, any community can have its own tax system.  

What happens to old people?  Well, in this new system, monetary communities would be having these conversations.  

It takes a village to care for a person, regardless of their age.

Ananda Community:  forty five year old system, the people who had the most were cqarpenters and plumber type folks.  Artists didn’t do well.   What happens with the value system tends to be separate from the monetary system.

Is there an appropriate size for such a community?  It is a matter of context and technology.

Context:  when these experiences are tried in US or Europe, it is hard for people to make the paradigm shift but if  you look at Argentina where overnight you could have a million dollars that become worthless overnight.  

Demurrage:  negative interest, your credits lose their value



Of Human Wealth. . . book about to come out by Bernard Lietaer and a co-author

Where do corporations come in to this new monetary system?
How, for example, does someone build a factory?

There will be big communities with high investing powers.  If you need cash to build a company, there will be banks that belong to community and these banks will provide a supply of money.