On Fri, Nov 11, 2011 at 7:29 PM, Natalie Golovin <[email protected]> wrote:
It's my understanding that only "legal tender" is legal. Of course, the govt won't attempt to get involved in local community barter arrangements if they stay low on Fed radar. But it won't let those grow....just like med marijuana
I don't think community currencies as such violate the legal tender laws. But when they cross the line into stuff that could be plausibly interpreted as the activity of an unlicensed bank (e.g. the way Greco's system arguably issues credit by allowing people to run negative balances), they're open to state sanction. Of course by that standard a grocer or shoe repair shop that lets customers run a tab is also an unlicensed bank, so as you said re legal tender laws, a lot of it has to do with visibility. The more people turn to such alternatives, and the more hostile conventional banks become, the more the state will crack down (much like the brick-and-mortar retailers instigating govt crackdowns on foodbuying clubs, etc.) I imagine that letting a hundred flowers bloom, as the state-corporate economy dries up, will result in an entire ecosystem with different currencies filling different niches. The more trust-based the system, as in opt-in platforms where there are ongoing relationships rather than one-offs and people's livelihoods will depend on their reputations, the more the money will function as a unit of account rather than a store of value, and take on the character of interest-free credit. The weaker the trust relationships, as in one-off dealings between people who don't know each other, the more likely it is that currency will be backed by something. -- Kevin Carson Research Associate, Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org Homebrew Industrial Revolution: A Low-Overhead Manifesto http://homebrewindustrialrevolution.wordpress.com Desktop Regulatory State: The Countervailing Power of Super-Empowered Individuals http://desktopregulatorystate.wordpress.com Organization Theory: A Libertarian Perspective http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html