This section's theme are generally the monetary aspects of P2P trends, and more specifically, aspects of monetary reform, that aim to make the monetary system into a participatory resource that more broadly benefits larger sectors of the world population.

Never forget: human and social wealth is never reducible to its translation in money, see the Wealth Typology.

The P2P Foundation supports the direct social production of money, such as for example through Open Money and other P2P Exchange Infrastructure Projects systems. This marvellous presentation by Robin Upton explains how this can work.

Thanks to Greg Martin and Georg Pleger for their support.

Please attend the unMoney Convergence April 14-16th, 2008 - Seattle, WA We support this convergence because it brings together, probably for the first time, open money advocates and digital identity developers!

Introduction

Money is making a fundamental evolutionary step into community currencies. Conventional money as we know it has a built in architecture that leads to scarcity, centralization, concentration, secrecy, proprietarization. This conventional monetary system is not appropriate to dealing with today's global systemic challenges (harmonizing local and global needs, creating ecological sustainability, enabling the information economy, leveraging the open source paradigm, etc). Just as there are now millions of media outlets today, currencies will follow this same evolution by shifting from centralized authoritative models to distributed ones that allow better sustainability, distribution, transparency, and regulation mechanisms. [1]

Citations

You treasure what you measure, and you measure what you treasure. Open money provides the tools to implement this maxim. What should we be treasuring in our culture and on our planet that we so far have no way to measure?

- Open Money [2]

"Poor liquidity and leakage (money flowing from the local economy) are key causes for floundering and/or disappearing regional economies. To overcome these shortfalls local communities should be increasing local liquidity and plugging the leakage through the introduction of complementary community currencies thereby re-building their respective local communities in the coal mining area of Wales. When local residents within their respective communities changed the agreements they had about conventional money, by creating and spending complementary community currencies locally instead of spending only diminishing amounts of federal currency with giant corporations, it commenced re-birth in the local communities. Molly used the term local multiplier when she discussed how local liquidity increased proportionately to the amount of complementary community currency being circulated by those who were choosing to participate."

- (from a summary of) Molly Scott reporting on complementary currencies in Wales [3]

Introductory Material

1. Money is not the Only Value Measurement System . By Geoff Chesshire.
2. Why Peer to Peer Currencies will Grow
3. In his landmark essay, Valuing the Ethical Economy, Adam Arvidsson explains why we need Wealth Acknowledgment Systems for the Ethical Circuit of Value

Also:

1. Rationale for Monetary Reform by Greg Martin.
2. Monetary Transformation, not Monetary Reform, is What is Needed. By Thomas Greco.
3. Why the Growth Imperative is Linked to our Monetary Format
4. Declaration Of The Universal Right Of Monetary Creation and the Open Money Manifesto
5. Peter Koenig's summaries on the History and Future of money
6. The Future of Money by Paul B. Hartzog
7. Capital, Profits, and Interest. Benjamin Tucker.
8. Chris Cook: a proposal for Open Capital

Key Resources

1. The Re-Inventing Money site, at http://reinventingmoney.com/
2. The Book: "Money; A Mirror Image Of The Economy" by Dr. J.W. Smith - full text at http://IED.info/books/money Applying Henry George’s philosophy across the economic spectrum transposes monopoly rent values into equally-shared use-values. Quality of life increases as working hours drop by half.
3. The consultancy: Value for People, helps local communities initiate complementary currencies

Key Blogs

1. Evolution of Money
2. Open Source Currency

Key Books

1. Future of Money
2. Money and Magic
3. Money in an Unequal World
4. Monetary Theory
5. 30 Lies about Money
6. Economic Democracy: The Political Struggle for the 21st Century

Key Concept Pages to read

1. Abundance vs. Scarcity and Monetary Scarcity vs. Monetary Sufficiency - Non-scarcity based monetary systems
2. Monetary Reform, Demurrage and Seigneurage, the Credit Commons
3. Wealth TypologyBecause we need Wealth Acknowledgment Systems for the Ethical Circuit of Value
4. Also read our more general page on Peer Property

Key Delicious Tags

1. Abundance, http://del.icio.us/mbauwens/Abundance
2. Complementary Currencies, http://del.icio.us/mbauwens/Complementary-Currencies
3. Monetary Reform, http://del.icio.us/mbauwens/Monetary-Reform
4. Open Money, http://del.icio.us/mbauwens/Open-Money
5. P2P Money, http://del.icio.us/mbauwens/P2P-Money

Key Documentaries

1. Money as Debt
2. The Wealth of Neighbors

Key Essays

1. The Future of Payment Systems. By Bernard Lietaer.
2. Peer to Peer Lending, June 2007 overview report by Brad Slavin.