County Currency As Strategic Liberty

[jabowery]

That is fine. You can push this on the GOP plank. By all means, go ape.

I'm talking about real world application however. You can't just force a county...

This is very critical:

What is it in my presentation that made you think that counties would be forced to adopt county currencies?

I must correct that unless the fault is in your reading of it.

[Athan]

The presentation isn't the problem. Its the execution. The GOP is a political party by which you are pushing your Resolutions. Not a problem. If its members in the County commissioners' court are GOP members that agree that these proposed resolutions needs to be implimented, then your on your way to get a county currency.

Therein lies a problem. IS it legal? I mean do you have a bunch of IRS lawyers saying your resolutions are currently legal and they can be implimented in the county today without fear of legal reprisal by the fed if they are approved? If your not sure, then it is likely you need to verify. I'll give you a hint however. It starts with an N. and ends with an O. The Fed is merciless and evil dude. Sorry. Its not me that wants this.

This is why you should push for the resolutions and have them moved up to state and national level. You need congress to authorize this and tell the Fed/IRS to back off counties. If you want something RIGHT now as a contingency plan, then do my recommendation. It preps the ground, and gives counties a plan to move immediately if things do go south. Moving burecrats is like moving a mountain of shit the size of Mount Everest. Bring your shovel, gas mask, and a lot of patience. I recommend moving already convinced non-burecratic members in your county that will move with a good plan today.

[jabowery]

Therein lies a problem. IS it legal?

So I take it you are in support of the legislation. Good.

[Athan]

Oh, I definitely am in support. Keep up the fight dude. For the Republic, for the cause.

[jabowery]

If you want something RIGHT now as a contingency plan, then do my recommendation. It preps the ground, and gives counties a plan to move immediately if things do go south. Moving burecrats is like moving a mountain of shit the size of Mount Everest. Bring your shovel, gas mask, and a lot of patience. I recommend moving already convinced non-burecratic members in your county that will move with a good plan today.

Not only have I been working on moving local currencies to food-backing for years, I've led a grassroots coalition to draft, coordinate congressional visitations, testify for and get through Congress and signed into law by George Bush Sr legislation to prohibit NASA and the DoD from launching to orbit anything that can reasonably be launched by private companies. NASA then invited me, as I then became a VP for Public Affairs for a private launch firm, to the VIP stand at the Cape to witness them break the law.

Don't talk down to me "Dude".

[Athan]

Not talking down on you, DOOD. Its good you know the crap you must go through. People don't realize it. Even with what you did, the B.S. will not stop. Plus as you should know, it requires a lot of procedural steps obviously at the burecratic level.

[jabowery]

Not talking down on you, DOOD. Its good you know the crap you must go through. People don't realize it. Even with what you did, the B.S. will not stop. Plus as you should know, it requires a lot of procedural steps obviously at the burecratic level.

As I stated in the Iowa forum call for action from delegates to the Iowa GOP platform committee: We need to prepare for quite a fight just in the State GOP platform. I'm taking this one step at a time.

Now, with you demonstrating you are aware of the difficulties that lie ahead, do you understand why I might like to see other States take this plank to their State GOP platforms hence to State legislation?

That's my motive for posting here.

I understand that some of us don't have the time other than to offer our sage advice on how difficult the battle is.

On the other hand, some of us have in the past, are now, and are, in the future going to bleed in the front lines.

Thanks for your well-intentioned words of caution.

Please help fight for it in your State if you can.

[Athan]

I'm going to be pushing resolutions regarding financial matters towards the debt/spending aspect. If anything I'm going to be more focused on trying to get organized for our county than what your doing. We frankly suck down here in the tip-o-tex and need to get the ball moving for Dr. Paul the primary.

Personally, I'm not worried in a true financial crisis down here where I live. Down here, pesos are just as good for businesses as dollars. Carlos Slim thinks silver pesos may be on the horizon. If he is right, we could be the first one's in America recovering in an economy as we don't have a major economy outside of trade and farming.

Our real worries down here are the damned drug cartels which despite what the idiots in the US media are telling you are pretty entrenched in our area and are going nowhere fast. Lose the Fed's ability to pay for border guards, and it could get pretty nasty. We absolutely need the general public to have real firearms here. The way it happened in north Mexico was corruption first, then came theft of property (I mean land and businesses not just a cars or TV's), and then just full blown violence. We can't end up like north mexicans who had no way to defend themselves.

So yeah... County currency for me is like WAY down on the list. I do want to promote my ideas for a physical social trade network though. I think it would help all of us Ron Paul supporters stay insulated from a potentially bad situation.

[jabowery]

So yeah... County currency for me is like WAY down on the list. I do want to promote my ideas for a physical social trade network though. I think it would help all of us Ron Paul supporters stay insulated from a potentially bad situation.

I wish you well in your efforts. Just to share my experience, which includes everything from the original 1980s "Green Dollars" that were promoted in Canada, to the barter networks based purely on local small businesses:

LETS/Complementary currency systems (Green Dollars, Ithica Hours, etc.) have a common failure mode:

Food suppliers (primarily grocers) that participate end up crashing the system by accumulating a huge quantity and, realizing they are not really useful for anything they need to acquire their own food supplies, dump them on the market or otherwise end up with bad blood with the participants.

Farmers have been turned into sharecroppers of the major corporations who operate massively capitalized automated systems. Its very difficult to get them to think about, or value, their fields as "mints" or their grain silos as "reserve banks" for acquisition of local labor or products. Even inter-harvest CSA shares, despite heavy reliance on local labor, are very difficult to establish as a standard of exchange because the value of the CSA shares varies far more than grain. Moreover, local landlords (forget about remote land lords) aren't hurting for food and it is housing that most directly hits most marginal-labor-value households. Remember, those are the one's we're trying to get off the government teat.

Getting a local barter network to standardize on a unit of exchange derived from some sort of factoring of the various exchange rates between the goods and services is exceedingly difficult due to the thin markets involved, hence the lack of good pricing information.

[jabowery]

John Robb over at Resilient Communities has just blogged an article titled "Can a Local Currency Improve Resilience" about a system being tried in Nantes, France with cooperation from WIR Cooperative Bank in Basel Switzerland, in which he says:

Nantes is also doing something that is likely to ensure that its local currency is successful. It is configuring its parking system, transport, leisure and other facilities to accept the nanto AND it is planning on paying city employees some of their salaries with the nanto.

This is critical. Historical evidence implies that local currencies that don’t integrate into the local government’s financial flows are usually limited to loyalty programs. Those that do are real, tangible currencies that people will use daily.

Of course, getting a local currency up and going takes time. It’s better to do it now, as protection against a growing depression in the dollar and euro economies, than to wait until later.