[Falconoffury]

Assuming we learn the mistakes of the past, and we attempt an economy that does not depend on growth, what form will wealth take?

I think a barter system without a central currency would be best. The problem with a central currency is that money is created through loans. Unfortunately, loans got us in this mess in the first place. I don't think an economy that is based on zero growth can survive by creating money through loans.

So the question is, would a barter system be best? If a currency would be better, how do you create money without growth?

A barter system may cause problems for some people, but at least it will keep people away from overspecialization. It won't be easy to survive on just one thing. Even farmers may need to trade food for tools or cloth. If they can't trade food for what they need, they will have to learn to spin their own cloth, or blacksmith their own tools.

[gg3]

M. King Hubbert himself belonged to an organization called the Technical Alliance (which later changed its name to Technocracy, which term became maligned in the popular media), which proposed a system of currency pegged to the erg, a basic unit of measurement of energy.

It seems that this could be a viable solution as well. A money supply could grow or shrink or be maintained at a steady state, depending on the supply of energy. Seems to me that this idea is right on target for the future we're facing.

Barter systems are interesting, but they require some means of keeping track of transactions. If person A needs something from person B, who does not reciprocally need something from A, then they need to find another person, C, who can trade with both of them. This immediately leads to the creation of transaction databases, which, over time, would almost certainly suffer from "combinatorial overshoot" (my term for what happens when the number of potential interactions among participants becomes so large as to become unmanageable).

Thus, beyond a certain scale, the need for a common denominator for trade, i.e. a currency or some equivalent. Currencies could be based directly on energy (as per Hubbert and Technocracy), on labor, or on some other resource or combination of resources that has practical value.

See also the information on the web about alternative currencies, starting with a search under "Ithaca Hours." A friend of mine up there is one of the key players in that system, and I did a fairly extensive analysis of it for a sustainable development project a couple of years ago. It works, often in very subtle ways, and it could be expanded to cover larger geographic areas.

[Keith_McClary]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Falconoffury', '
')I think a barter system without a central currency would be best.

[Mercani]

Gold is the money.

[GD]

Not all money has to be debt-based or made from real silver or gold. See the thread on alternative currencies.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('gg3', 'S')ee also the information on the web about alternative currencies, starting with a search under "Ithaca Hours." A friend of mine up there is one of the key players in that system, and I did a fairly extensive analysis of it for a sustainable development project a couple of years ago. It works, often in very subtle ways, and it could be expanded to cover larger geographic areas.