FootprintsintheWind.com

What if we could get together some out of work people who are imaginative and roll-up-sleeves kinds of people? Hand select them and invite them to be inviters. Test out a few projects and see how it might work. Look to be inventive, meet needs, see if there is a way to be paid outside of money.

Money is the problem—not its lack, but its pervasiveness in our thinking. Money is getting in our way—we won’t do what needs to be done because we don’t have enough. Money is a ghost—we don’t see it, so we are fixated on it to the point of fear, palpitations, and petrifaction. We can think only of what is not there! We can think only that this is the only way to move people and things within our society. And we can think that money is the sole way of creating credit. Our major industries and companies and even governments could create credit. In little ways and large. Gasoline suppliers could give credit to long-haul trucking companies and truckers. They could pass this credit on to others, and credits could start flowing.

What this economy lacks—what every economy has lacked—is not cash but imagination. We have developed other tools to do our work over the years—do we still use goats to mow our lawns? Do we still use horses to move people from place to place? Do we still use pay phones? We can come up with other ways to move credit and commerce.

Cash in fact hampers imagination. If we do not have it, we long for it and whine “If only.” If we have it, we don’t get to work with the better, but settle.

So: how do we move credits and commerce without cash?

The city of Curitiba got slums cleaned up and people to work by giving out bus tokens in exchange for bags of trash.

Restaurants give buy 10 get one free punch cards.

Airlines have frequent flier miles.

Think bus tokens, punch cards, miles: these are credits flowing.

There is much that has to be done in our society: the work has not gone away. There are many who can do this work: hands have not gone away. Heart has. Imagination has. Think: how to put them together?

:- Doug.