Short on Money, Cities Around the World Try Making Their Own

[BADecker]

Centralized money was never the way it was supposed to be done. The reason why we have centralized money is twofold:
1. In the past we needed the organization of centralization;
2. So the big bankers could rip us off, and control the world.

Presently, the local people realize that we need something without the ripoff, and yet something that can be used locally and still traded around the world. That's what they are starting to make by cities printing their own money.

Adding this new kind of money to a bunch of blockchains might prove difficult. But if it can be done, it would solve the decentralization problem, and maybe the bloated blockchain problem that Bitcoin has presented us with.


Short on Money, Cities Around the World Try Making Their Own

In a back room of the Tenino Depot Museum, a modest sandstone building in a city of less than 2,000 in Washington State, there is a rickety old machine that officials believe could help save the community from looming economic collapse: With it, money is literally being made from trees.

Printed on postcard-sized sheets of planed maple veneer by Tenino's only resident expert using an antique 1890 Chandler & Price letterpress, these "wooden dollars" are being handed out to locals suffering financial hardship. Pegged at the rate of real U.S. dollars, the currency can be spent everywhere from grocery stores to gas stations and child care centers, whose owners can later exchange them.

"We want this to be a symbol of hope," says Tenino's mayor, Wayne Fournier, of the City Hall-funded program. "We preach localism and investing in our local community, and the idea with this scheme is that we'll stand together as a community and provide relief to individuals that need it while fueling consumption. It's in our city's DNA."

Indeed, the wooden currency is a reboot of a Tenino program that dates back to the darkest days of the Great Depression. The logging city's only bank at the time had closed, and local businessmen decided to establish a wood-based scrip to allow commerce to continue. Tenino's 1931 program was the first of its kind in the the U.S.

[akram143]

Literally they are giving a coupon like things which can be redeemed later, am I right?

SO how government will accept this or this program backed by any rich individuals to save people?

[BADecker]

Literally they are giving a coupon like things which can be redeemed later, am I right?

SO how government will accept this or this program backed by any rich individuals to save people?

Right now, in the free countries at least, you can get grocery store coupons to use as money, sort of. Some store accept coupons printed by other stores. All this is, is a city making their own money for trade among city citizens. The hope is that this will keep the city afloat until government can fix the money system. However...

In the USA and Britain, there is no law that can stand against a city printing its own money for its citizens. In the USA, such a law, if it were made, would be struck down by the courts. Why? Because there is no foundational authority to make a law like that. The cities are free. Using FED money is not required by anybody, IF the people don't try to emulate FED money when they make their own.