Green Design ~ Green Values and Green Community Credit

Michael Lucas Monterey

Part 1: The Basics
‘Whoever controls the food supply can control the people. Those who control energy can control continents. Those who control money can control the world.’ – Henry Kissinger
Green means thriving while enhancing future generations' ability to thrive as well. Divided we fail and fall, conquered and enslaved by our debt default. United we stand a chance of sustainable success beyond our imagining - Michael Monterey

When asked what he thought of the US Federal Reserve System, President Harry Truman answered, ‘Well, I guess it’s like having foxes run the hen house because they have lots of experience inside.’

Why do people trust Federal Reserve debt-dollars? The US Fed’s debt ‘money’ is immoral, anti-ethical, and anti-green. Only trust enforced by fear and greed keeps the Fed’s debt-dollars circulating. That trust comes with a high price. A Federal Reserve ‘dollar’ is really a kind of toxic derivative, a micro-CDO (collateralized debt obligation), a financial commodity enabling exponential erosion of positive cultural value. As they generate ever bigger score for the Big Winners and ever lower score (poverty) for the losers, Federal Reserve bucks suppress cultural and economic activity and growth. The best reason to think that a community-based, nonprofit credit system will work is because the US Federal Reserve System’s destructive debt-dollars are still in use, globally and locally.
If we want a lively culture with a lively economy and modest affluence for all, we need a new game that over 80% of us can play successfully. That means having our cultural pie back and not letting anyone steal it or poison it.

Instead of a commercial economic system that exists for the sake of competing and winning, working and/or playing and/or cheating with symbolic units of symbolic wealth, we need a cultural economy with a nonprofit credit system that fosters creative cooperation for the sake of healthy value, greater flow (affluence), and cultural richness, for the sake of healthy children, elders, families, and communities.

How can any kind of credit be green? Green means thriving in harmony while fostering the ability of all generations to do so as well. Green economics is what we do with each other to enhance the quality of life. Plutonomy, which is the negative economics of plutocracy – like financial plutonium -- is what sociopaths do to each other and us, with no compassion nor regard or consideration of the consequences for all generations.
Green Credit is a modern version of the nonprofit Gifting Economy our ancient ancestors used long before anyone thought of using symbolic tokens for exchange. Pure giving and receiving are about sharing, caring, relatedness, and positive value rather than numbers, units, score, or winning. Green Credit is somewhat like the millennial ‘Suq’ system used in town markets of the Middle East and Asia (no fixed ‘prices’) combined with the economics of Star Trek (not for-profit currency, no destructive debt, no financial manipulation). In the healthy culture of the future, credit is awarded in appreciation and recognition of valuable contributions to culture and life, i.e., positive, constructive, creative, or beneficial thoughts, words, and deeds.

We are creatures of habit and of our paradigm, the matrix of definitions and notions determining our habits and/or distorting our interpretations of experience. An unthinkable alternative (missed in ‘The West’ now for 5,000 years) may seem impossible, but a Green Community Credit System (GCCS) will do what no local currency or alternative monetary system can achieve. The GCCS network will support and sustain a cure for the cause and effects of the negative socioeconomic system, regionally and globally. Only a pure credit system, expressing a non-ecocidal socioeconomic paradigm, will turn the tide of destructive economic madness.
But, why trust a new nonprofit community credit system instead of an existing local currency system or Club Fed's unfunny money?
Without counter-balancing and counter-acting the corporate monetary system and its underlying mechanics of for-profit debt, there is no escaping the effects. Unlike local currencies, Federal Reserve bucks are accepted and usable almost everywhere. Federal Reserve bucks have no positive, intrinsic value and destroy the basis of money, stability, and real equity by undermining cultural values and the intrinsic value of natural goods and benefits. So, if Federal Reserve bucks (and related fiat currencies elsewhere in the US and globally) ‘work’ for personal and commercial exchange, then pure credit will work better.

To counteract the corporate money system we need to re-construct the economic system on which credit sits. For instance the linked chart, forms and learning circle provide examples of effective tools for creating this new Green glocal (local and global) economy and True Cost Pricing inc. Total Embodied Energy like ingredients listed on each product, part of Social Accounting, while showing the difference between faux Green and Green.

As the failure of the parasitic debt-based financial system gets worse, green community credit will grow stronger. As the official currency systems of the global financial cartel go on faltering, inflating, deflating, and failing to serve as stable media of fair exchange, most local currencies will become more vulnerable. Why?
Making currency a debt-based commodity for betting (speculative ‘trading’) has destroyed its value, and validity, its stability and the sustainability of the industrial-financial world system. As long as local currencies are linked — directly or indirectly — to the dollar, which represents the corrupt socioeconomic paradigm of the Federal Reserve and Wall Street’s bubble market Pump & Dump Game, communities will suffer the same consequences of boom, bust, uncontrolled privatised credit creation, as these Federal currencies. Even local currencies denominated in units of time still depend on false notions of relative value based on negative economics and dominant national currencies. Accepting and supporting the corrupt socioeconomic paradigm, even unwittingly, dooms local currency users to the consequences.
In this era of ruthless financialism, the only way to sustain thriving, growing local economies is with an expansive community-based credit network, free of the negative socioeconomic paradigm and the perverted financial system of the corporate plutocracy.

Key advantages that make nonprofit community credit superior. It is:
• A non-taxable instrument of public benefit
• A not-for-profit (nontaxable) community service
• Interest-free, thus free of constant systemic losses as well as fee of political changes of heart and policy
• Free of inflation, deflation & cyclic disaster
• Grows can grow stronger if the global financial system collapses
• Provides a sustaining alternative to Plutonomy debt-dollars
• For lively culture, not scoring, hoarding & cheating
• Not more important than life, health, children, etc.
• Inclusive and not a commodity, not material, not limited

Part 2 in our next CRAFT Issue will be Start Up issues for a GCCS by Michael Monterey.
Information on GCCS in Australia contact Paul Wildman paul@kalgrove.com and Ron Stanton ronstanton@optusnet.com.au .
Author and Source for parts 1& 2: Excerpts from Awareness & Value: Green economics and natural values by Michael Lucas Monterey, 14-05-2012 San Luis Valley Bioregion USA © 2012 michael.monterey@gmail.com V3 16-05-2012