Here’s the power-point version of the presentation on open money I gave at the local currency preconference to the BALLE gathering in Burlington last month. The presentation came after a full day of folks like Bernard Lietaer and Tom Greco excellently setting stage by explaining how our current monetary system is both unstable and the structural underlying cause of many of our economic woes. They explained clearly how changing the monetary system is a necessary step for fixing our economic system.

So this presentation was aimed at showing how a decentralized community currency network platform in which individuals and communities are given the power to create an ecology of currencies, is the necessary second order mechanism so that we can change our monetary system. I argued that not only do you have to change the monetary system, but that you have to change how we change. This is a second order change. Which in this case, I propose, means setting up a system that allows for decentralized broad-based creation of many types (most yet unknown) of currencies in a unified network platform. Without that second order change in place I don’t think the system can be changed.

By the way, the red fish in the presentation is a herring. Get it, get it?

[tags]open money,local currency,money,community currency,BALLE,Eric Harris-Braun[/tags]