Friday, June 17, 2011

Social Money

THE ties that bind the 92,000 residents of Macon, Georgia, are a little tighter these days. Since October, the locals - college students and senior citizens alike - have been playing Macon Money, a "social impact game" that uses a currency of the same name to overcome socioeconomic barriers in the small city by encouraging people from all backgrounds to meet and collaborate....

In the game, players receive "bonds", which are imprinted with Macon-inspired icons and symbols, such as peaches, guitars and butterflies. They can then redeem these bonds for notes of Macon Money, imprinted with the face of the town's most famous son, the late soul singer Otis Redding. These notes can be spent at participating local businesses, which the game's organisers reimburse with US dollars.

But there's a twist. Each person receives just half a bond and must locate the person with the other half - identified by its matching symbols - in order to redeem it. Often turning to social media such as Facebook and Twitter, matching players then meet in person to redeem the bond and get their Macon Money. The bonds range in value from $10 to $100....

Read the whole thing at New Scientist: Future of money: A currency that's building community

(h/t Senexx)


5 comments:

Anonymous said...

That's what I want in my currency. The necessity of meeting the person holding the other half of my note and then arguing over what we get to spend it on. This is why partnership interests are valued at a discounted rate. I give it three months until the novelty wears off..

Anonymous said...

There's no indication they have to agree on what to spend it on, the article says they can spend it separately.

googleheim said...

I think I said before here a while ago that the PIIGS in Eurozone should keep the euro but also float a local currency to help barter goods and services to deal with the austerity.

Greece has a 350 billion deficit.

Supposedly the outgoing conservatives of the previous administration stated the deficit at 5% but it was really 15% after the then newly elected Papaandreao inspected the real economic condition of Greece.

Sounds familiar as when Bush W left office with the economy in shambles.

Clinton left with a fake surplus, but at least that surplus illustrated that MMT was about since borrowing from Soc Sec was not a really bad thing

Even if Clinton didn't have a surplus the deficit would have been a healthy one.

googleheim said...

Krugman is dressing up MMT in Keynes' clothing in his blog :

"
The bottom line, then, is that the plausible-sounding argument that debt can’t cure debt is just wrong. On the contrary, it can – and the alternative is a prolonged period of economic weakness that actually makes the debt problem harder to resolve."


http://www.princeton.edu/~pkrugman/keynes_and_the_moderns.pdf

googleheim said...

http://www.princeton.edu/~pkrugman/

keynes_and_the_moderns.pdf