Tuesday, September 30, 2014

David Bollier — Faircoin as the First Global Commons Currency?

It’s hard to find many co-operatives with the kind of practical sophistication and visionary ambitions as CIC – the Catalan Integral Cooperative -- in Spain. CIC describes itself as a “transitional initiative for social transformation from below, through self-management, self-organization, and networking.” It considers the state unable to advance the public good because of its deep entanglements with market capitalism -- so it has set about building its own working alternatives to the banking system and state.

Since its founding in May 2010, CIC has developed some 300 cooperative projects with 30 local nodes, involving some 4,000 to 5,000 participants. You can get an idea of the impressive scope of CIC’s work through this interview with Enric Duran by Shareable magazine in March 2014. It’s fairly clear that CIC is serious about building a new global economic system – and not just as a rhetorical statement. CIC builds real, working alternatives, showing great sophistication about politics, law, economics and digital platforms.
CIC has now started Fair.Coop to help build a set of free economic tools that will “promote cooperation, ethics, solidarity and justice in our economic relations.” A key element of the Fair-Coop vision is a cryptocurrency, Faircoin, which has been designed to adapt the block-chain technology of Bitcoin with a more socially constructive design. (Faircoin relies less on "mining" new coins than on "minting" them in a more ecologically responsible, equitable ways.)
Many skeptics might scoff at the brash, utopian feel of this initiative. But in many respects, Faircoin is the ultimate realism. CIC correctly recognizes that the existing monetary system and private banks pose insuperable barriers to reducing inequality and ensuring productive work and wealth for all. The only "realistic" alternative to existing fiat currencies and foreign exchange is to invent a new monetary system! Fortunately, thanks to the pioneering examples of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies and the evolving powers of software, that idea is actually within reach these days.…
David Bollier — news and perspectives on the commons
Faircoin as the First Global Commons Currency?
David Bollier

2 comments:

Matt Franko said...

"It considers the state unable to advance the public good because of its deep entanglements with market capitalism."

Should be:

"It considers the state unable to advance the public good because of its (CIC's) deep entanglements with libertarianism."

dont see any taxes in Faircoin... so this will be interesting to see if it works within this what looks like a 'slaving' cohort without taxes...

If taxes are required/sufficient to drive the currency in general, then this shouldnt work...

It could be that taxes are required/sufficient when we are dealing with the "wages & debt" cohort, and these "slaves" dont need the taxes for this to end up working...

btw it seems to be working already (without any taxes apparently....) hmmmmmm....

Matt Franko said...

And this is not true:

"CIC correctly recognizes that the existing monetary system and private banks pose insuperable barriers to reducing inequality and ensuring productive work and wealth for all."

This is absolutely not true...

and I would question the author's assertion that the people participating in this are trying to guaranty "productive work" for all and "wealth" for all...