designing bioregional Economies...

This is just a great site...
www.ceres.ca.gov/tcsf/path...pter2.html
Designing Bioregional Economies in Response to Globalization
this is another really great site...

OHIO I LOVE YOU!!!!
http://www.ohiopeakoilaction.org/action-communitycurrencies.html

Creating autonomy from the non-bioregionaly focused community economicly is an important way of making a firm non compromising stand so that animist life ways can actually be manitained, and a real sense of community developed...

"THE GIFT ECONOMY

The extent to which our lives are dominated by money and the preoccupation with money is incredible. Personally, I would like to see our social and cultural consciousness less dominated by money and more thoughtful of the real wealth around us—clean beautiful environments, family, good food, leisure time with children, and so forth. Richard Heinberg writes that, “At its base, economics is about how people relate with the land and with one another in the process of fulfilling their material wants and needs. In the most primitive societies, these relations are direct and straightforward. Land, shelter, and food are free. Everything is shared, there are no rich people or poor people, and happiness has little to do with accumulating material possessions. The primitive lives in relative abundance (all needs and wants are easily met) and has plenty of leisure time.”

Instead of a social environment dominated by money exchange and transactions, I would like to see a society with more casual, friendly, and community-oriented relationships. Anthropologists call this a “gift economy”—an economy based on gift giving as a primary means of social interaction and exchange. Indeed, the entomology of the word community suggests this more informal and generous relations among people. Cum means together. Menere means to give. Collectively they mean to give among each other.

The importance and ritual of giving and exchanging gifts is the glue that binds communities. Anthropologists call this reciprocity. Whenever the reciprocity and the gift-economy break down, so does the community at large.

Modern industrial civilization has replaced the gift-economy with a highly individualistic economic system that is all but devoid of ritual, reciprocity, respect and love between the exchangers. Thus we can see the breakdown of communities the world over not as a random, unconnected process, but rather as a systemic effect of an imperfect and immoral economic system.

Describing the evolution of a community currency system in Takoma Park, Maryland, Lietaer writes that, “It turns out that the complementary currency and the directory are just the oil to lubricate the imagination, an excuse to make the first contacts. Most actual exchanges use the complementary currency only for part of the transaction, sometimes not at all, and involve exchanges that weren’t even thought of as items to be listed initially in the directory. Gradually, neighbours get into the habit of just helping each other out as gifts, without any currency exchange.”

Thankfully, there is an easy way of reviving the gift economy. Make and give gifts. Make up new holidays with families and friends. Celebrate more often! Emma Goldman once wrote that if you can’t dance, it ain’t the right revolution!

Many of us have also become disillusioned with this so-called “capitalistic” economic system. For these reasons many people are calling for the complete destruction of all economies and money systems. But these suggestions that we should abolish all economic systems are unrealistic, as forms of trade, bartering, and money systems have historically evolved in practically every culture and seem to be almost a natural evolution within human societies. Rather than abolishing money and monetary systems, we should look to transforming and harnessing their power to create a more just, sustainable, and satisfying world for the two-legged, the four-legged, the swimmers, the fliers, the creepy crawlies, the rooted, and all of our other brothers and sisters."

http://www.ohiopeakoilaction.org/action-communitycurrencies.html

Much thanks to the bioregional activists of Ohio for all of the great work they do!