We need to regain our economic citizenship
Like everything else, the economy is built on guiding principles. Changing those will create a different economy. To do so, we need to regain our economic citizenship.
Everything is changeable. The economy is changeable too. We can create a different one: one that overcomes the insane, destructive sides of our current one. One that allows us to regenerate nature and rebuild our communities. First, we must regain our economic citizenship, because we have positioned ourselves as dependent consumers.
In the first step of this process, we need to understand three things:
We need to understand the dynamics, principles, and paradigms that currently shape the economy and society.
Fundamental transformations are only possible if we change the governing principles and dynamics. If we can understand them, we will know what to change.We must understand how those dynamics and beliefs are tightly intertwined with our daily lives.
Seeing how those dynamics shape our daily lives allows us to lessen the grip of those paradigms. We will be able to create inner freedom, resilience, and independence, and we must take bold steps.We need to understand how we maintain and advance the economy in our daily actions.
Knowing how we maintain the current system will give us a clue about where to start.
Let's use an example to make it easier to grasp.
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The economy is built on the circulation of money. Money is at its very foundation, and it feels so commonplace that we perceive it as natural. But it is a human invention. There have been times when humanity didn’t use money, and there are still indigenous people without it. Money is foundational to our society and in its creation it was shaped it in a specific way. Of all its properties, I want to highlight one: money is the gateway to society. You need money to be an active participant in society and to maintain your livelihood. This necessity compels you to earn money and engage in the circulation of money.
So money is one of the governing principles of our economy.
Money shapes our daily lives. Two aspects of our lives may shine a light on this:
We need to work to earn money, and this dictates the rhythms and cultures of our families. Money is the yardstick for almost everything, so it shapes our perception of self-esteem and self-worth. This drives the extraction of every natural resource we can think of. Thus, money is also at the base of the ecological destruction we create.
Money isn’t confined locally; instead, it flows globally. Over the last few decades, we have changed the laws so that almost everyone has the right to invest wherever they want to. Suddenly, entire neighborhoods are in the hands of non-citizens, turning property into an object of speculation. We flood local markets with foreign products, foods, and raw materials, undermining local economies based on self-sufficiency, and creating poverty and migration.1
These are just two of the ways that the governing principles of money shape our daily lives.
And we all take part in this economy, we need to take part, even the beggar on the street does this to survive. And by this, through all these tiny daily actions and decisions, we maintain the money system and the economy. When we hand out pocket money to our children, we introduce them to the system. When we buy things that aren’t really necessary, we maintain the system, just as we do when we are fighting with our spouse about how to spend money.
In 1932, the Austrian community of Wörgl started an experiment with a complementary currency, later called the "Miracle of Wörgl" (https://unterguggenberger.org/the-free-economy-experiment-of-woergl-1932-1933). This regional currency was the first sovereign, democratically legitimized citizens' money. It had a remarkably positive effect on the local economy during the time of the Great Depression. And it ended abruptly by prohibition of the state government, before more than 200 other communities had chance to apply it. The "Wörgl Experiment" showed that another money regime is possible. We need to envision it. And then create it. We’ll talk about this during the coming months.
If you want to understand more how money works and what kind of money we created, I recommend the books of Bernard Lietaer (https://bernard-lietaer.org).