Naming Sufficiency Currency

In this call, we discuss the pros and cons of the name “Sufficiency Currency”. To summarize:

• The terminology Currency comes from the Metacurrency Project, most notably Arthur Brock’s work on what he calls “current-sees”, that is, any type of flow (current) that you can measure (see) as an indicator of a desired or undesired behavior that the group wants to alter or monitor.
• In the Currency Design space (yeah, that’s a thing), most people understand this terminology.
• Most people don’t even know what the currency design space is, so it’s confusing. When people hear “currency”, they almost always think it’s a monetary currency, and the Sufficiency Currency is not a monetary currency.
• Calling it the Sufficiency Currency has the advantage of causing the project to feel like it belongs to both the cryptocurrency/decentralized movement, and the community currency movement. That is a correct categorization of the project, as far as we are concerned.
• A variety of names were proposed. The chat is posted below.

Quality of the video was sketchy, so the audio only is posted here.

Suggestions from the Chat:

MM:  sufficiency community => support people=> “supportable(s)”?

MML  commonwealth + community => commonities?

ML:  support network

HFH: Maybe we should not put in money. what we should put in economy instead

ML: yeah could be something simple like regenerative sharing economy

ML: distributive sharing pool

ML: community sufficiency currency

ML:  regenerative sharing commons currency

HFH: Exchange money is {1}:{1} bilateral relations

MM: divisibles,

MM: distributables + exchangables

MM: distributable good go to pools

MM:  exchangables are surplus value, to be traded as a community

ML: in our family budget system, we’ve renamed traditional financial terms to be more warm feeling rather than cold and calculated — we renamed “expenses” to “thrives” for example

ML: renamed “income” to “joy”, etc

MM:  that’s a good point about power (and potential fallacies) of language!

MM:  changing the name of a thing doesn’t usually change it’s nature, but it can alter perception drastically

HFH:  Quote1: Johann Karl Rodbertus wrote: The division of labour could just as well called the division of the result, because this concept is only the necessary complement to the former.

HFH: Quote 2: Gustav von Schmoller stated this: Mainly, however, if a full division of labor is to take place somewhere, social institutions must provide maintenance, food, clothing and housing for those, who devote all their labor to others.

HFH: (((money gets the purposefom economy) gets the purpose from society) gets the purpuse of the purpose of mankind)

HFH: Both money and economy lost the connection to what is it meant for: give men free time for relations and culture.