The Sufficiency Currency Project offers a new approach to sustainable economies that provide security for the provision of people’s basic needs. Underlying the project is the assumption that the purpose of society is to sustain the well-being of every individual in the society.
Rather than growth as a measure of health of an economy, the Sufficiency Currency measures economic health as the ability of the economy to support the needs of all the individuals in the economy. Growth is measured in terms of the economy’s ability to sustain and satisfy more people.
The following video gives a description of the Sufficiency Currency. You may also read the whitepaper.
Funding for the Sufficiency Currency pilot will be provided by the Family Regeneration project. Find out more and apply here.
Background
If some of the ideas seem difficult to grasp or just outrageous, the background section is for you. We’ve been doing currency design and crypto work for a few years now, and we recognize that some of the terminology and concepts need more background to understand.
Money vs. Currency
In the currency design discipline, we don’t use the words “money” and “currency” interchangeably.
- We use the term “Currency” to refer to any measure that a group makes visible. “Current-See”. Companies use currencies called KPIs to understand the health of the organization.
- People use different forms of currency every day to represent value and understand how to interact with other people and communities. Examples include online reviews, university degrees, “likes”, followers, infection rates, air quality indices etc.
Market Economics Alternatives
Market economics is one way that people have invented for distribution of goods. It isn’t the only way. Money is a human invention. It’s not like air. People can, and did, live without it. It’s probable that some other technology will replace money and market trading because eventually every technology becomes outdated. We aren’t talking about moving from gold to cash to cards to bitcoin—we mean that all forms of market exchange will be replaced by something else.
Pools before Markets
Markets and exchange are a proven form of communication that allows people to transfer goods and services globally. Markets don’t address issues of the people in society who don’t have goods and services to offer: children, elderly or disabled members of society.
Learn More
We’ve been doing currency design and crypto work for a few years now, and we recognize that some of the terminology and concepts need more background to understand. Subscribe to updates or join our weekly calls to learn more!
To learn more about money, join the currency design course
“The Future Ain’t What it Used to Be”
The First Year Pilot
The first year pilot program will involve 5-10 organizations including Ecovillages, urban commons and intentional communities in Europe, creating a collaboration for sharing among them. The project plan is under discussion between the VoH, Gen-Europe and other coalition partners. If you are interested in getting involved please reach out to join our fortnightly calls. Contact us directly at grace@daoleadership.com
Three Currencies
Sufficiency is the measure of what an individual or community has to offer and what they need for sustenance. Do all members have the shelter, food, electricity, supplies you need to perform your function in the society?
Status (November 2020)
The Sufficiency Currency Project has created a one-year plan and presented it to the GEN-Europe group. During November and December we have scheduled a series of meetings with GEN-EU to discuss the details. Once we have a plan and funding in place, research will start. You can download the draft of the plan here:
Funding
Funding for the Sufficiency Currency Project will be through the Family Regeneration Project.
Updates
Updates on the Sufficiency Currency are discussed Wednesdays at 5 pm Central European Time and recordings are posted on the Blog.
Money vs. Currency
In the currency design discipline, we don’t use the words “money” and “currency” interchangeably.
- We use the term “Currency” to refer to any measure that a group makes visible. “Current-See”. Companies use currencies called KPIs to understand the health of the organization.
- People use different forms of currency every day to represent value and understand how to interact with other people and communities. Examples include online reviews, university degrees, “likes”, followers, infection rates, air quality indices etc.
Clarity about what money is and isn’t.
- Money is a form of communication that structurally enables a particular type of coordination for commerce.
- Money, as used today, almost always communicates a kind of extractive value rather than a generative or creative value.
- Money is an invention. Humans invented it. Humans could live without money (and did for most of human history). Humans could invent something completely different to coordinate their activity.
Money has allowed large-scale coordination and technological evolution. It also has stripped many of the earth’s resources and created huge inequalities. These are not “unfortunate externalities”, but results of how we define money.
If we want different results, it is essential that we invent alternatives to money and alternatives to market economics.
Market Economics Alternatives
Market economics is one way that people have invented for distribution of goods. It isn’t the only way. Money is a human invention. It’s not like air. People can, and did, live without it. It’s probable that some other technology will replace money and market trading because eventually every technology becomes outdated. We aren’t talking about moving from gold to cash to cards to bitcoin—we mean that all forms of market exchange will be replaced by something else.
That should be a relief to hear, because the current financial system has generated shocking inequality; it’s increasingly difficult to navigate for the average human; and it’s causing untold ecological damage.
Yes, we invented money and we could invent something else, and that’s Good News.
When you learned the history of money, you were probably told that before there was money, there was barter—and that’s true in some societies, but in most pre-money societies, there was sharing. One person was a better hunter and another person was a better basket-weaver. Some people were elders and some people were just old. Everyone shared the food and baskets and wisdom. In that sense, there was no trade, just people sharing what they had. You didn’t let the children, old people or less talented people die because they didn’t “contribute to the economy”.
In some societies, trade was more like gifting, where it was more important to get a good reputation than a good deal, because you didn’t want the other tribe to go to war with you. Rewards for the best warriors might have been first choice of the food, but it wasn’t more food—because everyone ate what they wanted. Rewarding the hunter might have come in the form of feathers and beads or other types of decoration to make them feel significant, but not so that they could have more than everyone else. All of these forms of distribution and more have been used by different cultures. In any case, historically, people have used different forms of distribution, both with forms of money and without forms of money.
In some societies, it was incredibly important for everyone to work very hard, because producing enough food for everyone required everyone to chip in, but in many societies food was abundant and people didn’t work hard at all.
Market economies are based on the idea that everyone must work hard for a living. But as machines and computers take over more and more of the work that must be done—you would think that people could just relax. In fact, they could, if we lived in a different system. It’s time to create that system, because the current one is outdated.
Outdated doesn’t mean bad. It just means that it is no longer the best we can do.
Money is a human invention, and we could (and did) live without it.
Pools before Markets
Markets and exchange are a proven form of communication that allows people to transfer goods and services globally. Markets don’t address issues of the people in society who don’t have goods and services to offer: children, elderly or disabled members of society.
Pools are a natural way that people think about sharing. When you go to a potluck dinner or family meal, there is no “fair exchange”. People share what they have. Children aren’t supposed to bring a dish and nobody checks to see who ate more or less food. The food is just “pooled”. Similarly, people use pools such as Mutual Aid to loan money to one another, or pool their money to help someone in their community with a sudden tragedy. In all of these situations, people naturally “Pool” resources without concern about who is giving more or taking more.
Almost all societies use some forms of pooling through their governmental institutions. Public education and national healthcare are all examples of areas where societies recognize that pools are a better mechanism than marketplaces for distribution of certain types of services.
The Sufficiency Currency Project advocates for Pools for the “life support systems” for humans. Food, air, water, healthcare, and education. Rather than trying to make sure everyone has paying work, it is society’s job to make sure everyone has food on the table, electricity and access to Internet, as well as clean water, education and healthcare. To be honest, we aren’t far from being able to provide that. For one thing, most modern societies already provide education, healthcare and clean water to their citizens. Giving everyone free (basic) food and internet access would in some ways be more straightforward than Universal Basic Income.
The Sufficiency Currency Project seeks to work with intentional communities and cooperatives, to create ways of pooling resources among communities, not just within communities, creating the software tools and community awareness necessary for creating a new Pooling Economy.
Three Currencies
- Sufficiency is the measure of what an individual or community has to offer and what they need for sustenance. Do all members have the shelter, food, electricity, supplies you need to perform your function in the society? The movement might include people in the city who do IT services and some hydroponics as well as people in ecovillages who have more food generation capacity but need IT or hardware “maker” services. Every individual and group can broadcast their needs and offers, so that the movement as a whole can communicate and trade within the group. You don’t need “money” to barter because the digital platform would make the matches, and the basis is sufficiency. If you are in good standing, and you have a need the community can fulfill, the community fulfills it. If the community can’t make all people’s needs, the community brainstorms how to fulfill the needs.
- Carrying capacity: A group using Sufficiency Currency would have to have measures of its carrying capacity in terms of available capacity to have people join. The carrying capacity may come with conditions. For example, an agricultural community might be able to absorb 10 new people as long as 50% of them are able-bodied workers on the farm. Another example could be a community in Italy may be able to identify land the government wishes to have rehabilitated/repopulated and they don’t need money but they do need a lawyer, permaculture education, and four families with EU passports to commit to living there. One community doesn’t need a lawyer, but 10 communities together do, and they could save money and increase their capacity by bringing in a family where one parent is a lawyer.
- Reputation has both group and individual levels. To participate in a Sufficiency Currency, a community may need a particular type of “good standing” certificate Over time, rather than having a central authority deciding whether a community is “in” or “out” of the community, each community can set its parameters. Reputation would include things like carbon footprint, religious beliefs, and talents, as well as reviews from other communities that interact with them.
