A Schumacherian experiment

How is this any different from Disney dollars?

Amazon does not accept BerkShares, for example, but the Bookloft on Route 7 does. What a joke. How many books are printed in Berkshire County? Very few to none. So should we not sell any books there? And how much oil drilled and refined? So why sell gas? As I say, a joke. Not that it is wrong to seek community; and if the community is strong, people will buy locally when possible. But this plan is simply silly. It reminds me of something the late Pope JPII wrote: Before making practical plans, we need to promote a spirituality of communion Let us have no illusions: unless we follow this spiritual path, external structures of communion will serve very little purpose. They would become mechanisms without a soul, masks of communion rather than its means of expression and growth.

Crunchy Con heaven---Western Mass is vast liberal wasteland, not much industry, not many jobs, vast estates for the rich folk from Eastern MA to play in. Rod would love it.

One aspect of Berkshares that I think is unique among other attempts at local currency is the "discount note" aspect. You purchase 100berkshares for $90us. Participating vendors have to accept the shares on a 1:1 basis. So you can buy a $100 item for 100shares, essentially getting a 10% discount. Now the vendor has two choices -- exchanging the shares back into dollars (solidifying the 10% discount ot the customer), or finding other local vendors who will accept berkshares for his business expenses (whole also have to accept the shares at the 1:1 rate). The person who first puts shares in circulation gets a benefit, and a vendor somewhere down the line takes a small hit when they go out of circulation -- but they also get a happy customer. The initial discount I think has gotten a lot more into circulation more quickly and kept it in circulation longer than other similar attempts at local currencies (like in Madison and Ithaca.) Seems good to me.

I think that's the actual idea, oh brother. It's a subsidy to local merchants, through a non-exchange traded fiat currency. A book was written called "The Small-Mart Revolution" by Michael Shuman, that discussed matters like this further.

Joe Marier, in other words it's a subsidy to yet another special interest group. i hardly call that "community"

I think there is some confusion about the BerkShaes (disclaimer - I am a member of the EF schumacher society and originally from No. Berkshire County). Ithica Hours are a LETS type of barter exchange based on labor hours. BerkShares are nothing more than a local discount coupon scheme that uses pretty art printed on Crane paper (same as the FRN) but is backed by dollars. I have a five dollar W.E.B. Dubois in my wallet as I type. the real break through will come when we can set-up a mutualist credit clearing system like the WIR Bank in Switzerland. stay tuned as this is being attempted by the Second Vermont Republic (a distributist/secessionist project).