9. Please select a category that best describes your idea.
Community: How can we help connect people, build communities and protect unique cultures?
10. What one sentence best describes your idea? (maximum 150 characters)
This is an idea about how to create local currency that's more powerful than national currency and so give control of money and resources back to the people.
11. Describe your idea in more depth. (maximum 300 words)
Most communities today lack the cash necessary to sustainably develop local resources. Consequently, most either suffer endemic poverty or rely on global developers and marketers that often act with little regard for local values or sustainability.
Occasionally, communities have tried issuing their own currencies to rectify this. Local currencies work alongside national currencies, so all the advantages of the global marketplace are preserved, but local moneys never leave, so they can build prosperous, unique, and resilient communities, empowered to protect their people and resources. However, by the same measure, national money can buy goods from everywhere while local money is only valuable locally. So there's never been enough demand for local money to build the strong local money systems necessary to fully realize this potential.
The new idea here is to create that strong demand by giving a large discount on a highly sought local commodity when it's purchased with local money. For example, the poorest communities might give this discount on water. The demand this produces for the money would enable these communities to use it to fund agricultural micro-loans and build infrastructure, resulting in food and water reaching those who need them most. As the local economies grow, the discount could move from water to taxes, since taxation is how communities take advantage of economy of scale to deliver essential services and commodities, resulting in a large tax advantage for those able to fully participate in their local marketplaces. And for the most developed economies, the electricity providers could be required to accept local moneys at a major discount. In turn, these providers would need to use the local currencies to purchase electricity from the communities, presenting the opportunity for everyone to participate in their local marketplace while funding the development of local energy autonomy and sustainable prosperity.
12. What problem or issue does your idea address? (maximum 150 words)
The fundamental emergency facing us in the 21st Century is that our global economic system compels irresponsible development to compete successfully, often regardless of our best intent, resulting in poverty, environmental destruction, hunger, and war. Just as our global marketplace has revealed itself as unsustainable for this reason, the intrinsic accountability of strong local marketplaces offers a vital solution because prosperous communities are empowered to protect their natural resources and people from the exploitation of the global marketplace.
13. If your idea were to become a reality, who would benefit the most and how? (maximum 150 words)
The people who need the power of money most benefit most. Today, that's those of us who are desperate for food and water. For example, a community could pay its citizens with local money to dig a well, pump the water, dig irrigation, and farm a crop, creating a population that's watered, fed, and funded through direct payment and micro-loans to create art, build homes, a school, a clinic.... And tomorrow, all of us benefit, as local control of money and resources empowers our communities to address all our needs and dreams. Even global marketers and developers benefit because prosperous communities are better global customers and sustainable communities are lasting suppliers. So this strategy has no losers. A world where SunMoney is used widely just might be a world that at last realizes sustainable prosperity.
14. What are the initial steps required to get this idea off the ground? (maximum 150 words)
The initial step is to network this idea around the globe, asking many experts and other serious thinkers for help and feedback. I've done that, and the consensus I've surmised is that this might work but we wont know until we try because local money that's more powerful than national currency is truly revolutionary. And this strategy is the opposite of the standard relief model that brings big industry into impoverished areas to "industrialize" their economies, so without an innovative funder such as Google it isn't likely to happen. What's necessary to move forward now is funding for software, hardware, and a diverse management team, to mount pilot projects that explore how efficacious this strategy is when implemented in undeveloped, developing, and developed economies, as described below.
15. Describe the optimal outcome should your idea be selected and successfully implemented. How would you measure it? (maximum 150 words)
Optimally, three simultaneous demonstration projects are mounted in communities that express their desire to participate through YouTube video responses to a video invitation, because this model requires community consensus and because YouTube will serve as our network for participants to document progress. Each community develops measurable goals cooperatively with the management team that are appropriate to their particular circumstances. After three years, the projects culminate in video-documented community festivals centered around talent shows and showcasing development supported by each project, such as local foods, arts, solar energy, etc. The ongoing and final documentation would illustrate what did and didn't work in each community, and so serve as measure and guide for other communities. It doesn't take much national money for communities to create their own powerful currencies if know-how is available and consensus encouraged, and optimally this documentation would provide enough know-how and encouragement to serve as a seed.
17. You may also submit 1 YouTube video (max 30 seconds long) explaining your project.
18. If you'd like to recommend a specific organization, or the ideal type of organization, to execute your plan, please do so here. (maximum 50 words)
In 2006, when I presented the basic idea for creating powerful local currencies at a UN sponsored conference (see http://homepage.mac.com/forever.net), I asked STROhalm Foundation (http://strohalm.net) for help because I believe they are the world's best at introducing innovative community currencies, and at that time we agreed they would provide oversight.