© 2014 Armando-Jose Diaz

By Armando-Jose Diaz │ PhD MBA MBM

Are we ready to be social?

Coincident with “new today”, our society is changing its behaviors, its way of life, and

adapting to new technologies, new social landscape, protocols, culture, and more so with its

means to communicate, purchasing habits, obtaining goods using mobile resources and on

demand availability inventories, and actively interact with others local and worldwide. In the

meantime other sectors of the social community, are far behind or barely reacting to adapt

into the new “global village”.

What about social empowerment for all?

We need to see our communities not only as places of residence, recreation and retail but

also as places that nurture active citizens who make the rules that govern their lives, and

who have the skills and productive capacity to generate real wealth. Local economies must

be more than branch plants of planetary corporations. Local government must be more than

simply a body that reacts to higher levels of government.

As an example, let’s talk about Metal Money. Today is identical in all essentials with the

money that exchanged products of antiquity. Gold money unearthed from the ruins of

Athens, Rome or Carthage is universally acceptable and circulates freely with the money of

modern Europe or America. Apart from possible differences in the fineness of the gold, a

kilogram of coins with the stamp of a Roman emperor equals a kilogram of coins with the

stamp of the German mint.

Our today’s money has all the characteristics of the money that Lycurgus banished from

Sparta. Money is perhaps the only State institution still unchanged from Greek antiquity.

Today’s global imbalances, deficits, bouncing currencies, poverty and debt crises require a systemic redesign of that faulty economic source code. Worried finance ministers and central bankers call vainly for a “new international financial architecture.”

They do little but fret about this behind closed doors, at meetings of the G-8, WTO, and in Jackson Hole and Davos. Some clever libertarians try to beat the bankers at their own game with global digital currencies backed by gold, including e-gold Ltd, Gold Money and Web Money. Based in offshore havens, Nevis, Jersey, Moscow, and Panama, they have become platforms for cyber-crooks. The rest of us are redesigning healthy homegrown sustainable local economies – all over the world. Before we fall into “either/or” errors, we should avoid doctrinaire “smallness,” ideological localism, and knee-jerk libertarianism. None can protect local communities from the ravages of market fundamentalist-driven globalization.

© 2014 Armando-Jose Diaz

Like it or not, we are all “glocal” (global-local) now. Communities, like cells in the body-politic and the body, need boundaries or membranes to keep out elements destructive to the cell’s integrity. But all cell membranes are semi-permeable to allow needed elements, information and energy exchanges from the environment to pass through. In today’s information saturated world, communities need to understand which elements to reject and which to embrace.

Wholesale rejection can lead to rigidity, xenophobia, and misreading of history. Wholesale acceptance of current unsustainable economic global trends will surely lead to loss of local culture and biodiversity and to resource-depletion. We humans have been adept at creating new scenarios and technologies that mirror our lack of systemic knowledge and foresight. From such social changes and unanticipated consequences, we must then learn and evolve – or suffer ecological collapse.

It is up to the advocates of appropriate technology and small-scale systems to become the inventors of an appropriate technology for money. This task is vital to us, because all of the other appropriate technologies with which we are involved, eventually depend upon a proper and decent exchange system. When national currencies fail because of runaway inflation, or for any other reason, we will survive in some fashion by using barter or labor exchange systems.

If we are to expand and grow, and become more than a counter culture movement or a New Age subset of the larger culture, then we must create a new money system to replace the present system. Through this new system, the attributes we value -cooperation, self-reliance, community- can become growing and dominant within the entire culture. This is direction our work needs to go, not only survive the coming currency collapse, but also to develop what Schumacher called an "economy of permanence."

To help us do this, we must create local currencies. A local (appropriately scaled) currency should be:

1. Consistent with customary practices, such as cash, checking, and accounting systems. 2. Redeemable by a universal measure of value in real goods and based on local production. 3. Controlled by the community, perhaps through a nonprofit bank.

Among the alternatives, we will like to mention Timebanking, which is a practical tool that

enables co-production. Unlike the money economy, Timebanking values all hours equally:

1 hour of time = 1 time credit.

Timebanking values relationships that are forged through giving and receiving. Help give

people more control over their lives, prevent needs arising and grow what we call the ‘core

economy’ – our ability to care for and support each other and to engage in mutual and non-

materialistic exchanges and civic activity.

Much in the same way that the market economy – unless appropriately regulated – neglects

and erodes the ecosystem, so it can also undermine and weaken this core economy. In the

same way that the market fails to incorporate the environmental damage caused by

production into the cost of goods and services, it also fails to value the contribution of unpaid

labor.

© 2014 Armando-Jose Diaz

Currently core economy is taken for granted by the majority of public service interventions.

As globalization intensifies economic competition, however, people work harder and have

less time with families, friends and neighbors and the core economy is weakened. ‘Time

poverty’ leads to community breakdown, mental health problems and distrust. As market

economies across the world are threatening to implode, co-production in the form of

Timebanking suggests an alternative route by tapping in to abundant but neglected human

resources that can help to meet people’s needs and promote well-being for all.

For it is obvious that while on the one hand we are at a historical point when local and democratic participation in the economy is essential to our economic survival and to our humanity, it is also clear that we live in a world that is rapidly moving toward a one world economy. This new, local and appropriate system would consist of thousands of small, primarily self-reliant regions exchanging or trading directly with each other using a common unit of exchange.

Thus the foundation for a true world social economy would emerge, increasing benefits for all.

Armando-Jose Diaz a marketing strategist, is currently an independent business and strategies consultant, specialized in providing strategic resources needed, to successfully develop projects and consolidate long term institutional relationships over the Iberoamerican, European and Asian markets.

“We poses the ability to think globally, and yet act locally”.

www.ardiz.com ajdiaz@ardiz.com Skype ardizusa