Local Currencies: Communities Printing Own Money To Keep Cash Flowing

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/06/communities-print-own-cur_n_183497.html

I know this article is from a far-left Establishment blog, but they get it right. For too long because of a label "right" or "left" we fail to even consider the idea if it is not on "our" side. The image of a three legged race constantly comes to my mind when thinking about political parties. If you just look at the legs one may appear to be ahead for a while and then this strange leg seems to come from no where not really fitting to the image we have of either of the legs, but if we look up we see the whole picture and realize that the legs belong to two people who are really heading in the same direction. It appears to be a struggle but the the goal of both is the same, less liberty, personal responsibility, freedom for Jones, who is the common person. The legs can be called big government and big business, republican and democrat, left and right. The each have enough truth to keep up the support and enough of our money bully the rest of us for a while. This was a parenthesis to my main point, which is, let us look for real ideas to fix our country where they can be found and not be afraid of labels. There are good ideas out there and I believe none are to be found in unrestricted capitalism, socialism, or communism. 

Distributism is the answer, with smaller everything. Built on cooperatives and guilds, and local currencies, encouragement of small ownership and property, people seeing where their goods come from and how their purchases affect their neighbor. It is so easy to go to the store not thinking about who made that and how does my purchase affect them. With the recent bail-outs I believe we get a rare view of the "middle" leg. Both parties supported it, both presidential candidates. I don't believe it was the fault of unpaid mortgages, the poor are always the scape-goat, and they(I should say we) get to pay for the sins of the rich, who actually broke the law! These defaulted morgtages are supposed to be insured by mortgage insurance, which everyone who owes more than 80% loan to value must pay as part of the monthly payment. Distributism is personal responsibility, which the rich have always objected to.

Here is a quote from guess who, Chesterton in his book "the man who was Thursday" which sums it up well:

"Mere mobs!" repeated his new friend with a snort of scorn. "So you talk about mobs and the working classes as if they were the question. You've got that eternal idiotic idea that if anarchy came it would come from the poor. Why should it? The poor have been rebels, but they have never been anarchists; they have more interest than anyone else in there being some decent government. The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn't; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all. Aristocrats were always anarchists, as you can see from the barons' wars."

excerpt from the "Introductory Remarks on the Importance of Orthodoxy"

But there are some people, nevertheless—and I am one of them—who think that the most practical and important thing about a man is still his view of the universe. We think that for a landlady considering a lodger, it is important to know his income, but still more important to know his philosophy. We think that for a general about to fight an enemy, it is important to know the enemy's numbers, but still more important to know the enemy's philosophy. We think the question is not whether the theory of the cosmos affects matters, but whether in the long run, anything else affects them. In the fifteenth century men cross-examined and tormented a man because he preached some immoral attitude; in the nineteenth century we feted and flattered Oscar Wilde because he preached such an attitude, and then broke his heart in penal servitude because he carried it out. It may be a question which of the two methods was the more cruel; there can be no kind of question which was the more ludicrous. The age of the Inquisition has not at least the disgrace of having produced a society which made an idol of the very same man for preaching the very same things which it made him a convict for practising.

Now, in our time, philosophy or religion, our theory, that is, about ultimate things, has been driven out, more or less simultaneously, from two fields which it used to occupy. General ideals used to dominate literature. They have been driven out by the cry of "art for art's sake." General ideals used to dominate politics. They have been driven out by the cry of "efficiency," which may roughly be translated as "politics for politics' sake." Persistently for the last twenty years the ideals of order or liberty have dwindled in our books; the ambitions of wit and eloquence have dwindled in our parliaments. Literature has purposely become less political; politics have purposely become less literary. General theories of the relation of things have thus been extruded from both; and we are in a position to ask, "What have we gained or lost by this extrusion? Is literature better, is politics better, for having discarded the moralist and the philosopher?"

When everything about a people is for the time growing weak and ineffective, it begins to talk about efficiency. So it is that when a man's body is a wreck he begins, for the first time, to talk about health. Vigorous organisms talk not about their processes, but about their aims. There cannot be any better proof of the physical efficiency of a man than that he talks cheerfully of a journey to the end of the world. And there cannot be any better proof of the practical efficiency of a nation than that it talks constantly of a journey to the end of the world, a journey to the Judgment Day and the New Jerusalem. There can be no stronger sign of a coarse material health than the tendency to run after high and wild ideals; it is in the first exuberance of infancy that we cry for the moon. None of the strong men in the strong ages would have understood what you meant by working for efficiency. Hildebrand would have said that he was working not for efficiency, but for the Catholic Church. Danton would have said that he was working not for efficiency, but for liberty, equality, and fraternity. Even if the ideal of such men were simply the ideal of kicking a man downstairs, they thought of the end like men, not of the process like paralytics. They did not say, "Efficiently elevating my right leg, using, you will notice, the muscles of the thigh and calf, which are in excellent order, I—" Their feeling was quite different. They were so filled with the beautiful vision of the man lying flat at the foot of the staircase that in that ecstasy the rest followed in a flash. In practice, the habit of generalizing and idealizing did not by any means mean worldly weakness. The time of big theories was the time of big results. In the era of sentiment and fine words, at the end of the eighteenth century, men were really robust and effective. The sentimentalists conquered Napoleon. The cynics could not catch De Wet. A hundred years ago our affairs for good or evil were wielded triumphantly by rhetoricians. Now our affairs are hopelessly muddled by strong, silent men. And just as this repudiation of big words and big visions has brought forth a race of small men in politics, so it has brought forth a race of small men in the arts. Our modern politicians claim the colossal license of Caesar and the Superman, claim that they are too practical to be pure and too patriotic to be moral; but the upshot of it all is that a mediocrity is Chancellor of the Exchequer. Our new artistic philosophers call for the same moral license, for a freedom to wreck heaven and earth with their energy; but the upshot of it all is that a mediocrity is Poet Laureate. I do not say that there are no stronger men than these; but will any one say that there are any men stronger than those men of old who were dominated by their philosophy and steeped in their religion? Whether bondage be better than freedom may be discussed. But that their bondage came to more than our freedom it will be difficult for any one to deny.

G.K. Chesterton .... Heritics