Creating Wealth Read online

  Advance Praise for

  CREATING

  WEALTH

  We’ve seen the local food movement grow and spread, and the local energy movement too. But the local money idea is just as important; here’s some common sense explanation of why and how!

  — Bill McKibben, author Deep Economy

  Creating Wealth is the most practical and comprehensive guide for creating community wealth. It helps cities envision and model richer alternatives; healthier, more equitable, sustainable futures. This timely book deserves a wide audience.

  — Hazel Henderson, author Ethical Markets: Growing

  The Green Economy and the Green Transition Scoreboard®

  Two masters have come together to create an instant classic. Few can hold a candle to Gwendolyn Hallsmith when it comes to a systems approach that enables communities to vision a different future. Bernard Lietaer as an originator of the Euro is without peer when it comes to both the theory and practice of expanding the possible by creating new currencies. Together, they share a commitment to renewing cities and creating a sustainable world for all endangered species — including our own. This is a book that provides framework, theory, examples galore and tools. Get it. Use it. For us at TimeBanking and for our law school course in System Change, this is required reading.

  — Edgar S. Cahn, PhD, JD, Ashoka Fellow,

  Distinguished Professor of Law,

  originator, TimeBanking, Washington, DC

  I dare consider this is the single most important reflection in economics since Adam Smith.

  — Dr. Samir Ghabbour, University of Cairo, Chairman,

  Egyptian National Committee for the UNESCO

  Man and Biosphere Programme (MAB)

  Clearly describes the ever-greater role for community credits, as national currencies evaporate.

  — Paul Glover, founder of Ithaca HOURS

  and author of Hometown Money

  Not since Natural Capitalism has a book offered new ways for wealth to be created; it’s a must read for city counselors, local politicians, business people and everyone who wants a vibrant economy without destroying the planet in the process.

  — Harry Blutstein, Founder, The Lighthouse Bureau,

  Northcote, Australia

  CREATING

  WEALTH

  GROWING LOCAL ECONOMIES

  WITH LOCAL CURRENCIES

  Gwendolyn Hallsmith & Bernard Lietaer

  Preface by Dennis Meadows

  Foreword by Hunter Lovins

  Copyright © 2011 by Gwendolyn Hallsmith and Bernard Lietaer.

  All rights reserved.

  Cover design by Diane McIntosh.

  Cover Images: Piggy Bank — © iStock (3dsguru);

  Calgary skyline — © iStock (SensorSpot); Border design — ©iStock (sunnyfrog)

  Printed in Canada. First printing April 2011.

  Paperback ISBN: 978-0-86571-667-4

  eISBN: 978-1-55092-477-0

  Inquiries regarding requests to reprint all or part of Creating Wealth

  should be addressed to New Society Publishers at the address below.

  To order directly from the publishers, please call toll-free (North America)

  1-800-567-6772, or order online at www.newsociety.com

  Any other inquiries can be directed by mail to:

  New Society Publishers

  P. O. Box 189, Gabriola Island, BC V0R 1X0, Canada

  (250) 247-9737

  New Society Publishers’ mission is to publish books that contribute in fundamental ways to building an ecologically sustainable and just society, and to do so with the least possible impact on the environment, in a manner that models this vision. We are committed to doing this not just through education, but through action. Our printed, bound books are printed on Forest Stewardship Council-certified acid-free paper that is 100% post-consumer recycled (100% old growth forest-free), processed chlorine free, and printed with vegetable-based, low-VOC inks, with covers produced using FSC-certified stock. New Society also works to reduce its carbon footprint, and purchases carbon offsets based on an annual audit to ensure a carbon neutral footprint. For further information, or to browse our full list of books and purchase securely, visit our website at: www.newsociety.com

  LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

  Hallsmith, Gwendolyn

  Creating wealth : growing local economies with local currencies / Gwendolyn Hallsmith & Bernard Lietaer.

  Includes bibliographical references.

  ISBN 978-0-86571-667-4

  1. Wealth. 2. Cooperation. 3. Sustainable development. 4. City planning — Economic aspects. I. Lietaer, Bernard A. II. Title.

  HD75.H34 2011 338.9 C2011-902041-6

  www.newsociety.com

  As this book goes to print,

  we stand at the dawn of a new era on Earth.

  We hope that this work will help in some small way

  to build the bridge to a brighter future

  for all of Earth’s children.

  Contents

  Preface by Dennis Meadows

  Foreword by Hunter Lovins

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction: Cities And Economies

  PART I: LOCAL ECONOMICS

  1. What Is Wealth?

  2. Crash and Burn Economics

  3. Community Capitalism

  4. The Possibility of Sufficiency and Abundance

  PART II: EXAMPLES OF COMPLEMENTARY CURRENCIES

  5. Building Equity

  6. Growing Intelligence

  7. The Creative Economy

  8. Exchanging Ecologies

  9. Minding the Community’s Business

  10. Putting the Care Back In Healthcare

  11. Honoring Our Elders, Caring For Children

  12. Eating Money

  PART III: MAKING IT HAPPEN

  13. Intentional Cities

  14. A Tale of Three Cities

  Conclusion: Toward A Monetary Democracy

  Appendix: The Community Currency How-To Manual

  Endnotes

  Resources

  About the Authors

  Preface

  by Dennis Meadows

  A century from now social analysts will look back with angry astonishment at the extent our generation accepted the economists’ fantasy — happiness requires perpetual economic growth. This may have been true once; definitely now it is false. Indeed, the exponentially expanding use of energy and resources brought by pursuit of growth now erodes the foundations for the happiness, even threatens the survival, of our species.

  The growing numbers of people who recognize this tend to seek technological changes — factor four improvements in resource use, shifts to renewable energy sources, sequestration of carbon dioxide, genetic modifications of plant strains, and others. These are helpful. However, none of these efforts will succeed without a fundamental change in our understanding of human wealth. And that will require profound changes in our systems of money.

  Those who gain profit from the current global system obviously will vigorously resist any efforts to change it. And they will prevail until industrial society collapses. Current policies will be desperately pursued until they must be changed in response to crisis. But individuals, families, communities, perhaps even regions, can begin now proactively to make the necessary changes that will lead to true happiness and sustainable wealth.

  I know of no other pair better qualified than Bernard Lietaer and Gwendolyn Hallsmith to offer the theoretical understanding and the practical experience required for useful insights on these issues. This book is an extremely important and very unique resource. It offers theoretical insights and practical actions for those who w
ant to respond now to the most important global issue of our time.

  DENNIS MEADOWS is co-author of Limits to Growth and Beyond the Limits.

  FOREWORD

  Natural Capitalism Plus

  by Hunter Lovins

  Creating Wealth is a book that the world has needed for a very long time.

  Arguably, if the economists and accountants who have run the world’s financial system off a cliff had read this book, we’d all have a great deal more wealth now, and the world would not be in the parlous straits in which we all now find ourselves.

  Its authors know whereof they speak and have practiced wealth creation in communities around the world. Bernard, Gwen and I first worked together on a project called LASER — Local Action for Sustainable Economic Renewal. Gwen and I came up with the name for the project on a very long (and scary) drive to Belgrade, Yugoslavia from a workshop we’d delivered in Novi Sad, Serbia. The war in Kosovo had just ended, and Serbia was rebuilding their economy from the ruins. America’s Development Foundation (ADF) had invited us to Novi Sad because the local community resource people needed training on how to foster local economic development in hard times. Gwen brought the expertise she’d developed in such challenging economies as Kazakhstan and the townships of South Africa. I brought economic development lessons from Afghanistan, Jamaica and the hollows of Appalachia.

  We realized during the workshop that people around the world needed the ideas we were giving the Serbians. When people in a community work together on economic development, they need to understand and productively use several forms of capital. Natural capital — the environmental services provided by Mother Earth — is critical, but so are the forms of human and social capital, historic and cultural capital, built capital. And the means we use to make exchanges are also very important. ADF funded the development of an international workbook and resource guide so that people trying to jump-start their economy would know how to begin, and LASER was born.

  Natural Capitalism offers the way for businesses to profit by working with nature instead of against it. Creating Wealth likewise provides the basis for communities to grow their local economies by investing in all the forms of capital that lead to sustainable wealth. Community capitalism builds community assets so that enterprises, organizations and individuals can prosper. Natural Capitalism is the business model of the 21st century economy, and Creating Wealth is the community economic development model that business and citizens need to be successful. The two go hand in hand — businesses can’t succeed without community investment in infrastructure, education, health and the rule of law. Communities can’t succeed without the entrepreneurial initiatives that provide us with the products and services we need.

  Using the strategies described here, businesses can further expand their profitability as they implement environmental stewardship and employee well-being — even in tough times — by finding alternative means of exchange. The example of the WIR system in Switzerland shows us that complementary currencies make the economy more resilient and significantly reduce the built-in growth imperative that drives environmental destruction and economic dislocation.

  Growth and profit are key elements of the economy. With this book, Bernard and Gwen demonstrate that far from being a neutral means of exchange, the financial system serves as an almost invisible driver of unnecessary and unhealthy growth — the ideology of the cancer cell. By expanding the diversity of exchanges, we can achieve the growth we need — growth in intelligence, health, natural beauty, the arts, spiritual development, recreation and peace — and eliminate the unproductive waste and destruction that now threatens life on earth.

  Welcome to the future. You’re going to like living there.

  L. HUNTER LOVINS is President of the Natural Capitalism Inc. (www.natcapinc.com). Ms. Lovins has lectured extensively in over 15 countries, including at the World Economic Forum at Davos, The International Symposium on Sustainable Development in Shanghai, the Global Economic Forum, and the World Summit on Sustainable Development. She has consulted for industries and governments worldwide, and has co-authored nine books, including the 1999 book Natural Capitalism.

  Acknowledgments

  Every book comes into being with many hands shaping its birth. Beyond the creative work, there are also all the trees that provide the paper, the minerals that provide the ink, and the energy needed to give it life and shape. We are grateful to all the bright minds that influenced our work, and all of Earth’s abundance for making it possible.

  Gwendolyn is particularly grateful to Bernard, who has taught her much about the world of money, and whose patience with her learning process has shaped her thinking and helped her find new ways to initiate new currency projects. Three new currencies are currently being created and used in Vermont, where she lives with her family. George Hallsmith, Gwendolyn’s husband, is a tireless editor and provides so much support for all her work, it is hard to find words to express how much an integral part of this work he is. Her son, Dylan Hallsmith, is now studying International Politics at George Mason University, but his support and tolerance of a mother who leaves for weeks at a time to get the book written is deeply appreciated.

  Perhaps more than anyone, Gwendolyn’s parents and family are also worth mentioning. Wesley and Joan Hall set amazing examples of principled, intelligent people who worked hard for what they believe. Joan died in 2007, but Wesley continues to be very interested in and supportive of Gwendolyn’s work (even if he does refer to all these complementary currencies as “funny money”). Her sisters, Gaylynn and Gretchen, are both artists and create beautiful new ideas and realities every day. They are an inspiration.

  The staff at New Society Publishers have been great to work with — Chris and Judith have been faithful to this rather unusual book project, which started out with the premise that it would take over three years to write, simply because we wanted to bring some of the projects we were developing to fruition. They kept the faith that it would get written, and it did. In the meantime, several new currencies have been developed in both the United States and Europe as a result of our collaboration, so this is a book that has shown real results even before it went to print.

  Betsy Nuse, the editor, has worked hard to get all the editing done quickly and painlessly. Her assistance with all the vagaries of style and clarity have been enormously helpful. The marketing team at New Society are also amazing — I was never so surprised to find that people could purchase advance copies on Amazon.com before we had even finished the editing.

  Other editing assistance from Gina Ottoboni came at a critical time when my schedule was very demanding and I needed help pulling the last pieces together. Finally, I’m grateful to the Balaton Group and Dennis Meadows, who saw the importance of what we were talking about and scheduled the 2010 meeting in Iceland. That gave us a reason to travel there and meet with all the activists who were trying to put that country back on its feet. They also were an inspiration, and we wish them the best as the country struggles with real economic challenges.

  INTRODUCTION

  Cities and Economies

  Creating wealth — the idea catches people by surprise. Our system tends to instill the idea that our collective wealth adds up to a finite bottom line of financial assets, and the question is mainly one of distribution, not of creation. The call for lower taxes, the resistance to higher minimum wages, the idea that wealth held at the highest levels“trickles down” all contain this hidden assumption — there is only so much wealth out there, and we all need to struggle to get our piece of a finite, limited pie. Yet history and everyday reality tell a different story: we live in a world of expanding pies, and while some things on the planet are finite (the land area available, the fertile soils, the fresh water and fossil fuels, to name a few) there is no limit to human ingenuity, creativity and imagination.

  Our ingenuity and innovation have expanded the wealth of the human species by orders of magnitude, especially over the last century. We have collecti
vely built a remarkable wealth creation machine, and yet its construction over time has made most of us — even the people who turn its wheels and keep it in working order — blind to how it works. This new marvel has resulted in a middle-class lifestyle in the developed parts of the world that makes some of the royalty and aristocracy of yesterday look hardscrabble by comparison.

  If time travel were possible and we managed to go back before the industrial era to talk about computers, iPods, the Internet, cellphones, automobiles and airplanes, the people there would think we were wizards and witches, and they would probably burn us at the stake. Central heat and running water were not common until the mid 1900s. Tours of the ancient manorial houses and castles of Europe reveal that their relative levels of creature comforts were on par with the modern middle class in Europe, Asia, North and South America.

  We create wealth. We do it as a society, not as individuals, despite what the dominant myth of rugged individualism in North America would have you believe. Farmers have a hard time bringing their produce to market without decent roads. Merchants depend on a reliable currency to sell their goods and services. Even some of the iconic capitalists of the early 20th century — the Rockefellers, Carnegies and Mellons — depended on taxpayer-funded infrastructure to amass the vast fortunes that still form the foundation of companies like Exxon/Mobil, US Steel and Alcan. Even today, Bill Gates would be just another hacker without the laws our governments have passed protecting intellectual property.