THE BASICS
What are Regenerative Currencies?
Money is not a neutral tool. We need to understand the history of how it's designed, why it has the properties it has, and what the impacts of these properties are.
Then, we need to do the cultural healing of decolonizing how we think about value, opening the door for us to design healthier systems at many different scales which can truly support security and abundance.
This website shares an introduction to how new generations of media of exchange can be designed to benefit people and the planet. While there can be many beneficial ways to redesign money, this site focuses on the design principles of believing that all people and ecosystems deserve to be secure and well, and believing that economic systems should be designed to cultivate (rather than exploit) real abundance and value.
CONTRIBUTE, COLLABORATE, AND SHARE THESE APPROACHES WITHOUT COST.
The Central Concepts
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There is a disconnect between the real world and the modern financial world. In our existing systems, it is often profitable to exploit people & nature while it is generally expensive to build real security and abundance. We need to reverse this so real abundance is seen as profit and exploitation is seen as a cost.
Data Backing is one tool for doing this. It is a process for ethically and securely monitoring positive social and ecological conditions then producing a corresponding supply of a digital currency that represents these measures of value. |
Conventional currencies last longer than all real world forms of value. This consolidates financial wealth in the hands of the wealthiest while real value is constantly needing to be regenerated at high costs.
Demurrage allows a currency to slowly leave circulation over time to represent the real entropy of energy and materials. This allows new funding to be generated towards the production of new value without private costs, without increasing taxation, and without causing inflation. |
Currencies have slippery way of losing value when used to compete for basic well-being. Competing against others to make essential purchases like food and housing can systematically exclude whoever is outcompeted, regardless of social progress in overall income and employment.
Universal Basic Services provide an avenue for essential activities to be fully and fairly funded without any cost to recipients, and new currencies can be designed to facilitate Universal Basic Services without inflation while still directing markets based on consumer choices and preferences. |
Clicking above will open a post describing Regenerative Currencies through the lens of Doughnut Economics. Introduced by Kate Raworth, the "Doughnut" Model is an economic framework for prioritizing social and ecological well-being.
Shared with a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
For more information and to read the full legal code of this license, visit creativecommons.org
The Regenerative Currency System model is being digitally released in a publicly licensed form while it is still in an early-access state to cultivate transparency, collaboration, and accessibility. You are welcome to share, edit, use, and adapt these materials within the scope of their public licenses. Learn more and join the movement on the Collaborate page of this website.
For more information and to read the full legal code of this license, visit creativecommons.org
The Regenerative Currency System model is being digitally released in a publicly licensed form while it is still in an early-access state to cultivate transparency, collaboration, and accessibility. You are welcome to share, edit, use, and adapt these materials within the scope of their public licenses. Learn more and join the movement on the Collaborate page of this website.
Website text © 2022 Alex Bernat
Photos by Niko Photos, Todd Cravens, and Visual Stories || Micheile - used under the Unsplash License