craftsmanship, consumerism, virtue, privilege, and quality

the currency can be taken off the central metal

The value of the metal also based upon belief.

The concept of a Dark Age originated with the Italian scholar Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca) in the 1330s, and was originally intended as a sweeping criticism of the character of Late Latin literature.

awful Renaissance monarch Petrarch, what an asshole

i dig that guy sometimes. i really just wanted to quote that quote. cuz that is something that can be really true. communities that become more self-sufficient or whatever are probably better off in the long run. course it helps if you live somewhere with lots of resources and smart people, but, uh, you know...

The value of the metal also based upon belief.

yeah currency is a social contract, the weird implication that there is some sort of ACTUAL VALUE independent of people's implicit agreement that x = y is odd

well the quote is bunk too. centralized currency is good for all of us, it's a big reason why our economy is a bazillion times bigger than in the periods he's romanticizing.

There's a great This American Life (I think, or maybe it was a Fresh Air interview with an author?) about the history of money, and one of the examples given is a primative society which used GIANT IMMOBILE STATUES as currency, one of which was at the bottom of an ocean.

which is why we can afford computers, toilets, whatever.

citibank and walmart aren't pro 'centralized currency' cause of some conspiracy theory against 'value creation', they're pro 'centralized currency' cause that's a basic aspect of a modern economy

also see: every other country on the planet.

xp to myself

hurting 2, this (planet money) must be what you're thinking of:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/02/15/131934618/the-island-of-stone-money

LIXY IS THAT YOU

its not so much the centralized currency part. its the need for alternatives. local alternatives on a human scale and not on a big bank/walmart scale. because their scale has no end. they believe in infinite growth. no end to how big they can be. and most people don't have those same needs. people feel like there is only one way of doing something. and there should be at least, like, two ways.

i never actually participated in the local currency thing here in town. i don't even know if they still do it. nobody has ever asked me about it in 2&half years of having a store in town. i'm all for trade though. i accept baked goods as payment.

but there are two ways: my way and the highway

actually, that reminds me that i should put a sign in the window that states that i accept pie as payment. i did put it in a newspaper ad once and i only got one pie :(

that's because you didn't specify pies

hi laurel :)

DR: It’s like we only have a hammer and it’s really hard to put in screws. Centralized currency is really, really good for competition, it’s really, really good for big companies. Wal-Mart and Citibank can get money more cheaply; the bigger you are, the closer you are to the storehouse. And the big guys don’t want local currencies, they don’t want bottom-up value creation, work-based money, money that is worked into existence instead of borrowed into existence, because that reduces their monopoly over the means of exchange.

it's not a centralized currency part, the whole quote relates to it! DR: It’s like we only have a hammer and it’s really hard to put in screws. Centralized currency is really, really good for competition, it’s really, really good for big companies. Wal-Mart and Citibank can get money more cheaply; the bigger you are, the closer you are to the storehouse. And the big guys don’t want local currencies, they don’t want bottom-up value creation, work-based money, money that is worked into existence instead of borrowed into existence, because that reduces their monopoly over the means of exchange.

it's not a centralized currency part, the whole quote relates to it! small businesses like yours also benefit from the ability to buy and sell w/ a single currency. those 'local currency' things aren't really what this guy is talking about - those are just dollars that you can't use outside of town unless you switch them into regular dollars. it's just a stronger way of enforcing 'buy local' but not a currency w/ fluctuating value.

walmart and citibank are bad for totally different reasons that this dude doesn't understand because he hasn't watched the right ted talk yet I guess. suggesting local currencies as a way to fight walmart is like suggesting we shut down all the ports in america to fight walmart.

and maybe you thought he meant those 'buy local' currency things like the thing in your town. those are pretty innocuous, but that's not at all what he's suggesting, he's suggesting we get rid of the american dollar and have a million local banks produce their own money each w/ its own value.

see, i was just gonna suggest that we shut down all the ports in america to fight walmart, but you beat me to it.

regretsy is the website that calls shenanigans on the etsy culture. Anytime a complaint is brought against cheap-o resellers (not handmade) on etsy, they have some policy of "not being mean" to each other and ignore or ban the complainer. They are a business, they side against whoever brings in the revenue.

i don't honestly know what the currency answer is. i just know that something has to change. and i don't know how it will happen. but people have to try something. things look bleak! despite the hugest economy in forever angle.

i hear the women were taller during the dark ages. let's start with that. how do the dutch do it?

so mad i missed this thread all day

im not

wearing wooden shoes in windmills

xp they lowered the ground to below sea-level

they are so sneaky. no wonder they are known as "the sneaky dutch".

so unclear as to how we got onto the topic of the height of medieval dutch peasant women

…question answered before I asked it?

that sounds like a gross sex thing (xp to scott)

babe, tonight we're gonna do the sneaky dutch. get out the pipe cleaners.

hoos what artisanal handmade local social networks u like

it takes two lips

xp

it's gonna be gouda

it only took them a hundred years to be giants! what are they hiding???? radioactive hashish?

"Statistically, the tallest people in the world, as measured by country are the Dutch. The average height for all adults for the Netherlands is 6 feet 1 inch (1.85 m). This great leap in height is a huge change for Holland, where about 100 years ago, 25% of men who attempted to join the army were rejected as being too short, less than 62 inches (1.57 m) tall."

Central currency isn't just good for "big corporations," it's good for anyone who might want to do things like, say, relocate or even travel to another place, buy things that aren't made in one's hometown, etc. It's really not possible to produce most of what modern americans have decided they need to live "locally," which is all the more reason that "locally made" becomes such a novelty/luxury marketing concept.

BTW, reminds me of milk I bought recently -- had this nicely designed label and a tag on a string (tags on strings are wholesome) that said "Local Milk" in a very pleasant and endearing font. I bought it a couple times without thinking (price was reasonable enough anyway), and then one day read the print -- it said that the milk was guaranteed to have been produced within 200 miles of the point of sale. Then it occurred to me -- most milk we buy is probably already produced within 200 miles. New York is a dairy state and it doesn't really make sense to truck milk halfway across the country, and 200 miles isn't even that local anyway -- that could be like northern mass or something.

It's really not possible to produce most of what modern americans have decided they need to live "locally,"

disagree w/this and will defend l8r tonight

handmade computer

silicon lovingly smelted from the sand of american beaches

i think u mean hand~crafted~

tbh I don't even understand how that could be a point up for argument but I eagerly await your defense hoos

i was kidding abt silicon if that wasn't clear

lol

I being this up a lot but it's not even nec environmentally friendly to consume the same shit just ~local~

it is environmentally friendly to just consume less shit tho

bring

is that just based on that food article about locally sourced meat?

well food is where it comes up for discussion most often (esp annoying w/ the 'urban agriculture' fad) but it's gonna be generally true w/ lots of things. 100,000 local axe-makers aren't necessarily better for the world than one big axe factory in china. not buying axes is!

tbf axes are surely one of the things people only buy when actually needed

Not necessarily
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/01/garden/01peter.html?_r=2&src=twr&pagewanted=all

(esp annoying w/ the 'urban agriculture' fad)

not so sure about urban agriculture - I think the thing with locally sourced meat is that protein sources like animals are going to consume a lot of resources and emit a lot of greenhouse gases, such that big factory meat farms are gonna have a lower overall footprint than a local pig farm simply because of autonomies of scale, and that the savings in fuel and transport didn't necessarily outweigh the initial carbon emissions.

but locally grown vegetables ought to have a lower carbon footprint than produce shipped from south america, because the growing of vegetables doesn't really produce that big of a carbon footprint!