Lonely World, Failing Systems: Inspiring Stories Reveal What Sustains Us
If and when systems collapse, what will we choose to build together? These stories remind us where the real security and strength come from: the commons.
We are living through the death of one kind of society and the painful birth of another yet to be discovered. The converging crises of rising national debt, failing institutions, ecological collapse, a deadly chronic disease epidemic, and authoritarianism across the political spectrum are signaling that business as usual cannot hold.
If and when systems collapse, what will we choose to build together? The dominant form of power—centralized, money-driven, and extractive—continues to grow, while the power of the people rooted in trust, relationship, and collective wisdom has eroded in measurable and visible ways.
Time spent helping or caring for people outside the family has dropped by more than one-third. Digital habits formed during the pandemic permanently altered how people gather. Pandemic policy measures and crisis capitalism contributed to the dystopian rise of boarded up businesses across the country, and the closure of many third places—gathering places beyond work and home.
The annual World Happiness Report recently reported that the US fell to its lowest ever ranking, where trust in others dropped sharply from 50% in the 1970s to just 30% today. The report took it further, pointing to a quiet but powerful sign of our social unraveling: far more Americans are eating alone today than ever before. Nearly three out of every four restaurant orders in the US are for takeout, delivery, drive-thru, or curbside pickup. Well-being among under-30s in the US has declined far more rapidly than older generations, while solo dining increased by 80% among American adults under 25.
Entertainment and food have always served as powerful rituals for bringing people together. Shared meals, gathering spaces, and the civic commons aren't just relics of a bygone era—they are how we build trust, and how we find belonging with each other. Now, more often than not, these age-old rituals are being replaced with activities done in isolation—often behind a screen.
A baby starved of social contact has difficulty developing a regulated nervous system. Young men with few social acquaintances develop high adrenaline levels. Lonely students have low levels of immune cells. Prison inmates prefer violence to solitary confinement. In the US, social isolation is a greater public health problem than obesity.
― Douglas Rushkoff, author and media theorist professor, Team Human
The unraveling of trust and community is written all over the chaos of our political moment. While an NBC News poll found that both parties believe the other will destroy America, research shows that Americans vastly overestimate how extreme those with opposing views actually are. Another poll found that 71% of people say political correctness has shut down important conversations, and over half are afraid to even share their political views with others.
The fact that we’re increasingly socially isolated means also that we’re not testing our ideas about the world with other people ... And the more you sit around the table with other people who might have somewhat different views, the more you start moderating your own views. And the increasing lack of social interaction and social isolation as a result, for a lot of people — amplified by echo chambers — makes people more radical.
—"Americans Are Unhappier Than Ever. Solo Dining May Be a Sign." New York Times
In our recent 31-min mini-documentary on transforming media polarization, we discuss how the real threat isn’t each other—it’s the engineered media narratives that are fragmenting our sense of reality and driving us apart.
These manipulative narratives exploit something deeply human: our evolutionary wiring to protect ourselves and our community from danger. Today's media machine hijacks these survival instincts, flooding us with an endless barrage of character attacks and smears, existential worst-case scenarios, distorted fear-based narratives, and who's to blame. The more we live in fear and division, the more disconnected and disempowered we become.
In 2023, [US Surgeon General] Vivek Murthy ... published an 81-page warning about America’s “epidemic of loneliness,” claiming that its negative health effects were on par with those of tobacco use and obesity. A growing number of public-health officials seem to regard loneliness as the developed world’s next critical public-health issue. The United Kingdom now has a minister for loneliness. So does Japan.
Richard V. Reeves, the president of the American Institute for Boys and Men, told me that for men, as for women, something hard to define is lost when we pursue a life of isolationist comforts. He calls it “neededness”—the way we make ourselves essential to our families and community. “I think at some level, we all need to feel like we’re a jigsaw piece that’s going to fit into a jigsaw somewhere." Today’s young men do not seem to be constructing these relationships in the same way that they used to. In place of neededness, despair is creeping in. Feeling unneeded “is actually, in some cases, literally fatal,” Reeves said. “If you look at the words that men use to describe themselves before they take their own lives, they are worthless and useless.” Since 2001, hundreds of thousands of men have died of drug overdoses. These drugs, he emphasized, are defined by their solitary nature: Opioids are not party drugs, but rather the opposite.
—"The Anti-Social Century," The Atlantic
Cognitive scientist and psychologist Dr. John Vervaeke calls this the Meaning Crisis, the pervasive feeling of alienation and disconnection from the world and from each other. In an interview with Resilience, John Vervaeke cites a UK survey revealing a tragic finding: 89% of 16 to 29-year-olds in the UK say their life lacks meaning. Vervaeke explains that we lose meaning when we get stuck in narrow or distorted ways of seeing the world, leaving us feeling like we don’t belong in it.
Yet even in the face of this grim reality, the longing remains to be part of something real. To create something more human than the systems unraveling around us. How do we create the cultural and social conditions that bring out the best in each other? How do we find our way back to the kind of democracy that lives not just in institutions, but in how we treat one another?
Across ideological lines and in everyday life, people all over the world are cultivating abundance, security, and safety with one another. This matters now more than ever, because the future is not guaranteed to be stable. The more united and grounded we are in real relationship, the harder it becomes for the powers that be to manipulate us, polarize us, or pit us against one another.
Dr. Andreas Heisler, president of Swiss-based independent medical and health network ALETHEIA, said it best: “The currency of the future will be relationships of trust.”
Trust isn’t built on political ideologies or some fixed set of “agreed-upon facts.” Real trust grows from something deeper: the values and practices that bind us in relationship—mutual care, shared responsibility, and the belief that we’re better off when we look out for one another. At their core, true democratic values go beyond partisanship. They express themselves through common welfare, and the everyday ways we help each other survive, heal, and thrive.
When one lives in a society where people can no longer rely on the institutions to tell them the truth, the truth must come from culture and art.
—John Trudell, Native American poet, activist, and musician
Below are some of the most powerful, grounded alternatives to the loneliness and economic instability we face. We explore sharing and gift economies, local food systems, technology for good, community currencies, and moving stories of human goodness and community resilience.
In a time when centralized systems are faltering, these stories remind us where the real security and strength come from: the commons.
We're here to inspire the transformation and healing of our world by offering the kind of information that empowers this shift. Over 20+ years, we've collected over 3,000 inspiring news articles in our comprehensive news database, which has been used by journalists, educators, serious researchers, and everyday truth seekers since our founding. Our Inspiration Center features solutions to the world’s most pressing problems, mysterious explorations into consciousness and spirituality, and powerful human stories.
We can't shift the chaos we're in until we name it clearly. When we can recognize what's really pushing us—in our personal lives and as a society—we already have a degree of freedom from it. Challenging information can paradoxically remind us of the greater good. It is the courage of the people and the love for the common good that bring these challenges to light—fueling open dialogue and constructive action.
With faith in a transforming world,
Amber Yang for PEERS and WantToKnow.info
Note: If this resonates with you, explore our Substack on healing the culture wars, where we share real-life examples of social healing and deeper wisdom to break the cycle of polarization.
Why a game in which you look for a real, live pink elephant could help save the world
July 9, 2023, NPR
read on npr.org
Edgard Gouveia Jr., 58, says the key to solving the world's problems is games. "I use games and narrative to mobilize crowds," says the Brazilian game inventor and co-founder of Livelab. He's worked with schools, companies, government offices and slums. "Games that can make a whole town, a whole city or even a whole country play together." And now he's developing a global game called "Jornada X" whose goal is to get kids and teenagers to save nothing less than all life on the planet. Through games and playful activities, we create a field of trust. When you create abundance of connection, abundance of possibility, people sense it right away. It doesn't matter if for 30 or 40 years they were living in scarcity. By belonging to a group that we love and that's doing good in the world – these are ways of energizing our collective power, our collective meaning. When you do some good, you feel like you have an identity. [Jornada X] starts with young people. They receive a call that's like a Matrix video that says, "Humanity isn't doing well. Society is violent and nature is dying. But you are one of a group of special kids with superpowers – things like love, helping others, strength, and friendship. As soon as they sign up, the team starts to receive missions. We might say, "Look at your neighborhood. What's wrong?" By the end of seven weeks, they have to find a solution ... Kids play war games all the time. They collaborate to kill people. It's not that they like death, but they want to have this kind of adrenaline. What could be more exciting? My answer is saving the planet in a way that adults haven't been able to."
Note: The latest US Air Force recruitment tool is a video game that allows players to receive in-game medals and achievements for drone bombing Iraqis and Afghans. What world do we want our youth to live in? Explore more positive stories like this in our inspiring news articles archive, which aims to inspire each of us to make a difference.
Growing Food Instead of Lawns in California Front Yards
November 5, 2024, New York Times
read on nytimes.com
Tangles of grapes and blackberries grow in clusters along a trellis. Leafy rows of basil, sweet potatoes and mesclun spring from raised garden troughs. Most striking are corridors of elevated planters stacked four high, like multilevel bunk beds, filled with kale, cabbage, arugula, various lettuces, eggplants, tatsoi and collard greens. Run by a gardening wizard named Jamiah Hargins, this wee farm in the front yard of his bungalow provides fresh produce for 45 nearby families, all while using a tiny fraction of the water required by a lawn. At just 2,500 square feet, this farm forms the heart of Mr. Hargins’s nonprofit, Crop Swap LA, which transforms yards and unused spaces into microfarms. It runs three front yard farms that provide organic fruits and vegetables each week to 80 families, all living in a one-mile radius, and often with food insecurity. Rooted in the empowering idea that people can grow their own food, Crop Swap LA has caught on, with a wait list of 300 residents wanting to convert their yards into microfarms. The mini farms bring environmental benefits, thanks to irrigation and containment systems that capture and recycle rain. That allows the farms to produce thousands of pounds of food without using much water. “Some people pay $100 a month on their water because they’re watering grass, but they don’t get to eat anything, no one gets any benefit from it,” Mr. Hargins said. “I can’t think of a more generous gift to give to the community than to grow delicious, naturally organic food for the direct community,” [says Crop Swap LA subscriber] Katherine Wong. “This is one of the noblest things anyone is doing today.”
Note: Explore more positive stories like this about healing our bodies and healing the Earth.
Solar Experiment Lets Neighbors Trade Energy Among Themselves
March 13, 2017, New York Times
read on nytimes.com
Brooklyn is known the world over for things small-batch and local, like designer clogs. In a promising experiment in an affluent swath of the borough, dozens of solar-panel arrays spread across rowhouse rooftops are wired into a growing network. Called the Brooklyn Microgrid, the project is signing up residents and businesses to a virtual trading platform that will allow solar-energy producers to sell excess-electricity credits from their systems to buyers in the group, who may live as close as next door. The project is still in its early stages — it has just 50 participants thus far — but its implications could be far reaching. The idea is to create a kind of virtual, peer-to-peer energy trading system built on blockchain, the database technology that underlies cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. The ability to complete secure transactions and create a business based on energy sharing would allow participants to bypass the electric company energy supply and ultimately build a microgrid with energy generation and storage components that could function on their own, even during broad power failures. “The long-term goal is to be at least partially independent of the grid in emergencies, which was a reasonable argument to join,” said Patrick Schnell, whose Gowanus basement flooded during Hurricane Sandy in 2012. “Hopefully it will expand and more people will join and it will be more worthwhile.”
Note: Explore more positive stories like this in on technology for good.
Digital Justice: Internet Co-ops Resist Net Neutrality Rollbacks
October 2, 2018, Project Censored
read on projectcensored.org
More than 300 electric cooperatives across the United States are building their own Internet with high-speed fiber networks. These locally-owned networks are poised to do what federal and state governments and the marketplace have not accomplished. First, they are protecting open Internet access from the Internet service providers (ISPs) that stand to pocket the profits from the rollbacks of net neutrality the Trump administration announced. Second, they are making affordable and fast Internet accessible to anyone. In Detroit, for example, 40 percent of the population has no access of any kind to the Internet. Detroit residents started a grassroots movement called the Equitable Internet Initiative, through which locals have begun to build their own high-speed Internet. The initiative started by enlisting digital stewards—locals who were interested in working for the nonprofit coalition. They aim to build shared tools, like a forum and a secured emergency communication network—and to educate their communities on digital literacy. Just 30 of the more than 300 tribal reservations in the United States have Internet access. Seventeen tribal reservation communities in San Diego County have secured wireless Internet access under the Tribal Digital Village initiative. Another local effort, Co-Mo Electric Cooperative ... has organized to crowdfund the necessary resources to establish its own network. The biggest dilemma for cities is the erosion of the capacity for communities to solve their own problems. As a result, local Internet service providers are bringing the power back to their people.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this in on technology for good.
‘I like giving the gift of time’: Time banks build economies — and communities — without the almighty dollar
April 26, 2019, Washington Post
read on washingtonpost.com
Time banks offer an alternative, powered by 21st-century technology, to the U.S. dollar. About 70 exist across the country — some with a few members, others with hundreds — to give value to work that members say often goes uncompensated in a traditional market economy. The Silver Spring Time Bank formed in 2015 and has about 300 members, said co-founder Mary Murphy. Last year, she said, 1,000 hours were exchanged for basic home repairs, dog walking, cooking and tailoring, among other services, without the exchange of money. “You get to save that money that you would have spent,” she said. “You get to meet somebody else in your community and get to know that person. That's a bonus.” Edgar S. Cahn, an 84-year-old law professor who had worked on civil rights and anti-poverty legislation in president Lyndon B. Johnson’s Justice Department, suffered a heart attack in 1980. He said doctors gave him two years to live, with “maybe two good hours a day. I thought: What do I do with two good hours a day?” he said, having beaten doctors’ expectations by nearly four decades. “I have to teach people to value themselves ... We’re all trained as human service professionals: 'How can I help you?'' ” he said. “None of us is trained to say: ‘How can you make a difference?’ I need you as much as you need me.” Cahn became a proselytizer for what he called the “time dollar” — a currency in which an hour of work is worth an hour of work, whether it’s performed by a maid, a mechanic or a mechanical engineer. In 1995, he founded the D.C. nonprofit TimeBanks USA, which developed the software used by many time banks around the world. Time banks can serve as small-business incubators and a way for seniors to remain active after retirement.
Note: Read more about the potential of time banking. Explore more positive stories like this in on reimagining the economy.
Banking the Most Valuable Currency: Time
January 12, 2024, Reasons to be Cheerful
read on reasonstobecheerful.world
A time bank does with time what other banks do with money: It stores and trades it. “Time banking means that for every hour you give to your community, you receive an hour credit,” explains Krista Wyatt, executive director of the DC-based nonprofit TimeBanks.Org, which helps volunteers establish local time banks all over the world. Thousands of time banks with several hundred thousand members have been established in at least 37 countries, including China, Malaysia, Japan, Senegal, Argentina, Brazil and in Europe, with over 3.2 million exchanges. There are probably more than 40,000 members in over 500 time banks in the US. Many time banks are volunteer community projects, but the one in Sebastopol, [CA] is funded by the city. “Every volunteer hour is valued around $29,” Wyatt calculates. “Now think about the thousands of dollars a city saves when hundreds of citizens serve their community for free.” The Sebastopol time bank has banked more than 8,000 hours since its launch in 2016. Five core principles ... guide time banks to this day: First, everyone has something to contribute. Second, valuing volunteering as “work.” Third, reciprocity or a “pay-it-forward” ethos. Fourth, community building, and fifth, mutual accountability and respect. “What captured me is that people are doing things out of their own good heart,” Wyatt says. “Many years ago, a woman ... said to [civil rights lawyer] Edgar Cahn, ‘I have nothing to give.’ Edgar Cahn listened and finally responded, ‘You have love to give.’ And the whole room just went silent.” Every hour of service is valued the same, no matter how much skill and expertise a task takes, whether it’s an hour keeping someone company, helping them file their taxes or repair a roof.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this in on reimagining the economy.
Meet the woman who lives without money: ‘I feel more secure than when I was earning’
January 31, 2025, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
read on theguardian.com
In 2015, [Jo] Nemeth had quit her community development job, given the last of her money to her 18-year-old daughter Amy and closed her bank account. “I was 46, I had a good job and a partner I loved, but I was deeply unhappy,” Nemeth says. “I’d been feeling this growing despair about the economic system we live in.” Her “lightbulb moment” came when her parents ... gave her a book about people with alternative lifestyles. “When I read about this guy choosing to live without money, I thought, ‘Oh my God, I have to do that!’” The first thing Nemeth did was write a list of her needs. "I discovered I really didn’t need much to be comfortable. Then I just started ... figuring out how I could meet my needs without having any negative impacts.” For the first three years, Nemeth lived on a friend’s farm, where she built a small shack from discarded building materials before doing some housesitting and living off-grid for a year in a “little blue wagon” in another friend’s back yard. Instead of paying rent, Nemeth cooks, cleans, manages the veggie garden and makes items such as soap, washing powder and fermented foods. And she couldn’t be happier. She soon started tapping into the “gift economy” more deeply, giving without expecting anything in return, receiving without any sense of obligation. “That second part took a while to get used to,” she says. “It’s very different to bartering or trading, which involves thinking in a monetary, transactional way: I’ll give you this if you give me that. I actually feel more secure than I did when I was earning money,” she says, “because all through human history, true security has always come from living in community and I have time now to build that ‘social currency’. To help people out, care for sick friends or their children, help in their gardens. That’s one of the big benefits of living without money.”
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on reimagining the economy.
'It's a beautiful thing': how one Paris district rediscovered conviviality
July 14, 2022, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
read on theguardian.com
A 215-metre-long banquet table, lined with 648 chairs and laden with a home cooked produce, was set up along the Rue de l'Aude and those in attendance were urged to openly utter the most subversive of words: bonjour. For some, that greeting led to the first meaningful exchange between neighbours. "I'd never seen anything like it before," says Benjamin Zhong who runs a cafe in the area. "It felt like the street belonged to me, to all of us." The revolutionaries pledged their allegiance that September day in 2017 to the self-styled R©publique des Hyper Voisins, or Republic of Super Neighbours, a stretch of the 14th arrondissement on the Left Bank, encompassing roughly 50 streets and 15,000 residents. In the five years since, the republic – a "laboratory for social experimentation" – has attempted to address the shortcomings of modern city living, which can be transactional, fast-paced, and lonely. The experiment encourages people ... to interact daily through mutual aid schemes, voluntary skills-sharing and organised meet ups. A recent event at the Place des Droits de l'Enfant allowed neighbours to celebrate reclaiming the public space. A lifeless road junction ... no longer performed its role as an "urban square" – a place for life, interaction and meetings. But after residents were consulted about what they thought the square should become, it was cleaned, pedestrianised, planted and had street clutter removed with a grant of nearly 200,000 euros from the City of Paris.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.
'Bank Of Happiness' Lets Customers Deposit And Withdraw Good Deeds
July 18, 2013, Huffington Post
read on huffpost.com
When a Massachusetts woman needed help perfecting her English, she posted a simple six-word note online. Three eager fluent speakers willing to teach for free quickly responded to the call. "Hi Mary, totally willing to help via email!" a man named Chris wrote back. Thats how easy it is to get assistance, of nearly any kind, at the Bank of Happiness. Formed five years ago by Airi Kivi, an Estonian-based psychologist, the bank serves as a portal for people around the world to post services they need and those theyre willing to deliver - completely gratis. No money or credit is ever exchanged. We were inspired by the clear understanding that there is a gap in the society between humane caring and economic well-being, Kivi wrote on the Bank of Happiness site. We were then and are today convinced that the formula of happiness lies in noticing others. We feel that people want to help others, but often don't know how. But whats most bolstering to Kivi is that the offers for help, far outweigh the number of ads seeking favors. Some of the most popular services these bankers are willing to offer include, IT assistance, listening to a strangers problems, financial consulting and dog walking. Arent we just surrounded by the nicest people?, Kivi wrote on the site. Happy banking!
Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.
These Public Libraries Are for Snowshoes and Ukuleles
September 14, 2015, New York Times
read on nytimes.com
Libraries arent just for books, or even e-books, anymore. In Sacramento, where people can check out sewing machines, ukuleles, GoPro cameras and board games, the new service is called the Library of Things. Services like the Library of Things and the Stuff-brary in Mesa, outside Phoenix, are part of a broad cultural shift in which libraries increasingly view themselves as hands-on creative hubs, places where people can learn new crafts and experiment with technology like 3-D printers. Last year, the Free Library of Philadelphia pulled together city, state and private funds to open a teaching kitchen, which is meant to teach math and literacy through recipes and to address childhood obesity. It has a 36-seat classroom and a flat-screen TV for close-ups of chefs preparing healthy dishes. Libraries are looking for ways to become more active places, said Kate McCaffrey of the Northern Onondaga Public Library, outside Syracuse, which lends out its garden plots and offers classes on horticulture. People are looking for places to learn, to do and to be with other people. The Ann Arbor District Library has been adding to its voluminous collection of circulating science equipment. It offers telescopes, portable digital microscopes and backyard bird cameras, among other things - items that many patrons cannot afford to buy. In Sacramento, each item in the Library of Things bears a bar code, since the Dewey Decimal System was not intended for sewing machines or ukuleles.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.
Have old broken stuff? These people will fix it for you
January 15, 2019, Washington Post
read on washingtonpost.com
Martine Postma, a journalist in the Netherlands, noticed something had changed since her childhood in the 1970s. When a household item — a clock, a vacuum cleaner, a chair — broke, people used to try to fix it. Now, their first impulse was to throw it away. As a writer focused on sustainability issues, she was disturbed by that. She came up with a solution that led to a career change and inspired an international grass-roots movement: a regular gathering at which people with broken items can bring them to a place where other people can try to fix them. In 2009, she did a trial run in Amsterdam — and it drew many more people than she expected. Word spread, and soon a network of what became known as Repair Cafés began to spread across the Netherlands and beyond. Turning her attention to it full time, Postma started the Repair Café International Foundation. She wrote a manual on how to organize the cafes and put together a starter kit. There are now nearly 1,700 cafes in 35 countries, including 75 in the United States, 30 in Canada and 450 in the Netherlands. The repairs do more than extend the life of the items: They also create community. “You get to know your neighbors, to see that the person you pass on the street that you never talk to has some valuable knowledge and is not just a strange old guy,” Postma said. Repairers tend to skew older ... but Postma, 48, is trying to contact younger generations and has started holding demonstrations at schools.
Note: Watch a two-minute video on this wonderful project. Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.
Could bartering become the new buying in a changed world?
August 26, 2020, BBC News
read on bbc.com
Around the world, people have been turning to swapping, trading and bartering during the coronavirus pandemic, whether to do their bit for the local community, save money or simply source hard-to-find baking ingredients. With economic uncertainty looming and anxiety levels soaring, barter is becoming an emerging alternative solution to getting by – and staying busy. The increase in bartering is nowhere better exemplified than in Fiji. The country has a long tradition of barter, known as ‘veisa’ ... and Fijians have harnessed modern technology to connect even more people. “I knew that money would be tight to stretch out and even harder to come by. I asked myself what happens when there’s no more money? Barter was a natural solution to that,” says Marlene Dutta, who started the Barter for a Better Fiji group on 21 April. Its membership is just under 190,000 – more than 20% of Fiji’s population. Items changing hands have run the gamut – pigs for kayaks, a violin for a leather satchel and doughnuts for building bricks – but the most commonly requested items have been groceries and food. Bartering isn’t just for individuals looking for baking items or help with grocery shopping, however. Businesses are increasingly interested in joining barter exchanges, which have “doctors, lawyers, service companies, retailers – you name it”, says Ron Whitney, President of the US-based International Reciprocal Trade Association, a non-profit organisation founded in 1979 that promotes and advances modern trade and barter systems.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.
The Towns That Invent Their Own Money
March 24, 2025, Reasons to be Cheerful
read on reasonstobecheerful.world
Community currencies — alternative forms of money sometimes also referred to as local or regional currencies — are as diverse as the communities they serve, from grassroots time-banking and mutual credit schemes to blockchain-based Community Inclusion Currencies. Local currencies were common until the 19th century, when the newly emerging nation states transitioned to a centralized system of government-issued money as a way of consolidating their power and stabilizing the economy. Far from being a neutral system of exchange, a currency is a tool to achieve certain goals. Inequality and unsustainability are baked into our monetary system, which is based on debt and interest with practically all the money ... being created by private banks when issuing loans. Well-designed community currencies eliminate two main sources of financial inequality: money’s perceived inherent value and the interest rates, which both incentivize people to hoard their money. Like the pipes that bring water to your house, money is the conduit that gives you access to goods and services. The value of money is created in the transaction. In 2015 it was estimated that almost 400 of them are active in Spain alone, and across Africa blockchain-backed systems, like the Sarafu in Kenya, help underserved communities do business without conventional money. Elsewhere, local currencies like the Brixton pound in the U.K. or BerkShares in Massachusetts are a way to keep money in the community, buffering it against the pressures of a globalized economy.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on reimagining the economy.
Communities print their own currency to keep cash flowing
April 10, 2009, USA Today
read on usatoday30.usatoday.com
A small but growing number of cash-strapped communities are printing their own money. Borrowing from a Depression-era idea, they are aiming to help consumers make ends meet and support struggling local businesses. Businesses and individuals form a network to print currency. Shoppers buy it at a discount say, 95 cents for $1 value and spend the full value at stores that accept the currency. Workers with dwindling wages are paying for groceries, yoga classes and fuel with Detroit Cheers, Ithaca Hours in New York, Plenty in North Carolina or BerkShares in Massachusetts. Ed Collom, a University of Southern Maine sociologist who has studied local currencies, says they encourage people to buy locally. Merchants, hurting because customers have cut back on spending, benefit as consumers spend the local cash. Jackie Smith of South Bend, Ind., who is working to launch a local currency, [said] "It reinforces the message that having more control of the economy in local hands can help you cushion yourself from the blows of the marketplace." During the Depression, local governments, businesses and individuals issued currency, known as scrip, to keep commerce flowing when bank closings led to a cash shortage. Pittsboro, N.C., is reviving the Plenty, a defunct local currency created in 2002. It is being printed in denominations of $1, $5, $20 and $50. A local bank will exchange $9 for $10 worth of Plenty. "We're a wiped-out small town in America," says Lyle Estill, president of Piedmont Biofuels, which accepts the Plenty. "This will strengthen the local economy. ... The nice thing about the Plenty is that it can't leave here."
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on reimagining the economy.
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Both disturbing and inspiring! Thanks for sharing this wisdom about the state of our culture - I like to point out the ancient wisdom of the Golden Rule, and also of the boomerang effect - whatever we sow, we reap - and behind the curtain of our denial is the ongoing daily enslavement and slaughter of millions of cows, pigs, chickens, and other animals - we steal their purposes and we lose ours; we steal their social connections and force them to live as isolated units in an exploitive system, and we find the same happening to us - if we are actually serious about human happiness and liberation, then the first and primary way to achieve these is to offer them to those who are at our mercy, and who are vulnerable in our almighty hands. Liberating animals, we liberate ourselves. Breaking up their families, drugging them, and stealing meaning from them, we will always reap the same ourselves. One life lives through us all! Compassion for all living beings is beckoning us, each of us, and speaking up about it and living it brings gratitude, joy, and freedom - we are all interconnected.
Thank you Amber, for these bright points of positivity which share a common thread, that of being organized from the bottom-up instead of being imposed from the top-down.