Community currencies

The rise of the Internet has enabled new ways of payment. In the past, community currencies have been labour-intensive to administer and difficult to regulate, now they are becoming much more useful.

Here, at the Northern School, we are willing to use well-designed community money. So, what do we mean by "well-designed"?

First, we acknowledge that money doesn't really exist at all, outside of a set of ideas. So, keep the ideas simple - a communty currency system is merely a set of accounts that record the value tranferred from one person to another.

It's a bit like the old-fashioned practice where, in many towns, traders would submit their bills at the end of the month, giving their customers plenty of time to pay. As long as they were busy, the money would keep flowing.

Next, apply the key principles.

community - the money cannot leak away outside the trading community, and the system is under the control of the that community itself - we need not rely on external corporations, or allow them access to our funds.

personal - people "issue" community money when they use their account to pay for something and they "earn" community money when someone else pays them with it. So, the money is personally issued, and personally guaranteed,

practical - we use commonly understood measures (such as the pound sterling), the traders operate within the law, and the systems may not be used for tax evasion or any "funny business".

We prefer systems that are based on the "open money" principles, designed and produced through a world-wide community of developers.

The systems are at an early stage of development, so account-holders must be clear that they are participating in a pilot project, and undergo an short induction before they take out an accoumt.

We are prepared to recommend our associates as suitable people to participate and take out an account.