THE FUTURE OF MONEY Bernard A. Lietaer - library.uniteddiversity ...

CHAPTER 7
Some Practical Issues
'When a great innovation appears it will almost certainly be in a muddled,
incomplete, end confusing form... For any speculation, which does not at
first glance look crazy, there is no hope.' - Freeman Dyson
‘Chaos is creativity in search of form.' - John Welwood
'The future is like everything else.
It isn't what it used to be.' - Charles Kettering
It is not sufficient to invent or even implement a new currency.
Because of money's central role in our societies, a lot of different and
powerful organisations and people have their say in this domain. As
long as the complementary currency movement has remained
marginal, it has been largely ignored by the powers that be, such as
tax authorities or central banks. However, if this process goes
mainstream as recommended here, if we want to use complementary
currencies as a systematic tool to address the issues raised by the
Time-Compacting Machine, it would be unwise just to ignore the
concerns and objections that these organisations may want to
express. This chapter will address these issues. It will also identify
some elements for a European social policy using complementary
currencies, and provide some pragmatic advice for people who may
be interested in implementing their own complementary currency
project.
Complementary currencies, legal and tax authorities
The short answer to the relationship between complementary
currencies and both the legal and taxation systems is that there are no