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

Please note that none of the approaches proposed here is a
permanent solution. Instead, they are transition tools, useful for
perhaps the next ten to 20 years, as we move from the Industrial Age
to a Knowledge Age. We are living through an interval, a supremely
uncomfortable time, when we are realizing, along with philosopher
Thomas Berry, that 'we are in between stories. The Old Story is not
functioning properly any more, and we have not learned the New
Story.' This book focuses on what we can do in this interval 'between
stories'.
What prevents Sustainable Abundance?
The first hindrance to Sustainable Abundance is that rue are largely
ignorant about our money system, about the way money is created
and managed in our societies. Even professional financial managers
rarely understand how specific behavior patterns are programmed
into our transactions by the type of money we use. We all live deeply
enmeshed in a planetary money machine, most cogs of which we are
unable to perceive, let alone understand or manage. Yet the
prevailing money system prescribes all of our economics, and much
of our current social behavior and political climate. Our lack of
awareness also explains some strange facts. For instance, we have the
capacity to produce enough food for everyone on this planet and
there is ample work as well, but obtaining the money to pay for it all
is another matter. This means that the key to Sustainable Abundance
lies within the money system itself, the very system about which,
ironically, we have remained largely unaware until now.
The second hindrance to Sustainable Abundance is the inertia of
tradition and its related vested interests. However, this way of
exerting power is now slipping away for the simple reason that as
information technologies spread, so does control over currency
creation and the related monetary interactions.