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

competition among the participants as we have seen in the 'Eleventh
Round' (Chapter 2). This is the dominant economy. To most
economists, it is the only economic system. It recognises physical
capital, and aims at generating financial capital.
The circuit on its left side would include either the gift economies of
yesterday, or the emerging co-operative community-building
currencies of today. It acknowledges natural capital, and aims at
generating social capital.
If it is true that the unemployment process in the Information Age
has a structural component, I claim that it is in everybody's interest,
including the participants in the Yang economy, to see a stronger
development of the Yin economy through all means at our disposal,
including the formal encouragement of complementary currencies;
even through tax incentives. Why?
Remember the vicious circle of unemployment (Chapter 5)? When a
growing number of people are structurally unemployed, they don't
just disappear. They will either become 'economically 'irrelevant', and
therefore a permanent potential source of violence and problems for
the rest of society, which can be very expensive indeed (including
'pensions for life' in prisons). Or they will, as proposed by Jeremy
Rifkin, be supported by taxes on the Yang economy (see Figure 9.7).
Either way, the Yang economy is shooting itself in the foot
whenever it tries to stifle Yin type initiatives as it historically has
tended to do. By blocking a Yin currency and economy, by insisting
on a monopoly of Yang economy, the Yang economy also has to
transfer resources via taxation to the Yin economy. From a Yin
economy viewpoint, these transfers have proved invariably
insufficient for the needs at hand. Would it not make more sense for
both sides to enable a Yin economy to blossom fully with its own
complementary currency in sufficiency?