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

argain with the rounds instead of the unwieldy chickens,' he
explained.
It made sense. Everybody was impressed with the man with the
shiny shoes and inspiring hat.
'Oh, by the way,' he added after every family had received their ten
rounds, 'in a year's time, I will come back and sit under that same
tree: I want you to each bring me back If rounds. That 11th round is a
token of appreciation for the technological improvement I just made
possible in your lives.' 'But where will the 11th round come from?'
asked the farmer with the six chickens. 'You'll see,' said the man with
a reassuring smile.
***
Assuming that the population and its annual production remain
exactly the same during that next year, what do you think had to
happen? Remember, that 11th round was never created. Therefore,
bottom line, one of each 11 families will have to lose all its rounds,
even if everybody managed their affairs well, in order to provide the
11th round to ten others.
So when a storm threatened the crop of one of the families, people
became less generous with their time to help bring it in before
disaster struck. While it was much mom convenient to exchange the
rounds instead of the chickens on market days, the new game also
had the unintended side effect of actively discouraging me
spontaneous cooperation that war traditional in the village. Instead,
me new money game was generating a systemic undertow of
competition among all the participants.
This is how today's money system pits the participants in the
economy against each other. This story isolates the role of interest -