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

'We should have seen it coming.' he reflected. 'As long ago as the
1990s, the Director General of the institute of Directors, Tim Melville-
Ross, had said that the possibility of the Third Millennium being
ruled by the corporations was "a legitimate concern". Glen Peters had
said that "all evidence is that probably the tide is unstoppable". Not
everyone agreed that it would be so dramatic. Some had thought that
the state would return to its traditional roles of setting rules and
fighting wars. But we all expected that the information Age would be
as earth shaking as the industrial Revolution. And look at what that
did to the old landed aristocrats, not to speak of the peasants. A host
of business gurus had sounded warning bells for decades. I
remember Charles Handy, author of The Empty Raincoat, saying
'Companies are dill run as totalitarian states.’
'The real clincher,' he noted, 'was when corporations directly issued
their own currency, instead of simply competing for the currencies
issued by banks under governmental supervision. It started
innocently enough with "frequent-flyer miles", initially earned with
and redeemable only for airline tickets. American Express simply
generalised the concept by creating its 'world traveller money,
redeemable world-wide". When these prototypes merged with the
booming cyber economy, it almost became a free for all. However,
through coalitions and convertibility negotiations among the larger
corporations, we created today's reality: a few dominant 'hard"
corporate scrips backed by real goods and services that are
increasingly taking over the "unstable national currencies only
backed by debt".
The PM wiped the dust oft the window ledge. No one came here
any more. The Commons had held its debates on the Internet for
almost a decade. That allowed the politicians to spend more time in
their constituencies, or so went the reasoning. But nobody in the
constituencies cared. Everybody knew that politicians had no real
power to influence events.