Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion Not-Quite-Science Forum Money- too much or too little

HERE ARE NUMBER OF QUESTIONS AND COMMENTS BY BERNARD LIETAER
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What is money? Do we need more of it to solve some of the world?s problems? Or is money the cause of them? Ex-banker Bernard Lietaer thinks the latter is the case. And he has the solution: a new kind of money.

You have no idea what money is. Bernard Lietaer is too friendly and modest a man to say it that way, but this is the easiest possible way to sum up his message. If you did know what money was, then you?we?would see to it that we had a different monetary system.

Everything revolves around money. It's more than a cliche?; it's the daily experience of just about every world citizen not part of an indigenous tribe in the Amazon rain forest. And this daily experience involves, above all else, a continuous shortage of money.

There is not enough money to send the children to school. Not enough money for hospitals, or to care for the ever-greater numbers of old people who are getting ever older. Not enough money to clean up the environment and keep it that way. There is a lot of work to do, but no money to pay for it.

Who among us is not familiar with the feeling of wanting to contribute something but not having money to pay for that valuable contribution. The sad conclusion: If we just had more money, the world and our lives would be better.

But the kind of money we need is not the same old fiat-kind. Printing more of it just makes for inflation. Lietaer is talking about a new kind of community-based, not debt-based fiat currency. And it is not funny-money.