permaculture

[Toby Hemenway <toby@patternliteracy.com>]

On 1/13/07 12:35 PM, "Jay Woods" <woodsjay@cox.net> wrote:

> The emails on this have been long and interesting but especially the gold 
> and
> silver emails amazing. It is as if all that we are trying to accomplish as
> permaculturists had vanished.

I might be misunderstanding the above, but I think the gold and silver issue
points out the difference between our hopes and current reality. If collapse
and chaos come, I hope I am in a community where I don't need hard currency
to get the necessities of life. Right now I'm pretty far from that. How long
would it take anyone here to create a system where they need no money? Most
of the people I know are in the same position as me. We use money because
it's much, much easier than dropping out of the money system and living in a
self-reliant community where we personally know all the people we exchange
life's necessities with. If I'm in a similar position of not having a highly
evolved community when TSHTF, then I'm probably going to need a hard
currency to survive. Yes, I can barter many of my skills and products, but
when a person not in my community who has the nails I need doesn't want my
vegetables, I had better have something negotiable. (Incidentally, that will
most likely be old silver coins, pre-1965 in the US. Gold, at $600 for
roughly one coin, is too valuable for most exchanges. Silver coins are
familiar and easily available.)

Barter systems, anthropologists have found, never really existed--way too
cumbersome. Communities without money were gift economies: All contributed
or took what they needed with the trust that the community would support
them. We don't have anything like that now. So the likely scenario if TSHTF,
for me and for most of the people on this list, is that we will not be in an
ideal community at that time. I hope that I am; I realize I may not be. No
matter what, if there are people not in my community who I must do commerce
with, I'm going to need a currency that they will accept. And it's quite
possible that some people will use guns to get what they want. One could
argue a long time whether the answer is to have guns too, or just a big
enough community to make bandits pick easier targets. (Like the old joke
says, I don't have to outrun the tiger, I just have to outrun you!)

So setting idealism aside, a stash of silver and gold, or some such, will
come in awfully handy for most people. It's also a simple method to do
exchanges outside of your own immediate community, unless you happen to  be
sitting on the only obsidian deposit for miles or some such. In a perfect
world, we won't need money.  But I suspect we're a few generations from that
world.  

Toby
__________________
Learn permaculture in at a tropical food forest in Belize this February.
Details at www.patternliteracy.com
__________________