Sharing Is Good: How to Save Money, Time and Resources Through Collaborative Consumption Read Online Free
Author: Beth Buczynski
Tags: Social Science, Business & Economics, Popular Culture, consumer behavior, Environmental Economics
Chinese adopted it as one of the first forms of currency.
Now, you might be wondering, as I did when first learning about
this ancient currency, how in the world was it was possible for an international economy to operate using seashells? Nowadays, we make jokes about how nice it would be if dollars grew on trees; in 1200
BCE, cowrie shells littered the beaches of China, where they could be collected by the bucketful. This is hard to comprehend given how History of Sharing
7
hard most of us work for just enough money to pay our bills and
feed ourselves. How could a successful economy be based around a
unit of currency that washed up on the beach? How can a seashell
be valuable? When I realized the answer, it was a little bit scary, but also very exciting. Are you ready for it?
Money only has value because we say it does.
In modern America, which operates outside of the former gold
standard, we are in the exact same boat as the ancient Chinese. Just like them, we’ve all simply agreed that a dollar has value. Think about that for a second. All the work, all the worry, all the scrambling to get more dollars is based on nothing more than an idea of value. Dollars are just meaningless pieces of paper that we hand back and forth.
Unlike the cattle used in the early bartering systems, you can’t eat a dollar. Unlike the cowries utilized by the Chinese and others, you can’t turn a pile of quarters into a beautiful necklace. So in reality, our money is even less valuable than those primitive forms of currency.
Yet we’ve become slaves to money, spending our entire lives earn-
ing, spending, and saving it — even though it’s virtually meaningless and has no value unless a whole lot of people agree that it does. Scary, right? The good news is that realizing this simple fact about modern money opens up a huge door of opportunity to create something better than our current economic system. Currency doesn’t determine
a thing’s value; we determine the value of currency. If enough people get together and decide that they want to use something else as a form of currency, a new economy is born. Everyone can go on living and working and eating and trading. In fact, alternative currencies are particularly useful in times of economic crisis, when people are unable to get their hands on enough cash to meet their needs.
Alternative Currencies
Bartering is in our blood, and it’s an integral part of our history, but many consider it too difficult and time-consuming for the modern
world. You’re going to find it hard to pay your mortgage or utility bills 8
Sharing is Good
with things you have available for trade, valuable though they may be. But the dollar (or yen or franc) isn’t the only way to gain access to the things you need. In fact, dollars only work as a unit of currency because we all agree to the fantasy that a dollar has value. If an entire community decided to agree that monopoly money had worth, it
could replace the dollar without totally disrupting that community’s economy. It might be difficult to get the utility and cable companies on board, but you get the idea. It could happen if everyone agreed. To do so would create an alternative currency (or what some call a complementary currency when it’s used in an economy that also accepts traditional money). Find that hard to believe? Well, it’s happened many times throughout history, and, thanks to the sharing revolution, alternative currencies are making a comeback.
The biblical record tell us that when Joseph interpreted Pharaoh’s dream to mean that Egypt was headed for seven years of famine,
the country responded by stockpiling food. In his book, Community Currencies: A New Tool for the 21st Century, Bernard Lietaer specu-lates that in addition to being a bright idea, these stockpiles were also the basis of the Egyptian monetary system. “Each farmer who
contributed to the stockpile would receive a piece of pottery having an inscription
Now, you might be wondering, as I did when first learning about
this ancient currency, how in the world was it was possible for an international economy to operate using seashells? Nowadays, we make jokes about how nice it would be if dollars grew on trees; in 1200
BCE, cowrie shells littered the beaches of China, where they could be collected by the bucketful. This is hard to comprehend given how History of Sharing
7
hard most of us work for just enough money to pay our bills and
feed ourselves. How could a successful economy be based around a
unit of currency that washed up on the beach? How can a seashell
be valuable? When I realized the answer, it was a little bit scary, but also very exciting. Are you ready for it?
Money only has value because we say it does.
In modern America, which operates outside of the former gold
standard, we are in the exact same boat as the ancient Chinese. Just like them, we’ve all simply agreed that a dollar has value. Think about that for a second. All the work, all the worry, all the scrambling to get more dollars is based on nothing more than an idea of value. Dollars are just meaningless pieces of paper that we hand back and forth.
Unlike the cattle used in the early bartering systems, you can’t eat a dollar. Unlike the cowries utilized by the Chinese and others, you can’t turn a pile of quarters into a beautiful necklace. So in reality, our money is even less valuable than those primitive forms of currency.
Yet we’ve become slaves to money, spending our entire lives earn-
ing, spending, and saving it — even though it’s virtually meaningless and has no value unless a whole lot of people agree that it does. Scary, right? The good news is that realizing this simple fact about modern money opens up a huge door of opportunity to create something better than our current economic system. Currency doesn’t determine
a thing’s value; we determine the value of currency. If enough people get together and decide that they want to use something else as a form of currency, a new economy is born. Everyone can go on living and working and eating and trading. In fact, alternative currencies are particularly useful in times of economic crisis, when people are unable to get their hands on enough cash to meet their needs.
Alternative Currencies
Bartering is in our blood, and it’s an integral part of our history, but many consider it too difficult and time-consuming for the modern
world. You’re going to find it hard to pay your mortgage or utility bills 8
Sharing is Good
with things you have available for trade, valuable though they may be. But the dollar (or yen or franc) isn’t the only way to gain access to the things you need. In fact, dollars only work as a unit of currency because we all agree to the fantasy that a dollar has value. If an entire community decided to agree that monopoly money had worth, it
could replace the dollar without totally disrupting that community’s economy. It might be difficult to get the utility and cable companies on board, but you get the idea. It could happen if everyone agreed. To do so would create an alternative currency (or what some call a complementary currency when it’s used in an economy that also accepts traditional money). Find that hard to believe? Well, it’s happened many times throughout history, and, thanks to the sharing revolution, alternative currencies are making a comeback.
The biblical record tell us that when Joseph interpreted Pharaoh’s dream to mean that Egypt was headed for seven years of famine,
the country responded by stockpiling food. In his book, Community Currencies: A New Tool for the 21st Century, Bernard Lietaer specu-lates that in addition to being a bright idea, these stockpiles were also the basis of the Egyptian monetary system. “Each farmer who
contributed to the stockpile would receive a piece of pottery having an inscription
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