Introduction Part 3: Open Money - or how I learned to stop worrying and understand the Tom

After returning from a conference in California, a friend of mine Tom, introduced me to the idea of community economics and alternative currencies. He was quite excited about these ideas and he kept going on about creating currency and sandwiches and Powell's books. I was apprehensive and unenthusiastic to say the least. While he was explaining a lot this was all I heard:

Step one: Create currency
Step two: Tutor
Step three: Claim sandwich

We moved on to other topics and I went about working on other things. The next week I was cruising twitter and saw that Tom was going to be a guest on a streaming podcast with the guy who introduced him to these sort of Open Money concepts. I don't know what was said that made it happen (even re-listening to it now) but it all made sense like an explosion of understanding in my head.

I remembered Argentina.

You may be familiar with the tremendous economic collapse/crisis Argentina went through around 1999 2000. I remembered seeing a documentary not long ago on the subject called The Empty ATM (part of PBS' Wide Angle series). The segment that pertains to the discussion here is about the barter clubs. With the economy left in utter ruin, the banks having to ration out how much paper money they could give you (hence the documentary's title), and unemployment rates hovering around 25%, the people had to do something. Some of them did.

The Argentinian social credit or credito is a currency used in barter clubs run in Argentina. With dentists and farmers and pilots and everyone out of work a fundamental problem arose when there was no paper money to be had: People had stuff to sell. People had services to preform. Unfortunately, no one could afford to buy stuff or services hence barter clubs came into being. They provided a place where one could, say, bring a goat and get dental service or an airline ticket or what ever service one desired and vice versa. With a sort of economic apocalypse on their hands the people of Argentina created economic stimulus outside of the economy at large.

This isn't crazy. This is how people operate before there is an industrialized, currency driven economy. Some people have stuff, others do stuff. People do stuff for stuff and people give stuff to people for the stuff that they do. When money gets introduced into the mix, it acts as a liaison between vendor and specialist. Some people have stuff, and some people do stuff, people sell their stuff for a price people perform services for a price.

Community economics is a way of determining your price, in such a way that it directly benefits your community. I have found that many people have decided to think locally and not nationally when it comes to economic stimulus.

The theory is easy to resist, but after some very minimal research I have become fascinated by the practice. Posts here on Open Money will be an exploration of the practice of community economics wherever such a thing is being practiced. How has it worked? How is it working? Consider me an amateur community economist.

More to come,

Introduction Part 2: Open Access Philosophy

Open Access Philosophy as defined for this forum has two branches: one in the realm of publishing the other lies in the idea of accessibility.

For many, there are inherent problems with open access publishing and philosophy. First, being a published author in the field of philosophy can be a large chunk of your income as a philosopher; taking the time to write an essay or book and giving it away for free is a loss of income. Additionally, getting published in any number of the open access journals of philosophy is actually looked down upon in the philosophy community as it implies that you could not get published in a more distinguished closed access journal. Finally, discovering the new sexy topic to debate in philosophy gets you appearances, lectures, and publications, if you were giving away your ideas for free, someone could steal your idea or enhance its appeal before you got yours. The tides are changing, however even David Chalmers' new site is more of a search engine for those with access to academic journals than anything else.

Those of us who study philosophy tend to hold ourselves in high regard - to the point of unfortunate condescension. I noticed this when I was working towards my BA in philosophy. In the 100 and 200 level classes I took there was always that one person who touted his/her knowledge, engaging the professor in a conversation that was over everybody's head. As I continued with my studies I noticed myself taking part in this practice. It is something that unfortunately caries outside of the classroom. It's not something that every one does, even I don't do it all the time, but it happens. It's that response you get from the black turtleneck wearing philosophy student with greased back hair reading Wittgenstein on the bus. This is one of road blocks when it comes to the accessibility of Open Access Philosophy.

The second road block is that a lot of people do not know what the subject of philosophy consists of. Frequently when I tell people I have a degree in philosophy they say "I could never devote time to studying CRAZY people..." The main tenet of accessibility in Open Access Philosophy is that, when it really comes down to it, we are ALL philosophers. Philosophy is a side effect of consciousness and not just an academic discipline. The roots of philosophy are in the questions that every human encounters. Some of us devote insane amounts of time trying to answer these questions. Some of us never cared to ask these questions. Some of us found the answers and have no need to return to them.

Which brings us to the final road block. While contemporary philosophy is notoriously atheistic, that has not always been the case. There are scores of philosophers throughout history and even some today that are deeply religious folks. Indeed there are whole branches of philosophy that aren't even concerned with religion. Any doctrine/publication/etc... that attempts to answer the ultimate whys and hows of human existence is a work of philosophy: religion is philosophy.

The collide that religion has with philosophy lies in the confrontational nature of philosophy. When a philosophers engage in a philosophical conversation with a religious person we do so (well most of us anyways) under the pretense of friendly discussion in the spirit of a Socratic dialogue. We are not trying to test your faith. We are just as curious about why you believe what you do as you are of us.

I know that I will never be able to convince the philosophical community to convert to open access publishing, the customs in place are rooted in practices decades/centuries old. I will do my best to search out those open access sites and amass them here. You will notice that I link to Wikipedia often, this is because Wikipedia is the best Open Access Philosophy resource on the web right now in terms of publishing and accessibility. While this site is a great resource it is much less accessible to the general public.

This blog is a dumping ground for a larger more comprehensive site on Open Access Philosophy. I will mostly be designing the skeleton of what Open Access Philosophy is here, but I will occasionally be posting some articles that will appear on the actual to-be-named site.

Next up: Open money.

An Introduction

Hello,

Complementary Reason is a baby blog. It will grow into a fat baby as I will more than likely feed it more than it needs to eat. As it matures it will turn into a larger more refined teenage blog (with the help of all of you), and eventually it will leave this place here at blogspot.com as an adult blog ready to fend for itself in the world. Hopefully it will make us all proud. We shall see.

So, what is it with this baby? Does it have chubby cheeks? It it unnaturally gassy or intelligent? Why should you watch it grow up? Well. Complementary Reason is a blog concerned with two subjects as of right now. The first: open access philosophy, the second: community economics, in that order. There will be tangents and random musings, but the focus here will be on those two things. If these things interest you, you will be interested in this blog. It may happen that you become interested in these things because of this blog. That would be neat. Your feedback, thoughts, and concerns, are all welcome as they will help me help you.

So what is "open access philosophy"? What are "community economics"? That, my friends, will come in posts to follow. For now I must ready myself for the day and prepare to eat some Japanese food.

The Unaccredited Philosopher