Product Description

This text explains why money has different effects according to its origins and purposes. Was it created to make profits for a commercial bank or issued by a government as a form of taxation? Or created by its users themselves purely to facilitate their trade? And was it made in the place where it is used, or did local people have to provide goods and services to outsiders to get enough of it to trade among themselves? The book shows that to build a just and sustainable world, money creation must be democratized and the payment of interest on money in circulation scrapped.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #58305 in Books
• Published on: 2000-02-11
• Format: Illustrated
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 78 pages

About the Author
Richard Douthwaite studied economics at the University of Essex and the University of the West Indies, Kingston, Jamaica. He set up and managed a boatyard in Jamaica on behalf of the island's fishing co-operatives before spending two years as Government Economist in the British colony of Montserrat. He has lived in Ireland since 1974. His book, The Growth Illusion: How Economic Growth has Enriched the Few, Impoverished the Many and Endangered the Planet, was published by Green Books in 1992 and an extended and updated second edition appeared in 1999. His other major book, Short Circuit (Green Books, 1996), gives dozens of examples of currency, banking, energy and food production systems which communities can use to make themselves less dependent on an increasingly unstable world economy. In 1998-9 he was a consultant to an EU-funded project to establish experimental community currencies in Scotland, Ireland, Amsterdam and Madrid.

Customer Reviews

Excellent intro to how money works and how to fix it
This book is an absolute must-read. Guides the reader, in easy to understand language, through the world of money. What is money? Where does it come from? Who creates it? Who controls it? Why does it matter? - these questions and more are all answered. Just read it!

a good guide to the local currency concept
this book certainly succeeds in the difficult task of explaining how
"local" currencies can and do work .what richard douthwaite has done in this compact and informative book is to show how "the people" can democratise money.this book could become required reading as the penny drops and we all realise we need an energy descent action plan.he has refreshing views on how economies can belong to the community,rather than vice versa .i envisage a time in the future where copies of his book ,dog-eared and well thumbed will be used as a point of reference.