Have you ever thought about money? We imagine most people have! Today's guest is the founder of Bay Bucks, (a complimentary currency) Chong Kee. It promises to be interesting. Neal discusses changes we're envisioning for the show. Also he discusses the next show coming up, which will have Chuck Durrett, who, with his wife Kathryn McCamant founded the co-housing movement in the US. First let's share some news. Larry is pleased to be able to share that a friend, Craig Vetter, who was in a motorcycle accident a while back is on the mend and getting rapidly better. We like such good news! 2015 Get Local Holiday
Bazaar Date: Saturday Dec 5th, Time: 3pm - 9pm, Venue: HUB Oakland.It will be a day of good food,
great music and lots of local shopping. The vendor application is now open. The
whole of HUB Oakland will be open for this event, including the Omni Gallery,
the Uptown and Downtown rooms etc. As businesses that are associated with HUB
Oakland or Bay Bucks, you get first dibs at the space. Apply early if you want
one of these special rooms. For more information and application, gohere. ~~ Bay Bucks Teams Up With
Let’s Go Farm Bay Bucks is a thriving barter
exchange for Bay Area businesses. The service is growing, and it now has a CSA (community supported agriculture)
box on offer. Let’s Go Farm in Santa Rosa recently joined the Bay Bucks
exchange, which lets business owners offer up their extra inventory or skills
and benefit from someone else’s. Look here. ~~ Monkey Business (nice title!) When most people think of
economics, they probably conjure images of inflation charts or currency rates
rather than monkeys and marshmallows. But economics is increasingly being
recognized as a science whose statistical tools can be put to work on nearly
any aspect of modern life. That's because economics is in essence the study of
incentives, and how people -- perhaps even monkeys -- respond to those
incentives. But these facts remain: When taught
to use money, a group of capuchin monkeys responded quite rationally to simple
incentives;responded irrationally to risky gambles; failed to save; stole when
they could; used money for food and, on occasion, sex. In other words, they
behaved a good bit like the creature that most of Chen's more traditional colleagues
study: Homo sapiens. Here's the research. Now to our guest! Chong Kee tells us first that Bay Bucks is growing, now with over 300 members. A goal is to create a more stable economy. Neal asks why "local" matters so much. The global system now allows up to exploit others around the world. It's a very messy system. Pollution in China, for example is caused in part by our desire for more stuff. Keeping things local can prevent the problems. Really, it's going back to the older systems humanity has relied on. Chong Kee makes the point that we can likely live just fine (or better) on less stuff and less energy. Eliminating waste plays a huge part. It can actually free up time for living! After the break we get back into discussing energy. Chong Kee brings up Dancing Rabbit eco-village. It's a place built in Missouri and done without building codes. The amazing thing is they get by happily on only ten percent of the energy most of us feel we need. With their reduced cost of living, they get to spend more time together and doing fun stuff. It sounds like an interesting place! The message is clear that sustainability works. Here is a link to their site. Neal asks why be involved with Bay Bucks. Basically, we want to know what's in it for us and how it can help the community. Excess capacity of businesses is wasteful, and by using Bay Bucks, this capacity can be used to generate credit that can be spent without spending dollars. Additionally, you create new customers... not a bad thing. A financial community is formed! By using Bay Bucks, you wind up with new customers at no cash cost. If you're involved, Bay Bucks becomes the first choice for businesses to deal with. We do need to build up a group of local businesses to make this happen. Financially, it is good for businesses, so let's all sign up! Larry asks about tax effects. Basically if you spend your Bay Bucks balance each year for business, there is nearly no effect. Bay Bucks does file a 1099 for it's members, so there is nothing to hide. Another thing this does is benefit the community. It keeps money in town. Larry asks why this matters. Chong Kee brings up Wall Mart. In the long run, locals can't compete on price. Jobs are lost and the profit goes out of town. Wall Mart products are made elsewhere, so even more money leaves. The community becomes poorer. About 74% of the money spent locally is recirculated at least once. This is GOOD! Neal predicts that the first restaurant that brings Bay Bucks to town will benefit as being the first. We will talk about you on the show. At present, if you want to join please email Chong Kee at cktan@baybucks.com and you can sign up. The first 250 people to join can do this for free! The process actually involves humans, so joining can proceed smoothly. Neal brings up a book that Chong Kee has just helped write. The book is called Messages That Matter by Jill Lublin. Here's a link. It's subtitled: Top Experts Share Secrets for Hope and Healing . It's just out and is about sharing important messages. Chong Kee's slant is to say that he wrote about a zero interest economy. Very interesting! Interest creates inequality. We trade money quotes. Neal gets excited as money has some much control over our lives. Chong has a game he likes to get folks to play. The first round of the game is done with interest bearing currency. The second round is done with no interest. Chong Kee then asks the players how interest changed things. It turns out that with interest, it becomes every man for himself. With no interest, life becomes far better. All this simply because of interest. After a break, we discuss the psychology of money. With interest, we become fearful, with everyone out for themselves. With no interest, people work together because they can more readily see the bigger picture. The boom-bust cycle is created by an ever growing money supply that needs correction periodically. Larry asks for the true definition of usury. Chong Kee tells us that there are two definitions. Historically (for thousands of years) any interest was usury, but much more recently, the term has been used to suggest only abnormally high rates. A book by David Graeber, The First 5000 Years was written to give this history. Originally interest was simply a penalty for late repayment. Things changed as we know! Usury now is considered an unusually high rate. What is that? Nobody really knows. Chong Kee gives a hypothetical situation of ten people in a community. Say one person is good at collecting the money and lends it out. His share of the money steadily grows. Pretty soon there is one wealthy person and nine serfs. It's unbalanced. Our world works this way, with most of the wealth in the hands of less than one percent of the population. It's a great game for the wealthy. Eventually though, it just gums up. Simply put, if there is interest, the economy must grow at the same rate or more than the interest rate. However, there are limits to growth. It cannot continue forever. As happened in the "Great Recession" the middle class gets hurt. Neal asks Chong Kee about the environmental benefits of eliminating interest. It matters because with no interest, the economy does not need continued growth. This growth forces us to continue to damage the environment, pull carbon from the ground and consume more stuff. Sadly, this trend hurts the poorer people the most. Larry asks just how it hurts the poorer people. For example: with folks living paycheck to paycheck, once a job is lost due to a shrinking economy, the mortgage cannot be paid and the house is lost. We discuss how things might change when we go to a non-growth system. There are some serious benefits, even going so far as having benefits for the climate. We can look at the problems pessimistically or optimistically. So many problems are linked and interrelated, that if we fix one problem, the benefits can reach far and wide. Thanks to Chong Kee Tan! #Sharing Economy