Local Currency/Credits to encourage local spending...

Just read about a New England town that has convinced people to invest in local currency that isn't good anywhere besides that town.

This is one way the colonies, cities and corporations in my novel keep profits within their borders. Cash is worth more because you can buy anything with it, but some things within borders can't be bought unless you exchange it - for a loss.

New age town embraces dollar alternative
Tue Jun 19, 2007 10:50AM EDT
By Scott Malone

GREAT BARRINGTON, Massachusetts (Reuters) - A walk down Main Street in this New England town calls to mind the pictures of Norman Rockwell, who lived nearby and chronicled small-town American life in the mid-20th Century.

So it is fitting that the artist's face adorns the 50 BerkShares note, one of five denominations in a currency adopted by towns in western Massachusetts to support locally owned businesses over national chains.

"I just love the feel of using a local currency," said Trice Atchison, 43, a teacher who used BerkShares to buy a snack at a cafe in Great Barrington, a town of about 7,400 people. "It keeps the profit within the community."

...

"BerkShares are cash, and so people have transferred their cash habits to BerkShares," said Susan Witt, executive director of the E.F. Schumacher Society, a nonprofit group that set up the program. "They might have 50 in their pocket, but not 150. They're buying their lunch, their coffee, a small birthday present."

The Top of the Economic Food: Chain Oil vs. Corn

Oil is at the top - the highest desired commodity that everyone wants and needs and is scarse enough and hard enough to get that prices can go up and people have very little they can do except pay it... and keeping the prices low has become a huge source of strife for the entire world as nations fight to maintain control over this resource.

And because oil is the top source of energy, when oil prices go up, so does virtually everything else that requires energy to be created or transported.

Corn is closing in on Oil because ethonal made from corn is starting to replace Oil as a means for energy, BUT it's still used for feeding people and the animals who feed people. As people who make ethonal buy up the corn, they can afford to pay higher prices because people are USED to paying more for energy and aren't going to demand lower prices. But the people who feed people are dealing with a comodity that everyone is used to being very low in price, and for which there are alternatives (eating other things) so when they raise their prices, people eat other things.

The result is that our food sources are going to start drying up if ethanol is selected as an alternative to oil.

It's already causing a big problem in China, as their economy is doing better and more people are eating pork, at the same time the prices are rising because of a shortage of pigs as farmers simply can't afford the feed.

And because pigs eat corn and pork is a staple in the diet of Chinese workers who make American goods... well, you get the picture.

Rise in China’s Pork Prices Signals End to Cheap Output

The crisis over pork prices in China, like the jolt many Americans feel when gasoline prices jump, offers one example of how prices can suddenly soar. The Chinese government is struggling to cope — including deliberating whether to sell a snuffling, smelly strategic reserve of hundreds of thousands of live pigs kept at special subsidized farms for precisely the shortage the country is now facing.

Chinese officials offer several reasons for the high pig prices. The cost of animal feed has risen by one-quarter in the last year, partly because more corn is being made into ethanol and partly because more prosperous workers are eating more meat, which requires more animal feed.

Pork is a critical source of protein for Chinese of all incomes, but particularly for low-income workers like those who keep American and European families well supplied with $49 DVD players and other popular consumer products.

If there isn't some sort of top down change (meaning using something besides ethnaol or using something besides corn to make ethanol) there are several different possiblities of how this is all going to play out. People and animals will have to start eating something besides corn, more people will have to start growing corn to meet the supply, the prohibitive cost of trinkets from China will make buying them more expensive and people will stop hording junk and spewing it into landfills, people will stop feeling a need to travel so much and communities will become more inner focused....

Thoser are just a few possibilities. It'll be interesting to see what will really happen, but I know how it's going to happen in my book and I find these kinds of things really fascinating... ;)

Vermont group wants to secede from U.S.

The novel takes place at a time where there are no longer a 'United States' and instead the states operate independantly. I've made this prediction as a possible outcome for the way things are going because of the way Individual State preferences are being overlooked/ignored in favor of cohesive Federal System. Earlier in the blog I pointed out the "Nation within a Nation" in Canada where a city (Quebec) has succeeded in peacefully declaring itself independant from the nation within which it resides. There is still cooperation between Canada and Quebec, but Quebecians get to make up their own rules and don't have to listen to Canada, but they enjoy the protection of Canada (which actually enjoys the protection of the U.S., but that's besides the point)

So when I came across this article this morning, my stomach got a few butterflies... it seems there are people in Vermont who are ready to do things their own way. It's not at all surprising to me, and they are such a small number that I doubt it'll happen anytime soon, BUT the fact that people are thinking about it as an alternative should send up warning flags to Federalists(those who would like to see the U.S. continue on the trend toward a centralized government.)

In Vermont, nascent secession movement gains traction

About 300 people turned out for a 2005 secession convention in the Statehouse, and plans for a second one are in the works. A poll this year by the University of Vermont's Center for Rural Studies found that 13 percent of those surveyed support secession, up from 8 percent a year before.

"The argument for secession is that the U.S. has become an empire that is essentially ungovernable -- it's too big, it's too corrupt and it no longer serves the needs of its citizens," said Rob Williams, editor of Vermont Commons, a quarterly newspaper dedicated to secession.

"Congress and the executive branch are being run by the multinationals. We have electoral fraud, rampant corporate corruption, a culture of militarism and war. If you care about democracy and self-governance and any kind of representative system, the only constitutional way to preserve what's left of the Republic is to peaceably take apart the empire."

Such movements have a long history. Key West, Fla., staged a mock secession from America in the 1980s. The Town of Killington, Vt., tried to break away and join New Hampshire in 2004, and Hawaii, Alaska, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Texas all have some form of secession organizations today.

The Vermont movement, which is being pushed by several different groups, has been bubbling up for years but has gained new traction in the wake of disenchantment over the Iraq war, rising oil prices and the formation of the pro-secession groups

Right now most people are going to think this is a 'cute' idea to get attention and try to push for more local power - the idea that the States could function alone has a lot of problems, economically and militarily...

But our country was founded on an idea, not a rigid method of carrying out that idea. So to change the structure of how democracy is carried out to make it function more alligned to the idea of democracy, IMO doesn't sound like that far of a stretch... it's just getting people to think differently and rationally about what makes the most sense in the modern world.

As this site on global guerrillas points out, modern warfare is changing as larger nations become vulnerable to attack from smaller cells of independant military forces.

Remember: Vulnerability to disruption accelerates with size while the capacity to disrupt (using these methods) is scale-free (based on self-replicating computer resources and thereby within the budget of any state, no matter how small)

The current U.S. strategy of a strong centralized military that fights wars on other lands is starting to not be exactly what we need anymore. And the size of our country requires states and federal police groups to work together to thwart attacks on cities within our borders. If this continues to work, there will be no need for succession based on protection from terror threats. But as soon as a state or city starts to believe they could keep themselves safe with their own way of doing things, the dependance we have on the Federal government to protect us could disolve and there's nothing like fear to drive people to do something to protect themselves.

I should note that I'm not for or against sucession or keeping the U.S. federally oriented, I do think states should be given a bit more leeway in writing their own laws, but that is happening already... Mostly I find the entire situation fascinating, especially considering I created a predicted outcome for an unusual setting in my novel and many of these predictions are starting to come true!

Note on writing: I wrote another chapter on Saturday... and plan to finish it up today. So only 2 more to go for the first book!! very exciting.

Three Chapters left to write!!!

Or four, depending on how well I can condense the final one. *L*

I can't believe how much things have changed in the book in just a couple years, I had about 13 chapters done at one point and then rewrote EVERYTHING. It's the same basic story, but much richer with better to understand backgrounds on the characters.

There will be 2 more books to go along with it (at least) and this one is ending up at 16-17 chapters. So far I have the second book outlined to chapter 10 and I've started to take really good notes, and DATE them in a little pocket sized marble memo. I took it with me on my trip to Grand Junction, Colorado and Moab, Utah and was able to take the time away from home and the family to really think about where I wanted to go. It was an incredibly refreshing time and I'm so excited and have a lot of momentum built up. (Today I wrote 1/2 a chapter and still managed to be here for the refridgerator repair man (Did you know you gotta clean that dust out of the back vent every 6 months?), go to my son's school party, pick up the kids and take them to little league!)

I'm hoping to finish up editing this chapter tonight and then move on to the next one on Monday - the kids only have 4 more full days of school and then they're home for the summer. Since they are older it should be easier to write now, and bless their hearts, they are really getting into the idea that Mommy is writing a book. As they both learn to read I think it's meant more to them - especially the older one. It's made me think about the content of the book though, I don't want to write for children, it's not natural for me and the story itself is dark in places - because what humans do to each other is very dark. over all it should be an uplifting tale, and I'll probably just wait until they are in their teens to let them read it.

I'm so bummed about the layout of my blog, ever since the change, my template hasn't worked, and I don't know enough HTML to figure it out! Grrrr...

All for now...

Julia