Toward a happy, positive future.
A BlueBill may seem trivial. But the deeper it’s penetrated, the more beautiful it becomes! Its meaning unfolds in successive layers:
A) Token -Even a monkey can understand the basic layer of trade: a token is worth a grape. Money is born.
B) Authenticity -A clever monkey can even get that a wooden nickel is not a real token and will reject it. A genuine bill must be issued by a common political authority.
C) Root Value -Here is where a BlueBill,–based on the real value of a clean world–distinguishes itself from a green one, which is based on nothing!
D) Responsibility -A green bill can be gotten honestly or through deceit, it’s all the same and there’s no way to check. A BlueBill has a clean history and is always traded upon the express value of a clean world. Thus it becomes increasingly difficult for a dishonest person to trade with BlueBills because they must convince every person they trade with that they believe in the value of a clean world (Whether or not it’s true makes little difference!) BlueBills can be used for any purchase so long as the spender roots their value in a clean world. It doesn’t even matter what the money is spent on, as long as the spender supports whatever a “clean world” means to them, which is the single common element.
E) Community – The effect of a BlueBill economy is a gradual separation of dishonest players from the honest market. Trading upon the expressed value of a clean world will drive all economic activity (using BlueBills) toward “good” values. It’s not that exploitation with BlueBills becomes impossible, just increasingly difficult.
Our monetary system has not caught up with our beliefs. You know this is true. We all know that more money can be made exploiting the environment than doing good works. Even if one doesn’t care a bit about the garbage that exploitation leaves behind, they have to recognize that the means that once were of supreme value (like raw materials, slavery, acquisition through war) have been replaced by more complex means of even higher value (like medicines, international trade and creative ideas). And in fact making money the old way is becoming trickier as the suckers downstream of industrial processes become more sophisticated in claiming their rights. Those who profit from exploitation will have to change course.
Capitalists have been able to exploit the wonders of nature and sell its resources very rapidly by privatizing profits and externalizing costs. But we have reached the end of the bounty of nature. There is nothing more to expand the economy into. The earth has no more to offer, so the economy has turned to selling things that used to be free: water, open spaces, social “gifts” like babysitting, sharing meals, even schooling. Increasingly these formerly free services (social wealth) are being privatized (owned by a very few). Now the only resource to expand the market into is the people themselves. (That’s us!)
What is required is not a massive social overhaul, but a simple change of attitude. We now know that destroying nature and social bonds are not good for the future and that preserving the environment and social ties IS good for the future. Now all we need is an economy that recognizes that fact.
That’s where BlueBills can transform our monetary system, not by changing the fundamental structures of the economy but by simply changing the people’s declaration of faith to reflect what we already believe is the source of real value! The more we reject an exploitive economy the more expensive and less desirable that approach will become. And the more we affirm the values of a clean and co-operative world, the more of that kind of world we will see around us. If you look on the internet, you’ll see it’s already appearing everywhere!
Banks Give Out BlueBills
Banks have been circulating BlueBills since the inception of the project, though some bank employees are leary of BlueBills before they do the research.
Blue Euros!
Conversing with Victoria in Portugal who is thinking about doing this idea with Euros, a tougher nut to crack since the Euros are variously colored for different denominations.
Most world currency is actually multi-colored, a trend the US is reluctantly picking up as well. We are discussing possibilities that would work for a local currency but would constitute a sign across borders, since the BlueBills concept is one that citizens around the world can embrace and participate in with equal cause.
Our First Rejection!
After 10 years and nearly $1500 in BlueBills circulated (that we know of) and circulation around the nation, we got the first BlueBill rejection we’ve heard of, and from a long-time friend! Her arguments would be interesting enough to others to post here.
When offered a free BlueBill and hearing the explanation, she said she was skeptical about the whole concept, saying that she believed that, a) it makes no difference what color money is, BlueBills could be used for ill; b) people won’t accept them (despite the 100% record so far); c) it won’t change anything; and d) that people would still pass them on regardless of their own disbelief. So we tried to call her bluff. Standing in front of an ice cream shop, we asked if she would prove us wrong by buying a cone with our BlueBills, despite the fact that she didn’t believe in them. Unfortunately she refused the invitation. This seemed the perfect proof of our argument, but of course it was lost on her.
Well, at least she gets to go down in history as the first!
The Anti-theft Effect
Can you imagine walking away from a stack of money in a crowded market? We did an experiment in theft-resistance of BlueBills, leaving $500 unattended ($100 on a table, another $400 in plain view) for about 7 minutes during the crowded Fair Trade Market (and secretly filmed the result) in Helena, MT on Nov. 23, 2014. It’s hard to be exactly sure why this unattended money was safe, but if you believe that never would have happened with regular bills, that indicates BlueBills tend to be theft-proof!
Blue Bills Take On Wall St.
International speaker Garret Garrels held up a BlueBill on Wall St. for a photo to send us.
Here you can see him holding one up before the doors of the New York Stock Exchange moments before the cop (in the background grabbing his gun) riddled him with bullets for trying to take back the economy from the Wall St. raiders.
OK, just kidding about the bullets part but the rest is true!
Thanks, Garret!
Favorite Comments:
“… some very clever individuals have figured out that if they lend money to others and charge them interest, they can live well off the interest without having to do anything else. Of course, it doesn’t serve their interests to enable the borrowers to pay off their debt and then thrive so they never need to borrow money again, so they make every effort to ensure the borrowers remain shackled to their debts for as long as they live. They want borrowers to earn enough to pay their debts and interest, but no so much that they can actually live debt-free. In this way, the lenders become the most successful people in the world – financially at least – and the most powerful as well.
This tells us the system is outmoded, and needs revamping, because the conditions under which it once worked have changed.”
-Eileen Workman
Kids Dye Their Own
Here’s a video (mondo cute!) of little local kids who dyed their own BlueBills and came in to get them stamped.