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 “trust in the government”! How are we doing in that regard?
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 for them 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recognize that the means that once were of supreme value (like raw materials, slavery, acquisition through war), have been replaced by more complex means of even higher value (like medicines, international trade and creative ideas).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 dirty work like industrial processes become more sophisticated in claiming their rights to a clean world. 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. 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!) Like the new oil: our data.
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 becomes. 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. 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. Though some will discourage their use, afraid of encouraging similar, less fastidious projects, BlueBills prove themselves by their smooth daily use.
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 10 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!
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.