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Frontiers Of Coordination #12 - Mutual Aid & Community Currencies w/ Will Ruddick
Will Ruddick is an econo-optimist; in his words. A physicist that got into economics. Experiences such as being in the Peace Corps helped shape his vision around using technology for mutual credit on community groups coming together to produce mutual aid for each other. So he founded Grassroots Economics, a non-profit foundation developing economic empowerment to help communities realize and share their abundance. In this episode he shares with Peth his motivations and experiences with the project.
The proposal is to have communities form a type of agreement on their means of exchange, goods and services that are redeemable from vouchers that can be used in or out of the community. Through blockchain, these vouchers have an expiration built in and the contract holds the legal instruments for it. This type of exchange is actually similar with traditional systems, which in Kenya have not only a rich history but 42 different names to refer to.
For Ruddick this is a basic use case of blockchain that allows creating endogenous instruments in an association. However, in his opinion, for it to succeed there needs to be liability. “When I read the Bitcoin whitepaper and they talk about community currencies this is what I think they're talking about and historically if you look at a lot of the community currency research and all these examples over the years, the ones that were very successful had clear liability; it was clear who was backing this vouchers with what services”.
Some of the topics:
How he started Grassroots Economics
How does Grassroots Economics work
Adoption of the tech in these communities
Workshops for collective vision
Blockchain for accountability
Limited and trackable liability
Grassroots Economics spread and outreach
Sustainability
Toughest part on his journey
Hopes for the future
Resources:
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