Denis Paull and Tor Lunde (at least) have been involved in a recent dialogue about wealth and value. I agree entirely with Tor's comments about the "monetization" of value (something which has been extremely useful in the past, but which has definitely reached its use by date, at least in the sense of being our dominant paradigm) - and would like to add another perspective. Another consequence of "monetization" is that human beings come to believe that they can't create wealth themselves any more. Where money is concerned this is literally true, creating money is forgery and gets you a prison sentence. However, it is only the sun and human beings which create wealth - and one of the great features of the twenty first century community movement will be the fabulously creative ways in which human communities of all sorts, shapes and sizes, create and represent wealth for their own internal purposes. They will probably also deal with money for inter community transactions, but they will realise the huge benefits they can reap if they are intelligent about recognising, capturing and distributing the wealth they believe they create (and which their central government ignores). Some of this will be in a wide variety of community currencies (see Tom Greco's "New money for healthy communities") some will be in regaining self indepence (see Richard Douthwaite's "Short Circuit") - but all of it will be the major way in which communities provide food, etc and meaning for their members - something the monetary world apparently is not interested in doing. Charles Brass Chairman Future of Work Foundation PO Box 122 Fairfield 3078 Australia E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The mission of the Future of Work Foundation is: "To engage all Australians in creating a better future for work" -------------------------------------
