Charles Eisenstein's book "Sacred Economics" was reviewed in the Fall 2011 print edition of The Vermont Commons. According to our reviewer, the book:
"lays out a comprehensive plan for redefining money in accordance with ecological realities and the deep human longing for connection, meaning, and purpose. Building on theorists as diverse as Aristotle, Henry George, John Maynard Keynes, and Silvio Gesell (who devised a system of demurrage or negative-interest money a century ago), Eisenstein proposes a number of innovations and policy shifts he claims can guide a relatively orderly transition to a localized, steady state (i.e. no-growth) economy. He goes into great detail explaining how negative interest would drastically diminish speculation and hoarding, by making money as perishable as the natural goods it claims to represent. He endorses a version of George’s “single tax” on land and other tax policies that encourage economic exchange but discourage self-interested plundering of the planet. His plan includes policies for protecting the commons, preventing the externalization of production costs, and promoting complementary currencies and exchange systems."
This thinking has a natural affinity with the impetus and goals of Occupy. Here, in this OccupyLove* film trailer, Eisenstein explains:
"We live in a money economy where we don’t really depend on the gifts of anybody but we buy everything. Therefore we don’t really need anybody because whoever grew my food or made my clothes or built my house, well, if they died or I alienate them, if they don’t like me that's OK I can just pay somebody else to do it. It is really hard to create community when the underlying knowledge is: we don’t need each other. So people get together and maybe they act nice or they consume together but joint consumption doesn't create intimacy, only joint creativity and gifts create intimacy and connection."
When the goal is transitioning to a localized, interdependent, decentralized paradigm with as much grace and as little social dislocation as possible, this narrative and is essential.
*Chronicling the heart of Occupy Wall St., OCCUPY LOVE is the third film in the decade long trilogy from award-winning filmmaker Velcrow Ripper. The feature documentary will be in theaters 2012. http://occupylove.org/