: How can we stop using their money? It is practically all we
: have now.

I know - heck of a scam, isn't it? :)

We use their money because we're persuaded that we must - but of course we don't have to, _if_ enough of us decide to do something different.

The most 'subversive to the System' thing imaginable would be this: Start _giving_.

We've heard that "As ye give, so also shall ye receive," but we haven't understood it very well. Partly it's because we've been conditioned to think in "transaction packets" - we give, but then we do expect something in return _from_ whoever we gave to. Only thing is, that isn't "giving" in the first place - it's only a form of "transacting" in which we agree to go first.

Nothing's given that way; we're just "exchanging", same as we've been accustomed to do, all our lives, pretty much.

But it says, "As ye give, so also shall ye receive." Nothing there about "receiving back from exactly the one we gave to". Perhaps it means we shall receive from someone else entirely. Perhaps it means it works _only_ when we don't seek to control the process and micro-manage its workings; when we have just enough faith to begin to "put it on the street" in our own living experience.

It's perhaps a little tricky, at this stage of things, expressly because not only we but also our family, our friends and our neighbors are used to operating in "transaction packet" mode. We're used to using money to time-shift the completion of our transactions, to time-shift the "retiring of debts".

Because that's our custom, the "flow" of giving and receiving can be a bit 'halting', a bit 'stop-and-go' in our world. The first ones of us (like Rayelan with this forum; like Paul Mitchell with his Supreme Law forum) may find the scales seem out of balance for awhile, and that they're giving more than they're receiving.

I'm not sure that's really true - receiving can take many forms, not necessarily monetary ones though perhaps ones that are more valuable than money by far; so the scales may be balancing nicely in ways we're not thinking to measure. As I said, it takes a little faith to make a start at this, and the world will try to persuade us "It can't be done!" :)

But suppose we decided to "forgive our debtors"? Suppose we decided "no debt exists"? What then would happen to any "debt-based economy"?

I suspect it would simply vanish, like the illusion it is. :) All it would take is the shifting of our faith from the System we've been offered, to some other system of our choosing. It's like the computer said in the movie WarGames: "An interesting game...the only way to win is...to choose not to play..." :)

Meanwhile, in case we're not ready to adopt "giving" as our method today, some interim alternatives are appearing:

- e-gold
- OSGold (new competitor to e-gold)
- NORFED certificates
- physical gold or silver coins
- Local Exchange Trading Systems

BTW, during the prior Great Depression, the town of Carmel, California, printed up its own local currency, and just kept right on going. (Clint Eastwood, former mayor of Carmel, told this story on some PBS thing I happened to see one day. :)

Yes, there was the problem of how to "engage in commerce" with the world outside Carmel's city limits. But they worked that out, too, somehow - perhaps a few townsfolk had a goodly enough store of Fed currency to serve as the "exchangers" for that purpose. They'd accept Carmel Dollars for in-town purposes just like everybody else but would hand over Fed currency to bring in supplies from "the outside world" as needed.

Here's the point: We _could_ be doing that already, Depression or not. There's really nothing to prevent us from doing it; all we gotta do is: agree. :)