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Catalyzing worker co-ops & the solidarity economy

What’s mutual credit, how can it boost the Solidarity Economy, and what can we do to help?

Matthew Slater: We have a network of 20,000+ users who are all using their own local platforms. and they’re all connected, but the software is going out of date. We want to upgrade our systems so all these local communities will be able to use standard software and standard protocols to reach across from one community to another. In this way, we can start to think about building not only collaborative credit communities, but also a global movement.

DD: What’s the problem with using money?

MS: The people who decide who has access to money (which is to say, who has access to bank credit) is the banks. The banks are not under democratic control – they’re motivated by how much money they can lend and collect interest on. That’s quite anti-social. So the problem with money at the moment is that it’s been effectively privatised, like everything else that the government used to control, and it’s being abused by the world’s wealthiest people in order to centralise their wealth and power. The profit from lending money, and the decisions about who to lend to, are in very few hands. So money, that is fundamentally a public good, is totally in the service of private actors.

Read the rest at lowimpact.org

 

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