Sharing Is Good: How to Save Money, Time and Resources Through Collaborative Consumption Read Online Free Page A

of the quantity and date of delivery of his contribution, which he could then use to purchase something else,” Lietaer writes. “These receipts, or ostraca, have been found by the thousands and were in fact used as currency.” This food-based currency was
    used in Egypt for more than a thousand years, until the Romans
    forcibly replaced it with their own banking and currency system.
    The Great Depression of the 1930s was a global economic cri-
    sis, but most people associate it with the United States — and
    with good reason. In the United States, the effects of the Great
    Depression were particularly severe and long-lasting. Between the years of 1929 and 1938, the United States endured an unemployed
    population estimated at over 12 million; approximately 25 percent of all American families had no income whatsoever. There was a
    History of Sharing
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    huge increase in foreclosed farms and houses and evictions from
    apartments (in 1930, there were more than 200,000 evictions in
    New York City alone).
    After the stock market crash in 1929, people had almost no con-
    fidence in the rapidly declining value of the dollar. Those who had dollars hoarded them under their mattresses, resulting in even less currency being available for the rest of the populace and a further reduction in the volume of business that could be transacted. Those who didn’t have dollars became migrants, wandering the country in search of work that would prevent their families from starving to death. As we know, desperation is the mother of invention, and many people started to realize that they could still make simple trades and exchanges for things they needed even if they didn’t have dollars.
    “Besides learning how to ‘make do, or do without,’ people began
    to establish mutual support structures, like workers’ cooperatives, many of which would recycle and repair donated or broken items,”
    writes Thomas H. Greco, Jr. “People learned to share what they had, and to bypass the market and financial systems. Most of these measures were considered stop-gaps to be utilized until things ‘got back to normal,’ but in some of them there seemed to be the promise of more permanent improvements. One of these ‘stop-gaps,’ which was
    intended to address the problem of the dearth of currency in circula-tion, was the issuance of scrip. 2 ”
    Scrip took many forms and operated in slightly different systems, but no matter where it originated or how it was designed to be used, it was always a locally printed document that could be used in the place of dollars or US coins. According to DepressionScrip.com,
    paper, cardboard, wood, metal tokens, leather, clam shells, and even parchment made from fish skin was used. Inscriptions on some of
    these items promised that they could be redeemed for “real” money on a future date, while others, like rabbit tails and wooden discs, were simply a vehicle for expressing value so that trade could continue. At one point, the US government considered issuing a nationwide scrip 10
    Sharing is Good
    on a temporary basis, but that idea was quickly shot down by then Secretary of the Treasury William H. Woodin. The proliferation
    and use of scrip died down as soon as the Federal Reserve agreed
    to start printing more money and the economy started to recover,
    although the use of alternative currencies never died out completely.
    Around the same time as the Great Depression was laying waste
    to the American economy, nations around the world were feeling the pinch. An Austrian man by the name of Michael Unterguggenberger
    came up with a novel idea to help save his small town of Worgl. He persuaded the town’s government to issue paper tickets that were
    worth one, five, and ten Austrian schillings a piece. Unemployed
    people could earn this “money” by doing good works in the commu-
    nity, like repairing bridges or cleaning drains. The tickets could then be spent like money in the shops; in turn, the shopkeepers