The solution to the current food crisis is small and local, including growing food locally. But how to fund local food co-ops without pricey loans from big banks?
“Deglobalizing” and “dedollarizing” have been much in the news. Reducing dependence on the global supply chain and the U.S. dollar are trends that are happening not just internationally but locally. In the United States, we have seen movements both for local food independence and to divest from Wall Street banks. The burgeoning cryptocurrency movement is another push to “dedollarize” and escape the international bankers’ control grid.
This article is a sequel to one discussing home gardens and community food co-ops as local counter-measures to an impending food crisis. The question to be addressed here is how to fund them. What sort of local currency could fund food co-ops independently of the credit dollars we get from banks?
But first, some framing of the problem. It’s not just about temporary food shortages. It’s about sovereignty from the sort of global control foreshadowed in Henry Kissinger’s notorious statement, “Control food and you control the people.”
Continue readingFiled under: Ellen Brown Articles/Commentary | Tagged: blockchain, COMMUNITY CURRENCIES, cryptocurrency, ECONOMIC CRISIS, Ellen Brown, FOOD CO-OPS, FOOD PASSPORTS, FOOD SOVEREIGNTY, FOOD SYSTEMS, Great Reset, HOLOCHAIN, Inflation, KISSINGER, SUPPLY CHAIN CRISIS | 17 Comments »
WEB OF DEBT BLOG 
AI ABUNDANCE, PART 3: GOVERNMENT MONEY WITHOUT STRINGS ATTACHED
Project Hamilton, ECASH, and the Quest for a Privacy-Protected Digital Dollar
The first two articles in this series explored the proposition that artificial intelligence and robotics will soon be ushering in an economy of unprecedented abundance, and examined the resource and energy constraints that could limit that voluminous growth. If machines eventually replace most of the workforce, society may need some form of Universal High Income (UHI), as Elon Musk and others have suggested, simply to keep purchasing power aligned with productive capacity. In a world where goods and services can be produced in abundance, the challenge may no longer be creating supply. It may be creating enough consumer demand (money) to purchase that potential supply.
A UHI or UBI (Universal Basic Income) would have to be issued digitally by the government. This third article addresses the fear that such a currency would come with strings attached – that it could be programmed to restrict purchases, limit movement, or enforce political conformity, imposing a “digital prison.”
The question posed here is, could a government-issued digital currency be created in a way that is privacy-protected, not programmable, and tradable like cash?
The answer is that it could. In fact, between 2020 and 2022, such a public digital‑dollar system was in development. Project Hamilton, a collaborative effort of the Boston Fed and MIT, created a digital dollar that stored no personal data or transaction history, was not programmable to control how the money was spent, could be used without an intermediary, and was also the fastest payment system ever built. It was a digital money design that made a financial control grid impossible.
Continue reading →Filed under: Ellen Brown Articles/Commentary | Tagged: bitcoin, blockchain, crypto, cryptocurrency, FINANCE, Greenbacks, privacy protection, programmability, Project Hamilton, Public Banking, stablecoins, Treasury dollars | Leave a comment »