The nature of a circulation charge in my opinion lends itself primarily to global currency design because of the issue of emerging competitive alternatives that you mention. How could America implement a hoarding tax alone, for example, without experiencing a flight from dollars to other national currencies? So, in my opinion, if it is going to work, and some day I believe it will, it needs to be built on unprecedented international and/or global cooperation.

In terms of the sovereignty issue you are of course on the money. From my perspective, as global complexity continues to increase and fly over the heads of nations to adequately address the emergent problems, true “sovereignty” of all nations will increasingly be eroded to the point where it is increasingly in question. Already, we live in a world where Hezbollah can (and does) easily enter the US through Mexican drug cartel routes and Iran is a year or two away from the capability of launching an elecromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack from commercial vessels. Oil dependence, climate change, massive debt, terrorism, resource depletion, etc, etc. All of these problems are converging to build a need for a radical rethinking of what “sovereignty” and security means and how we are going to ensure they address 21st century challenges.

Ultimately, I believe the only answer is to build an exponentially more dynamic and self-organizing economy that integrates all of humanity into win-win-win scenarios, increases the velocity of money, resilience, savings and investment. It must also increase efficiency in resource consumption and, I believe tap into powerful new insights that can generate meaning and broader, more integrated values and identities. At the same time, such qualities must also allow us to keep and preserve what’s best and most treasured from each of our distinct cultures, nations and civilizations.

No, this is not easy. But I don’t think we live in a world with easy challenges or life conditions. In my opinion, there’s nothing else out there with as much power or potential to reinvent the international economic paradigm as a circulation charge. To put the matter back in your court, if you agree that it has potential then I’d be interested to hear how you think it could be implemented independently by “sovereign” nations?

Thanks for the excellent questions and observations.

Jordan

PS - It’s intriguing to me that we are so willing to call something a global crisis yet have so much resistance to global cooperation or transformation and thinking of ourselves as global citizens. Ultimately, how are global crises of any nature or order going to get dealt with effectively without the latter?

I agree *absolutely* that “our relationship with money is at the very heart of our global crisis.” However, your article seems to avoid any discussion of this “relationship with money,” focusing instead on the new relationship you propose.

You say Gesell’s “work garnered notable recognition and approval from many of his contemporaries, including … John Maynard Keynes and Irving Fisher.” But you neglect the problem Keynes pointed out regarding stamped money: a series of alternatives will emerge.

I may be open to Gesell’s idea. But I have powerful reservations about going global. You call for “profound, unprecedented cooperation between nations.” You call for a currency “regulated by global institutions, such as a United Nations agency.” You write of “global citizens” and “global transformation.” It will be difficult for you to get cooperation from anyone who uses the word “sovereignty.” And there’s lots of ‘em out there.

ps: I got to your site via your haiku comments in the NPR Planet Money thing.