Unconventional Thinkers: Paul Glover
Jun 8th, 2009 | By Dawn Rivers Baker | Category: Unconventional ThinkersCurrency has value because people decide, collectively, that it has value. If you stop and think about it, the dollar you use to buy that Snickers® bar is nothing more than a piece of paper with a lot of elaborate printing on it. The piece of paper has meaning because we have all agreed that it has meaning, and our government has enacted laws to protect the integrity of that social contract. But that contract doesn’t work so well for low-income communities in need of rebuilding, without access to conventional cash and without a way to monetize its resources.
Community activist Paul Glover, founder/inventor of Ithaca Hours local currency that was so spectacularly successful in Ithaca, NY, has made a name for himself by helping communities to solve that problem. Glover’s idea is to bring various elements of the community together to form a new social contract. The community assigns value to its various resources — to human skills, knowledge and even behaviors, to real property, to tangible equipment, and (of course) to U.S. dollars.The community then devises a system through which its members can engage in transactions with the new currency. These are the basic concepts surrounding Glover’s latest project, the Philadelphia Regional and Independent Stock Exchange, or PRAISE. And, fortunately, microbusiness support and development is a central part of Glover’s vision.
