Thai Village Prints Own Money

[plachon]

Yay, anti-globalisation and anti-development people unite in the glorification of backwards solutions...

Yo! So Time and WSJ are considered anti-globalisation/development then?

What you fail to appreciate TAWP is that globalisation and development come in many flavours, colours and designs. The future is about equity, sustainability and social/environmental justice of development approaches. That you fail to see the growing prevalence of alternative currencies as forwards solutions speaks volumes about your backwards ideology (imo).

[trihent]

This is an old revered tridition. SF america did it in the 1859- 1880s and as far local econamy's run, it works very well (cit) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_Norto...e_United_States.

10 dollar note SF USA 1880

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nort10d.jpg

enjoy

[Plus]

OK, I finally found the comments on WSj article, however they are mostly about gold standard and general currency issues.

Lewes pound has a website and clearly declared policies, including the number of notes in circulation.

Santisuk article has zilch of real information.

I asked a number of questions about this particular Thai experiment, I can post them again

- How much Santisuk money is there?

- How many people use it after ten years in circulation?

- How they deal with inflation?

- How traders who receive only santisuk notes pay for nationwide products like coke and ice cream?

- Do they pay taxes on their santisuk income?

- How exactly does it help local economy?

These are all important questions that need to be addressed before you continue glorifying this marvel from remarkable pioneers that was killed by bureaucracy.

[warfie]

Had me wondering for a second there with stories all over the News in recent weeks about fake Bank Notes. Seem as of late the power that be has got a handle on this issue.

me too... I was sure it was going to be about counterfeit 1,000 Baht notes... hahaha

[plachon]

OK, I finally found the comments on WSj article, however they are mostly about gold standard and general currency issues.

Lewes pound has a website and clearly declared policies, including the number of notes in circulation.

Santisuk article has zilch of real information.

I asked a number of questions about this particular Thai experiment, I can post them again

- How much Santisuk money is there?

- How many people use it after ten years in circulation?

- How they deal with inflation?

- How traders who receive only santisuk notes pay for nationwide products like coke and ice cream?

- Do they pay taxes on their santisuk income?

- How exactly does it help local economy?

These are all important questions that need to be addressed before you continue glorifying this marvel from remarkable pioneers that was killed by bureaucracy.

Am I missing something or wasn't the expt. closed down by BoT before it really got going? Therefore your questions are irrelevant and I thought was the original reason why you called it a "non-story". Which to some extent it is, but on the other hand is relevant to some extent in that it shows in the light of current interest surfacing about alternative currencies, that there is a pioneering precedent to the Lewes and Totnes pounds in deepest, darkest Isaan. Which might have caught on elsewhere if it wasn't for fear, loathing and mistrust about local financial autonomy in the corridors of power in Bangkok. That should be where the story points.

[Plus]

Am I missing something or wasn't the expt. closed down by BoT

Did you even read the OP, Plachon?

[Steve2UK]

Am I missing something or wasn't the expt. closed down by BoT before it really got going?

Hi again Plachon. That scheme (and others in Thailand) seem to be ongoing. On the website of RASMI (Thai "Rural and Social Management Institute" - http://www.rasmi-trrm.org/index.php?lay=sh...e&Id=141164 ) there's a timeline in English that goes up to 2005 (the rest of the site is in Thai, so there may also be later information there but my Thai skills are nowhere near good enough to track that). To summarise it:

1998

Yasothorn Province, Bia Kud Chum scheme started. Shut down by "local" authority with accusation for breaching monetary law [the original is not clear as to when that happened or what is meant by "local"]

Jan 2002

Thammasat University meeting with BOT over local currency terminology. Conclusion: word “Bia” which means “money” had to be replaced with alternative to avoid confusion.

Feb 2002

“Alternative Economic Systems in Asia” meeting - led to work in participatory research on local currency exchange, funded by Thailand Research Fund. Research task given to RASMI.

March 2002

Kud Chum local currency re-started as “Boon Kud Chum”. “Boon” means “merit”.

Initially, “Boon Kud Chum” could only draw some 30 local residents, as majority still feared threat of police arrest.

Feb 2003

RASMI held Thailand’s first-ever Local Exchange Meeting in Kud Chum, around 150 participants from all parts of Thailand attended. Lessons on history of money, development of local currencies world-wide (LETS, Ithaca etc) & reasons for local exchange alternatives. Local authority invited to witness [not clear if "local" here & above means provincial or BOT/Finance Ministry etc?]

July 2003

2nd Local Exchange Meeting held in Kud Chum with increased number of national participants.

At this point, those interested in local exchange alternatives and the public authority shared more mutual understanding than ever. ["public authority" - again not clear which specific authority]

Jan 2004

6 "strong local exchange groups" nationwide identified - Boon Kud Chum in Yasothorn, Mitraparb in BKK, Mae Buahiang in Mukdaharn, Bird Cage in Songkla, Wat Tewadaram in Nakorn Ratchasima and Wang Tong Weaving Group in Supanburi.

March 2005

RASMI organized further Local Exchange Meeting - emerged there were already a further 26 potential groups that could develop into active exchange groups (in addition to 6 existing).

For those genuinely interested in the subject of such schemes - some additional links with many onward links:

http://www.uea.ac.uk/env/ijccr/contents.html#13

(International Journal of Community Currency Research - peer-reviewed reports, research papers etc year by year to 1997 - 2008)

http://www.uea.ac.uk/env/ijccr/pdfs/IJCCR%...eMeulenaere.pdf

"2006 Annual Report of the Worldwide Database of Complementary* Currency Systems"

( http://www.complementarycurrency.org/ccDat...les_public.html *)

- graphs, statistics, breakdowns by type, size, status etc. Database entries up to January 2009.

[* Note the use of the word "complementary" in the name; while the terms "local" and "community" (currency systems) are also widely used - this term does highlight the fact that such systems are not replacements for a national currency system; as should be obvious, the two operate side by side for different purposes and needs. Elsewhere on the same (Database) site are many other resources including a helpdesk, FAQ's, detailed guidelines for setting up various types of scheme, software etc etc]

BTW, these sites contain a bountiful harvest of quotes and figures which those so minded to cherry-pick snippets (and with the appropriate compulsion to do so) can use to pile on even more derision till their heart's content and they move on (if that day ever dawns).

Overall, I'm increasingly struck by just how much work is going on in this area worldwide - the more you look, the more you find. Of course, it helps if you're actually interested to find out something - rather than driven by a completely different agenda........... e.g. to go on scorning something that you've pre-decided is a plot (WSJ article = Thaksin PR smear operation). Many people finding themselves in such a deep self-dug hole might decide to stop digging. Ah well, each to their own.......

All of that said, I'm not a salesman for the scheme in the WSJ story or any other - nor is it conceivably my duty to answer questions about it or defend it....... let alone "glorify" it . This has never been a pi_sing contest for me any more than it is a mountain of my making. Like (some) others, I just find the subject interesting.

PS - probably too many words again . I'm reminded of the Churchill (or Voltaire or Pascal or Twain or Shaw) line - roughly: "Sorry this letter is so long, but I didn't have time to make it shorter". Neat. Speaking of time, as indicated at the end of my Post #53, I'll waste no more of mine responding here to someone whose real motives are so clear. Expect to find me flossing with rusty barbed wire before that happens..........

[TAWP]

Yay, anti-globalisation and anti-development people unite in the glorification of backwards solutions...

Yo! So Time and WSJ are considered anti-globalisation/development then?

What you fail to appreciate TAWP is that globalisation and development come in many flavours, colours and designs. The future is about equity, sustainability and social/environmental justice of development approaches. That you fail to see the growing prevalence of alternative currencies as forwards solutions speaks volumes about your backwards ideology (imo).

I was referring to some of the posters that are hating globalization with a passion, even if it's the best way in the long run to fix the skewed distribution of wealth in the world.

[plachon]

Am I missing something or wasn't the expt. closed down by BoT

Did you even read the OP, Plachon?

Not in any detail, I have to admit. Guess I was smitten by the replies that followed more than the OP. Now I've looked back over it I realise there is an on-going story there and your dismissive attitude seems even more arrogant in retrospect. Sorry, Plus, but you ought to get out to ban-nork a bit more and realise that not all Isaan villagers are how you would like to paint them. The WSJ is to be commended for printing this story I would say.

PS Thanks to Steve for the further background to the evolution of bai kud chum.

Edited January 13, 2009 by plachon

[DaveGreen]

If the Thai government legalise village currency. What is stopping a village to pint their own currency and have a picture of their favourite hero on printed on it. It could be Mark's picture, or Sondhi's, or even Thaksin's.

Good idea. Where can I order some bank notes with Thaksin face on it. I bet it will also have half a map of Thailand printed on it too. Northern half of course.

Where will the division be? For simplity, pick a lattitude number (like N/S Korea). If you want the arguments (and wars) to go on for years, pick the "water shed" (like Thai-Cambodia).

[Plus]

Steve, are you posting long messages on purpose or what?

Latest one, at 800 words, has only one piece of real information - in 2002 the scheme had 30 participants.

How much benefit could it possibly bring to the whole community? Spread it over 10 years and think about it.

Let's say it grew to 100 participants by now (and I'm being generous). A hundred people after ten years of operation is a failure by any account.

You make it appear as if all RASMI does is promote local currencies, and it engaged six communities in the project. Not true.

More likely none of those other five communities took it on though they obviously heard about it at Rasmi seminars.

Another sign of failure.

>>>

WSJ is one of the outlets for regular articles favourable to Thaksin. Is this one a part of the same campaign? It could be, the idea of a small village fighting Bangkok bureaucrats fits perfectly in Thaksin's ideological narrative and is not in line with usual WSJ stand on globalisation.

>>>

Plachon, now that you've finally read the OP you think you know enough to accuse me of arrogance? Pot.. kettle..

[Steve2UK]

Seems the pesky Western (oops - so sorry, Middle Eastern in this case) media just won't leave this story alone. Obviously a deep, deep plot......

More seriously (and back in the real world)........ Al Jazeera have just run a video report by Selina Downes following her recent visit to San Ti Suk. Plenty of good visuals of both the "boon" local currency, the village itself and input from the locals - including the monk who tells us "the boon has been a success and it has helped the village to rely more on themselves than the state". Overall theme of the piece is self-sufficiency, boosting the local economy and strengthening the community.

For those interested, the video is here:

[Plus]

Define "success".

It appears to be more of a psychological boost than anything else.

Ok, it's got potential, but after ten years in operation they eveidently haven't progressed much, and probably never will, and they had plenty of opportunities to encourage other villages to do a similar thing but it didn't take off.

On the other hand they haven't done any harm either.

Storm in a teacup.

[Steve2UK]

New metaphor, same old same old......... So much angst - it's bizarre.

Just like "mountain out of a molehill" - nobody's "storm" but his.

[samgrowth]

If the Thai government legalise village currency. What is stopping a village to pint their own currency and have a picture of their favourite hero on printed on it. It could be Mark's picture, or Sondhi's, or even Thaksin's.

Good idea. Where can I order some bank notes with Thaksin face on it. I bet it will also have half a map of Thailand printed on it too. Northern half of course.

Where will the division be? For simplity, pick a lattitude number (like N/S Korea). If you want the arguments (and wars) to go on for years, pick the "water shed" (like Thai-Cambodia).

You may get toilet paper printed with Thaksin face on it. Bank note with his face? Not a chance as long as PAD shall live.

[gregb]

Ok, it's got potential, but after ten years in operation they eveidently haven't progressed much, and probably never will, and they had plenty of opportunities to encourage other villages to do a similar thing but it didn't take off.

It will probably never be a success as long as the sovereign currency (the Thai baht in this case) is relatively stable. Where this mechanism really shines, and hence the renewed interest in it, is when wider currencies become unstable. During the baht crisis a decade ago, it made sense for a short while to consider starting a local currency. But that storm soon passed, and there was no real advantage for the last several years.

Now however, there is a new, much larger storm brewing, and this small village provides an ideal case study of what could be applied all over Thailand. While inflation might take hold in baht terms, the local currency could provide a very stable store of value. And that is all that really counts for economic success.

The biggest problem with any local currency is exchange rates to a currency acceptable for external trade. All the local currency experiments seem to fail at this point. If you could find a relatively isolated village that had little exchange with the outside world, this mechanism would work extremely well. However, as you increase the imports and exports from the community, the complexities of managing a small money system, and the inherent contradictions and opportunities for corruption that arise, usually put an end to people's trust in the system.

Governments solve this problem by taxing its citizens and making only its preferred currency accepted for taxation, and otherwise forcing people to use it in commerce. A small village really has no way of encouraging this, and so it usually withers and dies in the face of a better currency. This system really only works when there is no better currency.

[plachon]

Define "success".

It appears to be more of a psychological boost than anything else.

Ok, it's got potential, but after ten years in operation they eveidently haven't progressed much, and probably never will, and they had plenty of opportunities to encourage other villages to do a similar thing but it didn't take off.

On the other hand they haven't done any harm either.

Storm in a teacup.

Local currencies, re-localisation, de-globalization, resilience awareness, economic and oil dependency shock-proofing are taking off in UK, Ireland and elsewhere in the West. Helped admirably by the economic crash and credit crunch admittedly. Why shouldn't they in Thailand? After all, economic self-sufficiency is a core part of the 10th NESDP, if you care to look. Local currencies fit right it with that, so why not?

[Jumber]

When It Comes to Cash, A Thai Village Says, 'Baht, Humbug!'

Interesting )

[Plus]

Now however, there is a new, much larger storm brewing, and this small village provides an ideal case study of what could be applied all over Thailand.

Why should it be applied all over Thailand? They can't spead their base beyond thirty people or so despite trying for years, it's failed by all objective accounts and has mostly sentmental value.

Local currencies, re-localisation, de-globalization, resilience awareness, economic and oil dependency shock-proofing are taking off in UK, Ireland and elsewhere in the West. Helped admirably by the economic crash and credit crunch admittedly. Why shouldn't they in Thailand? After all, economic self-sufficiency is a core part of the 10th NESDP, if you care to look. Local currencies fit right it with that, so why not?

Beacuse it doesn't work?

It's nice to expound on its virtues from from behind your computer, but out there, in the real word, it doesn't work. People should better direct their energy on finding why.

Instead of going all balmy kumbalaya, ask yourself - what are the goals, what are the expected outcomes, how would you measure success of failure, what is the expected amount of circulation, what safeguards should be there and so on.

It's been freaking ten years - who knows any facts about this "success"? How much money is there? How many people use it? Do they shop less in a local 7-Eleven? If not, what's the point? Do they lose out on adopting better, cheaper stuff coming from other villages in the name of self-sufficiency (isolation)? Does it have ANY effect on people's shopping patterns? How many people choose to do their shopping locally based on this currency? How much benefit this local shopping brought to the community? What part of this is supposed to be taxed? Did the govt lose on taxes at all? If so, what would be their progress AFTER paying taxes?

These are the real questions that need to be answered before even thinking about applying it all over Thailand.

Sorry to interrupt, those of you who can't help it, can go on waxing lyrical about saving the world.

[plachon]

Now however, there is a new, much larger storm brewing, and this small village provides an ideal case study of what could be applied all over Thailand.

Why should it be applied all over Thailand? They can't spead their base beyond thirty people or so despite trying for years, it's failed by all objective accounts and has mostly sentmental value.

Local currencies, re-localisation, de-globalization, resilience awareness, economic and oil dependency shock-proofing are taking off in UK, Ireland and elsewhere in the West. Helped admirably by the economic crash and credit crunch admittedly. Why shouldn't they in Thailand? After all, economic self-sufficiency is a core part of the 10th NESDP, if you care to look. Local currencies fit right it with that, so why not?

Beacuse it doesn't work?

It's nice to expound on its virtues from from behind your computer, but out there, in the real word, it doesn't work. People should better direct their energy on finding why.

Instead of going all balmy kumbalaya, ask yourself - what are the goals, what are the expected outcomes, how would you measure success of failure, what is the expected amount of circulation, what safeguards should be there and so on.

It's been freaking ten years - who knows any facts about this "success"? How much money is there? How many people use it? Do they shop less in a local 7-Eleven? If not, what's the point? Do they lose out on adopting better, cheaper stuff coming from other villages in the name of self-sufficiency (isolation)? Does it have ANY effect on people's shopping patterns? How many people choose to do their shopping locally based on this currency? How much benefit this local shopping brought to the community? What part of this is supposed to be taxed? Did the govt lose on taxes at all? If so, what would be their progress AFTER paying taxes?

These are the real questions that need to be answered before even thinking about applying it all over Thailand.

Sorry to interrupt, those of you who can't help it, can go on waxing lyrical about saving the world.

I think you seem to be missing the point about local currencies Plus. The clue is in the word "local". They was never supposed to replace hard currencies completely, but to give local communities the option to localise their economies and keep money from being syphoned out. If you ask the good people of Totnes in Devon who are using the local Totnes Pound, Calgary in Canada with their Calgary Dollars, Burlington in Vermont with their Burlington Bread and numerous other examples in the West who have adopted local currencies in recent years then you might get some of the answers you are seeking [outside of Thailand].

As for the Kud Chum Bia, I have no idea beyond the information contained in this thread and am not in a position to go and get the information directly from Yasothon, so perhaps someone living nearby could go and report on the ground. In the meantime, I'll stay optimistic that it is an idea whose time has come to Thailand and can be revived based on the experiences from Kud Chum and abroad examples.

Some further sites giving more information on the ethos and practice of local currencies:

http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/009286.html

http://www.consciousmoney.org/pages/content/examples.html

http://www.ratical.org/many_worlds/cc/NMfHC/chp10.html

I'm sure tens of thousands of people who now use local currencies daily would dispute your assertions about them "not working".

[Plus]

tens of thousands of people who now use local currencies daily

Well, it might be working somewhere OUTSIDE of Thailand, though tens of thousands of people out of potential three-four billion who still live in small communities doesn't sound like a success.

I'll stay optimistic that it is an idea whose time has come to Thailand and can be revived based on the experiences from Kud Chum and...

That village probably has several thousand people who are not so optimistic about the currency they CAN use but choose not to, but what do they know? Internet warriors have spoken, it's been designated as a panacea already.

[Steve2UK]

The clue is in the word "local". They was never supposed to replace hard currencies completely, but to give local communities the option to localise their economies and keep money from being syphoned out.

I would add or substitute the word "complementary". Granted, it's implied with "local" versus "national/hard" and, as you go on to say, they're not intended to replace hard currencies completely; but it would remove a good deal of confusion (for some, at least) to state it explicitly - as I touched on in Post #67 - and refer to Complementary Local Currencies (CLC's). That same post (with others here) contains links to resources which give an objective i.e. challenges/warts-and-all overview of CLC's.

[samuibeachcomber]

imho,the world needs to get rid of this globalisation crap(the cause of many of todays financial rip offs)and get back to doing things more simply,like village and small town communities(where local currencies could be used) people could be taught againto learn local crafts,things that are needed to sustain a good life,plumbers,welders,electricians,builders/carpenters etc,as a world we have been sucked in by all this rubbish that has made a few people wealthy beyond measure at the expense of us!