Hal,
You and I both build arguments around the primal importance of currency to the modern psyche, yet we take it in opposite directions. You make the point that bitcoin and other digital currencies would be quite useful for extending the monetary and financial framework further into the developing work as well, as provide an emotional refuge from the vicissitudes of increasingly encumbered conventional state currencies.
In my entry I make the argument that notational currencies are actually a contract, rather than a commodity and if society were to emphasize that point, it would remove the conceptual basis of our obsessive focus on units of currency as an object of veneration in themselves and replace it with the understanding that they are simply chits in a large social contract, whose value derives entirely from the connectivity and fungibility within the entire system. We respect and honor contracts, but we are far less inclined to obsess over them, in the way we treat objects. Then people will understand the actual value is in those very social relations which are the real foundation of the monetary system, but which are often neglected in favor of accumulating that notational wealth. So we would then seek to impart more value back into those interpersonal connections, as well as the natural environment, as a form of wealth storage, rather than drawing value out of those sources in order to put in a bank. Not only would this serve to make society and the environment more healthy, but it would result in a smaller and more stable financial system that would be better focused on the efficient transfer of value around the economy, rather than it being the bloated dream catcher that is currently a large tumor on the rest of the economy. Think of it as blood in the body. The head gets preference over the feet, but they both get what they need and no more.
Wishful thinking, I know, but this system has about reached the end of the rope for plan A and doesn't seem to have a plan B. When the do finally blow up the currency in trying to save the banks, local communities are going to start issuing their own currencies in order to get by and maybe they might be open to new ways of thinking.
Regards,
John M
Ps, Are you still resident in MD?