Financial Autonomous Zone
|
|
The "Financial Autonomous Zone" (FAZ) is an economic proposal by Domenico de Simone. It is exposed in his Un'altra moneta (http://it.geocities.com/domenicods/am/am.htm).
According to Open Economy (http://www.open-economy.org/index.php?newlang=eng) and The Transitioner (http://www.thetransitioner.org/wiki/tiki-index.php?page=FAZ) the FAZ isa plan for the construction of an alternative socio-economic model, which is to be founded upon the use of a particular currency ("Free Money" or "Community Gift Money"). Such a currency shall be issued and managed by this alternative network, and an initial allotment thereof shall be automatically credited to all participants as a citizen's communal dividend (different to a standard citizen's dividend and to a basic income because it comes from the communal seigniorage of the citizens, who own the money they use), something we may call "the token of existence". Money, in fact, possesses no intrinsic value; only in the social exchange does it acquire significance, hence our desire to design a new a form of money compatible with the exigencies of a modern community. We should like to see the FAZ being introduced as a legal entity, a body of rights based on equality. What Free Software is to copyright, the FAZ is to the banking network: just as the GNU GPL license legally sanctions the right to copy, thus the FAZ legally proclaims the abolition of monetary accumulation, usury, and hoarding, by means of a currency yielding a negative rate of interest, better known as demurrage (see Freigeld for more details). In other words, economic paralysis is to be defeated by the adoption of a perishable means of payment, a means of payment that should be resurrected in the form corresponding to its real nature: a mere symbol: the symbol accompanying the exchanges, tangible and otherwise, of the free community. We seek to emancipate ourselves from the grip of an exploitative banking system, which debilitates the economy by withdrawing from it enormous amounts of resources for the benefit of the absentee class and the corporate clients of such banks. Meanwhile, most of us are forced to struggle for the acquisition of mind-deadening jobs, in the midst of financial uncertainty caused by the dealings of these interests, without our knowing, without our say. We wish to rebel against this configuration of power: this is, in short, the objective of the FAZ. The project is addressed to all the components of the economy - from businesses and consumers to administrators, by way of doctors, artists and writers – to every single participant in the daily exchanges of life. It is addressed to them today, for immediate implementation – action ought to be taken now. The FAZ is an independent (but open) economic net desirous to improve the welfare of its participants, and such a goal is to be accomplished only in an environment in which the logic of accumulation is rejected, and in which money is divested from its proprietary attributes and commodified guise. Money would cease to represent a tool of economic violence and return to perform its symbolic duty, namely that of escorting the economic interactions of humans. Our guiding principles upon this economic net are equality, solidarity, and creative variety, though we do not exclude the notion of advantage, or motivation: abundance, as well as individual and aggregate well-being are legitimate stimuli for the growth of and participation in this project.