In practice
It's already happening
Technomutualism isn't a dream waiting for permission. Pieces of it are running today, from Swiss businesses to Kenyan villages to a pair of Australian towns. Here's where, and what it could grow into.
The BeanPool Project
BeanPool is free, open-source software that lets any community run its own local marketplace and mutual credit, on a server the community controls. It's the first project built from the ground up as technomutualism, and it's already in use by real communities in Australia.
A market on a map
Members post what they offer and what they need: eggs, lifts, repairs, lessons, tools, events. Everything sits on a map of the local area.
Beans, not bank money
Members pay each other in Beans, a mutual credit. Beans are created when one member pays another, and all balances add up to zero. No bank, no interest, no coin to speculate on.
Credit you earn
Spending room opens through real trading and grows with your record. Trading round in circles with the same partner stops counting, so trust can't be faked.
A common pot
A small fee on market sales and a slow fade on hoarded balances flow into a community fund, spent the way members decide.
Your keys, your account
Every member's account is a key on their own phone, backed up as 12 words. Payments are signed by the payer. Private chats are end-to-end encrypted.
Run it yourself
Any community can install it on its own server, with no dependence on our domain, our servers or our permission. Communities can connect and trade with each other.
It runs as an app on Android and iPhone, and in any web browser. A shared key vault, held by independent custodians in different countries, is being built so a lost phone never means a lost account.
Visit The BeanPool ProjectRead the code
BeanPool is one attempt, not the only one. Its code is free under the MIT licence precisely so that others can copy it, fork it and build something better. The idea matters more than any one project winning.
Others pointing the same way
WIR, Switzerland
Since 1934, tens of thousands of small businesses have given each other credit through a co-operative network. Studies found it gets busier in recessions, steadying the local economy just when banks pull back.
Sardex, Sardinia
Since 2009, thousands of businesses on an island hit hard by the financial crisis have traded on mutual credit instead of waiting for bank loans.
Sarafu Network, Kenya
Community currencies run by the non-profit Grassroots Economics help villages and informal settlements keep trading food, water and school fees when shillings run short.
Mondragon, Spain
Since 1956, a network of worker co-operatives in the Basque Country has grown to tens of thousands of workers, with its own bank, university and supermarkets.
Credit unions, worldwide
Banks owned by their members, with hundreds of millions of members across the world. Profit goes back to the members, not to outside shareholders.
Community land trusts
Since the first one in Georgia, USA, in 1969, communities have held land in common so homes on it stay affordable for good.
Time banks
An hour of help earns an hour back, whoever gives it. Used worldwide for childcare, elder care and odd jobs.
Wikipedia and Linux
Proof that people sharing work as equals can build things that beat the biggest companies, at global scale.
What it could change
Put those pieces together, with tools every community can own, and here is what becomes possible.
Food
Growers pre-sell their harvest to neighbours, swap surplus, and trade seedlings and labour, without a supermarket taking the margin. Communities that grow and trade their own food are harder to starve and harder to price-gouge.
Homes and land
Land held in common through land trusts, and recorded rights to use it, can keep homes out of the speculation game, so living somewhere doesn't mean paying rent to someone who never visits.
Work when money is short
In a recession, the work and the needs don't disappear; the money does. Mutual credit lets a plumber, a baker and a teacher keep trading with each other even when no one has cash, as WIR has shown for ninety years.
Places with unstable money
Where the national currency collapses or the banks are out of reach, a community's own credit, on phones people already have, keeps local trade alive. Unlike paper vouchers, signed digital credits can't be forged.
After disasters
When floods or fires hit, neighbours are the first responders. A ready-made local network to offer beds, tools, food and labour, and to keep track of who helped whom, turns goodwill into organised recovery.
Care
Care for children, the sick and the elderly is the biggest unpaid economy on earth. Recording it as real contribution, the way time banks do, makes it count.
Honest institutions
Clubs, co-ops, unions and town councils could run their money and votes on open, signed records. Not because people are bad, but because nobody should have to just take someone's word for it.
How to start
- Find your people. A handful of neighbours who trade, swap or help each other already: a market, a garden, a street, a club.
- Pick your tools. Try BeanPool, or any open tool that your community can own and run.
- Write your rules down. Who can join, how disputes are settled, how the common pot is spent. Publish them.
- Start small and real. Trade actual things that people actually need. Let it grow from there.
- Connect. Link up with other communities as equals, and share what you learn.