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Written on 07 April 2015.

Si può misurare la meritocrazia? Si può cercare di farlo costruendo un indicatore che sintetizza le varie dimensioni in cui si articola un sistema sociale ed economico orientato, appunto, alla promozione del merito. Rispetto agli altri paesi europei, i risultati dell’Italia sono sconfortanti.

La meritocrazia

Il concetto di “meritocrazia” è molto utilizzato nel dibattito pubblico, non solo dai giornalisti, ma anche da imprenditori, politici, insegnanti e qualche volta anche dai sindacalisti. Il termine è certamente sfuggente, controverso e si presta a numerose polemiche; tuttavia, almeno in linea di principio, tutti concordano che in Italia di “meritocrazia” ve ne sia poca.

Dal punto di vista economico, la carenza di merito si associa all’idea di un sistema poco efficiente, perché non consente un’allocazione ottimale delle risorse, cioè di far giungere nel posto giusto chi può svolgere meglio quel ruolo. Tutto ciò finisce per comprimere la mobilità sociale, come molti studi documentano, facendo dipendere gli esiti individuali più da caratteri ascrittivi (genere, luogo e famiglia di origine) che acquisitivi (impegno personale, competenze e capacità).

Chiunque provi, però, a proporre una misura della “meritocrazia” si avventura su un terreno minato. Da un lato, ognuno ha una propria idea di cosa si debba inserire in tale concetto; dall’altro, tecnicamente, si tratta in effetti di una grandezza complessa e multidimensionale. Inoltre, manca una vera e solida discussione pubblica su cosa sia il merito nella sua natura plurale (Kenneth. J. Arrow, Samuel Bowles e Steven. N. Durlauf: “Meritocracy and Economic Inequality”).

Qui, presentando in sintesi un lavoro più ampio, ci concentriamo sulle condizioni “meritocratiche” del sistema in cui si opera. Più nello specifico, per “meritocratico” intendiamo un contesto che consenta alle doti e alla progettualità di ciascuno, indipendentemente dalle condizioni di partenza e di appartenenza, di arrivare a rendere al meglio nel mercato del lavoro e nei luoghi di rappresentanza, in coerenza con il tema dell’uguaglianza delle opportunità (sviluppato, innanzitutto, da John Roemer).

Il nostro esercizio permette quantomeno di iniziare a dare un riscontro empirico e operativo a un concetto utilizzato spesso in modo vago e quindi anche strumentale.

La misura

La misura di meritocrazia da noi proposta (“meritometro”) corrisponde operativamente a un indicatore complesso che deriva dalla sintesi di varie dimensioni in cui si articola un sistema sociale ed economico orientato alla promozione del merito nell’accezione sopra indicata (si veda la tabella 1).
Per farlo, abbiamo adottato una procedura standardizzata e trasparente (che ha previsto anche un confronto tra esperti attraverso il metodo Delphi).

L’esito ha portato a identificare le dimensioni (connesse soprattutto alle opportunità di partenza e alla possibilità per tutti di esprimere liberamente le proprie potenzialità) e l’insieme di indicatori più idonei, in grado di rispettare alcuni requisiti: essere disponibili e riconosciuti, consentire confronti nel tempo e nello spazio, derivare da una fonte autorevole e continuamente aggiornata (in primis, Ocse e Eurostat). Si è poi proceduto a sintetizzare le dimensioni in un unico indicatore, previa standardizzazione e assegnando un peso omogeneo. Per verificare la robustezza, l’esito finale è stato poi messo a confronto con soluzioni diverse sul tipo di sintesi e si è verificato che ranking tra i paesi e distanze non dipendessero da ciascun singolo indicatore. In altre parole, la critica su un singolo indicatore e la sua eventuale esclusione non inficiano il risultato finale.
Maggiori dettagli sul nostro lavoro, comunque, si possono trovare qui.

Tabella 1 – Dimensioni e indicatori utilizzati per costruire il “meritometro”

Schermata 2015-04-02 alle 11.29.28
I risultati

In ambito europeo, considerando dodici realtà nazionali per le quali risultava disponibile il set completo dei dati, i paesi più “meritocratici” risultano essere quelli scandinavi, seguiti da Germania, Paesi Bassi, Gran Bretagna, Austria e Francia (grafico 1).
L’Italia è in ultima posizione, con un punteggio di 23,3 pari a meno della metà della Finlandia (67,7), paese europeo più virtuoso, ma anche inferiore di dieci punti alla Spagna (34,9) e perfino alla Polonia (38,8).

Nel complesso, la posizione del nostro paese nel raffronto europeo appare sconfortante. Siamo ultimi nella classifica generale, ma anche in quelle relative a quasi tutte le singole dimensioni.
Ne risulta la fotografia di una società sostanzialmente “opaca” nei meccanismi di selezione, con una bassa mobilità e un sistema di regole poco trasparente.

La procedura di misurazione qui proposta va intesa come un tentativo aperto alla discussione e a miglioramenti, che consente di avere un primo riscontro empirico della posizione relativa in cui si trova l’Italia rispetto ad altri paesi. La nostra convinzione, in ogni caso, è che monitorare questo indicatore aiuti a capire quanto siamo sulla buona strada nel cercare di diventare, nel complesso, un paese più efficiente, più competitivo a livello internazionale, più attrattivo per gli investimenti dall’estero, con meno diseguaglianze sociali e generazionali.

Grafico 1 – Il “meritometro” in dodici paesi europei (anno 2014)

Meritometro

Paolo Balduzzi, Giorgio Neglia e Alessandro Rosina -- LaVoce.info

Written on 03 April 2015.

Another unhelpful op-ed from the chairman of Roubini Global Economics, as he calls himself.(Guardian, 3 April). Again, he delved into European economics, a sector notoriously difficult to understand for Anglo-Saxon economists. After a nice but hardly original description of the economic situation in the Eurozone, Roubini concludes: "Germany needs to adopt policies – fiscal stimulus, higher spending on infrastructure and public investment, and more rapid wage growth – that would boost domestic spending and reduce the country’s external surplus. Unless, and until, Germany moves in this direction, no one should bet the farm on a more robust and sustained eurozone recovery. "

The idea behind this advice is that Germany's lavish spending would compensate thrift in Italy and Greece in order to combat deflationary tendencies in the Eurozone which block the growth needed to "grow" out of the heavy public and private debt load. Funnily, Roubini seems to recommend a SYRIZA-style government for Germany, raising wages, pensions, stopping privatizing, helping tax dodgers to get clean at almost no cost.... Maybe, Greece and Germany should swap governments in order to save the Eurozone: Merkel to Athens, Tsipras to Berlin.

Seriously, Roubini should think a bit harder before doling out advice. Germany's economy is running at full speed and employment. Where would it find the manpower for additional "spending on infrastructure and public investment" ? Import a few hundred thousands idle Italians or Greeks to repair Autobahns and modernize school buildings? Apart from such technical trivia, Roubini's advice boils down to inflating the Eurozone economy by making the "healthy" countries in the North as indebted as the "sick" countries in the South.

Mario Draghi's quantitative easing is already an important step toward "southernizing" the Eurozone. His scheme of flooding the eocnomy with cheap money is possibly counter-productive as it started at a moment when the Eurozone had already begun growing. Even without Draghi's scheme, credit is already dirt cheap in Euroland; any serious and trustworthy borrower has already been served. Hopefully, Draghi recognizes that he started the scheme too late and stops it before it can do serious harm. Italians are already suspiciously jubilant about the record low "spread" they owe to their co-national Draghi.

Heinrich von Loesch

Written on 30 March 2015.

As Greece is struggling to maintain its membership in the Eurozone despite being close to default, many economists recommended the introduction of scrip, an alternative currency for local use only, a kind of Greek Euro. This parallel currency would allow the state to pay its public servants and meet its national obligations with the (vague) promise of converting the alternative currency to Euros after public finances have recovered. How realistic is this proposal? Scrip has been used on many occasions to overcome shortage of cash, for instance during and after the American Civil War by impoverished Confederate states. Raúl Carrillo took a look at the fate of modern alternative currencies.

Death. Darkness. Deceit.

If you've been following recent headlines about alternative currencies, you probably find them ... villainous. Last month, a Manhattan jury found Ross Ulbricht, otherwise known by the pseudonym “Dread Pirate Roberts,” guilty on seven counts, including narcotics distribution, identity fraud, and money laundering. Ulbricht also faces charges in Maryland regarding murder for hire.

Ulbricht committed his crimes while operating Silk Road, a massive online drugs marketplace. The website, hidden by the anonymity software Tor, allowed anyone to purchase not only drugs, but weapons and counterfeiting services via the cryptocurrency and payments system known as Bitcoin.

Most alternative currency projects are not indexed to murder and mayhem.

Federal prosecutors didn’t have anything positive to say about Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies more generally. Understandable. Cryptocurrencies—so named because they use encryption to secure transactions and circulate units—have served a central role in digital black markets.

But the world of alternative currencies—those not issued by nation-states—is much deeper and broader than cryptocurrencies or Bitcoin, and it is not limited to unsavory activity. Indeed, people around the world have long used alternative currencies to empower their communities in the face of austerity and financial crisis. They are now being established in gritty South London, Kenyan slums, and Native American reservations. How do they help?

Money, credit, and currency

To understand the how and why of alternative currencies, it is helpful to know the history of money and the history of credit more generally. Today, most purchasing power—the ability to buy goods and services—is created by governments issuing money and licensed banks making loans. Yet long before the time of modern money, credit existed in the form of people exchanging IOUs without governments and banks acting as middlemen.

Growth in the use of alternative currencies might pressure governments and banks to be better financial stewards.

To better illustrate this distinction, Wartburg College economics professor Scott Fullwilerasks us think of the use of sovereign currencies (like the U.S. dollar) as a “vertical approach” to funding economies. Governments and banks put cash into our hands and loans into our bank accounts. Simultaneously, the government requires us all to pay taxes, thus driving demand for its currency, which we need to avoid legal trouble.

At the end of the day, for better or worse, most money circulation in the present is backed by guns, courts, and jails. By contrast, Fullwiler sees alternative currencies as representing a “horizontal approach,” in which groups within the public generate, expand, and contract purchasing power. The cooperation required to make a horizontal system work can be facilitated by cryptography, as in the case of Bitcoin, or it can be generated by custom, law, or simply a high level of mutual trust.

With this distinction in mind, it's easy to see how alternative currencies, especially cryptocurrencies, are attractive to people seeking to avoid or subvert governments. Ross Ulbricht, like many other Bitcoin enthusiasts, is a self-described libertarian and fan of the right-wing Austrian School of Economics, as detailed on page 26 of the criminal complaint against him. Silk Road was, if nothing else, a paragon of deregulation. A cryptocurrency like Bitcoin is an intuitive part of the network.

Yet dread pirates are not the only people who benefit from financial privacy or access to new sources of funding. Many low-income people struggle to access credit, and in an increasingly surveilled digital world, they are often treated unjustly when doing so. Interacting with most financial services providers means interacting with Big Data in one way or another, which can have harmful consequences. Just last month, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) sued a data broker for allegedly selling payday loan applications to marketers, ad agencies, and far more nefarious clients. These loan applications, which included bank account information, Social Security numbers, credit card history, and other forms of personal financial data, belonged mostly to low-income people. The worst part is, the lawsuit offers only a glimpse into the dark side of financial surveillance.

The world of alternative currencies has been portrayed by the media as a sinister realm, defined by privileged access to complex technology for concentrating wealth. But such a picture is incomplete.

It is true that Bitcoin has done little to promote economic justice in any authentically democratic sense. But other currencies have been established for those who either don’t have enough traditional money, can't access enough, or don't want to ask for a loan because of privacy or security reasons.

Most importantly, alternative currencies can and are helping communities that have the physical resources for economic activity, yet lack money to facilitate the exchange of goods and services. At the very least, growth in the use of alternative currencies, as competitive or relatively unmonitored economic activity, might pressure governments and banks to be better financial stewards and provide for the basic needs of the public.

: Brixton's own colorful currency. Photo courtesy of Brixton pound.

Local loyalty: The Brixton Pound

“When people think of Brixton, too many think of gangs, drugs, and riots. We’re trying to turn that notion on its head.” That’s what Tom Shakhli, the general manager of the Brixton Pound, told me when I visited the team office at Lambeth Town Hall. A storied district in the middle of South London, Brixton is indeed an atypical home for a thriving local currency. As Tom notes, other local currencies in the U.K. are succeeding in suburban neighborhoods full of “hippies.” By contrast, the 5-year-old Brixton Pound is humming in one of the U.K.’s most diverse and dynamic neighborhoods, the heart of Black Britain, heavily hit by the recession.

Unlike Bitcoin, the Brixton Pound is a “complementary currency”: It’s not meant to subvert the national currency nor dethrone pounds sterling. Indeed, the Brixton Pound is officially both pegged and backed by pounds sterling at a 1:1 ratio. There is no issuer, per se. Rather, residents can exchange £ for B£ at various shops and public places across the neighborhood. Because the Brixton Pound organization isn't making loans, the U.K. Financial Conduct Authority treats the currency as a “voucher scheme,” and thus the team avoids entanglement in the legal morass that plagues small lenders and other financial services providers.

: Forty percent of local businesses now accept the Brixton pound. Photo courtesy of Brixton pound.

At this stage, the goal of the Brixton Pound isn't credit or value creation. So why use it? When the Brixton Pound launched, one economist accused the project of “not achieving anything meaningful” and interfering with already-existing existing incentives to buy cheap goods from outside Brixton.Admittedly, the main reason to use the Brixton Pound is precisely because it empowers local businesses and traders in the neighborhood, 40 percent of which now accept the currency, Shakhli told me. Since you can only spend Brixton Pounds in Brixton, the currency stays around, at least until it is exchanged, maintaining the vibrancy of the neighborhood's world-famous markets and entrepreneurs.

Some government employees receive portions of their salaries in electronic Brixton Pounds.

“We don’t want to be part of Clonetown Britain,” Shakhli and his team of employees and volunteers are fond of saying. That is, they don’t want people to get off the Underground and run into the same fast-food joints and convenience stores that pop up in most other London neighborhoods. This is clearly a sentiment shared by many local businesses. In fact, many of them now offer discounts simply for using B£ instead of £. In return, they receive free advertising from the Brixton Pound organization, in addition to other benefits.

One of those perks is that it’s incredibly convenient. In 2011, the Brixton Pound followed the model of several services in sub-Saharan Africa by adopting pay-by-text—Shakhli estimates that 95 percent of transactions now occur with e-currency via SMS. The businesses pay lower transaction fees for this service than they normally do to debit card and credit card providers. The fees are then collected and pooled in a micro-grant scheme—money that will soon be reinvested in the community.

Without a doubt, the paper version of the Brixton Pound looks amazing: With pictures of locals like black feminist activist Olive Morris, the Miami Heat’s Luol Deng, and David Bowie, it’s the coolest currency I’ve ever seen. But texting is as easy as using a credit card, with lower fees, so many people go for the digital option.

: David Bowie graces the 10-pound note. Photo courtesy of Brixton pound.

As for security and privacy, the Brixton Pound stacks up fairly well. The paper currency contains similar security features to pounds sterling, which help prevent counterfeiting. Furthermore, when you exchange sterling for Brixton Pounds, the sterling goes into a local credit union, which is not only far more likely to lend to small businesses than a conventional bank, but succeeds at the expense of predatory and invasive payday lenders, which are becoming increasingly ubiquitous in low-income London. On a macro level, as the link between the Brixton Pound and the local credit union is strengthened, it is less likely that the pounds of Brixton residents will be subject to the hazards and punishment that come from dealing with unseemly lenders.

At this stage, the Brixton Pound is working for local economic empowerment. Shakhli says the currency succeeds because it is easily understood. The local government also supports it—indeed, some government employees receive portions of their salaries in electronic Brixton Pounds, and some business pay local taxes with them.

The future of the Brixton Pound may become more complicated: they plan to get their first ATM soon, thus stepping further into the realm of more traditional financial services providers. But, for now at least, Shakhli can confidently say that the Brixton Pound is both helping the neighborhood and encouraging people to reflect on crucial modern questions: “What is money, anyway? Where does it come from?”

: Mombasa, Kenya. Photo courtesy of Bangla-Pesa.

Creating credit: Koru Kenya

Shakhli’s questions have long revolved in the mind of Will Ruddick, an American physicist who began his career studying high-energy particles but now works for Koru Kenya, a community-development organization headquartered in Mombasa.

Some officials hope the currencies will provide a platform to finally tax the “informal sector.”

Like the Brixton Pound team, Koru Kenya builds currencies that complement sovereign ones (although the organization now runs several “community currencies” in different locations across the country). Yet the scenarios could not be more different. Brixton is an admittedly hard neighborhood in a massive metro, but in the slums and villages where Ruddick and his Kenyan colleagues work, needs are more basic. As Ruddick put it when I spoke to him, people in Mombasa are not “struggling” in the same sense that they are in U.K. or the U.S.: “People here are starving."

Accordingly, Koru Kenya’s currencies do something the Brixton Pound does not: They create credit where there is not enough. Interest free. When Ruddick arrived in Kenya from the United States five years ago, his co-founders introduced him to a world of both waste and opportunity. There were people who could work but weren’t participating in the local economy. There were plenty of goods, but they couldn’t be bought or sold. All for lack of particular pieces of paper and metal.

“If I have forks and you have spoons but we can’t engage in trade just because we don’t have money, I consider this is a human rights violation,” Ruddick asserts.

: Shop owners in the Bangladesh neighborhood accept Bangla-Pesas. Photo courtesy of Bangla-Pesa.

That may sound intense to some readers, but this is what happens when a nation’s currency doesn’t reach all of its people: The public is separated from its own potential for physical abundance by mere lack of legal tender. Ruddick’s training as a physicist leads him to compartmentalize systems, and accordingly he sees lack of credit as a glaring yet solvable inefficiency in the economic machine: “When you turn one knob, the monetary system, everything changes.”

Ruddick envisions a network of interlocking local currencies contributing to a more distributed banking system.

Ruddick and his colleagues began turning knobs by issuing a new community currency, the Eco-Pesa, into three villages in the Kongowea Location on Mombasa’s north coast. Businesses agreed to trade with the paper currency, and community members could earn extra by taking part in monthly service projects. Every month, people could exchange the vouchers for Kenyan shillings with the Green World Campaign, an anti-poverty environmentalist group.

In 2012, the Koru Kenya team took the concept one step further and issued the Bangla-Pesa in Bangladesh, one of Mombasa’s worst slums. Residents adopted the currency quickly, with many local business groups agreeing to become issuers, handing out the paper from community centers, health clinics, and schools. The network expanded based on trust: All you need to receive Bangla-Pesa free of charge is four guarantors within the network will who vouch for you. Part of your grant is placed in an actual network trust, which is used for administration, marketing, and community programs such as health care for elderly. Then you’re on your way.

In May 2013, the Bangla-Pesa went official. About 200 participating businesses, 75 percent of them owned by women, received currency grants. The organization’s definition of a “business” is expansive: An individual teacher, sex worker, nurse, or farmer can qualify. This inclusivity has repeatedly borne results. Since the launch, Ruddick estimates that total sales in the neighborhood of 8,000 have risen by 20 percent. Considering the financial paralysis of Bangladesh beforehand, this growth is tremendous. Still, some academics and analysts are cautious. The Brookings Institution, for example, wonders if the Bangla-Pesa might weaken linkages to the national economy or drive out “good money.”

For the most part, the national government and the banks haven’t stood in the way of Koru Kenya's success ... except for one small hiccup. On May 29 of 2013, Ruddick and some of his associates were locked in federal prison. Terrorism had struck, and Ruddick was lumped in with a secessionist movement in the resulting national security sweep. He and his associates had to make the case that the Bangla-Pesa was not meant to subvert the state nor destroy the Kenyan shilling. Indeed, the community currency is what Post-Keynesian and Institutionalist economists often refer to as an “automatic stabilizer”: When people can't get enough shillings, they use Bangla-Pesa, but when the national economy is roaring, they inevitably switch back to using shillings.

: Local outreach groups spread the word about the alternative currency. Photo courtesy of Bangla-Pesa.

Ruddick is adamant that, for now at least, Koru Kenya’s currencies will continue to be pegged to the shilling at a 1:1 ratio. Supporting the strength of this case, hundreds of academics from the community currency movement, friends, and eventually the Kenyan attorney general rallied behind Ruddick and his associates. They were released within a few days and charges were finally dropped in August.

Now, Koru Kenya enjoys more support than ever, and faces few of the regulatory hurdles that often stifle local currency projects in the North Atlantic. Ruddick will soon become a Kenyan citizen like his wife and daughter, and the organization is sharing its experience in implementing community currency programs across the continent, with a specific focus on gender equality and women's empowerment. The group will soon rebrand as Grassroots Economics, signifying their growth into a full-fledged international foundation. Eventually they'll go digital, with the localized nature of each currency serving as a buffer against fraud and speculation.

Perhaps more importantly, Ruddick has already talked with other African governments about supporting local currencies. Some officials hope that these currencies will provide a platform to finally tax the “informal sector” (Ruddick estimates anywhere from 50 percent to 80 percent of people living in Africa don't pay taxes at all). If the local currencies indeed become accepted for national tax purposes, currencies like the Bangla-Pesa will begin to blur the aforementioned line between simple “credit” and state-sponsored “money.”

Ruddick welcomes that prospect. He envisions a network of interlocking local currencies contributing to a more distributed banking system and a more democratic monetary system.

“Money is what we make it. We should be asking, ‘What is real value?’” he says. The implications of the vision are enormous: “People won’t have to go into debt to the IMF or microfinance if they can just create their own community currencies.”

Demanding dignity: Mazacoin

On the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation on the South Dakota-Nebraska border, a small team of developers has been attempting to achieve not only economic growth, but economic self-determination—via the Internet. It’s a plan created out of a desperate situation. According to Oglala Sioux Lakota Housing Director Jim Berg, about 40,000 members of the tribe live on the reservation; 80 percent are unemployed and 49 percent live below the poverty line. Furthermore, the tribe has felt the wrath of austerity, facing million-dollar budget cuts from the U.S. federal government, which will worsen housing, education, and health services. It seems that if anyone could benefit from financial innovation in the painful absence of the U.S. dollar, it would be the people of Pine Ridge.

Fortunately, the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 with the U.S. federal government says nothing about the tribe relinquishing its right to maintain a currency. The Oglala Sioux can thus attempt to go beyond a complementary currency—like the ones in Brixton and Mombasa—and create a limited sovereign currency, to eventually substitute for the dollar.

It’s easier said than done.

When Payu Harris, himself of Cheyenne-Lakota heritage, started Mazacoin a year ago, it was marketed as a cure-all. At the peak of popularity, Harris told Forbes magazine that the cryptocurrency could become the “new buffalo,” the foundation of a new economy. Within weeks, Mazacoin was all over the financial press. Although perhaps well-intentioned, the media attention backfired. Investors on online coin exchanges flocked at first, and then left when it became apparent that the currency didn't have quite the backing from the tribal government that some thought it did. As a result, some cryptocurrency investorsconsidered—and still consider—Mazacoin to be a scam. From the perspective of the team that’s building the currency, however, things have cooled down, and they are preparing for a slower, less precarious hike.

Harris has indicated that he is working closely and productively with tribal officials.

Some of the volatility is to be expected. Operationally, Mazacoin works very differently from the Brixton Pound or the Bangla-Pesa. It is neither backed by the U.S. dollar nor pegged to it. There is no central issuer. Instead, Mazacoin is based on the software behind Bitcoin. Even though it is ostensibly used for different purposes, the currencies bear many technical similarities. As the website states, “at its core, Mazacoin is a software program that anyone can run on their PC or Android device, and some rules for computers to communicate.”

People send Mazacoins to each other’s (often encrypted) electronic “wallets.” To do so, all you need to know is the recipient’s address, unlimited numbers of which are generated freely with the click of a button. The addresses aren’t available unless they are shared by the recipient, and users are encouraged to use a new address each time they want to receive Mazacoins. This process purportedly maintains privacy and security without the need for a bank, a feature that is important to the Mazacoin team, just like it is paramount to other cryptocurrency organizations.

As opposed to the more centralized monetary policy of the Bangla-Pesa, which essentially bases supply on real labor, Mazacoin uses the “mining” protocol of Bitcoin. Some users equip their computers to solve codes that are necessary for the upkeep of Mazacoin’s digital ledger and payment system. When the computers solve the codes, the users—or “miners”—are rewarded with Mazacoins for their service. They can then spend Mazacoins into the economy.

Unlike Bitcoin, however, Payu and his team have “premined” 20 million coins to be held in a trust by the future Mazacoin Development Foundation, on behalf of the Oglala Sioux tribe. The trust is essentially a digital sovereign wealth fund, the value of which will be determined by the future performance of Mazacoin on the reservation, with neighboring retailers, and in investment on the cryptocurrency markets. Additionally, the coins in the trust can be used for price stabilization and distribution. The legal details of the trust are a bit murky; it is unclear how the coins would be allocated and how much of a share the Mazacoin development team might get.

Although Mazacoin isn’t worth much now, the founder’s hopes spring eternal. Perhaps most importantly, if Mazacoin ever does take off, the funds in the trust might be exempt from U.S. taxation. If retailers that now accept Bitcoin, like Overstock.com and Dell, ever accept Mazacoin, buyers could pay a lower tax rate to the Oglala Sioux than they would to the U.S. government. Although U.S. regulators would likely wade in with respect to nontribal transactions, there is potentially enormous upside.

This is all quite complicated. On a fundamental level, a digital cryptocurrency isn’t as easy to comprehend as a paper voucher. For better or worse, many people on the reservation, including tribal officials, are understandably hesitant to embrace the idea. A Mashabledocumentary from last fall depicts some of the tension between Harris and residents on the reservation. Although the permission to create the currency doesn't seem to be an issue, trust is, and in addition to the confidence of the public, Harris and his team need legal recognition from the tribal government if Mazacoin is indeed to take on aspects of a sovereign currency. Recently, however, Harris has indicated that he is working closely and productively with tribal officials.

Regardless of whether Mazacoin succeeds in its ostensible goal to become the crux of a new economy for Pine Ridge, or merely becomes a source of speculation and individual profit-seeking, it’s difficult not to see economic self-determination as a worthy goal. The reservation is in a perpetual depression. That it should have the ability to create financial wealth for its own people, especially when the United States isn’t exactly flooding the badlands with greenbacks, seems a tenet of fundamental justice.

Innovation vs. inequality

In their own different ways, The Brixton Pound, Koru Kenya, and Mazacoin are all attempting to achieve a common goal: empowering people in a monetarily unequal world, from the bottom up. In an age when governments and banks aren’t always the best stewards of communities’ financial growth, security, or privacy, people deserve the ability to provide for themselves. Collaborative innovations around the world, especially within impoverished communities of color, show reasons for cautious optimism. Most alternative currency projects are not indexed to murder and mayhem.

Alternative currencies have limited scope. Because they’re not issued by powerful governments, their abilities are inherently narrowed. Perhaps, in an ideal world, through either regulation or direct provisioning, sovereign governments and their agents would guarantee their people enough money to live apart from financial predators, support their own neighborhoods, participate in commerce, and maintain basic dignity.

But meanwhile, some brave people are pointing new ways forward and creating pressure from below. There will always be mistakes and mishaps. There will always be greedy pirates. But there are also people trying to create new treasure and put it in the hands of those who don’t have enough.

Correction: This article originally claimed, incorrectly, that the Brixton Pound could not be exchanged for pounds sterling. The text has been corrected.

Raúl Carrillo wrote this article for Yes! Magazine. Raúl is a student at Columbia Law and a graduate of Harvard College. He is a co-organizer for The Modern Money Network (MMN), an interdisciplinary educational initiative for understanding money, finance, law, and the economy. Follow him at@ramencents.

Written on 01 April 2015.

Taking a page from the Soviet script of 1968 Czechoslovakia, Saudi Arabia has come to the fraternal aid of Yemeni President Rabbo Mansour Hadi by starting to bomb Sana and massing 150,000 troops on the frontier and war ships off the coast. On the eve of what should be called Saudi aggression, a letter of President Hadi asking for the brotherly help of Saudi Arabia, the Gulf Cooperation Council and others was written. The ink was hardly dry on the message calling to defend security and stability of the region and to counter the threat to world peace that fighter jets were in the air. Messages of support came from Turkey and Pakistan. The USA promised intelligence and logistic support.

One might think that there had been some military planning prior to receiving President Hadi's letter unless one believes that the Saudi army is always on ready alert and can plan and stage a major offensive in a couple of hours. President Hadi is now living safely in Saudi Arabia, so we may never know the exact timing of the appeal and military action.

President Hadi, although weakened by revolts, has a detailed knowledge of both internal and regional politics, having been Vice President during the last segment of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh's 30years rule. Saleh had officially left power after riots in 2011 but stayed in the country and kept in touch with his supporters. Part of the current struggle can be seen as a conflict between the supporters o the two men. However, that would be to give too much importance to internal political life, overlooking the regional political dimensions as well as the highly fragmented nature of Yemeni society.

The foundations of Yemeni society are tribal-clanic. The closest equivalent is Somalia. When the tribal networks break down, people fall back to their extended family-clan for support. There is also a religious divide between Sunnis (65%) and Shi'its (35%), but sectarian solidarity only complements tribal-clanic structures. Sectarian differences do not create the factions.

Regionally, Saudi Arabia and the League of Arab States support Sunni factions, and Iran the Shi'ite, although the Shi'ite in Yemen do not follow the same Shi'ite traditions as those in Iran. Religious differences play some role, but one must not exaggerate theological divisions which few people understand or care about.

The tribal-clanic divisions are made stronger by the sociological-demographic make up of the country of 26 million people. Many Yemeni are young, uneducated even in traditional Islamic knowledge, unemployed and with few hopes of future employment. Subsistence agriculture is declining with real problems of water resources. Thus many young people cross into Saudi Arabia looking for work. They are considered “illegal immigrants” although national rather than tribal boundaries have little meaning. Likewise for trade, what Saudi Arabia considers as smuggling, Yemeni consider as traditional trade routes.

To continue the 1968 Czechoslovakia analogy, where the purity of Marxist doctrine was less a Soviet priority than the fear that any reform ideas might spread to other countries, including the USSR, so the worry of Saudi Arabia is not that Shi'ite theology might somehow corrupt the purity of Saudi's official religious doctrine, but that the idea that people might organize to promote their interests might cross frontiers. Likewise, Iran would like to see the Shi'ite Houthi movement grow stronger, but Iran does not control the movement.

Ultimately, the 1968 Soviet troop movements did not keep Czechoslovakia part of the Marxist empire but rather drove many to start asking questions about the relation between Marxist thought and Soviet practice. By the early 1970s, East-West negotiations started which led to the Helsinki Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe. Likewise, it is not clear that Saudi air power will lead to a more consensual, integrated society in Yemen. The disintegration of the political structures in Somalia since 1991 shows us that tribal societies can continue to function even without a central national government. But the Somalia “solution” may not be a model desired for Yemen.

There have been calls for “negotiations” and “political solutions” in the Yemeni conflict, though it is unclear what there is to negotiate or what political solutions mean. The further disintegration of an already highly fractured Yemen is dangerous. More foreign fighter jets and land troops may not lead to a Yemeni society based on at least minimal forms of cooperation.

René Wadlow, president and a U.N. representative (Geneva) of the

Association of World Citizens and editor of Transnational Perspectives

Written on 30 March 2015.

"In 200 years, most people will be brown", said Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, the eminent Stanford geneticist. What he hinted at is the accelerating process of human globalization: the mixing of all peoples in the course of massive migration streams. As the end result of this relentless moving and mixing, brown will become the dominant skin color worldwide, he said. Gradual change is already evident in the United States where an estimated third of all who consider themselves as non-Hispanic whites are said to have a mixed ancestry, sometimes unbeknownst to them*).

What does that mean for Germany? Germany will in all likelihood continue to absorb millions of immigrants. These newcomers will increasingly hail from non-European countries and most of them will physically distinguish themselves from the local population.

The visible impact of immigration has started very slowly in Germany because up to now, most migrants came from other European countries and the neighboring Mediterranean. Due to demographic trends, however, more newcomers will in future arrive from sub-Saharan Africa, China and the Indian subcontinent.

If current immigration trends continue or accelerate, the majority of big city dwellers in Germany will be migrants or first generation descendants of immigrants. Already now, in cities such as Munich every fourth person**) is a foreigner. Only in the countryside, "old" Germans will retain the majority. On average, the "new" Germans will be overwhelmingly young, the "old" Germans old. As owners of most real estate, intellectual property and capital goods, many "old" Germans will find themselves in a comfortable social position whereas most immigrants will struggle to achieve their "German Dream" and compete with the local blue collar class.

Due to demand of employers and demographic pressure from outside, immigration will continue to be strong. In combination with the typically high fertility of the immigrants, newcomers will easily make up for any natural decrease of the "old" German population. The overall population size of Germany is therefore likely to remain at or exceed the current level of some 80 million, depending, of course, on the country's relative economic performance.

Although massive immigration is needed to sustain Germany's economy, it will also entail some unpleasant trends such as social disequilibria, new poverty and crime***). The myriad of small family homes ("Eigenheim") in suburbs, exurbs and the countryside are at risk; the image of a Shangri-La of safety which Germany still presents will suffer⁸⁸⁸⁸⁾. The country will begin to resemble the United States in showing a combination of developed and developing country aspects. Gated communities will spring up and high-risers will become fashionable. Cities will need more effective policies to prevent the appearance of poor ethnic ghettos.

The immigrants will not only offer cultural variety but also import their economic traditions. Informal Chinese and Bangladeshi credit unions will serve to launch new commercial ventures; Arab and Persian style suq markets will extend the scope of traditional German flea markets. Fiscal police will have a hard time tracking and reining in the new informal economy with its often mafia-like structures. However, this informal economy will serve as a launching pad for new economic ventures; it will also supplement the traditional economy with creativity and services.

Also, the immigrants will import their religion. The percentage of Muslims in Europe's population, for instance, is likely to almost double by 2050. "Globally, Muslims have the highest fertility rate, an average of 3.1 children per woman – well above replacement level (2.1), the minimum typically needed to maintain a stable population. In Europe, for instance, the Muslim share of the population is expected to increase from 5.9% in 2010 to 10.2% in 2050 when migration is taken into account along with other demographic factors that are driving population change, such as fertility rates and age. Without migration, the Muslim share of Europe’s population in 2050 is projected to be nearly two percentage points lower (8.4%)." (Pew Research Center) In 2010, Germany's Muslim population was calculated at about 5 percent of the total. If the Pew Center's projections prove accurate, the share would rise to nearly 10 percent by 2050.

Although, in the very long run, the "old" Germans will become a minority in their country, there is no danger that the "typically German" mentality and style of life will disappear. Although English would become the second language, dominating not only science and business. Beer steins, handshakes and German life style will be adopted by most newcomers eager to integrate and match local requirements.

The average German citizen in 2050 might be of slightly darker complexion but in all likelihood he or she will be as "teutonic" as his or her predecessors or ancestors. Although the country will become more colorful, many "old" German traditions will survive, if only as tourism attractions.

Heinrich von Loesch

*) A recent exhibit in Milan, Italy, of Civil War photographs released by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and the Library of Congress shows several groups of freed slaves fighting for the Union. As far as the black & white pictures can tell, the average complexion of these volunteers appears much darker than that of today's African American population

. Keith Richburg, the former Africa correspondent of the Washington Post, described how he felt awkward for being, as an African American, of much lighter complexion than the Africans -- an experience also made by other American travellers.

**) Adding foreign born citizens with a German passport brings the share of "people with a migration background" to 40 percent of Munich's 1.5 million population. Within 10-15 years the "old" Germans could become a minority in Munich.

***) A spate of events in traditionally xenophobic northern Italy provoked calls for closing the borders and Mussolini's return. In a poor quarter of Turin, three African migrants staying in an occupied building kidnapped a handicapped Italian girl, kept and raped her for several days. In a train outside Milan, when a ticket inspector wanted to see the tickets of a group of young Latinos, they pulled a machete, chopped his arm off and wounded another rail employee.

****) ....massive migration flows that have brought to its knees a city (Ventimiglia, Italy) now pervaded by degradation, with camps on the beach, along the river and the railway; but also drunk foreigners who harass passers-by and a surge in widespread crime: primarily, burglaries and damage to stores and private homes.

It is obvious that clandestine immigrants represent a mixture of the best and the worst, the elite and the hoodlums. Italy, a country well known for its weak law enforcement, its superficial border controls and its mafia-run refugee reception centers pays a price by attracting ordinary criminals as well as organized crime such as the Latin youth maras.

Update

The German microcensus 2014 revealed that in 2014, 16.4 million people of foreign origin were living in Germany. Compared to 2011, the number of immigrants had risen by 1 million to 10.9 million. Over the same period the local (non-immigrant) population decreased by 885,000. For 2015, immigration is expected to exceed previous levels. By 2030, Munich can be expected to become Germany's first big city with a population majority of foreign origin.

Update: By mid-2017, according to official statistics 43.3% of the population of Munich was either of foreign nationality (28.3%) or of foreign origin (15%).

These figures debunk popular fears that Germany's population is shrinking. The Berlin Institute for Population and Development is notorious among those (probably more politically than scientifically motivated) institutions which inspired popular media such as Der Spiegel to spread the "Demokalypse" story that Germany's was caught in an irreversible long term trend toward depopulation which would shrink the economy, as well.

Clearly, none of this is plausible. In 2015, Germany is Europe's most powerful magnet for immigrants. Immigration policies and logistic issues are currently among Germany's most pressing problems.

Update II

Italy also expects rapid growth of its population of foreign origins. By 2040, every third citizen below age 40 will be of foreign origin, according to the official Bureau of Statistics ISTAT:

"Eurostat data indicate that Italy will "import" between 300 and 400 thousand people per year until at least 2040. These will be years in which the number of foreign citizens or citizens of foreign origin will rise from the current 8.3% to just under a third of the entire Italian population. One out of every two Italian children and one out of every three citizens under 40 years of age will be foreigners or of foreign origin. Today, an elementary class composed only of children of foreign origin is news: tomorrow it will be almost the norm." (L'Espresso)

Update III : The German labor market

When coming to Germany from abroad, you will notice how many simple activities are carried out by "old Germans" (without a visible migration background). Sales assistants, gas station attendants, gardeners, parking ticket clerks, even construction workers usually seem to be of old German origin. Many of them are perhaps integrated foreigners from other parts of Europe who have assimilated themselves in the first or second generation and whose origins can at best be recognised by their name or a slight accent.

This raises the question of who is a foreigner these days. In view of the immigration of Asians, Arabs and Africans, newcomers from Europe and North America have increasingly lost their role as a foreigner. A Bulgarian or Canadian may seem less foreign in Germany today than a Frisian in Bavaria 200 years ago.

This phenomenon of the integration of a wave of old immigrants by the arrival of new immigrants is well known in US history. When Irish and Germans arrived in masses around the middle of the 19th century, they were rejected as foreigners and considered responsible for the allegedly rising crime rate. When Italians ("dagos"), Poles, Russians and Latinos later arrived, the Irish and Germans were promoted to the rank of full-fledged Americans. Later, the descendants of Italians, Poles, Russians and the first Latinos also became full blooded Americans.

The strong Black Lives Matter movement shows that the U.S. is finally ready to better integrate the "blacks", recognizing them as one of the oldest parts of the American population. It has become fashionable -- at least among the lighter skinned, upper class "blacks"-- to emphasize their African origin with the pride typical of descendants of Irish, Polish or Russian immigrants. With their 15 percent share of total population, the African Americans ensure that the United States remains an anglophone, anglo-cultured country resisting the rising pressure of the Hispanics.

In Germany Italians, French, Greeks, Portuguese, Americans now integrate so seamlessly (with at least the West German population) that one can hardly speak of them as foreigners any more. Eastern Europeans are also increasingly accepted as part of the local population. The same applies anyway to the descendants of the Turkish generation of guest workers.

Eastern Germany lacks a few decades of cohabitation with immigrants. Apart from Soviets and a few Vietnamese there were few foreigners in the GDR. Therefore, what has been said only partially applies to East Germany.

However, in Germany, Asians, Arabs and Africans are still considered strangers. Too many of them arrived in too short a time span. Migrants with evil intentions -- Islamists mainly from eastern Arabia and petty criminals from North Africa -- serve the "popular" assumption that refugees are to blame for an allegedly rising crime rate.

There are still waves of immigration that have not reached Germany. These include the Latinos in Spain with the petty criminality of Peruvians and Colombians; the Somalis, Ethiopians and Uyghurs in Turkey; the Ukrainians in Poland; the Caribbeans in Great Britain and France; Indonesians in the Netherlands; the Mozambicans and Angolans in Portugal; the medical doctors from Pakistan and Iran in the US.

Nor does Germany have a North-South problem, as it characterizes Italy where a considerable part of the northern population regards the Italians of the south as foreigners and detests them. Logically, this regional differentiation leads to rejecting all southern foreigners as "even worse" than the despised compatriots from the mezzogiorno.

Consequently, northern Italians are often accused of racism; some even seem to be proud of it. The political consequences of this attitude can be seen in recent election results. Germany must be careful that similar election results in eastern German länder do not provoke blanket judgements on both sides that could weaken the sense of national unity.

After Poland, Germany is the country with the strongest immigration in Europe. A country with a powerful economy that is still flourishing despite COVD 19 and the progress of concreting, it attracts immigrants -- both desirable and undesirable -- although its rather difficult language is of little international importance:. Whether the "old Germans" like it or not, immigrants will increasingly replace them in the simple professions and also above.

Africans in agriculture, as construction workers and in supermarkets, as security guards and (as soon as they are naturalized) as policemen and soldiers; Iraqis as hairdressers; Syrians as bakers and metal workers; Turkish women with headscarves as bus drivers; Afghans and Arabs in retail; Moroccans and Vietnamese with "French" restaurants, Croats and Albanians with "Italian" restaurants and bars; Indians with pharmacies and pizzerias; Chinese and Iranians with 1-euro shops; Nigerians in the red-light trade; Georgians and Chechens in dubious activities - foreigners of the first and second generation will change Germany's economy and labor market more and more visibly, as has long been the case in other countries. Belgium, France, Great Britain and Italy, but also Switzerland and the Netherlands are showing where the trend is heading.

Riots

The growing ethnic diversity which is causing problems in French, Belgian and British cities is also starting to cause friction in Germany. Stuttgart, a rather boring industrial city in the Southwest, is the theatre of regular bouts of saturday night fever expressing itself in drunken male crowds seeking fights with police, sometimes even destroying property and looting. Limited data showed that half of the young men were foreigners; the other half Geman citizens with partly foreign background.

The violence may have been caused by TV images of Floyd-type "defund police" demos in the U.S., Britain and France as well as boredom, the feeling of being discriminated at as foreigners, and by Covid-induced economic and social problems. Local police, showing presence instead of avoiding confrontation with aggressive drunk youngsters, could be part of the lesson Germany is about to learn.

The Mannheim Chairman of the Police Union (GdP), Thomas Mohr wrote on Facebook:

"The 'Randale-Night' in Stuttgart outraged everyone! Now also in Frankfurt! The perpetrators again mainly young men with a migration background, who have no respect for state institutions, no behavior, no appreciation of other people's property, no scruples to be violent to people."

Update IV

In Germany more than every fourth inhabitant has a migration background. Last year, this figure rose to 21.2 million people, or 26 percent of the population, according to the Federal Statistical Office in Wiesbaden. At 2.1 per cent, the year-on-year increase was thus at its lowest level since 2011. Almost two thirds (65 per cent) of the people with a migration background are immigrants and their descendants from another European country,

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