The value system of circles is the one that nurtures the commons and democratic forms of arranging life. autonomously, and locally.
Today, we use one money to manage health, education, local and international trade, agriculture, and many other aspects of life. This "one size fits all" mode of exchange is like a pine forest. In such a forest, decaying pine needles acidify the soil and prevent certain types of plants from growing.
The monetary design for Circles, by contrast, resembles a jungle. In the jungle, success requires a healthy arrangement of relationships with your neighbours. There are no bankers dictating which strategies are permitted. The system is open to a wider diversity of strategies.
UNLIKE LIFE IN A MONOCULTURE, IF SOMETHING GOES WRONG IN THE JUNGLE, THE PARTS OF THE SYSTEM THAT ARE UNRELATED TO THE PROBLEM EITHER ADAPT TO THE CHANGES OR REMAIN INTACT.
From a social perspective, it means the ability to issue credit to others. Trust flows the same way as goods and resources. Trusting somebody else's Circles means that you are willing to accept their IOUs (I owe yous) as payment in exchange for something of value. You can pay people you do not know through what we call transitive exchange.
SOCIAL PERSPECTIVE
From a technical perspective, trust means that you acknowledge somebody is a real person. Trust is there to avoid people making fake accounts, pretending to be someone who they are not and claiming, unfairly, 2 basic incomes for themselves. The point of it is not to replace the trust between people with a faceless technology, but to create new social and political institutions with the infrastructure this technology provides, by trusting one another.
TECHNICAL PERSPECTIVE
Trust is The ability to issue credit to your peers. in circles Wherever there is credit,
there is trust.
the dual meaning of trust
in circles
With Circles, when a new person joins, they exercise the power to issue credit to others. Alone, these are called personal currencies, but together these form a network of mutual currencies. As personal currencies only start to circulate once somebody else trusts them —the structure of that network depends on the ecology of trust people have with each other.
The more people trust each other’s Circles as a reliable means of payment, the more Circles currencies will be positioned socially as money.
