Amazing people join this website

Today I have been making a list of those who are registered on our site. They are awesome people.

We have people over a wide age range from 75 down to late teenagers. Three people said they trawled the internet trying to find a political party which seemed to address the issues they were worried about and had solutions they thought would work. Others hit upon it by accident.

We have many professions here from financial advisers to teachers, engineers, architects, lifestylers who practise permaculture, permaculture teachers, IT people who are fully aware of the challenges of peak oil and a wide range of other challenges. We have those who read Spontaneous Evolution by Bruce Lipton and Steve Bhaerman (remember Swami Beyondananda? He said “I have good news. There will, indeed be peace on Earth.. I sure hope we humans are around to enjoy it”. We have psychologists, a theology graduate, someone who built an electric car, someone who sells raw milk and someone who has been a leader in many sustainability organisations. We have members of Transition Towns from various places and a farmer who hates land tax policy. We have many who have read widely on the topic of money systems and a lot of people who have read my book Healthy Money Healthy Planet. Some have been to Christoph Hensch’s course on money in Christchurch. We have followers of Max Keiser, Bernard Lietaer, environmentalists, a pharmacist, an activist in the Occupy movement and an anthropology scholar.

Some have been involved in Green dollars in the past and many have been founding members of intentional communities and were once keen Social Credit Party, Values Party or Green Party voters. There is a keen land value tax man and someone connected with a church based Liberty Trust. We have Steiner School enthusiasts and daughters and sons of ministers in a church. Some are involved in coast care and river care. Some are interested in small business and entrepreneurship.  It goes on. Amazing people, leaders in thinking and that’s how it will be.

Collectively many of us believe, as Bruce Lipton and Steve Bhaerman write; “A miraculous healing await this planet once we accept our new responsibility to collectively tend the Garden rather than fight over the turf. When a critical mass of people truly own this belief in their hearts and minds and actually begin living from this truth, our world will emerge from the darkness in what will amount to a spontaneous evolution.”

So I have had my first interview with a radio station and it was a student radio station who picked up the piece on how Auckland needs an Auckland currency. It was fine, I enjoyed it. Every time you speak to the media it stimulates you to learn more so you can answer better the next time.

And I have been working still on thinking about how we can get a politically acceptable policy on land tax. Is to be a Location Value Covenant or a Land Value Tax? We need a policy which isn’t going to take ten years to implement. Every time I raise land tax someone says “Well that is political suicide”. But if I start talking about getting a policy based on existing contract law which means that instead of paying the banks for your house you pay the Council or Central Government, the reaction is different. If you pay Central Government, then will have enough revenue to drop GST and soon income tax.

Imagine a time when all landowners have to pay and nobody can gain advantage by taking their assets overseas or paying for an army of accountants who minimise their tax. Imagine a time when you can work all you want and don’t get penalised for it, but prices are low because there is no interest built into the price of goods, no GST and no income tax. More spending power. Imagine a time when we have thriving local economies because local authorities have issued a different sort of money, one that depreciates like the goods they represent. Imagine a time when people spend their local money in sustainable business investments rather than in speculating in land or simply banking the money and keeping it out of circulation. As Silvio Gesell says in his book The Natural Economic Order “Money is an instrument of exchange and nothing else”.

Last week both Laurence and I were interviewed by Rose Diamond in her A Whole New World Series