Is a Community Currency Just Another Welfare System?
To many people, anything that helps the poor is a welfare system. (note 11) While that is indeed the case in most programs, community currencies are an exception. Let us consider a practical example from a city that, by American standards, would be considered an extreme case of poverty. It will show that a community currency does indeed help the poor — but by using market forces, not any transfer of resources from the rich to the poor. In fact, it makes some welfare systems unnecessary because it puts the poor to work to help themselves. When Jaime Lerner became mayor of the medium-sized Brazilian town of Curitiba in 1973, he had a tricky garbage collection problem. The majority of the 500,000 people of Curitiba lived in shanty towns (favelas), which had been built so haphazardly that even the garbage trucks could not get into them. The accumulation of garbage attracted rodents, which in turn spread diseases at alarming rates. The classical solution would have been a welfare program t
