FAZ

FAZ: Definition

The "Financial Autonomous Zone" (aka FAZ) is an economic proposal by Domenico de Simone. It is exposed in his book "Un'altra moneta".

According to open-economy.org the FAZ is "a plan for the construction of an alternative socio-economic model, which is to be founded upon the use of a particular currency ("Free Money" or "Gift Money"). Such a currency shall be issued and managed by this alternative network, and an initial allotment thereof shall be automatically credited to all participants as a citizen's communal dividend of seignorage (similar to a citizen's dividend and to a basic income) – something we may call ‘the token of existence'. Money, in fact, possesses no intrinsic value; only in the social exchange does it acquire significance, hence our desire to design a new a form of money compatible with the exigencies of a modern community. We should like to see the FAZ being introduced as a legal entity, a body of rights based on equality. What FreeSoftware is to copyright, the FAZ is to the banking network: just as the GNU/GPL license legally sanctions the right to copy, thus the FAZ legally proclaims the abolition of monetary accumulation, usury, and hoarding, by means of a currency yielding a negative rate of interest (demurrage system). In other words, economic paralysis is to be defeated by the adoption of a perishable means of payment, a means of payment that should be resurrected in the form corresponding to its real nature: a mere symbol: the symbol accompanying the exchanges, tangible and otherwise, of the free community. We seek to emancipate ourselves from the grip of an exploitative banking system, which debilitates the economy by withdrawing from it enormous amounts of resources for the benefit of the absentee class and the corporate clients of such banks. Meanwhile, most of us are forced to struggle for the acquisition of mind-deadening jobs, in the midst of financial uncertainty caused by the dealings of these interests, without our knowing, without our say. We wish to rebel against this configuration of power: this is, in short, the objective of the FAZ. The project is addressed to all the components of the economy - from businesses and consumers to administrators, by way of doctors, artists and writers – to every single participant in the daily exchanges of life. It is addressed to them today, for immediate implementation – action ought to be taken now. The FAZ is an independent (but open) economic net desirous to improve the welfare of its participants, and such a goal is to be accomplished only in an environment in which the logic of accumulation is rejected, and in which money is divested from its proprietary attributes and commodified guise. Money would cease to represent a tool of economic violence and return to perform its symbolic duty, namely that of escorting the economic interactions of humans. Our guiding principles upon this economic net are equality, solidarity, and creative variety, though we do not exclude the notion of advantage, or motivation: abundance, as well as individual and aggregate well-being are legitimate stimuli for the growth of and participation in this project."

Similar models

Salmoney

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This page is a temporary one, a dirty cut&paste

Discussion

From jf:
Dear Stefano, it seems that many initiatives, and specially the Open Source Money one, are in tune with the properties and goals you give to the FAZ.
This first introductory text opens an important question to me: the FAZ concept - and the description given above - exist as an opposition to something, I see a few threats in such approaches which are:

• movements and thoughts that exist as an opposition to something else are not free because they depend on what their opponent do.
• they exist because of their opponent, in other words they are the child of what they fight and their existence depends on the existence of their opponent. If their opponent disappears, what is left?
• they generate a fighting front. The word "autonomous" refers to an existing authority that takes our freedom away. It gives more consistence to this authority and generate a war zone where both opposed forces will strike. This generates a manichean approach.
• this manichean approach keeps us in the scarce paradigm?, i.e. it closes the alternative to 2 choices: the initial force or its opponent. Where are the other alternatives?
• it may open the trap of a weak ideology. Fighting "against" doesn't mean that participants are a united group. They are united during the battle, but what after? This phenomenon can be observed in most countries where some authority has been fought and defeated. Then a new wave of war begins between former allies.

I don't intend to say that the FAZ, and fighting against things is bad and meaningless. My opinion is that they should be seen as a starting point, a birth, that should quickly move into the abundance paradigm?, i.e. a creative mode where new ways and playgrounds are invented. By creating new rules and new "battle fields" where the old order is not ready to fight. If these rules are more convenient to the world, then fine, the world will move to them, with or without fight. See cooperation versus competition. — jf