ok once upon a time when i was broke i worked as a freelance sub for red pepper for a while, and there i edited a piece on unofficial street currency systems: not barter, but actually established monetary tokens grounded in (local) public will and need to believe, as used in areas which are poor/redlined/full of foax unable to get (non-sharked) loans. The tokens are something readily available and non-fakable (acorns sticks in my mind, though these are hardly readily available): the guarantors are locals, sometimes banded together into "banks" or mutal assistance schemes, and the function is of course to produce a flow of exchange where official monetary policy has deemed it pointless and irrelevant
― mark s (mark s), Wednesday, 7 August 2002 13:00 (twenty-three years ago)