Ok, I havent the time at the moment to read this over,but at a cursery glance its looks pretty cool.
Nutshelled, a pretty large town (Ithaca, NY is a pretty big town, probably a city actually) has set up a local currency which has been goin since 93. Basically just to support the local economy, big I think it sounds like a pretty cool/interesting way of reclaiming community autonomy.
this is why booze is bad... you forget to include the key part of the post...
Yeah, more then a few collectives did this during the spanish revolution.
I think the alternative currency is good step towards greater autonomy if a region has a strong mutualist/co-operative movement, or interacting intentional communities. Then it can really be useful in building community controlled capital.
If the region is still dominated by private capital including small business, I don't see it as much more then a nice novelty.
It is interesting though to see that in Ithica there seems to be significantly more community groups signed up for the currency then private business.
Does anyone know if Christiania has it's own currency?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_State_of_Christiania