Karma Currency
A way of introducing fairness into the economic system.

Chapter 1. Rodger
Rodger was a carpenter. He built houses for a living. He built them on his own and would teach his son how to build houses someday. Because everyone needs houses, and what better way to learn than from someone you trust.

And who do you trust more than your father?

So Rodger Wilco (that was his name), owner and operator of the Wilco Construction company, had a company van, which used to be the family minivan until it turned into a shitbox, and he and his son, who dropped out of school, would drive around, fixing and building houses, listening to NPR all along the way.

Rodger figured that listening to NPR was like being in school. It taught you how to deliberately deliberate. Because there was a calculating presence causing nothing to be done in the world. It started in early education, and it stemmed from one of the most dastardly human emotions on the planet; fear.

People in school were afraid to learn. They were afraid to let kids actually build anything. They were afraid to let a child have a hammer and hit things with it. Schools in time became more like prisons, as activity inside of them became less permissive. It started a whole trend and a battle between self-education and accreditation which we're going to talk about in a later chapter.

But Rodger wanted his child to have an education, so they listened to NPR. It was either that or hear Free Bird every hour on "PL-arrgh!" The pirate radio station. They drove around with lumber that they picked up in the lumber yard on Midland Street. Theyd' drive around town to the house they were building, and they'd use the lumber carefully, utilizing every cut, and every fiber. What they didn't use, they offered to the new homeowner for firewood. They automatically installed radiant flooring, solar thermal, and woodburning stoves in every house they built. The homes were super energy efficient and they were also very nicely handcrafted.

But American Currency was giving Rodger and his son the very worst of the trade. They were in fact, tradesmen but their trades were all for the US Dollar. And money circulated from the top down, to the very bottom, to the people who had literally close to nothing but the table scraps. Ironically, these were the people who were physically building the world.

Rodger's son got frustrated. "Dad, if we're not getting paid fairly, let's just do a bad job!" And his father replied, "Oh absolutely not, son! We can't do a bad job. Even if we're not getting paid enough. People have to live in those houses. We need to make them as best we can."

But he understood his son's frustration. Why on earth would you ever want to work so hard and do things so righteous when the world was doing you wrong? In spite of all the wonderful houses Rodger had built, he still lived in the shanty shed of a dreamhome he never had the money to fully invest in. There was potential in its ability to become the house he always wanted, but it was not. It needed work, and it was all work that he could do himself, but he could not afford to buy the materials.

He digressed at a coffeeshop to Wally, the flower Kingpin of town.

"Why can't you afford the raw materials?"
"We just can't. I can't afford to redo the entire second floor. We'd have nowhere to live for six months. I can't do that."
"Don't you make plenty of extra money with the houses you build?"
"Not really! We barely make a thing."
"How come?"
"People don't want to pay us as much as we actually need. They say, 'Oh how much is the cost of materials?" And we say, 'They're expensive. They cost about half of what we're going to charge you,' and so they say, 'you're charging us double?' But the answer is no, of course not, we're actually having it cost as little as humanly possible. The only reason it's double is for insurance, and to pay for fuel, and, well, it's mostly insurance to be honest."

Plus Rodger had his entire family to pay for. In that sense, he was unlike the class of those who did not. He was not amongst those who were free to wander the earth in search of Lattes. he was the son of a latte maker. Perhaps the grandson of the inventor, who neither reciefved nor was compensated for the implimentation of his miraculous invention. Rodger was among a working class of individuals who were never recognized for his innovations. He saw all of the subtle nuances in his little boy which made him different from all the other little kids in his grade. He thoguht about how those would never go noticed. They'd be tucked into a wall, someplace warm where the person living in the building would never understand nor notice the practical detail that was set in place for the insulation. Or he would be framing houses in his spare time, living as bottom feeder for the rich Greenwich laywers who had nothign better to do with their money than pay for expensive building materials, and cheap experienced labor. The town was full of them.

But then something crossed his mind.

"Young boy," he said to his son at dinner time." "Have you thought about yoru future?"
And the boy responded, "A little," as he carefully picked through his jellybeans.
"And what about it have you thought?"
"I want to be solar worker."
"A solar worker? Is that rofr real?"
"Yeah," he said, eating the rootbeer jellybeans. "Solar's the coolest."
"What on earth made you decide you wanted to be a solar worker?"
"My calculator. I look at it and it can solve anything for me."
"What does your calculator have to do with photovoltaics?"
"It has a solar panel on it."
Indeed, the small calculator, the TF_202, did contain a small solar panel.

"That's fascinating that it would interest you."

So the dad recognized that his son was interested in the art of building. Maybe not in exactly the same way, but in a slightly differetn manner. And it was the way of the future. Rodger knew that we couldn't keep burning oil forever, and there would have to be an end to it at some point.