This essay seems to broaden the framework of the money supply, admittedly through auditable commitments, but without defining what money is. The great risk is falling back into the classic processes of hierarchizing value control on the plane of having rather than on the plane of being. In my view, the protocol of commitment pools does not solve the limitation of money creation, and introducing fiat currencies will generate the inherent difficulties of creation through interest-bearing credit. The question for me, therefore, is what is the objective of this implicit process? The explicit part being clear...
For a historical view of the economy from the 15th to the 18th century, Fernand Braudel helps clarify its evolution from an angle that opens up considerations beyond purely economic ones. He worked on three categories that economists do not necessarily perceive in this way: namely, the subsistence economy, the market economy, and capitalism. The latter two are often conflated or even completely confused. It is obviously a bit lengthy since each category has its own volume:
As for a definition of money other than by its functions, I still don't see one. Manipulating an object on a large scale without a definition of what it is seems problematic to me. The consequences for living beings are not entirely neutral.
Nice thoughtful critique! I appreciate the care you’re bringing to it.
Let me try to clarify a few things, because I think there may be a partial misreading of what we're attempting here.
First, on money. I’m not trying to redefine money or blur its meaning. In a very plain sense, money is what the state issues and enforces as money ... historically tied to taxation, sovereignty, and authority (as you note, going back at least to Moneta). I’m not contesting that, and I’m not proposing a new money theory. In fact, part of the motivation for this work is precisely to stop overloading money with functions it was never meant to carry alone.
What the essay focuses on is not money creation, but commitment clearance. Human economies have always operated on promises, obligations, and deferred exchange .... long before and alongside state money. What’s changed is that many of those commitments have been progressively enclosed, financialized, or made illegible unless they are translated into money and, worse, into interest-bearing debt.
That brings me to your second concern: interest and credit. I’m not proposing interest-bearing money creation here. The system is explicitly designed around service fees for settlement and risk management, not compound interest on issued credit. That distinction matters. Fees pay for coordination, monitoring, guarantees, and dispute resolution; they do not rely on perpetual expansion or extraction from borrowers. In other words, this is not an attempt to reproduce fractional reserve - fiat credit dynamics in another form.
On Braudel: I agree with you, and I find his framing extremely useful. One way to situate this work in his terms is that it is not an attempt to extend capitalism deeper into life, but almost the opposite: to strengthen the market and subsistence layers so they are less constantly subordinated to capital-intensive, interest-driven systems. Much of what Sarafu Network and Grassroots Economics has dealt with, in practice, are communities that already operate in those layers .... but are forced into dependency because their commitments cannot travel or clear without passing through capital.
That’s where commitment pooling comes in. This is not about hierarchizing “having” over “being,” but about making delivery, accountability, and bounded promises visible and enforceable without requiring enclosure by centralized capital or the state. Commitments are curated, limited, time-bound, and redeemable against real capacity. When they fail, limits tighten or issuers are delisted. There is no claim that “everything is money,” nor that everything should circulate indefinitely.
You’re right that commitment pooling has existed in many forms historically. What has changed .... and what we’re trying to do with Cosmo-Local Credit ... is to release it in a way that is much harder to enclose. The DAO layer is explicitly about stewardship: incentives, downside, loss ordering, governance risk, moral hazard, run dynamics, and exit ... all the things that, when left implicit, allow capture to happen.
Finally, on objectives. The objective is not to expand the money supply or replace state money. It’s to reduce unnecessary dependence on it by allowing real obligations to clear where they already exist ... and to do so with explicit limits, transparency, and credible exit, rather than implicit power and abstraction.
Many of the assumptions and safeguards you’re asking about (especially around fiat use, limits, governance, and failure modes) are addressed directly in the Cosmo-Local Credit white paper, which I’d genuinely encourage you to read here: https://cosmo.local.credit . I think you’ll find that the implicit processes you’re worried about are precisely the ones we’re trying to surface, bound, and make contestable. (and if not please let me know)
I appreciate the historical lens you’re bringing!
it is exactly the kind of scrutiny this work needs.
After reviewing the Dao's presentation documents, I understand your text "The Autopoiesis Threshold" much better, as it effectively summarizes many aspects of the white paper. There are certain shortcuts that could be interpreted differently without the complete concept. It is certainly the most refined concept I have read regarding the ability to anticipate "ethical diversions." It is extremely enjoyable to travel through a universe based on explicitly encoded values. However, I see a major problem in these exchanges: Value Added Tax. As you point out from the definition of the chosen currency, "what the state issues and imposes as money... historically linked to taxation," the state's priority is therefore taxation. The economy of commitment pools is a form of circumventing this taxation. As long as these exchanges concern only the subsistence economy, it serves the nation-state by intervening at a social level where it is not present (I would even say it suits it). However, by touching the domain of the market economy, it is a form of more or less direct competition. The consequences of this situation are highly likely... If the Dao is conceived as a means of negotiation to refocus the economy on its sustainability, it is a truly interesting idea. This is undoubtedly one of the inevitable outcomes if the process were to gain momentum. At the scale of exchange within a nation, it is certainly very useful. And ultimately, why not at an inter-nation scale. However, I doubt that this is the best option initially. The value of such a tool is also extremely interesting for highlighting how speculative cryptocurrencies function. It provides a contrast effect for those who can only rely on the sometimes-promoted eco-socio-crypto "packaging."
Regarding not a new theory of money but more precisely the meaning of its appearance, I share some additional elements in my opinion.
In a world where credit (commitments) was already well established, monetary creation came to solve a problem according to anthropologist Alain Testart (whom David Graeber sometimes cites) that deserves reflection in my view. It is not a theory but rather a perspective. Given the work done in the white paper, I see a strong resonance both to support the process and to deepen its limits:
Summary of the introduction of the book "The Origins of Money"
The two classic theses on money are criticized. The first, that it would be a commodity "like any other." Money is indeed a good, a commodity in the commercial world of the modern economy, but not like any other. The second theory, that of money as a sign, is also dismissed: money is a good. The thesis of Georg Simmel, one of the main proponents of this theory, is criticized.
Contrary to what is generally thought, the definition of money in terms of function does not date back beyond the end of the 19th century. The exact list of classic functions attributed to money (function as a medium of exchange, function as a store of value, function as a unit of account) did not, moreover, establish itself without difficulty within political economy. The main ambiguity concerns the confusion between medium of exchange and means of payment. These two notions have been improperly assimilated. However, paying is not exchanging: when one pays taxes, money serves as a means of payment, but nothing is exchanged.
The notion of means of payment is more general and more effective than that of medium of exchange. Once a good is accepted as a means of payment, it can be shown that the other functions (including that of medium of exchange) derive from it.
Following these critical considerations (entirely internal to political economy), the author proposes the following definition:
"We shall consider as money:
- one or several species of goods, the number of these species being limited,
- whose transfer, in a determined quantity, within a payment community, is prescribed or preferred in most payments and is reputed to have liberatory value."
"A definition, which must obey the principle of economy, does not have to state all the properties of the defined object nor even the main ones, but only the minimal properties from which the others are deducible. Thus, from the previous definition are easily deduced: the fact that money constitutes the good par excellence or the supreme form of wealth, which we consider as the main characteristic of money; the general acceptance of money as a means of payment; the subsequent functions of medium of exchange, store of value, and standard of value."
This new definition is essential for understanding how one can speak of money in primitive economies: it is clear, indeed, that what can be called "money" in these universes does not primarily serve as a medium of exchange.
This had been well seen, both by someone like Max Weber at the beginning of the 20th century and by the authors of the two most remarkable works on primitive money (both published in 1949), but which remained ignored or almost so by social anthropology: Paul Einzig and Hingston Quiggin.
These researchers had perfectly understood that these primitive monies served little for exchange but served mainly to pay to meet social obligations: paying the blood price in the widespread custom of wergeld and, above all, paying the bride price, an even more widespread custom that involves payments essential for marriage.
It remains to say why these goods do not serve for exchange (or serve only subsidiarily for this purpose). The reasons are multiple. The first is the low social division of labor. The second is the importance of credit in primitive societies. The third, undoubtedly the most important, but it is linked to the previous one, is that material exchanges do not take place under commercial modalities, i.e., anonymously and between people who decide only based on quantitative value considerations: they take place between people who know each other and maintain ongoing relations of friendship, what should be called "exchange friendships." These personal relationships also mean they can give credit, which eliminates the need for money as a medium of exchange.
The end of the essay draws some general conclusions on the evolution of the monetary phenomenon.
The unlimited development of credit would eliminate even the interest in having money, as some economists have noted. However, this is roughly what happens in primitive societies. And credit is, by definition, necessarily personal. Money is the invention of anonymity. It is because primitive societies are entirely structured by personal relationships that they have so little need for money. And when they invent money (there are unquestionably societies without money), they still do so to meet social obligations, because these monies will first concern persons or rights over persons. It is only in a second stage that money, a thing, and an eminently anonymous thing, will serve almost exclusively to exchange things."
The question raised by this assertion, "Money is the invention of anonymity," is obviously more "relational" than purely economic. The dimension of anonymity takes on a specific character in the relationship. The context determines its legitimacy or not, but the means found by nation-states to prevent anonymity is the monopoly of this money.
There would still be much to say on the subject and the consequences of this definition, but I hope to have brought a little more clarity regarding my questions in the previous comment. I hope this contributes to enhancing the development of CLC for the best.
Thank you for this very careful reading and for taking the time to situate the work historically and conceptually. I really appreciate the way you bring Braudel, Testart, and the question of anonymity into the discussion ... it helps sharpen what is at stake here.
Below... point by point.
On taxation and VAT:
You’re right that state money is historically inseparable from taxation, and that the nation-state’s priority is to preserve that capacity. I don’t see commitment pooling as an attempt to “circumvent” taxation so much as to make explicit what is already happening. State money itself is a commitment; business contracts are commitments; invoices, wages, and credits are commitments. These already flow through informal and formal commitment pools every day ... often invisibly and without adequate clearing, routing, or repair mechanisms.
The CLC DAO is not removing money from that picture. State money can move through the protocol, and taxes can be paid through it just as well ... arguably more transparently. What we are doing is adding services that the state and markets often don’t provide well at the edges: routing, clearing, discoverability, limits, repair, and auditability for commitments that already exist.
It’s also important to be precise about what is taxable. Borrowing is not income. Mutual aid is not VAT-able. If two people exchange services informally, or if a community helps each other through non-monetary commitments, most states do not and cannot meaningfully tax that without becoming deeply invasive. We already accept many domains of human coordination that are not taxed ... conversation (like this one), care, volunteering, reciprocity. Commitment pooling doesn’t magically change that; it simply makes some of those commitments more legible and safer to coordinate at scale.
On subsistence, market economy, and capitalism:
I agree strongly with the Braudelian distinction you’re making. One of the core motivations here is precisely to strengthen the subsistence and market layers so they are not constantly subordinated to capital-intensive, interest-bearing systems. Many communities we work with already operate largely in those layers, but are forced into dependency because their commitments cannot clear beyond a narrow circle without converting into money and interest bearing debt.
In that sense, I see Cosmo-Local Credit less as competition with the nation-state than as complementary infrastructure ... particularly at the local and inter-local scale you mention. If it grows, yes, it becomes a negotiation space. But that negotiation already exists; today it simply happens implicitly, often through coercive credit and opaque markets rather than explicit governance.
On money, credit, and anonymity:
I think Testart’s definition is extremely helpful, especially the idea that money is fundamentally a means of payment with liberatory power (for some), and that anonymity is central to its historical role. I agree that money is, in many ways, the invention of public anonymity of power ... and that this anonymity is both enabling and dangerous depending on context.
What commitment pooling does is reintroduce agentic gradations of anonymity. At very large scales (for example, between states or in foreign exchange), commitments are quite visible and attributable .. we know which state owes what. At the level of everyday users of a national currency, anonymity dominates (at least with cash). Commitment pooling allows agents ... individuals, groups, businesses, even states ... to choose where on that spectrum they operate.
In other words, anonymity is not abolished, nor is it totalized. It becomes contextual, bounded, and governed. That feels consistent with both historical reality and contemporary needs.
On whether this is a new theory of money:
I don’t see this as a new monetary theory, but as an operational clarification. (N.B monetary theory is the wrong scale here). Commitment pooling is ancient; it predates money and persists regardless of the CLC DAO. What we’re trying to do is make that protocol explicit, composable, and stewardable ... so people are not forced to outsource it to capital, platforms, or the state by default.
If anything, the work is closer to de-financialization than financialization: fewer anonymous, interest-bearing abstractions; more explicit limits, accountability, and repair.
On objectives:
The objective is not to eliminate money, nor to replace the nation-state. It is to reduce unnecessary dependence on extractive credit by allowing real commitments ( rooted in capacity, relationships, and delivery ) to circulate safely where they already exist. If that remains primarily at the subsistence and local market level, that is already a success. If it later becomes inter-local or inter-national, that should happen through explicit negotiation, not stealth.
I really value the way you framed this as a question of being versus having. The core design constraint we hold is that commitments must remain bounded by reality: who can deliver, who can observe, who can repair when things fail. When those anchors weaken, the system should tighten or stop ... not expand.
Thank you again for engaging so deeply. Your reflection helps clarify both the promise and the limits of what we’re trying to grow.
I appreciate each of your clarifications point by point because it allows me to refine my thinking in a structured way.
Regarding taxation and VAT: in the place where I am located (France) and the non-profit association framework, this subject is particularly sensitive because the state readily reclassifies an association as a company if it considers that certain rules are being circumvented. The line is sometimes very thin, especially if the subject is troublesome. It is relatively easy for the state to reclassify certain exchanges and create an unmanageable situation for the structure. So this is a rather contextual concern that is not necessarily important in another context. The ambiguity that exists in the law is not always in favor of the smallest structure!
That said, it's also the advantage of being able to exit the CLC relatively clearly if it were to become incompatible either with its governance or with the context.
Regarding subsistence, the market economy, and capitalism: I completely agree with your analysis and the objective of the CLC. I was wondering, while reading the white paper, to what extent it would be possible to reintroduce a layer of governance equivalent to the structure in Figure 1 in Ron Eglash's text "Introduction to Generative Justice":
(Figure 1 shows a schematic for the flow of unalienated value in the case of Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) farming around the time of the first European colonists. Each Iroquois nation (in older terminology “tribe”) was divided into clans, and each had a council of clan mothers in charge of farming (Stites, 1905). The all-male tribal council distributed land to clans, but clan mothers chose the tribal council members, and could have them recalled (“knocking off
the horns”) if their decisions were deemed biased (Wagner, 1993).)»
I understand that this is already the case in a certain way since the CLC is already largely conceived in these terms, but it remains a bit abstract for me. Your clarifications are always welcome.
Regarding the Braudelian dimension of capitalism and its definition in terms of monopoly rather than market, it is then possible to draw a parallel with generative justice because the nation-state is capitalist by nature (monopoly on currency). Socialization being only an artifact of capitalism (useful, however, when not done under coercion).
On the question of whether this is a new monetary theory:
I entirely agree with your response "I do not see this as a new monetary theory, but as an operational clarification. (N.B. Monetary theory is not the appropriate scale here).
I only wished to introduce the operational fact while repositioning the order of appearance of the functional elements of exchange.
At this stage, I wish to introduce a notion that seems complementary on an operational level. What also gives money its value compared to a commitment is a psychic fact:
"Our brain constantly executes a simple equation: effort divided by the probability of success. When the workload seems enormous and the result appears distant or uncertain, our brain makes a decision: withdraw energy."
Money as an immediate reward for a "free" future responds much better to this cerebral injunction than a commitment, even an auditable one. In my opinion, this is an aspect at least as important as anonymity. It is a projection of instant power.
The CLC allows us to respond in part to this future uncertainty by making an honest return on effort explicit and "insurable."
It is a means of recreating trust without total liquidity. In this sense, it is a significant step towards responsible exchanges. (even if Mancur Olson's theory is never far away either)
Applying this process in my context requires more extensive reflection but represents the possibility of actions currently singularly restricted. The CLC thus opens the perspective of reintroducing relational clarity into systems that are opaque or rendered opaque by liberalism.
It is therefore with attention that I am interested in the evolution of your actions.
I am not educated in economics or mathematics. As far as I can follow I like it.
And I support the growth of this reef!
I fail to see how it is different from an idealized village in the European Middle Ages. You know your neighborhood and who (not) to trust. Money is only needed outside the village...
That was not described precisely nor scrutinized, yet it feels like what you described. What is the essential difference?
You’re right that there is a strong resemblance to village economics.
In many ways, I am describing the strengths of an idealized village economy: trust rooted in relationships, reputation that matters, and money mainly used at the edges. Where it differs is in what breaks when you try to scale or interconnect those villages.
The medieval village worked because trust was local and implicit. But it didn’t travel well. Once you stepped outside your village, trust reset to zero, and power tended to concentrate in whoever controlled land, violence, or coin. Most people were locked into one small web, with very limited exit or voice.
What we’re trying to add is structure that lets trust travel without becoming blind trust. Commitment pooling makes promises explicit, bounded, and auditable — so they can circulate across communities without requiring everyone to personally know each other. Limits, windows, and guarantees are there precisely because we don’t assume everyone is trustworthy.
So yes: money is still needed outside the “village.” But the key difference is that the village is no longer a closed world. Many villages can interconnect, route value, and still retain local accountability — with credible exit if something goes wrong.
In short:
Medieval villages relied on who you knew.
This aims to let people rely on what can actually be delivered, even across distance and difference.
If we get it right, it keeps the human strengths of small communities, while avoiding the fragility and power traps that historically came with them.
... this is exactly the kind of question that helps sharpen the work. Thanks.
N.B. cosmolocal.credit is the financing layer to bootstrap all of this with clear rewards for people seeding capital into these networks.
This essay seems to broaden the framework of the money supply, admittedly through auditable commitments, but without defining what money is. The great risk is falling back into the classic processes of hierarchizing value control on the plane of having rather than on the plane of being. In my view, the protocol of commitment pools does not solve the limitation of money creation, and introducing fiat currencies will generate the inherent difficulties of creation through interest-bearing credit. The question for me, therefore, is what is the objective of this implicit process? The explicit part being clear...
For a historical view of the economy from the 15th to the 18th century, Fernand Braudel helps clarify its evolution from an angle that opens up considerations beyond purely economic ones. He worked on three categories that economists do not necessarily perceive in this way: namely, the subsistence economy, the market economy, and capitalism. The latter two are often conflated or even completely confused. It is obviously a bit lengthy since each category has its own volume:
https://archive.org/details/civilizationcapi0001brau/
https://archive.org/details/civilizationcapi0002brau
https://archive.org/details/civilizationcapi0003brau
As for a definition of money other than by its functions, I still don't see one. Manipulating an object on a large scale without a definition of what it is seems problematic to me. The consequences for living beings are not entirely neutral.
Nice thoughtful critique! I appreciate the care you’re bringing to it.
Let me try to clarify a few things, because I think there may be a partial misreading of what we're attempting here.
First, on money. I’m not trying to redefine money or blur its meaning. In a very plain sense, money is what the state issues and enforces as money ... historically tied to taxation, sovereignty, and authority (as you note, going back at least to Moneta). I’m not contesting that, and I’m not proposing a new money theory. In fact, part of the motivation for this work is precisely to stop overloading money with functions it was never meant to carry alone.
What the essay focuses on is not money creation, but commitment clearance. Human economies have always operated on promises, obligations, and deferred exchange .... long before and alongside state money. What’s changed is that many of those commitments have been progressively enclosed, financialized, or made illegible unless they are translated into money and, worse, into interest-bearing debt.
That brings me to your second concern: interest and credit. I’m not proposing interest-bearing money creation here. The system is explicitly designed around service fees for settlement and risk management, not compound interest on issued credit. That distinction matters. Fees pay for coordination, monitoring, guarantees, and dispute resolution; they do not rely on perpetual expansion or extraction from borrowers. In other words, this is not an attempt to reproduce fractional reserve - fiat credit dynamics in another form.
On Braudel: I agree with you, and I find his framing extremely useful. One way to situate this work in his terms is that it is not an attempt to extend capitalism deeper into life, but almost the opposite: to strengthen the market and subsistence layers so they are less constantly subordinated to capital-intensive, interest-driven systems. Much of what Sarafu Network and Grassroots Economics has dealt with, in practice, are communities that already operate in those layers .... but are forced into dependency because their commitments cannot travel or clear without passing through capital.
That’s where commitment pooling comes in. This is not about hierarchizing “having” over “being,” but about making delivery, accountability, and bounded promises visible and enforceable without requiring enclosure by centralized capital or the state. Commitments are curated, limited, time-bound, and redeemable against real capacity. When they fail, limits tighten or issuers are delisted. There is no claim that “everything is money,” nor that everything should circulate indefinitely.
You’re right that commitment pooling has existed in many forms historically. What has changed .... and what we’re trying to do with Cosmo-Local Credit ... is to release it in a way that is much harder to enclose. The DAO layer is explicitly about stewardship: incentives, downside, loss ordering, governance risk, moral hazard, run dynamics, and exit ... all the things that, when left implicit, allow capture to happen.
Finally, on objectives. The objective is not to expand the money supply or replace state money. It’s to reduce unnecessary dependence on it by allowing real obligations to clear where they already exist ... and to do so with explicit limits, transparency, and credible exit, rather than implicit power and abstraction.
Many of the assumptions and safeguards you’re asking about (especially around fiat use, limits, governance, and failure modes) are addressed directly in the Cosmo-Local Credit white paper, which I’d genuinely encourage you to read here: https://cosmo.local.credit . I think you’ll find that the implicit processes you’re worried about are precisely the ones we’re trying to surface, bound, and make contestable. (and if not please let me know)
I appreciate the historical lens you’re bringing!
it is exactly the kind of scrutiny this work needs.
After reviewing the Dao's presentation documents, I understand your text "The Autopoiesis Threshold" much better, as it effectively summarizes many aspects of the white paper. There are certain shortcuts that could be interpreted differently without the complete concept. It is certainly the most refined concept I have read regarding the ability to anticipate "ethical diversions." It is extremely enjoyable to travel through a universe based on explicitly encoded values. However, I see a major problem in these exchanges: Value Added Tax. As you point out from the definition of the chosen currency, "what the state issues and imposes as money... historically linked to taxation," the state's priority is therefore taxation. The economy of commitment pools is a form of circumventing this taxation. As long as these exchanges concern only the subsistence economy, it serves the nation-state by intervening at a social level where it is not present (I would even say it suits it). However, by touching the domain of the market economy, it is a form of more or less direct competition. The consequences of this situation are highly likely... If the Dao is conceived as a means of negotiation to refocus the economy on its sustainability, it is a truly interesting idea. This is undoubtedly one of the inevitable outcomes if the process were to gain momentum. At the scale of exchange within a nation, it is certainly very useful. And ultimately, why not at an inter-nation scale. However, I doubt that this is the best option initially. The value of such a tool is also extremely interesting for highlighting how speculative cryptocurrencies function. It provides a contrast effect for those who can only rely on the sometimes-promoted eco-socio-crypto "packaging."
Regarding not a new theory of money but more precisely the meaning of its appearance, I share some additional elements in my opinion.
In a world where credit (commitments) was already well established, monetary creation came to solve a problem according to anthropologist Alain Testart (whom David Graeber sometimes cites) that deserves reflection in my view. It is not a theory but rather a perspective. Given the work done in the white paper, I see a strong resonance both to support the process and to deepen its limits:
Summary of the introduction of the book "The Origins of Money"
The two classic theses on money are criticized. The first, that it would be a commodity "like any other." Money is indeed a good, a commodity in the commercial world of the modern economy, but not like any other. The second theory, that of money as a sign, is also dismissed: money is a good. The thesis of Georg Simmel, one of the main proponents of this theory, is criticized.
Contrary to what is generally thought, the definition of money in terms of function does not date back beyond the end of the 19th century. The exact list of classic functions attributed to money (function as a medium of exchange, function as a store of value, function as a unit of account) did not, moreover, establish itself without difficulty within political economy. The main ambiguity concerns the confusion between medium of exchange and means of payment. These two notions have been improperly assimilated. However, paying is not exchanging: when one pays taxes, money serves as a means of payment, but nothing is exchanged.
The notion of means of payment is more general and more effective than that of medium of exchange. Once a good is accepted as a means of payment, it can be shown that the other functions (including that of medium of exchange) derive from it.
Following these critical considerations (entirely internal to political economy), the author proposes the following definition:
"We shall consider as money:
- one or several species of goods, the number of these species being limited,
- whose transfer, in a determined quantity, within a payment community, is prescribed or preferred in most payments and is reputed to have liberatory value."
"A definition, which must obey the principle of economy, does not have to state all the properties of the defined object nor even the main ones, but only the minimal properties from which the others are deducible. Thus, from the previous definition are easily deduced: the fact that money constitutes the good par excellence or the supreme form of wealth, which we consider as the main characteristic of money; the general acceptance of money as a means of payment; the subsequent functions of medium of exchange, store of value, and standard of value."
This new definition is essential for understanding how one can speak of money in primitive economies: it is clear, indeed, that what can be called "money" in these universes does not primarily serve as a medium of exchange.
This had been well seen, both by someone like Max Weber at the beginning of the 20th century and by the authors of the two most remarkable works on primitive money (both published in 1949), but which remained ignored or almost so by social anthropology: Paul Einzig and Hingston Quiggin.
These researchers had perfectly understood that these primitive monies served little for exchange but served mainly to pay to meet social obligations: paying the blood price in the widespread custom of wergeld and, above all, paying the bride price, an even more widespread custom that involves payments essential for marriage.
It remains to say why these goods do not serve for exchange (or serve only subsidiarily for this purpose). The reasons are multiple. The first is the low social division of labor. The second is the importance of credit in primitive societies. The third, undoubtedly the most important, but it is linked to the previous one, is that material exchanges do not take place under commercial modalities, i.e., anonymously and between people who decide only based on quantitative value considerations: they take place between people who know each other and maintain ongoing relations of friendship, what should be called "exchange friendships." These personal relationships also mean they can give credit, which eliminates the need for money as a medium of exchange.
The end of the essay draws some general conclusions on the evolution of the monetary phenomenon.
The unlimited development of credit would eliminate even the interest in having money, as some economists have noted. However, this is roughly what happens in primitive societies. And credit is, by definition, necessarily personal. Money is the invention of anonymity. It is because primitive societies are entirely structured by personal relationships that they have so little need for money. And when they invent money (there are unquestionably societies without money), they still do so to meet social obligations, because these monies will first concern persons or rights over persons. It is only in a second stage that money, a thing, and an eminently anonymous thing, will serve almost exclusively to exchange things."
http://alaintestart.com/monnaie.htm
The question raised by this assertion, "Money is the invention of anonymity," is obviously more "relational" than purely economic. The dimension of anonymity takes on a specific character in the relationship. The context determines its legitimacy or not, but the means found by nation-states to prevent anonymity is the monopoly of this money.
There would still be much to say on the subject and the consequences of this definition, but I hope to have brought a little more clarity regarding my questions in the previous comment. I hope this contributes to enhancing the development of CLC for the best.
Thank you for this very careful reading and for taking the time to situate the work historically and conceptually. I really appreciate the way you bring Braudel, Testart, and the question of anonymity into the discussion ... it helps sharpen what is at stake here.
Below... point by point.
On taxation and VAT:
You’re right that state money is historically inseparable from taxation, and that the nation-state’s priority is to preserve that capacity. I don’t see commitment pooling as an attempt to “circumvent” taxation so much as to make explicit what is already happening. State money itself is a commitment; business contracts are commitments; invoices, wages, and credits are commitments. These already flow through informal and formal commitment pools every day ... often invisibly and without adequate clearing, routing, or repair mechanisms.
The CLC DAO is not removing money from that picture. State money can move through the protocol, and taxes can be paid through it just as well ... arguably more transparently. What we are doing is adding services that the state and markets often don’t provide well at the edges: routing, clearing, discoverability, limits, repair, and auditability for commitments that already exist.
It’s also important to be precise about what is taxable. Borrowing is not income. Mutual aid is not VAT-able. If two people exchange services informally, or if a community helps each other through non-monetary commitments, most states do not and cannot meaningfully tax that without becoming deeply invasive. We already accept many domains of human coordination that are not taxed ... conversation (like this one), care, volunteering, reciprocity. Commitment pooling doesn’t magically change that; it simply makes some of those commitments more legible and safer to coordinate at scale.
On subsistence, market economy, and capitalism:
I agree strongly with the Braudelian distinction you’re making. One of the core motivations here is precisely to strengthen the subsistence and market layers so they are not constantly subordinated to capital-intensive, interest-bearing systems. Many communities we work with already operate largely in those layers, but are forced into dependency because their commitments cannot clear beyond a narrow circle without converting into money and interest bearing debt.
In that sense, I see Cosmo-Local Credit less as competition with the nation-state than as complementary infrastructure ... particularly at the local and inter-local scale you mention. If it grows, yes, it becomes a negotiation space. But that negotiation already exists; today it simply happens implicitly, often through coercive credit and opaque markets rather than explicit governance.
On money, credit, and anonymity:
I think Testart’s definition is extremely helpful, especially the idea that money is fundamentally a means of payment with liberatory power (for some), and that anonymity is central to its historical role. I agree that money is, in many ways, the invention of public anonymity of power ... and that this anonymity is both enabling and dangerous depending on context.
What commitment pooling does is reintroduce agentic gradations of anonymity. At very large scales (for example, between states or in foreign exchange), commitments are quite visible and attributable .. we know which state owes what. At the level of everyday users of a national currency, anonymity dominates (at least with cash). Commitment pooling allows agents ... individuals, groups, businesses, even states ... to choose where on that spectrum they operate.
In other words, anonymity is not abolished, nor is it totalized. It becomes contextual, bounded, and governed. That feels consistent with both historical reality and contemporary needs.
On whether this is a new theory of money:
I don’t see this as a new monetary theory, but as an operational clarification. (N.B monetary theory is the wrong scale here). Commitment pooling is ancient; it predates money and persists regardless of the CLC DAO. What we’re trying to do is make that protocol explicit, composable, and stewardable ... so people are not forced to outsource it to capital, platforms, or the state by default.
If anything, the work is closer to de-financialization than financialization: fewer anonymous, interest-bearing abstractions; more explicit limits, accountability, and repair.
On objectives:
The objective is not to eliminate money, nor to replace the nation-state. It is to reduce unnecessary dependence on extractive credit by allowing real commitments ( rooted in capacity, relationships, and delivery ) to circulate safely where they already exist. If that remains primarily at the subsistence and local market level, that is already a success. If it later becomes inter-local or inter-national, that should happen through explicit negotiation, not stealth.
I really value the way you framed this as a question of being versus having. The core design constraint we hold is that commitments must remain bounded by reality: who can deliver, who can observe, who can repair when things fail. When those anchors weaken, the system should tighten or stop ... not expand.
Thank you again for engaging so deeply. Your reflection helps clarify both the promise and the limits of what we’re trying to grow.
I appreciate each of your clarifications point by point because it allows me to refine my thinking in a structured way.
Regarding taxation and VAT: in the place where I am located (France) and the non-profit association framework, this subject is particularly sensitive because the state readily reclassifies an association as a company if it considers that certain rules are being circumvented. The line is sometimes very thin, especially if the subject is troublesome. It is relatively easy for the state to reclassify certain exchanges and create an unmanageable situation for the structure. So this is a rather contextual concern that is not necessarily important in another context. The ambiguity that exists in the law is not always in favor of the smallest structure!
That said, it's also the advantage of being able to exit the CLC relatively clearly if it were to become incompatible either with its governance or with the context.
Regarding subsistence, the market economy, and capitalism: I completely agree with your analysis and the objective of the CLC. I was wondering, while reading the white paper, to what extent it would be possible to reintroduce a layer of governance equivalent to the structure in Figure 1 in Ron Eglash's text "Introduction to Generative Justice":
(Figure 1 shows a schematic for the flow of unalienated value in the case of Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) farming around the time of the first European colonists. Each Iroquois nation (in older terminology “tribe”) was divided into clans, and each had a council of clan mothers in charge of farming (Stites, 1905). The all-male tribal council distributed land to clans, but clan mothers chose the tribal council members, and could have them recalled (“knocking off
the horns”) if their decisions were deemed biased (Wagner, 1993).)»
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/311811471_An_Introduction_to_Generative_Justice
I understand that this is already the case in a certain way since the CLC is already largely conceived in these terms, but it remains a bit abstract for me. Your clarifications are always welcome.
Regarding the Braudelian dimension of capitalism and its definition in terms of monopoly rather than market, it is then possible to draw a parallel with generative justice because the nation-state is capitalist by nature (monopoly on currency). Socialization being only an artifact of capitalism (useful, however, when not done under coercion).
On the question of whether this is a new monetary theory:
I entirely agree with your response "I do not see this as a new monetary theory, but as an operational clarification. (N.B. Monetary theory is not the appropriate scale here).
I only wished to introduce the operational fact while repositioning the order of appearance of the functional elements of exchange.
At this stage, I wish to introduce a notion that seems complementary on an operational level. What also gives money its value compared to a commitment is a psychic fact:
"Our brain constantly executes a simple equation: effort divided by the probability of success. When the workload seems enormous and the result appears distant or uncertain, our brain makes a decision: withdraw energy."
Money as an immediate reward for a "free" future responds much better to this cerebral injunction than a commitment, even an auditable one. In my opinion, this is an aspect at least as important as anonymity. It is a projection of instant power.
The CLC allows us to respond in part to this future uncertainty by making an honest return on effort explicit and "insurable."
It is a means of recreating trust without total liquidity. In this sense, it is a significant step towards responsible exchanges. (even if Mancur Olson's theory is never far away either)
Applying this process in my context requires more extensive reflection but represents the possibility of actions currently singularly restricted. The CLC thus opens the perspective of reintroducing relational clarity into systems that are opaque or rendered opaque by liberalism.
It is therefore with attention that I am interested in the evolution of your actions.
The conversion trial debt largely addresses my last comment.
Love this….look forward to witnessing at participating in whatever ways I can 🫶🏽
I am not educated in economics or mathematics. As far as I can follow I like it.
And I support the growth of this reef!
I fail to see how it is different from an idealized village in the European Middle Ages. You know your neighborhood and who (not) to trust. Money is only needed outside the village...
That was not described precisely nor scrutinized, yet it feels like what you described. What is the essential difference?
You’re right that there is a strong resemblance to village economics.
In many ways, I am describing the strengths of an idealized village economy: trust rooted in relationships, reputation that matters, and money mainly used at the edges. Where it differs is in what breaks when you try to scale or interconnect those villages.
The medieval village worked because trust was local and implicit. But it didn’t travel well. Once you stepped outside your village, trust reset to zero, and power tended to concentrate in whoever controlled land, violence, or coin. Most people were locked into one small web, with very limited exit or voice.
What we’re trying to add is structure that lets trust travel without becoming blind trust. Commitment pooling makes promises explicit, bounded, and auditable — so they can circulate across communities without requiring everyone to personally know each other. Limits, windows, and guarantees are there precisely because we don’t assume everyone is trustworthy.
So yes: money is still needed outside the “village.” But the key difference is that the village is no longer a closed world. Many villages can interconnect, route value, and still retain local accountability — with credible exit if something goes wrong.
In short:
Medieval villages relied on who you knew.
This aims to let people rely on what can actually be delivered, even across distance and difference.
If we get it right, it keeps the human strengths of small communities, while avoiding the fragility and power traps that historically came with them.
... this is exactly the kind of question that helps sharpen the work. Thanks.
N.B. cosmolocal.credit is the financing layer to bootstrap all of this with clear rewards for people seeding capital into these networks.