A proposal for a parallel currency, based on people rather than debt.
Wars, environmental destruction, greed, egoism. These are usually treated as separate failures — of politics, of morality, of individuals. They may share a single root: the way our money is built.
Nearly all money today comes into existence as interest-bearing debt. This one design choice pushes people out of their natural restfulness in two ways:
Borrowing. The option to borrow accelerates human wishes beyond what patience would allow. Not all of these wishes are constructive — war financing is the clearest example of borrowed money pouring oil on the fire of hatred.
Lending. Whoever has surplus money is urged, by interest itself, never to let it rest. Money lying idle appears as a loss. The result is a permanent pressure to keep every unit of money in motion — a restlessness that spreads from the monetary system into society.
In the past, money was based on limited resources such as gold. Later it was replaced by government decree (Latin: fiat — "let it be done"), backed by little more than trust in the issuing authority. This opened the door to creating as much money as those in charge wish — and politicians do not always act in the interest of their citizens.
Today, money is printed — largely to finance wars and crises — and the bill arrives as inflation on every citizen.
Capita Money is a proposed parallel currency with opposite mechanics.
Lending without interest. Capita Money may be lent, but not at interest. It remains flexible as a medium of exchange, while the dogma of hyperactivity — "if you don't use it, you lose it" — is removed. In this, Capita Money follows an older tradition: Silvio Gesell's Freigeld ("free money"), tested in practice in Wörgl, Austria, in the 1930s.
Issuance per head. Capita Money is not based on the discretion of money printers, nor on gold, but on an unconditional basic income, generated continuously per person — Latin: capita. Hence the name. This places the proposal within current debates in monetary theory about the real foundations of a currency's value.