Today I look at both trash as cash - in the form of plastic credits - and trillion dollar coins and lament the unfairness of our current global economy.
Paying the global waste picking community properly is a start - and enabling little kids to get a quality education in exchange for empty plastic bottles is kind - but how can any impoverished community hope to compete in a world where some have to sift through literal rubbish to earn a mere income while others can simply to quote my natural ideological enemies, the Monet Monetary Theorists, "change the numbers on the computer" to make money for themselves and to enrich their favourite citizens at the click of a button (and at, to add insult to ironic injury, the real expense of the very same waste pickers who are supposed to be grateful for new improved plastic credit swap schemes on the other side of the globe...)
What a world.
Where have you seen trash to cash schemes working (or failing)?
When will we see "financial inclusion" schemes that change rather than formalise the existing status quo?
And what do you think about that damned trillion dollar coin?
Let me know.
Read more:
Why trillion dollar coins make the global poor poorer : https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/opinion/2023-03-22-bronwyn-williams-largesse-in-rich-countries-makes-poor-nations-poorer/
Plastic credits and other “financial inclusion” https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2023/03/revolutionizing-sustainability-how-plastic-credit-schemes-could-tackle-an-overlooked-crisis/
Trash for school : https://www.the-star.co.ke/news/big-read/2023-04-19-the-school-accepting-plastic-bottles-as-fees/
The infernal trillion dollar coin and other ways the USA knows it can screw you (the non-US global citizen without a vote here) and you can’t do anything about it : https://www.vox.com/22711346/trillion-dollar-coin-mintthecoin-debt-ceiling-beowulf
Trash for cash vending machines : https://sandtoncity.com/be-the-change-recycle-vending-machines/
Trash and trillion dollar coins