Discover Sustainable Solutions
Resilient Roots: The Living Economies Blog
Exploring the economic system, stories, and solutions to empower local community wealth.
Give Councils a New Superpower: Let Them Create Local Money
If Wellington can create money, why must councils rely entirely on rates? A forgotten experiment from Hamilton, and the remarkable “Miracle of Wörgl”, points towards another possibility.
Money Without Borrowing?
What Modern Monetary Theory means for how we pay to rebuild our schools, hospitals and infrastructure
Why Are We Paying Interest on Money We Could Create Ourselves?
A forgotten tool that could help solve New Zealand’s infrastructure crisis
Helen Dew: A Life of Interconnectedness and Local Action
Practical wisdom from a life lived close to the land and the community
The Currency That Terrified Central Bankers
In 1932, a small Austrian town did something extraordinary — it printed its own money, put 1,500 unemployed people back to work, and frightened national authorities into shutting it down
Helen Dew’s Memoir: Looking Back and Looking Ahead
"I think the global economy is teetering. And we may just need this kind of parallel exchange system to keep the wheels of commerce turning and to meet one another's needs." Helen Dew has spent the...
The Big Shift: Why I Believe We Need a New Political Economy
As I promised in a previous post, I will share my thoughts on a new economic system. We are standing at the edge of a much bigger change than most people realise. The old system is not merely unfair...
About this blog
The Living Economies Educational Trust champions economic systems that prioritize people and the planet. We provide resources for practical community solutions—including TimeBanks, Savings Pools, and local currencies—to build resilience and fair exchange throughout Aotearoa.