Bernard Lietaer Quotes

• GREED AND COMPETITION ARE NOT THE RESULT OF IMMUTABLE HUMAN TEMPERMENT…GREED AND FEAR OF SCARCITY ARE IN FACT BEING CREATED AND AMPLIFIED …THE DIRECT CONSEQUENCE IS THAT WE HAVE TO FIGHT WITH EACH OTHER IN ORDER TO SURVIVE

  Bernard Lietaer

  Fighting, Order, Greed

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• Money is created through bank debt. When you go for a mortgage through a bank, they give you $100,000 to buy a house and basically send you out into the world to bring back $200,000 in the next twenty years. The first $100,000 is principal, and the second is interest.

  Bernard Lietaer

  Years, Giving, House

  Interview with Tracy Fernandez Rysavy, www.greenamerica.org. 2009.

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• When the banks create the money, they don't create the interest. They send you into the world to compete with everybody else to get the second $100,000 that never was created and bring it back to them. So if we're in a world with zero-growth population, goods, services, and money, the problem would be obvious.

  Bernard Lietaer

  Zero, Growth, Population

  Interview with Tracy Fernandez Rysavy, www.greenamerica.org. 2009.

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• Complementary currencies work in addition to existing money, rather than replacing existing, official money. There are whole different families of complementary currencies. One of them is local currencies. One is regional currencies. Another is functional currencies. Another is social-purpose currencies.

  Bernard Lietaer

  Different, Purpose, Currency

  Interview with Tracy Fernandez Rysavy, www.greenamerica.org. 2009.

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• Basically, for any complex to be sustainable needs to have a balance between two factors: resilience and efficiency. These two factors can be calculated from the structure of the network that is involved in a complex system. A resilient, efficient system needs to be diverse and interconnected. On the other hand, diversity and interconnectivity decrease efficiency. Therefore, the key is an appropriate balance between efficiency and resilience.

  Bernard Lietaer

  Keys, Hands, Two

  Interview with Tracy Fernandez Rysavy, www.greenamerica.org. 2009.

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• Conventional money is supposed to be doing everything. By adding in complementary currencies, you actually get different types of things and different outcomes from different complementary currencies.

  Bernard Lietaer

  Different, Outcomes, Currency

  Interview with Tracy Fernandez Rysavy, www.greenamerica.org. 2009.

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• Our [American] money system is structurally brittle. It doesn't matter if you put a very clever guy or a stupid guy at the wheel. The clever guy will take a half hour to have an accident, and the stupid guy will take ten minutes.

  Bernard Lietaer

  Clever, Stupid, Guy

  Source: www.greenamerica.org

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• Look at any financial institution, at any bank. They're all photocopies of each other. There's no diversity of institutions and even less diversity of currency. Therefore, just as you say its very logical that an ecosystem like this will collapse, it's very predictable a monetary system like this will collapse, too. And it hasn't finished collapsing, by the way.

  Bernard Lietaer

  Ecosystems, Diversity, Looks

  Interview with Tracy Fernandez Rysavy, www.greenamerica.org. 2009.

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• The Future of Money: Creating New Wealth, Work, and a Wiser World

  Bernard Lietaer

  Creating, World, Wealth

  Gwendolyn Hallsmith, Bernard Lietaer (2011). “Creating Wealth: Growing Local Economies with Local Currencies”, p.243, New Society Publishers

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• The direct consequence is that we have to fight with each other in order to survive.

  Bernard Lietaer

  Fighting, Order, Direct

  "Beyond Greed and Scarcity". Interview with Sarah van Gelder (Yes! A Journal of Positive Futures), www.lietaer.com. Spring 1997.

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