I think there could be two strands to this:

1) Local pragmatic ideas

2) Global economic systems

This group may focus on the local schemes and the Positive Alternatives group can look at the Global. 

Both could examine what the faith and belief perspective is on this.

Shalom

Dave

See the link: http://www.karmatube.org/videos.php?id=1569

This describes the Gift Economy - Dama

One way to empower communities is to make sure all government business goes through a state or municipal bank. The Bank of North Dakota is currently the only state bank in the United States and North Dakota is the only state that I know of that managed to maintain a budget surplus through the latest banking debacle.

Instead of money being sucked out of the community by the big banks, it gets recycled into the community. (It's kind of like moving your money from a big bank to a credit union, only for government instead of individuals.)

How do we manage to create a state or municipal bank?

Well, the best way is to probably start locally. Organize a group to interface with the local progressive government elected representatives and work with them to generate legislation to create a municipal bank. Then start a campaign to support the legislation (that's the hard part).

If anyone has other ideas or strategies on how to get local or state governments to switch their business to a municipal or state bank, I'd love to hear them.

Here's a somewhat related group on this site.  Some discussions had begun.

David has the two themes simply put:

1) Local pragmatic ideas

2) Global economic systems

Local pragmatic economies will not replace your IRA savings. They are the human and humane innovations of creative necessity. People already do this in every city today. Perhaps we might find ways to recognize the positive abundance of local prosperity, and reward and promote those things that already work.

The global economic system is a framing problem in many ways. Most of the bad behavior and debt wars that are being created in human societies right now are the effects of many years of a globalization experiment gone wrong. But because the organizers of the experiment all profited, they will not wind the system down unless their governments force them to. We do not need a solution - globalization itself is the obvious problem, with the many root causes leading to that system.

So I do not see where it benefits Occupiers to be the new economic masters - we do not want to own a global system. We could benefit from a well-regulated national system that actually served its people. This could take 5 years or a decade of organizing and public service. But honestly, Americans have never even tried doing the right thing economically. (One moral reason why I moved to Canada, to sidestep the war economy, and Canada also has much less of the corruption problem.) So who's to say corruption is impossible to defeat?

If we really are speaking for the 99%, they are not going to move to a barter system. They need to preserve their life's capital, and somehow soon, before the systemic crisis steals the rest of it.

The Mondragon model has been used in the basque regions of Spain since the 1940's,  It involves worker cooperatives.  I have serious problems with the entire discipline called economics - perhaps we need to change to a different form of mass balance.  I hope to be on the forum later, but it seems that most of the baggage that we carry economically now should be left behind in a new equitable system.  Fair and equal do not mean the same thing, but inequity certainly is not fair.