Podcast: Complementary Currency
Our “BlueSciCon” podcast for May features a conversation with our 2014 essay contest winner Kamir Hiam titled “Redesigning Human Motivation and Aiming for the Stars“.
Space exploration requires costly investment, and the lack of an immediate return on this capital provides little economic incentive for a long-term exploratory program. Likewise, optimal solutions to environmental challenges sometimes compete against marketplace forces, which can create difficulties in motivating new behaviors. In his winning essay, Kamir Haim proposes that “complementary currency” could provide a mechanism for instigating interest in the human exploration and colonization of space. Hiam highlights several contemporary examples of how local economies have used complementary currencies to solve otherwise intractable problems, and he discusses possibilities for extending these ideas toward supporting research and education.