About Graham Barnes

Graham Barnes is a Director of Feasta and co-organiser of the Feasta Currency Group. He holds a PhD in Computer Science and worked at a senior level in IT and online marketing in a previous life. His past projects have included the design and delivery of currencies to be sponsored by a local authority; by a social entrepreneur to complement and enhance a well established sustainability methodology; and by a 'local-aware' restaurant chain. His focus is  on the systemic dysfunction of mainstream money and finance, the inequity it accelerates and promising developments for its democratisation and detox  #fairgreenmoney

Graham Barnes has written 51 articles so far, you can find them below.

Questioning The Free Trade Mantra

Graham Barnes presents three reasons for challenging the narrative that restrictions on trade are never justifiable, and goes on to argue that the potential rebalancing of an economy - away from over-financialisation towards productive activity and especially stuff of life end product like food and energy - could create its own success story/ case study and encourage others. Changing our money system would help to achieve this.

The strange idea of negative interest

This article by Graham Barnes addresses the role of demurrage (negative interest) in the design of new currencies. But it takes a roundabout route with diversions around the zero and negative interest rates being currently applied to fiat money; and a detour via positive interest which is itself a stranger idea than we have been led to believe. It suggests that demurrage is worth a place in the designer's kitbag, but not for the reason normally postulated.

Privatising Air

We seem to have entered an era of 'reductio ad absurdum' capitalism. Many of life's fundamentals such as land, water and energy have been or are being enclosed and privatised. @GrahamJBarnes asks if there is any natural limit to this. Could air be privatised?

A Financial Transaction Tax (FTT) for Ireland

If implementation of an FTT is indeed a no-brainer, as suggested at yesterday's launch in Dublin of RobinHoodTax.ie, it is because of its potential influence in creating a more stable and balanced economy within a fairer society. These may not be the lead messages of a campaign featuring the #MakeBankersPay hashtag and emphasising the dogoodability of FTT tax receipts. But arguably they should be. By Graham Barnes.