Great post Scribe!

"Joe Blow" is slang for a hypothetical American and like it or not my imagination of myself rather fits the stereotype of being blithely ignorant. But the stereotype also includes that Joe Blow is motivated--incentivized--by money.

Maybe not so much like Joe Blow American, I'm for alternative economies and local currencies and in other ways the epithet, "moonbat" sticks. What's jarring is "energy independence" is that a rallying cry of American populism from the American right. As much as we Americans benefit from globalization and the dollar on the top of the heap as an international commodity reserve currency, the populist imagination is "don't tread on me."

Former presidential candidate Al Gore has proposed scrapping employment taxes in favor of a Carbon Tax. The idea is in some ways similar to George Monbiot's Icecaps www.energybulletin.net/22176.html But Monbiot's plan is an international system.

The reason I bring this up is that your question: "[D]oes the future of alternative economies lie in tying it to alternative sources of energy, e.g. local micro-currencies for local (renewable) micro-generation?" Raised questions in my mind about the conversion of currencies, even local currencies.

The Asia Times article is very good and so far as I have seen little attention in the American press has be given to the issues raised. As you may know the deliberations of Cheney's Energy Task Force are top-secret. In my Joe Blow mode, ordinary working-class Americans do understand that our current accounts deficit doesn't bode well for us.

My opinion is that some sort of market basket of currencies for use as international commodity-reserve currency is probably in my interest as Joe Blow American, essentially for an orderly revaluation of the dollar rather than a precipitous decline. That's where "moonbat" really sticks.

Alternative currencies tied to local energy systems don't seem far-fetched to me. But I also foresee taxes (like death) are inevitable. Taxes will require conversion of currencies. Monbiot's advocacy of the Bancor and his recent idea of Icecaps both require international agreements for taxing authority to maintain an international monetary system.

Readily admitting my ignorance, especially about economics, it still seems to me that the shape of taxes on currency conversions, or the extraction of taxes by currency conversions, will be crucial to how national and local currencies fair.