By Melisa Luymes

I was so inspired in writing the article about land access this month and, once you read it later in this issue, you’ll understand why. So much of what Amy Stein said about her farmland investments got me thinking about values and, strangely, about those ‘Priceless’ Mastercard advertisements. You know the ones, “There are some things money can't buy. For everything else, there's MasterCard.”  A clever slogan that no doubt perpetuates consumerism and massive credit card debt.
Just like a fish doesn’t understand the water it swims in, we don’t often reflect on our economy, do we? But ever since a York University course in economic anthropology, I can’t see our world the same. Turns out that a number on a paper or screen is basically useless unless you can exchange it for food, shelter, entertainment, or something else of use. It is a scary thought but, really, currency only has value because we collectively believe it does. 
And the way our monetary economy is set up, the more money you have, the more money you can make. In Canada, the top 20 per cent of people hold 68 per cent of the country’s wealth, while the bottom 40 per cent have less than three per cent, according to Statistics Canada and reported by Global News last year. And you think that the rich would be happy, but a Princeton University study showed that happiness rises until a person earns $75,000/year (USD) and then it plateaus. So maybe Mastercard was right – happiness is one of the things you can’t buy.
But I wonder if it could.  Maybe in some alternative economic system and here are some ideas. 
First is the gift economy that I learned about in that fateful anthropology course. There are several cultures around the world, including the First Nations here, in which gifts are essentially the currency of exchange. One of my favourite social theorists, Charles Eisenstein, summarizes: “In a gift economy, the more you give, the richer you are.” Gifts create reciprocity and obligation, status, and social ties, which are a type of social wealth that ensure your needs will be met by community members. 
Another concept is a solutions economy, termed by Shaun Loney who has helped start several social enterprises, in which the goal of the business is not profit, but a social or environmental outcome. According to Loney, a solutions economy would be social enterprises run at scale and with public funds. Imagine our taxpayer dollars were directed towards solving a problem before it ended up costing us down the road. For example, making healthy food affordable now to save on health care spending later or creating jobs in underprivileged communities now to save on policing and incarceration later. In a solutions economy, strategic investment creates social and environmental wins, much like Amy and Michael’s investment in the land access article.
Next, believe it or not, there are still ways that people participate in a barter economy. A few years ago in Toronto, I met someone on their way to connect with a stranger they had met on an online barter group, exchanging produce from their garden for a stack of bus tickets. One of the issues with bartering is that each party needs to want what the other has, at the same value and at the same time, and this isn’t often the case. BarterPay® is a digital platform in Canada in which companies can offer their spare capacity of goods and services for credits that can be used later.  I’m intrigued. 
And similarly, there is Timebanking, a community-based platform of credits in which everyone’s time is valued equally. By spending an hour tutoring your neighbour’s son, you can get someone else to walk your dog for an hour or give you an hour’s worth of legal work. It is a means of non-monetary exchange that builds connections. There are also towns with “library” lending systems for tools, lawnmowers, extra cutlery for a party, etc. These systems help households save money on purchasing things they don’t need every day and it also helps strengthen community bonds.
What really gets me thinking is that these examples above and the story of land access in this issue demonstrate how to build connection, and studies show that happiness stems from connection. So maybe we can buy happiness! 
These examples, however, don’t feed our current monetary economy, which thrives on our constant spending and profit-motives.  Is Mastercard, in effect, keeping us from the one thing money can’t buy? I’m not suggesting we topple the system, but perhaps there are ways we can leverage our resources more creatively at a local level to make some more happiness and connection in rural Ontario. ◊