Do you know where your money is? More importantly, do you know what your money is doing? Most of us feel confident that we know what money is. But few of us feel confident in taking responsibility for what our money does. We hand over the power of money to banks and mainstream finance with real, often damaging, consequences for people and planet. A unique collaboration between an academic and a practitioner, this book tells the story of money, from ancient Athens to the Bitcoin revolution, to explain how crowdfunding is the way for people to reclaim the power of their money in pursuit of a fairer and greener society.
Author(s): Mark Davis, Bruce Davis
Publisher: Bristol University Press
Year: 2021
Language: English
Pages: 182
City: Bristol
Front Cover
Testimonials page
Crowdfunding and the Democratization if Finance
Copyright information
Dedication
Table of contents
About the Authors
Acknowledgments
Preface
ONE The Crisis of Finance
The financial Leviathan
Why ‘democratic finance’?
Models of democracy
What does finance value?
TWO What is Crowdfunding?
Savings accounts (in banks, building societies or National Savings)
Investments (capital at risk)
eBay for money
Crowdfunding: the basics
Donation/rewards-based crowdfunding
Debt security or loans-based crowdfunding
Equity-based crowdfunding
Co-operatives and community benefit societies
Crowdfunding around the world and back
Crowdfunding as ‘democratic finance’
Democratizing finance? For whom, about what?
THREE Democratic Finance, Then and Now
Who controls your money?
Guardians of the financial Republic
Saving versus investing
P2P finance, a 2,500-year-old new idea
Digging for coins
From Goschen loans to Community Municipal Investments
FOUR The Destination of Money
Flat, colourless and heartless
It’s relational work, stupid!
The gift of money
Modern Monetary Theory, moonshots and missions to Mars
FIVE Futures of Democratic Finance
Challenging crowdfunding, within and without
Understanding investment as a social act
The enduring paradox of financial inclusion
The taboo of investment
Money, meaning and those magic money trees
From wealth creation to wealth management: neoliberalism’s ‘real’ legacy
Beyond the crisis of finance: crowdfunding versus cryptocurrencies
CONCLUSION The Change in Your Pocket
Notes
References
Index
Back Cover
