Metaboston

Are Berkshares and Other Local Currencies Effective?

Local activists in the Berkshires created a local currency called BerkShares to encourage the local economy.  Tim Harford questions whether they do any economic good but thinks they may build community ties:

"The real benefits, if they exist, are not economic but social, and best explained not by an economist like me but by a sociologist such as Ed Collom of the University of Southern Maine.

Collom's work looks, at first glance, like bad news for the community-currency movement. He has found, for example, that most currency schemes in the United States last only a few years before collapsing. The ones that thrive are in places which already have strong, liberal, middle-class communities, such as Portland, Ore., or Ithaca, N.Y. In the Rust Belt areas that would seem to need them more, they have not taken root. The schemes take a lot of effort to set up: Brixton LETS, for instance, remains nascent.

But despite the obstacles, Ed Collom is convinced that local currencies can strengthen neighborhood ties and allow people to make friends: They are a focal point for the community-minded, even when they do not last."

Tyler Cowan thinks more of the idea arguing that "private currencies can serve as a form of price discrimination.  By accepting private currency from your local customers, and indeed only your local customers, you can charge them a lower net price and without being very public about it."

Edith Wharton House Nears Foreclosure

Tomorrow's the last day to contribute to the organization that runs Edith Wharton's Berkshires mansion, the Mount, which is facing foreclosure following heavy reliance on debt financing for their renovation.

"The Mount is faced with imminent foreclosure, which could result in         this National Historic Landmark being closed to the public forever.       

Please make a contribution now! To prevent foreclosure, The Mount estimates         that it needs to raise up to $3 million through the Save The Mount campaign         before April 24, 2008."

From their website it looks like they've raised about $760,000 at this point so things don't look great with only one day to go.  However, they say they have a matching fund pledge which brings them considerably closer. (Image above:  Edith Wharton Restoration)

Edith Wharton House Faces Foreclosure

Edith Wharton, chronicler of rich and snobbish New Yorkers in novels like The Age of Innocence , built a massive summer house in the Berkshires and in a blow to her posthumous dignity it is in imminent danger of being repossessed.  Now the organization that restored and runs The Mount, as Wharton's house is known, is facing the property's foreclosure. 

"To stave off creditors -- including, most prominently, Berkshire Bank -- so the home, which is listed as a National Historic Landmark, can continue to be a viable business venture, it must raise $6 million by March 24." 

They seem to have lined up a person willing to match $3 million of the debt.

After having borrowed million to pay for restorations the organization cannot pay the debt and has already missed one mandatory payment.  Borrowing that much seems like a very risky strategy when the usual approach seems to be to raise money first and then begin a big project. 

House museums often aren't all that popular so it remains to be seen whether there will be the kind of grassroots support that saved Toscanini's.  Do people like Edith Wharton the way they like ice cream?

(Image of The Mount:  Edith Wharton.org)

Read: The Economics of Apple-Picking

Daniel Gross casts a gimlet eye on fall-in-New England staple day trip:  apple-picking.

Apple picking is a cherished rite of fall, a wholesome and fun family outing, a throwback to a simpler time when people weren't so disconnected from the production of their sustenance. I look forward to it every year. It's also a wasteful scam.

Gross ends up having a good time at Bartlett's Orchard in the Berkshires but still notes that it encourages overconsumption and brings up the paradox of choice.  But he doesn't bring up the idea that in rich countries manual labor, like gardening or apple picking, becomes a leisure activity.

Find Out About: the Mass MoCA Case Judgment

Mass MoCA wins in its case with artist Christoph Buchel and can display the product of their disputed joint venture with the artist.

"The judge cited pertinent facts grounding his decision, including that the project was 'a very large and complex installation' requiring 'a large degree' of detailed collaboration between artist and museum. The exhibit was 'the product of the intent and vision of persons other than Mr Büchel', he added. The museum paid for all or most of the materials, he said, with the result that 'a great deal of stuff' which it bought is now 'resting on its premises'. It also paid for most of the installation work, he said, and the dispute is occupying the museum’s 'primary gallery', which the museum says it cannot now use. "

Read: More on The Mass MoCA Controversy

Another art critic (this one from the NY Times) piles on Mass MoCA for exhibiting the "unfinished" work of Swiss artist Christopher Buchel.  The controversy arose out of a dispute between the museum which had had bankrolled a mammoth installation by Buchel but started to pull back when it felt Buchel's requests were spinning over-budget and out-of-control  as with his request for the fuselage of a Boeing 737.  Having already sunk over $320,000 and with Buchel ceasing participation, Mass MoCA decided to exhibit what it had despite the artist claiming it was unfinished.  The critic Roberta Smith objects to the exhibition of a giant installation of objects including a two-story house, a bar, an old movie theatre, "1,000 beverage cups from a race track" and "1,000 feet of barbed wire." 

Smith suggests that Mass Moca is on dangerous ground in thinking that "in controlling the purse strings, a museum starts thinking of itself as a co-author who knows what the artist wants better than he or she does." But if the museum isn't the artist it is at least the patron and patrons have a long history of influencing artwork.  Books like Michelle O'Malley's  The Business of Art:  Contracts and the Commissioning Process in Renaissance Italy describe the very specific contracts patrons wrote.  Painting allowed artists to achieve some degree of independence with limited expenses involved in acquiring canvas, paint, and brushes.  With investments in the hundreds of thousands, artists like Buchel may face difficulty preserving independence while getting these enormous sums.  Smith suggests that there is a reservoir of resentment toward the freedom of artists behind this situation but to anyone who has ever had work done on their house, this seems like a very familiar version of the homeowner-contractor disputes erupting in neighborhoods across the country.  Perhaps Buchel has ushered in a new era, not the artist as hero that Smith seems to look back to where artists "operate with a kind of freedom and courage that other people don't risk or enjoy" but the artist as contractor leaving your space full of stuff with the job undone.

Smith also argues that "the artist's freedom includes the right to say, 'This is not a work of art unless I say so.'"  This is an interesting argument because it is likely that there would be any objective way to determine whether the installation is complete so relying on the artist's word would serve as the only firm finish.  But can we trust the artist's word?  The suggestion has been raised earlier by the Times that Buchel intended the dispute as part of his art as we wrote about before.

Christoph Büchel v. MASS MoCA

Working on the exhibit (image MASS MoCA)

Is Christoph Büchel's feud with MASS MoCA itself an elaborate prank/meta-commentary at the expense of the "art establishment" that the museum represents? 

That's the intriguing idea raised at the end of this article on MASS MoCa's fraught exhibition of a new work by Büchel called "Training Ground for Democracy."  The conceptual installation required the museum to build a two-story house and bring in an oil tanker, movie theatre, and mobile home before the requests became really elaborate with what became the final straw for MASS MoCA:  the "fuselage from a large jetliner, like a 767, that Mr. Büchel wanted to be burned and bomb-damaged and then hung from the ceiling."  Needless to say the budget spun out of control doubling the initial estimate to over $300,000.  Büchel now refuses to have the work exhibited unfinished and the museum plans to show it covered in tarps. 

A couple interesting points:  the museum's lawyers seem to have done a really bad job with no clear agreement governing the terms of the work and expenses and in this situation the museum seems to have become the employee of Büchel  or, more positively, the artist itself in assembling all the materials through its workers with little direct involvement by the Büchel.

BerkShares: Berkshires' Alternate Currency

BerkShares, Inc. has been putting out an alternate currency (the BerkShares) intended to encourage local trade in the South Berkshires.  You can purchase BerkShares at a 10% discount (paying $0.90 on the dollar) from local banks and then use them at businesses in the area that accept them from restaurants and B&Bs to auto repair shops and lawyers.  You can redeem the BerkShares at a bank for dollars but you'll lose the 10% difference.  The currency features local notables like Melville and Norman Rockwell.  It's an interesting idea because the consumer gets the discount and can be aware in advance of which businesses use BerkShares while the businesses which are likely to benefit most from local shopping take on more of the risk of the 10% discount and additional accounting concerns.

This audio clip does a good job of describing the experience of implementing an alternate currency.