ucos:use-credit_obligations

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ucos:use-credit_obligations [2025/12/14 10:27] – [Avoiding ‘[regulatory capture](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udoqK5AfYpw)’] daveucos:use-credit_obligations [2025/12/14 10:51] (current) – [What can I do?] dave
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-### Avoiding [regulatory capture](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udoqK5AfYpw)+### Avoiding 'regulatory capture'
  
-Another important Chris Cook invention was to make UCOs assignable, not transferable. To explain: a £10 note is transferable. Anyone who gets it can spend it, and it doesn’t matter where they got it from. They might have found it, or got it from someone who stole it – but they can still spend it. No-one will question where they got it. Transferable is clean and anonymous. That’s not the same for a cheque, which has (had? Does anyone use cheques any more?) someone’s name on it. It used to be that cheques were assignable – you could cross out the name on the cheque and write another one. The banks didn’t like this, as circulating cheques meant that people needed to borrow less money from banks. Plus it made the money supply hard to control, and there were fraud issues etc. But you could make a cheque non-assignable by drawing two lines through it. That was called a crossed cheque. Now, crosses are automatically printed on cheque books. So cheques became non-assignable _and_ non-transferable. Banks were very happy to make cheques non-assignable, because it increased their hold on everyone’s finances.+Another important Chris Cook invention was to make UCOs assignable, not transferable. To explain: a £10 note is transferable. Anyone who gets it can spend it, and it doesn’t matter where they got it from. They might have found it, or got it from someone who stole it – but they can still spend it. No-one will question where they got it. Transferable is clean and anonymous. That’s not the same for a cheque, which has someone’s name on it. It used to be that cheques were assignable – you could cross out the name on the cheque and write another one. The banks didn’t like this, as circulating cheques meant that people needed to borrow less money from banks. Plus it made the money supply hard to control, and there were fraud issues etc. But you could make a cheque non-assignable by drawing two lines through it. That was called a crossed cheque. Now, crosses are automatically printed on cheque books. So cheques became non-assignable _and_ non-transferable. Banks were very happy to make cheques non-assignable, because it increased their hold on everyone’s finances.
  
 So – looking back at our energy example above – what assignable not transferable means is that the local energy group holds the register of who’s got the ECOs. If I own some, then I’m the registered holder of those ECOs in the ledger. If I want to sell them, I can only do so to those registered with the energy group, and the energy group can refuse to register anyone they don’t like, for ethical reasons, or because they think they’ll siphon profits out of their local area. The commons groups have control of who they have on the register. This means transparency – anyone who owns the ECOs can find out who else owns them, so the group can make sure that ownership doesn’t become too concentrated, and they’re not used for speculation. So – looking back at our energy example above – what assignable not transferable means is that the local energy group holds the register of who’s got the ECOs. If I own some, then I’m the registered holder of those ECOs in the ledger. If I want to sell them, I can only do so to those registered with the energy group, and the energy group can refuse to register anyone they don’t like, for ethical reasons, or because they think they’ll siphon profits out of their local area. The commons groups have control of who they have on the register. This means transparency – anyone who owns the ECOs can find out who else owns them, so the group can make sure that ownership doesn’t become too concentrated, and they’re not used for speculation.
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 Commons groups can provide sustainable infrastructure – renewable energy, natural buildings, compost toilets and reed beds for sewage, organic food etc. Commons groups can provide sustainable infrastructure – renewable energy, natural buildings, compost toilets and reed beds for sewage, organic food etc.
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-We’d like to hear from people willing to co-design robust legal and governance models. Once these are in place, we’d like to support some candidate groups with promising ideas. 
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-The [Credit Commons society](https://creditcommonssociety.org/) is progressing a design for commons housing, so we'd especially like to hear from anyone willing and able to contribute to that work. 
  
 We’ll be adding new topic introductions on how UCOs can be used in all sectors – housing, energy, land, care etc. There are already developments with which you can be involved from the start - [housing commons](/hoco/Housing_commons) and [energy commons](http://lowimpactorg.onyx-sites.io/posts/building-the-energy-commons-marcus-saul-of-island-power). We’ll be adding new topic introductions on how UCOs can be used in all sectors – housing, energy, land, care etc. There are already developments with which you can be involved from the start - [housing commons](/hoco/Housing_commons) and [energy commons](http://lowimpactorg.onyx-sites.io/posts/building-the-energy-commons-marcus-saul-of-island-power).
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  • by dave