Via the excellent (but sometimes NSFW) Towleroad, I found the following:

PROVINCETOWN — A pocketful of pirate “gold” might pave the road to a new form of local currency aimed at stretching residents’ finances and bringing the community together.

The Unitarian Universalist Meeting House is behind the idea — slated to be rolled out on Jan. 15 — to create a local, legal barter currency that residents can use to exchange skills and services. UU Meeting House Rev. Alison Hyder said most people living in town have a skill, resource or interest that could be of use to someone else. By using the paper barter currency, called “dune doubloons,” residents can pay for a pie or putting up storm windows or guitar lessons without using real cash.

The emancipation of commerce from a money which is proving more and more useless in this way begins with the expulsion of the money from hoards. People begin at first to hoard other money instead so as to have marketable goods at their disposal for unforeseen future needs—perhaps precious-metal money and foreign notes, and sometimes also domestic notes of other kinds which have a higher value because they cannot be increased by the state (for example, the Romanoff ruble in Russia or the"blue" money of com munist Hungary); then ingots, precious stones, and pearls; even pictures, other objects of art, and postage stamps. A further step is the adoption of foreign currency or metallic money (that is, for all practical purposes, gold) in credit transactions. Finally, when the domestic currency ceases to be used in retail trade, wages as well have to be paid in some other way than in pieces of paper which are then no longer good for anything.

The collapse of an inflation policy carried to its extreme—as in the United States in 1781 and in France in 1796—does not destroy the monetary system, but only the credit money or fiat money of the state that has overestimated the effectiveness of its own policy. The collapse emancipates commerce from etatism and establishes metallic money again.

The dune doubloon program is based on a successful barter system that originated in Ithaca, N.Y., where over 900 participants accept “Ithaca Hours,” the local barter currency aimed at promoting local economic strength and community self-reliance. It also keeps the money “local,” which could be an asset in Provincetown, Hyder said, where people with myriad skills have little to do in the winter.

The program will kick off with a potluck dinner at 5 p.m. Monday, Jan. 15, at the UU Meeting House, 236 Commercial St. People and stores that sign up for the program will receive $50 in dune doubloons free.

The gold doubloons will be worth $10 and the silver $5. However, the idea is that each hour of service or time spent creating a product is worth $10, Hyder said.

“Everybody is treated the same and everyone’s time is worth the same,” she said.

If you are an AHA member and can attend, the sponsors of the resolution need your help. It will be an uphill battle to get this passed but the potential pay-off for academic freedom of winning will be enormous.

I hereby give Pursuit of Happyness a glowing endorsement. It is a compelling, energetic, and unabashed celebration of free markets, individual responsibility, and old-fashioned pluck. Based on a true story, Will Smith plays Chris Gardner, a man who never lets up in his dream of becoming a stockbroker despite the responsibilities of a young son and the lack of a college education. Smith’s performance deserves an Oscar nomination, at least if merit still counts for anything in Hollywood.

While the critics have generally praised the film, it has rubbed some of them the wrong way. More than a few have found it hard to stomach the novelty of a sympathetic black character in a major Hollywood film who aspires to be a stockbroker and quotes Thomas Jefferson without irony or apology.

For example, Jeffrey M. Anderson sees a “disturbing...depression era attitude toward the class system. Here, the wealthy are mainly kind, generous folk and the poor are angry and vindictive. Gardner's ambition is admirable, but the movie dimly believes that great wealth is the final answer to all his problems.”

With unconcealed disdain, Peter Sobczynski reports how Smith as Chris “ponders unironically what he sees as the great American meritocracy, by way of Thomas Jefferson’s phrasing for the Declaration of Independence. He’s especially impressed that the founding father was wise enough to see the 'pursuit' was all that might be deemed a right, at least for those considered entire people at the time (as opposed to, say, those considered 3/5ths people).” Even more unforgivable for Sobczynski is the film’s inattention to “racism, on institutional or individual levels.”

John Beifuss's summary of the main themes is misleading but equally illustrative of the mind-set of the critics: “With Reagan hovering in the background as a sort of patron saint of economic self-determination and Captain America as the son's superhero of choice, the movie segregates its characters into two categories: Guitar-strumming hippie chicks, homeless nutcases, Chinese-speaking day care operators and non-Smith black folks -- bad; rich white stock brokers with box seats at 49ers games -- good.”

Most of the critics, however, have faulted the film for predictability and excessive sentimentality. Don’t let them keep you out of the theater. Pursuit of Happyness is about ideas and refreshingly subversive ones at that, especially for a Hollywood film.