Cross-city programs

Here's the idea worth building toward.

A paper penny is a local promise: spend it here, in this town, at these stores. The cross-city vision asks one more question: what if a penny issued in one town were honoured in the next?

Think of it in Grey-Bruce terms. You collect pennies at a shop in Owen Sound. You drive to Wiarton for the weekend and spend those pennies at the bakery there. The Wiarton shop loses nothing because the ledger settles the amount behind the counter: the Owen Sound program makes the Wiarton program whole, penny for penny, with every movement recorded and auditable.

That's the whole mechanism. Local paper, honoured regionally, settled between cities through the ledger. No bank in the middle. No fees eating the margin. Just towns keeping honest books with each other.

To clarify the current state: no penny is in circulation, no two cities have a settlement agreement, and no ledger settles anything between towns today. This is the destination rather than the departure board. We publish this because a network map should show the purpose of the network.