> Bottom-up development combining modular and nested components]]
Living systems assemble components one unit at a time, with development starting at the smallest scale. Simple solutions to a basic problem are nested within larger systems to form more complex entities. Starting with simple building blocks moving to more complex allows all the parts of the new system to grow and develop in response to local contexts, from the bottom up.
This recalls the biological metaphor of cohabiting cells working together to form a multicellular organism. A cell is a (comparatively) simple entity and a life form in its own right. Biology gives us many examples of cells working together and specialising to make an organism with a higher degree of organisation.
The credit commons proposes that the economy be re-imagined from the bottom up in a self-organised manner analogous to the design process of the natural world. The power of the state to force citizens to accept its promises as money is anathema to notions of freedom of persons, and of markets. Considering the value of legal tender monies rests entirely on the productivity of the citizens, they are the natural candidates to issue promises for produce, if money be such.
Systems in which a currency is imposed from the above lead to disparities in the availability of the currency, as we see in the Eurozone between Germany and Greece, for example. The biomimetic principle of designing from the bottom up would suggest every person, or more likely every economy, have its own currency for internal trade, and that complexity and scale be layered on top of that stable system.