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LETS
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Wed Dec 06 2000 at 9:25:09
LETS = Local Exchange Trade System
The LETS and similar exchange systems like
Ithaca Hours
or
ROCS
present themselves as an opposing, and thus
fair
er,
trade system
than conventional national and international
capitalism
.
Characteristics
It is intended for
local
and
regional
communities
and based on trade of hours of service ("I work x hours for you, you x hours for me") or, more often, mediators like the "Green $" (like money, but then different, see below).
Other characteristics are the way of issuing that: conventional (inter)national currencies are debt-based, bearing
interest
and therefore promoting
competition
; most important authority is the
Central Bank
; e.g. influencing the Euro of the EMU zone with some foreign currency trading. The
LETS
and similar systems work with a
mutual credit
, which is a system where the currency necessary to mediate a
transaction
is created at the time of the transaction as a corresponding
credit
and
debit
in the balances of the two parties involved. There isn't a
third party
involved who wants to gain
profit
from your trading activities, nor dictating what you must do to please them.
Effects
The alternatives are based on
sufficient
currencies and tend to be oriented towards a
gift
economy
and
social bond
ing, whereas the so-called
scarce currencies
support
hoard
ing. This in turn increases the value of a currency because of the scarcity: "making money" by doing nothing with it. The LETS system on the other hand sort of promotes the use of your currency (e.g. your ROCS): it doesn't increase, nor decrease, in value if you store more of them, thus
spending is good for your economy
.
An example
I've been a volunteer for the Wageningen
Student Organization
which is a member of LETS. The average student doesn't have money, but has time. We were
offer
ing copy
facilities
to other student organisations, who in turn gave us a certain amount of ROCS. However, if we would have kept the ROCS, nobody would have been able to use our facilities after a while, which certainly wasn't the intention. In the (inter)national currency system you take a
loan
and
speculate
, more often resulting in higher debts and/or financial dependencies to the one institution that "offered" you the
money
. But instead spending our scarce money in a fancy restaurant, we went over to their student organisation canteens for our biannual dinners, or they were distributing our magazines etc.;
many hands make light work
and
nobody is useless
in this system. At the end of the day all parties involved
gain
ed from the
trading
. And all participants are equal, not like in the big wide world that people who already have a considerable amount of money gain even more and the vast majority stays at the bottom.
More information and alternative theories about money can be found doing a Google search on LETS, Ithaca Hours, Time Dollars and/or ROCS.
printable version
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