Showing posts with label LETS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label LETS. Show all posts

March 12, 2009

Alternative Money Systems

At the moment I am researching some alternative Money Systems for use as an online software system for a LETS job agency in Groningen in the Netherlands (Dutch: LETS uitzendbureau). We will work under the name LETSwerk.nl
Looking at the following softwarelist (http://www.complementarycurrency.org/software.html).
The system should be able to have multiple currencies. We will use time (like time-banks), LETS (local barter units) and conventional money (Euro). 
After lots of research we will begin to use Cyclos as our main banking and administration software. Before this I tried CuroMuto.com as a test environment but I could not get this barternetwork to work.

Just before this post I joined http://stroomgeld.ning.com/ (dutch) aiming at an ecosophical approach using Bernard Lietaer's book 'The Future of Money'. A good portal-page about complementary economics in the Netherlands (including international links) is: http://complementaire-economie.startpagina.nl/

There are many web sites dealing with alternative money systems and related issues. The following are some of the most interesting (list from: http://www.ces.org.za/misc/links.htm)
Alternative Money Systems
The following resources are to help you understand the nature of money-as-we-know-it and why we need a new money system.
Documents, Books and Articles
Monetary Reform
Monetary History
Miscellaneous
  • Money, Banking and Credit. This site is devoted to the issues of money, banking, fiscal, and monetary policy and their impacts on families and the nation as a whole
  • The People vs The Banks - Class action suit on behalf of the people of Canada alleging that financial institutions are illegally creating money.
Peak Oil
Video
  • CC Video. Collection of videos on complementary currency systems
  • Money as Debt [Google video]
    Paul Grignon's 47-minute animated presentation of "Money as Debt" tells in very simple and effective graphic terms what money is and how it is being created. It is an entertaining way to get the message out. The Cowichan Citizens Coalition and its "Duncan Initiative" received high praise from those who previewed it. I recommend it as a painless but hard-hitting educational tool and encourage the widest distribution and use by all groups concerned with the present unsustainable monetary system in Canada and the United States.
  • The Money Masters [Google video]
    How International Bankers Gained Control of America
  • Monopoly Men - Federal Reserve Fraud (1999)
  • Suzao Media
    A good collection of videos on money and debt
[this post was updated on december 3, 2009.] 
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    October 12, 2008

    Exchange Economics

    Most ways humans have of organizing are adaptations to scarcity and want. Each way carries with it different ways of gaining social status.

    The simplest way is the command hierarchy. In command hierarchies, allocation of scarce goods is done by one central authority and backed up by force. Command hierarchies scale very poorly [Mal]; they become increasingly brutal and inefficient as they get larger. For this reason, command hierarchies above the size of an extended family are almost always parasites on a larger economy of a different type. In command hierarchies, social status is primarily determined by access to coercive power.

    Our society is predominantly an exchange economy. This is a sophisticated adaptation to scarcity that, unlike the command model, scales quite well. Allocation of scarce goods is done in a decentralized way through trade and voluntary cooperation (and in fact, the dominating effect of competitive desire is to produce cooperative behavior). In an exchange economy, social status is primarily determined by having control of things (not necessarily material things) to use or trade.

    Most people have implicit mental models for both of the above, and how they interact with each other.
    Government, the military, and organized crime (for example) are command hierarchies parasitic on the broader exchange economy we call ‘the free market’. There’s a third model, however, that is radically different from either and not generally recognized except by anthropologists; the gift culture.
    Gift cultures are adaptations not to scarcity but to abundance. They arise in populations that do not have significant material-scarcity problems with survival goods. We can observe gift cultures in action among aboriginal cultures living in ecozones with mild climates and abundant food. We can also observe them in certain strata of our own society, especially in show business and among the very wealthy.

    Abundance makes command relationships difficult to sustain and exchange relationships an almost pointless game. In gift cultures, social status is determined not by what you control but by what you give away.

    Used source: Homesteading the Noosphere by Eric Steven Raymond\

    [Reposted MetaMagazine 2001]

    Local Echange Communities
    Local Exchange Economies are formed locally worldwide with a Local Exchange Trading System (LETS) which often use their own local currency unit. It is a barter-like network but not only for businesses; also individuals can join. I am member of Keerkring Groningen which is one of the many LETS groups in the Netherlands. See also Letscontact.nl (Dutch).
    Another bartering network I joined (aiming at sustainable economy) is Qoin.com.
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