What an awesome thing he has done for the world!!!
I wonder if he knew back in the 80's when it was developed just how far reaching it would be.....
I wonder how many realise today just how much bigger it is going to get....
We started a LETS group in Woodford a couple of months ago and we now have 24 members... Big deal you say???? Woodford is a little town of a few thousand people.... I wonder how many people in Woodford will grasp the idea and run with it.
Here's a piece of writing by Michael Linton, founder of LETS - the full article can be found on http://www.lets.org.au/
"Local currencies have been common throughout history, emerging whenever a community needs to protect its internal economy from outside disturbances such as war, or depression. The Social Credit movement was one example, and more successf ul systems were used in Austria before the second world war.
Not surprisingly, the current economic climate has spawned several systems ranging from small, informal self help networks to the hundreds of commercial "barter" networks now operating throughout the US, and increasingly elsewhere.
The growth of these commercial networks is extraordinary.
In 1991 they reported $5.9 billion trading among 240,000 clients, in 450 systems. Two years later estimated trading had almost doubled to $10 billion, at a time when the US economy as a whole was standing still. This growth has occurred despite the high costs of taking part.
At present the LETSystem - Local Exchange Trading System - is the most advanced form of local currency in circulation.
The first LETSystem was developed in Canada's Comox Valley, in 1983, where some people adapted the "barter" network model and turned it into a full scale community system with greater advantages, yet operating at a fraction of the cost.
This prototype was very successful, despite considerable antipathy and even active resistance from key elements in the local community, and about 20 similar systems sprang up across North America.
By 1988 a combination of factors, principally research and development costs and fragile user confidence, caused trading in the Comox Valley system to decline virtually to a standstill.
While this created a general loss of confidence in N. America, LETSystems began to grow worldwide. Since 1987 some 70 LETSystems have been established in New Zealand and almost 200 in Australia. In Britain the number has rocketed from 7 systems in early 1991 to 150 by the end of 1993.
All these systems are based on the original prototype in Comox Valley, which has recently resumed trading with improved computer software, administration and more ways of introducing and educating people about LETSystems.
For a local currency to work people need to be able to use it alongside conventional money, and its design should resolve the three fundamental problems of that money. A local currency should ideally
- stay within the community it serves
- be issued by the people who use it
- exist in sufficient supply to meet the needs of that community.
It works much like a bank or a building society. Everyone has an account, but instead of money transferring from one bank to another, all exchanges are within a single system.
Personal Money
Each new account starts at zero and thereafter may hold a positive or a negative balance. Those with negative balances have, quite simply, created the money which is in the positive accounts. So this local money is essentially a promise by some members of the community to give service to others.Money like this, which you issue yourself, is personal money.
Conventional money, while easy to spend, is hard to earn. As a result it is coercive by nature - people with money exercise power over people without it. Who pays the piper calls the tune.
In a personal network , however, money is easy to earn. Everyone has money to spend.
By the same token, nobody needs it, so things only happen when people want them to. People serve willingly, or not at all. Nobody can tell anyone else what to do.
We are acknowledged for what we give to others. Acknowledgement in the local money has value because that money is actually the commitment of people in the community, to the community. "
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