However, I think that the merchants would benefit from being paid in cash or checks.

If one wanted to support local merchants, I think that would be reason enough to pay in cash rather than with a credit card.

And I think I would get great satisfaction knowing that the credit card companies were not getting their usual 2% cut!

Well, you could do it anyway. Re-read the contract first though.

LETSlink UK, the national development agency for LETS, has it as top recommendation for software, and is also usable for any hours based or other mutual credit system, so would also be usable for running a skills exchange within a Transition group.

The software is available via LLUK’s comparative web site for complementary currency software – http://cxss.info (see the Local Exchange forum there for download links).

I’ll be demonstrating it at workshop(s) for LETS groups in Devon (Plymouth, Sun 8 Aug, and hopefully also Exeter, Sat 7th Aug) – should anyone wish to attend either of these please contact me direct via Falmouth LETS site as above, or via http://transitionfalmouth.org.uk.

There’s also a demo site for use by those considering installing it. Please contact me as above if you’d like to try it out.

On how easy it is to set up a local money scheme: I think in the book I show that setting up a basic LETS is very, very easy, especially given the support there is on line. The harder bit is keeping them going, and deepening the range of services that are available.

Just share? Sure – if that’s what you are into.

But, I would suggest that if we really want to build resilient local economies then we have to go beyond the ‘usual suspects’ who probably share between each other, help each other out, use Freecycle/Freegle etc already. Money can be useful when some people want to ‘pay their way’, not feel obliged to others. This comes out very strongly in the experiences of LETS.

Secondly, we need to involve existing local businesses, co-ops and the like in our project of building resilent local economies, and develop new ones so we produce more of the things we need locally. I think this means we need to go beyond just sharing. (Not that Ive anything against shgaring at all – do it all the time!)

http://files.uniteddiversity.com/Money_and_Economics/The_Sharing_Solution.pdf

The idea is this: not using a credit card to pay for purchases, since there is typically a hidden fee (an average of 2 % in the US) that the merchant has to pay.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interchange_fee

Thus, paying local merchants with cash or by check would mean they would get 2% more.

Of course there are other considerations (e.g. some consumer protection when you pay by credit card, at least in the U.S.).

Can anyone see a whole in this argument?

Bart / Energy Bulletin

The underlying issue, as I think you agree, is helping people to provide for each other in ways that promote wellbeing instead of just increasing money flows.

Local currencies of the Berkshire/Totnes/Lewes etc. or LETS or Time Bank varieties may help in this, may make the giving and receiving more familiar, but it is the organised mutual support that we are trying to arrange: all the practical ways of sharing food, transport, goods, etc. as you describe on your website for Westchester, and much else, to be developed, until we have working resilient local economies.

When I went through the Orsi book and made a list of all the ways of sharing already existing in my extended community, it became an exciting catalog of the local economy already beginning to work here.

When we read so often about the Totnes Pound and the other UK paper currencies, it becomes easy to forget that other (non-currency) methods of sharing between community members might be equally as powerful in cultivating local economies. Many types of non-currency community finance systems are relatively easy to set up, and many have no financial cost to set up.

Also, non-currency systems like LETS and time banks can remove the “barrier to entry” that often occurs when a system requires a person to exchange a unit of national currency for the new local currency in order to enter the system. Having a barrier to entry can perpetuate economic class divides (where the wealthy begin using the local currency but the poor can’t afford to buy in).

For examples of what Orsi talks about, you can see our work in our neighborhood of Los Angeles at http://envirochangemakers.org/sharing.htm

The fundamental problem with money is that it is an abstraction, and as such it can have whatever “meaning” we want to attach to it.

Further, the essence of the abstractions by which we manage our lives has to do with their “information quality,” which can be seen as the relationship between our abstract ideas and the reality of the complex and dynamic, physical, ecological, and cultural world we live in.

The global financial system and its many national components have been involved–mainly without intent–in destroying the “information quality” of money by a constant increase in the amount of money in play relative to the amount of energy available to do the work that money represents.

Thus, we are living in a time of accelerating, and mainly hidden, inflation, which has the mainly (for a while) invisible effect of confusing the operating realities of our lives.

This can be rectified by creating a better linkage between the meaning in our (abstract) monetary system and the physical reality of the systems in which we live.

Of course, you would hear none of this from the economics departments in our universities, whose perspective on the world is all about “money.”

However, this can, and will change as we increasingly experience the circumstances of reality and begin to apply our real intellectual capabilities to the challenge of learning to live in a world powered by (changing) available energy and the need to understand just what that means to our–and our children’s–lives.