THE FUTURE OF MONEY Bernard A. Lietaer - library.uniteddiversity ...

freshly baked whole wheat bread. Amy sees potential trades in all of
these. She negotiates with Sarah for her car tune-up for 30 'green
dollars' plus $20 in cash for the new spark plugs. She receives her
dental treatment from John for 50 'green dollars' and $10 in cash. She
agrees to provide Harold with two deliveries of bread this week for
10 'green dollars' and finds out that he also would like some of the
vegetables from her garden for another 30 'green dollars'.
The cash component is handled by all the participants directly as in
any ordinary sales transaction, and only the 'green dollars'
component is called in by phone or by a note to the LETS system. At
the end, Amy obtains what she needs for only b30 in cash for a total
value of $110 of goods and services. She also ends up still owing
another 40 'green dollars' to the community as a whole. The 'green
dollars' are not a scarce currency; as soon as people agree on a trade
the currency is available. Neither do they pitch the participants
against each other the way the normal dollar does (remember the
Eleventh Round?). In most systems, there is no interest charge on any
balances. Finally, the information about any individual's outstanding
debit or credit balance is available to all participants so that there is a
self-policing process to avoid abuse of the system by attempts to
accumulate unreasonable debits.
Canada has between 25 and 30 operating LETS systems at this
point. However, LETS became much bigger in the UK than in its
country of origin. From there it spread to a dozen other countries,
primarily in regions where high unemployment levels prevailed.
UK
In 1994, Alan Wheatley, a Reuters journalist, filed a report (see box).
Manchester, England