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

is the ROCS, because it brings together all the best features that
provide robustness to the system. As of this writing, this currency has
not yet been implemented to my knowledge.
Its choice of the hour as unit of account makes it pretty universal
and safe against shocks to the national currency system. Its mutual
credit aspect eliminates the risks of over-issuing that is intrinsic to all
fiat currencies. What differentiates the ROCS from Time Dollars is
that the rate of exchange of the hour is negotiated between the
participants. Some people may consider that everybody's time should
be equally valued. But this is Utopian, as in practice it simply means
that people whose services are significantly more valuable in the
'normal' marketplace, such as dentists or surgeons, simply will nor
accept Time Dollars in exchange for their services.
Finally, ROCS would include the demurrage feature for reasons
explained next.
Some technical lessons from the 1930’s usable today
One of the more interesting features successfully tested in hundreds
of cases in the 1930s (including Worgl, described in Chapter 5) -
which has not been copied in the more recent systems is the idea of
demurrage. This feature has nevertheless some very important and
desirable effects. First of all, it would advantageously replace the
transaction costs (which have the built-in incentive to discourage
trading) necessary to fund overhead expenses. It could also be used
to fund some collective project that the community agrees should be
supported.
One pragmatic disadvantage experienced in today's
complementary currency systems is that they typically have to
depend on continuous sales efforts by the originators of the system.
Many systems have simply died when the originators got tired of