>From: ijccr@yahoogroups.com
>Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2003 01:53:14 +0930
>From: Sue <sunet@...>
>Subject: musing on the earth conversation

>>So we don't need to use gold or hours or energy or a
>>basket of global "commodities" as a stabilizing factor for
>>a community/complimentary currency system. We can just use
>>the very goods and services of the participants in the
>>system. I believe this would be very good way to build
>>such a system.

S: I'm latching on to this conversation at this point
because the description tunes in with something I noticed
about how people operate LETS systems...around here.

Somewhere along the way they tend to start separating the
commodities traded from the 'assigned value', and they
manifest this in their documentation.

So a column listing 'goods received' eventually becomes
detached on a report from a column listing 'point value'.
Pretty soon everyone starts obsessing on the numbers in the
value column. Wasn't LETS supposed to be about 'move
directly to Go. You don't need the $200'!?

When I did records for my group I bunched up the goods with
the numbers so they stayed together. I soon realised that
anyone would feel better looking at a list naming the good
things they'd received and and the services performed for
them than a list of numbers they OWED!!

I observe that no one in my LETS group seems to have a
problem with wanting to RETURN the energy received back to
the community- in fact we mentally torture ourselves with
guilt (typical gals!) when we haven't. Which leads me to
believe that we should always encourage new members first
off to acquire, acquire, acquire...
a) so that they get a buzz, and
b) it provides older members who they are acquiring from a
chance to 'give back'... and
c) the process one would expect, would encourage the next
new who will also find joining beneficial because of the
pattern of getting to receive first. (I have just noticed
this is much like the process known as Human Reproduction,
down through the generations!)

JCT: It does seem to stress a fundamental human
characteristic that Tom Kennedy had noted in his Grade 5
class use of LETS. Guilt for owing and wanting to pay it
back and get into the positive. That's why LETS that start
everyone with a certain standard amount, like Ithaca, do not
experience this kind of impediment.

S: funnily the polar opposite of
maketonsofmoneywhilereversingagingevenasyoulosewightand
developaabiggerfingerwhilstsendingthousandsofharassing
junkemails FOR WHAT??!!!!

So, your list of what you acquire becomes a '+' list (a list
of 'plus' points demarking energy received) which is
conversely a measure of your 'debt' to society. This number
REDUCES as you 'pay back', which also FEELS GOOD to do.

JCT: That's another way to make LETS feel good.

S: Idyllic dreams: This system could equally be applied to
reckon up our debt to the generous planet, the sun, our
ancestors, our unknown allies, indigenous people if we are
the colonistas, the third world (if we are not them
ourselves), the third world ancestors, our worthy opponents,
etc. And all historically exploited people should
automatically become recipients first off!

Strangely this is the opposite of what LETS seems to
manifest in its method of documentation!

JCT: Don't forget, I didn't have anything to do with the
documentation and if people have been led to ride their
machines backwards, it does not detract from the system when
ridden right.

S: AND if people would turn it around like this it would
immediately come into congruency with federal 'tax' reward
systems at least here in Australia. So that when you GIVE
LOCALLY, you pay less tax federally.

What else? What do I need? What do I give? I have given
BIRTH, how much is that worth, mother sun?! All I need is
LOVE, poetry, intelligent conversation, a quest, humor,
food, a roof, beauty, a bicycle - only a car if people don't
live close to me... failing the internet, that is. And to
see the world thrive so all people may live in Peace-
without burning that dead stuff, soon, I hope. Sue
(great great niece of Sir Ernest Rutherford <^;)

>Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2003 11:55:37 +0930
>From: Sue <sunet@...>
>Subject: [ijccr] Basket of Goodies

>Let me guess that the people having large, and growing,
>positive balances are the ones growing concerned, like,
>"Hey, I have given X thousands of loaves of bread over this
>counter, in return for all these LETS certificates.. now I
>am getting behind in paying for my employees and my wheat
>and electricity... hmmm who are the people who have all the
>negative balances? Oh my gosh, they haven't been heard
>from in ages!"

Just taking a couple of your points (thanks, I'll add them
to my balance... hehe) A baker in a LETS system would not be
in this situation. If they were drawing their power and
grain from others in a LETS system, the thousands of loaves
of bread they gave out would certainly qualify them to
receive these necessities from those who are offering them.

If it was a hybrid situation they would not be so silly as
to give out thousands of loaves to LETSERS unless they were
able to balance the input. You always in LETS have
permission to refuse to trade. They might though be able to
balance the input by having someone on LETS fix their car,
or clean their house, or babysit, or give them hi tech goods
or any of a number of energy inputs which save them the
money so they can use it to buy what they have to.

JCT: But easiest of all is to charge part Green and the
other part cash to cover cash expenses.

S: We can complain all we like about the delusion of the
monetary system but let's face it, whoever performed the
sleight of hand was clever enough to think it up and
consistently convince people. To make LETS work people have
collectively to apply an equal amount or better of creative
power, flexibility, innovation, will and whatever else it
takes. (Not that I am convinced that LETS is the be all and
end all)

JCT: No, UNILETS is the be all and end all. The Local LETS
model has all sorts of problems that cannot exist once the
total database becomes accessible to all members.

S: If LETS people could smell the value of those tempting
loaves of bread then someone might eventually get smart and
think up away of including power sources and agricultural
sources into the system. But there doesn't have to be a
DIRECT LETS relationship between these various ingredients,
I remind you.

JCT: That's because the "L is for Local" crowd have striven
to keep it small and ineffectual. Okay, they didn't aim at
keeping it ineffectual but keeping it small did the same
thing.

>Let's face it, many of these people may be laboring under
>some handicaps, some mental attitudes, some addictions, or
>just rotten folks. For whatever reason, the risk is ending
>up with people who are *not* efficient producers
>particularly for the more complicated or unpleasant tasks
>of production.

Todd, I have enjoyed the bluntness of your observations on
'addictiveness' in as Australia is rife with it but I beg to
differ here - there is not necessarily anything wrong with a
person with a handicap benifiting from a LETS system. Who
says we have to all give equally? My interest in Indigenous
systems and pre-industrialised forms of culture have
particularly made me aware that a society can function very
nicely with other paradigms - stronger members helping care
for weaker... middle-aged people can care for old, old for
young,.. who says we do not personally BENEFIT from
altruistic satisfaction of our potential to give to others?

JCT: I don't know how many times I have expressed my
approval for the Timedollar operators who give open credit
lines to little old people who will never be able to pay it
back. I don't know how many times I have repeated that they
are counting on the next generation to do the same for them
even if Todd doesn't trust the next generation enough.

S: AND look at how our entire society (ok I'm being
patriarchal-centric here!) has sustained itself simply by
refusing to value monetarily the caring, cleaning, teaching,
healing, shopping, cooking, maintaining and sustaining work
of 50% or more of the population. ALSO I am reading at the
moment of how 'white' has been consistently applied in the
US and Australia to 'whoever doesn't have to do the yukky
jobs'... White has automatic entitlements... in Australia
and US (and others) all sorts of 'non-white' people (which
changes according to this economic stuff) have been brought
in or rounded up to do lowly paid or even no pay work for
the entitled and benefiting White people... that's what our
CURRENT economy rests on. So to say we can manage to 'carry'
a few 'non-productive' people is not a big ask.

JCT: Can't wait until all LETSers feel like Timedollarers
too.

S: A very interesting book is called 'Society as an Addict'
by a woman called something-Ann-Schaeffer (sorry, forgot
name- can find out) which compares the characteristics of a
Western Industrialised society with an individual addict -
and disovers they are the same... Selfishness, Consumerism,
Toxicity, Denial (as far as I can remember, you'd better
read it yourself!). She made a convincing case that people
born into these societies are ENCOURAGED from birth to
acquire addictive mind sets and behaviors... in an
individual, addictiveness can be can be intervened with so
maybe societally too...it will be just as hard work though.

JCT: Right. They've been conditioned to eschew personal
initiative and strive for consensus before doing anything
which permits a few nay-sayers to nullify their worth.
They've been brain-washed into such sick behavior.

S: Anyway, I've never noticed any real encumbrance weak or
handicaped people place on a LETS system apart from the way
I think about them... which challenges me to see if it's all
in my head...

JCT: Except for guys who worried about being repaid.

S: This message has had plenty to digest in it already but
in closing, I'll just say I find the whole telescoped
colonial occupation of Iraq to be a disturbing but an
intriguing look at the forces of subjection and colonisation
before our very eyes.

JCT: And some of us found out about the puppet's strings
before they got before our very eyes. But it is a heck of an
education watching the Amerikan booboisie's consent being
manufactured in real time. Any bets that in a few months,
they'll all believing that the Iranian Ayattolas did 9-11
like they make them believe Saddam did it too?

S: Right down to the Language which has been so OBVIOUSLY
gendered ie. "softening up", "thrusting", "probing",- cities
"fall" (like a 'fallen woman') - and the projected attitude
towards the population by the US is unashamedly 'they are
poor, helpeless victims, unable to help themselves, they
need our forceful, masculine,

JCT: Hey, some pretty heartless feminazis too. Madeleine
Albright who answered that half a million dead Iraqi
children wasn't too high a price to pay to ensure their
Kuwaiti Royals kept their stolen oil wells.

S: sometimes brutal help to give them a better life (which
they are incapable of doing for themselves)' 'and if that
means surrendering up their autonomy, their resources, their
freedoms for our benefit (o, yeh, THEIR benefit too)- well,
so be it'. How typical of a patriarchal gendered
(male/female) relationship is THAT!! Food for thought eh...
would you like some fishes with that? Sue <^;O*

>Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2003 02:04:39 +0930
>From: Sue <sunet@...>
>Subject: YES!

A sample from Buckminster Fuller's article (thanks for
posting the websites Mr Chance!)

Hey, when did he write this? Sue
from: http://BFI.org/grunch_of_giants.htm

Spaceship Earth now has 150 admirals. The five admirals in
the staterooms immediately above the ship's fuel tanks claim
that they own the oil. The admirals with staterooms
surrounding the ship's kitchen, dining rooms, and food
refrigerators claim they own all the food. Those with a
stateroom next to a lifeboat claim that they own the
lifeboat, and so forth. They then have an onboard game
called balance of trade. Very shortly the majority of
admirals have a deficit balance. All the while the
starboard-side admirals are secretly planning to list the
boat to port far enough to drown the portside admirals,
while the portside admirals are secretly trying to list the
boat to starboard far enough to drown the starboard-side
admirals. Nobody is paying any attention to operating the
ship or steering it to some port. They run out of food and
fuel. They discover that they can no longer reach a port of
supply. Finis.

Humanity is now experiencing history's most difficult
evolutionary transformation. We are moving away from a
rooted life-style with a 95-percent rate of illiteracy. We
are almost unconsciously drifting away from self-identity
with our ages-long, physically-remote-from-one-another
existence as 150 separate, sovereign nations. Now the
uprooted humans of all nations are spontaneously deploying
into their physically integrated highways and airways and
satellite-relayed telephone speakways, into a big-city way-
stationed, world-around living system.

We may soon be atom-bombed into extinction by the preemptive
folly of the political puppet administrators fronting for
the exclusively-for-money-making, supranational
corporations' weaponry industry of the now hopelessly
bankrupt greatest-weapons-manufacturing nation (the U.S.A.).

If not bomb-terminated, we are on our ever swifter way to
becoming an omni-integrated, majorly literate, unified
Spaceship Earth society.

The new human networks' emergence represents the natural
evolutionary expansion into the just completed, thirty-
years-in - its-buildings world-embracing, physical
communications network. The new reorienting of human
networking constitutes the heart-and-mind-pumped flow of
life and intellect into the world arteries...

JCT: And all this insanity is the result of humanity trying
to pay back more monetary tokens than the banks printed and
loaned out in the first place. All the bad vibrations stem
from that one great instability, the greatest sin on earth,
usury, interest on sterile non-baby-producing money.


--
Abolitionist Slave Leader John C."The Banking Systems Engineer" Turmel
for UNILETS interest-free time-based currency in U.N. resolution C6
to Governments in the http://www.un.org/millennium/declaration.htm
http://www.cyberclass.net/turmel / http://www.medpot.net 613-225-3885