JCT: Doing a short troll on the net for "UNILETS," I ran
across an article from an interview I did several months ago
by Alternatives Canada
<http://www.alternatives.ca/article138.html>

Monday December 2, 2002,
by: Ingrid HEIN

PHOTO : Dominic Morissettec

IH: Imagine if you could pay for goods and services with
time; an hour of babysitting could get you an hour of legal
advice, five hours of community work could get you a used
stove. Money would be almost redundent, leaving the IMF very
little power indeed.

JCT: Actually, 10 hours of babysitting would get you an hour
of legal advice if usual rates apply. Just because we use a
$12Hour as our money chip doesn't mean we all get paid $12
an Hour. The babysitter might charge half-an-Hour per hour
while the lawyer might charge 5 Hours per hour. Only in US
Timedollar systems do they try to get doctors to accept the
same pay as babysitters which does account for their having
few doctors or professionals other than those who think of
it more as charitable volunteering rather than profitable
timetrading.

One of the greatest weaknesses of the Timedollar system is
their forcing everyone to accept the same Hour per hour which
is the reason they don't use paper notes. They need central
control to make sure they can impose their structure on the
members. If systems use notes, people are free to do
whatever they feel is fair with no central control. The
centralized Timedollar model cannot be the eventual world
currency. They have to get over their desire for control and
leave people decide for themselves what another person's
time is worth.

IH: This might sound like a utopian dream, but dropping out
of the money economy - exchanging goods and services
directly without the medium of recognized currencies - is
becoming a real option in many areas around the world.

JCT: The utopian dream is becoming the ONLY option in some
places. Imagine being forced by poverty, and only when
you're poor enough, do you adopt the perfect system. If
you're not poor enough, you keep trying to stay with the
slavery system. Amusing, isn't it?

IH: Besides monetary benefits like avoiding the bank, barter
or "LETS" (Local Exchange Trading Service) systems also help
develop rewarding socio-economic relationships between
people, giving manual labor the same value as professional
services, by keeping track of hours, instead of dollars.

JCT: It's not giving manual labor the same value as
professional services, it's giving it the same respect. Sure
a plumber might only get 3 Hours per hour and a doctor 5 but
if that's what the fair market has decided, so be it.

IH: While LETS system were originally designed to work
locally, they are starting to reach a global scale. For
instance, before John Turmel made a trip to Europe, he
agreed on an exchange standard with his hosts; a night was
the equivalent of 5 hours work, or with a Canadian LETS
system, $50. He didn't have to do the work in Europe, he
could do it back home, in due time, whenever his services
were called upon. "You can't get cheaper or better
accommodation than that ! It was easy to find places to
stay, and much more personable," Turmel says.

JCT: Okay, I've heard the complaints on the International
Journal of Community Currency Research that using Hours to
count with is too hard to understand. And it seems no one
finds that laughable. I guess most of the experts find it
hard to understand too.

What's incredible is that the very first thing every single
LETS and Barter system does it connect whatever token-unit
they are going to create to the local hour of work. 12 Ecos,
Canadian Greendollars, all worth worth an Hour. $10 US
Greendollars, Berkshares, all worth an Hour. So the Ithaca
system simply agreed they would call their $10 Greendollars
per Hour note an Hour note. And some Canadians have agreed
to call their $12 Greendollar Hour note an Hour note too.

How can it be much easier to value things with a $10 dollar
bill that gets you an hour of labor than a one Hour bill
that gets you $10 worth of labor? And why should it be so
much harder to value things in Hour notes (worth $10) than
in $10 notes (worth an Hour)? Can you see how silly it is to
prefer a unit of nothing, the dollar, compared to a fixed
unit of energy: manpower x time?

IH: Traditionally, the problem with barter is that exchanges
are not always possible between two people. The baker
doesn't need his house painted - but could use a seamstress.
The seamstress doesn't need any painting or baked goods, but
needs a plumber. LETS solves direct-exchange bartering
issues. Its uses an alternative time-based system as
currency, allowing each member of a community to trade goods
and services with any member they choose. Members are
debited and credited as they give and take goods and
services from one another, without ever having to "pay up".

JCT: With federal cash on a payment plan. You do have to pay
up with personal time on the whenever-you-can plan.

IH: Whether you're a plumber, a psychiatrist or a
babysitter, the "receiving" end of the barter simply agrees
on how many hours the service is worth.

JCT: That's better. If the doctor's service is worth 10
times more because that's what he can command and still keep
a full waiting room, then that's the worth the LETS records
was fairly arrived at.

IH: Real money does enter the system, in cases where
obtaining supplies, such as the paint needed to paint a
house.

JCT: Good. Glad it's pointed out that they can charge
federal to cover their federal costs and Green to cover
their profit margin.

IH: Worldwide alternatives

Started in Canada in 1984 by Vancouver-based Michael Linton,
LETS systems developed simultaneously around the world,
wherever a need for alternative economics presented itself.

JCT: No, it wasn't simultaneous. Michael did a lot of work
to spread the local LETSystems around the world and I did a
lot of talking on the hustings to promote the national and
UNILETS.

IH: Today, there are thousands of LETS communities worldwide
in almost every country, including Japan, Australia, the
U.S., and South Africa. There are systems in nearly every
province in Canada, and in many cases, several systems.

Turmel isn't the only one that wants to take LETS to the
world. While the original LETS idea is sustaining local
communities, cross-border barter is catching on. UNILETS
Online, an Internet-based LETS group, is seeing a lot of
success by posting services on its site, and keeping track
of hours through an online computer system. Anyone can log
on and exchange with another LETS group, and everything from
accommodation to legal advice to babysitting to hard goods
are available for barter.

In Victoria, B.C., "VicLETS" is also looking to expand
outside of its home community. Using a system of Green
Dollars, the 115 member group have spent $12,000 Green
dollars in exchanges in the last two years. They are
currently looking at how to interact with other LETS groups
using partial local currencies. "I think that layers and
levels are important," said "AdminisTrader" Kieth Moen. "If
a system remains local and relatively small, the economic
relationship maintains an emphasis on relationship, rather
than economic."

JCT: That could be a problem. I know that one of the
greatest fears of many is that connecting to the big Global
system might have them lose some of the conviviality
they've found in their new social circle of friends. When
LETS becomes more a support group than a funding system, its
growth slows down for this reason. Luckily, being able to
spend their credits out-of-town and being able to earn out-
of-town credits really has no bearing on their in-town
relationships though it's the dickens trying to get it
through their heads.

IH: In Alberta, the Calgary Dollars (C$) system is steadily
growing, with a high success rate locally. The system has
$25,000 in C$ in circulation over the past six years, and
has about 700 listings of things you can buy with Calgary
dollars. Everything from childcare, flute lessons,
translations and physiotherapy to bookkeeping, carpentry,
plumbing, and autobody work are payable in C$. Coordinator
Gerald Wheatley boasts, "There are five apartment buildings
that accept C$ as part of rent, our city accepts C$ for a
small number of transit tickets, and recreation center
tickets, and is promoting C$ to seniors city-wide."

JCT: I've been trying to get our Ottawa mayor, my political
opponent over many years, to do the same but good ideas
elsewhere don't necessarily translate into being worth
trying here where Bob's just recently successfully cut 40
million from the city's budget. When Bob can cut funding to
social services so easily, why bother using a new funding
source? All he has to do is plug his ears to the cries of
woe from those whose life-support tickets he took away?

IH: Quebec has seen more than a dozen barter systems in the
past few years. Montreal-based BECS (Banque d'echanges
communautaires de services) is one of the biggest. "It
doesn't replace the economy, rather, it stimulates it. Many
of the exchanges are end up being things that people
wouldn`t bother doing without the system. - Like repairing
my clothes !" BECS member Charles Jutknecht says. "When you
don`t have a lot of money, this is a great way to get things
done."

JCT: And there aren't enough people in Canada who don't have
a lot of money. Yet.

IH: LETS as a way of survival
The practical benefits of LETS are best seen in Argentina.
The country's economic crisis has led it to depend on them.
Called "Trueque Clubs" ("Exchange Clubs"), they have nearly
replaced the national money system.

JCT: We know they were attacked by fraud artists and I'd bet
that they've tightened up on the security of their tokens
but regardless, the federal banking system had collapsed.
There was no choice.

IH: With strict government limits on bank withdrawals in an
attempt to prevent the collapse of the financial system,
barter became the only way to survive. Turmel reports that
LETS systems in Argentina have grown exponentially, and are
a good example of how the system works.

JCT: The most wonderful example for the world that came out
of the recent Argentinian experience was finding out that
farmers' IOUs for grain were valid currency in the eyes of
multinational corporations. Trading grain directly for cars
and tractors got them more for their grain and it will only
be a matter of time until Canadian and American farmers wise
up to ask for the same privilege.

Actually, I'm amazed that the Canadian and American Farmers'
Associations haven't informed their members of what the
Argentinian farmers are getting and fighting to get it for
them too. Then again, as we've learned in our medpot fights,
the guys at top of these Associations have a high
probability of being establishment moles which would explain
why they haven't told their members how the Argentinians
farmers have escaped their captive markets and how we could
do it too.

Right? If you were The Banks, wouldn't you want to have
placed agents in the Farmers' Associations to make sure that
they don't find out and ask for the same thing the
Argentinian farmers have won? What other explanation can
there be for Argentinian farmers boasting about having cut
the middlemen out of the transaction and the leaders of the
farmers' associations here not picking up on it? Simple
incompetence or more devious sabotage?

Come on, farmers in Argentina who were on the verge of
bankruptcy just a few years ago are now laughing all the
way to their own "grain" banks where they print up their own
"grain" dollars that the large multi-national corporations
have been forced to accept? And the Canadian and American
farm leaders haven't noticed? By accident?

I've reported on court sabotage by Canada's to medpot
lawyer Alan Young, on political sabotage by the leader of
the never-elected Marijuana Party of Canada Marc-Boris St-
Maurice, on media sabotage by Canada's top medpot publisher
Marc Emery, support from US mole Richard Lake who sits on
the database of all medpot stories with their authors (for
easy tracking and identification), why would it be so
incredible to believe that Big Money hasn't plugged moles in
the farmer's associations to make sure that they don't find
out how to escape their debt bondage, and if they do, to
make sure any efforts to copy the Argentinians gets
derailed from the top?

IH: "In Argentina, the last estimate was eight million
members. It's that or starve." While LETS will probably
never replace our entire economic system, it could very well
become a popular secondary system.

JCT: When the main system collapses and LETS is the only
trading token left, it does replace the entire economic
system. The only thing lacking is the break of the main
system and enough starving people in the streets.

IH: If nothing else, it connects people, and makes giving
and taking a little more fun.

JCT: If nothing else? When the great collapse comes, knowing
who can fix your plumbing and being able to trade with him
is going to make all the difference in the world. And you'll
have the connections ready to go, rusty, unused perhaps so
far, but ready to take over the whole economic system when
called up to do so.

Still, seeing the big picture isn't easy. Of the hundreds,
perhaps thousands of LETSers who have heard of UNILETS, and
despite being endorsed by the 1350 Non-Governmental
Organizations at the United Millennium Forum, I believe I
have only heard four of us endorse it publicly. Me, Marc
Gauvin, Freed Schitter, and Wes Burt. It's almost as if
understanding the local model impairs the ability of the
others to understand the world-wide model or maybe we're
just gifted with a different kind of foresight.

So, seeing the Big Simple Easy Picture just isn't all that
simple and easy.

Yet, the Millennium Forum NGOs did. How to explain it?


--
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 613-562-0669