The Ultimate Barter

Article Tools

Image Gallery

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

One of our concerns right now is how quickly we should let the supply of HOURS grow. The constraint on that is similar to an inflationary. We're just beginning to monitor the volume of the transactions, and we don't have a formal network to measure our analogous figures and data. We know that we must increase the money supply over time to facilitate transactions, and we do that through grants and loans. So, there are similar functions to what our regular government would do. We also have the same constraints—we can't increase the money supply too fast or inflation will happen. People will get just too many of these things and they'll have to raise the price.

I doubt most HOURS participants are worrying about an inflation right now. I don't think we've issued too many yet so there's no sense of pressure really in the consciousness of the people. But then, I don't think this relationship is in the consciousness of Americans in regard to the overall economy either.

In general, for this system to collapse it would take major businesses that accept HOURS to back out suddenly. For instance, if you no longer have the Farmer's Market or movie theaters taking them, then I could see a collapse occurring. While it's nice to know that you can get sailing lessons or rototill your garden with local currency, I think the mainstay of the system right now is the fact that you can use it at a good number of businesses. I must say I'm impressed and surprised at how well the HOURS system has worked so far, and that Paul's start-up model seems like a very good one.

Bill Myers, Bank Manager

Let me first start with some background on the Alternative Federal Credit Union. We are a community development credit union with the function of making sure that the community's resources are reinvested back into the community. So while we provide financial services, our core function is to gather the money in the community and then lend it back to the community. The three main groups we focus on are small businesses, low-income people, and nonprofit organizations.

Create a Local Currency in Your Community

By Paul Glover

Although local currency is lots of fun, it's also lots of work and responsibility. Here's a step-by-step summary of how we got started in Ithaca and how we're expanding.

1 . Design the money. By law, your cash must be obviously different from a dollar, and of a different size.

2. Sign up participants. Show prototypes of your money to people who might be willing to appear in the first published list. Tell them this will be real money, backed by real people, real tune, real skills and goods. They'll each get the same quantity of local currency as advance payment for being willing to accept it.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print