Date: Wed Apr 1 18:01:31 1998
From: maria@lovfors.se (=?iso-8859-1?Q?Maria_L=F6vfors?=)
Subject: Re: JAK
*Right, _if_ the savers didn't get something
else back for saving in
*JAK. Which they do. They get "saving
points" (my own literal
*translation), according to time and amount
of money saved. The points
*then give them a certain right to borrow.
Without points, you can't
*get a JAK loan. In the end, after first
saving, then borrowing, each
*member will have contributed the same
amount of crowns to the system,
*as the amount that s/he has borrowed.
And so the "savers" turn out to
*be identical with the "borrowers", thus
subsidising themselves. Not
*bad. consists of some 19 000 people,
JAK members in Sweden.
*Maria Lovfors - freelance
journalist and editor of the JAK magazine
*Ansgariegatan 5, S-117 27 STOCKHOLM,
SWEDEN, e-mail: maria@lovfors.se
JCT: This is really
an interest-free credit-union which does not
create its own tradable liquidity as LETS
does but would it ever fly
if they used Paper Points which could
be traded like currency or let
people transfer Paper Points from account
to account. Then they would
get the benefit of an interest pooling
of their money, the Sparta
effect, as well as the Employment-Trading
of a LETS between the group.
***
Date: Thu Apr 2 10:59:56 1998
From: Roy.Davies@exeter.ac.uk (Roy Davies):
*times when groups of (usually working
class) people, formed savings
*associations to raise money to purchase
houses. Gradually, however,
*the building societies tended to become
more and more like banks
JCT: No matter
how you cut it, these bank programs don't include
the interest positive feedback and a system
where everyone gets out
what they put in, one-for-one has a purity
that a lesser interest-rate
but still positive feedback kind of credit
just cannot possess.
Besides, they know their Points are valuable
in the eyes of the other
19000 members. Liquify those points and
the largest LETS in the world
pops into existence.
Satisfying, isn't
it how building blocks are falling into place.
I've always bemoaned that most LETS did
not set up a storehouse
function allowing more members to trade
in the positive and allowing
the elderly to trade in the negative whether
having an estate or not.
JAK has the storehousing function and
LETS had the tokens.
***
Date: Thu Apr 2 11:12:26 1998
From: Roy.Davies@exeter.ac.uk (Roy Davies)
Subject: Capital formation: was Re: JAK
To: dillonph@northcoast.com Cc: econ-lets@mailbase.ac.uk
*Some protagonists of LETS have seen them
as replacing the
*conventional money system instead of
simply supplementing it. This is
*despite the fact that so far most LETS
seem to be used for small
*transactions between individuals.
JCT: So JAK could
add a LETS to be used for small transactions
between individuals.
*The issue of capital formation would have
to be addressed
JCT: And it looks
like JAK has that angle already addressed!
Imagine the astounding
LETS effect the mere introduction of Paper
Points would have to such a large database.
Imagine how successful any
LETS Newspaper Directory of goods and
services would be with such an
automatic customer database. It will replace
the Yellow Pages when
LETS pages have a large enough selection
of things for Green credit.
*I doubt if LETS will ever replace money
as we know it but it is
*possible that they could spread beyond
their present niche into the
*world of business.
JCT: As soon
as the transnational corporations that belong to the
international barter networks see a database
of 19,000 buyers with
their own valid currency, they'll pursue
it. Otherwise the JAKLETS
model might sweep the interest-bearing
world. Remember, once LETS is
installed in a global database, there
will be no more reason for
people to form money pools like JAK to
protect and help themselves.
But what a ride with twin engines on a
JAKLETS!
*Perhaps that might be easier if some links
could be established
*between LETS the various barter systems
that exist.
JCT: When LETS
markets get big enough, as England's learned
astrologer predicted, governments would
have to peg their currencies
to the Commercial and Personal standard.
And that can only be Hours.
Of course, the
moment Government joins LETS, everyone in that
realm sees the same value in the LETS
currency, tax credits. I hope
those municipal councils in Britain are
learning to make full use of
their LETS account. Is there anyone from
Calderdale out there who can
tell us if they're financing municipal
repairs yet?
The merger of
Personal, Commercial and Government interests into
one linear barter network is inevitable.
Please, someone
in Sweden, could you call JAK and ask if they've
ever considered adding benefits of using
a LETS Paper Point token
system.
I even love the
name: Points. It's on a par with Units, Credits,
for clearness of comprehension but all
are completely outclassed by
The Engineer's preference: the Hour of
Labor.
There's an abundance
of willing and available Labor world-wide
and liquifying that industrial output
would allow us to pay our cattle
with better feed and care, our environment
with cleaner emissions, but
first of all, interest-free life-support
credit at the global bank to
purchase any resource not being used.
As best said in Isaiah 55,
"All you who have no money and are very
hungry still,
May come and BUY the food we have so you
may eat your fill.
And you who have no money and clad insufficiently,
Do come to BUY some clothing so that warmly
dressed you'll be."
With an interest-free
LETS loan and JAK to keep track of money
you took out and put back when you later
come on line, it's the
salvation from debts promised by one of
Christ's two differential
equations, the LETS Differential Equation
represented by it's Laplace
Transform: 1/s. The Transform of the world's
current debt-growth-by-
interest banking system is 1/(s-i).
Yes, I believe
prophecy is fulfilled in the Armageddon battle
between the USURY Enslavement software
and the LETS Liberation
software now competing for world-wide
banking supremacy.
As Papa LETS
Engineer, I never took the Mama Engineer's
concerning the fragility of our brood
of little and mid-sized LETS now
in the process of merging into a Standard
Unit of Value for Labor.
Michael would tell the media that LETS
was no threat to the
established banks while I was grabbing
every political headline I
could to proclaim that it was. Needless
to say, my role in seeding the
LETS project remained secret for that
reason.
But I've always
believed and even argued before the Supreme Court
of Canada that interest-free global software
could be installed
overnight in the hands of the right bank
networks. We've always been a
switch of a disk away from financial liberation
from our debts and
full clean industrial output.
I'd expect that
many LETSers have been as mystified at resistance
from above to something that has proven
so beneficial as I have. I
hear that France has found LETS earnings
in violation of the law.
Since I'm a Frenchman, Quebec Frenchman
that is, I might have to take
a jaunt over to France after this year's
TOES conference in London and
see if my French is as good as it used
to be.
By the way, can
anyone post the logistics of this year's TOES98
conference. Last year's panel on LETS
afforded me only 20 minutes and
I'd be interested registering a block
of 3-4 hours of time for a
seminar in Advanced LETS Engineering Mathematics.
I think it's time
people get a high-tech look at the blueprints.
I know it may
sound vain but it's meant to astound. Once I
discovered my little algebraic media-dubbed
"Miracle equation," the
claim that my Abolish Interest Rates Project
would land me 3 Nobel
Prizes seemed reasonable. That I'd land
in the Great Canadian
Character Anthology and Guinness Book
of Records for pursuing that
same engineering project were unexpected
bonuses.
Fighting bank
slavery makes news. And I had 3 tactics going at
the same time. Political: Assaults against
interest using elections.
Judicial: Assaults against banks using
guerrilla court tactics.
Economic: Supporting any small 1/s system
anywhere I could. Linton's
LETS had the 1/s equation, I sent all
available seed money. Linton
nursed that small brood of systems through
the first decade then the
growth evidenced geometric progression,
exponentiality. If the
thousands of the world's LETS systems
agree to the Hour standard and
use an open bulletin board to post all
intersystem transactions, they
will become an instant major market that
the commercial networks will
be forced to pursue by also adopting the
standard of the hour, and
trailing along, government currencies
unless they've already joined
their local LETS.
I'm frankly astounded
at the amazing confluence of good news on
the LETS front. Of course, if a few members
of AOL convinced them to
offer a LETS service between members for
members who'll pay a dollar a
month more, then the remainder of the
database would soon find out the
benefits and an AOLLETS Greendollar system
would swamp the JAKLETS for
size.
I hope I've armed
many of you with very eloquent arguments, not
all mine, but keep in mind that no matter
how high the praises for
LETS community and cohesiveness, it is
no real miracle, it is only a
simple set of tokens keeping score.
I'm always been
let down when I read sophisticated dissertations
on something as elementary as "poker chips."
It's nothing but use of a
token accounting system that is receiving
such accolades. Of course,
when the prevailing token system has enslaved
everyone in exponential
debt, a simple non-slavery token system
seems a blessing. LETS is a
blessing for more and more people. Would
it were for the world.
I'm off to work
a stint and don't communicate when I'm in field.
I know I post a lot for the week I'm in
town and if you average it out
over the month or two I'm gone, it isn't
all that much.
My posts are
archived at www.mailbase.ac.uk in econ-lets. Search
for turmel for 20 months worth of discussions.