BARTERING SYSTEM MEANS PEOPLE CAN CASH IN ON TALENTS
By Canadian Press
COURTENAY, BC
- Joy Dryburgh is an unemployed single mother
on welfare, but she wears silk scarves,
hand-woven jackets and
original painting hang in her home. Her
three pre-school children
have beautiful wooden toys and are well-dressed.
Dryburgh is not
abusing her social assistance. She is just
one of almost 1,000 Vancouver Island residents
supplementing
their cash income with "green dollars,"
a quasi-currency earned
through a unique bartering system called
Local Exchange
(jct:Employment) Trading System.
LETS started
more than a year ago here as a means of
generating income within the community
particularly hard hit by
the recession.
Michael Linton,
one of the founders of the system, has
helped set up nine new systems in island
communities in the last
year.
"The more people
that are involved in it, the greater the
number of services that can be offered
and the more effective it
is."
The system operates
like a bank. Users open accounts
through a central office in the community
and transactions are
recorded through a main computer.
But money isn't
necessary. If someone wants to buy goods or
services, they find someone within the
system offering what they
need and negotiate a price in green dollars
(which Linton said
are equal to the current value of federal
dollars). Once the deal
is completed, the green dollars are deducted
from the purchaser's
LETS account and added to the supplier's
account.
Each transaction
is recorded at the central office and it
doesn't matter how long a person keeps
their account in the
negative, as long as they offer something
that can be bought by
people within the system.
The difference
between LETS and the traditional barter
system is that deals don't have to operate
strictly between two
individuals.
"You can find
someone with something you want, but they
don't have to want or need what you have
to offer," Linton said.
Once the green
dollars exchanged are recorded in each
party's account by the central office,
each party can then
continue to trade their green dollars
or service with any other
user of the system.
"It's great when
you don't have much money or are
unemployed," Dryburgh, 29, said.
"It really gives
you a sense of community spirit because
every time you buy something, you're not
only getting something
you like but you're improving someone
else's cash situation.
Dryburgh sells
some crafts through LETS and offers hair cuts
to members for green dollars.
"You don't need
to have a lot of training to be able to
contribute," she said. "And it doesn't
matter whether you have
green dollars or not if you want to buy
something."
Linton said government
agencies that distribute welfare and
unemployment cheques haven't got a policy
for green dollars yet,
but he adds that many of the things that
can be bought through
LETS are luxuries, rather than essentials.
"I wrote to (BC
Finance Minister) Hugh Curtis and requested
that the only things that be deducted
from benefits be essentials
obtained through the system," Linton said.
"We're still waiting
for their policy."
Members pay $15
to join and 20 cents a month to advertise on
a computerized list mailed out to members
monthly, in addition to
a small transaction cost, but Linton said
there are no interest
charges or limits as to how much a person
can spend.
"When a person
uses green dollars, they're not really
accumulating debt because they can take
the rest of their lives
to pay back the system if they want to."
He said no one
individual suffers if someone forfeits on
their commitment to the system because
all the members can help
absorb the loss.
And the government
gets its cut too. Linton said all
transactions are recorded so that members
can calculate how much
income tax they must pay on earnings.