Finance
Beyond money
Driven by a systemic need to grow through interest and debt, the mainstream money system drives extraction and exploitation on a global scale. Fortunately, there are many old and new alternative systems of exchange and valuation that enable communities to meet their needs and care for one another outside of the mainstream money economy. Here are some of those alternatives.
Beyond money Actions
Join or start a Time Bank or LETS.
Join or start a Time Bank or LETS.
Joining or creating a time bank or LETS (Local Exchange Trading System) is a great way to decouple valuation from the mainstream financial system, and to keep value circulating in our local economies. A Time Bank is an extended bartering system that allows people to exchange their time, measured in hourly credits, rather than money. LETS expands this concept by creating platforms on which people can exchange goods and services using a local currency that is not pegged to government-issued money. Both systems build social support networks, help members save money, and make visible the multitude of knowledge and skills already present in our communities.
Take action
- Find a Time Bank or LETS near you with the Community Exchange System's database of Networks, covering more than 1000 local exchange initiatives worldwide.
- Find additional networks with LETS Link UK's map UK Regional Links (UK) and TimeBanks.Org's map Directory of Time Banks (US and New Zealand), and in Australia, Timebanking and the Community Exchange System Australia.
- See How to Start a Timebank, based on materials gleaned from The California Federation of Time Banks and Timebanks USA.
- Dive into the details of how to start a time bank with the Center for a New American Dream's webinar How to Start a Time Bank and Skill Exchange.
- Find a time bank near you with the Directory of Time Banks from TimeBanks USA, featuring both North American and international projects.
Get inspired
- The Cape Town Talent Exchange in South Africa facilitates exchanges of skills and goods at their currency-free weekly Claremont Talent Market and the annual Learning Clan Festival.
- Adelaide LETS, Australia, operates a shop and a pick-up and drop-off service, for members to exchange handmade goods.
- Bristol LETS in the UK hosts an open online directory of offers and wants, to share a sense of the breadth of goods and services exchange through LETS systems.
- The Neighbor-2-Neighbor Time Bank in Allentown, Pennsylvania, US, has more than 30,000 members, who have exchanged over 200,000 hours of time.
- ‘I like giving the gift of time’: Time banks build economies — and communities — without the almighty dollar, by Justin Moyer, profiles the work of the Silver Spring Time Bank in Maryland, US.
Barter what you have for what you need.
Barter what you have for what you need.
Bartering – the direct exchange of goods or services – is one of the oldest forms of economic transaction, and it still thrives in many parts of the world today. Barter not only provides a way for people without cash to exchange what they have for what they need, it also strengthens social ties in the process.
Take action
- One-on-one bartering is difficult: you need to find someone who has exactly what you need, and who needs exactly what you have. Increase the odds by adding "willing to barter" whenever you post something for sale.
- Set up a barter market in your community.
- If you have a business, consider ways that you could incorporate payments by barter.
- For an understanding of the laws around bartering in the US, check out Money Soup: A Legal Guide to Bartering, Giving, and Getting Stuff without Dollars, put together by the Sustainable Economies Law Center.
Get inspired
- The report Barter markets: sustaining people and nature in the Andes by Neus Marti and Michel Pimbert explores how barter markets in Peru contribute to food sovereignty, agricultural biodiversity, and community resilience.
- Alam Sehat Lestari in Kalimantan, Indonesia runs a medical clinic that accepts payments in seedlings, handicrafts, manure, and more. In addition, the clinic offers discounts up to 70% for patients from villages that have collectively reduced illegal logging.
- The patients at Panamédica Cooperativa de Salud in Mexico City, Mexico can choose to pay for medical services with a “solidarity fee,” where 50% of the payment is done in-kind through community service.
- The Fitzroy Urban Harvest in Melbourne, Victoria is a monthly event where residents both barter and give away homegrown and homemade food.
Join or start a local currency.
Join or start a local currency.
A local currency helps keep wealth circulating within the community, rather than leaking out of the local economy. This section covers paper and digital notes whose value is pegged to and backed by government-issued currency, and which therefore function as coupons to encourage local spending. Time banks, LETS, and other non-monetary local means of exchange are covered elsewhere in the Beyond Money topic page.
Take action
- Find a local currency, mutual credit or barter system in many countries around the world with this Local Currency Directory from the Schumacher Center for a New Economics.
- Create a new local currency with Shareable's short guide How to Start a Community Currency.
- Deeply explore tools for re-engineering our relationship with money through currency innovation, with this report from the New Economics Foundation People Powered Money: Designing, Developing, and Delivering Community Currencies, and with Peter North's book Local Money: How to Make it Happen in Your Community.
Get inspired
- The locally-controlled bank Banco Palmas in Fortaleza, Brazil issues loans by default in the local currency, the Palma, to encourage borrowers to shop at neighborhood enterprises. The bank charges a fee for issuing loans in Brazilian Reals.
- The Lewes Pound in the UK is a paper currency accepted by local businesses. When people purchase Lewes Pounds with the UK£, 5 pence is given to local community-building projects.
- The Catalan Integral Cooperative in Catalonia, Spain created a local digital currency, the Eco, which is accepted at the many small shops and businesses run by its members.
- BerkShares, in western Massachusetts, US, is a local currency formed by a partnership between the Schumacher Center for a New Economics, three community banks, and 400 participating businesses. More than 10 million BerkShares have circulated within the local economy over the past 15 years.
Be part of a gift economy.
Be part of a gift economy.
Gift economies free us to give without an expectation of direct payment, and to receive without feeling indebted. They can help us shift our personal economies from a series of faceless transactions to a web of nurturing relationships. In most societies today, gift economies cannot form the entirety or even majority of our economic transactions. Nonetheless, they can be a vital part of our transition from global to local economies.
Take action
- Organize a Really Really Free Market – a space for people to get and give away goods completely free of obligations to pay, trade or barter – with Shareable's guide How to start a really really free market.
- Refuse payment – even in barter – for small goods or services you provide to others in your community. At the same time, explain the gift economy concept. See how long it takes to notice that others are doing the same.
- Join or start a Buy Nothing Group with the Buy Nothing Project, which facilitates hyper-local gift economies where people offer and request items with no transactions involved. There are more than 5,000 active local groups in 44 countries; if your area doesn't have one yet, the website offers everything you need to get started.
- Explore the economic, social, psychological, relational, spiritual and cosmological elements of gift economies with Charles Eisenstein's in-depth, self-guided course Living in the Gift.
Get inspired
- An Teach Saor in County Galway, Ireland is a thriving house, permaculture garden, and community space that operates without money. The article Happiness Without Money? This Irish Community Proves It's Possible shares their story.
- Reclaiming the Gift Culture, an anthology of 26 essays by Shikshantar: The People's Institute for Rethinking Education and Development in India, describes gift economies in Mexico, Mali, India, and elsewhere.
- GIFT, a documentary film by Robin McKenna, is "a tribute to something that can’t be measured or counted, bought or sold. An intimate exploration of real-life gift economies," covering both giving freely with no expectation, and giving to generate the wealth of social capital.
- The Singapore Really Really Free Market is one example of dozens around the world. The article The Really (Really) Free Market Operates Under a Simple, Radical Philosophy explores how these markets help us to see "how societies could function more equitably, compassionately, and sustainably."
Voices from the field
- In How to Start a Time Bank and Skill Exchange, an hour-long webinar from the Center for a New American Dream, speakers from three successful time banks in the USA discuss how to create one in your community.
- Hear from people involved in creating the Brixton, Bristol and Totnes Pounds in the The Rise of Local Currencies interviews by the Transition Network.
- The LIFT Economy podcast episode, How Complementary Currencies Support Vibrant Local Economies, features Scott Morris, founder of IthaCash, "Money Made for Main St.", a regional cooperative currency program for in-and-around Tompkins County, New York, US, where the marketplace and local money work together for local people, causes, and economies by offering another way to meet real needs."
Resources
- Creating Wealth: Growing Local Economies with Local Currencies, by Gwendolyn Hallsmith and Bernard Lietaer, shows how "Using creative initiatives such as time banks, systems of barter and exchange and local currencies, cities and towns can empower themselves and build vibrant, healthy, sustainable local economies."
- Learn about various local currency models – local convertible paper notes, time dollars and time banks, LETS and mutual credit systems and more – with Local Currency Models from the Schumacher Center.
- The Power of Local Money for a Thriving Local Economy, an article by YES Magazine, shares examples of local currencies and credit systems from around the world.
- The report Barter markets: sustaining people and nature in the Andes by Neus Marti and Michel Pimbert explores how barter markets in Peru contribute to food sovereignty, agricultural biodiversity, and community resilience.
- In their academic article, Bypassing Globalization: Barter markets as a new indigenous economy in Peru, Alejandro Argumedo and Michel Pimbert explore the non-monetized barter markets developed by the Quechua peoples of the Peruvian Andes, showing how they reflect the local philosophy of social reciprocity and ecological equilibrium and can inspire others seeking to support local food sovereignty, ecological diversity and economies based on solidarity rather than greed.