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.
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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

Get inspired

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

Get inspired

Barter what you have for what you need.
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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.

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.
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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

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. 

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

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.
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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

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

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.