World

LETS Barter

by eagoodlife | March 15, 2009 at 06:40 pm

174 views | 34 Recommendations | 4 comments

LETS systems throughout the world will be flourishing in this economic downturn.LETS is a worldwide barter system started in Canada many years ago by Michael Linton.Barter has existed as long as people got together in communities and grew and made things, had skills and swapped them.LETS stands for Local Enterprise Trading Scheme or Local Employment Trading System and variations on that theme.

In it's current form it is organised into an efficient system for bartering skills,services and goods through a Resource Guide and regular Markets.All LETS groups run in the same way with regional variations in the name of the barter unit and slight variations in the running and recording of transactions.

LETS has kept alive the "old-fashioned" values of honesty,integrity and sharing in a world where greed is rampant and honesty hard to find.In these hard economic times, more and more people are seeing the value of barter, whatever their income and circumstances.Many want to be part of this good news story and to join a community of like-minded people.Life doesn't have to be so hard, so stressed and so expensive!

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Roy C

at 18:45 on March 15th, 2009

This is such an important topic and a way out of the present system.

If you join an organization that barters, you can exchange for credits and use them like money.

It keeps trade local and let's everyone participate.

Paschen

at 18:49 on March 15th, 2009

In the late 1980s I worked as a consultant for a large International Restaurant chain that was establishing it self in the USSR latter to be called Russia again, yet it could not trade products nor buy machines from the US or the EU due to the currency and would have been doomed to fail was it not for the great idea to use Potato's rather then money. The USSR had a lot of potato and the West lacked potato. It worked like a charm and made things possible that other wise would have remained a pipe dream.

Babel-Fish

at 22:11 on March 15th, 2009

I have heard of this system before its in operation in UK somewhere.

Wouldn't this be good on the internet?

,or. is it already being done?

eagoodlife

at 23:00 on March 15th, 2009

Freecycle is a great system too and very useful for giving and receiving things.A successful LETS Group runs on face to face contact with most of the members knowing each other, the way to build up trust and knowledge of what others offer and their skills.The internet is useful to LETS for communicating some things like Newsletters and transaction statements but nothing replaces that old personal contact for building a community.You can't fix someone's blocked drain over the net or paint their room or deliver a box of vegetables.That personal contact means you get to know the person who fixes your drain, paints your room or grows your vegetables, unlike the situation in much of the modern world.There's no room for dishonesty, greed or shoddy work either.Radical!!