Photo credits: Camilo Gomez Durán

This Dialogue built on the context set in January’s “Idle No More: A Love Story”  Dialogue (see the report just below).  We explored some inspiring possibilities which can be created by community-based economies, keeping in mind the indigenous values of reciprocity with the land, other species and other human communities. 

We challenged the dominant conception of the economy as primarily about money issued by banks. If we accept the view that money and credit are represented by only a single government-sanctioned currency, then our exchanges with each other at a peer and community level are also colonized by that mode of account.

The huge distortion caused by the financial sector's disconnection from the real economy of everyday life has led many to seek ways of building resilient, self-supporting communities less constrained by limited access to national currencies.

In this Dialogue, we asked how economies can run independent of the global market, exploring together several models for relocalizing economic activity to support communities in becoming resilient to the destructive effects of globalization. 

Special Guests:
- Josephine Grey, Founding Director of Low Income Families Together (LIFT), and Roxy Cohen, who are getting ready to launch the UpLIFT Community Credit Exchange.
- Angela Miles, a founding member of Toronto Women for a Just and Healthy Planet, former LETS member in Toronto and  Antigonish, Nova Scotia, and professor of community development at OISE, U of Toronto.

Host David Burman, co-founder of LETS Toronto (Local Exchange Trading System), spoke of the difference between a deliberately scarce currency like the Canadian dollar and an economy based on abundance, like mutual credit exchange, e.g. LETS. 

As I mentioned at the event, we are currently seeking volunteers who would like to join the initial advisory committee for the UpLift Credit Exchange. We are looking for people with website management, networking, and fundraising skills, and generally anyone who is excited about the idea and willing to dedicate time to the project. Currently the time commitment is flexible, and of course you will receive time credits for your involvement. If you're interested and want more concrete details on what it means to volunteer with UpLift please reach out.

If you would like to sign up to the UpLift Credit Exchange, Click here! 

Please connect with me if you just want to talk more about time banks as well. In talking through the concept I always learn something too! 

Thank you again for bringing your curiosity and passion to the Unify event,
Roxy

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Roxy Cohen
LIFT Program Coordinator
905-717-0765
www.lift.to

David Burman: Introduction to the Concept of Money:
We need to reconnect with the land
→ The Iroquois and Mississauga of New Credit sought to share the land with the newly arrived and take only what they need and share respect                                                                                    
Just as it is absurd to think that you could run out of inches to build a house, it is absurd to think that there can be insufficient money
→ Yet scarcity increases value

Most money comes from debt created from nothing
→ banks only need 6% reserves
→ debt money → requires constant growth
→ steal from the commons to maintain wealth
The financial sector supports production sector
In 1971, Richard Nixon floated the US$ to fund the Vietnam war
→ all other currencies had to float too, and were no longer tied to anything tangible
            → profitable for only the few

Mutual credit and local economic systems (described more below)

• Locally produced: Canadian Tire money, Air Miles

• LETS (Local Employment and Trading System) (described more below)
• time banks (described more below)
• local currencies
• SwapSity, since 2008: general barter, swap meets and curated entrepreneur-to-entrepreneur coming soon
• Freecycle

When the conventional economy dries up, local economy thrives

• Devalue scrip daily → don’t hoard

• The Future of Money (book): Blends local & global economy

• The German-speaking part of Switzerland has had a parallel economy since 1920s

In Canada

• 40% of population lives from one paycheck to the next
• average $20,000 debt

LETS (David Burman):

• from 1983 in Courteney, BC, 1990 in Toronto
• built on reciprocal relationships
• "Capitalism that Marx would have loved"
• Abundant local currency
• Equitable
• Can’t run out
• Foster independence

                                                                                                                                   
Roxy Cohen & Josephine GreyUpLIFT Community Credit Exchange (Time banking) 

• Money is currency – 1 h = 1 h
• Indirect barter
• Redefining work & valuing all tasks
• but hard to value goods & services
• Time banks are booming, especially in Italy & Spain
• Barcelona’s economy: 50% is time banking
• Time banking software is available

→ can transfer to other TBs

• Hourworld.org
• Volunteering not an option for the poor

→ need to value their time

• Pros can include prep time
• Need to value growers’ work
• Time is inherently equitable-all have same amount
• Need to be able to manage easily
• online platform is key
• But not all have Internet at home
• need a place where there is a curated offer list
• Can use text messages to note transactions
• LIFT is based in St. Jamestown
• but has partnerships
• good to start neighbourhood-based
• key is face-to-face contact
• link to St. Mike’s – determinants of health networking with other time banks
• Aim to have 1000+ members → tipping point

Angela Miles: Alternative economies have important differences. Comparing LETS and Time banking 

• LETS: $ are abundant, time is not

            $ have no inherent value, time does

• LETS: creates debt-but that’s OK
• problem if people don’t spend

                        → need to access services to make system grow

• can interrupt social exchanges & gifts with measurement & valuings
• seek to tax and spend LETS $

→ but governments would have to spend its tax revenues in local community

• LETS doesn’t equalize value of work
• LETS reflects market value of services, while time banks are an equalizer
• Time Bank: questions needs
• Develops more appreciation for what we have
• reduce waste
• Women undervalue their services and are more in the gift economy

            → we dehumanize gift work

• Men gain humanity in their access to economic benefits

A basic income guarantee would free people’s time to volunteer

• Reclaim public banking

We need to value economic relationships and humanize them as we exchange

• It’s all basically about relationships, not measuring
• Measuring separates the economy from relationships & spiritual relations
• We need to manage exchanges among strangers
• But valuing of offerings is potential source of conflict

                                   
Highlights of Small Group Discussion:
How might we create a viable community-based economy?
·      Relationship is key
·      Must avoid in-breeding and membranes of exclusion
·      A system can build relationships and community across differences
·      Learn to share more of ourselves
·      Hoarding impedes flow
·      Exchange itself is divisive
§  seek to build up the gift & givings
§  loosen up the flow
                        -using value interrupts the flow
·      The different models are complementary
·      We need to prototype diversity
            -create fertile soil for when the collapse comes
·      Most value elements of exchange more than relationships
The power of the big picture
·      We need to take a leap of faith and trust
o   “I am we”
o   Exchange divides
·      Community-based economies are transitions
o   We need to use scarcity wisely, to manage resources

"Local Exchange and Trading Schemes: A Useful Strand of Community Economic Development Policy?" R.K. O'Doherty, D.A. Purdue, J. Dürrschmidt and P. Jowers (1 Nov 1999)

From the abstract:  We identify LETS as a social movement rooted in the alternative milieux of greens, feminists, New Agers and so on, comprising those committed to experimenting with new ideas and identities. LETS have the potential to strengthen these milieux and thereby reinforce civil society within a locality, enhancing the benefits from a web of personal networks and extending them through weak links. LETS might also act as seed beds for new skills and practices which spill over into wider social and economic networks. Thus, by promoting networks which facilitate flows of information and innovation, and thereby building the capacity for responding to social change, LETS could contribute to Community Economic Development. LETS form part of a cultural rather than technological innovation milieu. 

"Creating Community: The experience of a local currency system."
by David Burman, LETS Toronto, dburman@web.ca
Ontario Healthy Communities Coalition, 7 June 2000

Summary: This research project was conducted to find out how much Toronto LETS members thought their system enabled them to get the products and services they needed, made it easier for them to cope with problems in daily life, and made it easier to interact with one another. We also hoped that the research process would get people thinking about their involvement in LETS. We started by finding out what the community wanted from the research, we trained telephone interviewers, we interviewed LETS members in depth by phone and in person, and conducted focus groups.  This report is on the focus group part of the research. 

It is becoming abundantly clear that the current economic system based on global capital and commodity labour is not working for most people. Over the past 40 years, most of us have been working harder, longer and more productively for little gain – most of us have lost ground. 

Since the Occupy movement announced “We Are the 99%” in 2011, the "Too Big to Fails" have become even bigger. The mountains of personal and nationalized debt have become a commonplace, and society has ignored the immanence of another financial collapse. The 1% are richer (in monetary wealth) than ever in history.  But the global economy is engineered to grow inequitable wealth while destroying the natural wealth that we all depend on for our survival.  

At the same time, we are seeing the emergence of new ways of thinking about wealth and money, of doing business, of exchanging with each other and with the earth, that reflect the age-old world views of connectedness held by indigenous peoples throughout the world.   

So our questions are: What will the new economy look like? How can we reclaim our rights to economic arrangements that work for our planet, and for us, for our families and citizens in urban communities? 

How might we extract ourselves from the colonizing effects of globalized capitalism? What would our communities be like if we could grow our food, produce the energy we need and create structures that enhanced the interaction with each other and the environment? 

For us to survive on this planet, a new economy would have to reflect the Earth's economy where nothing and no one is wasted. For we know that the human economy is entirely dependent on the health of the Earth's economy.

Stay tuned for invitations to upcoming sessions.