I agree with Sepp that this implies a start-up threshold; this may, in fact, be insurmountable in many communities.

Is anyone aware of US-based C3 organizations? STRO seems to be active in Uraquay, Brazil and Netherlands, but I have not been able to locate any US-based organizations to contact.

The idea of a local currency is to build up a local economy that runs independently of your external income. Let’s say you name your local currency “credits”. And let’s say they are really just units of credit that you grant each other. In order for this to work, you have to have a critical mass of people and businesses who use the currency. At a bare minimum you need the a grocery store, a restaurant, some farmers, the laundromat, a hardware store, and ideally your landlord, but really many many more people who are participating. You need a participating community that can sustain, amongst the members, the life of each one.

So that would involve getting friends together and deciding to do it, deciding on which platform you might want to use to run your currency on. (Ledgers do work for small communities and little activity, but they get very cumbersome with time, so an electronic platform like a LETS system, would need to be chosen.) There is a friend who does just that – supply such platforms.

Check out http://communityforge.net/

or https://raindroplet.info/about/

Basically, it is a thing that needs to be organized from the bottom up. First getting some people interested, then linking up with available technology, then actually getting local businesses involved, as well as the people to populate the system. It isn’t easy, but I suppose one could do it.

Then the outside payments that come in now and then will inject more life into the system, but they won’t be absolutely necessary for you to survive.

I have listened attentively to both of these links and I am none the wiser when it comes to working out HOW I personally can apply it.

I am a “sole trader”. My problem with 60 day terms is that when I do a contract for a major player – which means I can’t be working for someone else – and when they don’t pay me for two months, I can’t eat or pay my bills. I am not a small business trying to cover overheads. I need the money for the basics, food, clothing, shelter. All my peers are in the same boat. We are not members of the local chamber of commerce. We are not influential in the local leagues clubs or masonic lodges. We are a loose network of sole trader providers who DO NOT service one another EVER and do service major large corporations. Let’s say we have one graphic designer, one technical writer, one instructional designer, one trainer, one illustrator, one video maker, one who has branched out into making bras for fat ladies etc in a network. We all need to keep paying for the basics. Coles and Safeway will not take credits, the energy provider, the housing provider, the telecommunications provider will not take credits. Friend B has invoiced client B for $5000. I have invoiced client C for $2,000. Friend A receives their payment from client A for $3000, so we have $3000 dollars of cash floating around between us and $7.000 promised to pay all our bills until the next person gets paid.

Remember, we are bartering NOTHING between us, and all the actual income is coming from external sources. How do I get some of that $3000 off the person who got paid to pay my urgent bills? It seems to me that all we would be doing is setting up a lending/borrowing “club” so that we can even things out over the short term. I go to Friend A and say, I can’t make my rent this month, will you pay it for me. Then next month they come to me and say, I can’t pay for my groceries because I lent you that money, will you pay them for me?

Tell me what I have missed. Tell me how this proposed enormously complex financial system in any way relates to me and all the other solo travellers out there.

We could say that our economy is divisible in two basic parts, in competition with each other. One is the people’s economy that deals with the needs of daily living: food, clothing and shelter and anything needed to facilitate interaction with others. The second kind of economy is that of finance, speculation and a great part of the activities that supply what we have come to call a “consumer society”. We are manipulated into buying those extras offered. We are made to think we need them, but in reality those things are the stuff the major corporations live on, that is … when they aren’t engaged in financial speculation. Most of them are and see their production as a secondary activity.

The two economies compete for the use of “money”. Those corporate activities that supply the consumer society and the speculative activities are in great need of finance. The corporations are vastly more powerful than people. They can buy governments and they can persuade law makers of their needs, including that for finance. Of course that tends to leave the consumer side of the equation with little to work with.

People are actually worse off than dairy cows. At least a farmer cares for the well being of his animals. The corporations, whose role is not so dissimilar from that of a farmer … they don’t even seem to care for their consumers.

But what if there were currencies that catered to the local economies, including the small and medium sized businesses. With survival assured because basic needs can be well met with the assistance of a people’s currency, perhaps we would be less apt to be mere “consumers” but rather become clients who know and demand what they want.

Could the existence of complementary currencies all by itself create a better balance between the people’s economy and that of finance and multinationals?