THE FUTURE OF MONEY Bernard A. Lietaer - library.uniteddiversity ...

credit for one hour, while Joe gets a one-hour debit, which they can
mark on the blackboard near the superintendent's once.
Julia can spend her credit on the biscuits baked by another
neighbour, while Joe will offset his debit by tending the community
garden, or something else that his bad eyesight allows him to do. If
Joe was going to spend one hour working in Julia's garden, that
would be simple barter. However, the fact that Joe can work for an
hour in the garden of someone else in the community to cancel his
Time Dollar debit, and that Julia can use her credit to buy Jane's
biscuits, makes Time Dollar exchanges much easier to complete than
barter. Joe and Julia do not need to have 'matching needs and
resources' to complete the transaction.
That is why Time Dollars is real money as we defined it earlier: an
agreement within a community to use something (in this case, hours
of service) as a means of payment. In other words, Joe and Julia have
created money. It is as simple as that.
The costs of starting such a system are almost nil. For small
communities, one can use a blackboard or a piece of paper. For larger
se projects, a 'Timekeeper' computer program can be downloaded for
free the Internet (www.timedollar.org). All participants' names are
listed with little pluses and minuses. It expands automatically to
record whatever number of participants and person-hours are
needed.
Furthermore, whenever someone gets a credit, someone else
automatically creates a debit. The sum of all the Time Dollars in the
system therefore, always zero at any point in time. But Joe got his
slippers, Julia her biscuits, and the community a vegetable garden,
and not one dollar needed to make it all happen.