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

hour to James, she gets a credit for one HOUR, and James a debit for
one HOUR. They have therefore created the Time Dollars necessary
for their transaction by agreeing on the transaction itself. The main
advantage of mutual credit systems is that they self-regulate to have
always currency available in sufficiency.
Negotiated exchange rate: In contrast with ‘fixed exchange rates',
when the exchange rate is negotiated as part of the transaction itself.
Currently under floating exchange rates, all national currencies have
negotiated exchange rates among each other. Similarly with ROCS
the value of one hourly service is negotiated at the moment of a
transaction: a dentist may charge five ROCS for each hour of work for
example.
OECD: The Organisation of Economic Co-operation and
Development, based in Paris, and grouping the 'developed' countries
in the world.
Website http://www.oecd.org
Payment system: Procedure and infrastructure by which the
transfer of a currency is executed from one person to another.
ROCS: Acronym for Robust Currency System. Incorporates all the
most robust features of various monetary innovations. The unit of
account is the hour, the currency is created by mutual credit, and a
small demurrage charge is applied to it.
Scarce: In insufficient quantities. For instance, in all our national
currencies 'bank debt money keeps value only by its scarcity
compared to its usefulness'. For our purposes, the polarity of scarcity
is not over-abundance, but sufficiency. For instance, in a mutual
credit system there is always sufficiency of money (as participants
create it among themselves as a debit and credit at the moment of a
transaction).