Healthy Money Healthy Planet - library.uniteddiversity.coop

5
• There is too little education of committee members.
Unlike commercial trade barter companies (see Chapter 11), which restrict the numbers
in each occupational category and actively act as brokers (trade coordinators), there is
seldom any monitoring of the make­up of membership of green dollar exchanges, so that
an imbalance of supply and demand results. Many prospective members complain that
there are too many alternative healers and not enough people who sell food.
Most of the exchanges that no longer exist simply vanished into the ether, neglecting to
zero out their members’ trading accounts.
Richard Douthwaite and Dan Wagman, after many years of advocacy and research
on LETS, believes the main weakness in most LETS systems can be traced back to
Michael Linton’s original philosophy:
This was that it should be left to each member to decide how much indebtedness he or she could
take on and if other members, knowing the state of the member’s account, sanctioned that decision
by selling more of their goods and services to an already­indebted person, that was OK. Despite
the fact that a major factor in the collapse of Linton’s pioneering Comox Valley system, after a few
year’s trading, was the high level of personal indebtedness of Linton’s personal account, many
systems have continued to adopt his approach. 10
Douthwaite and Wagman contrast the general unwillingness of LETS administrators to
impose sanctions on members who run up debits and then stop trading, with the legally
enforceable agreements backed by collateral applied by WIR, the successful and longlasting
Swiss trading circle founded in 1934 (see Chapter 11). 11
Trading between Green Dollars Exchanges
Obviously, LETS systems would work better if members could trade between exchanges.
This poses many challenges. New Zealand green dollar exchanges have been
experimenting with a rather cumbersome system of trading between branches that was
originally called G$ Connections but is now known as LETS Connect NZ. If members
want to trade with another exchange, they don’t have to join it. Instead, they contact the
management of their local exchange, which gives them a letter of credit (valid for two
months) to say how much they can spend or earn. They then take this letter to the other
exchange, which facilitates trading. The trading is done between exchanges, and the
LETS Connect accounts are between exchanges.
Not all exchanges have joined Connect and certain issues have arisen, which are
essentially the same as those facing exchanges – namely, large, static imbalances or
exchanges leaving with bad debt or a credit. Exchanges that are popular as holiday