LLL- LETS-LINK LONDON
TIME AS CURRENCY Conference Report
More and more institutions in this country are becoming interested
in LETS. On Wednesday 15th October 1997, Tony Gibson, long-time
instigator of neighbourhood initiatives in the UK, and Professor
Edgar Cahn, inventor of Time Dollars (a scheme which according
to the LETSlink UK's info-pack was an antecedent to LETS), were
both welcomed by a mixture of well-healed, funded, delegates
from Local Authorities and the Voluntary Sector, as well as
a few enthusiasts from the world of LETS, at a Conference named
"Time as Currency - valuing the hidden resource, organised by
the London Health Partnership and the New Economics Foundation,
with the King's Fund and the Princes Trust. Both speakers gave
inspirational accounts of their successful schemes and the profound
social consequences of encouraging people to help their neighbours.
In such a short day there was insufficient time to find out
what problems if any there might be in both systems, and in
the discussion sessions many delegates focussed on trying to
figure out the extent to which Time Dollars was similar (or
not) to LETS.
Obvious differences were that in Time Dollars, participants'
time is rated equally no matter what task they were doing,
whereas most LET schemes allow for any agreed value to placed
on ones time. Another was that Time Dollars seemed to have
retired people helping other older people whereas LETS involves
a variety of ages. In LETS the organisers try to encourage
participants to spend as well as earn credits, but only 15%
of Time Dollars earned are ever spent, so that individuals
seem to accumulate them as brownie points or indeed as an
insurance policy against the day when they might need ask
for help. Indeed it was not clear who issues the currency
or what it could be spent on - it sounded as though the sponsoring
organisation might decide what discounts or perks could be
given to the participants, eg free tickets to facilities or
events, whereas in a LETS system the person receiving a service
will have their own account debited in paying for work done,
so in effect the members themselves jointly issue the currency
in the act of trading. In Time Dollars it was not clear whether
recipients were debited at all, so the whole thing looks more
like a well-organised and recorded system of voluntary work
than a mutual trading system.
Another major difference was that Time Dollar schemes are
invariably funded by organisations in whose interests it is
to encourage people to help their neighbours in order to lower
the costs of institutional provision, whereas LETS so far
are mostly grass-roots initiatives without much support from
major institutions - although this is now changing with an
increasing level of interest from Local Councils who are looking
to assist the development of LETS under their Anti-Povery
Strategy or Local Agenda 21 initiatives. Furthermore, it appears
that welfare laws in the states give positive support to Time
Dollars, in that claimants can only get benefits if they can
show that they are involved in voluntary work, for which purpose
the computerised list of Time-Dollar transactions is ideal,
and the feeling of social approval seemed vitally important
to the participants, whereas with LETS, individuals may feel
threatened by the official DSS legislation which allows local
offices to view LETS credits as financial earnings, or at
least deem the individual as not "available to work".
Finally, the transactions in Time Dollar systems were set
up by the office rather than independently by the individuals
concerned, which had the advantage of putting strangers in
touch with each other and spreading out the work - the computer
system (which is available free of charge on the internet)
brought up those who had traded longest ago as a priority
for each job. Professor Cahn was very open to discussion about
how the system could be developed to complement or augment
LETS trading, and I understand that some LETS schemes are
now working with volunteer bureaus to help supply workers
for their hard-to-fill assignments. Pursuing strategies to
gain institutional support and ensure that legislation actively
supports LETS rather than (in the usual British way) merely
allows them, would seem to be crucial elements in their future
success, and underlines the importance of the Benefits Campaign
which has just been launched by LETSLINK UK to change our
current legislation.
© October 1997 Mary Fee |