Media
Money is no object in the ‘freeconomy’
Sydney Morning Herald
December 4, 2008
Excerpts:
Sydney-Illawarra LETS co-ordinator Eve Lichtnauer says LETS networks have prompted a new creativity around skilled labour. In Western Australia, for example, out-of-work people are encouraged to sign up in order to retain and use their skills while they’re looking for a job.
“It can create more opportunities and it stops people sitting around at home waiting for something to happen,” Lichtnauer says. “It creates opportunities for them and they get something in return, even if it’s not money.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Instead of forking out cash to pay for the gardening, Budai bakes cakes - banana, chocolate, scones, biscuits and macaroons. Cooking earns her operas - the Sydney-Illawarra LETS currency (one opera equates to about $1), which she then uses to “pay” for the things she needs, such as a gardener whom she pays 20 Operas an hour.
Budai says she didn’t want to make a business out of baking and she doesn’t have the disposable income to pay for a gardener. She bases the “cost” of her cakes on the time it takes her to make one. In exchange, she has picked up a series of fantasy books, as well as vegetables and some clothes for her young son.
Mavericks swap till they drop
Sydney Morning Herald
Sept 3, 2008 pg 19
Excerpts:
When Magda Hansson needs a haircut, a babysitter or a new computer, she doesn’t think twice. It’s not that she’s a rampant consumer - quite the opposite. Instead, Hansson is a member of LETS, a community-based bartering system where time is more valuable than cold hard cash.
LETS (Local Energy Trading Systems) groups are alternative trading networks made up of individuals who use people power to trade skills, goods and services. Sydney members pay for their goods and services in “operas”, not dollars.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
While new members often get stumped at what they can offer, Hansson says most people have skills they don’t use. “Often what we are paid to do is something we trained for at TAFE or university. But there’s so much more to us than that one particular skill. People have lots and lots of different skills they may not get paid for in the broader sense, but which are still useful to somebody, somewhere.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
But for Hansson, independence is just another positive. “In the federal system money tends to come and go in ways that people can’t control,” she says. “But in a LETS system people create their own money through their trading. It’s not that there’s ever a lack of money, there’s just a lack of imagination.”
Local Exchange Trading Scheme – Check it Out
Pyrmont Village - www.pyrmontvillage.com.au
August 15th, 2008
Excerpt:
All in all, it makes for a wonderfully sustainable community. And you don’t even need to make any cash payments. It is a non-profit system that exchanges offers and wants. The currency is Operas. It is 10 Operas to join and it is suggested that you charge 20 Operas per hour.
Read the article online »
Hack notes: Join the cashless society
Interview on Triple J’s Hack - May 2008
Sydney LETS spoke to Hack as part of a series they were doing on money.
The interview is available online as an MP3 from Triple J’s website. The whole episode is pretty interesting, but if you just want to hear the part about Sydney LETS it starts about 18 minutes into the broadcast.
Hack notes: Join the cashless society listen »
Fair Trade
Sun Herald’s Sunday Life Magazine
Sunday 27th July, page 20
Journalist and LETS member Helen Hawkes wrote a great piece capturing the experience of a LETS trading day in the Central Coast.
“An old-fashioned system of bartering is thriving in local neighbourhoods, where savvy community traders (magazine writers included) use their skills and time as “currency” to buy goods and services.”