“LETS” is short for Local Employment and Trade System and it overcomes the limitations of money.
Under the present economic order, money is everything. In a recession when money is tight, skills are locked within people. The money is not there to pay them for their skills, and allow them to pay others for theirs. Many of the needs of people and their communities go unmet when the skills are already there to provide them. LETS releases those skills. It works like this:
Invent a currency. The name doesn’t matter because it doesn’t actually exist in a physical form. They’re just imaginary units of exchange. When you join a LETS group, you are given a list of all the skills and contributions being offered by the other members. You write down a list of all the things that you can do. It can be anything from baby sitting, to repairing a house, to fixing a car. If there is something you need, that a member of the group can provide, you contact them and agree a price in your unit of currency, whatever that may be.
One group in the Isle Of Wights in Europe has called their currency ‘Wights’, but it could be anything. Let us say that you contact a car mechanic in the group and you agree a price of 50 Wights for him or her to repair your car. When the job is done, you contact the LETS coordinator and you say ‘credit so and so with 50 Wights and debit my account with the same.’ The mechanic now has fifty units which he or she can use to purchase your skills or anyone else’s in the group and you have committed yourself to giving 50 units worth of work to the group also.
No money has ever changed hands, but you have your car repaired and the mechanic will be paid in whatever services he or she might need. It may be that, for the moment, some money has to be spent on items purchased within the System, like some spark plugs or engine parts in this case until we fully automate society and put 3D printers in place everywhere, but in some LETS groups even shops are offering food and goods in exchange or part exchange for barter in this way.
You can take it further and have each member commit themselves to so many units of work a month for those in the community who can’t contribute through illness or infirmity or old age. But there are very few who cannot offer SOMEthing. One way of running LETS is to have a rate per hour for everyone, so all time is measured equally.
You can start now, the sooner the better, to build a community economy as independent as possible from the global system. The more we can live outside of that system, the more the power of the banks is reduced. Put an advertisement in the paper and call a public meeting or just gather a few friends at a coffee spot or lounge that you think might be interested.
There might already be a LETS in your area that you can join. No rules that must be obeyed and begins to network with other LETS groups, via the internet. Each group works out what is best for them and learns with experience how best to proceed. These LETS groups can grow quite large, but it is best to keep them to manageable numbers. It is important to have them up and running as soon as possible to reduce dependency on the elitists and to limit the chaos and suffering when the present system collapses.
In the new peoples’ economics we will need local cooperatives and community-owned companies for food distribution. It is simply stupid for food to be grown in one area and sent long distances to other communities while those communities send their produce in the other direction. Food cooperatives will have the role of collecting the food from local farmers and growers and distributing this to the local shops and markets.
To be truly responsive to local needs, these cooperatives should be controlled by representatives of ALL the community, not only the farmers and growers. We will require community organizations on a weekly or even monthly basis, again with all views and needs represented, to coordinate the production and distribution of the necessities of life to everyone in their particular community.
Their meetings will be to ensure that no-one goes without food, warmth, clothing, and shelter. This can be provided much more quickly and efficiently by local communities once they can control their own lives and they can be freed from the barriers presented by the current system to any form of activity which operates independently of its structure. These “community economic cooperatives” will also have the role of identifying the goods and produce imported into a community which could be produced locally. They will then seek ways to replace the imports with their own local production.
There can be local currencies to work alongside barter and “community banks” (peer to peer with no central bank like crypto-currency) will be developed to channel local money into the local economy. These banks should not make money out of money, only cover their costs. If we are going to bring in the changes to ensure that economics serves people, the System of making money out of money has got to end.
To type in numbers on a computer screen and then charge interest for lending money that doesn’t exist has to stop if the control is going to stop. Money should be a form of exchange and a measurement of productive activities and not a way of increasing your wealth for doing absolutely fucking nothing. This ethos has turned the global economy into a giant casino with the table rigged against everybody, except for a few people that actually help rig the tables.
I am not suggesting that communities cut themselves off from each other in the local economies. Quite the opposite. There will still be trade where possible, but it will be for the mutual and equal benefit of both communities involved and largely based on an exchange system of a modern day barter system, instead of a financial transaction. I do not see trade in necessities except where one community absolutely cannot provide them for itself.
We need closer links between communities, not more division. But why does unnecessary and destructive economic activity which makes all communities dependent on outside forces have to be a basis for cooperating with each other? Surely the fierce competition between communities that such a system creates discourages the very cooperation we’re trying to see.
It’s time for people of all backgrounds, creeds, colors, and views to come together and cooperate for the good of the whole and not compete for the good of the few. That’s bullshit because we’re all on the same flying rock. “After The Crash” by Guy Dauncey offers lots of advice and examples of how to build a local economy in which people can free themselves from the clutches of national and international control.
Don’t let anyone tell you this isn’t possible. It is, and it is happening now in a lot of places. The media just won’t report on it because it endangers their very survival if people start doing for themselves.
Local production for local need is the direction in which we are being guided by changing consciousness and economic necessity. We will also realize from these experiences that we have been indoctrinated to accept a perverted view of efficiency. We have been sold the line that says if you centralize your production you can produce things cheaper. This might be true in a few cases, but not the majority. Most of these products are only cheaper in the shops because they do not reflect the full cost of producing and distributing them. If something is made or grown locally and sold as near as possible to where it is produced, the price will reflect virtually the full cost of production and distribution. Not all of it, but most of it. That is not the case with centralized production. When you centralize you need massive trucks to deliver those products. You need millions of them and they must get bigger and more destructive as the centralization intensifies.
They consume fossil fuels at a breathtaking rate with the trucks capable of less than ten miles to the gallon. To cope with these trucks we have to build more motorways and by-passes at incredible cost. We have to spend money repairing the motorways and roads, the water and gas pipes, buildings, and pavements, all damaged by the ever increasing weight of the trucks. We have to pay in medical costs for the growth in road accidents and ill health caused by pollution and the stress of living alongside roads full of traffic and trucks which shake your home and deny you peace and quiet.
We have to spend more on the welfare system, because people-based businesses which served their local communities have been closed down by corporations who largely serve only their shareholders and profit margins. Financial speculation, not human need, dominates industry and we all suffer from that.
None of these costs I have listed are reflected in the price of the products that are produced in this way. You pay for them once at the shop and again in your taxes, while the costs in environmental destruction are not even acknowledged. They are passed on to future generations which, through reincarnation, could be us! All this creates an illusion of efficiency which has hoodwinked billions of people into accepting centralization as ‘progress’.
When those costs have to be reflected in the price on the shelf, local production will often be shown to be cheaper, especially the essentials like food. Packaged and factory-prepared food is far more expensive than buying fresh food locally and preparing it yourself. The national and multi-national food conglomerates have to find ways of taking a potato or a carrot and adding as much to its value as they can. They do this by turning out processed, conveyor belt, ‘convenience’ food in the form of microwave dinners or whatever.
And because food produced in this way has to travel long distances before being eaten, chemicals and preservatives have to be added which increase the cost of the medical services by the affect they have on the human body. This is on top of the poisons the food already contains as a consequence of chemical-based farming methods. The food giants can ensure big profits from what started out as a potato or vegetable costing only a few pennies. We will see the return of buying fresh food locally and preparing it at home at a much cheaper cost in the years ahead.
The centralization of production and political control have brought about the death of our community. The System’s policy of divide and rule has destroyed so much community spirit, cooperation and local self-reliance. Local post offices and small shops have closed. So have local schools and children have to be bussed out of their community to the big, often impersonal, centralized schools where classrooms are overcrowded and children are taught half of what they could really know.
Their parents have also had to travel longer distances to work as centralization has closed local firms and created the need for mass commuting with all the road, public transport, and pollution costs that entails. People are forced to begin and end each working day in traffic jams or crowded trains alongside others in the same situation. More of their time is taken by working and traveling, and less is available for families, friends, and life in the community. That’s what the System wants!
Governments talk of the need for ‘family values’ while promoting a system that breaks up families for most of every day, and creates pressures that many relationships do not survive. More people are now realizing that if you can reduce your number of ‘wants’, you need less money to live. Simplifying your life like this can free those most precious of gifts – time and choice.
Yet another consequence of centralization has been the dependence of communities on one or very few companies for their economic stability. When those industries falter or the companies decide it is better for them to centralize elsewhere, the communities are devastated because their economic base is so small and dependent on so few. Community economies of the kind that will evolve in the years ahead will not suffer from such lack of diversity.
The multi-nationals who use their power to exploit people and the planet will not survive the transformation. The expansion of consciousness will ensure that their days are numbered. Business will go through a fundamental reassessment of values and motivations, because the evolution of consciousness is not limited to the weak and the poor. It is touching everyone who is prepared to open their mind and go with the gathering flow.
I wish to emphasize again that in my critique of our economic system I am not condemning or judging people. I am challenging the thought patterns that control the people who serve the System. Managing directors living their lives under the daily and growing pressures of serving balance sheets and growth figures are as much victims of this madness as those they employ, or don’t employ, on the factory floor. We’re the sheep and the shepherds. No bueno.
With every day, more of the ‘winners’ are finding their work unfulfilling and without meaning. Their true selves are rising to the surface and new views and values are entering their consciousness. As this continues, they will be asking many questions they have never asked before.
These questions will include:”What is my business really here for? What are we really here for? Is it merely to accumulate money as fast as possible? Is that all that life is about? Are we here to be terrified of not selling more things every year?”
I know that a lot business executives are already asking these questions and they are realizing that they are victims also.
The new business that will emerge from the ashes of the old will be there to serve rather than exploit and it will judge its success by these criteria:
(1) Is the process of producing, distributing, and selling the product damaging in any way to the planet and the natural life support systems?
(2) Is the business exploiting the world rather than making a contribution to healing the world, serving human need, and making it a better place for all people and life-forms?
(3) Is the business harming or exploiting animals mentally, emotionally or physically and causing them pain and stress of any kind?
(4) Is the business exploiting people to maximize profits? Is it paying them less than their work is worth because I can use my economic power to make them accept whatever they are offered? Am I exploiting my suppliers or weaker countries and peoples by abusing my economic power over them?
(5) For the business to win, does it require that other people or countries must lose?
(6) Do those working in the business feel a part of the decision making process and empowered to release their full creativity, or do they feel their creativity has to conform to some rigid corporate structure in which the maximization of profit is the only driving force?
If the answer to any of those questions is ‘yes’ then we are looking at a business that is going to be submerged in the changing consciousness in the collective mind of the human race.
The new “businesses” will seek to ensure that economic activity leads to everyone winning from any situation and that includes the Earth. The new businesses will have no rigid structures. Instead it will evolve its ways of working and operation from foundation values like caring, sharing, compassion, environmental responsibility, love in its widest sense, peace, harmony, truth, justice, and respect.
From these principles each business will evolve in ways that best suit its community and the people involved. Diversity and variety will replace the centralized uniformity of today. You can go to almost any city in the world and see the same names and shop fronts, all coordinated by some centralized multi-national corporation. McDonald’s is a real estate company, not a food company. Look around.
One culture created in the United States is being imposed upon the whole of humanity with the bulk of the profits going back to head office at the expense of the local people and their indigenous culture. The kind of changes described here will put a stop to this cancerous expansion.
People more and more will begin looking for individual designs that allow them to express their individuality. It may appear to be a contradiction, but the move towards an understanding of the Oneness of all consciousness will lead to a desire by people to express themselves in ways that emphasize the infinite variety within that Whole.
The re-balancing of the planet is happening on all levels and affecting all things. The re-connection of lower and higher self will lead to a re-balancing of economics and business practice. Those who try to continue with the old methods and motivations will find themselves struggling to sell their products.
The System has been created to appeal to the five physical senses. I’ve explained before that there are more than your 5 senses. Products and advertising have been geared to this and the 5 senses have largely made the decision on what and where to buy. Now other senses are coming into play. These are the higher senses that work through the intuition. They are often referred to in every day conversation as a ‘sixth sense’, although there are many levels of them.
These are becoming more influential in decision-making as people awaken. Everything is energy and absorbs energy. The energy in a production process is transferred to the product and that energy, consciousness, will reflect the intent behind the product. If the intent is only to make as much money as possible, the product will carry that thought pattern. If the production involves environmental degradation, that, too, will be in the energy field of the product.
This has not really mattered to companies so far because the 5 senses do not relate directly to that energy field of the product. They relate to its feel, smell, taste, look or sound. But as growing millions become more sensitive to higher levels of themselves, they will be tuning into the energy fields of everything and everyone – including products in the shops. They will sense on these intuitive levels the intent behind a product.
They won’t be saying:
‘Oh I’ll buy this pair of jeans because I can sense that the intent of the company is to serve, not exploit’.
They will simply pick one product and not another because their intuition will encourage them to do so. They won’t know why they are choosing that product. They will just do it. This will mean big trouble for those companies which produce with negative intent and they will be racking their brains trying to work out why people are rejecting their goods when there appears to be no explainable reason why this should suddenly be so.
There will be two stages in the transformation of economics and business.
The first stage will be the acceleration in the break down of the old and the attempts by the brotherhood to use that situation to bring in their World Central Bank and one currency. From the chaos that will follow this period, the new will emerge. There will be a great deal of stories, lies and immediate reacting to these events. It will be a time when a modern day bartering system will be essential and we will have to help each other on the basis of need, not want. New technologies will be discovered that will transform our lives. This technology will give us all the power and warmth we need without touching or harming the physical Earth – and it is technology that already exists.
The second stage will see the consolidation of the new “economics” and technologies, as the old fades to become history at long last. As the decades of the next century come and go and the frequencies go on rising, humanity will build a new world of amazing and wondrous potential. What we would call miracles today, will be a part of everyday life for all of us.
I cannot stress enough the importance of distinguishing between the transition period and the world that will follow. Yes, of course, there will be traumatic times. This always happens when one era is replaced rapidly by another. I can see shortages of food and people overall bugging out. But the transformation to a higher consciousness is not leading us back to caves, hardship and struggle. Don’t worry.
If you want a system that brings hardship and struggle, then stick with the present one. That delivers both guaranteed. The transformation is guiding us to an era of abundance in the next century. When the destructive ways have been replaced and the System’s control is dismantled, the Earth will be abundant in her gifts of food and beauty. Love will replace hate, and cooperation will replace competition. The present system does not want abundance. Its power is in an illusion of scarcity. That increases the price, the profit, and the ability to control everything and everyone.
We will see that life is meant to be a joy. We are not here to be victims and it wasn’t supposed to be like this. Deep down beneath the layers of conditioning, the programmed people know this is true and the memories of that truth are beginning to stir within their hearts and the vision to think for themselves is being seen.
Knowledge and understanding is starting to surface. Look at the global protests and revolutions. Not everyone will make that choice, and perhaps the majority will not. But many will and they will be the ones to change the world. Change and necessity shall free all our pent-up, locked-up, creativity, love, and passion for living. We will see human nature in its fullest and most glorious expression. We will discover potential within us that we never believed possible. Humans are not sinners who must find Jesus to be ‘saved’.
We’ve been misguided and misdirected by a disconnection from our true selves, that’s all. The re-connection into Wholeness will bring a transformation of outlook and values that will rid this planet of the ills that currently overwhelm human consciousness. It will also wrest control from the forces that seek to destroy.
All is thought and thought is all. Nothing happens in the physical world which has not been preceded by a thought. Physical actions are manifestations of thought. If thought is imbalanced and destructive, then the physical world will be. If thought is balanced, loving, and constructive, then that is the society that will emerge.
We create our own reality, and that is why inner vision is so important. The greater the vision the greater the reality. The old vision had money, production, and exploitation as its focus. That is the reality it has created. The new vision is about respect and love for all life and all that is creation.
