We have been described as the New Alchemists. The people who take something worthless and turn it into something of great value.

Is this magic? Is it a scam? No, it is a reasonably straightforward process involving people and releasing their potential. Words like social capital are bandied about and many people are unsure of the meaning of this.

One way to look at it is to say "There is so much work to be done and so many people underemployed - why don't we bring the two together to sort out the problems." The use of people to solve problems is the use of Social Capital

Money tends to be the sticking point. We haven't got enough! Yet there is many times more money in the world than there are things to buy with it.

So let's invent our own! Why not? It's not illegal - despite what people might think - so long as you don't try and pass it off as sterling (or dollars or whatever).

In Ithaca, New York State Paul Glover invented the Ithaca Hour. A printed note worth one hour of anyone's time (or $10 if you wanted to buy food/bicycles/jumbo jets). People started to accept them and the local farmers accepted them for food and paid their casual labour partly with "hours." This took off and now hundreds and hundreds of people in the area use "hours to get extra work done or buy extra food or whatever.

In the UK we have had LETS (Local Exchange Trading Systems/Schemes) since the 1980s. A lets is a club where the members agree to accept points instead of money from one another. One person keeps a record of all the accounts and all the members receive a list of the other members and their skills. Everyone also receives a "cheque book" with which to pay for goods and services.

Some schemes link their points to the pound (1 point = £1) while others link the value of the point to time (5 points = 1 hour's labour) while some schemes make the best of both worlds saying 1 point is £1 and have a standard rate of 5 or six points per hour.

Having done this we have then abandoned the idea of shortage. The rules say that members can go overdrawn so you can start spending straight away. The commitment you must sign up to is that you will balance your account from time to time and the only way of doing that is to do something for one of the other members.

LETS are doing particularly well in Australia (Greetings to any Blue Mountain people out there), New Zealand, Canada and now several european countries with the UK taking the lead.

Hungary is about to launch their first LETS with help from the British Council and UK LETS advisors.

Other similar schemes include Time Dollars in the US which was invented by Edgar Cahn. This is a system which provides caring support for disabled and marginalised people without spending huge amounts of money. It has developed in a variety of ways even to the point of young peole being able to earn computers for activities such as helping younger students or even turning up for a course which was normally skipped.

Once money is in the hands of the people they do with it what needs to be done.

I'll explain the banking system in another entry.