Selfsufficientish.com

Shameless plug ...

I'm the Promotions Officer for the Brisbane branch of this group and over the last two years have met a lot of people and had a lot of fun.

LETS is a local currency - you earn units by doing / making / selling things to / for others in the group, which you can then spend on goods and services in the same way. On joining, you get a Resource List which tells you who in the group does what, and sign yourself up for certain skills / products.

Why bother?

1. It encourages local enterprise - finding someone in your local area who can make that gift rather than going to Kmart to find it. Not only does the community benefit, but you can get your goods custom-made.

2. Trading this way increases the self-sufficiency of your local community. It's a great feeling to know that the things you can't currently do yourself can be done by people you know. It's a well-organised way of swapping your surplus for someone else's.

3. You meet really interesting people - most of whom you never would have met in your other social circles. Most LETSers are friendly and multiskilled and are great to talk to.

4. A large number of LETS members are gardeners / cooks / people generally interested in self-sufficiency. A lot of the time, there are common interests beyond the LETS group to talk about.

The Australian page is http://www.lets.org.au which lists a number of the Australian subgroups (usually one per metropolitan area). There are LETS groups all over the world, including the UK, Canada and the USA. If you're interested in community groups and self-sufficiency, it's a great thing to do.

Kfish

There's not LETS here in my part of NZ, (that I know of anyway) but some folk are trying to start up a Timebank here, http://www.timebanks.co.uk/ I guess it is very new here, as it doesn't have an NZ website yet, but it is something I think is really worthwhile.

Before I left Australia, I think I can remember Centrelink or the taxman was trying to have LETS included in your income. Do you know anything about this?

Thats the sort of shamless plug we like

Will have to look into a LETS scheme for when I move to Bristol (next week). There were big news in the early nineties during the recession, but I have only heard whispers of them since. I guess it is something that could be started, perhaps with the help of a website

It's interesting that you call it Local Energy Trading; I can sorta see where that's coming from. Here in the UK they are Local Exchange Trading Schemes (though I think I've heard Economy used, too). They take the form of lots of local groups, though some seem more successful than others. The main UK site is here, if anyone is interested. Scotland has its own site here.

The taxman problem seems to be a grey area. Apparently, some people see the scheme as a way to evade tax, but it is my understanding that even this form of trading is subject to taxation in the same way as any other. How this is resolved in practice I don't know.

Looks like there is more than one in Bristol, cheer for that link.

Taxing favours, that just ridiculous. It would be wicked to go to court because you owed the taxman a haircut, two cooked meals and some digging.

For you non-Aussies, Centrelink is the place that pays out pensions etc., and is very interested in how much you make. Since approx. 2000, Centrelink has not counted alternative currencies as income.

The tax office (in Australia) is also not interested unless you earn units from an activity which is also your main job / profession. If you're an electrician, and do work for both $ and units, the units are counted as equivalent to dollars and taxed accordingly. Grrr...

That makes sense, Kfish, as I left at the beginning of 2000.