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        REA-13          Multiple systems.              January 7th,  1986





                            Multiple systems.


        Any criteria can be used to define the members of a LETSystem.

        Typical groupings might be geographic, cultural, commercial or 
        shared interest of any kind.

        While the potential number of such groupings in any particular 
        group of people expands exponentially with the size of that 
        group, there will be practical limits to the number of LETSystem 
        memberships that any one person will find it useful to maintain.

        Most people will restrict their accounts to two or perhaps three 
        LETSystems, most likely one serving their local region, one with 
        activity in the wider region around that locality, and possibly 
        one or more serving to connect special interest groupings.

        The range of services will of course vary from one system to 
        another, however the major distinction between them will be the 
        degree to which the member's services are in demand in each, as 
        this effectively determines his/her spending capacity in each 
        system.

        For people with lower earning capacity, the smaller the system, 
        the greater the demand for their services.

        For people with greater earning power, the larger the system, the 
        higher the demand, and thus the greater difficulty in disposing 
        of the earnings.

        Both these characteristics work to favour greater levels of 
        activity in smaller systems than in larger.



        The tendency with all operations involving conventional money is 
        to large scale integration, since the larger the market, the 
        greater the profit opportunity and therefore the greater the 
        effect of economies of scale.

        This consequence both derives from and accentuates the extraction 
        of money from the community.

        LETSystems support small scale local operations, not by tariff 
        barriers or artificial subsidies, but simply by providing money 
        which cannot leave the community and thus maintains demand for 
        the local product.

        This will effortlessly create the decentralised economic 
        structures which are increasingly recognised to be essential to 
        our economic and social well-being.





        Landsman Community Services Ltd.              REA-13    Page    1


        REA-13          Multiple systems.              January 7th,  1986




        Since a critical distinction of LETSystems is the emphasis that 
        is generated on local interaction and production, it is self-
        defeating to chase after the supposed advantages of bigger 
        systems and unrestricted inter-trading facilities.

        While inter-trading must be recognised as an essential part of 
        the relationship between the organism and its environment, 
        excessive indulgence in import and export will merely create 
        a similar condition of dependency and impoverishment to that 
        established by the cash economy.

        This will not be a long-lasting problem, since it will quickly 
        lead to the demise of the LETSystem in question, or at least, to 
        a major reduction of its activity, but it should be appreciated 
        to be an absurd direction.




        Notwithstanding the above considerations, there is a clear need 
        for some mechanism to support trading between communities with a 
        higher level of sympathy, ethics, practicality, and ecological 
        realism than is presently provided by conventional monetary 
        systems.

        Landsman will provide the facility for registered LETSystems to 
        arrange such intertrading through a meta-level LETSystem.

        Import-export trades between such communities may be acknowledged 
        by the recording of credit transfers betweeen the accounts 
        maintained by each community in the meta-level LETSystem.

        In addition to the normal conditions relating to the recording of 
        acknowledgements, the trading volume that a community will be 
        allowed to transact in import-export through this exchange will 
        be initially restricted to a some small fraction of its internal 
        trading.





















        Landsman Community Services Ltd.              REA-13    Page    2