![calmingmanatee:
[Image description: A mantee is side on to the camera, looking right. The water is sea-green, and one of its fins is crossed over its body. TEXT: “Just take things one step at a time. You are doing a great job.”]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m6injb00G81rxqd36o1_500.jpg)
[Image description: A mantee is side on to the camera, looking right. The water is sea-green, and one of its fins is crossed over its body. TEXT: “Just take things one step at a time. You are doing a great job.”]
“They’re quite joyous occasions,” she said. “It’s very liberating, not using money.” At one market, she said, she approached a woman who had come along with three large trays of homemade cakes and was selling them for a unit a cake. “I asked her: ‘Do you think that’s enough? After all, you had the cost of the ingredients, the electricity to cook …’
“She replied: ‘Wait until the market is over’, and at the end she had three different kinds of fruit, two one-litre bottles of olive oil, soaps, beans, a dozen eggs and a whole lot of yoghurt. ‘If I had bought all this at the supermarket,’ she said, ‘it would have cost me a great deal more than what it cost to make these cakes.’”
What rules the system has are designed to ensure the tems continue “to circulate, and work hard as a currency”, said Christos Pappionannou, a mechanical engineer who runs the network’s website using open-source software.
No one may hold more than 1,200 tems in the account “so people don’t start hoarding; once you reach the top limit you have to start using them.”
And no one may owe more than 300, so people “can’t get into debt, and have to start offering something.” (via)
Wow!
WHOA!
Reading the whole article just…. BLOWS MY MIND! This is AMAZING!! A system where exchange value is determined by the people themselves, not by corporations, where services have value for necessary commodities like FOOD and since people have to deal with each other they are forced to recognize how valuable these services are, and welcome it…. OMG!!!! *SCREAMS* THIS IS SO EXCITING.
“You are not poor when you have no money,” she said, “you are poor when you have nothing to offer – except for the elderly and the sick, to whom we should all be offering.”
<3<3<3<3<3
This is beautiful! There is a very similar organisation in the UK, The Freeconomy Community where you can offer up services or things either for free or in exchange for things you need. It’s not quite as advanced, but it’s there. :)
