The
History of LETS
The term LETS (Local Exchange Trading Schemes) was coined by Michael
Linton, a Brit living in Canada in the 1970s, but the idea has been
around in one form or another for about two hundred years, maybe
even longer. Local people have exchanged skills using community-based
currencies instead of banks and ‘real money’ since at
least the 1830s.
By the Depression of the 1930s, local currencies were being combined
with barter networks and people continued trading their goods and
services even though they had little work and no money. There were
networks like these worldwide and some, in Germany and Canada, became
so successful in alleviating poverty and cutting unemployment that
eventually the banks managed to get the law changed. (Even now it's
difficult to operate a non-commercial community exchange system
like LETS in Germany).
Here in Britain, the first schemes using the LETS name started in
Norwich and Stroud in Gloucestershire in the 1980s. Recessions and
crashes of the 1980s and 90s stirred up a lot of interest in LETS
and by the mid 90s there were over 400 active groups with a total
membership of 20,000+ people. |
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