Replacing Scarcity with Trust: Local Currencies

[Free Digital Universe]

Francis Ayley established over a dozen local currencies in the UK before moving to the U.S. He contrasts our standard, scarcity- and debt-based money system with local currencies in which "there's always as much as you need."

Local currencies like his Fourth Corner Exchange issue money when members trade goods and services. Communities with local currencies will be less affected when recession or depression hits the mainstream economy.

"Fourth Corner Exchange is a Sustainable Community Currency based in the Pacific Northwest USA, which operates throughout the USA and the world. Currently we have over six-hundred participating members, with branches in Washington, Oregon, Colorado, New Mexico, Ohio, California in the USA, Nova Scotia and British Columbia in Canada. Founded by Francis Ayley and a small group of friends in 2002, Fourth Corner Exchange formally started trading in January 2004. From those small beginnings we have grown to over six-hundred members, exchanging a large selection of goods & services throughout the Pacific Northwest, centered around Bellingham and Port Townsend.

Our vision:

A world of economic freedom and justice for all, where all communities have access to a fair and equitable universal medium of exchange, issued by the people in sufficiency to meet their own needs and the needs of their communities.

Our mission is to create this world of economic democracy by rebuilding our communities through teaching people how to use our community currency in a socially just and responsible manner.

You can join Fourth Corner Exchange and bring the benefits of our community currency to your community.

Our unit of currency is the 'Terra Dollar' (Time Dollar), which we use in a somewhat different manner to Ithaca Hours and Time Banks. Our Terra Dollars (Time Dollars) have many advantages over other local, complimentary and alternative currencies, and significant advantages over bank issued money.

At Fourth Corner Exchange, we are social entrepreneurs who recognize that our traditional money system creates serious social problems, which devastate our local economies by removing money from local communities and transferring it to large corporations and financial centers, leaving the people without a medium of exchange at a local community level. This stifles local trade, unnecessarily suffocating the local economies of thousands of communities throughout the USA (and the world), destroying their ability to exchange available goods and services, creating unemployment, poverty and a pervasive sense of disempowerment and despair. Our traditional money system destroys local communities by denying them adequate access to a universal medium of exchange, which is necessary to facilitate trade. There are strong arguments against the traditional money system that suggest we need monetary reform. There is also the debt problem. Visit the U.S. National Debt Clock to read about this.

Local, alternative and community currencies replace the money drained away, allowing the people to continue trading the essentials of life. Fourth Corner Exchange Terra Dollars cannot be removed from the communities in which they circulate, because the members issue Terra Dollars as and when they need them by trading their goods and services within their communities. This is democratic money, issued in sufficiency by the people to meet all their local trading needs. Bank money is issued in scarcity for the private profit of the banks and multi-national corporations, who frequently act antisocially at a community level.

When the next recession or depression hits the mainstream economy, our members will continue to trade as if nothing has happened. Fourth Corner Exchange Terra Dollars are immune to the unstable perturbations of the mainstream economy. They retain their value and continue to perform their primary purpose of facilitating trade between members under all conditions and at all times. Traditional bank-issued money has never been capable of performing this simple social task. This has been its main failing.

For more information about alternative money systems, read these YES! magazine articles.

Or see our recommended reading list.