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May 19, 2008
Posted: 1718 GMT
LEWES, England — It sounds a bit crazy really. Why would a small town mint its own currency to use in local shops? But there are a few places that do just that and Lewes, in the southern English county of East Sussex, wants to join that list by the end of the year. The theory goes like this - you get £1.10 ($2.20) worth of goods in a shop with one Lewes pound. That discount is the incentive to use it. The local shop absorbs that loss but gets more business to make up for the discount. The shop would then use that Lewes pound to buy its goods, from a local farmer or craftsman. Advocates say a pound that stays in town is recycled four or five times, while a pound spent a chain store leaves town immediately - the so-called leaky economic theory. It also part of the green agenda. After all, walking to local shops and buying your veg, milk, cheese etc. from local suppliers cuts down on transportation costs. One store owner we talked to loved it. So did the local brewery, but only if it could use the alternative pounds to buy its supplies. That will be the test. The few townies we talked to actually made fun of the whole thing. It just seems a nuisance to them. Totnes in Devon has had a local currency for a few years. And in Western Massachusetts (where else?) local stores take BerkShares which look a bit like euros but for the pictures of local notables. The questions asked include how are they different from gift certificates? (They don’t expire, can be used for anything in the store, can be used multiple times, can be used in any participating store). Are they legal? (Of course, they are just promissory notes like any other “currency” and aren’t backed up by anything more than confidence — like any other “currency.”) The backers in Lewes say we have reached peak oil, and that prices will only rise as the amount of oil shrinks. That of course is debatable. But they want to voluntary return to a time when people shopped locally and there were plenty of local farmers etc. to meet that need. They fear a time when it will just be too expensive to ship food in from far away suppliers, but by then the local suppliers will already be out of business. But for people to now make the effort to use a parallel currency there will have to be a lot of local goodwill. Posted by: CNN Correspondent, Jim Boulden |
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