There is no such thing as a "generic unskilled labor hour",
Yes, is a work that you don't need preparation nor any special abilities to complete. It's a very simple definition. Usually it's said "it is more or less equivalent to 10$" as an orientation. The intention of using hours is avoiding USD inflation.
Anyway, if you don't like that unit, you can use USD, silver oz, liters of milk or whatever you prefer. Whatever the group agrees will work better for them.
I repeat, there is
no such thing as a generic "unskilled labor hour". Herding geese, painting houses, moving boxes, and digging holes are all "unskilled labor", but they certainly are not all worth the same amount of money. Nor is the quality of work the same between laborers or companies for all of those jobs. Also, your "they're trying to avoid inflation" argument is 100% invalid as virtually every community currency operating in the US is backed by USD. A few "have plans" to back their currency with stupid things like firewood, but I haven't seen it happen yet and I can already tell you how that will work out. How many tons of firewood does it take to exchange the same value as one ounce of gold? Which is more expensive to store? Which will rot and become more or less useless if it gets wet?
and I don't have to prove that Keynes was wrong in order to say that Gessel's depreciating money is crap when Gessel himself was full of crap.
Glad that you get they're different. Out of curiosity...What would you say is the worst crap from Gesell?
Not talking about solutions, what misconception?
There are two major fallacies in Gessel's work. The first is the idea that interest is an unfair charge against workers (and business owners, who Gessel would rather see eliminated) for capital. The second is the idea that workers should receive "all of the fruits of their labor". He specifically mentions salespeople as being more or less superfluous middlemen that steal potential "fruits" from the "laborers".
The stated purpose of LETS and every other ponzi scheme like it is "to provide an alternative (or adjunct) to state money, and to create jobs in the community". In every case, people get some sort of discount; either in the form of a markdown on goods or else (extremely) cheap labor. I remember an article about it once, noting some old lady getting her house painted for less than half of what it would cost her in dollars.
LETS aren't designed as ponzi schemes. You don't need more and more users to make it work. In fact, it's trust requirements make growing the user base very difficult or even impossible from certain point.
What makes you think they're ponzi schemes?
I haven't heard of any discount not in stuff prices nor in wages. Where have you heard that?
I read some articles about bitcoin being a ponzi scheme too. Could your article be biased too?
Could the old lady be saving the hidden costs of conventional money?
Unless those community currencies are saving the hidden costs of
minimum wage, which would be illegal AFAIK, then no. Bitcoin started at zero value, whereas LETS and similar schemes start bankrupt. The berkshares site even specifically says "merchants give a ~2% discount as an incentive to use berkshares". Also, the article I read was pushing LETS as a great socialist panacea, it was my own conclusion that they are ponzi schemes, based on the fact that they begin bankrupt and run on debt.
The system overall is basically the same stuff the NGOs shove down poor developing countries' throats: shame based credit money. They claim by offering either zero interest or artificially low interest you can stimulate business, but all real business runs on capital, the holders of which demand interest and for good reason. The incentive of interest ensures that money is spent on the most efficient businesses rather than socialist bridges to nowhere. By taking away interest and economic responsibility through their arbitrary credit materialization, they invert economic control from consumers to producers and eliminate any chance of getting capital influx or developing any real business.
This is not to borrow money for investing. This is just realizing the internal trades within a community and replacing conventional money with their own accounting in the degree that is possible. Nothing to do with micro-credits which, by the way aren't at zero interest.
But you can also borrow to invest at low or no interest with others systems like Wir or JAK.
Still they aren't ponzi schemes nor destroy the economy. Read about them, also interesting.
If you want to be a "good person" and paint some old lady's house for free, then volunteer and do it for free. Don't use some retarded socialist ponzi brainwashing scam. LETS, Berkshares, and all their crony companions are pure blooded communists, and the results of communism are always the same no matter what shade of red you paint it.
Amazing how fast dogmatic people bring up words like brainwashing. I'm far far away from communism. You haven't read Gesell (specially critic with Marx) nor Riegel (who inspired LETS). Both libertarians.
Start with their wikipedia pages because it seems that you haven't gone that far in your research:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.C._Riegelhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silvio_GesellThen reading directly what they said from them won't hurt you:
http://www.newapproachtofreedom.info/http://www.community-exchange.org/docs/Gesell/en/neo/I have read Gessel's work, in his (translated) words for myself. I always do so in regards to any subject that interests me even slightly, and that I might argue about. I'm quite familiar with Gessel, and when I first read his work I even thought it was a good idea.
However, I have also read "Human Action" cover to cover, and after comparing Gessel's arguments to von Mises', I can only conclude that Gessel's arguments, and not Mises', are invalid. Do I also need to rub it in your face that Gessel served as the economic Tzar under a communist state (albeit for a short time)? Gessel
says that he is an anarchist and supports freedom, but the sort of freedom he wants is the freedom to do whatever you want on anyone else's property. His "freeland" idea was nothing short of pan-communism, and his obsession with worker ownership was obviously pinko. Gessel's "Robinson Crusoe" argument was especially convincing, but when you take away the moral assertions and examine it from a pure economic standpoint, it completely fails to make sense anymore. An economy where you grow everything yourself and the only trade is barter in perishable goods, then it's true no interest is possible, however no economic specialization is possible either so it's a moot point- you can't have economics without a real economy.
Also, Switzerland is currently a bankrupt hole working on becoming a third world country. Wir hasn't worked any economic miracles for them, although it has produced a lot of superfluous low quality housing. It's merely a less extreme version of the colossal ghost towns built by the communist Chinese government.
