Incidentally, a lot of that local economy you see is ‘tax free’ or black market. But I doubt very much that those people care. They live on a bit of cash, plenty of exchanges and the business relationships they create are of high importance.

I try to buy locally as well and, here in France, there are several villages and towns with a local exchange system too. If I ever start a small business here, I think I’ll try to remember the cultural importance of local business–it’s taken seriously around here.

Thank you for writing that insightful post. “The meaning of community can still exist in the global world” I can’t help but think of Haiti and Chili, when they had that earthquake, the sense of community felt around the world really gave me goosebumps, it was very inspiring…

Highly recommend it!

http://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc420.html

http://www.myjourneytomillions.com/articles/barter-system-is-alive-and-well/

Regardless of that tax stuff, I’d be interested if anyone has experiences with LETs. Real life experience?

I don’t know how much of the service industry in the poor areas of Egypt works without the exchange of currency but I am sure it happens a lot considering so many people have very little access to much cash.

I also want to apologise for some grammatical errors in this post. I wrote it a while back and didn’t fully check it before submitting…. Although I ramble a bit I hope you enjoyed the general gist.

Egypt’s poor really don’t have it great and they don’t get much government support. In fact many don’t have birth certs, SS numbers or anything so they theoretically do not exit! Beside all the hardship they really do have vibrant communities with many inner workings and the supply of services to each other and to the richer members of Cairo are very interesting to me….