All communities of practice must face questions relating to the material economic foundations of future sustainable societies. David Graeber, Karl Polanyi and Karl Marx each have produced typologies of possible types of economy, synthesised as: (1) the principle of individual reciprocity, (2) the market principle of capitalism, and (3) the planning principle of the state. I apply this synthesis to recent proposals for community change advanced by Bill McKibben and David Korten concerning economic scale and the re-localising of production and consumption sundered by globalisation, focused on the local exchange and trading system (LETS). The operationalising of LETS draws upon Adam Smith’s view of markets as face-toface exchanges of goods taking place in small morality-bound communities. Smith, McKibben and Korten conflate two different meanings of the term ‘exchange’. To understand the role LETS may play in future sustainable economies in communities of practice demands treatment of this problem.

中文翻译：

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未来生态可持续社会中的本地贸易和交换/就业系统（LETS）

所有实践界都必须面对与未来可持续社会的物质经济基础有关的问题。David Graeber，Karl Polanyi和Karl Marx各自都提出了可能的经济类型的类型学，这些类型学综合为：（1）个人互惠原则，（2）资本主义的市场原则和（3）国家的计划原则。我将这种综合应用于Bill McKibben和David Korten提出的关于社区规模变化的最新建议，这些建议涉及经济规模以及由于全球化而导致的生产和消费的重新本地化，重点是本地交换和贸易体系（LETS）。LETS的运作借鉴了亚当·斯密（Adam Smith）的市场观，即在道德约束有限的小社区中进行的面对面商品交换。史密斯 McKibben和Korten将“交换”一词的两种不同含义混为一谈。要了解LETS在实践社区中在未来可持续经济中可能扮演的角色，需要对此问题进行处理。