Name: SEL - explained Correct 'apostrophes' to use. Summary: SEL is a local exchange trading system based on the Community Forge platform. Description: SEL is the French acronym for LETS (Local Exchange Trade System). The website of the SEL de Toraggio, along with it's exchange tokens called 'olives', are based on the Community Forge platform which allows individual exchange groups to create their own website and exchange tokens.

CommunityForge distributes free and open source software to manage SELs (Local Exchange Systems), Time Banks and complementary currencies and provides hosted and unhosted sites. Based in France, founded by Matthew Slater (UK) and Tim Anderson (CH),

1. 1 olive is valued at 1 minute of time/labour.

2. Everyone effectively starts with zero olives but can make purchases by creating a negative balance in their account,

3. Negative accounts are necessary for the system to work, in fact it's how they 'create' the tokens of exchange,

4. The system ensures that no one can have a balance of less than minus 1000 or greater than 3000 (50 hours),

5. At any time in the system, the sum of the negative accounts should be compensated by an equivalent sum of positive accounts, i.e. sum of negative account balances plus sum of positive account balances should equal zero,

6. SEL olives exchange tokens are fine for the exchange of produce, low value goods and small jobs but are not well suited to support the growth of a true parallel economy,

7. With SEL olives in an exchange system where for example, 50% are active buyers and sellers and the other half only buy, the trading community will soon arrive at the point where 50% of the group have all the tokens whilst the other half has none, this is not good for the growth and prosperity of the trading community,

8. With Monnaie Libre in a Free Money Market, everyone receives a universal dividend each month which means everyone has 'money' to spend and the community grows, those who actively buy and sell will obviously prosper and accumulate greater revenues whereas those who just buy will at least be able to buy the basics each month, this is a healthy and fully embracing trading community,