5th Biennial RAMICS International Congress in Japan
September 11th -15th, 2019
Hida-Takayama, Japan

Light-Color Money: Three-dimensional Digital Money That Can Express Uniquenessand Diversity of Value Beyond LETS
Makoto Nishibe
School of Economics, Senshu University, Kawasaki, Japannishibe@isc.senshu-u.ac.jp
Abstract
We understand that changing the way money today will be a breakthrough in overcoming the problems
caused by free investment in globalization, which is the long-term tendency of expanding Market for
exchange and shrinking Community for reciprocity and State for redistribution. Among community
currencies, LETS is the most general form as integrative communications media of money and language
and has a significant potential to solve the problems of globalization and create alternative socioeconomic
markets independent of capitalist markets. However, conventional money including LETS is scalar money
to evaluate things only quantitatively with one-dimension so that it might have defects of monochrome
reduction of everything. We thus conduct a thought experiment on light-color money with such three
dimensions as RGB so as to qualitatively evaluate not only products and services, including volunteer
activity and shadow work, but also social and natural environments and resources more diversely. The
several properties of light-color money derived from the rule of complementary colors are unique, so there
is a large potential to use it to make our socio-economy non-capitalistic, sustainable, and diverse. Because
it is not difficult to implement light-color money in ICT environments, it is worth to carry out a social
experiment to test its feasibility and applicability.
Keywords: Globalization, Free investment, Community Currency, LETS, ESG, Light-Color Money

1. Introduction: Community Currencies and LETS to solve the problems caused by Globalization
Money is said to be an indispensable and convenient economic tool, but it has many flaws: economic
instability in bubble collapses and severe depressions accompanied by corporate bankruptcy andunemployment, and substantial income and asset disparities between individuals and regions. Free
investment through globalization expanded markets all over the world but destroyed communities formutual aids and human livelihood as well as nation-states for redistribution for social welfare. Althoughthese are all complex phenomena through working of the markets for products, labor-power, and financial
commodities, they can be regarded as the manifestations as the results of fundamental defects caused by
one-dimensional reduction of everything by conventional money.
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In order to theoretically define what globalization is, we introduce three different coordinating principles ofsocioeconomics, according to Polanyi (1944) and with my modifications (Nishibe 2015): 1) Market (theprivate domain of exchange and freedom), 2) Community (the common domain of reciprocity andfraternity) and 3) State (the public domain of redistribution and equality). Then, Globalization can beinterpreted as the historical trend over several decades for Market to expand, and for Community and Stateto shrink, qualitatively, and quantitatively, as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Globalization: the tendency of Market to expand and of Community and State to reduce
We understand that changing the way money today will be a breakthrough in overcoming the crises that
We understand that changing the way money today will be a breakthrough in overcoming the crises that
globalization has created. The starting point of such a change would be that people can start to reconsider
money as a communication medium, and think deeply about "community currencies (CCs)" as integrative
communication media, and gradually spread them from below.
Since the 1980s, CCs that circulate only within local community areas had been taken notice of as possible
solutions for such defects of money and globalization. LETS (Local Economic Trading Systems) is themost popular and radical scheme of CCs, because 1) it has no physical form such as paper money andpermits no refund into legal tender, and 2) it can potentially create alternative socioeconomic markets
independent of capitalist markets by giving each participant the right of issue and enabling multilateral
settlements.

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2. Money and language as communication media
CCs can be seen as the revival of the initial character of money as "communication media," and they havethe potential to change the ways other money work than CCs, as well as our internal values andmotivations. Before we touch on CCs more specifically, let us first consider language and money ascommunication media and then raise the issue of CCs as an integrative communication medium.
Firstly, we consider the identity and difference between money and language as media based on the ideasof Luhmann (Luhmann 1984=1993, 1998=1991). In the case of language media, the form is "utterance" inwhich multilayered structures such as the object, the subject, and the situation are expressed. In the case ofmonetary media, the form is "payment," which represents the object, the subject, the total expense, etc.
Money and language are also homomorphic in "generalization" that overcomes differences in three
dimensions of time, events, and society. The generalization of events of money is enabled by the functionof a measure of value, which attaches unidimensional "price" to diverse and heterogeneous "commodities"
to provide universality and commensurability. "Commodities" and "price" in money correspond to"sentences" and "meaning" in language.
Language also has a function of generalization of events, although not as much as the function of a measureof value by money. The decisive difference between money and language is that money is "uniform media"
that reduces the qualitative diversity and complexity of goods to unified information through priceexpression, whereas language is "diverse media" that can express overwhelming diversity and complexity,
although it has the function of eventual generalization described above.
In other words, the form of payment only contains a much simpler structure than the form of utterance.
Money as a measure of value can express the complexity of the real world by reducing and condensing it tounified values. Furthermore, the form of payment, by acting as "symbolic generalization," facilitates thedivision of labor, the division of knowledge, and the discovery and innovation of knowledge in the market,
and enables the sale of a wide variety of commodities in large quantities.
At the same time, however, when money expresses everything at single unified prices, it will result in"diabolical generalization" in which the uniqueness and qualitative diversity in the culture, values, andnorms of regions, organizations, and groups would be erased. In particular, once money emerges as capital
whose sole purpose is to augment value, and as “internalization of the market” further proceeds in the midstof globalization since the late 1970s, not only investment and speculation prevail, but also the investors'
mode of thinking such as opportunity costs and human capital are widespread among ordinary people, thisproblem becomes quite serious.
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What this means is that people's consciousness will gradually become closer to capitalists. Increasingly,
women and mothers perceive housework and childcare as the loss of an opportunity for wage income toearn outside their families, and people are increasingly viewing higher education, learning, qualifications,and even health as investments in human capital to increase future returns. Such changes in value andawareness are accelerating to the point where communities such as families, schools and universities arecompletely disassembled into markets. We will see later how CCs as integrative communication media cananswer these problems.
3. CCs as Integrative Communication Media of Money and language
CCs are economic and social-cultural media that play a crucial role in Community (common), which is thesocio-economic coordination domain along with Market (private) and State (public). Here we will viewCCs from language and money that are the communication media. First, we must pay attention to thefollowing unique characteristics of CCs.
3.1 CCs as Economic and Social-cultural MediaCCs as ‘integrative communication media’Side

PurposeFunction

Money

Language(Economic media)(Social-cultural media)

Vitalization of local economy

Rehabilitation of community(autonomy, circulation, recycling)(dialogue, interchange, commitment)

Independent Design, Issue andFerment of trust and reciprocity

administration

Cooperative ‘prosumers’

Bounded sphere of circulation

Linguistic expression/ transmission

Zero/ minus interest
Form

Complementary currencies andMutual-help and reciprocity

Emergency currencies (Stamp scrip,(Time dollar, Time bank, Fureai kippu, Eco-

WIR, RGT, CC coupon)money )

Commercial /non-commercial

Non-commercial circulation

circulation (Market)(Non-market =community)

DomainFigure 2

Dual properties of Community Currency as integrative communication media
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CCs, like the ancient Roman god "Janus," have two aspects: "monetary" and "linguistic." They are unionsof these two factors, but the term "currency" or "money" naturally indicates strong economic connotations.
To make it clear that CCs include not only economic but also social and cultural domains, we will call them"integrative communication media" in the sense that they simultaneously hold both money as economic
media and language as social-cultural media. Figure 2 summarizes the dual characteristics of CC as anintegrative communication medium.
First, look at the "economic aspect" in the left column. Here, the monetary aspect means that heterogeneousand diverse goods and services are reduced to a single measure of CC, say, "Green Yen," and are onedimensionally expressed and evaluated by the quantity of the "Green Yen."
While producers or sellers set prices of goods and services and wait for buyers to come, consumers or
buyers look at the prices and buy goods and services if they judge the prices are not high. The entire
network formed of these individual bilateral transactions of buying and selling constitutes the "Market." Aslong as CCs are used to set prices for goods and services, such unified expressions and evaluations are
required. As monetary media, therefore, CCs also constitute a market domain that is a different type fromthe current capitalistic market economy.
It is often misunderstood that CCs create, not markets, but communities, but it is not true. The CC contains
the monetary aspect in the sense that it aims at "reciprocal exchange." If another "linguistic aspect" is also
considered, CCs form markets that are not only 'competitive' but also 'cooperative,' that is, 'coopetitive'
local markets. To understand this, we need to escape from Neoclassical view of markets in which
participants are supposed to be selfish and rational, and have no interactions under perfect competition, andrethink that markets can include altruistic and bounded-rational agents and cooperative and mutually-help
interaction (Nishibe 2006).
Next, note the "social-cultural media" aspect of the CC in the right column of Figure 1. It is also called the"linguistic aspect." All human relations use language and numbers complementarily, but the monetary
media is "one-dimensional media" that evaluates goods and services as single numbers and is different
from "multi-dimensional media" that can express and evaluate everything more complexly like language. A
CC can represent and communicate the social values, norms, and cultural diversity inherent in the issuingand operating entity and the local community in which it is circulated, as compared to ordinary currency.
3.2 The Purposes of the Economic Media and Social-cultural MediaA CC has two purposes that respectively correspond to the "economic media" and the "social-cultural
media."

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The purpose of the "economic media" for CCs is "revitalization of the local economy." One of the causes of
the recession and unemployment in the local economy is that money flows out of the region, and there is alack of money circulating in the area. Even if deflation occurs in Japan as a whole, the seriousness of the
problem, which appears as the bankruptcy rate and the unemployment rate, varies from region to region
depending on the balance of payments and industrial structure. In general, the situation is more severe inrural areas than in metropolitan areas. Furthermore, every town and village in the nation is suffering fromdepopulation, an aging society with a declining birthrate, and the decline of shopping districts. Youngpeople go to cities where there are many job opportunities. In addition, more and more local residents havebecome not to shop at local shopping districts, but instead, drive to large stores in neighboring towns or go
to local convenience stores. As a result, purchasing power is flowing out of the region, and the problem isonly getting worse. If shopping districts are dismantled, invisible community functions such as crime
prevention, mutual aid, childcare, and cultural events will be lost. As a result, the living conditions of not
only the elderly who cannot go shopping by cars but also the entire community will deteriorate,
accelerating the decline of the local economy.
Under these circumstances, if people can create and manage a CC by themselves that does not flow out of
the region and make it circulate within the local area, the regional economy will be revitalized and become
relatively self-reliant, thereby promoting the formation of a circular economy based on "local production
and local consumption." This is the primary purpose of the implementation of CCs for the purpose ofregional economic revitalization.

On the other hand, another purpose is "revitalization of the community" or "strengthening of bond andactivation of communication." This corresponds to the "social-cultural media" of the CC. Today, organs,germ cells, carbon emission rights, and even genetic information can be bought with money, expanding thedomain of the markets (including black markets). Market fundamentalism is gaining momentum as themarket economy increasingly covers the world, and deregulation and liberalization are promoted. In thisglobalized world where markets are expanding both in quality and quantity, human relations tend to be
reduced only to economic trade and legal contract relations. But that would destroy communities that werebuilt on mutual aid and altruism.
Communication between people also tends to be diluted, relying on mobile phones and the Internet, with
non-face-to-face and anonymous relations expanding. If people become completely selfish and isolated,
they may not be able to help each other or volunteer. Therefore, CCs have come to be used in such trendsof market and individualism as a means of reconstructing mutually supportive and reciprocal relations, or
as a means of making communication between people "face-to-face" and activating it.

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3.3 Evolution and Diversification as CCsThus, there are two aspects of CC: monetary and economic medium and linguistic and social and cultural
medium. These are intricately combined and integrated into CCs, but it is possible to detect these two
aspects. We cannot understand its unique property from one side only. Since one of the two aspects is
usually relatively stronger, reflecting its uniqueness and originality of local regions, each CC takes apeculiar form of individuality. The evolution of CCs into species has led to the emergence of a variety of"subspecies." The purposes of introduction and the characteristics of each region are diverse, and the CCs
also vary accordingly.
That's not all. The motivations and behaviors of participants and the performance and patterns of theircommunities influence each other and change over time. Through the media characteristics of CCs, themicro agents and the macro environment change endogenously through interactions. In this evolutionary
process, it makes no sense to ask what form of CC is optimal or most efficient. This is because, in thecourse of evolution, the criteria for evaluation and judgment themselves change, and so do the rules of thegame.
The CC aims to restrain the negative function of money as capital as in Luhmann's "diabolic
generalization," and restore social stability and sustainability by intentionally limiting the versatility interms of circulation area, period, objects of transactions, participants, etc. of a modern national currency. If
a CC that is overwhelmingly weaker than a current national currency can be maintained evolutionarily, it
will slowly have a gradual impact on the values, ethics, and habits of thought that are the inner institutions
as shared rules of behavior for such agents as individuals and organizations.
4. Local Exchange Trading System (LETS)
The details of the CC systems are not necessarily the same. For example, CCs include "centralized issue
system" in which an administrator or management committee issues paper currency according to thepredetermined rules or arbitrarily, and "distributed issue system" (also called "mutual credit system" or"multilateral clearing system") in which participants can voluntarily create money as buyers up to a specificlimit or unlimitedly and an administrator registers sales as plus and purchases as minus in the accounts ofboth sellers and buyers. They can also be categorized into those that link currency values to labor hours,
those that link to the national currency, and those that link both as in Ithaka Hours. CC differs according to
the time and place in which it was established, and according to its purpose and philosophy. Such diversity
indicates the significance and potential of CCs. However, we will take LETS as a typical example to help
people understand the actual operation and structure of CCs.

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3.1 Overview and an Example of Transactions of LETS
In February 1983, six members, led by Michael Linton, started LETS in the Comox Valley, a town of
60,000 people on Vancouver Island, Canada. LETS is a network in which participants voluntarily trade
goods and services using CC. Linton and his colleagues called the monetary unit "green dollar."
To start LETS, they must first decide on "registry" and "trustee." The registry opens and manages theparticipant's account, records the transaction, and sends the account statement to the participant every
month. The trustee sets transaction fees, monitors the system, regulates anti-social activities, and exchanges
information with other LETS, and engages in system development. Participants (1) open their accounts andstart from zero balance, (2) put the goods or services that they offer (sell) or want (buy) on the item list, (3)contact the other party when they find the goods or services they want and negotiate the terms oftransaction such as price and quantity, and (4) ask the trustee to record the transactions in which the priceagreed is added on sellers' account and the same price is subtracted from buyers' account. The balance ofeach participant can be negative up to a predetermined limit.
Participants may, at the time of transactions, learn from the registry about the account balance andtransaction performance of other participants. No interest is charged or paid on the account balance.
Finally, administrative expenses are paid with internal currency from the participant's account. The systemis thus so simple.
The original system, which Linton started, does not allow green dollars to be converted into Canadiandollars, but the two are assumed to have the same currency value. This is to serve as a reference for valuing
goods and services, and to allow the price of goods to be expressed as a mixture of cash and green dollars,for example, "$10 (payable by green dollar up to 20%)." The actual exchange is, for example, as follows.
The buyer calls the office and leaves the following message on the answering machine. "This is David on
number 35. Please get Cathy on number 220 to make a 100 green dollar surplus for computer lessons." Theregistry records this information on a computer. Kathy runs a 100 green dollar surplus, and David runs
a100 green dollar deficit or "commitment." David doesn't need to have it in his account before he spends
100 green dollars. And if Cathy is confident enough to make money from teaching computer lessons, she
can buy the listed used Volkswagen van for 1000 green dollars from Mary. As a result, Cathy's account has
a 900 green dollar deficit. Finally, Mary asks David to fix the roof of her house for 300 green dollars, theresult of these three transactions would be a surplus of 700 green dollars in Mary's account and a surplus of
200 green dollars in David's account (Figure 3). Each participant's account surplus or deficit iscontinuously changing with each transaction, but the sum of all accounts balance in surplus or deficit is8300

5th Biennial RAMICS International Congress in Japan
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Hida-Takayama, Japan
always zero. Therefore, credit creation does not occur as a whole in LETS. The sharing of deficits orcommitments among participants facilitate trades in goods and services.

Figure 3

An example of transaction on LETS

4.2 Four Principles of LETS
Interests on deposits and loans in bank accounts accumulate, so the balance increases over time. But LETS
has no interest in surpluses or deficits. So those who have surpluses will buy goods and services from otherparticipants as much as possible without hoarding them. As a result, CCs in LETS circulate rapidly within
the community, stimulating demand within the local economy. In LETS, each participant can create money
when buying goods or services and holds the surplus or deficit as a result. It does not represent the positionin bilateral legal relations of right/obligation between two parties as in debtor/creditor relation. In the wordsof Linton, "It is the commitment of the people in the community to the people in the community," not theright/obligation under a legal contract.
The national currency flows as income in the community from the outside eventually flows out as
expenditure. LETS aims to complement such money flow into or out of the community and to constructmoney circulation in which it flows around within the community as much as possible.
LETS is based on freedom in the community and the resulting responsibilities, and follows the four
principles of "consent," "no interest," "sharing," and "information disclosure." "consent" means that alltransactions, including participation and withdrawal, are based on consent; "no interest" means that there isno interest in either the positive or negative balance of the account; and "sharing" means that one of the
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participants provides LETS support services on a non-commercial cost basis, with all participants sharing
the costs, depending on their use. "Information disclosure" ensures that participants have access to
information about other participants' transactions and account balances when making transactions. Linton
calls LETS specifically LETSystem, which adds to these four principles the fifth principle of using aninternal monetary unit of the same value as the national currency. This distinction became necessary whenthe LETS that uses standard labor hours was introduced in Britain and elsewhere. Linton's prototype is the
LETSystem.
LETS appears to be a system with mutually contradictory duality. It is because it has the aspect of making
individualism and liberalism in the market economy more thorough, and it also aspires to trust between
neighbors and friends in the region and community. The two dimensions of freedom and cooperation arelinked to the ethical dimensions of the individual: commitment based on personal choice and the resulting
responsibilities. Cooperative nature is by no means a "closed" nature that forces exclusivity andassimilation into communities, and freedom and responsibility do not mean only those as
consumers/investors who consider only economic merit.
4.3 LETS as the general form of community currencies
LETS has the highest degree of freedom and versatility, and it is conceivable that other CCs can beincorporated as a special case of LETS.
LETS does not reduce the value of money to an absolute measure of labor time. The 1: 1 ratio between the
CC and the national currency is presupposed in LETSystem, but it is possible to remove it so that LETS
can be independent of the pricing system of the external market and the parties to the exchange candetermine the price comprehensively taking into account the more pluralistic values. Such endogenous andindependent pricing decisions that do not depend on a single external measure imply that LETS is a systemwith a large degree of freedom that can encompass cultural, social, and ethical values other than economic
values.
Also, LETS does not exogenously determine the amount of issue for circulation, as in the case of Robert
Owen's Labor Notes where a single institution such as the management committee issues notes, but it isdetermined endogenously by voluntary issuance of participants. The interest rate in LETS is usually zero,but it can be minus as in Gesell's stamped money, and such LETS actually does exist. This is why what canbe said about LETS thus applies to CCs proper.
4.4 The Significance and Possibility of LETS: IOC as Micro Existence without any Macro Existence

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Then what is the significance and possibility of LETS?
First of all, LETS has a limited range of circulation for its currency as other CCs, its "community" is not apreexisting territorial or kinship community, nor a closed community that demands a single membership,
but a topological neighborhood space in which participants commit positively in resonance with hobbies,
interests, or ideas. Such a "community" can be realized by the use of information communication
technology such as the Internet and smartphones. A CC deficit is called a "commitment" because it implies
the responsibility for the "community" of one's choice, not for the “debt” nor “liability” to anotherparticular individual. Instead, participants multilaterally lend and borrow via the community, and they do
not stand in bilateral debtor/creditor relations. So, the crucial point is that we should understand the money
created and multilaterally canceled in LETS as IOC (I Owe Community), not IOU (I Owe You). It isbecause the relations of participants in LETS are formed by the ‘pay-forward’ principle of multiple parties
rather than the ‘pay-back’ principle between two parties.
The ‘zero-sum principle’ that the summation of balances in all participants’ accounts in LETS amounts tozero means that money can seemingly appear only locally on the micro level but does not exist globally as
the aggregation on the macro level. In other words, the money in LETS is not a thing as a material entitythat can exist independently, but an event as the whole record information or collective memory on
balances through all transactions in the past. The unique property of LETS lies in the fact that LETS
constitutes a multilateral clearing system as a “community” where “money” is bilaterally created andmultilaterally canceled among all participants as members of the community. Here a community is
regarded as the group of individuals as well as the field of reciprocal exchange conducted by members.
LETS simply depicts the modern image of an ideal community that keeps existing only as a collection ofindividuals and keeps being continuously sustained by mutual aids and cooperation among members in acommunity.
4.5 Multi-LETS: Multiple Attribution of Individuals and glocal Community of Interest
Also, since we can simultaneously participate in an arbitrary combination of multiple LETS as many as
possible, we can express our identities regarding interests and values by selecting a unique blend of 'multiLETS.' The different diversity of multi-LETS that each one chooses exhibits the uniqueness of individuals.
Through such pluralistic attribution of individuals to multiple CCs, the meaning of "community" isextended from a "closed community" to an "open community" and the implications of "liberty" and"responsibility" are also extended from the freedom and self-responsibility of consumers and investors inthe single global market to the freedom of choice and responsibility of multiple belongings to multi-LETS.

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Hida-Takayama, JapanIf each individual simultaneously belongs to multiple LETS, the situation is called Multi-LETS. Figure 3
shows the case of 5 participants belonging to 4 different LETS. There are four kinds of LETS Bike(B),
LETS Childcare(C) LETS Tokyo (T), LETS Woods(W), and an individual a belong to C and T, b to C, T,
and W, c to T, d to B, C, and W, and e to B. Then b has 3 accounts in LETS Childcare, LETS Tokyo and
LETS Woods. Then, if unit of value of those LETS are not set exchangeable, the account balances of a, b,
c, d, and e are expressed as such four-dimensional vectors, each element of which is 0, positive or negative,as (B, C, T, W) = (0, -34, 43, 0), (0, 24, 50, -10), (0, 0, -100, 0), (32, -40, 0, 25) ,and (3, 0, 0, 0),
respectively. The vector representation of all account balances of multi-LETS for participants expresses thediversity of their own interest depending on cultural identity and social characteristics as different
individuals. It looks a little similar to light/ color money mentioned below, but the concept is completely
different.

Figure 3 Multi-LETS (in case of and 5 participants belonging to 4 LETS)
In general, "local" means a close area or a neighborhood as an opposite concept of "global" representing a
global area or a wide area. The term "local" in CC refers specifically to geographical regions ranging fromneighborhood to elementary school districts, local shopping districts, and municipalities. In the past, many
attempts at CC, regardless of its purpose or method, have been made "local" in this geographical sense.
However, these include "communities" who share specific issues, values, and interests, such as theconservation of the environment and nursing care. In this case, they can be considered as “communities ofinterest (COI)” that refer not only to the physical space or geographical region but also to the topologicalspace of the neighborhood of meaning. In other words, the space in which people gather on specificthemes, interests, hobbies, values, and ideas is also "local." Such locality may be more easily understood as
circles, communities, or associations sharing some meanings. It does not necessarily depend on
geographical proximity. If we can share values and interests, it can be broader. The development of

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information and communications technology represented as the Internet, WIFI, and smartphones as
products of globalization is making it much easier to create such virtual communities.
There already exist countless websites and blogs, and communities on such SNS as Facebook are virtual"communities." When we want to know the latest information about environmental issues and discuss
them, we don't care where they are in the world. Such "communities" are "global" in the sense that they canparticipate from anywhere on the earth, and "local" in the sense that they form autonomous COIs. In otherwords, "virtual" communities are, by its very nature, glocal, global and local at the same time. And suchglocal CCs on the Internet enable such a variety of virtual "communities."
The reason why CCs can be said to be counter-media against globalization is not because they denyglobalization, or rebuild and confine ourselves in closed local communities, but because they have thepossibility of creating new virtual "communities" by making the best use of the fruits of globalization. CCsshould aim to develop new types of open communities in which people who spontaneously meet inharmony with values and ideas can build mutually beneficial relations and create richer communication
based on trust and cooperation.
4.6 Change in the Concept of Time
Second, the significance of LETS that is interest-free money is that it prevents the accumulation of money
and the self-augmentation of capital, and stimulates the "use" of money rather than the "possession,"
thereby increasing the velocity of circulation and promoting both buying and selling. Minus interest likeGesell’s money (Gesell 1916) to depreciate might be possible in LETS. In this way, the circulation of
goods and services within the region is enhanced.
Third, LETS, which takes the form of voluntary issuance by participants, allows participants to issuemoney as needed for their purchases without being affected by the malicious discretion of central bankissuance and monetary policy or the lending policies of financial institutions. Of course, participants are
responsible for their own "commitments" and have to manage themselves, which also stimulates buying
and selling.
Fourth, LETS, like markets and the Internet, represents an autonomous distributed network. The wholesystem is self-organized as a collection of individual buying and selling processes without regard tocentralized management or overall coordination. Transactions are bilateral transactions, and pricing is left
to the parties involved. Thus, actual valuations can take into account a variety of values other thaneconomic efficiency and profitability with reference to historical and nearby customary prices, such as
reciprocity, reproduction, and environmental conservation.
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LETS can also pay for services that are generally not priced in the market. It thus promotes non-profit
activities and cooperatives by targeting volunteers and 'shadow works' that were not previously traded inmoney. That is to say, we will be able to vanish the conflict occurring between volunteer and business, andbetween altruism and selfishness. In this sense, LETS can be conceived as not just economic media but also
ethical and cultural media.
4.7 LETS as a Trust Money
Fifth, LETS is a "trust money" formed by participants' commitment to a "community" and trust among
them. Attribution and solidarity of participants are spontaneously fostered based on trust. This allows
participants to cultivate creativity and demonstrate originality actively and to confirm their dignity. For
example, those who have lost their confidence after losing their jobs will empower themselves by thinking
about what they can put on the offer list and developing their capability.
Finally, in LETS, the very meaning of money ownership and choice diversifies. The portfolio mix of multiLETS in which we participate in and use is no longer determined in terms of maximizing economic value.
There is a wide range of potential for cultural, ideological, and normative values to be reflected. Thus,
LETS take on the character of social-cultural media beyond economic media. The communication realized
as money exchange is gradually more multi-dimensional and complex and approaching linguistic
communication. By complementing linguistic communication in a multitude of different CCs, these twoforms of communication will not be completely separated, but rather will be combined and integrated as a
hybrid.
Such conventional money as cash made people autonomous individuals and formed the basis for liberalism
and individualism, but the excessive expansion of liberty as trade and investment in the market led to a
decline in linguistic communication and communities. Conventional money also enabled anonymity intransactions, thus forming an area of personal confidentiality. But the spread of credit and debit cards has
already shrunk the realm of anonymity, and the fact that credit companies and banks have instant access topersonal information could even threaten personal privacy. If it is the case, it might be possible to open up
a considerable area of anonymity to many different partial public spaces. LETS discloses information ontransactions and balances of all participants, but it is up to the individual to decide what transactions should
be conducted at which LETS. In other words, the extent to which an individual opens up to multi-LETS canbe freely determined.
4.8 The Limits of LETS

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But as long as LETS depended on manual recording on account books of participants and administration, it
is faced with the problem of high costs in terms of troubles using analog technologies.
The rapid spread of such digital technologies and cryptocurrency as smartphones, QR code, blockchain,and mining can contribute to solving such problems found in manual LETS. As cryptocurrencies and token
economies gained popularity among people, they started to seek other kinds of value such as people’sbonds within communities, eco-friendly products, and simple lifestyles, all of which have wanted in CCs.
Accordingly, LETS as integrative communication media has the possibility to expand in such a trend atpresent.
Nonetheless, the present author believes that the fundamental problem of all kinds of money, including
CCs and LETS, until now lies in the fact they are all mono-dimensional, and all values are expressed as
one-dimensional plus/ minus quantity. Then people are forced to evaluate the value of goods and services
only quantitatively according to monetary costs and visible scarcity and are tempted to pay attention only tothe amounts of costs, incomes, and profits. Assets are also estimated in portfolio investment in terms ofdifferent one-dimensional currencies.
However, if we can invent multi-dimensional money beyond LETS in order to extend the possibility as theintegrative communication media, we can express uniqueness and diversity of value of things and evaluate
goods and occupations not only by price/ salary but also by its high quality and safety, social significance,
conservation of the natural environment, individual enjoyment. We will be free of uniform measurementthat fundamentally causes economic, social, and cultural disasters so that we can adequately express andexperience the potentiality of the various richness of our world.
We understand that LETS is a high potential social experiment to overcome defects of money andglobalization. But there is still the traditional concept of money in LETS as the one-dimensional quantitythat hinders us from seeking the true happiness and developing high QOL based on individuality anddiversity of value. There are still vast unknown fields for the future of money that seemed to be no longer
remained. But we cannot detect such fields under the prevailing institutions, rules, and concepts that look
impossible to change at present. They can only be identified only in a thought experiment in which we
assume that they are modifiable. This is the reason why we need to conduct a thought experiment on the
future of money.
5. Light-Color Money as The Three-dimensional extension of LETS
We understand that the fundamental defect of conventional money, as well as LETS, is its one- We
understand that the fundamental defect of conventional money including LETS is its one-dimensional
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representation and create a new concept of money with multi-dimensions that can provide the solution to
the various problems caused by such "diabolical generalization" on the “uniform media” as economic
instability in bubble collapses and severe depressions, substantial income and asset disparities between
individuals and regions, and dissolutions of various community caused by excessive popularization of thespirit of free investment capitalism.
Capitalism is a world in which self-augmenting capital is omnipresent. In order for capital to quantitatively
expand, an amount of money should increase. Therefore, a one-dimensional unit for a measure of value tocalculate the amount of money, for example, the weight of gold or silver, pounds, dollars, or yen, is
required. If such a unit cannot be specified, capital self-augmentation does not make sense. In other words,
capitalism is an economic system that derives from the one-dimensional nature of money. Accordingly, tomake capitalism cease to exist, we have only to introduce multi-dimensional money.
The question of the system selection between capitalism and socialism in the 20th century was regarded as
two binary options of “private ownership and the free market” or “public ownership and central planning,”and did not consider the problem of the institutional design of money at all. Even if the market economy isbasically premised on private ownership and free markets, it is possible by changing the institutional designof money to create a non-capitalist market economy. It is not a capitalist market economy in which selfaugmenting capital is the primary agent, but a non-capitalist market economy in which values are expressed
not only quantitatively but qualitatively, and cooperation, exchange, and division of labor are carried out
based on such diversity. Depending on the design of the money system, a socio-economy different from
capitalism and socialism may emerge.
Based on such a motif, we have considered the problem of designing a monetary system. One example wasthe Hokkaido Virtual Community Currency. Here "Hokkaido" is not necessarily a geographical area, but avirtual community that consists of people sharing the same value and interest. It is envisioned that the
LETS type of virtual regional currency circulated in this area would allow a reciprocal exchange market
economy beyond the capitalist market economy. However, even under such an innovative media design ofmoney, there was an implicit assumption about money. The fundamental characteristic of money thus far isthat it represents one-dimensional value with positive and negative values. The same is true for LETS.
Even in the case of multi-LETS, where an individual or a group of individuals simultaneously participatesin mutually overlapping but different LETS and is multi-attributed to many different communities, andindividuals or groups of individuals belonging to the same community trade using a community-specific
LETS, there are only many types of one-dimensional currency.
In other words, conventional money, including CCs, is a much simpler medium than language andmathematics and is close to numbers. However, it is not a countable set with the same cardinality as natural
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numbers, but an uncountable set as the same cardinality as real numbers. The evaluation of pleasure/displeasure or happiness/ unhappiness with a single scalar currency is to express the richly colored world inmonochrome black and white (though, in reality, black and red). The time thieves in Michael Ende’s Momo
bleach the world and turn everything gray (Ende 1985). It is because even if things in the world are
multidimensional and richly colored, in other words, they have qualia, the quantitative texture as individual
experiences, money evaluates and expresses them all in one dimension. By doing so, we eliminate thesingularities that are unique and specified to individual persons and things and reduce them all to sets thatare commensurable, replaceable, and substitute. We, just like Momo, cannot feel genuine excitement andhappiness in such a dull world without qualia and singularity. Is there any money that can express the mostvibrant colors of the world and keep us happy? Here we call such money light-color money and carry out athought experiment on them.
Now we explore a thought experiment on light-color money and analyze its possible merits and demerits.
First, we distinguish monochrome money as conventional money and light-color money as a new one.
1) monochrome money (black-red money) is expressed as a scalar that is quantity without direction andhas a linear measure of surplus (the black, +), deficit (the red, -), or zero. All conventional money
including LETS is based on this idea.
2) chrome money (color money) is expressed as a vector that has three elements of three primary colors
such as Red, Blue, and Green (RGB) of light, or Cyan, Magenta, Yellow (CMY) of color, each ofwhich is a real number that is zero or larger than 0 (Figure 4).

Figure 4. The three primary colors of light (left) and the three primary colors of color (right)(R: Red, G: Green, B: Blue, C: Cyan, M: Magenta, Y* Yellow, W: White, K: Black)Three-dimensional money expresses Light-color as a three-dimensional vector value by using digitaltechnologies. Light-color money represents value as a three-dimensional vector, each component of whichis zero or a positive real number, in a three-dimensional space in Cartesian coordinates that are not
reducible to each other such as (R, G, B) = (1,1,0) or (C, M, Y) = (0.2, 0.3, 0.5).

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Hida-Takayama, JapanAny color of light or color can be represented as such a three-dimensional vector because it can be createdby mixing three primary colors in a particular ratio. In other words, all colors are linear combinations ofprimary colors.
What about light-color money? The three primary colors of light make any color when red, green, andblue light are simultaneously projected on the white screen in a pitch-dark room just like a color TV or PC
display. Adding light to color in this way is called additive color mixing.
W＝R+G+B C=G+B M=R+B Y=R＋G
On the other hand, the three primary colors of color make any color when a mixture of cyan, magenta, andyellow pigments illuminated by white light on a white canvas just like color photographs and inkjet
interpreters. Mixing paints to produce different colors means that more light is absorbed, and fewer
wavelengths of light are reflected by the paint to reach our eyes. Such subtraction of light to produce color
is called subtractive color mixing.
K=C+M+Y

R=M+Y

G=Y+C

B=C+M

It should be noted that each factor of a vector of light or color takes only zero or positive values and does
not take negative values.
What should be recalled here is the relationship between the three primary colors of light and the three
primary colors of color. Red, Green, Blue (RGB), which are the three primary colors of light and Cyan,
Magenta, Yellow (CMY), which are the three primary colors of color, are complementary colors. Let us
denote the complementary color by adding the sign “~” after the color.
In the case of additive color mixing of light, we put
R + C = R + (B + G) = R + R~ = W
G + M = G + (R + B) = G + G~ = W
B + Y = B + (R + G) = B + B~ = W
C + M + Y = (B + G) + (B + R) + (R + G) = 2W
In the case of subtractive color mixing of color, we put
R + C = R + (B + G) = R + R~ = K
G + M = G + (R + B) = G + G~ = K
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B + Y = B + (R + G) = B + B~ = K
C + M + Y = (B + G) + (B + R) + (R + G) = 2K
Therefore, when the buyer pays in light-color money, the seller increases the paid color, and the buyer
normally decrease the paid color. However, the buyer might be able to increase the complementary color
according to the rule of complementary color, instead of decreasing the color. In this case, the color moneyof, say, Red can turn into the color money of Cyan after the payment of Red like radiation of radioactive
elements. It would be possible even though it looks very strange to our common sense in which we think
the money must be decreased in quantity after payment. It just depends on whether or not the rule ofcomplementary color is permitted in the system. Also, the original color and the complementary color
make “white” in additive mixing of light money and, in contrast, “black” in subtractive mixing of color
money as we can see in Figure 4.
Light-color money is a three-dimensional vector written as 𝑚 = (𝑚$ , 𝑚& , 𝑚' ) in RGB cube and CMY
cube with 𝐾 = (0, 0, 0) and 𝑊 = (255, 255, 255) in 8-bit notation in Cartesian coordinate system
depicted as in Figure 5. Therefore, we cannot compare any two vectors of light-color money in quantity.
There is simply a difference in brightness of the same color. As to red, there are a dark red (1, 0, 0) and abright red (255, 0, 0). Similarly, there is dark cyan (0, 1, 1) or bright cyan (0, 255, 255). For
monochrome, there is darker gray orbrighter gray between black and white.

Figure 5

Light-color money in RGB or CWY cube

Both light money and color money is possible, and the difference between them lies in the initial balance ofeach account, “white” for light money or “black” for color money. While in light money all accounts startfrom white light, say, (𝑅, 𝐺, 𝐵) = (1, 1, 1) in a unit cube, in color money all accounts start from black
darkness (𝑅, 𝐺, 𝐵) = (0, 0, 0). Suppose a buyer of a good or service pays 1 in Red in a trade in the case oflight money. The red element in the seller's money is incremented by 1 so that its balance will be (2, 1, 1),19311

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Hida-Takayama, Japanand the red element in the buyer's money is decremented by 1 so that its balance will be (0, 1, 1). The
question is whether the buyer can pay by increasing its complementary color so that its balance will be(1, 2, 2), instead of decreasing its paid color, according to the rule of complementary color. If this holds,
the scarcity of money that is essential for conventional money is abandoned because the summation ofseller's and buyer's accounts is calculated as (1, 2, 2) + (2, 1, 1) = (3, 3, 3) and (1, 1, 1) is created in thepayment, even though the buyer cannot arbitrarily create any color money as much as possible.
Therefore, the light money is a "vector money" that microscopically represents various colors, but whenaggregating all accounts macroscopically, it will always become a "scalar money" as a scalar multiple ofthe vector of the white light (1, 1, 1) in light money or black darkness (0, 0, 0) in color money. Therefore,
macroscopically viewed, light money exists but color money does not exist, though both microscopicallyexist in complementary sets as “light and color”, and “color and complementary color”. Color money ismore similar to LETS where there microscopically exist as the blacks and reds in accounts of participants
but no money as the summation macroscopically, according to the zero-sum principle. The sum of thesurpluses or deficits in LETS increases in proportion to the square root of the transaction volume if thetransactions are randomly carried out (Kichiji, Nishibe 2012)

Figure 6

Munsell Color System

The Munsell Color System is a color space to determine color by three properties: Hue, Chroma (color
purity), Value (lightness) as in Figure 6. This can also be used to define light-color money differently form

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three dimensions in RGB and CWY cubes. In either way, three dimensions are necessary to designate lightcolor in a color space.
For example, full-time housewives who give birth and raise children do not receive monetary rewards ofwages at present. In other words, child-rearing labor is the shadow work that is not valued by money, andthis is one of the factors contributing to the ongoing declining birthrate. However, if the central government
uses subsidies and evaluates them in legal tender, it cannot be a correct solution. It is because it will only
result in accelerating the long-term tendency of globalization that created free investment capitalism ashousewives will simply be subsumed as free investors in the capitalist labor market in the same manner thatwomen workers are becoming free investors. However, if the red currency is necessary for the reproductionof the labor-power in the next generation because childcare labor is necessary in order to raise the laborpower in the future, not only the legal tender but also the light-color money as to the red element must be
paid for the sale. In other words, wages will include a certain amount of red money. Then, it will clearly
indicate that the red money in the vector representation of the price of labor-power has to be accumulated
and only used to raise the next generation.
Thus, the one-dimensional price of goods and services does not tell us anything about their ingredients andcontents, but it only tells us that they include the costs less than the price and if the price is raised, it tells us
the demand is tight compared to the supply, and the production costs might be higher because of shortageof raw materials. However, the vector price of the commodity in light-color money can inform theconsumers of more detailed and precise information on, for example, what kinds of elements of production
including producible energy, exhausting resources, and labor-power and other services are used to produce
the products. The introduction of light-color money naturally would force enterprises to make a broader
disclosure on more detailed information on their production and investments because the cost and income
have been realized in different elements of light-color money so that such divisions of cost and profit
cannot be concealed anymore.
Color money indicates a point as a vector that has three primary colors as its elements. Conventional money
is one-dimensional scalar money on a monochrome line. In scalar currencies, the value of a commodity can
only be expressed in one dimension. That is to say, only the volume of the value is expressed by the price.
However, in the famous example of water-diamond paradox which Adam Smith raised as a problem in “Of
the Origin and Use of Money” of his chief book (Smith 1776), it seems to be a contradiction that the low
price is given to the water that is indispensable in the life or water has “value in use” without “value inexchange”, and the high price is given to the diamond that is an ornament which is not very significant in thelife, or diamond has “value in exchange” without “value in use”. And it is frequently assumed to be solved
by introducing the viewpoint of utility or scarcity and, according to their marginal utility depending on the
scarcity, giving prices of 100 yen and 1 million yen to each of water and diamond, respectively, and21
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approving the act of consumers buying them. However, it would not have been such a paradox if each valueof water and diamond had been expressed multidimensionally as mutually incommensurable in light-color
money from the beginning. For example, if we have two-dimensional vector money whose two components
are a) reproducibility and b) scarcity, the value vector is expressed as (a, b). Then water and diamond are
expressed as (1000, 0) and (0, 1000). Two factors are not exchangeable in this expression, so these two areincommensurable with vector money. We understand these vector value expressions are more correct andprecise.
Now we have to consider what the three coordinates of RGB are. Three primary factors should not be
mutually substituted but supplementary and are supposed to be spontaneously and endogenously
determined by users, depending on the changes of the particular conditions of people’s needs, scarcity,values in the time.
In Classical economics, three primary factors of production are Labor, Capital, and, Land. On the other
hand, in the modern era of deindustrialization and environmental conservation, those can be changed to
Reproducible (wood, water, food, heat, force, products), Exhausting/ scarce (petroleum, metal, diamond,land), and Information (skills, knowledge, fashion, data, entropy, time).
We emphasized that CCs can be interpreted as integrative communication media with dual aspects ofmoney and language, and that, since money is the most indispensable medium of the modern capitalist
market economy, CCs should be strategic targets for evolutionist institutional design in order to solve
current social and economic problems caused by global capitalism. We have defined globalization as thelong-run tendency of Market as the exchange principle to extensively expand and intensively deepen and ofCommunity as the reciprocity and State as the redistribution principles to reduce and get shallower. We
need to coordinate and regain the balance of these three principles such as Market (exchange, freedom,
private, blue), Community (reciprocity, fraternity, common, red), State (redistribution, equality, public,
white) so as to make the modern capitalist market economy be more non-capitalistic, sustainable anddiverse. The introduction of light-color money would include these three principles in the threedimensional elements and lead to the realization of such harmonized socio-economy.
This is not just the hopeful imagination of the present author. Now we all know that commodities as
products or services themselves carry various cultures and values, and we have also experienced thatpurchase and investment, including buying products related to sustainable development goals (SDG) andenvironmental, social and governance (ESG) investment, convey not only economic but social-culturalvalues and messages. Therefore, RGB can be interpreted as the same factors as ESG in investment
evaluation, that is, Environment (climate change, biological diversity, conservation of water resource),
Social (human rights, labor custom, labor safety, human development, customer responsibility, community,
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diversity), and Governance (corporate governance, compliance, risk management). We regard this as thesymptom of ascension to higher dimensions of consumption and investment in which both are transformed
into the activities searching for multi-dimensional values in terms of social, environmental, and governancesatisfaction, not just seeking more diverse products and services and more money. In short, the modern
trend of free investment is starting to show that it moves into the direction in which vector money is needed
to go beyond capitalism.
6.

Conclusion

The media design of light-color money as CC is an attempt to reduce the money side as “uniform media” or“one-dimensional media” and add the language side as “diverse media” or “multi-dimensional media” so as
to escape from the disaster caused by global capitalism and enrich CCs as integrative communication
media.
The introduction of light-color money would 1) prevent money capital and fictitious capital to only seek
profit and self-augmentation in terms of quantity as global, speculative, and financial capital (Nishibe2019), 2) urges corporates and governments to make more complete disclosure on usage of energy,
resources, and labor so that consumers and investors can know more about the detailed ingredients ofproducts and investment, 3) enables to conduct more abundant and diverse communication among people
and companies based on qualitative information so that they mutual understanding and respect can develop
based on exact knowledge on each other, and 4) build more sustainable and diverse society in the noncapitalistic, cooperative market economy.
We expect that it is not difficult to implement and use light-color money in the network of smartphones andcomputer servers under the current ICT environments and that the representation of light-color money as
color symbol similar to QR codes, which are two-dimensional machine-readable barcodes now widely usedin cryptocurrencies and digital CCs in Japan and the world, facilitate it to be diffused once it can attract theinterests of people. It is worthwhile to conduct a social experiment with the younger generation, who are
relatively free from traditional fixed ideas of money and easy to accept an innovative concept ofcommunication media, to test its feasibility and applicability in the real world.
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Kichiji, N. Nishibe, M. (2012) ‘A Comparison in Transaction Efficiency between dispersive andConcentrated Money Creation’ International Journal of Community Currency Research Vol.16 (D)49-57
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