The money has gone somewhere else, and it will only come back when we sell ourselves as cheaply as the global market demands. So conventional money flows through communities, thus determining that the goods and services it purchases do so also. It not only supports inter-regional trading, it makes it virtually inevitable, irrespective of the local costs that may be incurred at either end. The less conventional response to the missing money is to create a local currency to fill the available space. For more on these ideas, review the LETSystem pages .
Money creates patterns of exchange in communities.