Have you ever wondered why the Talent Exchange works the other way around from the ‘normal’ Rand-based economy. In the latter, buyer’s pay sellers whereas in the Exchange it is the seller who seems to ‘take’ from the buyer. In other words, in the Rand economy the buyer is the active party and the seller the passive party. In the Talent Exchange it is the other way around.
The reason why it is like this in the Talent Exchange is because we do not have a circulating currency. The ‘Talent’ is just a cute name we use for our ‘currency’, which simply measures the value of transactions instead of existing as an exchange medium. Therefore, buyers do not ‘give’ Talents to sellers; sellers instead record the value of what they have provided. It has to be the seller who enters the transaction because the buyer has no interest in doing that.
The main property of conventional money is that it has quantity. This means that it has to be ‘created’ in some way, that it has to be issued into circulation, that it circulates and that the quantity of it has to be controlled. The word ‘controlled’ gives away that there needs to be a controller. This is the problem with conventional money: it is an exchange system that is controlled and that control is not in the hands of the users. In fact our regular money system is a private, for-profit exchange system that is run like a business for the benefit of its owners and shareholders. How can this be good for us, the users of money?
The main property of Talents is that they measure. They do not exist and so no one can control them. They provide us with a truly democratic exchange system that does not operate for private interests. As such the concepts of ‘paying’, ‘interest’, ‘usury’ and ‘speculation’ are meaningless.
Having said all this, it is in fact possible to ‘pay’ a seller in the Talent Exchange. This is not ‘pay’ in the conventional sense that the buyer gives or transfers a certain amount of a currency to the seller, but that the buyer can be the active party in the recording of a transaction.
Sometimes it is more convenient for the buyer to enter the transaction, such as when the seller has no equipment to enter it, or is currently not in a position to do so, or when the traders want to record a transaction immediately.
So if you want to ‘pay’ someone, go to the CTTE mobile interface at http://cell.ctte.org.za. You can do this with your mobile phone, a tablet or with your regular PC. The reason why this function is not available on the full site is because it is usually in market situations when the ‘payment’ option is useful, and this is where the traders usually have their mobiles in their pockets and not their PCs!
Log in with your normal CTTE account number and password and then click on (or touch on your mobile) the [Record a Transaction – as Buyer] option. Enter the seller’s account number, a description, the amount and then press the [Submit] button. That’s it – the transaction is recorded. Your account, as buyer, is debited and the seller’s is credited.
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