If money doesn`t exist, you can`t steal it. This is the view of the South African New Economists Network (SANE), in the wake of the Absa identity theft.
SANE is an affiliation of organisations and individuals who state they are "concerned about the social and ecological consequences of economics as it is conventionally taught and practised".
Their alternative to conventional economics is to form an online Community Exchange System (CES), where members can trade services or talents with one another, keeping tally on a points system. These points differ from money in that they are of no value to their holder except as a mechanism to exchange for another service. The sum of all the debits and credits on the system always equals zero, making it impossible to 'steal` credits.
"It seems like money, but in this system, the money gets created at the trading interface so that there`s no actual supply of money, it exists instantaneously, so it`s really a score system," explains Tim Jenkin, administrator of the SANE CES.
"You can`t steal this money, because it doesn`t exist, it`s just numbers in a computer, which is really what actual money is anyway, but all the debits and credits must equal to zero."
He points out that if someone wanted to mess with these figures, they simply couldn`t, because any members with erroneous debits reflecting on their accounts would deny the thief had performed any services for them.
The SANE CES started over five months ago, and already has over 200 members who have performed several hundred trades, from car oil changes to hairdressing services.
"This is a worldwide movement," says Jenkin. "Mostly these groups are paper-based with a central administrator. We`re unique in that we`re doing it over the Internet, just like online banking."
Although the CES system seems to have an international following, Jenkin says the idea is to keep it local. "When it grows, we want to split it up into groups so that people can trade in their community. This is unlike conventional money that goes into the bigger centres and then out of the country. There`s always that leakage of money from the community, and in this way you can keep the wealth in the local economy."
He adds that it is still possible to trade outside the community as all these systems will be linked.
"There`s no reason why the whole economy couldn`t run on this whole system, except for convention."
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