Local groups can be formed to network small businesses, including co-ops and the self-employed, that can help to provide a ready market of like-minded people who would prefer to purchase from and trade with local, small-scale businesses, for the reasons outlined above. Small businesses and the self-employed can commit to trading with each other locally – to be local consumers as well as producers, or ‘prosumers’, if you like. These kinds of groups could develop the basis of a different kind of economy, founded on sustainability and democracy, with mutual credit as the means of exchange.