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How to Share Time
When dollars are scarce, timebanks help neighbors swap skills, instead.
During the last two great depressions in the U.S., hundreds of thousands (possibly millions) of people organized to meet their basic needs when the mainstream economy and centralized monetary system failed them. Unemployed poor folks got together to create time dollar stores and cooperative mills, farms, health care systems, foundries, repair and recycling facilities, distribution warehouses, and a myriad of other service exchanges.
Many of these were based on the hour as a unit of account, and often everyone's hour was equal and could either be exchanged for another hour of service or its equivalent in goods.
Modern forms of time exchange, called Timebanks and LETS (Local Employment Trading Systems), have been around since the 1980s. Now, with one in ten Americans unemployed (likely twice that, given recording problems), time exchanges are making a comeback.
Timebanks USA, a system of over 120 timebanks in the U.S. and a few other countries, was developed by activist lawyer Edgar Cahn as a way to help the underprivileged and underserved help each other through an organized system of reciprocity. In the following interview, Cahn explains the basic principles behind timebanks:
Official Timebanks purchase software that provides a ready-made, standardized directory and accounting system of individuals, and sometimes nonprofits or government agencies, that are willing to provide services to their communities and receive help in return.
Timebank coordinators help create matches between people who need things and others who can help meet those needs, and they keep track of completed transactions in the system. No money is involved, and everyone's hour is equal, which is one of the features that enabled Timebanks to receive an official IRS income tax exemption declaration so that people on disability, social security, unemployment, and other government benefits can participate without penalty.
While we may not have many dollars these days, most people do have some time.The egalitarian nature of the system ensures that people will be able to purchase the services that they need without toiling endlessly to meet high prices in the market economy. People can also trade goods with the stipulation that their price be based on the amount of time involved in producing the goods and not their market value. Timebanks' most successful application has been to provide a means for at-risk youth who have gone to court to do service for their community.
LETS systems also operate without money (except for fixed costs like gas or paper copies), but the value of time or goods may be linked to market value. Every community determines its own rules, so every LETS is a little different. LETS are now mostly online accounting and directory systems just like Timebanks, but they have also taken the form of paper ledgers, checkbooks, paper currencies, and time-based stores.
When one person provides service or goods to another, the giver receives credit in her account and the receiver gets a debit to his account so the system is always in balance. People manage their own accounts and make payment over the internet by logging into their personal account. Businesses, nonprofits, and government may also have accounts if they are involved in reciprocal community exchange. Some systems have account balance limits, others don't or merely flag high or low balances and then contact members to help them figure out how to spend or earn their credits.
Many communities have created similar time exchange projects, going by names like Fourth Corner Exchange, Village Networks, Richmond Hours, and Austin Time Exchange.
Probably the largest time exchange in the world is the Fureai Kippu in Japan. Fureai Kippu ("Caring Relationship Tickets") was created in 1995 to help families who had migrated to other parts of Japan care for elder family members from whom they'd been separated. Seniors can help each other and earn the hour credits, family members can earn credits and transfer them to their parents who live elsewhere, or users may keep credits for when they become sick or elderly themselves.
Free open source software is now available for any community to tailor a time exchange to its own needs and to reflect the local culture. Many of these projects also have regular in-person meetings, swaps, and potlucks to help facilitate exchange, trust, and community building.
While we may not have many dollars these days, most people do have some time. Instead of paying professionals who we may never see again to provide services, we can use time exchanges to find neighbors who might provide service in exchange for hour credits, thereby saving scarce U.S. dollars for things like rent and medicine.
In the process, people get to know and trust their neighbors, establishing caring relationships that can help reweave the fabric of our communities, and replace our culture's over-reliance on individual financial security.
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22 Comments so far
Show AllWell, this explains the power of the collective unconscious. I didn't know about any of these incentives, not on any conscious level, when the idea of a time bank came to me from the dream state and I integrated it into a novel (vision of the future) submitted to a contest sponsored by Ted Turner in l990.
Actually, I'm glad that the idea is "out there," as it's the most fundamental form of equality: that everyone's hour of service/trade/talent is equal! I thought the concept was so radical as to have scared off any contest judges who might have otherwise seen the merit of this visionary work. It's now self-published under a new title. I wish I had kept the original, "After the Transition," as now, 20 years later, I understand what that transition signifies. At the time the writing came through me, I did not.
Just glad we aren't going all the way back to the Stone Age. Just back to the Middle Ages when people used barter, they call it Feudalism.
We would not be talking about Timebanks if our taxes were being used to help ordinary people.
In a society where people treat the unemployed and underprivileged shabbily and government spends recklessly for wars and corporate handouts, it is no surprise that Timebanks and LETS systems are put in place. I have heard of them before but I don't believe that they replace genuine care and collective thinking among people usually found in most other nations. I still question the effectiveness of those two systems since they were used ever since the 1980s when disaster capitalism started. Time Banks do exist around the world too but are more obvious in the US.
We currently have the most common form of Time Share system all around the country-no thanks to the federal refusal to have national health insurance- in the form of free health clinics. Except in this case it is the vol. medical staff donating their time so they can ease suffering and maintain their own souls and consciences against the greed they see throughout the health care system.
And like probably more than a few of these co-op systems, it's a poor excuse for having the government spend its tax money on actually helping ordinary people instead of warring with poor people across the world and enriching corporations thru welfare to them.
But until fed elections are no longer bought, it's all we have..
If by free health clinics you are referring to community health clinics, they actually are dependent upon federal funding. While the Democrats are nice enough to fund them while the Republicans aren't, it is only a matter of time until war funding eats into that funding as well. The 2700 page Obamacare bill that passed is tougher on non-profit care while giving for-profit more free passes.
Nope, I'm talking about the completely free clinics, the ones staffed by only volunteers. I'm familiar with the fed-funded ones you're talking about, but there are very few in my state. Thus, the working poor, unemployed, and otherwise uninsured like me flock to these free clinics as our only source of primary health care and then hope we don't have to get more advanced care at a hospital or clinic and then have to pay money we don't have for the many things they can't do for us at the free clinics, which are usually sponsored by local churches and non-profit community groups.
Obamacare will do nothing to reduce the demand for these clinics and soon they will be completely over- run in most places because more people with jobs will still not be able to afford insurance and the out-of pocket costs under Obamacare and the subsidies will not be enough, esp. for the unemployed or working poor. That's because I understand that the subsidies based on household income will actually be that good old Repub vehicle of tax credits rather than actual government transfer payments to patients to pay the insurance premiums.
Good luck with those patients being able to come up with the money in advance to pay the premiums and out of pocket costs during the first year of enrollment before they get any help after the end of that tax year. Will lead to that classic dilemma of old folks before Medicare and Supplemental Social Security, " Do I eat cat food or pay for my meds?"
Also, I meant to say timebanks in my first post.
I will have to search for those volunteer clinics in my area or the state in general. I think MO and KS might have some in the KC area. Thank you for bringing this up.
Twice annually, in May and November, a particular Steinway grand piano is examined and tuned by Julio, a highly skilled and conscientious piano tuner and technician, also a competent pianist. The time to service the piano is 1.5 hours and perhaps .5 hours travel.
This bi-annual service is well appreciated by the owner and principal player of the Steinway instrument, Dr. Dawson, who is a respected cardiac surgeon at the Local Hospital.
One day, under emergency circumstances, it is learned that Julio may die if he does not quickly receive cardiac bypass surgery. If the two hour surgery is performed by Dr. Dawson, obviously there will be a fee. But in this case we can make an informative calculation: How many times would Julio need to tune Dr. Dawson's piano in order to pay the surgical fee for his bypass surgery?
After we calculate that figure, what questions should we ask?
Trylon
Well said.
"replace our culture's over-reliance on individual financial security"
Individualism versus collectivism is a terribly flawed dichotomy in the USA, thanks to elitist propaganda.
The elites promote individualism but only a very "special" type: that which IN FACT crucially depends on finance kapital, fossile fuels, and other elite dictates, which necessarily constraint individual self-determination.
Meanwhile, the "collectivists", actually elite wolves in sheep's clothes, oppose their "individualist" peers not for the people's benefit but rather to strengthen state enterprise at the expense of private enterprise.
These "collectivists" fail to point out the criminal flaw in the "individualist" model thus helping to keep the people in perpetual confusion/enslavement to elites.
They should point out that LOCAL interdependence helps protect the people from elite oppression, creating effective independence for all, allowing the people to avoid the destructive codependency with elites, faux individualism, and associated plunder/destruction.
In other words - it's a problem with monetary policy that can be solved by issuing alternative currency based not on gold or silver, but "the hour".
http://www.paulmurray.id.au
We are not on a gold standard.
Time Banks show that we have value to each other because we are alive;..our life enhances the life of others- not scarcity/darwin/malthus-competition. Abundance is meta-physical..
I very much like the idea of localizing the economy, and this is probably one excellent way to do so. A few random thoughts:
Cash is too convenient to be replaced; money didn't cause our problems, but it's misused as a giant Monopoly game of accumulation and advantage.
I would just like concrete examples -- How many hours does it take to grow a carrot? If the mechanic trades his services in checking your car, who pays for the belts and lubricants? Etc. Housecleaning does not equal brain surgery.
We have always traded; it's not a new idea. The exchange of kindnesses and favors is well-known, for instance. Time trading simply formalizes this and extends the practice beyond friends and neighbors.
"Housecleaning does not equal brain surgery." - sorry, but being a quadraplegic, I need housecleaning a lot more than brain surgery. My brain isn't the part that doesn't work anymore - and damned few people want to clean somebody else's house...
Late at night, in a sleazy part of town, a man pulls his car to the curb, under a dim street light where a woman is standing. He pulls a lever and the passenger side window zips down. She leans over, exposing small tats on the tops of her lovely breasts.
SHE: "Hi, Big Boy, are you looking for some Fun?"
HE: "That would be affirmative, because I sure like Fun. But first, what would be the cost of some Fun?"
SHE: "Well, I need a new dimmer switch installed for my dining room chandelier, and the reel needs changing on my weed whacker. Can you do those two things?"
HE: "Absolutely. Hop aboard!
Late at night, in a sleazy part of town, a woman pulls her car to the curb, under a dim street light where a man is standing. She pulls a lever and the passenger side window zips down. He leans over, exposing an expensive gold link chain over a hard, hairless chest.
HE: "Hey, Babe, are you looking for some Fun?"
SHE: "That would be affirmative, because I sure like Fun. But first, what would be the cost of some Fun?"
HE: "Well, a dinner of meat loaf, mashed potatoes, and corn on the cob, with iced tea would be nice. Then I'd like to tell you how lousy my day was."
SHE: "Not worth it," she replies, and drives away.
Trylon
Speaking of neighborhoods, if you have a chance with your neighbors and have gardens, try neighborly gardening together. The long term benefits can be amazing. We were able to grow healthier produce working together like that.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7065205277695921912# !!!!