Mon Valley communities test “time credits”, a new form of currency

Which reminds me of the excellent 1977 Sweeney and Sweeney econ paper about the Capital Hill Babysitting Coop: http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/cs286r/courses/fall09/papers/coo...

So there was forgery.

Of course, in such a small community, it was immediately obvious who had done it, so people stopped being available to babysit their kids.

So VAT must be paid in euro for purchases in the local currency? I am wondering how this eventually works out, especially the day when selling your local currency into euros is not anymore possible or pegged 1:1, while VAT must still be paid in euro.

However, I really don't know how viable this scheme would be on a bigger level. Eventually, this hopeful and admirable attempt faces the problems outlined in the article: landlords don't want time credits, banks don't want them, the government doesn't want them. So it's a risk of giving up your privilege of earning well that might leave you with nothing eventually.

So there's a useful idea out there called the 8 Forms of Capital: https://www.google.com/search?q=8+forms+of+capital

The idea is roughly lets use the language and methodology of "capital" to look at all the non-"net-worth"-ey things that makes us human.

So your "net worth" is the sum of your 1) Financial Capital (bank account) and 2) Material Capital (house and "stuff").

But that's only 2/8. When you hear about people who live in luxury highrises and work 12 hours a day at McKinsBcgBain but are too drained when they come home to do anything other than order takeout and pass out watching netflix only to pop a xanax and do it all again the next morning, that's being wealthy in Financial and Material Capital but poor in everything else.

The idea of these community tokens isn't to price your time as Financial capital, but rather price it into something like 3) Social Capital (the relationships you have with others) or, maybe, 4) Cultural Capital (all the ideas and bonds that constitute a community identity). Do others interact with you purely transactionally, or do they rely on you as you rely on them? Do you feel like you're part of a neighborhood, or just renting space one 12-month lease at a time?

So basically, your time can be priced in salary-dollars or it can be priced in community-bonds. Your time may command a high salary-dollar price, but what kind of social- and community-dollar price do you command?

Contrast that with today, where we can buy computers for $1000 that took millions of worker-hours to design and build. So in away, our $15 is worth something like $15,000 to them. Or more precisely, their day's work on the farm would produce 1/1000 of today's wages, maybe 30 cents or something comparable. Enough to buy some eggs or beer if they were lucky.

What gets me though is that most of us have a quality of life higher than royalty enjoyed then. Yet most of us spend our entire lives underemployed, doing work of little importance, still making someone else rich. The sacrifice of our daily life should cost us 1/1000 what it did then, but it still costs us the same. What good is more buying power if you hate your job, today is the worst day of your life, and tomorrow will be even worse? But hey, at least you have a flat screen.

I think that's why the concept of barter can feel attractive, because if everyone has a relatively comparable work output, then an hour spent doing something we enjoy (say baking or whatnot) can be exchanged for something we might find miserable but someone else might enjoy (like giving a massage). Whereas with cash, an hour baking might be worth $7, but an hour massage is worth $60.

The divergence between the free market value of something, and its toll in human suffering, is the primary cause of most conflict in the world today IMHO. That gap is why some of us are punished so much more for the work we do, and why so many of us don't get to do the work we'd like to do. We all just run the rat race and compete with the joneses until we're put out to pasture. I've found no solution to this yet in my own life, so I'm curious to hear others' experiences.

Surely if people can trade these “tokens” for goods or other services, then they’re money?

I really like this idea of businesses accepting different types of currencies to encourage specific types of work like charity, volunteering, good grades for kids.

1. Medium of exchange; this is what you're referring to as "the whole point of currency". But don't forget about:

2. Unit of account; Something that allows you to compare "apples to oranges" so to speak, a common denominator.

3. Store of value; Some people choose to consume what's due to them up front, others choose to "hoard" for later (nothing wrong with that, IMO), most spread their consumption evenly over their life more or less. If we were all trading chicken eggs and babysitting hours amongst ourselves this would be a lot harder.

It's apparent that maybe we should have hoarded a little bit, as individuals and institutions everywhere are reeling from the damage covid has wrought on the world economy.