'Time Banks' alternative to cash

`Banks' allow members to pay with time, not cash

No money? No problem! Pay with time, instead.

That's what Maria Villacreses did when the economy put a hitch in her wedding plans: She used "time dollars" on everything from a wedding-day makeover to an elaborate seven-layer cake.

In a modern twist on the ancient practice of barter, people like Villacreses are joining time banks to help them get the things they need or want without having to spend cash.

In a time bank, members get credit for services they provide to other members, from cooking to housekeeping to car rides to home repair. For each hour of work, one time dollar is deposited into a member's account, good for services offered by other members.

Scores of time banks are being started in hard-hit communities around the nation — and thousands of devotees are helping each other survive tough financial times.

Source

I didn't see any threads on this from my search. Has anyone ever participated in one of these?

This could be a useful system, especially if augmented with bartering in small communities post SHTF.

I wish this could be explained better in the article. I'm not quite sure how they track what is being cashed in or taken.

It seems to be working well in these areas. I don't know if such a system can be abused or taken advantage of.

[edit on 8-6-2010 by Wolf321]

i like the general idea but 1$ per hour is way below minimum wage.

reply to post by Havick007


The 'exchange rate' is not $1 USD to $1 TD.

I think it is more akin to 1 hour for 1 hour.

reply to post by Wolf321


I like the idea, only how does this help the common man stick it to The Man? How does this remove or change the game?

Just looking for a reason to get into the loop.

Somehow I feel the Time bankers are probably Time Bandits like their brothers the bankers.


[edit on 8-6-2010 by Absum!]

reply to post by Havick007


doesnt sounds bad, especally as things get worse. i like the old market twist with modern day technology. i might even check it out

Originally posted by Absum!
Somehow I feel the Time bankers are probably Time Bandits like their brothers the bankers.

It doesn't say so, but I imagine that if there is some centralized location for depositing and claiming time, the person(s) working their get 1 time dollar for every hour they work it. I doubt this system even recognizes the concept of interest.

If this were to take off it would turn into indentured servitude. Then people would start loaning out time dollars with a 5 min interest on each hour loaned. Yeah it would just turn back into money, it is a good idea on a small scale but it would inevitably turn into slavery.
Instead of a 15 year home loan you could get a 15 year time loan. All you have to do is work for usfor 15 years.
For just 3 years part time you could own this car.

[edit on 8-6-2010 by zaiger]

Whatever happened to just doing a favour for a friend? Now we need time banks to make people help each other out?

How sad.

Originally posted by zaiger
If this were to take off it would turn into indentured servitude. Then people would start loaning out time dollars with a 5 min interest on each hour loaned. Yeah it would just turn back into money, it is a good idea on a small scale but it would inevitably turn into slavery.
Instead of a 15 year home loan you could get a 15 year time loan. All you have to do is work for usfor 15 years.
For just 3 years part time you could own this car.

[edit on 8-6-2010 by zaiger]

This is of course correct but such a thing could be prevented by banning time loans. Although it puts a whole new spin on the idea of "time share" huh?

reply to post by Wolf321


I actually have done something like this for many years. After college I only had one job where I was an employee. While in college I was recruited by one of the alphabet soup agencies. After 18 years I left full time status to start my own company that provides consulting and experimental process analysis that look for any technology implications. In most cases I design adaptive and robust protocols for private firms, and some government agencies. While I offer fee's on standard time based and project completion models, thats not the kind of contract I usually operate under. If you ask what does time represent as mentioned in the post, one could say it's a used as payment in exchange for cash. But by itself it,s less then worthless. Of course it represents a thing of value, like accounting. It requires certification of the tax code (sometimes called the bastardized secret hand shake) One can adopt almost any service people need, but require a skill to do to as a form of payment. The important part is being more specific packaging your skills in a much more descriptive why.That means events, causes, and solutions.Take plumbing. Parts and time alone won't be effective in their understanding why you know this task is more important then that one.They only see the parts cost the same and it took you the same time. But you know one part requires more precise placement, and if that fails your sinks out of action for hours. That other part goes and your dry for days. The key to making your services more attractive and trustworthy is, you defrock them.Take away the ancient guilds use of secrets as economic bludgeon, instead turn them around and show the process you use as plainly as possible. And don't forget they know why, knowing the reason you did something a certain way conveys's respect, and that the tradesman takes as a sales call. When people spend their money, their giving up some of the control the perceived over them selves. I know this sounds weird, but the more involved in a process someones feels a part of, even having sink fixed, it contains identifiers of a ritual. A ritual where one feels like a participant is a sacrament, and not a sacrifice Organizations like guilds or religions, or governments are secrecy machines almost by definition. It's natural for people to be wary of institutional secrecy. They feel looked down on and usually a bit intimidated. The second is by design, the fist one is because most don't care. There are organizations where secrecy is a martial art. But the biggest secret of them all is not cosmic but from the point of having a appearance of an advantage. Be it the local cops or the CIA they make sure your aware that "they know something you don't know"sometimes its useful for you to have the impression its about you. It may be the equivalent your front tire is flat. It usually is. But its usually the impression real powers behind the monetary system or pattern baldness have one thing in common, and want you to be sure you know. Us little people can't do a damn thing about it.

In my case I do a great deal of bartering at in least some areas, but it's for a different reason. In our case a barter relationship has what has always made it appealing. The first is really knowing what people are made of. Trust must be understood beyond any security clearance. Since we have some restricted contracts, the companies we work with must be cleared at least to the level of the other one. Some of the people at our companies can trade skills so esoteric, as far as I know exist no where else. But the best reason is we have no word for red tape, I've have no other ideas.A guy once said that and I told that will be true, when your no longer breathing. A barter relationship is one that even when applied to a highly technical area, like adaptive programing, design a adaptive protocol or business plan for a company, the people who perform certain tasks like all us have a multitude of personal traits. I'm not a programmer, but I can visualize a process as an topographical landscape in 3D. A result is the answers we often get are different, depending on who asked the question. The image we see has an artistic appearance, and sometimes an emotional impact. To get significant meaning like the answer to a problem we din't know we had yet, which has happened, it must be taken in as a gestalt. The fact that this approach creates an answer of amazing complexity, but I think that because it gives us the impression of elegance.

Regarding other services like business plans, et. our our big winner for a while has been our corporate security protocol. Some firms use executive protection or body guards, thats not something we do. We do have a close relationship with a firm, ours is one of the very professional ones. One thing about building a network. Be totally anal about collecting names, business cards etc. The critical part of any of our protocols is none exist in a vacuum. I have taken methods developed for the Secret Service and adapted them for the corporate world."If someone kidnaps you I guarantee you'll know it. But if a company, usually via a "temp",( free lance who picks secrets to order) gets hold of your proprietary transparent solar cell (this is a real incident, I got called after the event, and no it was salvaged but by the time the owner discovered it he was so deep in the s*** hole he might as well sign a lease. Sorry for spacing, gota run.

reply to post by arbiture


I wanted to add when I set up my company, and realized the close business associations we had that were first set up to protect proprietary information, I thought it could have economic advantages. The first I realized was I had to come up with some kind of formula that determines it value. But based on what? Is there a set unit of material, physical effort, and the one most important to us creativity that can be quantified ? I realized if we some how managed to come up with a unit of value, what would it's valued be tied to. And if one guys efforts were making all the companies money, would this imbalance create inflation? Would the rest of us, who's contribution's were not as profitable, have to do more work, creating inflation? If it all blew apart, at least I could wright a paper on the short history of what might be the first currency to go bust whose value was based on the impact of brain storming and outcomes research.

But then that;s what most currency is based on. The promise that the facade of of a nations stability and GDP is an image that reflects reality. Ours is still based not on an IOU, but an idea that improves, what we can do. And that improvement usually is the result of looking at something from a more effective perspective.

What I set up is complicated, but the basic idea could apply in most cases. The key is coming up with a system of value used to calculate must be done in the beginning And while confidentiality in some case is a big element, as with us. The trust and loyalty any company gets from treating people with respect, and going out of one's way to save the clients money is good for business, and it actually makes me feel good..

reply to post by ImaginaryReality1984

This is of course correct but such a thing could be prevented by banning time loans. Although it puts a whole new spin on the idea of "time share" huh?

They could ban time loans but they would come up no matter what. For example how many hours would a house be worth? For the big things people would have to get into time debt.

reply to post by zaiger


The time banking is primarily for services. A house would cost however many man hours. The materials would be a whole other matter, in a post SHTF environment, they could be obtained via bartering. There is no interest on service.

exchange rates a problematic, because the purchaser doesn't really care how long something takes to complete and the amount of time can vary wildly and for a lot of reasons.

time $ is therefore misleading, because actual values will be the result of negotiation. it is what it is, an interest free, alternative currency. good luck with it, because the better it works the more attention it will receive from the feds.

reply to post by Long Lance



Several years ago my company was developing business and orgaanizational operation's protocol's. We did a lot of work in designing corporate security stratagies. All plans invove the whole company. Our security plans in part are based on anti-terror/military tactic's but adapted for the board room. These were computer based adaptive, and anticipatory plans. and conducting, contact was There all my own definitions I developed over the years, so I'm making it up as I go. But as I've said on occasion I don't mind if you think I'm weird just remember who signs the checks. As part developmental exercise to test adaptive strategies, and a way to analyze and provide clients with unique services both in result and as packaged, I would base "fees" on on the surface look anything but money. My idea was to identify companies whose products or services we use, and present them with a proposal to exchange " intrinsic units of value" or IUV which could be services, the always fun "stuff", but also what business men, spooks, politicians, and kids away from home value more then anything; connections. Introductions usually required, there might be a concern I'll make a mess on their friends rug if their not in the loop. But with a name I could contact someone and I swear there would be no trail on which to connect the dots (someone objected to "IUV" saying it sounded like something you use so you won't get pregnant. I said good, it might help people remember). Next we had to define just what an IUV would be. I started by saying what it wouldn't. Both what it represented and it's value would not "float". If I want a dingy I'll let you know. It's based on a defined value even though that may be based on ideas, things, or an evening with "Tina" and her mimes. I'm a business man, not a den mother. No one ages 100 years and answers to the name Alan Greenspan. The IUV is not a speculative instrument. Holding them so the value goes up or anything that smells like that won't work. Because there based on what IMO up to now has never been quantified but is truly priceless; innovation.. Creativity is the version of whats the same skills, but not personality. Usually thought of as a gift, passive but more a ballerina or artist. The artist uses art to express themselves. The innovator looks at an environment, opinion, idea, and art as both the observer and observed. As they perceive it,they imagine an outcome that pleases them, and create using the original not as template, but inspiration. They create something new by force of will, not to bask in there image, though an observer could not know this. What they perceive changes how they see everything, most of all themselves. The creative is the artist and craftsman. The true innovator is the magician. The artist interprets reality. The innovator creates it.

So how do you make money without being on a first name basi with the local secret service? Before you create a technological master piece that comes when you call it, you must determine what the other value's. Hold it. Ask him that and you'll get a list of specific items, or more often problems and I don't care how you solve. He's going to tell you whats important. Then you look at more then just a list and decide if he's right. I don't want to go all Zen on anyone but often ones comfort level in say a business is never based on just the bottom line. Much more so in a small business it doesn't take much for things to start to slip and so many business's go under because of the issue people know about, at least in concept, more money going out then in. Obvious? As a matter of fact it is. But then something creepy happens. People feel powerless in their situation, they acquire an affect like stunned war refuges. It varies for everyone but we all have a point when we reach what engineers call a cascade degradation or failure. The machine can no longer even hold up it's own weight (keep the lights on...). Put another way like a reactor going critical but in reverse. Instead of it going into a runaway chain reaction then melt down, it says " oh %*#$ it and dies". I found one reason so many small business's lose it along with not understanding a business plan despite MBA"s legend is not that it's bronzed and mounted like your first dollar, as if anyone really has their first dollar. If it ever existed you got a better chance of getting Bigfoot to pose for a photo shoot then you do of having any one following a plan. But the main reason I can only describe as when feel there going down hill they feel grateful because at least they know the rocks will break there fall. WOW.

I was interested in developing computer models that would apply concepts associated with what could be if describing a personality that when faced with a problem the natural methodology would be defined as a "compulsion to innovate." I define innovation where creativity is not so much a personality trait as a lifestyle. Where problem solving is not a fixation or even a dominant thought. They don't see an objective as a linear activity with activity over time that ends. "Progress markers" are not the natural way of assessing how ones doing. But the moments when your relationship, how you interact with a project changes, how you continue will also change in some way. One result is the methods, even the way you think about a project at the beginning will be different at the end. I knew if people working on projects used programs that could identify and catalog the number, and circumstances of perceptive change could we encourage more A HA!! and if not less not notice as many Prozac moments? The short answer was yes. We went through 1210 people for what were 14 jobs at the time. If there's trait of incredible people who are innovative when ask'd how they do it as one women said after a pause " for me moment's when I discover something trully new, I see an idea not as a passing thought but a complex being seen once will never be far, joy personified is not really a feeling, it's a person.""A guy said "You know some of us like me were labled extreme fantasy prone when young. But now there's a difference. Are we still abnormal when were getting paid, because normal or not, you tapped into an odd way to make a living".

reply to post by Wolf321

www.timebanks.org...
Timebanks are an amazing thing. You can sign up and start one in your town via the .org web. I just did an entire issue on them and interviewed the creator and CEO of TB USA. Here is that link:
issuu.com...
These are community building systems and favored by the elderly, the young unemployed and the underemployed in your community. Everyone has skills and most of us have some extra time, so you can 'donate' that time to helping someone in your local area and you receive a one hour time credit for each hour donated. You are basically paying it forward. This is not a barter system. In fact the IRS has ruled that Time Bank earnings are NOT taxable. If you donate an hour of time raking a neighbors leaves, you can receive an hour of help painting your house and so on. It's not income, it's donated time. The simple software keeps track of hours and you cannot "loan out" your time so no interest or loans ever. NYC has a big time bank program [ www.nyc.gov... ]and there is even a new one in the Middle East called Time Dirham. www.timedirham.ae...

reply to post by altcurrencyguy


Excellent contribution! I had been curious about the tax issue, so thanks for clearing that up.

The categories of peoples you listed at present could benefit the most. In a post apocalyptic community/economy it would be a great augmentation for bartering for tangible goods.