Progressive Politics

Welp, you found hOurworld, which has a large knowledgebase. I think their links are poorly organized and mostly targeted at people looking to start a timebank. So here are some of my more common talking points.

As the US economy craters, we have to come to full grips with the fact that there is nobody coming to save us except us. Timebanks enable even impoverished communities to build resilience and interconnectedness. In a timebank, relationships based on trust and mutual aid are forged and reinforced. "Oh, JayleneSlide, you know computers? Can you also help my friend with this technical thing?" And all of a sudden, my neighbors are on Linux, following Louis Rossman, and we're setting up a mesh network in our sparse neighborhood.

A common concern I fielded when launching our local timebank was: what about people who use services without offering services? This is a common refrain in capitalist theory. There will be people who do that, but the overarching experience of timebanks in the US is that a majority of people provide services without ever using their time dollars. In our timebank, we allow people to go into arrears as much as they want. Not a single user in our timebank has a negative balance. Don't let the possibility of a scant outlier undermine a great system.

But what about bad elements? At the risk of answering a question with a question: what about bad elements in your day-to-day life? There are no guarantees in life, and you learn who you can trust the same way we always used to do it. Meet them, talk with them, check their references (hOurworld has an endorsement function), and listen to your gut. In my town, the stories of shady contractors are legion, hypothetically legitimate businesspeople. By removing that financial motive, most of what's left are people who want to do right by their communities. Moral hazards (in the economics definition) are greatly reduced. It's super easy to get a felony charge in the US, speaking from firsthand experience. This is by design, so as to create a slave labor class (see: "The New Jim Crow" by Michelle Alexander). Even some misdemeanors can lock citizens out of the "legal" economy, exacerbating the conditions that may have led to their felony in the first place. Timebanks (can) short-circuit that treadmill, giving neighbors the chance to be contributing members in their communities if they so choose.

"I helped my neighbor with a [a bunch of things] but they are not in the timebank." Most (all? not sure) timebanks, including ours encourage members to log their time, even if the recipient is not a timebank member.

As I mentioned in my original comment, everyone's time is valued equally. This is the huge appeal to me. I bang on a keyboard for a living, underpinned by some head work. Yes, there was a huge learning curve, but my most important professional lessons were given to me freely. Also, even if software engineering didn't pay well, I'd still be doing it, like music, cooking, sewing, bicycle repair, etc. It chaps my ass that a person growing my food makes a fraction of my income. I understand the economic reasoning, but I don't agree with it, i.e. my salary is based on the cost of replacing me, not on the difficulty of my work and definitely not on the value of my work. In the US, chances are we won't ever get to realize the full value of our labor; I'll gladly "settle" for an alternative case where everyone's labor has equal value. I want to move our world to a more egalitarian model.

Everyone has something to offer in a timebank, whether they know it or not. The list of services one can offer or request is exhaustive.

Because timebanks are a network of 1:1 volunteerism, the IRS has no interest. There are service exchanges that allow users to value their time asymmetrically; the IRS is very interested in those.

Bonus round, not exactly timebanks: co-ops were successfully turning the tide of the Great Depression and "invented" credit unions. Cooperatives were massively successful, bringing utilities (okay, electric) to rural areas where investor-owned businesses refused to invest. WWII and the subsequent Red Scare stemmed the growth of cooperatives with a massive propaganda campaign. (Source: https://resources.uwcc.wisc.edu/History_of_Cooperatives.pdf; and "Food for Change" documentary) Bringing it back to timebanks, co-ops and timebanks can be some of the bootstraps (god, I hate that term) our communities need.