(Edgar) No. I think it clearly was not. We assume that there is a value in specialization that we don't deny. That human being are wired in two ways, we are wired for aggression and competition and that has its own survival value and we are wired for cooperation, collaboration and altruism. We think that Time Banking clearly draws first and primarily on that desire to work together to collaborate, to help to build a long term vision but that we know that money invites enormous achievement and competitive drive and we don't want to pretend that's...its about a hunger for power and also sometimes a predatory desire to take advantage of people. I just think that, that part of human nature is not going to go away, but I don't think that altruism, caring and collaboration is going to go away either. What is remarkable it how much that it has survived without a currency to acknowledge it and reinforce it.
(Chris) That is why too that we adopt spending quite a bit of time in every TimeBank out there on the sustainability because it's like there is a continuum. There is money, time banking in the middle and volunteering. The TimeBanks pull on volunteering energy and they pull on money energy and resources. In our answers to you we have been very concerned with how do we get money into a TimeBank. It cannot replace [money] it really is complementary. It needs, as Edgar always says, a thin stream of money as well as other types of energy to make it go.
(Q) From your writing on Co-Production you state, "TimeBanking takes the basic ideas of Co-Production? and builds on the fact that people naturally want to give back, to make a difference, just as professional providers do." Can TimeBanking and other community currency bridge the gap between the Core economy and the money economy?
(Edgar) I think we will see it first or we are seeing it first in the human service fields. Where you have a major breakdown in the core economy and the government rushes in and foundation rush in with money to pay professionals. The model used to be let's pay professionals to fix the community, fix the people and fix the neighborhood. What TimeBanking does is it taps a little bit of the money and gives it a huge multiplier effect by enlisting the very people who are defined as the problem as the co-workers and co-producers of the outcome that government and foundations seek to achieve. The question then becomes to what extent in doing so do those folks have access to the goodies of the market and government that they were previously unable to access. There we have begun to build bridges but for instance in long term care insurance, in juvenile justice the kids are learning recycled computers, in cross age peer tutoring they are earning recycled computers, some of them are earning vouchers that they can use at Safeway the end of the month when food stamps run out. The question of how one honors work building community, mentoring kids, raising families and striving for social justice. How one turns that into access to what money and only money can buy right now is one of the challenges that I think every community currency faces and that TimeBanking itself faces because it so clearly poses a different theory and definition of value. Tending to preserve this value we have had to be very careful with how those bridges are made. What is beginning to emerge in different places, is ways in which ...as in membership in the triple A gets you a discount at certain places, membership in Time Bank organizations can secure discounts from the market or can secure scholarships if community service is viewed, like when the Veterans come back and they had the GI Bill they got different mortgage rates, so it is possible to build those bridges and that is part of the frontier which we are exploring now.
(Chris) We totally understand that community currencies like LETS and other currencies have a very strong community building ethos behind them as well, many of them do. I think where TimeBanking is sort of a little different from them is that this has been so explicitly articulated though this idea of the core economy and through the notion that this core economy stands as something in and of its own right with its own exchanges and with its own dynamic. So since you actually put this out there about the core economy and it was interesting that you actually asked about the core economy you actually bring to the floor something that tends to get folded in to community currency more generally and makes it stand along and then you have to start looking at the question that you just asked, how do we bridge, where do we make the bridges, where are the bridges and all of a sudden they become explicit.
(Edgar) If you view the core economy in some sense as our eco system, it's like we didn't care about air or water or the ozone layer until we messed it up and then we realized without it we were in deep trouble. The same thing is true in terms of taking family, neighborhood, community, trust, social networks, friendships, mutual respect, moral infrastructure and social infrastructure. That is our eco system. Money floods in only when you screw it up so much it endangers others and that our own sustainability as a section of the species feels threatened and then all of a sudden it becomes fashionable to look at it as having economic significance. Just as we are seeing that building green has economic value and that there is money now in air purification and in reducing carbon emissions we are beginning to look at what are the carbon emissions of the way in which we treat kids, families and the way in which we treat community.
(Chris) If the intention is there to do that bridging; if there has been an effort to understand what that bridging requires; and if it is championed by individuals and organizations who are strong players in the money economy, then yes, it really can provide bridges across that gap.
(Q) For a new user, should they expect to buy groceries or fill up their gas tank paying with Time Dollars?
(Chris) That's not their intent. Time Dollars do not replace money in the way that that implies. Maybe if the new user is homeless, living in a shelter, and earns Time Dollars by contributing to the shelter, then one option offered by the shelter could be to cash in Time Dollars for a bag of groceries. That has happened with TimeBanking. But using Time Dollars to do regular grocery shopping or purchasing the gas? That would miss the whole point of what Time Dollars are for.
(Q) Can members earn time credits, collect them or pool them and donate them to a community group or project? (I love this idea)
(Chris) It's fine to donate Time Dollars. Actually, it is quite common to do so. The most powerful instances are where people who have always been at the receiving end of services are able to donate Time Dollars they have earned' to help others. But there is a caveat. The HARD part about Time Banking is actually asking for help. We all like to think that we are self-sufficient. If some TimeBank members always give away their Time Dollars and aren't willing to ask for help, they are only contributing half way to the circles of giving and receiving that TimeBanks seek to create. Even with the best of intentions, donating Time Dollars instead of using them may reinforce relationships of inequality between "haves" and "have-nots." In TimeBanking, the act of receiving is as important as the act of giving because it empowers someone else to give.
(Q) You have written, "TimeBanking had its roots in a time when "money for social programs dried up" and no dominant approach to social service in the U.S. was coming up with creative ways to solve the problem." In the current economy of 2010, not only are social service funds drying up, everyday essential programs and services are flat out dying. With all of these financial issue across America, do you feel that time banking will take on a much larger role in the coming years?
(Chris) Yes, I do. In part, that's because so much is being learned about what can be achieved using Time Banking.
(Edgar) I personally do. To pioneer a new initiative in Washington, DC for all the at risk kids who have been in one way or another hit a trip wire and been involved in the juvenile justice system. We doing the same, when they come out with folks who are returning from prison, because we are building and creating something called the Homecomers' Academy (1). They need to ask, "how do we survive?" if the answer is 'the way you survive is to continue to have problems, that's one thing. We think that the way to survive and the path that we are creating for survival is to contribute. We are using that model to deal with long term care insurance in Vermont. The federal government just made a three year million dollar grant to test the notion that seniors could age in place by contributing to each others well being and by their families being a part of an extended family social support network that would reduce the need for nursing home care and enable the people to support each other.
(Chris) I have a slightly different take on this, I think there is a very good chance that it will. For instance in Michigan, they have very few time banks, I think about 6 so far but the interest is huge. We are talking about a possibility of holding a really large training for probably well over 100 people there is an explosion of interest in using time banking as a way to mitigate the economic downturn. That is an opportunity that also comes to my mind with something of a challenge which is that for many people they just immediately leap to seeing time banking as a replacement for money and then be troubled as to why it is not operating as money does. All of that, and so that is pretty ...well might turn out to be really challenging. I'm just sort of watching the situation and saying how can we be really really clear that time banking does specific things and it just does not replace money.
(Edgar) Head start in St. Louis for example was using Tim Banking as a way to get parental involvement and we see increasingly that Time Banking will enable a community based organization that is running a time bank be a competitive bidder because of what they bring in terms of capacity and getting sustained community engagement.
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