(Edgar) The St. Louis program set up a Time Dollar...it was called a resident college and people could pay in time dollars tuition for courses and any resident who had a skill whether it was plumbing or photography or gardening or cooking or crocheting could offer to give a course and time banking set up its own board of regents to accept the proposal for a course and then it offered the course and people paid for the course in Time Dollars.(2) In Scotland, in the prisons they are using Tim Banking and people can use the time credits to get courses from the open university and are doing so. Here in the states we have offered as incentives for kids who want to earn karate and in Long Island mothers who want to learn word processing have earned computers and taken courses with Time Dollars that they have earned.
(Chris) So Edgar's giving you all of this, essentially this is one of the areas that I've heard Edgar pushing and suggesting and cajoling for years and years because it seems such a natural. Large organizations like colleges are conservative, they know what they know. It's been sort of an uphill battle to persuade them this is a good idea but I think this is one of the areas that we both feel this will be a growth area for time banking. The University of the District of Columbia is creating a community college and we are looking to see if young people in the juvenile justice system who earn Time Dollar can use those as credit to get into community college when it's formed. It's a great great idea and we'd like to see a lot more of that.
(Edgar) University at Albany - School of Social Welfare said they were willing to accept Time Credits as part payment of tuition, this is for a social work degree. They did it on a limited basis. I know that.
(Chris) What this really raised in a very nice way, is the degree to which Tim Banking is already about, on one level, is really about looking at resources of value and getting behind the money, you know money does so sort of so automatically that we don't really spend a lot of time analyzing flows of resources, we just hand over the money. We don't go through the laborious work. One of the reasons I think time banking is interesting and works is because it's very inefficient as currency you are forced to actually analyze resources, you're forced to have a look and say "oh these people are putting in this and those people could put in that and where is the benefit and what are the incentive" and you are forced to really pay attention to them. The possibility to actually getting into college or getting a reduction on your tuition fees that is a major benefit that could be a major incentive. So then it becomes sort of part of an analysis about what would incentivize people to do what kinds of work and aware of the resources. But then you have to ask what's in it for the school. So you have to go down this sort of journey of asking "well what's in it for?" So it is a great great idea but as with all things TimeBanking you have to ask what's in it for the school.
(Q) What does the IRS say about Time Dollars and why is Time Banking is the only complementary currency that is recognized as tax exempt?
(Chris) The tax exemption relates to specific qualities of TimeBanking.If it were used in ways that mimicked regular money it would not be tax exempt.
(Q) With all the ID theft in the world today, it seems to me that trusting others would be difficult for new members. Are there any credit checks or background checks on members?
(Edgar) There are different answers for you on that, because some programs do use background checks because some states require the use of background checks particularly where children are involved and vulnerable elders are involved. I do want to say that what you would allow any Stanger if your brother, aunt or best friend said you could trust them. What TimeBanking does is it creates a way by which people can vouch for each other and by which if they screw up that is immediately reflected so that what we found that even in neighborhoods where everyone knows everything bad about everybody we've been able to build trust. And, I can't tell you that all the people in the TimeBanks are angels because I know too much about them but I can tell you they play by the rules visa via the other members of the TimeBank.
(Chris) It really is a sort of reputation system in fact people make exchanges they build up reputations in the TimeBanks and so it is an 'changed network' they are and are not strangers because as members of the time bank they've sort of validated their contributions and so forth. Of course you always have newer members coming in and so the question is, "is a new member trustworthy?". So most TimeBanks actually do require that new members have references from existing members or just references. The other side of that, as Edgar says, is some TimeBanks specifically to choose to take in ex felons and people who would not pass credit checks and then they have policies around that. If somebody has a record that they have specific kinds of assignments that they can do and some that they can't or they do project assignments and so forth. We actually have a little booklet that we hand out which we created around the issue of liability and each TimeBank makes their own policies and decisions around that.
(Chris) Every TimeBank has its own policy in this regard. Many do use background checks. They have special policies for members who have records, such as setting boundaries around kinds of tasks that those members may or may not be permitted to do. TimeBanks USA provides a guide for new TimeBanks to think about how they want to proceed given who the members in their TimeBank will be.
(Q) What makes this system work between strangers?
(Chris) In a TimeBank the members vouch for each other. If there's a problem, then it gets back to the coordinator instantly. One role of the TimeBank coordinator and the TimeBank leadership is to handle problem situations but to date those have been exceedingly rare.
(Q) Have you been able to identify the most important feature which contributes to creating trust among Time Bank users?
(Chris) It is a very interesting thing, Stephanie Rearick who helped to create the Dane County TimeBank which I think has been going now for 3 years and has 1500 members. At the Time Banking conference in 2009 she was one of the speakers and she said she had been involved with LETS before then so she was quite familiar with community currency she was one of the creators of Madison Dollars which was a LETS, what she said she was totally unprepared for was that she found that TB created what she called the "Economics of Generosity". She said that even knowing that in her head going in that she was totally unprepared for the actual experience of that. That every exchange has this element of generosity in it. We hear that a lot from people.
(Edgar) I would say that at least on of the key elements is the elimination of anonymity. A transaction can either be a transaction or it can birth a relationship. In fact we built small clusters, so as people come to know each other, as they work together on different projects, as they come together for monthly events or birthday parties, that sense of "I'm going to see you again" and that you are in a continuous loop it's not an isolated transaction is critical. If I'm only going to see you once, I have a choice, I can hit you over the head and take your money or I can treat you according to the golden rule. If I'm going to see you tomorrow, or if I'm going to see somebody else who is going to see you tomorrow, I'm going to think twice about that. So the whole dynamics around creating a memory loop, because you can't create trust without a memory loop. It remembers what footprints your last transaction left and how you were treated in that last transaction. I think it's the way in which Time Banking turns transactions in to relationships that creates that kind of memory trace reinforced by the software, reinforced by the sense that somehow the computer is a super ego in the sky that somehow knows what you are doing.
(Chris) Interestingly, it seems to be the hour-for-an-hour aspect of TimeBanking. It means that every exchange calls for some measure of altruism in either the giving or the receiving, because there is no way to judge whether one is giving or getting "value for money." A person gives what they can. They receive what they receive. There is generosity built in on both sides. And that leads to trust.
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