Time-based currency
In economics, a time-based currency is an alternative currency or exchange system where the unit of account is the person-hour or some other time unit. Some time-based currencies value everyone's contributions equally: one hour equals one service credit. In these systems, one person volunteers to work for an hour for another person; thus, they are credited with one hour, which they can redeem for an hour of service from another volunteer. Others use time units that might be fractions of an hour. While most time-based exchange systems are service exchanges in that most exchange involves the provision of services that can be measured in a time unit, it is also possible to exchange goods by 'pricing' them in terms of the average national hourly wage rate.
History
19th century
Time-based currency exchanges date back to the early 19th century.The Cincinnati Time Store was the first in a series of retail stores created by American individualist anarchist Josiah Warren to test his economic labor theory of value. The experimental store operated from May 18, 1827, until May 1830. The Cincinnati Time Store experiment in use of labor as a medium of exchange antedated similar European efforts by two decades.
The National Equitable Labour Exchange was founded by Robert Owen, a Welsh socialist and labor reformer in London, England, in 1832. It was established in Birmingham, England, before folding in 1834. It issued "Labour Notes" similar to banknotes, denominated in units of 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 40, and 80 hours. John Gray, a socialist economist, worked with Owen and later with Ricardian Socialists and postulated a National Chamber of Commerce as a central bank issuing a labour currency.
In 1848, the socialist and first self-designated anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon postulated a system of time chits.
Josiah Warren published a book describing labor notes in 1852.
In 1875, Karl Marx wrote of "Labor Certificates" in his Critique of the Gotha Program of a "certificate from society that has furnished such and such an amount of labour", which can be used to draw "from the social stock of means of consumption as much as costs the same amount of labour."
20th century
was a Japanese housewife, author, inventor, social commentator, and activist credited with creating the world's first time bank in 1973.Mizushima was born in 1920 in Osaka to a merchant household. She performed well in school and was given the opportunity to study overseas in the United States in 1939. Her stay was shortened from three years to one due to rising tensions between the US, Japan, and China. Mizushima opted to pursue a short-term diploma course in sewing.
After returning home, she married. Her first daughter was born at the outbreak of the Pacific War, and her husband was soon conscripted into the army.
Mizushima's sewing skills proved invaluable to her family during and after the war. While the Japanese population was suffering immense material shortages, Mizushima offered her sewing skills in exchange for fresh vegetables. It was during this time that she began to develop her ideas about economics and the relative value of labor.
In 1950, Mizushima submitted an essay to a newspaper contest as part of a national event titled “Women's Ideas for the Creation of a New Life.” Her essay received the Newspaper Companies’ Prize. While it has since been lost, the ideas in the essay attracted widespread press attention.
Mizushima soon became a social commentator, with her views being aired on the radio, in the newspapers, and on television. She frequently appeared on the NHK, the country's national broadcaster, and toured the country giving talks about her ideas.
In 1973 she started her group the Volunteer Labour Bank. By 1978, the bank had grown to include approximately 2,600 members. The membership included people of all ages, from teenagers to women in their seventies. The majority of members were housewives in their thirties and forties. Members were organized into over 160 local branches throughout the country, coordinated by the headquarters located on Mizushima’s estate.
By 1983, the network had over 3,800 members organized in 262 branches, including a branch in California.
The political activist and philosopher Cornelius Castoriadis, after criticizing the incoherency of capitalist, Leninist, and Trotskyist justifications of wage differentials in his 1949 Socialisme ou Barbarie text translated as “The Relations of Production in Russia” in the first volume of his Political and Social Writings, responding to the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, advocated that workers “proclaim the abolition of work norms and instaurate full equality of wages and salaries” in his 1957 Socialisme ou Barbarie text translated as "On the Content of Socialism, II". He elaborated further on this advocacy of an “absolute equality of wages and incomes” in his 1974 text, "Hierarchy of Salaries and Incomes", and in the “Today” section of “Done and To Be Done”.
Edgar S. Cahn coined the term "Time Dollars" in Time Dollars: The New Currency That Enables Americans to Turn Their Hidden Resource-Time-Into Personal Security & Community Renewal, a book co-authored with Jonathan Rowe in 1992. He also went on to trademark the terms "TimeBank" and "Time Credit".
Timebanking is a community development tool and works by facilitating the exchange of skills and experience within a community. It aims to build the 'core economy' of family and community by valuing and rewarding the work done in it. The world's first timebank was started in Japan by Teruko Mizushima in 1973 with the idea that participants could earn time credits which they could spend any time during their lives. She based her bank on the simple concept that each hour of time given as services to others could earn reciprocal hours of services for the giver at some stage in the future, particularly in old age when they might need it most. In the 1940s, Mizushima had already foreseen the emerging problems of an ageing society such as seen today. In the 1990s the movement took off in the US, with Dr Edgar Cahn pioneering it there, and in the United Kingdom, with Martin Simon from Timebanking UK and David Boyle, who brought in the London-based New Economics Foundation.
Paul Glover created Ithaca Hours in 1991. Each HOUR was valued at one hour of basic labor or $10.00. Professionals were entitled to charge multiple HOURS per hour, but often reduced their rate in the spirit of equity. Millions of dollars' worth of HOURS were traded among thousands of residents and 500 businesses. Interest-free HOUR loans were made, and HOUR grants given to over 100 community organizations.
The first British time bank opened in 1998 in Stroud, and a national charity and membership organisation, Timebanking UK, started in 2002.
21st century
According to Edgar S. Cahn, 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. He would later write that "Americans face at least three interlocking sets of problems: growing inequality in access by those at the bottom to the most basic goods and services; increasing social problems stemming from the need to rebuild family, neighborhood and community; and a growing disillusion with public programs designed to address these problems" and that "the crisis in support for efforts to address social problems stems directly from the failure of... piecemeal efforts to rebuild genuine community." In particular Cahn focused on the top-down attitude prevalent in social services. He believed that one of the major failings of many social service organizations was their unwillingness to enroll the help of those people they were trying to help. He called this a deficit based approach to social service, where organizations view the people they were trying to help only in terms of their needs, as opposed to an asset based approach, which focuses on the contributions towards their communities that everyone can make. He theorized that a system like timebanking could " the infrastructure of trust and caring that can strengthen families and communities." He hoped that the system "would enable individuals and communities to become more self-sufficient, to insulate themselves from the vagaries of politics and to tap the capacity of individuals who were in effect being relegated to the scrap heap and dismissed as freeloaders."As a philosophy, timebanking, also known as Time Trade is founded upon five principles, known as TimeBanking's Core Values:
- Everyone is an asset
- Some work is beyond a monetary price
- Reciprocity in helping
- Community is necessary
- A respect for all human beings
involves everybody coming together as a community... the Gorbals has never—not for a long time—had a lot of community spirit. Way back, years ago, it had a lot of community spirit, but now you see that in some areas, people won't even go to the chap next door for some sugar... that's what I think the project's doing, trying to bring that back, that community sense...
In 2017 Nimses offered a concept of a time-based currency Nim. 1 nim = 1 minute of life. The concept was first adopted in Eastern Europe.
The concept is based on the idea of universal basic income. Every person is an issuer of nims. For every minute of one's life, 1 nim is created, which can be spent or sent to another person, like money.