By Vincent Armentano
As an econ major, I felt right at home as Dr. Cahn commenced his presentation. An older gentleman with a welcoming voice, he spoke in terms that have become second nature to me; scarcity, demand, price and exchange. These concepts are typically an economist’s bread and butter. Dr. Cahn recited a familiar logic chain of how scarcity determines price and value, then caught us off guard when he asked if this concept of scarcity applies to human beings. If there’s seven billion of us on the planet, we’re no longer scarce. The audience was speechless. He followed up by asking us if all abundant resources were worthless. At this point I had officially been ripped from my comfy economics mindset and was ready to listen to Dr. Cahn’s presentation.
While TimeBanking simply sounds like a volunteer organization on paper, Dr. Cahn showed us that it is really a more conducive environment for an informal economy to flourish within a community. The inception of a TimeBank is actually a conversation between neighbors. In an initial meeting, members learn about each other’s skills, challenges and hopes for the community. After their needs are established, members can start to earn time credits by performing tasks for their neighbors. For example, I could earn a time credit by hanging out with my neighbor’s son after he gets home off the bus from school. Later, I could use the credit that I earned to pay my neighbor for a calculus tutoring session.
In order to maximize the accessibility of this informal economy, Dr. Cahn developed a user-friendly website that allows individuals to make a profile and post their skills and challenges electronically. The system is so effective that some TimeBanks boast membership of over 2,000 individuals. You can find these micro-economies operating in 83 different countries across the world; their applications are truly endless. Dr. Cahn spoke proudly of TimeBanking’s ventures into areas of Justice and Skills Development. TimeBanking had a unique opportunity to enter into an experimental judiciary where minors were actually tried in a court by a jury of their peers. The young jurors could suggest a variety of options for individuals found guilty, from community service hours, to jury duty. The population of repeat offenders was reduced significantly and this speaks volumes to the impact of TimeBanking. In regards to skills development, this provides an opportunity for individuals to hone their vocational skills over the course of years at virtually zero cost.
Many of the TimeBanking services provided, apart from jury duty,are presently left up to the market. As Dr. Cahn shared with us, he is of the opinion that moneys infiltration into these exchanges is causing problems for society. What was lost in the transition to formal economy? Clearly the presence of money is one major distinguishing factor. Therefore, the question naturally arises: what is money? I found myself perplexed by this question as I walked out of Dr. Cahn’s presentation. Unfortunately, there’s no easy answer. We can find attempts to answer it dating as far back as ancient Greece in Aristotle’s The Good Citizen. More recently the question has evolved: how does money impact our behavior? A recent book by Harvard Lawyer Michael Sandel claims to know the answer. In What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets Dr. Sandel attempts to show that we’ve moved “from having a market economy, to having a market society.” His book is littered with examples of how money has eroded or altered human interactions through a process he calls commodification. Did you know that you’re able to actually purchase an apology in China? or that prisoners can pay $82/night to upgrade their cell? Herein lies Dr. Edgar Cahn’s motivation for creating the first TimeBank: to combat that process of commodification. While my last two examples may seem outlandish, we can find commodification everywhere. My favorite idea is that in the English language, time is money. You spend your time. You’re shaping the way you view time as a resource to either be invested or traded. Anyone familiar with a romantic language will note that this is unique to English. In French; “comment es-tu passe le temps?” literally translates to “how do you pass the time?” I bring this up because Dr. Cahn was adamant that commodification is impacting our lives in ways we aren’t consciously aware of. And once I was able to empathize with him on that idea, I understood why the world needs TimeBanking.
Ultimately, TimeBanking prioritizes the human elements of exchange in our lives and removes the measuring stick of the dollar from that interaction. In the TimeBank economy, no one person’s time is more valuable than another’s. One hour of work means one time credit; this promotes an ideal of human equality and valuing each individual’s contribution, in spite of our abundance. The best analogy I can draw is the difference between commerce and gift-giving. The way I see it, they’re both exchanges, but the aim of each is entirely different. The litmus test for TimeBanking, and an example that was brought to me twice while discussing the merits of the system is the question of why someone has the incentive to participate. “Why would a brain surgeon take part in TimeBanking?” Obviously the opportunity cost of 1 Time Credit is an hour that could’ve been spent in the real labor market earning a wage. “Does this mean that people earning large incomes are less likely to value this system?” The spirit of these questions however, entirely miss the point of participating in the system. I can only imagine Dr. Cahn laughing and telling us that we need to step out of our bias for a second. Timebanking is not supposed to replace commerce. Time Credits are not supposed to replace income. Timebanking is supposed to provide an alternative to the market solution for small scale needs. This alternative is also the incentive to participate, and it is being a part of the community built through TimeBanking.
After his presentation, Dr. Cahn had us reach out to other students and brainstorm what TimeBanking could bring to our campus. There were some awesome ideas put forward, a lot of them involving how our university could better serve the local community just outside the campus borders. I’d like to ask you what you think TimeBanking could bring to campus. Empowering students to take on endeavors such as this is what sets NEU apart. Please email your ideas to sei@neu.edu to initiate a dialogue, and perhaps we could make these visions reality.
If you’re interested in learning more about Time Banking, please click here:
http://timebanks.org/what-is-timebanking/
If you’re interested in learning more about Sandel’s book, please click here:
http://www.amazon.com/What-Money-Cant-Buy-Markets/dp/0374533652
I would like to thank Laura Benedict Koch for her help revising this piece.
