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SoylentNews is people

posted by cmn32480 on Saturday June 27 2015, @12:34PM   Printer-friendly
from the immortality-here-i-come dept.

As part of their Get2Gether Challenge, the Center [for a New American Dream] put together this video on how to start a time bank. Essentially a neighborhood exchange program that allows people to connect and trade their skills, time banks work by providing a system through which neighbors perform tasks or services for each other—anything from DIY to accounting to gardening skills—and earn "hours" in the time bank (everyone's time is valued equally), which they can then trade with other neighbors for other skills.

Not only does it get neighbors talking and trading together, and therefore create tighter social bonds, but it also keeps people trading skills, goods and resources locally. Why pay for an organic tomato from California when you can have your neighbor teach you how to grow your own? The other plus side of time banks is that they can help low income people, or folks who may not be able to work full time, by providing a way to supplement their income and get out in society on their own terms, without the need for start-up capital or formal business knowhow.

Science Fiction writers often explore alternative economies. Kim Stanley Robinson did a lot in his Mars Trilogy. Would you participate in a Time Bank? The ability to tell people, "Have you tried turning it off and on again?" could make you the king of the neighborhood Time Bank.


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  • (Score: 2) by mhajicek on Saturday June 27 2015, @08:03PM

    by mhajicek (51) on Saturday June 27 2015, @08:03PM (#202200)

    How does it help someone who's skills aren't in need? If you're skills are in need, are you going to trade your skilled time one for one with that of a bonsai trimmer?

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    The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
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