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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.
Original Submission
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 27 2015, @09:22PM
Brilliant!
As an aside I am so sick of hearing about how important Californian agriculture is. If you dig into the numbers and specific definitions people are spewing out (like 99% of walnuts grown in California), you realize how bunk it is. Look around your own backyard and you will find just about everything California claims a monopoly over is grown just down the road from you. That produce is sold locally and thus is not counted nationally. California farmers are heavily subsidized so they dominate the export business on price, but that does not mean their produce cant grow anywhere else or isn't grown anywhere else. Now excuse me while I go enjoy the view of my fruit and nut trees keeping the scorching sun off of my veggies in a northern state.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Saturday June 27 2015, @10:58PM
I have a walnut tree it my yard that drops more walnuts than I want to eat every year. I never water it. Pacific NW. They store well too so there is no issue with season.