Cred

[u/the_nominalist]

Time Credits are the best way for local communities to regenerate and pave the way forward to true Gift Capitalism. Here, i'll devise a plan for my local hometown.

What are time credits? How are they used?

Time credits are like money given out for doing volunteer work for others. The idea is that if you give me an hour of your time, i'll do an hours' worth of work for you reddemable at any time. Currently they are only useful for goods, though services could use a similar system as well.

Chunky

What of specialized professions like doctors or lawyers? A way to incentivize working in harder jobs may be lowering the required average work time before you are allowed to trade with others. An idea may be that you need to work an average of, say, 30 hours per week before anyone trades with you. This keeps out freeloaders. Your worktime record and profession are recorded and made public on the internet on a profile. Anyone who wants to contribute takes a pledge to only trade with people who trade with those who work a certain minimum worktime.

Compression rate

If the minimum worktime for doctors is, say, 10 hours a week while for others it's 30 hours a week lots more people would like to be doctors. While one hours' credit is given for every hours work, stores can, on their own, offer bonuses for harder, more in-demand jobs. Some stores may give doctors four hours per hour while others ten hours per hour. Each stores' bonus salary schedule is made public. Good work is rewarded at store discretion.

Lifecycle of a credit

Credits are created to reward one particular person. They circulate, then they are destroied when a store accepts them. Stores accept time credit to earn business credit that they use to shop at other stores. Each time credit recieved during a month adds to a stores' average earnings, which are their average earnings-expenditures divided by the number of months they've been open.

As an example, let's say that I have earned fourhundred timcredits and been open for four months while spending threhundred. I'd have an average earnings per-month of 25, or 400-300/4.

Once this average is calculated, businesses place orders with each other by rewarding each business in store credit. Each business gets an amount of store credit individualized and valid at each particular store equivalent to their average earnings per month.

Earnings= % of a person’s salary spent at a particular store x average salary. Spending can be measured in normalized store credit. Here’s an example of how trading may work.

Again, Let’s say average monthly earnings are 300 per month. Every store then gives you 300 store business credits valid at that particular store. You earn new store credits every month without doing anything. It’s your choice of where to spend your credits. They do accumulate. Spent store credits go on the expenditures side of your account, decreasing your average earnings so you earn less store credits next month. When you spend store credits, they go on the earned side of the business you spend them at’s account, increasing their average earnings and thus giving them more store credits for the next pay term.

Inflation?

No inflation can exist. An hours' work now will always be worth at least one hours' work in the future regardless of elapsed time. Average earnings will smooth variations in income.

Creation of new businesses

Simply create time credits to pay people. There's a natural limit to how many time credits you can give because there is a limited amount of time in a day. People with no issues can also earn time credits by betting that their business will suceed- in effect backing time credits with their own time. I suggest that one time credit lent out be backed with three hours of time. This means that if the loan fails i'll perform three hours' worth of work or prison time. Multiple people can split this risk. Failure to obllige terms and condition of said loan puts you on a delinquency list which means you cannot buy or sell anything and anyone who trades with you also cannot buy or sell.

Running the program

A centrally-appointed administrator oversees each business to keep track of time and prevent fraud.They do not manage. Each cities' volunteers organization can appoint a timekeeping worker within each factory that earns bonus credits for accurately reporting how long each coworker works. If they commit fraud, fellow workers can report them and replace their position. You might get triple time for this. There's a heavy disincentive to misreport hours because whoever reports first takes the other's time credits and position. This is true even if you offered to misreport hours worked in the first place. No prison time would be offered so theres less fear involved.

A public facebook group with three cofounders would hold elections to appoint a local board and new mods. Each working resident would get a page/post that serves as a central repository for all work done. Anytime a resident did work, a comment would be made by a mod under that post. When they shopped, stores would post how much the person bought using their official account. The person themselves would verify this by making another comment underneath the store's comment. This is double entry bookeeping at its finest. A store couldn't fake the numbers because what's taken from one account must be given to another. Both numbers must be equivalent or else nobody is paid/gets goods. All of this happens in or near real time.

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